Quote from: Trond on August 05, 2021, 08:56:02 AM
Some obvious ones that I think you should check out:

Runequest / Basic Roleplaying - old system with no levels, and it is very intuitive, but most rolls are just pass/fail (like most systems)

Rolemaster - this one has levels, and I always felt like the system needed tweaking, but plenty of intermediate results and interesting combat effects. Lots of tables though, but I never found this to be such a big problem as some say.

Runequest has "Special Success" (IIRC <20% of needed roll) And "Critical Success: (<5% of needed roll) levels. 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu uses a similar method adding in a "Hard Success" threshold of <50%  roll. Both also have a fumble mechanic of 95-100 being a fumble, or 100 if the skill is over 100.

Wow, that sounds a lot like my tastes.  I to have bitter memories of the early 2000's.  The OGL ate the RPG industry. Everything was either DnD 3.5 or WoD and it was all awful.  If you enjoyed a kind of Medium Crunch skill-based RPG like Interlock, you were stuck browsing the Games section of used book stores.  It left a very bitter taste in my mouth and it's taken me a long time to discover the OSR.

It took me a long time to warm up to Class and level based games. In my experience Class and Level based games aren't necessarily always awful.  There's a certain elegant simplicity to a class and level based game.  Your character development path is pretty much set out for you and you don't have to spend time agonizing over which of your free-form skill points or worried that the ability or skill you're about to drop points into is a "Timmy" option either poorly designed or deliberately designed as a trap for inexperienced players.

B/X is the least-worst version of DnD and I'll happily play any version of it.  In my opinion, two games that do class and level-based character progression a lot better are Fantasy AGE and Dragon Warriors.  Both manage to dodge the Hit Point Bloat problems that plague higher-level DnD Campaigns by giving the characters a lump sum of HP at First level and a slow trickle of HP as characters progress.

DW does this better IMHO since HP totals are quite low with most classes getting 1d6+ 4 - 9 HP at start and an additional HP every level or every other level.

DW is also my counter-point for fixed weapon damage. It uses a system where the damage of a weapon is fixed but a die is rolled to bypass armor.

Quote from: tenbones on August 03, 2021, 10:06:06 AM

Quote from: dbm on August 03, 2021, 04:46:38 AM
Chipping in on Savage Worlds, in my experience of the system the extra nuance comes from dramatic tasks. Here you break down an objective into multiple steps and multiple party members can potentially contribute. This gives you much greater granularity and you can see what part of the activity the team handled easily and which bits made them sweat. There is also the possibility of complications, which moves it on again from just a series of skill checks with little consideration in between.

It's a really good sub-system in my opinion.

And it's ENDLESS in its application. And it scales to literally any level of play.

Last night I sat down and re-read the SWADE rulebook because of this thread. Could you recommend a setting/supplement/something/anything that shows it off in all its glory? I believe you that it's great, but I'm not "getting" it, and I'm not sure how to introduce it to a group. When I read the SWADE rulebook, I come away thinking that either I should keep playing something simple (OSR) or borrow all of the trouble and embrace a full-complexity full-generic system (GURPS). Hellfrost has tempted me a couple times, but it's pre-SWADE and I have to do fiddly something something to update it. I'm a lazy, busy, incompetent jerk and I'm not sure how to set up SWADE to be a winning fun time for my players, especially those who don't already own SWADE things.

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi? I'll increase your Pinnacle Entertainment stock value?

Quote from: Torque2100 on August 05, 2021, 11:05:14 AM
In my opinion, two games that do class and level-based character progression a lot better are Fantasy AGE and Dragon Warriors.  Both manage to dodge the Hit Point Bloat problems that plague higher-level DnD Campaigns by giving the characters a lump sum of HP at First level and a slow trickle of HP as characters progress.

Huh? I've seen AGE criticised more than once for HP bloat, especially at higher levels. Don't have my book with me right now to re-check the details...

Quote from: Torque2100 on August 05, 2021, 11:05:14 AM
DW is also my counter-point for fixed weapon damage. It uses a system where the damage of a weapon is fixed but a die is rolled to bypass armor.

