Thoughts for the night

Thoughts on Thoughts:

1) Challenges.
Disassociate skill checks from the idea of “challenges.” There is no challenge in having the RNG spit up just what you need to open a door. I don’t care about that door. It’s a gate to something more interesting.

And don’t get hung up on defining “winning” or any angst about “….most people don’t want challenge. People want to *win*…” I recently played “Long March, Dark Coda” and as a Val’Mordane with The Knight’s Code I had entire minutes of being utterly without an idea of the proper actions to take in several encounters. That kind of experience is winning.

That was challenging, too. It’s got nothing to do with whether the Avoidance scores on enemies are too high or too low, and everything to do with a given character’s investment in a scene. There’s not much accounting for that -unless the decision comes down from above that there needs to be more mods based on the campaign character demographics.
Which could be a great idea or a terrible one, not sure.

Keep telling strong stories. That’s where the real challenge is found. Locally 4th Ed. D&D’s LFR campaign sunk because if RPG’ing is supported by 3 legs -mechanics, camaraderie, and setting investment LFR decided to be a two-legged stool, and eventually enough people walked away to greener pastures. Like this one.

2) The Obscurity – Utility skill slider.
Nothing to be done about this. The removal of Making a Living made this problem worse. I’ve got a hero with Ranks in Craft: Swordsmithing as flavor. They’re now literally useless.

The best solution I’ve ever seen was in Shadowrun. The designers gave PC’s a huge bonus skill pool and said, “spend this on whatever, but it has to be cool and non-Combat.” Perform, Craft skills, and superfluous Knowledge skills like “Knowledge: history of the gladius” or “Knowledge: Horticulture” are perfect candidates.

3) The Arms Race.
Skip it. It’s ultimately bad for the campaign overall, because somewhere in there is one more reason for someone to quit. A TN 30 Lock is a TN 30 Lock. Scenery can take a pass on being challenging anyway if it’s not serving the narrative.

A PC who was part of the destruction of Ubraxicitit got mauled by a Shadow Lion a few days ago. Survived a brawl with a demon king and banished The D*******, yet she got her butt raked by a giant cat. Try not to think about it too much, but more importantly try not to keep having this happen. It is quite possible to humiliate a PC out of playing.

I’ve complained about armor mechanics before and it’s not a good idea to ask faith of a player that Slow is worth tolerating solely because somewhere in the dozens of points of Stamina lost to that cat the difference between 4 and 5 DR is proven. Then why wear Gothic Plate at all? Because it’s the character’s choice. Because being a intimidating tower of plates and metal is part of who that person is, which is the best reason to do anything in an RPG. Choices like that show investment. So do non-optimal weapon selections. The Arms Races harms all these things.

4) Skill Gating.
Make sure you really want to gate some piece of lore behind a a check and not a personal choice. In Living Arcanis the eloran “Past Lives” feats were the very incarnation of what a bad idea this was. First you took a feat that served no other purpose. Then you waited. Eventually you made a roll with a high variability of outcome and no retries, and held your breath. Maybe you learned something new. Maybe you were reminded of a clue you could have gotten some other way or already had.
In the end an opportunity cost far in excess of the benefit and detrimental to the player type Arcanis seems to want to cultivate: the people who love the lore.
As a positive example: Secret Societies. Flavor-loaded, varied and multifaceted, and free to get into, but not without consequences. Fantastic, where do I sign up Under the bridge? With the three-fingered woman? Terrific, I’ll be there with lunch.

5) Errata.
I’m far better at these kinds of discussions in person instead of online. I can measure tone of voice and body posture and facial expression and eye movement and whatever else makes the difference. That matters because I care, I want to have a voice in these topics, but I struggle with expressing myself in a way that’s adequate for conveying my passion for the topic without being inflammatory.
I don’t want to pick a fight, but I do want even just a token nod when I observe that bastard swords are everywhere but heavy armor isn’t and polearms are virtually non-existent. This suggests to me a problem, though probably not a huge one. No, I don’t have a statistical model of usage. I couldn’t get a big enough sample size to be useful, and my references would be ultimately anecdotal. But when the spectrum of player types from “performance focused” to “fluff-effectiveness balanced” keep coming up with the same combinations, something’s out of whack.
See also Martial Archetypes and Sweeping Strikes/Mighty Swing advanced maneuver combinations. I’m sure this homogeneity will even out as the tiers climb, but I’m not playing Tier 3 -I’m playing Tier 1 and 2 and right now there could be a problem because this combo’s practically mandatory and I start to get antsy when every Might based warrior looks the same.

