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.
Sounds like almost any game that isn't D&D or PbA, and has a fairly developed skill system, would fit.
Also I'd point out - PBTA games don't have skill rolls. They have moves which are like in 88% meta-moves pushing narration in some direction, not fail/win situations. I mean in most cases if you're character simply have being professional of some sort in background DM should just allow do things, unless they trigger moves in fiction. If you play PBTA to win skill challenges... well that's original sin for you. Not that I'm great fan of this style - but this style exists with specific purpose, and this purpose is not catering to quasi-realistic simulationists. Like sure there is high chance for partial success/complications specifically to push story forward with complications, as it's meant to be total impro on GM side based precisely on which moves would go into problematic situations.
I mean I dunno why you even bothered to mentioned it because it never even pretended to be crunchy system with high versimilitude :P
Quote2nd 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.
If those are elements you liked in 2e you should check 4e. Way more streamlined profession system (which I admit sometimes seems bit wonky because of it) but you also have really gradual 1% per buy advancement of skills and stats, with easy to get, hard to master philosophy (advancements to become competent are way cheaper than advances to become master), professions are not closed with cap - if you are a soldier you can remain low-level soldier and grew into veteran without profession change simply by honing your WS, rather than need to buy sergeant to change +10 into +20, like sergeants were getting some superior sword training or smth. So you can stay all life in one profession and still be powerful (though without much societal push as almost all professions of 1 lvl are not well respected). You have various levels of success and degree, opposed rolls on melee which eliminated 2edition swing and miss situation, the only thing I must say I really dislike is basing magic on skill (Language Magick). Settingwise it's more return to low-humour of 1e, over wargame inspired military post-apo of 2e (though I think it's banal to mix editions with overall Empire situation). Also for better and worse it lacks damage rolls. You have innate weapon bonus + Str Bonus + difference between SL of Attacker and Defender. Give it a check.
Have you tried any of the Rune Quest variants? Based on your criteria, I'm not sure which one to recommend trying, but they all hit a fair chunk of your criteria. Whether or not you'd like Glorantha setting material tied in or not is an orthogonal question.
By halfway through your post I was going to suggest the EGG Star Wars system, but I see you got there on your own. Take Genesis and adjust to whatever setting you like. Sadly, the vehicle rules (particularly the interface between scales) leaves much to be desired.
Have you heard of... Savage Worlds?
/puts on hat, whips out his cane, get up on his SWADE Collector's Boxset
Gather round! Gather round, (hey kid, get out of here with that d20... ) Let me tell ya about Savage Worlds....
Small Wound Track 3 levels (Well 4 I guess Incapacitated is the last)
Ranks Well "Levels" kinda sorta. Basically the inevitable reality that your character is going to progress, and when you're made some progression through play you get to choose how your character advances in skill. After so many advances (5) you're considered a new Rank, which might qualify you for some new abilities. Because the advances are so chunky, the difference between "Levels" in most games is more granular and anemic. There are only 5 "Ranks" in Savage Worlds and you can play WAAAAAAYYYY into the 5th Rank (Legendary) where doing so in most Level-based (D&D) games, you'll peter out long before then. Savage Worlds scales in power much better (in relation to D&D).
Roll Skills when it matters Savage Worlds is about keeping it fast and fun. You make your Skill checks only when it matters if you fail. OR you want to dunk on a success. Levels of success matter! Savage Worlds is notorious for its exploding dice, which for swashbuckling adventure is a FEATURE not a flaw. The Skill list is small. The output it very high in versatility. You can dial it up or down in granularity as you see fit.