This is interesting and reminds me I really need to check out DW sometime.

I like the idea of a combat system that says: does the blow connect, and if so does it get past armour? If yes to both then the target should be in trouble. Minor (but still penalising), major or mortal wound, or dead outright. Not 1d4 off of about 50 HPs and carry on as you were.

Cyberpunk 2013 (the first one, not CP2020) had a system vaguely like that as I recall. Wish I still had my books.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral on August 08, 2021, 09:05:17 PM

Quote from: tenbones on August 03, 2021, 10:06:06 AM

Quote from: dbm on August 03, 2021, 04:46:38 AM
Chipping in on Savage Worlds, in my experience of the system the extra nuance comes from dramatic tasks. Here you break down an objective into multiple steps and multiple party members can potentially contribute. This gives you much greater granularity and you can see what part of the activity the team handled easily and which bits made them sweat. There is also the possibility of complications, which moves it on again from just a series of skill checks with little consideration in between.

It's a really good sub-system in my opinion.

And it's ENDLESS in its application. And it scales to literally any level of play.

Last night I sat down and re-read the SWADE rulebook because of this thread. Could you recommend a setting/supplement/something/anything that shows it off in all its glory? I believe you that it's great, but I'm not "getting" it, and I'm not sure how to introduce it to a group. When I read the SWADE rulebook, I come away thinking that either I should keep playing something simple (OSR) or borrow all of the trouble and embrace a full-complexity full-generic system (GURPS). Hellfrost has tempted me a couple times, but it's pre-SWADE and I have to do fiddly something something to update it. I'm a lazy, busy, incompetent jerk and I'm not sure how to set up SWADE to be a winning fun time for my players, especially those who don't already own SWADE things.

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi? I'll increase your Pinnacle Entertainment stock value?

   I would suggest beasts and barbarians.  Its written with the older rules, but easy at a glance to swap to SWADE, and it has a few setting rules and flavor to get you running. 

Quote from: Valatar on August 02, 2021, 04:35:20 AM
I'm a picky bitch about my RPGing, striving for a crunchy system that strikes the best blend between verisimilitude and usability.  D20 in particular has always bugged me for a few of my opinions:

Ablative HP per level as a health mechanic sucks.  Higher level characters shouldn't be able to roll around naked in a minefield just because the mines only do 1d10 damage apiece.  A person's health, in the sense of incoming damage they can absorb, shouldn't be constantly increasing for no good reason.

Levels kind of suck.  A corollary of the above, character growth being paired entirely on a concept of levels leads to things like higher-level people being able to ignore being constantly stabbed.  I'm also not a fan of long periods of zero advancement followed by a sudden leap in power when you ding the next level.

Skills as a pass/fail single roll aren't interesting...  D20 has fairly lavish attention to spellcasting and some interesting mechanics for combat, but almost no complexity whatsoever for non-combat skills.  Doing surgery?  Roll 15+ on a d20.  Underwater lockpicking?  15+ on a d20.

...but Powered by the Apocalypse blows.  You might be tempted to think, "Oh!  That new-fangled PbtA system doesn't use a pass/fail skill check..."  Let me stop you right there.  Powered by the Apocalypse is a sham.  The way it's set up, roll 2d6 and the most likely result is that you semi-succeed, is intentionally aiming to get every action a player takes into a bargaining scenario with the GM.  2d6 is so swingy that even if you have a specialized character with every conceivable bonus, you're still pretty likely to halfway botch the thing you're best at, which ruins the world for me.  Since you have to have a total of 10 or better to uncompromisingly succeed at something, even if you have a +3 bonus, which is a very large bonus, you have to get a 7 or better, leaving a 41.66% chance of partially failing.  That is fucking terrible.  And it's terrible in service of the belief that having to go back and forth with the GM to negotiate the result of every roll is making the game better somehow.  It's not.