I don’t think anyone’s out to screw anyone else, but we’ve also clearly got differing opinions on what balance is. I was debating bringing up the Wings of the Fiend talent chain for examination as the basis of a claim of that it’s overcosted and underperforming. For example I think the Tier 3 part should very clearly state that as long as the character wing’s aren’t restrained they can fall a possibly infinite distance without injury on landing. And they can -as long as the Storyteller interprets their ability to glide downward like that. Because if the source talent doesn’t say that, that hair will be split. I’ve seen it.

I can’t appropriately express how much I hate that kind of mentality in these games, but it’s as reliable as dice and battle maps. Your endless quibbling about weapon handedness and casting and shields as weapons is “clearly important and consequential,” but my concerns about a niche racial feat are pointless and unnecessary because you can directly quantify the stakes in hard numerical terms and I can mostly just tell “something’s not right.”

You’re not out to screw me just because you think there’s no reasonable issue there, but that’s the result when in actuality the difference is just opinion. I hate “reasonable.” I hate “designer intentions.” In the context of rules and laws they mean nothing substantive on a practical level, and more directly I’m not buying a system that thinks Rule Zero is preferable solution to anything.

If you were sweating a Tick in gear juggling at the table I’d tell you not to worry about it because it’s holding up the game. Take your turn, do your thing, move the narrative along. I trust you to know your character -yeah, you can cheat that Tick. I’m not really worried about it. Not because I trust you, but because I actually care about how much fun the rest of the table is having and wasting time on minutiae tends not to be entertainment.
But if I decide to try to assault a fortified canyon position from the unclimbable back face by gliding in and you think it’d be “more realistic/fair/plausible/funny” to instead work out how many Wounds I take when I pancake from 70′ up then you’ve screwed me, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing that you didn’t intend to. Sure the result was painful, but the process -an opinion rendered from a position of superior authority, was legitimate and isn’t that what really matters?

No. No it’s not. But it’s likely we disagree, so let’s try to keep an eye on the actual stakes and likely outcomes instead of justifying the Ends with the Means.

I agree with Paul, as well. And my suggestion would be to make the bonus XP no more than 25% – 30% of the total. And in addition, not every adventure should have it. Even though it’s called, “bonus XP”, if it begins to feel mandatory, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

Lastly, the “bonus” stuff should not always be XP. Sometimes it should be information, nifty items, favors, etc. Any little extra “reward” for doing something can be reward enough. Heck, personally, I’d rather get the extra piece of lore or an unusual thingamajiggy than bonus XP any time. They add flavor and story. (Bonus XP just adds bigger, meaner monsters, next time.) But that’s just me.

Scott

I agree with Paul, as well. And my suggestion would be to make the bonus XP no more than 25% – 30% of the total. And in addition, not every adventure should have it. Even though it’s called, “bonus XP”, if it begins to feel mandatory, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

Lastly, the “bonus” stuff should not always be XP. Sometimes it should be information, nifty items, favors, etc. Any little extra “reward” for doing something can be reward enough. Heck, personally, I’d rather get the extra piece of lore or an unusual thingamajiggy than bonus XP any time. They add flavor and story. (Bonus XP just adds bigger, meaner monsters, next time.) But that’s just me.

ScottI agree with Scott.

I will say this. If it all depends on what you say “extras” are. If extra’s are from saving lives, or remember to lock a door behind you, things that would come naturally to heroes, but aren’t necessary to get from point at to point be, those are fine things to attach “bonus” exp to. But Scott is right, anything that doesn’t require a huge TN or a rare character choice won’t feel like “bonus” exp to players, especially if they come up often. Anything that is available to everyone will just feel like regular exp that’s hard to get.

The ridiculously high TN check, the oddity skill/talent, the sacrifice, etc. These things should only show up occasionally, otherwise people will start to feel like they are being penalized for not speaking every language, or being an artist, or being a psion, or generally not having every single thing covered at their table.

Stuff and story is better in my opinion than XP for having a character choice.

One thing I would like to see, is not having written XP penalties for taking the moral gray choice in the end.

