Back when Numenera was still just a Kickstarter project, Monte Cook started hyping up his biggest idea yet, the notion that a character could be described by, even built from, a Sentence. The Dude that does the Thing with That Other thing.
You know: I am a Half-Orc Samurai who Fights Duelling Style...
...oh, wait, that's my last D&D character.
Lets try something from the Invisible Sun RPG instead.
I am a Phlegmatic Order of the Vance who Understands the Words.
Dressed up in mis-applied fancy talk (in the abusive fashion of the Invisible Sun RPG) that certainly sounds nice, but honestly its rubbed me the wrong way ever since the Numenera days. And I think I finally worked out the single biggest flaw.
See, I do think its a clever idea, though as evidenced by my first example, not nearly so clever as it was presented. Players have always reduced their characters down to a few identifiable elements as a short hand to talk with other players. The exact information presented varies depending on the conversation and the exact game being played.
Boiled down to its essence, the problem with the Cook Idea is that his sentences are both Limiting and Reductive. Rather than expanding your horizons, or making deeper and richer characters, you wind up smaller and less interesting as a result.
Lets go back to my D&D character. Without the Cook Idea, the sentence could just as easily be 'I'm a 3rd Level Half-Orc Samurai with the Sword of Kas' (Note: I do not have the Sword of Kas...). Or I could be a Lawful Good Samurai, or a Half Orc Fighter with a Katana, or the Fighter who Fights with His Persuasion Skill...
I can shape that sentence however I like to convey information as needed. Its a bit of hyperbole to suggest the number of sentences I can create about/from a single character are infinite, but certainly they are broader than the single, fixed format suggested by Cook.
But its also reductive. Looking at a single character there are only so many ways I can actually describe my singular character, certainly, but taken from the broader context of D&D as a whole, the number of possible 'setences' I can create approaches the infinite in truth... and not merely because I have far more choices than a mere simple sentence allows for.
Take again the Cook Sentence, which in the Cypher System, and in Invisible Sun, you end your sentence with some 'big flash thing' that goes beyond the basics of race and class. In Invisible Sun this is your Forte, and Monte Cook provides some twenty or so Fortes.
And that is it. Sure, they are all colorful and exotic. Bears an Orb, fuses Fist and Nightmare, Shepards the Mind... one might honestly suggest your Forte is far more colorful and interesting than the means by which you make magic (Your Order).
But it requires Monte Cook to have dreamed it up for you. More absolutely in Invisible Sun than the equivalent in the Cypher system, as you need a solid ten powers arranged in a leveled tree, which is beyond the scope of your typical homebrew rules.
But again: Look to D&D. My equivalent 'forte' might be the specific fighting style I prefer, or a prominent magic item (one of several I bear), or even a choice spell-metamagic combo I use a lot. When the unique thing that separates my fighter from another fighter is taken from the character, rather than used to create the character, the options are much more open, and can change.
Looking at some of the Fortes in Invisible Sun the question I wound up with was 'what if my character joins that cult during game play? Why wouldn't they then have two fortes?', which is an unnecessary question to create. By going backwards, by creating the description before the character, you create a series of rules that can conflict with organic, evolving characters who change and grow, eventually necessitating additional rules to patch the problems created by working backwards in the first place.
Forgive me if you are all five years ahead of me on figuring this out...
The Cypher System is also really dull. Finding magical knick-knacks feels dull when their effects are so negligible and samey.
His principle was "Well Players like doing cool stuff, but balancing around cool stuff is hard, so how about limited uses of cool stuff?", well thats GM fiat and not cool stuff.
This man has a way of selling stupid ideas (This is him about The stuff from numanera):
QuoteThis means that in gameplay, they're less like magic items and more like character abilities that the players don't choose.
I noticed that, but I recall being more concerned with the rather hard way the numbers broke. As I recall you have multiple levels but only three real difficulties: Super Easy, A challenge, and Fuck You. I'm being glib, of course.
Oddly, from what I can tell of Invisible Sun, magic items might actually be more important than the character. I only have the Key book (one of four necessary for play), but in that you seem to average 2 'points' per attribute, while 'kindled items' which can be bought openly (and are far less cool than proper magic items, I gather) can provide up to 4 points in an attribute, and you can have lots of them equipped, just not two of the same 'type'... only one pair of pants, yo...
Quote from: Spike;1117121I noticed that, but I recall being more concerned with the rather hard way the numbers broke. As I recall you have multiple levels but only three real difficulties: Super Easy, A challenge, and Fuck You. I'm being glib, of course.