Weapon damage being static is bad.  A weapon that can only ever do a fixed amount of damage lead to scenarios where a given weapon cannot possibly defeat a given opponent, even taking a critical hit into account, barring houserule stuff like three nat20s being an instakill.  You can have the best swordsman in the world and he won't ever do better than 2d8+8 damage with a 1d8 longsword and a +4 strength bonus, no matter how amazingly he strikes.

What systems do I like better?

Alternity  A colossal failure that crashed and burned, but I think it did a whole lot right.  Your health pool is based off of your stats, not your level.  It does have classes and levels, but those serve more as a framework for what skills and feats one can buy than anything else.  A character's skill ranks have much more bearing on what they're doing than their class level.  Plus the skill checks aren't just pass/fail, there are different degrees of success and failure depending on the roll.  And as a side-benefit, weapon damage scales on how good of a result you get on your attack; you can't ever ignore a random person with a dagger, because getting a dagger stuck somewhere sensitive is bad.

Shadowrun  Since I'm not a fan of level-based systems, it shouldn't be a shock that I like skill-based systems.  Shadowrun has its own issues of course, but I approve of its progression where you can purchase character upgrades piecemeal rather than the all-or-nothing of playing multiple sessions with no advancement, then getting lots of new stuff because of a level increase.  Also has successes on attacks directly feed into a weapon's damage, so like Alternity the better your skill the more likely you'll take down a target.

Fantasy Flight Star Wars/Genesys  I'm not big on custom dice, but that aside there're a lot of good things here.  The system is geared for murky resolutions of imperfect successes and failures with upsides, which is far more interesting than pass/fail binary results.  And the important distinction between Genesys and PbtA is that the "you succeed but there's a downside" is not a foregone conclusion with every roll, but a result of situational disadvantage dice added to the pool for challenging conditions, and can be negated by advantage dice for having good tools/people helping/etc.  If you partially fail it's for a specific reason and not because every roll has a high chance of it.  Advancement is through purchases of skills and talents in bite-sized XP spends, so you can usually upgrade your character with every session.  Character health can be upgraded but not to such a degree that they can disregard incoming bullets, and the system does a good job at capturing a cinematic adventure feel by having disposable minion NPCs, decent challenge rival NPCs, and downright scary main villain nemesis NPCs, and it does so without any of them being HP batteries.

(New) World of Darkness  Old WoD was clunky as hell, a single combat would take all night with roll to hit, roll to dodge, roll to damage, roll to soak, the nWoD update helps hugely with streamlining things.  I prefer the oWoD settings, but it's pretty undeniable that the newer ruleset is a big upgrade.  Like the other systems, it's more skill-based than level-based in progression, attack damage scales with attack roll successes, etc.

2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying/40K  The percentile roll is refreshingly easy as a mechanic, while still having a degrees of success mechanic instead of just pass/fail.  I'm also a big fan of the advancement system where characters can easily purchase upgrades within a career and change careers at will, it's considerably more organic than locking into a class and gaining levels.  The over the top, gory critical hit tables are also a guilty pleasure.  The system is geared heavily towards the setting, I don't know how well it would adapt to a non-Warhammer game, but it does a great job of being a gritty and uncompromising ruleset for a dour setting.


So now that I've gone on at exhausting length about my opinions on rule mechanics, can anyone recommend a system that I have yet to mention that could also fit the bill?  I'm always on the lookout for interesting ways to play.

  Savage worlds and GURPS meet many of the points you are seeking.   I would also suggest Mythras (percentage based, similar to WH, but different) which also hits lots of the points you are seeking.

   I do not know how available its games are now a days, but All Flesh Must be Eaten/Eden studios had a game system that rewarded "better" levels of success and though it had hit points, I never felt they were "bloated".   I only played a couple games years ago, so I do not know where the seams begin to show.  It has some of the points you are seeking as well.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral on August 08, 2021, 09:05:17 PMLast night I sat down and re-read the SWADE rulebook because of this thread. Could you recommend a setting/supplement/something/anything that shows it off in all its glory?

