I guess I'd start by asking "What do you mean by Stealth?"


When I think of stealth, it either boils down to encounter stealth, or whole-scenario stealth. The D&D rulesets have an acceptable level of abstraction for encounter stealth, but really fall flat if you try to apply them to whole-scenario stealth.

Key principles I would suggest for designing a system for whole-scenario stealth:

* More players rolling dice should not necessarily lead to higher chance of failure
* Every character can contribute something unique to the encounter (not just "I roll Stealth")

In my mind, whole-scenario stealth is more along the lines of Ocean's Eleven or Mission Impossible. You need to define key roles for characters like face-man, technical (hacker, mage), muscle, diversion, etc. The roles need not be specific to the character but could be fluid to the scenario -- e.g. Russian character is a more effective face-man in a Moscow-based scenario, even if he's normally the strong-man who knocks out guards.

What you probably end up with is some kind of progress-clock minigame where you give players a certain number of moves to accomplish their objectives. I also like the idea of a stealth pool that automatically ticks down, which implicitly creates some tension and you can either force players to do certain things (hide, knock out a guard, make a diversion, etc) to maintain stealth, or complete objectives.

I think the best stealth mechanics I've encountered recently are in a Stars Without Number supplement "Darkness Visible" which is about espionage campaigns.

Basically, you get everyone to roll their Stealth skill normally. The person with the highest Stealth skill has their skill level (Traveller-rated, so 4 is the highest) in free passes that they can dole out to the less ghostly party members. It keeps it light and fast, while also preventing one bad stealth roll from screwing the whole infiltration.

I do like the idea of a Stealth pool, where time and actions degrade the pool. I wouldn't use a HP mechanic, but I might use poker chips or something like that.

Quote from: Jason Coplen on May 11, 2024, 01:14:05 PMJeebus, I went and read some of it. That site really is too far left with Umbran and Morrus thinking they're right and this sex swap is fine.

Well evidently when morrus made the sarcastic quip to me: "It's fun, isn't it?" he didn't really mean it...

He blocked me after my last post, which 'locks' me out of the thread because he started it.

So I can see notifications of people replying to my post, but cannot reply in turn because the thread is not available to me.

Which of course makes it look like I walked away as there is no official red text thread ban, because I didn't actually violate any of their forum rules.

Being his forum and all, morrus knew full well what he was doing...

They like to dish it out, but man they really can't take any pushback.

Oh, and welcome RPhlegethon. Also, good luck...

Quote from: Corolinth on Today at 11:47:47 AMI'm clipping off most of the text to save space. I fucking hate walls of nested quoted text.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on Today at 09:45:32 AMI'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I'm not surprised at all.

The OSR community doesn't want to play Vampire, they want to play B/X and 1E. In early TSR era D&D, you didn't get to be a vampire. That's not how it was done. Meanwhile, all of the WoD players are playing WoD because they don't like D&D. They don't want to roll a d20. They don't want to have classes. They're never going to play an OSR Vampire game.

Of course there's no OSR replacement for Vampire. It's a waste of everybody's time.

I mean in the sense of "why has nobody made a replacement game like how One Page Rules is replacing Games Workshop?" Not literally using D&D rules.

There's absolutely no reason to touch Paradox's dumpster fire games. WoD is unplayable in every edition and you only buy the books to read the garbage lore, which was nuked in 5e anyway. CoD is unplayable because of course it is, plus it's canceled and you'll be bullied by the WoD cultists if you mention you like it in public.

I don't want to deal with that bullshit. I have no attachment to their garbage lore and I want rules that are actually functional.

I'm clipping off most of the text to save space. I fucking hate walls of nested quoted text.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on Today at 09:45:32 AMI'm really surprised that people still buy that and haven't made OSR-style replacements. Vampires are a public domain concept and there's no reason you can't just make your own urban fantasy games about playing them.

I'm not surprised at all.

