Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[40 Year Old Boomer]

I rather another Satanic Panic because at least I know no real damage will come to it. Trannies are-and I know this isn't a correct phrase or whatever but fuck it-infinitely worse than anything these boomers ever did...to TTRPG as a whole at least.

This is another Satanic panic, only this time it is his worshippers fucking up D&D.

 

[Adamska]

OSRİC and OSE is kind of a requirement if you want to play a decent OSR game in foundry. Because one cannot just play AD&D because of WOTC.

No, you can run B/X or any edition on foundry if you really wanted to. The only difference is that you'd have to actually code that in yourself rather than plug in the pre-mades that you paid for. Honestly OSE and OSRIC are why you don't see modules for B/X on there; no one wants to do it because those two snap up the volunteers instead, and they then usually just convert them back to B/X if it's really what they want. Foundry's like Linux; you have to actually put a few hours in to properly code it to spec.

But even then, this is an issue only if you play with Foundry specifically. It goes away if you don't.

Kind of like how I don't use Foundry at all barring a single Glorantha game I'm in right as a player now. You just need a VTT that allows mapping and interaction and it doesn't have to be Foundry. In terms of assets, you can just use pdf character sheets. I should also note that mythweavers has sheets for all iterations of DnD, including basic, as well.

 

[ZMOT]

For example in core, each spell level has no more than 6 or 8 spells, but there are mechanics for researching new magic. Basically the spell list would start out sparse and as your players go through it and multiple characters, the shape the world founding new Kingdoms and researching new spells/creating new items. This is the sort of buy-in to world building most narrative games could only dream of achieving and the sort of progressive flexibility the most german austist spergulations hope in vain to reach. Because as you said, Gygax's main directive was "The only law is the DM, the only rule is to have fun. The written rules are just a guide for the GM to follow until they are ready to make their own, and somethign for them to fall back to if they lose their way"

and herein lies the problem - that's not was nu-TTRPG players want. the whole OSR thing is part of that but often only on a mechanical level with the same issues of 5e/pf2 etc. if you play OSR with theatre majors and critical role fans it won't be much different.
there's also the downside that the approach "just make your own fun bro" gets exploited by people like wotc etc. getting away with half-assing everything besides the right pronouns for their NPCs. like @Adamska said why deliver something solid enough instead of an "idea" or "tools" to come up with your own shit after you paid $100+ for the latest kickstarter. after all that's what TTRPGs are about, right?

as much we know that's what it's really about, the vast majority doesn't want to shape their own world (or invest the time, if they have it in the first place), even if they say so and they _think_ that's what they do, in reality most want to treat TTRPGs like a theme-park ride or a netflix binge...

 

[AnOminous]

This is another Satanic panic, only this time it is his worshippers fucking up D&D.

My parents were briefly worried it was Satanic from the pictures on the covers of the AD&D handbooks but were not retarded, so when I explained you were KILLING the demons they were okay.

 

[Tri-Tachyon'sClown]

My parents were briefly worried it was Satanic from the pictures on the covers of the AD&D handbooks but were not retarded, so when I explained you were KILLING the demons they were okay.

Reminds me of the Christian boomers who lashed out against DOOM despite it arguably being the most Christian game on the planet, then again these are the same people who went after Pokemon because of Evolution being a thing in the game.

 

[The Ugly One]

In retrospect, the parents who were overly scrupulous about He-Man teaching your kids polytheism or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles making them become nihilists had it more right than parents who figure you can just sign your kid up for Discord and Roblox and let them do as they like.

 

[Jaimas]

It's depressing eh? Welcome to how I feel. Like @Battlefield2142EU said, anything that isn't 5E is sacrilege to them, and I don't mean 5E as a DnD version or even as a system, but as an identity. They're fake fans, not even nu-fans, they don't play as 5E is their personality and nothing else. They can't make Call of Cthulhu their identity because it doesn't pander to them, they sure as hell can't make stuff like Dark Sun their identity despite the degeneracy you can theoretically get up to, I bet they wouldn't even touch shit like Night Witches no matter how "girl power" it is. They're in too deep, too lost in the sauce to even think of doing anything else, even with faggotry like Lancer.

