Quote from: Willie the Duck;1034944I don't think he's backed up his assertion very well,

I don't think he's backed it up at all.  Of all the reasons various people haven't bought this or that edition, I think "hates change" is among the least likely of reasons.

The notion that somebody could actually be happy with the game they have seems deeply upsetting to a nonzero number of people online; I've gotten an amazing amount of shit for it in any number of venues.  I don't know if 5th edition is good or bad.  I frankly don't CARE about it one way or the other, because I'm happy.

I feel Happy!  I feel Happy! * DONK! *

Happy? what is this thing you speak of?

I don't think people rationally do a lot of things. Those answers usually come out afterwards.

I fully believe a gamer can be happy with a version of a rpg they enjoy. I don't see the need to edition war on newer version of a rpg either. Which happens to often in our hobby. Not all gamer behave that way enough imo that it's noticeable and does the hobby no favors. I turned my back on 2E D&D for years once third came out and said some stupidly negatives about it. I grew up matured as a person and gamer and now I find myself reading my 2E books more than PF books sometimes.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1034949I feel Happy!  I feel Happy! * DONK! *

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6rZJe1Wsd4

Quote from: sureshot;1034945If someone at the very least reads the a newer edition and dislikes what they see I may disagree with yet can respect and understand why they don't like rpg edition XYZ. It's when they can't be bothered to read let alone play the rpg where my opinion on some gamers not liking change comes from. They don't know anything about the newer edition of a rpg.

I can rule out an rpg without reading it by asking three questions of those who play it.

1) How long does the average combat take? If the answer is longer than 10-12 minutes, I am unlikely to enjoy the game. If the answer is 20+ minutes, I know I will not not enjoy the game.

2) How long does it take for a new player who is not familiar with the rules to create a character, assuming a bit of guidance from the GM or another experienced player?  If the answer is longer than 15-20 minutes, I am unlikely to enjoy the game.  If it requires more than 30 minutes, I'm unlikely to be even willing to give it a try.

3) How important is system mastery? Can a player play well without knowing the rules and simply describing what he wants his character to do?  If system mastery is needed to play well or worse to enjoy playing at all, I know the game will not interest me.

Why? Because I've played a lot of RPGs since I started playing in 1975 and those with time-consuming combats, complex, time consuming character creation and/or that stress system mastery have consistently turned me off.  Why should I waste my times playing another such game? Its not disliking change, it is simply knowing from experience what I like and dislike in traditional RPGs and using that knowledge to avoid wasting the limited time I have available to play on games I am extremely unlikely to enjoy. However, as D&D is my "go to" game, I tend to try new editions of D&D. I've tried all the WOTC editions and they all fail on at least one of these points. Heck 3.x and 4e (and Pathfinder) failed on all three points.

Quote from: RandallS;1034965I can rule out an rpg without reading it by asking three questions of those who play it.

1) How long does the average combat take? If the answer is longer than 10-12 minutes, I am unlikely to enjoy the game. If the answer is 20+ minutes, I know I will not not enjoy the game.

2) How long does it take for a new player who is not familiar with the rules to create a character, assuming a bit of guidance from the GM or another experienced player?  If the answer is longer than 15-20 minutes, I am unlikely to enjoy the game.  If it requires more than 30 minutes, I'm unlikely to be even willing to give it a try.

3) How important is system mastery? Can a player play well without knowing the rules and simply describing what he wants his character to do?  If system mastery is needed to play well or worse to enjoy playing at all, I know the game will not interest me.

Why? Because I've played a lot of RPGs since I started playing in 1975 and those with time-consuming combats, complex, time consuming character creation and/or that stress system mastery have consistently turned me off.  Why should I waste my times playing another such game? Its not disliking change, it is simply knowing from experience what I like and dislike in traditional RPGs and using that knowledge to avoid wasting the limited time I have available to play on games I am extremely unlikely to enjoy. However, as D&D is my "go to" game, I tend to try new editions of D&D. I've tried all the WOTC editions and they all fail on at least one of these points. Heck 3.x and 4e (and Pathfinder) failed on all three points.

Serious question, how many game systems do you think succeed at at least two of the three points?

JG

Sorry RandallS I don't care how long you have been playing rpgs. I can respect a fellow gamer in the hobby. Your gaming pedigree is meaningless to me at least if you can't be bothered to at least read a rpg. Why should I listen when one might be going off factually incorrect second or third hand information on a rpg. Having read many rpgs does not suddenly make one immune to being mistaken about a rpg either.