Static Damage? Can I introduce you to the Explodie? Because Savage Worlds has fairly static Wounds, it allows for the scaling of damage opportunities via skills, Edges, and mechanical options to be much more dangerous. A players is expected to make Called shots to hit that unarmored body-part, to pick up that Combat Edge that is going to let you raise that damage cap, etc. And it's CHUNKY. Yes your longsword does Str. + d8 damage. But when everyone is running around with 4-hp, and the only thing between you is the scaling capacity of your Parry and the ablative effect of Armor (you didn't think it makes you harder to hit, did you?) Combat is dangerous. The better you roll the more bonus damage you do. Then... there is the fact that damage dice Explode.
This combat system scales from kids fighting with sticks in the practice yard, to your super-powered PC's fighting Godzilla Kaiju one-on-one knocking down buildings and everything in-between. It also allows you to do mass-combat of up to planetary scale if you want in ridiculously fast order.
If you want something more "crunchy" - I'd totally recommend Mythras/RQ6
tenbones, I swear to God I think you own stock in Pinnacle. :)
Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 02, 2021, 09:22:44 AM
tenbones, I swear to God I think you own stock in Pinnacle. :)
LOL if only I could convince Shane to adopt me.
I'm actually planning on publishing with them. I'm getting my shit together.
I also thought of Savage Worlds. It
does seem to tick all of the boxes the OP listed.
- No hit points. The number of wounds you can take doesn't go up (or barely goes up), and even a high level character can get crushed by a very lucky roll
- Frequent, flexible advancement
- Non-binary check results, except the possibilities are fail/succeed/extra success rather than fail/mixed/success, which both feels better for the players and generally leads to less negotiating with the GM
- Variable weapon damage, plus exploding dice
But Savage Worlds has a lot of fiddly bits of exception-based mechanics, so I wouldn't be surprised if Valatar can find something to hate. He seems a bit grouchy.
Kidding, kidding! We all have a lot of loud opinions about RPGs around here.
QuoteNon-binary check results, except the possibilities are fail/succeed/extra success rather than fail/mixed/success, which both feels better for the players and generally leads to less negotiating with the GM
But also is slightly less interesting.
"Yes, but..." and "No, but..." are usually most interesting.
Like critical success - even D&D have it really :P That's not level of granularity clearly OP was asking about.
There is a number of systems that would work GURPS being the first that comes to mind, including its "Lite" version and the "Dungeon Fantasy" line.
The Dark Eye might be interesting.
HP are based on your race and Constitution. Advantages and Disadvantages can modify that a little. They don't go up unless you raise your Con or buy them up with xp. Buying them up with xp has a max number of times (7 I think) and you only get +1 each time.
As you lose HP you start gaining Pain. One level at each of 3/4, 1/2, 1/4 and <5. Each level gives a penalty to your actions. There are ways to mitigate this but things can go south real fast with one bad hit.
There are no levels. You get xp and spend xp. Everything costs xp. Raising stats, raising skills, spells, prayers, combat ability, everything. Certain things cost more than others. The only thing that is level-like is that characters have an Experience Level at character creation (inexperienced, ordinary, masterly, etc). This limits your numbers at character creation only.
Skills work on a 3-stat d20 system and results have quality levels. Every skill is tied to 3 attributes and you have a skill level. You are trying to get equal to or under your attributes on 3d20. This isounds like a handful, but it works pretty quick in actual play.
For example, you want to Fast-Talk someone. You look at the Fast Talk skill and see you have an 8 in it. It uses Courage, Intuition and Charisma. You have a Courage 12, Intuition 15 and Charisma 14 so you roll (there are a bunch of ways to do this to make it fast, color coded d20s to match the stat color, roll all 3 and just take results left to right, 1 at a time, whatever) and get a 13, 4 and 16. The 13 is one over your Courage so you spend 1 of your 8 skill levels to make is a 12. The 4 passes as it's less than your 15 Intuition and you spend 2 more points to make the 16 a 14. You pass the roll with 5 points left over so you succeed with 2 Quality Levels. Each QL can get you extra effects, longer durations, quicker completion time, more damage on spells, depends on what you were rolling for. If you can't get all three d20s at or below their associated stat, you fail the roll.
