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

[The Ugly One]

Does destroying legacy and attacking the dead actually sell the product to anyone?

"Burgers?"

 

[SadLonelyLoser]

I ran 5e for a decade and never had this problem. The CR system doesn't work as written, but it is not hard at all to figure out if a group of monsters is way beyond what the players can handle by eyeballing it. You pretty much had to do the same thing in AD&D.

An experienced DM can do this, but experienced DMs also don't need the CR system. It's the new DMs that accidentally wipe parties with pack tactics or something.

The CR system being broken also means that XP leveling takes a lot more work than it should. Most DMs will just throw a lot of milestone XP at the players and at that point, just do milestone leveling.

 

[The Ugly One]

An experienced DM can do this, but experienced DMs also don't need the CR system. It's the new DMs that accidentally wipe parties with pack tactics or something.

This has been true of new DMs in every edition. Accidentally wiping a 1st-level party with a few goblins is as old as the game.

The CR system being broken also means that XP leveling takes a lot more work than it should. Most DMs will just throw a lot of milestone XP at the players and at that point, just do milestone leveling.

I'm running an OSR game where after a year, nobody is over level 5. I never found 5e leveling to be terribly slow. If anything, parties got to high levels far too quickly.

 

[filthypenguin]

I ran 5e for a decade and never had this problem. The CR system doesn't work as written, but it is not hard at all to figure out if a group of monsters is way beyond what the players can handle by eyeballing it.

That's kind of my point, coming from 5e you're used to eyeballing it. PF2e CR is enforced via the math of the system, and it almost always works exactly the way it's supposed to (the only exception being that very low level parties can get one-shot by an appropriate CR boss if the boss has no minions and crits). Level matters more in PF2e because it's added to all stats, so if you eyeball it the same way as you would 5e you're going to make the CR too high. A level 3 party of four has a 50/50 shot of TPK against a pair of level 5 enemies, you can't just overwhelm them by having twice as many actions. If anything, it's skewed in the direction of the highest level combatant instead of the larger number of combatants.

 

[Abella]

Does destroying legacy and attacking the dead actually sell the product to anyone? I know some pretty pozzed faggots (though probably not coastally levels) and couldn't imagine them giving a shit even if they went full hotep and claimed DND was stolen from the black man.

Isn't it just destroying the past for destroying the past sake?

It’s an effort to make the game a lifestyle brand.

 

[Loose Goose]

The biggest thing about the way they’re trying to erase Gygax from the game is that they waited until he was dead to defame him. If he wasn’t a white Christian conservative man they wouldn’t try so hard to erase him. It’s part of not just trying to make D&D into a lifestyle brand but try to make everything as sanitary as possible in order to cast as wide of a net as possible and get as much money as possible. That’s why they try so hard to appeal to brown people and homos like they do.

Wokeness just wasn't a thing yet when he died, so he died a respected and beloved man. He had a long thread on ENWorld where people could chat with him about game history, his favorite whiskey or anything else. The quotes about biological determinism and orc babies mainly come from there. But at the time, it was just guys shooting the shit. You occasionally had someone try to troll him, and Gary would slap them down with some funny shitpost. He was damn good at this, especially for an old guy. The orc babies quote that get brought up as evidence of him being a white supremacist is one of these, but he had dozens and dozens of these for people whining about level limits, Vancian magic, or whatever else. His late books are not that good (and were mostly ghostwritten), but he lived 24/7 on the net being a glorious Internet shitlord. And that's all that the SJWs are doing: digging up someone's prolific shitposting history to make him look bad.



As for Kuntz, I wouldn't make him into the figurehead of my Internet crusade yet. The man is the John Videogames of the game industry, and a minor lolcow in his own right. A lot of the ex TSR people are old weirdos (Frank Mentzer is a fun one), but Rob is the living archetype of the minor has-been who thinks he is an industry legend. He is known for self aggrandizement, taking good money for projects he never delivered (multiple publishers in the 2000s, including Kenzer & Co, Necromancer Games, Troll Lord Games and Paizo), commissioning art he didn't pay for (his own company, including work from Jim Holloway and struggling young freelancers), taking writing work from freelancers he didn't pay for (updating his own stuff), and generally being a pompous, insufferable jerk. His ventures failed and his projects went nowhere because he is a lazy narcissist who can talk up his industry creds, but can't deliver the goods. At this point, there is nobody in the industry who will work with him.