It's more that even passing challenges hurts you. I don't know which dunderhead decided that your health system would double as a resource system, and that succeeding on harder tasks requires you hurt yourself.
Everything involving Monte Cook has always been overhyped online. He's far better at marketing himself than making anything useful for actual play.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1117125It's more that even passing challenges hurts you. I don't know which dunderhead decided that your health system would double as a resource system, and that succeeding on harder tasks requires you hurt yourself.
That specific bit isn't entirely so bad (at least conceptually speaking), cuz you could literally strain yourself or blow a hernia applying effort to physical tasks. The problem is that they built the entire task resolution mechanic (and power use, IIRC) around it, then made it a major thing where you're expected to blow resource/health points ANY time you encounter an actual challenge and gave you a measly number of points to do it. If they'd at least split it up between physical health for injuries and strain/fatigue(stun?) for effort and power use, and/or maybe give you a few more points, it might not be so bad. But they give you too little, then expect you to burn your points ALL the freaking time.
As for the actual topic, I found the "Adjective noun who verbs" thing kinda interesting (if a bit pretentious) at first, but it ultimately comes off as a story gaming thing that at the end of the day still limits you to a race/descriptor class/profession and specialty/AD&D 2e Kit type of thing, except they tend to be even more setting-specific and written in pretentious prose. And it sounds cutesy and creative, but as far as I can tell (I haven't played it yet, only read Numenera and a few supplements years ago) you're still limited to whatever "Adjectives nouns and verbs" they've actually published, so it's not like you get that many customization options beyond mixing and matching different published adjectives nouns and verbs.
Quote from: VisionStorm;1117137That specific bit isn't entirely so bad (at least conceptually speaking), cuz you could literally strain yourself or blow a hernia applying effort to physical tasks. The problem is that they built the entire task resolution mechanic (and power use, IIRC) around it, then made it a major thing where you're expected to blow resource/health points ANY time you encounter an actual challenge and gave you a measly number of points to do it. If they'd at least split it up between physical health for injuries and strain/fatigue(stun?) for effort and power use, and/or maybe give you a few more points, it might not be so bad. But they give you too little, then expect you to burn your points ALL the freaking time.
Yup. Maybe I should have been more specific. This becomes doubly stupid where if you fight too long you die even if your never hit. I know there could be...SOME explanation and precedent for it, but the execution is just lame.
QuoteAs for the actual topic, I found the "Adjective noun who verbs" thing kinda interesting (if a bit pretentious) at first, but it ultimately comes off as a story gaming thing that at the end of the day still limits you to a race/descriptor class/profession and specialty/AD&D 2e Kit type of thing, except they tend to be even more setting-specific and written in pretentious prose.
I know the RPGpundit hates that stuff, but what exactly IS a storygame. I would think it would be a game that prioritizes story over PCs freeform roleplaying in a world, but I find that thrown more at stuff like WOD thats just a bunch of emo wank wrapped around a pretty hard crunch system, but not FATE which has borderline everything be the PCs just rolling dice whenever they feel like it.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1117142I know the RPGpundit hates that stuff, but what exactly IS a storygame. I would think it would be a game that prioritizes story over PCs freeform roleplaying in a world, but I find that thrown more at stuff like WOD thats just a bunch of emo wank wrapped around a pretty hard crunch system, but not FATE which has borderline everything be the PCs just rolling dice whenever they feel like it.
TBH, I'm not entirely sure how to precisely define it myself. But I believe that in the strictest sense it refers more specifically to games with mechanics that affect the story. Though, I've seen it applied very broadly to just about any game that focuses on narrative elements.
Obviously I must be missing something, because this is literally what classes and their names are.
The fighter fights
The thief thieves
The magic-user uses magic
Okay, the cleric isn't as obvious as the others, but still
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1117142I know the RPGpundit hates that stuff, but what exactly IS a storygame. I would think it would be a game that prioritizes story over PCs freeform roleplaying in a world, but I find that thrown more at stuff like WOD thats just a bunch of emo wank wrapped around a pretty hard crunch system, but not FATE which has borderline everything be the PCs just rolling dice whenever they feel like it.
There's no real consensus, but in general storygames have mechanics intended to force a particular narrative structure to emerge instead of just letting it do so naturally. And a lot of games get lumped into this category in spite of being pretty traditional because their creators are pretentious wankers that make claims the mechanics just don't support. It's a mess.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1117142I know the RPGpundit hates that stuff, but what exactly IS a storygame.