The OSR community doesn't want to play Vampire, they want to play B/X and 1E. In early TSR era D&D, you didn't get to be a vampire. That's not how it was done. Meanwhile, all of the WoD players are playing WoD because they don't like D&D. They don't want to roll a d20. They don't want to have classes. They're never going to play an OSR Vampire game.

Of course there's no OSR replacement for Vampire. It's a waste of everybody's time.

Quote from: ForgottenF on Today at 10:53:45 AMPersonally, I think that if you're going to go to all that trouble to strip magic out of D&D, you might as well just use a system that was less reliant on magic to begin with, but that's a matter of taste. Some people clearly like the underlying D&D system enough to make the effort worthwhile.

I think they argue that because if you look at the 1E AD&D books, Gary seems to have a huge hate-on for spellcasting classes. There is an undercurrent of, "Magic-users and clerics are NPCs only," that flows through the books. Did Gary actually want magic to be NPC-only? I don't think it was deliberate. I think it was subconscious. In the books and movies that inspired D&D, the wizard was always the Bad Guy. Nevertheless, there is certainly a subset of players who took this and ran with it, and they're always looking for an excuse to have a world where none of the PCs have magic.

It usually goes something like:

1) Wizards are overpowered
2) I don't want to allow wizards
3) Low fantasy gives me an excuse to ban wizards
4) Now my wizard villain is super scary

As for why they don't play a different game, most people just want to play whatever version of D&D they started with.

Quote from: RPGPundit on May 10, 2024, 09:25:26 PMDid you mention Zak S? Because that's probably why, he's blacklisted, though I'm not for some reason.

Yes, I copied the additional Consultation by from the 5E basic set and the text included Zak S name. I think you are right because Zak S and Alexander Macris (who I didn't mention) were listed as part of the reason my comment was rejected (your name wasn't mentioned). I should resubmit the point with Zak cut off to see what they'd do but the pettiness of the rejection makes me want to avoid the sight entirely.

Just spitballing here, but I think you're on the right track with treating stealth a bit like a combat encounter.

One of the problems with a lot of TRPG stealth is that satisfying stealth gameplay is often more about planning than execution: scoping out guard positions, preparing your route, etc. Planning requires a certain level of predictability to be rewarding, and that goes right out the window if a single bad dice roll can blow the whole plan. In a lot of RPGs, a successful infiltration is going to require a long series of dice checks, and you have to succeed on every single one of them. The laws of probability are going to make that not worthwhile, especially if that single fuckup is likely to mean death.

You could argue that's realistic, but honestly, the whole Splinter Cell/Thief/Styx style of stealth infiltration game is highly unrealistic, so I think you have to suspend your disbelief on the whole genre.

You can mitigate the dice-luck issue a lot by flipping it so that instead of having to make lots of rolls and fail none, you just have to pass most of the rolls in a sequence. That retains an element of randomness while still averaging out to more consistent results. It'd go a long way towards making stealth characters as reliably good at their specialty as combat characters are.

The fip side there is you don't want to make passing each guard as involved as a full combat encounter. I don't know, maybe you could blow up the scale so that an entire infiltration plays out like a single combat encounter, rules-wise?

This reminds me of an odd sort of conversation I have seen and been involved in many time over the years.  I have seen it it in every venue I have been a part of where ttrpgs are discussed but it as most common at TBP and usually involved whatever the current darling was.

Someone will post and ask for a system to do some specific thing.  What's a good system for gritty, low-powered fantasy.

Several people would pop up to suggest the current darling no matter how poorly suited it was to what the person wanted to do.  "Have you considered Exalted?" as a suggestion for everything was so common that it became a meme.  I want to do a gritty spy thriller set during the Col War.  Have you considered Exalted?  That was a real suggestion.

Someone with an ounce of sense chimes in to say that the darling isn't really made to do what the OP wants and suggest something else.  Maybe WFRP for that gritty fantasy game or maybe an OSR title.