Personally, the first significant game I ran was Last Parsec - Eris Beta V. It's pre-SWADE but actually Savage Worlds is really easy to convert with little effort and can mostly be done on-the-fly (and I'm not expert in the system like Tenbones is). One of the good things about the campaign set-up is that it encourages action that is broader than just combat. It easily includes investigation, exploration, figuring stuff out and social interaction with different groups. The ability to easily support different kinds of encounters with enough mechanics to make it interesting without bogging down is one of it's key strengths.

QuoteWhen I read the SWADE rulebook, I come away thinking that either I should keep playing something simple (OSR) or borrow all of the trouble and embrace a full-complexity full-generic system (GURPS).

I've been a long-term GURPS player and it still one of my top-three systems. SWADE has enough crunch to keep things interesting without getting into tiny details. The different sub-systems are only loosely connected, meaning that the game is much easier to home-brew without accidentally breaking stuff.

QuoteHellfrost has tempted me a couple times, but it's pre-SWADE and I have to do fiddly something something to update it.

It's not a campaign world I've run myself, and it has quite a lot of material support. It looks like it was originally written for Explorer Edition, so that would make it two editions old - I wouldn't bother picking it up for the rules personally at that point. SWADE is much more feature complete than Explorer Edition was. Maybe the bestiary would be useful with some light conversion.

QuoteI'm a lazy, busy, incompetent jerk and I'm not sure how to set up SWADE to be a winning fun time for my players, especially those who don't already own SWADE things.

The main advice I would offer is focussing on something pulp adventure in scope and going with the core rules to start. It's a gift that keeps on giving.

Tenbones may have more specific suggestions!

Original Alternity is one of the best designed rpg systems in the industry but it also does so many things that are polarizing to what most people were, and are, used to that a lot of people couldn't grok it. The inversion of how bonus' and penalties to the Die Steps where the Negative dice were positive and Positive dice were actually negative. The roll under structure when many prefer roll high. How integrated your Stats are with your different damage and health tracks. How you gained advancement was more character points based than leveling up yet the game used levels and yet it didn't have ablative hit points. Initiative was wonky.

But when you learned it, it was slick. It all worked. It didn't need many house rules. It is very robust. And the dice system is actually Fun.

It also has one of the coolest campaign settings ever printed with Dark*Matter.  (Not to be confused with the Dark Matter space setting Mage Hand Press recently did for 5e... Alternity Dark*Matter fucking rocks).

I think other games that are similar in scope to those mentioned in the OP are

--> Torg: Eternity, Fading Suns, Revolution d100 (to offer another adaptation of the BRP/D100 system), Open Legend rpg (probably one of the best free rpgs ever designed), Buffy/All Flesh Must Be Eaten (the Unisystem is fantastic), Black Void, Shattered: The Grimdark rpg, and Conan 2d20 (and other 2d20 games like Fallout, Star Trek, Infinity, but not Dune... Dune is even more narrative focused than your standard PbtA games).

Some of these do use hit points or life points in some way but they don't really go up post character creation without something extraordinary happening.

Thank you oggsmash and dbm, checking out those suggestions

Quote from: Marchand on August 08, 2021, 11:19:23 PM


Huh? I've seen AGE criticised more than once for HP bloat, especially at higher levels. Don't have my book with me right now to re-check the details...

Quote from: Torque2100 on August 05, 2021, 11:05:14 AM
DW is also my counter-point for fixed weapon damage. It uses a system where the damage of a weapon is fixed but a die is rolled to bypass armor.

This is interesting and reminds me I really need to check out DW sometime.

I like the idea of a combat system that says: does the blow connect, and if so does it get past armour? If yes to both then the target should be in trouble. Minor (but still penalising), major or mortal wound, or dead outright. Not 1d4 off of about 50 HPs and carry on as you were.

Cyberpunk 2013 (the first one, not CP2020) had a system vaguely like that as I recall. Wish I still had my books.

My point of reference for HP bloat is always DnD 3.5 and Pathfinder where the HP bloat got to be absolutely HORRIBLE.

Seconded on checking out Dragon Warriors.   It is actually quite a good game, but requires the Player's Guide to be truly complete.  It does suffer from what I like to call "British Editing."  The organization is horrible.  Important information is sprinkled through the text in a way that's great when you are reading the book from cover to cover, but horrendous for referring back to the relevant sections during play.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Modiphius games have this as well, hence the name.