Since this forum was founded, there's been a couple dozen threads involving arguments as to WTF is a storygame. Without going into the many specifics, here's the rub. What is usually referred to as a storygame is a RPG-ish game which may or may not have a GM where players have some (or all) narrative control over their characters. For example, in many storygames, the GM cannot kill your PC without your permission. In many storygames, the setting and NPCs are created and controlled by the players with little, if any, input by the GM (if there is even a GM present). As such, I consider them to be their own genre of games, much like how LARPing has RPG-ish aspects, but LARPS aren't traditional tabletop RPGs. The entire Swine Wars with RPGPundit existed because instead of celebrating their new game genre, many (but not all) fans and authors of storygames declared these new narrative games to be the "real" RPGs, inherently superior to "old" RPGs, and much more nauseous stupidity.
Quote from: GeekEclectic;1117165There's no real consensus, but in general storygames have mechanics intended to force a particular narrative structure to emerge instead of just letting it do so naturally.
Thats almost every RPG including the original D&D.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1117168Since this forum was founded, there's been a couple dozen threads involving arguments as to WTF is a storygame. Without going into the many specifics, here's the rub. What is usually referred to as a storygame is a RPG-ish game which may or may not have a GM where players have some (or all) narrative control over their characters. For example, in many storygames, the GM cannot kill your PC without your permission. In many storygames, the setting and NPCs are created and controlled by the players with little, if any, input by the GM (if there is even a GM present). As such, I consider them to be their own genre of games, much like how LARPing has RPG-ish aspects, but LARPS aren't traditional tabletop RPGs. The entire Swine Wars with RPGPundit existed because instead of celebrating their new game genre, many (but not all) fans and authors of storygames declared these new narrative games to be the "real" RPGs, inherently superior to "old" RPGs, and much more nauseous stupidity.
Ah I see. It's not so much an actual ruleset but a mindset. Because having played WOD extensively it's pretty much the run of the mill RPG with some wank attached.
Fate is a game with much more elements of PC narrative control, but again I never saw the Pundit express his loathing towards it.
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1117142Yup. Maybe I should have been more specific. This becomes doubly stupid where if you fight too long you die even if your never hit. I know there could be...SOME explanation and precedent for it, but the execution is just lame..
Death from exhaustion is actually a frighteningly common thing in factory work. I worked in a hell hole of one and a friend of mine died that way. So I could see someone on a battlefield overextending themselves and at the very least passing out, or even dropping dead. Though Id think passing out would be more common.
The way it seems to be set up in the game does sound a bit odd. The original Albedo has a similar exhaustion system, but much more nuanced and reasonable.
Quote from: Omega;1117185Death from exhaustion is actually a frighteningly common thing in factory work.
Again its the execution. Your not fighting hordes for hours, or even AN hour. Just about ANY level of exertion requires you hurt yourself. And there is no "Nonlethal HP" type deal.
Quote from: JeremyR;1117163Obviously I must be missing something, because this is literally what classes and their names are.
The fighter fights
The thief thieves
The magic-user uses magic
Okay, the cleric isn't as obvious as the others, but still
In the Cypher System it would be more like "I am a Charismatic Fighter that Wields Fire", where Charismatic is a special quality you possess that grants you some bonus (maybe a bonus to rolls to impress people or get them to do what you want in this case), Fighter is your actual class that determines most your basic skills, and Wields Fire is some special ability that you have on top of your basic class abilities (in this case you probably can generate fire and use it as a weapon). And much like in my example, your selections don't have to follow traditional class expectations--even though in D&D or similar games fighters usually benefit more from physical power and don't have magic, you could still play a charismatic fighter with fire magic (assuming those elements have been defined in the game) and somehow make it work.
The character elements always follow the same sentence structure: "I am an Adjective (special quality) Noun (class) that Verbs (special ability/specialty)".
Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1117187Again its the execution. Your not fighting hordes for hours, or even AN hour. Just about ANY level of exertion requires you hurt yourself. And there is no "Nonlethal HP" type deal.
I found the entire Stat mechanics (which is directly tied to this) to be kinda interesting yet way too "gamey" and horrendously executed. They basically tried to copy the D&D convention of "Attributes have Scores", but then those scores don't give you anything constant--only a Pool of points you can spend when attempting tasks or using an ability tied to that stat. But those points are also your health for that particular aspect of your basic capabilities, and if it ever reaches 0 you either die (Might), become immobile (Speed) or a drooling idiot (Intellect).