Weapon damage is kinda static. Weapons generally have a 1d6 or 2d6 + a fixed value. Dagger is a 1d6+1, long sword is 1d6+4, 2-handed battle axe is 2d6+4. Critical hits exist, as do fumbles, and things can get modified by your combat skill level. There are combat techniques that do things like take a penalty to hit for an equal bonus to damage, charge a foe, feint (penalty to hit for a penalty to their defense roll), etc.
Overall, after running it for several months now, I'd say it is about as crunchy as D&D 3rd or Pathfinder, but the numbers aren't nearly as ridiculous.
I'm definitely grouchy and overly-opinionated, it's how you can tell I'm a nerd with a hobby. Thanks to all the replies thus far!
As far as PbtA goes, I know that technically a roll is supposed to be representing a whole series of events and isn't as granular as a single skill roll in d20, but the fact that Zorro would have a very high chance of stumbling on any given attack ruins the simulation for me. The 5% nat-1 auto-miss in d20 already doesn't sit very well with me, so the much higher chance PbtA has of the best fighter in the world not managing to stab a goblin without repercussions completely curdles my milk.
I played an older edition of Savage Worlds back a decade-ish ago in a Deadlands game, I don't clearly recall the ruleset but tenbones certainly piques my interest! I'll have to give it a look.
Dark Eye is also something that's been on the edge of my radar, but the scarcity of resources for it in English have kept me away thus far. I need to get off my butt and actually dig deeper.
And yes, WoG is dead on with my love of granularity.
D20: Miss/hit/crit or pass/fail for skills.
Alternity: Crit fail/fail/ordinary success/good success/amazing success.
Shadowrun/WoD: Botch/fail/success/more successes usually betterer.
Genesys: Sliding scales of successes vs failures, threats vs advantages and occasional triumph or despair.
WHFRP/Savage Worlds: Fail/success/increasing degrees of success for more result.
The more the system can narrow down exactly what happened when I did a thing, the happier I am. If a player gets a super awesome roll, there should be a super awesome result. A thing I especially like about Alternity with the control die and Genesys with the boost and setback dice is that getting the super awesome result isn't just randomly rolling high, but often a result of the player needing to arrange as many advantages as possible. You can still just get a lucky or unlucky roll, but the player has control over the circumstances around the roll and can try to improve their odds.
I'm one of the few Genesys/FFG SW advocates around here as well.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
My pitch about Savage Worlds (I highly recommend you check out the current edition - Savage Worlds ADventurer's Edition, or SWADE), comes from the fact that on its face, it's *extremely* easy to customize. Most of the system is neatly packaged with small numbers, so a tweak can have really large results.
By comparison in D&D, where a basic +1 To Hit is fairly common place, but the numbers in Savage Worlds, a +1 To Hit is equal to a D&D +4 to hit. There is a mathematical compression that gives you mechanically more for much less. And it keeps the bloat down. It can get as fiddly as you want it to be, and it expands its rules via the settings that are produced for it.
This is why I'm particularly excited about SWADE these days with the release of Savage Worlds Pathfinder. It's D&D on a much more flexible and scalable system. Combined with all the other Savage Worlds settings out there... you can get *really* crazy. Savage Rifts is *excellent* and the power-level there is insanely high. The mechanics are exactly the same and there they're not, they're modular so you can plug-n-play.
It's not a perfect system, there are things that I can give or take (Action Deck mechanics, for instance, but they've grown on me, and if I really didn't like them I could replace them with simple dice mechanics). Their is a lot of genre-mileage you can get out of the system.
I'd also give Mythras a look too - since you're a fan of WHFRP2e. It's percentage-based and I feel they share a lot of DNA.
I'm going to wax poetic about nerdy mechanic things because I like them.