He also had a mail order bride from Africa who bolted as soon as she got her green card. Check out his site for a flavor of the man and his style. For now, here is his bio. You can guess who wrote it.

Designer of RPGs and Board Games,
Fiction & Non-Fiction Author,
D&D Historian, Game & Play Theorist​

Robert J. Kuntz is one of the legendary founders of the D&D™ game and a first-wave alumnus of TSR, the company which in 1974 produced the world's first RPG in his home town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

Rob is the "Last Designer Standing" from the game's UR beginning; and he considers it a huge honor and duty to celebrate the people and sources that were instrumental in birthing and nurturing what he believes was a paradigm shift in game design and game theory.

Rob was born in 1955 in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. In 1968 he met and became friends with Gary Gygax and his family. Besides mentoring him in writing and design Gary considered adopting him (at age 16).

In November, 1972 Gygax and Kuntz and several other LGTSA (Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association) members were on hand for Dave Arneson’s demonstration of his new “fantasy game,” Blackmoor, that he and his group in the Twin Cities had been playing since 1971. This meeting soon blossomed into what is known as the first commercial RPG, Dungeons & Dragons®. This started a blitz in creativity initially centered upon TSR Hobbies in Lake Geneva that has since continued unabated into the present.

Over his creative career, Robert Kuntz has accumulated many awards and accolades for his multi-faceted works. He has over 100 publishing credits to date. His works have been read worldwide by millions and published in 20 languages.

In 2020 he announced his retirement from the print publication RPG industry to pursue other media projects including a contracted novel about, and film adaptation for, “Lake Geneva Days”.

Due to his unwavering commitment to his fans he licensed part of his RPG properties to Legends of Role Playing and TLB Games. He has reorganized his IP holdings under the RJK Estate umbrella, this in order to concentrate on a wide variety of projects for feature films, documentaries, CRPG ventures, fiction/non-fiction and 5E D&D™ ventures.

Robert Kuntz resides in Corsica, France with his charming wife Nathalie and their four spirited cats, Coco, Pupuce, RooRoo and Mimi.

Contact the RJK Estate: rjk.estate@orange.fr

 

[The Ugly One]

That's kind of my point, coming from 5e you're used to eyeballing it.

My point is that no, DM fiat is not the standard way to end encounters in 5e. What you posted sounds a lot like the standard tripe from the Extremely Online 5e Haters Club, where people do a lot of theorycrafting and precious little playing to determine what 5e games are "really" like.

It took me maybe about two sessions to be able to eyeball difficulty. It's really simple, just look at how many damage dice the monsters can roll in a round if they all hit. It should be less than half the sum of the party's levels.

I've played exactly one D&D variant where the encounter-building system was fairly precise, and it was 4e, hardly the edition that the Extremely Online 5e Haters Club adores. So my other point is that the lack of a really solid CR system isn't crippling, since D&D never had one for all but six of its 50 years.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

that's how pf2 does it actually. they didn't just rename race into ancestry, they kinda split it into backgrounds as well (which leads to easy "ABC chargen" marketing buzzwords).

for example dwarf gives you +con/+int/free, but -cha because dwarves are grumpy gits. backgrounds usually gives you the choice between 2 boosts 1 free, with some skill training and feats depending on the fluff. classes itself only add skills/feats.

min-maxing still happens of course, but you want to max your key attribute anyway (and the math somewhat expects you too). there's a variant of picking any 2 boosts and no flaw if you want to be a special snowflake, which might get more in that direction (especially combined with free archetype), but like any rules depends how you run it.

I think the idea of it is great, in practice it's normal Paizo shit where it's completely inconstant in execution. Like take the Grippli, who are frog people. You probably think they'd get stuff like swim speed/ water breathing, climb speed, big jumps, maybe camouflage a which is totally in line with what other heritages get.

Instead they get a choice between:
1/hour Poison damage reaction to do 1d4 to somone touching you
+2 against disarm/trips/shoves
You can use your tongue as a limb, but only when it does nothing. I think you can open doors with it, which is helpful if your DM is the sort of retard that tracks limbs so hard you have to sheath weapons to open doors
You can take no fall damage, but only if you have an open hand

 

[filthypenguin]

It took me maybe about two sessions to be able to eyeball difficulty. It's really simple, just look at how many damage dice the monsters can roll in a round if they all hit. It should be less than half the sum of the party's levels.