I unfortunately missed Pundit's old "Fail-forward sucks" video and just ran across it today, so rather than necroing that old thread I figured I would rebut here instead.

Given that I went and praised several systems in the first post that have degrees of success/failure, it should be apparent that I fundamentally disagree with his assertion.  I do agree that a system where failure is outright impossible and you always must throw players a bone is bad, but he specifically included mechanics for partial success or failure in the list of baddies, so now we have to fight.

1. Life is seldom binary. (Insert gender joke here.)  Whenever I'm doing a task that's an actual challenge to me, and I think most GMs are in agreement that PCs shouldn't be rolling for checks that are trivial to them in the first place, it's rare that I have an unadulterated success or failure.  I got the alternator replaced in my car but it took longer than I thought.  I didn't fix that problem with the AC but found a clogged line that needed cleaning.  Pass/fail is far too simplistic a metric for simulating a much more complex scenario like life.
Consider a pitched sword fight.  With D&D there's really no compelling reason for the combatants to do anything but stand toe to toe and swing like robots until one falls.  Attack, hit.  Attack, miss.  Attack, miss.  Attack, hit.  There's no, "You missed but messed up his attack, he gets a penalty for his next swing."  Or, "Your buddy shot him with an arrow and he dropped his guard, you get a bonus."  The only dynamic element to D&D battles comes from feats, it's not possible within the rule framework for the party wizard to distract a bear by chucking a rock at its nose.

2. MAXIMUM EFFORT  I like systems with expendable resources for players to enhance their rolls, e.g. edge in Shadowrun, fate chips in Deadlands, willpower in WoD.  In D&D there is only, "I attack," no, "That man murdered my father, I attack SUPER HARD."  For a system to really capture a realistic feeling for me, it needs a mechanic to cover when a character is pushing themselves as hard as they can for a task.  They shouldn't be cheap or common enough that using them is a negligible cost, and I appreciated red chips in Deadlands and the destiny points in Star Wars because players using those were in turn giving over similar boosts to the GM to use against them.  You needed to really want those bonuses before you'd resort to using them.  Speaking of resort, Alternity's version was called last resort points, and you actually had to pay XP for them; there's a way to guarantee the players don't overuse them.

3. I still don't like PbtA  In all of the systems I do like, outright failure or outright success are still perfectly possible outcomes, potentially likely ones depending on the circumstances.  Sometimes you do great.  Sometimes you cock it all up.  That's realistic too, and realism is absolutely a priority for me for RPGs, as long as it doesn't come at a cost of making a system unwieldy.  d100 hit location charts to see which finger you hit can fuck right off.  My beef with PbtA is that I feel it's aiming for every test to be of the, "Well you kinda succeeded." result, a mishmash of mediocrity that eventually sorta limps over the finish line.

Quote from: Valatar on August 13, 2021, 03:41:42 PM
I unfortunately missed Pundit's old "Fail-forward sucks" video and just ran across it today, so rather than necroing that old thread I figured I would rebut here instead.

Given that I went and praised several systems in the first post that have degrees of success/failure, it should be apparent that I fundamentally disagree with his assertion.  I do agree that a system where failure is outright impossible and you always must throw players a bone is bad, but he specifically included mechanics for partial success or failure in the list of baddies, so now we have to fight.

1. Life is seldom binary. (Insert gender joke here.)  Whenever I'm doing a task that's an actual challenge to me, and I think most GMs are in agreement that PCs shouldn't be rolling for checks that are trivial to them in the first place, it's rare that I have an unadulterated success or failure.  I got the alternator replaced in my car but it took longer than I thought.  I didn't fix that problem with the AC but found a clogged line that needed cleaning.  Pass/fail is far too simplistic a metric for simulating a much more complex scenario like life.
Consider a pitched sword fight.  With D&D there's really no compelling reason for the combatants to do anything but stand toe to toe and swing like robots until one falls.  Attack, hit.  Attack, miss.  Attack, miss.  Attack, hit.  There's no, "You missed but messed up his attack, he gets a penalty for his next swing."  Or, "Your buddy shot him with an arrow and he dropped his guard, you get a bonus."  The only dynamic element to D&D battles comes from feats, it's not possible within the rule framework for the party wizard to distract a bear by chucking a rock at its nose.