Here is Alternity's core resolution mechanic:
(https://i.imgur.com/FxF5uJW.png)
You always roll a base d20, called the control die, and possibly other dice to modify the base roll, called the situation dice. Alternity's a roll-under, so subtracting is good and adding is bad. The GM sets the difficulty, there are some generic modifiers in the book for things like being wounded, assistance from other characters, etc. But also of interest, the target numbers are always static. If your stat+skill is 16, you succeed at <=16, get a good success at <=8, and an amazing success at <=4, always. Opposed checks against someone else alter your situation dice depending on their stat rather than changing the target you're rolling for. Trying to hit a slippery little bastard might give you a +3 step penalty, for example.
I find this setup extremely elegant. High stat and skill improve your chance at success and also improve your chance of better successes, so a character who sucks at something but gets a lucky roll is still probably not getting a good or amazing success. On the other hand, you can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if the situation dice are bad, so it's in a character's best interests to try to stack the deck as much as possible. Trying to shoot a ninja in the dark when it's raining and while you're bleeding out is not a recipe for success for even skilled people.
Another cool item for Alternity is the health system. It uses stun/wound/mortal health tracks, somewhat like Shadowrun's stun/lethal health track setup. If you take any mortal damage, you will die without medical care, full stop. There's no walking off a bullet in your liver or eight hour resting away a knife in your lung. Mortal damage doesn't necessarily incapacitate a character, but it will inevitably progress to death if untreated. Fortunately taking mortal damage isn't common, you need to be hit with a big nasty weapon, be hit with an amazing success with a normal-ish weapon, or fill your whole wound track. Armor is ablative and mitigates damage rather than making you harder to hit, also nicely realistic, and even if it completely absorbs an incoming blow some secondary stun damage can get through from you being rattled around.
So much about Alternity was amazingly thought out, it's a terrible shame that it was released in TSR's death throes. If it had come out under another, healthier company, I think it could've been a real contender.
Sounds like you need my game. I guess I'd better hurry up and finish it.
QuoteAs far as PbtA goes, I know that technically a roll is supposed to be representing a whole series of events and isn't as granular as a single skill roll in d20, but the fact that Zorro would have a very high chance of stumbling on any given attack ruins the simulation for me. The 5% nat-1 auto-miss in d20 already doesn't sit very well with me, so the much higher chance PbtA has of the best fighter in the world not managing to stab a goblin without repercussions completely curdles my milk.
Yes, but this stumbling is not necessarily stumbling unless your GM tries to run it like D&D or Warhammer.
Let's say your Zorro objective is to free imprisoned noble savage Apaches from hands of Wicked Inquisitor Don Elon Bezos or smth.
In fiction it's shown as several obstacles, player choose how to Zorro shall deal with, which may or not trigger some MOVE.
Let's say Zorro is trying to quietly dispose of lonely guardsman. Zorro is by fiction rules - excelent swordsman. The mook is a mook. So assuming we're in swashbuckling world - the proper conduct from GM would be that mook will be disposed off. But it triggers dunno Silent Assassin move. If Zorro pass test that means zero consequences - mook was disposed off without any problem. Then let's say we have two clocks - that common new school mechanics though I think it could pass very well for old school systems with certain tweaks. One clock is measuring how close zorro is to opening prison cells, another how close zorro is to alarm guards and making his whole situation way worse.
Now problem or failure on roll is not necessarily FAILURE of action, like skill roll. But it gives DM some options to act against player. So let's say simply - you always defeat this guardsman and get one tick of your clock, fine. With perfect roll you just get two, with problem enemy also gets one - guardsman managed to make loud cough when you pierced his heart and some guardsman started to ask "Cuánto cuesta", with failure you still move forward, but enemy guardsman was so fat you failed to stop his body from failing down on a big cheap of hay for horses, guards clock goes up 2 ticks, as this body will sooner or later be found. Still you're closer to your objective.