Let me start off by saying mod writing is an art, not a science. Writing any mod, much less a good one, is a LOT of hard work. Having written a half dozen myself I have a deep appreciation for the time any effort that goes into producing enough to keep a campaign running.

Okay, on to this thread: Let me start with questions. Anyone ever read a terrific novel that got turned into a lame movie? Or … Anyone ever see a tie-in novelization of a movie that then won a major literary award? I’m guessing your answers are of course and no. All mediums of “art” (written, visual, performing etc) have strengths and weaknesses when it comes to conveying thoughts feelings and emotions … and these strengths are different so there have always been problems converting from one medium to another. I think Empire Strikes Back is in the running for the greatest action movie of all time … but my old copy of the novelization of Empire Strikes Back did not win a Hugo or Nebula (and I wouldn’t mention it when talking about great sci-fi or fantasy novels).

I think of module writing as an art as well and from the viewpoint of making more “good art” I have the following thoughts about things said on this thread:

…snip… If we as authors truly write to the needs of the story, there are going to be places not everyone can get. A table with two Orthodoxy members may be able to talk to an NPC that won’t talk to non-Orthodoxy members, while a table with no Orthodoxy members will not. A table without someone skilled at picking locks will not be able to get into some rooms without smashing down the door (and essentially advertising their skullduggery to other people at the party that evening. I’m looking at you, As Cold and Gray As Stone). But if we have to proceed on the feeling that everyone should be able to get everywhere and get everything… a lot of story opportunities become a lot less viable. …snip…

Thought One: I’ve never played a good module that not only had a story at its heart, but that story also pulled me in and engaged me. In fact, the whole reason why I enjoy the Arcanis campaign is because all the hard points fit together to form a larger story that is built out of the smaller stories in a way that makes sense, and is aesthetically pleasing to me. I don’t see how you could write a good mod without writing to the story.

Thought Two: Not all stories make for good roll-playing role-playing adventures. Module writers (and potential module writers) need to discriminate between ideas that work well in this medium from ones that don’t. It’s my opinion that there are story opportunities aren’t viable inherently in a RPG format. Even if they might make a great book or movie. I’ve never enjoyed a module where my character was essentially a passive or a witness. If fairly logical/obvious courses of action are “disallowed” because it breaks the module…it really doesn’t matter how “cool” anything (or everything) else is in a module … I leave the slot disgruntled.

In a shared world campaign the core of any story has to work for the overwhelming majority of players. That unique thing that happens with the two Orthodoxy members has to be secondary to the core of the story. Or in the alternative has to be a special mission designed for Orthodoxy members (like the previous special mods for joining the Warrior of the Eternal Flame or Ehtzarta from the previous campaign). You could do more personal tailoring in a home campaign. A shared world campaign is not the same as a shared world campaign.

…snip…The ridiculously high TN check, the oddity skill/talent, the sacrifice, etc. These things should only show up occasionally, otherwise people will start to feel like they are being penalized for not speaking every language, or being an artist, or being a psion, or generally not having every single thing covered at their table.
…snip…
One thing I would like to see, is not having written XP penalties for taking the moral gray choice in the end.

I have a mixed feeling about high TNs and obscure information. If you come across a painting and maybe there is a snippet of cool lore attached to it, I have several different responses. ONE) If the information is vital for the adventure to proceed then all tables need to get it one way or another regardless of what makes sense numbers-wise. If its tangential then I don’t feel all (or even most) tables need to know. On the other (3rd?) hand, if you have a character who is a painter and has maxed out his ranks in painting over 3 Tiers of play, I don’t think he or she should need to make a 50/50% roll…just give them the information. In this case passive ranks are a more useful gauge than a skill check.

My last thought it to echo agreement on the idea that what makes a “right” ending is often subjective in this campaign. And xp should try to reflect that. In the modules I have written, the one thing I think that runs through them all (from Living Death modules set in Victorian era Portland to LA modules in Sweet Savona) is that you are dumped in an “interesting” situation, nobody tells you exactly what to do, and your party needs to pick and choose what opportunities and choices make the most collective sense to you. I would like to see more soft points in this spirit.

I lied. I want my last thought to be the same as my first: Mod writing is an art, not a science. Writing any mod, much less a good one, is a LOT of hard work. Having written a half dozen myself I have a deep appreciation for the time any effort that goes into producing enough to keep a campaign running.