2. MAXIMUM EFFORT  I like systems with expendable resources for players to enhance their rolls, e.g. edge in Shadowrun, fate chips in Deadlands, willpower in WoD.  In D&D there is only, "I attack," no, "That man murdered my father, I attack SUPER HARD."  For a system to really capture a realistic feeling for me, it needs a mechanic to cover when a character is pushing themselves as hard as they can for a task.  They shouldn't be cheap or common enough that using them is a negligible cost, and I appreciated red chips in Deadlands and the destiny points in Star Wars because players using those were in turn giving over similar boosts to the GM to use against them.  You needed to really want those bonuses before you'd resort to using them.  Speaking of resort, Alternity's version was called last resort points, and you actually had to pay XP for them; there's a way to guarantee the players don't overuse them.

3. I still don't like PbtA  In all of the systems I do like, outright failure or outright success are still perfectly possible outcomes, potentially likely ones depending on the circumstances.  Sometimes you do great.  Sometimes you cock it all up.  That's realistic too, and realism is absolutely a priority for me for RPGs, as long as it doesn't come at a cost of making a system unwieldy.  d100 hit location charts to see which finger you hit can fuck right off.  My beef with PbtA is that I feel it's aiming for every test to be of the, "Well you kinda succeeded." result, a mishmash of mediocrity that eventually sorta limps over the finish line.

Regarding your second point, earlier (e1-3) versions of Shadowrun used pools for discretionary effort. You could put extra attention into hitting your target---or spend extra effort minimizing your exposure to return fire. Magic was the same if you could cast spells (except you could extend the defense to others). Lot a of versatility, but clunky in play, especially for more casual players.

Quote from: Valatar on August 02, 2021, 04:35:20 AM
I'm a picky bitch about my RPGing, striving for a crunchy system that strikes the best blend between verisimilitude and usability.
--snippity--

To me, the best-of-the-least-worst is Call Of Cthulhu, mainly because the BRP it's based on is a pretty solid system and ripe for house-ruling.  A favorite of mine. A close second is Pendragon - the older editions. King Arthur stuff is cool to me.

But the BEST OF THE WORST, is and always will be: ALMA MATER. I'm a sucker for Errol Otis, and besides - It's not the system, it's the GM. Don't BLAME the system, in this case! Don't!
IMHO: We need games like this NOW! Screw PC RPGS! BWA-HAHAHAH!
link: http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/06/retrospective-alma-mater.html

Quote from: Valatar on August 13, 2021, 03:41:42 PM
3. I still don't like PbtA  In all of the systems I do like, outright failure or outright success are still perfectly possible outcomes, potentially likely ones depending on the circumstances.  Sometimes you do great.  Sometimes you cock it all up.  That's realistic too, and realism is absolutely a priority for me for RPGs, as long as it doesn't come at a cost of making a system unwieldy.  d100 hit location charts to see which finger you hit can fuck right off.  My beef with PbtA is that I feel it's aiming for every test to be of the, "Well you kinda succeeded." result, a mishmash of mediocrity that eventually sorta limps over the finish line.

Not to change you mind about PbtA, specially because you seem to grasp it and know what you're talking about. But it's important to remember that the games actually have a spot where players are expected to shine, and that is in the playbook exclusive moves. In which case even the 7-9 results are usually advantageus, because they just mean you pick more good options among many. For eg, if your character is particularly good at stealth he will have some exclusive move on you sheet that will look like this:

"When you infiltrate some place unnoticed, roll. On a hit you do it. On 7-9 pick 1, on 10+ pick 2:

- you find a valuable item along the way, ask the MC what it is;
- you understand the security patterns of the place, gain +1 forward;
- you forge security evidence to de-escalate the alert state of the place, tell us how you do it;"