I get if it's too meta for your taste, becasue God knows it's often too meta for mine, but ultimately stumble in PBTA and simmilar games means something very different than stumble in D&D. In D&D if you get nat 1 on Stealth roll - you are, let's be honest, immediately found by some guards, period.
Now leaving this new school apologetis with distaste in my mouth I must say I see this Alternity system very very fine. Mortal wounds that are not necessarily insta-kill, but they are inevitable death with some time - is really really awesome. Does it have any stress/peril mechanics like let's say system of this nasty nasty red fur animal, I won't mention here?
Quote from: Valatar on August 02, 2021, 04:35:20 AM
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.
For skill-based RPG mechanics, I like either Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition or Serenity with its Big Damn Heroes Handbook.
Quote from: Wrath of God on August 02, 2021, 06:21:46 PM
PbtA things
I get the gist of PbtA's intent behind the mechanics, they want to generate drama for the table. Which, y'know, noble goal because it doesn't have a mechanic for the GM to act outside of reacting to the result of player rolls. It just doesn't sit well for me because one of the things I like most about RPGs is earning a big win. Like having a double-handful of dice to throw in Shadowrun when you're burning edge and playing to your character's strength. All the planning and experience spent to build up to a super crowning roll where you are going to be a badass for the next turn. PbtA is in staunch opposition to that, you can never earn enough of a bonus to not have a good chance of hitting a setback when you attempt to do something.
And when you do have a setback, it's not really for any particular reason. Like, for FFG Star Wars, if you have a bunch of black dice in your hand, you know exactly why they're there. There are specific penalties about what you're doing that added those black dice to your pool, so if they screw up your roll, you can say, "Oh, I made a noise while stealthily offing the guard because the floor was slippery." And not, "Oh, I made a noise while stealthily offing the guard because I always have a 40+% chance of having done so."
Quote
Now leaving this new school apologetis with distaste in my mouth I must say I see this Alternity system very very fine. Mortal wounds that are not necessarily insta-kill, but they are inevitable death with some time - is really really awesome. Does it have any stress/peril mechanics like let's say system of this nasty nasty red fur animal, I won't mention here?
Alternity has a skill attached to the Will stat called Resolve, which breaks down into Mental Resolve and Physical Resolve. Like the names suggest, Mental Resolve is rolled against stress, fear, mental attacks, and emotional damage, while Physical Resolve is to resist being knocked out and continuing through fatigue and exhaustion. So yes, the game does have the concept of being debilitated by stress and fear and a mechanic for resisting it. Since it's a modern/sci-fi game it also includes alien horrors and psychic attacks, and higher ranks in the skill improve your resistance to their rolls to ruin your day.
QuoteBut also is slightly less interesting.
"Yes, but..." and "No, but..." are usually most interesting.
Like critical success - even D&D have it really :P That's not level of granularity clearly OP was asking about.
Raises are much more baked into Savage World's system, apply to all trait tests, and come up much more than 5% of the time. I suppose partial successes are often more interesting, but I am in the same camp as Valatar in finding it inherently annoying and fatiguing (and frustrating for the players) to have to contrive up reasons for partial failure on, like, 40-50% of all checks. I'll trade some interesting complications in exchange for the game running smoothly and the players not feeling like most of their actions are one step forward, one step back.
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.
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.
Quote from: Valatar on August 02, 2021, 04:38:45 PM
I'm going to wax poetic about nerdy mechanic things because I like them.
It had some good ideas and some very bad ideas. The skill list was absolutely painful. Too long, and the broad skills were an unnecessary complication. MOGA degrees of success is great, but there are easier ways to do it than d20 +/- dX. Classes didnt do enough to justify their inclusion.. Rolling dice for armor, IIRC? Pointles step. Three damage values for weapons, ugh.
Wanted to like it due to Dark Matter, but it was just too clunky.
I would recommend GURPS 4e. It's a toolbox generic system that you can customize to taste. Tons of options. Can be ultra detailed or light. TONS of PDF supplements available to help you customize the system.