I don't understand this shit, not even the 4E purists were this obnoxious.

 

[Adamska]

there's also the downside that the approach "just make your own fun bro" gets exploited by people like wotc etc. getting away with half-assing everything besides the right pronouns for their NPCs. like @Adamska said why deliver something solid enough instead of an "idea" or "tools" to come up with your own shit after you paid $100+ for the latest kickstarter. after all that's what TTRPGs are about, right?

Another big fallacy is you need all of the books out there to run a game. Bullshit; you only need the core handbook, and depending on the game you can sometimes just find the rules online. The extra items that companies sell are almost only useful if you ever intend to DM, and even then you can easily and happily find guides and tips from generations online.

I don't understand this shit, not even the 4E purists were this obnoxious.

It's because they just want to pretend they play more than anything else. It's actually comical to see the extent they try to bodge a busted ass system like 5e into doing anything else.

One of the dumbest things I ever saw was someone trying to do this with Pokemon, when you have the stupidly simple Pokerole system right there. A strong runner-up was a Lovecraft inspired game, which I would say is more damning due to how there is a D20 version of it.

You don't have to reinvent wheels; you just have to find the ones you need for your clapped out idea.

 

[AnOminous]

Another big fallacy is you need all of the books out there to run a game. Bullshit; you only need the core handbook, and depending on the game you can sometimes just find the rules online.

The One Rule to Bind Them: If the Rule Sucks, Make Up Your Own.

 

[Ghostse]

It's actually comical to see the extent they try to bodge a busted ass system like 5e into doing anything else.

3.5 would like a word.
But 3.5 at least has the excuse of WotC pushing the "d20 system" to entice publishers vs. 5e which has Hasbro jealously seething over every cent crowdfunded because none of it is in their coffers.[/spoiler]

 

[Tactical Wizard]

3.5 would like a word.
But 3.5 at least has the excuse of WotC pushing the "d20 system" to entice publishers vs. 5e which has Hasbro jealously seething over every cent crowdfunded because none of it is in their coffers.[/spoiler]

3.5 at least, theoretically, had a robust skill system that allowed for character customization across levels with enough flex to it to add and remove skills. If you tried to do that for 5e, you would break the skill system because you get a pathetic handful of skills at character creation unless you take one of two feats every fourth level. But that edition was the king of character customization.

 

[The Ugly One]

3.5 at least, theoretically, had a robust skill system that allowed for character customization across levels with enough flex to it to add and remove skills.

3.5's skill system wasn't robust. It was an easily breakable mess with too many overdefined skills. The skill point system was garbage, because it was tied to INT and d20+N is too coarse of a probability distribution to allow tinkering without breakage.

If you tried to do that for 5e, you would break the skill system because you get a pathetic handful of skills at character creation unless you take one of two feats every fourth level. But that edition was the king of character customization.

A typical 5e skill covers 2 or more 3.5 skills. If your level 1 Fighter is just a typical warrior, he might have +2 to teach of:

Athletics, Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Survival, Artisan's Tool

In 3.5, this would be

Balance, Climb, Craft, Escape Artist, Handle Animal, Jump, Ride, Survival, Swim, Tumble, and Use Rope.

Five of those aren't class skills, so to get to +2 in all of those, you'd need to spend I think 32 skill points.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

3.5's skill system wasn't robust. It was an easily breakable mess with too many overdefined skills. The skill point system was garbage, because it was tied to INT and d20+N is too coarse of a probability distribution to allow tinkering without breakage.



A typical 5e skill covers 2 or more 3.5 skills. If your level 1 Fighter is just a typical warrior, he might have +2 to teach of:

Athletics, Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Survival, Artisan's Tool

In 3.5, this would be

Balance, Climb, Craft, Escape Artist, Handle Animal, Jump, Ride, Survival, Swim, Tumble, and Use Rope.

Five of those aren't class skills, so to get to +2 in all of those, you'd need to spend I think 32 skill points.