If I believed everything told to me by fellow gamers about rpgs I would never be playing anything else. Some gamers if they hate a rpg can and will lie about how it runs or plays. They can and will purposefully try to sabotage a person interest in a rpg so that they don't try the rpg. It's not to say I don't trust anyone opinion on a rpg I can count them on one hand. You know how many times during the D20 boom how many times gamers said "rule/feat/class was broken". Once I actually read the supposed broken material it was anything but.

Quote from: sureshot;1034958I fully believe a gamer can be happy with a version of a rpg they enjoy. I don't see the need to edition war on newer version of a rpg either. Which happens to often in our hobby. Not all gamer behave that way enough imo that it's noticeable and does the hobby no favors. I turned my back on 2E D&D for years once third came out and said some stupidly negatives about it. I grew up matured as a person and gamer and now I find myself reading my 2E books more than PF books sometimes.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6rZJe1Wsd4

My only opinion on 5E is that it has too many pages to interest me.  I'm just not going to read a huge tome like that to play a game; this is a second-tier hobby for me, or perhaps third tier.

I don't happen to believe that my opinion counts as "edition warring."

I can respect that Gronan even if I don't agree with it.

To add more to my post I would still game with a person who never read or played a rpg. Show up with a willingness to learn and more importantly have fun. Don't edition war or compare what your playing to the previous edition constantly and we will get along fine. While behaving in mature responsible manner sad I have to add this but it needs to be said.

Quote from: sureshot;1034945If someone at the very least reads the a newer edition and dislikes what they see I may disagree with yet can respect and understand why they don't like rpg edition XYZ. It's when they can't be bothered to read let alone play the rpg where my opinion on some gamers not liking change comes from. They don't know anything about the newer edition of a rpg. Go off second or third hand information which can be misleading. Assume by virtue of it being a new edition that it must be crap. Hide behind years of gaming experience in the hobby to not read the new edition while some also claim to be experts on the new edition on the rpg which has happened to me one to many times at least. I don't care if you were gaming when primitive man was in caves and carving D20 from petrified wood. If you don't read a new edition of a rpg a stadium full of fresh manure at least has more value than your opinion on the subject.

As for the thread topic I like what I see with what they are planning to do with magic. I'm still not impressed with Goblins being core. The goblin art we have seen so far screams more " Me gonna carve youse face offa with my choppa and wear it" then " I'm here to help you trust me".

1. Not all systems have their rules available for free. Even if they do, important rules could be behind the paywall or changed later by lazy developers.

2. Getting people to read your system is the greatest hurdle for RPGs. I personally look through every edition of D&D, but by no means should anyone be expected too to decide whether or not a system is worth their time. This is where marketing comes in.

3. You won't know if an RPG system is good until you have played it for years because it takes that long to run multiple campaigns with multiple GMs throughout all the system has to offer.

4. Goblin race has been the most interesting thing so far about 2e, which is sad. Paizo has had a terrible time making their rules seem cool between Starfinder (which I read through, even though someone can craft a valid opinion without doing so) and these previews.

Paizo recently published a sneak peek of its spell system, and hooooo boy is this going off the rails. Their replacement for Cure Light Wounds, Heal, is a number of different spells mashed together that does different things depending on how many actions you spend and what level you cast it at. What makes it even more fun is that the effect of heightening it depends on how many actions you spent to cast in the first place. The result is that the text for D&D -3.75's basic cure system is this spaghetti:

QuoteHeal Spell 1

    Healing, Necromancy, Positive
    Casting Somatic Casting or more
    Range touch, Range 30 feet, or Area 30-foot aura (see text); Target one willing living creature or one undead creature

    You channel positive energy to heal the living or damage the undead. You restore Hit Points equal to 1d8 + your spellcasting modifier to a willing living target, or deal that amount of positive damage to an undead target. The number of actions you spend when Casting this Spell determines its targets, range, area, and other parameters.

• Somatic Casting The spell has a range of touch. You must succeed at a melee touch attack to damage an undead target.
  
• Somatic Casting, Verbal Casting The spell has a range of 30 feet and doesn't require a touch attack when targeting an undead creature. An undead target must attempt a Fortitude save, taking half damage on a success, no damage on a critical success, or double damage on a critical failure.
  
• Material Casting, Somatic Casting, Verbal Casting You disperse positive energy in a 30-foot aura. This has the same effect as the two-action version of the spell, but it targets all living and undead creatures in the burst and reduces the amount of healing or damage to your spellcasting ability modifier.
  

Heightened (+1) Increase the amount of healing or damage by 1d8, or by 2d8 if you're using the one- or two-action version to heal the living.