The classic D6 game is less crunchy but has plenty of room for customization (aka WEG D6, classic Star Wars, Ghostbusters...). I'm using it as the basis of my own generic heartbreaker... :-D (It was released under the OGL)
One system to check out is Masterbook
Was originally released by West End Game, but has been republished by Precis Intermedia. Was designed as a kind of universal RPG, but with modifications that would fit certain gameworlds and settings (Indiana Jones, Necroscope, etc.)
Some highlights of the system include:
Skill based system with a bunch of attributes: you don't have levels, and instead gain competence in certain areas. The basic mechanic is rolling 2d10, comparing it to a small chart, and getting a bonus number that is applied to your skill total. That is compared to a difficulty number or an opposing value generated by your opponent.
Now here is where it gets interesting: not only do you have a success or failure, you have a degree of success and failure, and this is determined by another chart. You might lightly wound an opponent, or you might knock him down, inflict a wound, or even knock him our. So it is not a hit/miss system.
No hit points: death is determined by number of wounds. But you also have shock points, which can go down through injury, exhaustion, pushing yourself too hard, etc. --0 shock points = unconsciousness. I think this is an excellent feature, and adds a lot of realism to the game.
Now healing is very interesting: first aid and medicine checks to fix you up are a skill check against how wounded you are. The worse you are, the harder it is to get you back operational.
Arbitrary DN scale allows for skill checks against virtually anything
Advantages and Compensations: are basically perks and drawbacks, but unlike other systems, Masterbook gives you a number of these based on the setting / gameworld. A Pulp Fiction / Detective setting may give you less advantages and compensations than a fantasy setting. This is to make PCs better fit the gameworld.
The game is very realistic and a bit crunchy, but not overly complicated, and it moves pretty quickly (on a scale of 1 to 10, its complexity is probably a 7, with something like Rolemaster being 10)
there is also a Master Deck (cards) that can be used in the game to introduce random elements, subplots, etc., and can take the place of initiative. It can be used in solo play.
so very cool system worth checking out
https://www.pigames.net/store/default.php?cPath=107
Yeah, Masterbook is cool. Lots of character to the game.
Was one of the first (IIRC) introductions of the "universal measures" table with a cool logarithmic progression. WEG ported that over to D6 for the magic system. Brett has made some nice refinements in the Masterbook 2e beta...
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.
Have you ever looked at Classic Traveller? Damage comes directly off physical stats, leading to a death spiral of sorts as there are penalties for using weapons with less than certain stat values. Combat is fairly lethal - an average PC can be insta-killed if they are not careful. The answer is to be careful. The system rewards planning and smart tactics both in terms of getting creative in how you set up the combat (hire henchmen, exploit terrain etc.) and in terms of mastery of the (relatively few) rules.
There is no task system in the style of the d20 mechanic. Referees come up with throws based on the situation. That could easily encompass outcomes beyond binary pass/fail. You would have to be OK with an old-school approach to rulings not rules. There is blog called "Tales to Astound" that goes into this in detail. You can google "Rule 68A" as well if curious.
I think GURPS and Savage Worlds and FATE systems are pretty customizable and easy to use for any game world. And combat tends to run pretty quickly because hit points are capped. I like using these more than D20 systems.
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.
Quote from: Eserhaudin on August 05, 2021, 08:39:20 AM
I think GURPS and Savage Worlds and FATE systems are pretty customizable and easy to use for any game world. And combat tends to run pretty quickly because hit points are capped. I like using these more than D20 systems.
I.find that Savage Worlds can break down on the high end (e.g. Savage Rifts) where you might get -8 modifiers to hit, and then you still have to top out damage to have any effect.These can lead to frustrating combats with lots of ineffective actions.