Yeah, I know. I remember it all from those days and I ran 5e for years. As for 3.5, there's a reason that I bolded the word theoretically. There's room for customization in there and you can add skills but too many cloying mis-steps made it a broken mess but it was a broken mess that was fixable entirely within it's own scope, the example you cite could be fixed by doing away with out of class skills and untethering them from Intelligence, and rolling a few of the hyper-specific ones into the more general ones. 5e's skills would break if you started adding to them because they touch too many other systems and you have very limited opportunities to get new ones. There are sixteen of them and you might have 5 of them, without giving up a stat boost. Want to put more skills in the game? Get ready to start rewriting classes and tell your players to get comfortable with the idea of just rolling most checks without skill proficiency so you have to adjust what classes and backgrounds give you in terms of skills and it all starts spiralling from there...

What weirds me out is that D&D can't make a good skill system to save it's life. For almost every other famous game, this has been a solved problem since at least the nineties and the game that is damn near a monopoly consistently fails at it. Does anyone remember Bear lore from 4e?

 

[The Ugly One]

I think you're missing the problem, which is that 3.5 skills are so narrowly defined that, despite how many they are, they don't really cover everything, and you often end up feeling like you need custom skills. 5e skills are broad enough that there's little need to expand the list.

 

[strawberry15]

3.5's skill system wasn't robust. It was an easily breakable mess with too many overdefined skills. The skill point system was garbage, because it was tied to INT and d20+N is too coarse of a probability distribution to allow tinkering without breakage.

3.5 e was glorious as it allowed clerics with 0 points in religion or wizards with 0 points in spellcraft. kek.
Ad&d non weapon proficiencies are the way to go
or maybe SIEGE engine system...

 

[Corn Flakes]

I think you're missing the problem, which is that 3.5 skills are so narrowly defined that, despite how many they are, they don't really cover everything, and you often end up feeling like you need custom skills. 5e skills are broad enough that there's little need to expand the list.

That, and the skill system didn't provide most classes with enough skill points to be good at more than one or two skills even if more skills are relevant to your class or character concept than that. God forbid you try to make a proficient horse rider if you're playing a Barbarian.

So the 5e skill list isn't terrible, but it needs a skill point system that 1 - ditches cross-class skills because paying two points for a single improvement sucks, and 2 - gives non-Rogues/Bards with less than 18 Intelligence more than a pittance of points to spend.

 

[Ghostse]

3.5 skill points are very spergy and one of things I dislike most about the system. The delta of points by lvl 10 is simply too great to do any sort of balance on, and its hard to make good archetype characters without some asspulls (prestige class, DM points, whatever) if your archetype doesn't conform to narrow expectations.

The 5e system of "Pick from this list, add proficiency" is far too simplistic. The 4e system of training + random bonuses isn't much better but was more forgiving I think; I love 4e but I will readily admit the skill system is garbage from every perspective except "Shut the fuck up and roll initiative".

My ideal system would be some sort of logarithmic/rank progression (takes more points to go from 2->3 than 1->2) and maybe some sort of skill rank. Think prestige classes for skills. And have that tie into a Race + Ancestry + Background system City Elves don't automatically get better at nature as they level up, but if they actually start going glamping they would discover their senses and innate brainwiring makes it so they pick up the skill very quickly
But that also might just end up like
Which I guess is the 2nd part of my idea system is you have something that just autopilots for the lazy/uninspired/NPCs but the dedicated can pry off the cover.
But I also think this might end up like "Roll Initiative Every Round" - a wonderful system that does everything you'd want it to number wise, but unusable at any real table because of how it completely breaks combat flow when implemented.


I saw one system that had a matrix that looked neat-but-overly-complex; skills had ranks and some skills required other skills be leveled to rank up.

 

[GhastlyGhost]

I like the way Storyteller handles skills, especially in regards to progression. 2x current-points -> next point.
I think it helps that it's a dice pool system and each point has a very tangible effect on your character's effectiveness beyond a number.
I also really like that highly skilled characters get an overall buff the effectiveness in the form of a specialty that allows 10s on d10s to explode.

 

[The Ugly One]

I think the fundamental problem with D&D skills is d20 vs target pass/fail isn't a very good skill system, but the designers of the game have, for the last 25 years, felt a relentless need to unify everything under the same engine. It works well enough for combat (but isn't particularly good for that, either).

 

[strawberry15]

Ad&d2e nwp+ thief skills or no skills