But then in addition to that your Stats have a separate component that can be developed independently called Edges. And unlike your stat scores (Pool), your stat's Edge actually gives you persistent benefits similar to a D&D stat bonus, yet still tied to Cypher's contrived mechanics, where instead of simply giving you a bonus they reduce the number of points you spend from your stat Pool when making rolls or using abilities. And if the Edge reduces the cost to 0, it's free (effectively giving you a permanent reduction to task difficulty for the stat).
But all of this crap could have been simplified by simply making Stats give you a roll bonus and instead of having stat-based pools you could just have one physical Health pool to stay alive, and one separate non-lethal Strain pool for effort and using kwel powerz of any type. And achieve almost the same effect, but with less complications, or having to invent some weird paralysis state that doesn't exist in real life in order to explain what happens when your Speed pool reaches 0.
Monte Cook is kind of like Paul McCartney. When he was teamed up with Jonathan Tweet on 3e, it was great, because Tweet used his fancy ideas but kept him in check. On his own, he's mostly done drivel.
His initial 'contributions' to 5e was a boatload of diva bullshit.
I prefer the rule of 3 when describing my character (or getting players to describe theirs):
What are 3 things that other people would know about you after knowing you for an hour?
What are 3 things that other people would know about you after knowing you for a month?
What are 3 things that are private to you?
This is less constraining, as it's mostly about what other people see, not what you actually are. And the truly personal stuff is "hidden", which I feel is less constraining.
I guess the first 3 things might be equivalent to the "Thing that does the thing with that other thing", but it's different enough foe me.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1117479His initial 'contributions' to 5e was a boatload of diva bullshit.
That is not true. He did invent Passive Perception.
Quote from: Shasarak;1117504That is not true. He did invent Passive Perception.
What a load of bullshit. He did not. You can go all the way back to original D&D, Dwarves, Elves, and Thieves automatically received passive perception rolls to detect sloping passages, secret doors, and traps respectively. GM's have been making those or other attributes rolls vs. Intelligence or Wisdom for players to notice stuff and make observations in game, automatically rolling on behalf of players, since D&D and RPGs began.
Didn´t Hero Quest use the same type of one-sentence character description as Cypher? I seem to remember that much of it from Mythic Russia.
Quote from: GameDaddy;1117509What a load of bullshit. He did not. You can go all the way back to original D&D, Dwarves, Elves, and Thieves automatically received passive perception rolls to detect sloping passages, secret doors, and traps respectively. GM's have been making those or other attributes rolls vs. Intelligence or Wisdom for players to notice stuff and make observations in game, automatically rolling on behalf of players, since D&D and RPGs began.
But in 5e passive perception is not rolled; it's a fixed target number like AC which stealthy opponents must beat to surprise the character. (For early D&D, I'd also mention surprise rolls as a common perception check.) (I don't recall that thieves got an automatic passive roll to detect traps, though, in Greyhawk at least.)
I don't know that it's that original even so; it looks to me like the take 10 mechanic from 3e but automatic. It does avoid a lot of dice rolling (of which you'd have to do extra spurious dice rolling to keep the players guessing).
I also don't think that it's that good a mechanic; the more perceptive character is never surprised unless the less perceptive one is also, and stealthy characters don't experience the swing of d20 vs d20 that grappling or other contests have.
Quote from: rawma;1117521I also don't think that it's that good a mechanic; the more perceptive character is never surprised unless the less perceptive one is also, and stealthy characters don't experience the swing of d20 vs d20 that grappling or other contests have.
But then again neither do combatants, yet the case could be made for a swingy Attack vs active Defense roll (as done in some other games), if we're judging action mechanics by their swingyness. You could even add opposed rolls for all ability checks and just treat difficulty as a modifier instead of a passive target number. You could also make passive perception rolls individual as well (the stealthy character needs to roll vs each observer individually) to add more variability between who notices or not the stealth (or equivalent--Bluff, whatever) attempt.
Personally I think it's a give or take, and either approach could work depending on how "swingy" you want actions to feel vs how fast you want them resolved. I'm also not sure how original this mechanic is, since I'm pretty sure I've seen it before (since decades ago), but don't remember which systems had it.
I never did opposed rolls much originally, except for strength checks for grappling. After 3e came out is when opposed checks became much more popular. Most of the passive perception rolls from the early days were made versus a privately determined target difficulty number which depended a lot on the situation at hand, and whether the players were being stealthy, and roleplaying cleverly or not. Such checks, I would add were rolled in secret behind the GM's screen. Most of the time the players thought I was doing a wandering monsters check, but in reality a lot more was happening behind the scenes, and I was using their character abilities and skills to determine how much information to give them about the situation they were currently in.