That rule doesn't work in pf2e, but CR does.

I've played exactly one D&D variant where the encounter-building system was fairly precise, and it was 4e, hardly the edition that the Extremely Online 5e Haters Club adores. So my other point is that the lack of a really solid CR system isn't crippling, since D&D never had one for all but six of its 50 years.

I'm just saying that pf2e leaves a bad taste in new players mouths when a 5e DM uses a rule of thumb that works in 5e but not in pf2e and party wipes the players. When you look at 4chan or reddit threads of people complaining about pf2e it's almost always because they party wiped in an encounter that's CR was too high.

 

[The Ugly One]

That rule doesn't work in pf2e, but CR does.

I'm just saying that pf2e leaves a bad taste in new players mouths when a 5e DM uses a rule of thumb that works in 5e but not in pf2e and party wipes the players. When you look at 4chan or reddit threads of people complaining about pf2e it's almost always because they party wiped in an encounter that's CR was too high.

You said this:

5e's CR is so broken that DMs are used to ignoring it, which party wipes players.

This isn't true. If you use the 5e CR system as written, you tend to end up with pathetically easy fights that the players shit all over and get bored, because the system wildly underestimates the impact of adding another player and wildly overestimates the impact of adding another monster.

And this:

Players are used to always winning via DM fiat

This isn't even a little bit true. In ten years, I've never played or run a single campaign where the players relied on DM fiat to win.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Yeah, I have no idea where this notion that 5e players rely on "DM fiat" to beat encounters comes from. If anything 5e, as its CR system tells you to build encounters, is too easy. And I'll give it some credit: it's much easier and more satisfying to increase difficulty because your players are clamoring for more challenge than it is to have to lower difficulty because they keep wiping and getting frustrated. Would it be better if 5e was more challenging out of the box and actually taught DMs how to build encounters rather than just leaning on a single numerical value for monsters? Absolutely. But when it comes to difficulty on a low-lethality game like 5e it's best to err on the side of "easy" and let experienced players make the enemies smarter/more numerous if they want a challenge.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

The biggest thing about the way they’re trying to erase Gygax from the game is that they waited until he was dead to defame him.

I am out of the loop on this. Not surprised, mind you. But out of the loop nonetheless.

 

[Gingervitis]

I am out of the loop on this. Not surprised, mind you. But out of the loop nonetheless.

The long and short of it is that WotC released a book celebrating, showcasing, and discussing OD&D. In the intro to said book (no idea if it’s done elsewhere), they get on Gygax’s case for being a sexist because of some joke about women’s lib in Tiamat’s monster entry (just because troons are running around doesn’t mean feminists aren’t lolcows) and for saying women generally don’t belong at D&D tables (back then a game that more closely resembled a wargame than the more modern games of today) because men and women are inherently different in terms of thought process and what they enjoy (a statement most normies would agree with). Less believably, they also get on his case for muh heckin racism because of orcs (it’s telling that black people see themselves as a representation of the savagery inherent in humans) and because of the Hindu gods being killable in Gods, Demigods, and Heroes (maybe a bit insensitive, but Gygax lived in Wisconsin in the 70’s, and had likely never met a real Hindu at that point).

 

[LovisXVI]

for saying women generally don’t belong at D&D tables

He didn't even say that iirc, he just said you should expect your girlfriend/wife to like the game and it kind of is a dude thing, never denying that some women might be into it. However since rpgs that do appeal to most women more than the skirmish games of those days do exist now, like World of Darkness (I say as a certified WoD enjoyer), so it is extremely silly to be on his case about all these years later.

 

[The Ugly One]

Yeah, I have no idea where this notion that 5e players rely on "DM fiat" to beat encounters comes from.

Back when 5e came out, there was a lot of sperging by 3.5 fundamentalists who theorycrafted the hell out of the game and insisted it was unplayable. Some of the nonsense they came up with became a kind of consensus among the 3.5 curmudgeon set who never touched 5e, but were certain they'd figured out exactly how every 5e game must be going and what the players must be like.

 

[filthypenguin]

This isn't true. If you use the 5e CR system as written, you tend to end up with pathetically easy fights that the players shit all over and get bored, because the system wildly underestimates the impact of adding another player and wildly overestimates the impact of adding another monster.