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? :D
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? :D
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;"
;)
Quote from: Itachi on January 07, 2022, 10:55:51 AM
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 partiularly good at stealth he will have some exclusive Stealth move on you sheet that will look like this:
"When you want to 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;
- you understand the security patterns of the place, gain +1 forward;
- you forge security evidence to de-escalate the alert state of the place;"
;)
Yeah, but it's hard to -fail- in that situation. The most common result on 2d6 is 7, and that assumes you have no modifiers at all.
Yep, but notice even the 7-9 roll in that Move has only advantageus outcomes. The GM cannot insert complications like the normal 7-9 tests allow (like, say, "you do it but get hurt while jumping that fence.. take -1 HP"). @Valatar point is that the most frequent outcome (7-9) always result in some complication to the player, which is true... except in exclusive character moves.
Quoted100 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.
I'd say in areas of competence due to position/effect logic, even failed tests can be interpreted as past, but with strain on yourself.
And kinda succeed can mean, you do it easily, but some minor inconvinience happened, some small chink in resources or stress.
(Also d100 hit location table seems to be quite easy one :P).
QuoteYeah, but it's hard to -fail- in that situation. The most common result on 2d6 is 7, and that assumes you have no modifiers at all.
Well because assumption is you are already competent in your field of study. It's not zero to hero logic of D&D, more TV series logic when detectives, engineers, assassins already starts quite awesome in S01E01 and things escalate up from this.
QuoteYep, but notice even the 7-9 roll in that Move has only advantageus outcomes. The GM cannot insert complications like the normal 7-9 tests allow ("you do it but get hurt while jumping that fence.. take -1 HP").
Well but Ghostmaker just complained about test being too easy.
I picked up The Dark Eye for many of the same reasons you listed in your opening post. I got really tired of the leveling. You were stuck with PCs that could do anything with impunity in a civilized setting because no guard could effectively enforce the law or you had to come up with some reason the guard captain was a level 18 fighter that didn't want his own stronghold. Plus certain monsters just ceased being a threat and the whole thing felt like a nuclear arms race.
I like the Quality Level that comes with the skill checks. It allows me to bake in "success with advantage" that you get with the SWRPG from FFG without having to interpret the heiroglyphics on the dice (ok, it's not really that bad, but still). As a matter of fact, I've included a house rule now that allows a near-failure to basically be a "success with threat" based on my experience with SWRPG.
I also like the armor soak and the restrained magic. The constraints around magic give it a bit of an OSR feel (to me). You're kind of stuck with static weapon damage but there are special abilities that can alter that a little bit.
For me, the drawback with TDE is that if you're in the mood for monster fighting, then you're going to need to convert some. The system leans toward mostly interacting with human situations and the adventures definitely lean that way. My solution has been to convert monsters from all sources and I haven't looked back. It hasn't proven to be too hard.
As far as availability of translated books, I'm pretty sure we have all we need: Core Book, Aventuria Compendium (good extra special abilities for what they call the mundane classes/non-magic classes), the Aventuria Almanac, the Gods book, Magic of Aventuria, and the Bestiary. There's more than that, but that's ample amount to play with.
I'm partial to savage worlds as my go to catch all system. Even got the collector's edition of SWADE. Unfortunately my players seem to like the consolidated d20 rolls for D&D so I haven't used it as much.
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.
A small thing, but I haven't been able to enjoy DW combat since I started watching HEMA videos and realised DW has penetration vs damage exactly back to front - it gives swords high armour penetration & low damage, while giving axes (etc) low penetration and high damage. Eg DW 2h sword is d10 pen 5 damage, 2h axe is d8 pen & 6 damage. Reality is the exact opposite - IRL big clunky weapons are better penetrators, but less lethal, than swords. Swords are best vs unarmoured & lightly armoured targets.
Dunno about if axe give less damage, but it generally gives damage easier to fix if you're not dead, while sword... and rapier even more with it's puy d6 in most D&D game.
Though I'm not sure if axe would be good armour penetrator. I think good shield destroyer, but with armour - I'd pick hammers.