Other things:

• Looks like cantrips get one damage die every two levels
• Casters are way more powerful when they don't move.
• Casters will also have Spell Points that they can spend to cast "Domain Powers"
  
• There will be rituals, which sound like a hybrid of 4e and 5e in implementation
• Most of the new critical effects seem reasonable, some sound asinine.
• There's no consistent rubric for heightening spell. Heal gains 1 or 2 dice every level, depending on action consumption. Vampiric Exsanguination gains 3 dice every 2 levels. Regenerate gains a flat bonus only when heightened to 9th level.

The other two spells they listed aren't as much of a mess as Heal. However, there is so much complexity and interaction in the spell system's design that I expect enterprising players will find ways to bust this system wide open.

Is it possible to make a game with all the worst aspects of 3.*/PF, 4E, and 5E mashed together?  It appears they may be game for the prize.

Quote from: sureshot;1034975Sorry RandallS I don't care how long you have been playing rpgs. I can respect a fellow gamer in the hobby. Your gaming pedigree is meaningless to me at least if you can't be bothered to at least read a rpg. Why should I listen when one might be going off factually incorrect second or third hand information on a rpg. Having read many rpgs does not suddenly make one immune to being mistaken about a rpg either.

Sorry, but I neither have the time to read or the money to buy (to enable reading) every RPG out there. As you seem to consider this very important, I will be happy to do so if you will provide the games free of charge and pay me a living wage (with benefits) to read them all. If you are unwilling or unable to do this, I am going to ask questions of those who play games I hear about to see if they are likely worth spending my limited funds on buying so I can then spend some of my limited time reading them to see if I actually want to play them. If this means you don't respect me, so be it. I don't get why you think I should be willing to buy and read every RPG out there before deciding whether it is likely to interest me. If I was going to write reviews of games I had not read, let alone played, I could see where you would have a problem -- but I'm not. I'm simply prioritizing my limited supply of money for buying games and my even more limited time for reading games so don't waste either on games I am unlikely to even want to play once. Sure, it is remotely possible that one of the games I pass over because of the answers to my three questions might be an exception that I really want to play, but I think that's a 1 in 100 chance at best and I'm not willing to waste time and money buying and reading 100 games that don't appear to meet my basic needs just in case I might really like a single one of them.

Quote from: James Gillen;1034973Serious question, how many game systems do you think succeed at at least two of the three points?

Quite a few -- just not some of the current editions of better known games. For example, (limiting it to the D&D branch of the RPG family tree, which is what I am most familiar with), most OSR games, 0e, and B/X meet at least two of the three and a good number actually meet all three.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1034935Your conclusion is bad. Gamers don't hate change for the sake of hating change. Generally nor specifically.

They don't hate change for the sake of hating change.  They hate change because it's something they're not used to.  Humans are built around comfort, patterns and habits.  Change disrupts this, thus humans in general do not like it, and often, yes fear it.

Gamers are worse, because a lot of us were pushed into a sub-section of 'humanity' that isn't often liked or even tolerated, it's not something we were invited to.  After all, there's a reason unpleasant appellations were leveled at us during High School and often later, terms like Nerd or Geek.  So gamers, especially of my generation had to find something within our new 'culture'/clique/tribe to enjoy, and make our own.

RPGs (and gaming in general) was it.  So we now had OUR thing, and it was safe and we could ignore the other tribes of humanity, we had our 'thing'.  Problem is, our thing needs money, and it needs to change with the times as generations and interests change, but there's a subset of us who never left our hobby, for various reasons.

But we're still human, and we still find change uncomfortable, unpleasant and scary.  And like I said, in some ways, more so than the average person.

Quote from: Ras Algethi;1034936Come now, it should be obvious he hates change simply because if people play something different his social value drops tremendously. He can't be on-board with other versions/releases since he'd just be another gamer in that world.

I have to admit, in my more uncharitable moments, I do think this.  My apologies.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034984...
There's no consistent rubric for heightening spell. Heal gains 1 or 2 dice every level, depending on action consumption. ...

Except of course it doesn't apply to the damage option, because reasons. I've come to appreciate scaling cantrips and upcasting spells from 5e and I'm sure they could be done better even. I actually appreciate asymmetrical stuff more than ever these days, so I am almost primed to like this stuff, but when I break down and look at this PF2 material I just ... nope.

I guess I really am not the target market (at least one hopes so for their sake) so maybe this stuff looks waaay different to them. I honestly figured this new edition would just be a blip and they would keep chugging along in the #2 spot but this is almost starting to look like a potential crash and burn scenario for the company. I hope they at least are going to make some niche happy with this system, then again maybe I'm wrong and this will overtake 5e.