We're agreeing about 5e. If you follow the CR rules in 5e, everything is too easy. You have to ignore it and use your own judgement instead, usually making the CR higher than you're supposed to in order to get a fight with any amount of danger. If you ignore CR in PF2e, you will TPK.

This isn't even a little bit true. In ten years, I've never played or run a single campaign where the players relied on DM fiat to win.

I don't doubt you. I'm assuming that since you're in a thread on kiwi farms talking about different systems, you're probably know what you're doing and play because you enjoy the game. There's a huge chunk of 5e players who's first exposure to TTRPGs was Critical Role and their sessions are mostly just theater kid improv disguised as a game where the enemies die because the DM decides they do instead of keeping track of health, and players can only die if the plot the DM has written says they do. It's not a problem with 5e, it's a problem with people who don't actually play the game who have decided to try another system for political reasons like the licensing or the thing with the Pinkertons and get upset when the PF2e DM expects them to actually play the game instead of furry erp where you kill racists occasionally. I don't personally have this experience, so I might be mistaken on how common it is, but one of my players moved across the country and has tried to join groups where none of the players or the DM knew what spell slots were and has had to leave when they tried to make her character join their characters' trans furry polycule via charm spells.

 

[The Ugly One]

groups where none of the players or the DM knew what spell slots were and has had to leave when they tried to make her character join their characters' trans furry polycule via charm spells

Yeah, I've never run into this shit. It certainly isn't part of organized play, and I've always just run games as written in the books.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Back when 5e came out, there was a lot of sperging by 3.5 fundamentalists who theorycrafted the hell out of the game and insisted it was unplayable. Some of the nonsense they came up with became a kind of consensus among the 3.5 curmudgeon set who never touched 5e, but were certain they'd figured out exactly how every 5e game must be going and what the players must be like.

There was a Spoony video of 5e (when it was called DnD Next) that was like this. I specifically remember him saying advantage was a dumb system because people would constantly argue they have advantage for the slightest benefit. "The sun is at my back, so I have advantage" being one example he used.

There's a huge chunk of 5e players who's first exposure to TTRPGs was Critical Role and their sessions are mostly just theater kid improv disguised as a game where the enemies die because the DM decides they do instead of keeping track of health, and players can only die if the plot the DM has written says they do. It's not a problem with 5e, it's a problem with people who don't actually play the game who have decided to try another system for political reasons like the licensing or the thing with the Pinkertons and get upset when the PF2e DM expects them to actually play the game instead of furry erp where you kill racists occasionally. I don't personally have this experience, so I might be mistaken on how common it is,

I've said this a bunch, but the typical internet opinion of 5e, it's players, and critical role enjoyers has no baring on reality, at least in my experience. I'm told I'm the outlier, but have never encountered the "theatre kid" type people always tell me about.

I've talked at length before about my tolerance for "freakshit" and how it never became a problem. My experience with a CR fan was he wanted to play Bloodhunter, and that was basically it. Good player all round. What I have experienced however are nutcases from the other side of the argument. One guy I've called HEMA guy used to constantly complain about the lack of realism of situations and complain whenever dumping wisdom came back to bite him in the arse. I've met a guy who would punch himself in the face whenever the DM didn't give him what he wanted all the time. And of course I've met lots of people who theory craft and wax nostalgic about DnD 24/7, but make every excuse not to play or simply flake out without a word.

I don't see this kind of thing talked about much on the internet, and I think it's because what I've described is most of the online RPG community.

To give two simple examples. Online tells me monks are bad, but every game I've seen them in they kick all kinds of arse. I'm told dragonborn are the worst and completely unplayable, but everyone I know who played them didn't do worse than any other character.


This might sound strange, but I wonder if there's some degree of projection or horseshoe theory going on.

 

[filthypenguin]

@Judge Dredd:

I suspect that it probably depends on the circles you run in. The player I was referring to was the least nerdy of the group she played in, and was only interested in playing in the first place as a way to hang out with the other members of the group that she knew from outside of playing. When she moved, she tried to find a group, and found one via a co worker that was a SQL DBA, and found another via her sorority, and both groups were bad due to some combination of no one knowing rules, trannies, pervert furries, etc. The place she moved is also more blue than the place she moved from. I live in a relatively red area, and I've met a total of one player who says he plays 5e because "there aren't any rules."

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

View attachment 6171464

From Rob Kuntz, someone who helped make original Dungeons and Dragons.

Evil cannot create.