Quote from: Wrath of God on January 09, 2022, 09:16:47 AM
Dunno about if axe give less damage, but it generally gives damage easier to fix if you're not dead, while sword... and rapier even more with it's puy d6 in most D&D game.
Though I'm not sure if axe would be good armour penetrator. I think good shield destroyer, but with armour - I'd pick hammers.
Hammers especially pointy hammers are the best penetrators yup.
Quote from: Hzilong on January 09, 2022, 04:04:29 AM
I'm partial to savage worlds as my go to catch all system. Even got the collector's edition of SWADE. Unfortunately my players seem to like the consolidated d20 rolls for D&D so I haven't used it as much.
I do like SW. I've never ran it for fantasy, it's always been for horror or Deadlands. I'd love to run Hellfrost.
Quote from: Valatar on August 02, 2021, 12:35:12 PM
I'm definitely grouchy and overly-opinionated, it's how you can tell I'm a nerd with a hobby. Thanks to all the replies thus far!
As far as PbtA goes, I know that technically a roll is supposed to be representing a whole series of events and isn't as granular as a single skill roll in d20, but the fact that Zorro would have a very high chance of stumbling on any given attack ruins the simulation for me. The 5% nat-1 auto-miss in d20 already doesn't sit very well with me, so the much higher chance PbtA has of the best fighter in the world not managing to stab a goblin without repercussions completely curdles my milk.
I played an older edition of Savage Worlds back a decade-ish ago in a Deadlands game, I don't clearly recall the ruleset but tenbones certainly piques my interest! I'll have to give it a look.
Dark Eye is also something that's been on the edge of my radar, but the scarcity of resources for it in English have kept me away thus far. I need to get off my butt and actually dig deeper.
And yes, WoG is dead on with my love of granularity.
D20: Miss/hit/crit or pass/fail for skills.
Alternity: Crit fail/fail/ordinary success/good success/amazing success.
Shadowrun/WoD: Botch/fail/success/more successes usually betterer.
Genesys: Sliding scales of successes vs failures, threats vs advantages and occasional triumph or despair.
WHFRP/Savage Worlds: Fail/success/increasing degrees of success for more result.
The more the system can narrow down exactly what happened when I did a thing, the happier I am. If a player gets a super awesome roll, there should be a super awesome result. A thing I especially like about Alternity with the control die and Genesys with the boost and setback dice is that getting the super awesome result isn't just randomly rolling high, but often a result of the player needing to arrange as many advantages as possible. You can still just get a lucky or unlucky roll, but the player has control over the circumstances around the roll and can try to improve their odds.
Zorro in a PbtA game would probably have a +3 in his relevant equivalent martial physical action Stat so him outright failing would only happen on a natural 2d6 roll of a 2 or 3. He would always succeed on an roll of 7 through 12. That's a bit over 50% of the time. Then he'd have some Moves based on whatever Archetype he was within the Zorro game construct...
But I think the Zorro d6 rpg that just came out last year might be a better fit.
Indeed. And between 4-6 that still would be success, just with side-effect, so generally he'd achieve his swashbuckling efforts way more often than even best of D&D swashbucklers (always losing at nat 1).
Considering side effect can very well be - you strain yourself a bit, or goblin screamed and allarmed others, that's still one deadly machine.
I mean this is not simulative engine but I cannot see how that ruins simulation - you think best killers in the world do not get tired when mowing through crowds of enemies. Does not sounds very simulationisty to me.
The least-worst RPG system is the one your players enjoy that you can run regularly without that system's issues lessening your enjoyment.
Every system has issues. The question is which issues affect your enjoyment and that's not universal, it's personal.
Whole chunks of OSR D&D doesn't make shit for sense, and don't get me started on Palladium. I can argue the issues all damn day, but few (if any) of the issues of OD&D or PB games really matter to me in actual play.
Perhaps because I rarely run anything RAW.