People start defending the nonsensical suggestion.  Exalted can totally do low-powered fantasy/gritty cold war spies/fucking everything.  Usually, what they say if self-evidentially true.  That's not what Exalted is written to do.  It says so right in the fucking book. 

After a bit of discussion, it comes out that the person saying that X game can totally do Y thing is either ignoring great chunks of the game or has house ruled it to the point where it is only nominally the same game.  Exalted works for low-powered fantasy if you take the basic resolution mechanic and the scant rules for playing mortals and discard the entire rest of the game.  In other words, if you don't actually play Exalted.  People seem to think that this is actually a sensible suggestion instead of using a system that was actually made to do that.  Every time I mention this, someone will pop up to make a case for why suggesting Exalted for a gritty cold war spy thriller totally makes sense and isn't an incredibly idiotic suggestion.  I could use the core resolution mechanic and build my own spy game around it.  On the other hand, I could not be an idiot and stupidly waste my time doing that when there are several games designed to do what I want to do. 

I have found the Wrath & Glory rules for Stealth interesting and useful for gaming. You roll your stealth score (after including modifiers for environment, gear, special abilities, etc.) and your successes (it's a dice pool system) give you a stealth score. This is the score opponents need to beat with their passive awareness to detect you. The trik is that various actions taken can increase or (more commonly) decrease your stealth score. If the GM wants to keep you on your toes, they can switch the flat increases/reductions to a randomized value and keep track of your score out of players' sight so they don't necessarily know the exact moment they are detected.

Quote from: Omega on May 11, 2024, 12:53:46 AMBut then you get the occasional idiot there stating things like "D&D can not handle low fantasy!" and other bits of negative wisdom.

Quote from: Corolinth on Today at 09:26:33 AM

Quote from: Omega on Today at 05:26:03 AM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 11, 2024, 08:28:24 AM3.X is particularly shite at handling low fantasy. 5E can do it fairly well, but looking at all of the classes and races that have some kind of spellcasting or magical abilities, one does get the impression that 5E is not the system to use for low fantasy.

They say that because apparently they can not imagine restricting race and class selection. And toning down monsters or even going no monsters at all. Just people and animals.

Most people don't buy a game and then think it would be a great idea to cut out 90% of it.

It's one thing to say, "5E went off the rails with Tasha's," or something like that. Pick your favorite 5E book that you think is trash, it doesn't matter. You're suggesting someone also not use the Monster Manual, three entire PC classes, and at least three subclasses of the remaining classes.

You can do that. The system allows for it. You can totally play low fantasy in D&D, as long as you don't play D&D. That's such a fantastic argument. It's not even the first time someone made it. I remember back in the '90s, these guys had this game about vampires. Then they came out and said, "You know what would be a great idea? What if we took this game about vampires and got rid of all the vampires?" And it worked! People still buy that vampire game to play it with no vampires.

This ends up being one of those borderline useless conversations, because no one can agree on what the definition of "low fantasy" is. Wikipedia defines it as "a subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude on an otherwise-normal world". D&D could do that, though I think it's worth noting that none of the official D&D settings match that definition. Anyway, I don't think that's what most people mean when they use the term.

It's probably more profitable to talk about "low vs. high magic" rather than "low vs. high fantasy", since that's at least a little closer to being quantifiable. What I don't understand is how people can argue that D&D was ever meant to be a "low magic" game. In every edition of the game as written, magic is 1) extremely useful, 2) readily available to the players at minimal cost, and 3) assumed in the character and game progression. Of course the game has gotten more "high magic" as the editions have gone on, but that's always been there. You can homebrew it out, but it takes a substantial re-write of the game, at least on the level of something like Lion & Dragon.

Personally, I think that if you're going to go to all that trouble to strip magic out of D&D, you might as well just use a system that was less reliant on magic to begin with, but that's a matter of taste. Some people clearly like the underlying D&D system enough to make the effort worthwhile.