You can file this under ancient GM tips.
Quote from: VisionStorm;1117540But then again neither do combatants, yet the case could be made for a swingy Attack vs active Defense roll (as done in some other games), if we're judging action mechanics by their swingyness. You could even add opposed rolls for all ability checks and just treat difficulty as a modifier instead of a passive target number. You could also make passive perception rolls individual as well (the stealthy character needs to roll vs each observer individually) to add more variability between who notices or not the stealth (or equivalent--Bluff, whatever) attempt.
Personally I think it's a give or take, and either approach could work depending on how "swingy" you want actions to feel vs how fast you want them resolved. I'm also not sure how original this mechanic is, since I'm pretty sure I've seen it before (since decades ago), but don't remember which systems had it.
I can see a trap hitting everyone whose AC is less than, say, 15; that would be equivalent to trap or secret door detection where there's a fixed (or rolled in advance) stealth for the thing hidden. Players can make their passive perception an active roll by searching more carefully (and getting advantage adds 5 to passive perception).
Making a roll of d20+(AC-10) (that is, as if AC were a bonus to a default armor class of 10) versus the existing attack roll (although it wouldn't quite work the same, since matching numbers in a contest favor the status quo, which is presumably not hitting, but an attack roll that matches the "passive" AC hits, and of course d20 averages 10.5 rather than 10). (And once it's an actual roll, then there's the question of luck, guidance, advantage, foretelling and various other features that allow substitute rolls.) But for me bounded accuracy means there's still enough swing in combat, and making a roll on each side would slow things down.
The reason for making passive perception fixed is that if the character's current perception is constantly rolled, that's a lot of rolling which the players can interpret as something happening, or a lot more rolling in order to disguise which are actual checks. For surprise, since you're usually about to roll initiative, it doesn't seem like you're giving much away to the player (just determining if they can act, in which case they know what tried to surprise them, or they can't act, in which case knowing in advance of next acting is not really a benefit) or adding too much to the burden of total dice rolling. (Using the same roll for surprise/perception and for initiative would probably not quite work, as anyone who was not surprised would have a good initiative and the two rolls might have separate advantage/disadvantage.)
Curiously, TWERPS (1987) combat used opposed rolls of d10+strength; ties went to the defender in combat. Other things were resolved by a single roll against a fixed difficulty set by the GM.
Quote from: GameDaddy;1117542I never did opposed rolls much originally, except for strength checks for grappling. After 3e came out is when opposed checks became much more popular. Most of the passive perception rolls from the early days were made versus a privately determined target difficulty number which depended a lot on the situation at hand, and whether the players were being stealthy, and roleplaying cleverly or not. Such checks, I would add were rolled in secret behind the GM's screen. Most of the time the players thought I was doing a wandering monsters check, but in reality a lot more was happening behind the scenes, and I was using their character abilities and skills to determine how much information to give them about the situation they were currently in.
You can file this under ancient GM tips.
Still, you're talking about rolling; passive perception for traps, secret doors and so on does not involve rolling any dice on either side (although the DM may have rolled for the trap when populating the dungeon or whatever), and that's different from what was explicitly in early D&D rules, whatever a few campaigns might have done.
Early D&D did not use opposed rolls much, and you see additional one-sidedness in saving throws -- there was pretty much the same save versus a 1st level Medium and an 11th level plus Wizard, and a very few monsters had save with a bonus or a penalty. But we compared strengths to decide who would win at arm wrestling, say, even if the final determination was a single die roll. A common thing was to roll under an ability score (on 3d6 or d20) or to roll some multiple on percentile dice; I am pretty sure that some contests like that continued until one side succeeded while the other failed, which is like an opposed roll.
One thing that for us sort of acted like a pair of opposed rolls was reaction; while both d6's were rolled by the DM, we played that the charisma modifier could only modify the first die and we judged reaction based on considering the value of each die (so rolling 6 with +4 from an 18 Charisma could be offset by the low roll on the other die - 6+ on both dice were better than a total of 12+ from a modifier).
Monte spent his time mostly running his mouth, and every time he did so he said something that was guaranteed to outrage the old-school fans and worry everyone else.
Out rage the Old School Fans? That is just Tuesday.
Quote from: Shasarak;1117614Out rage the Old School Fans? That is just Tuesday.
I'll admit there are certain trigger-phrases that outrage the old-school fans. But the point is that for an edition that had as an explicit goal to achieve the return of those players, Monte was being absolutely disastrous for it.