Why don’t more games use the OGL?

[Jedi Master Radek]

2. CC, [...] are way too powerful.

Crowd control is too much fun to change it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Classless systems give you a great freedom for development of your characters, but since D&D 3E you can take levels in different classes with very few regulations (stats based). And they divide your character into different skills instead of keeping a coherent monolithic character that classes offer.

3e multiclassing is one of the worst things that ever happened to d&d

 

[Darth Canoli]

Wrong

(it's great for a pen and paper system but for PC, you can do way better)

You got it all mixed up, it's the other way around, there is a lot of good PnP systems, one i know well being Shadowrun but it's one of many.

The only one that translated well into a cRPG, so far is D&D, sometimes through a custom system, sometimes almost "pure".
Dark Eye system lacks interesting magic.
Fallout 1 & 2 are great in spite of their system and not because of it, although the perk system is good, i give it that.
Arcanum system is just not good, the good technological system with crafting saves the day but it lacks fallout-like perks.
Wizardry 8 system is the only one standing out with a great character creation and development but we know it's a custom D&D system.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

From designer's point of view tabletop rulesets and video games rulesets are made using completely different premise.
For tabletop you want simplicity, speed and "feel of the dice". For video games all calculations are made by the machine so you want "clarity of the rules".

Over the years I have designed many video games and many boardgames and I always considered a diffeerent ruleset the ideal one. You simply design those completely different way. As a rule of thumb, from designer's perspective and ommiting the "players are familiar with it already" benefit (which can be huge, like for using AD&D rules) it is always better to not use boardgames rules for a video game (and the opposite: using video game rules for tabletop are much, much more devastating).

Sure, I suppose there are some exceptions. But still, for a designer it's simplier & more efficient to craft ruleset for the medium and the game you are making.


For example: note that tabletop RPGs were designed exclusively for "one player controlling one character" not for controlling 4, 6, or 7 characters at once. Which might result with information overload (you can remember all traits and skills, no matter how many are those if you are playing this one character in a compaign you play with friends for months, but when you are playing a cRPG with a bunch of characters and you need to control them all then... well, you are not going to remember which character has the +1% to fire resistance trait/item :D) Overall rule, the more characters you control the easier to grasp the stats/traits should be (because you need to multiply the information overload by the number of characters you need to control). But that can be countered by offloading calculations to the machine, but to use this advantage you have to forge your own system rather than reuse tabletop one (with the exception when sometimes you can reuse the tabletop rules and those will work :D)


Overall, and as a general rule, reusing a tabletop rules for a video RPG is feasible when you get a marketing edge (we want to play PUT PEN AND PAPER SYSTEM NAME HERE on a computer!). Otherwise it's more effective to forge a custom one.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

The dislike for OGL surprises me. While it may not be the best system out there, it is still much better than most of the "Imma design my own!" people manage to produce.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I've never played the tabletop game but I hear the rules of Traveller are amazing and that you can even die during character creation.

There is a thread on why the hell we don't get more sci-fi CRPGs.

 

[CryptRat]

Yes, you can die during character creation in MegaTraveller by the way. Character creation is the best part of the game, past the discovery time the game is not really good, there's not much use of the utility skills and the combat is some real time mess.

 

[Darkzone]

Classless systems give you a great freedom for development of your characters, but since D&D 3E you can take levels in different classes with very few regulations (stats based). And they divide your character into different skills instead of keeping a coherent monolithic character that classes offer.

3e multiclassing is one of the worst things that ever happened to d&d

No. It has cleared out the worse dual class and multiclass system of ADD. And the rest is the fault of the DMs and players.

From designer's point of view tabletop rulesets and video games rulesets are made using completely different premise.
For tabletop you want simplicity, speed and "feel of the dice". For video games all calculations are made by the machine so you want "clarity of the rules".

But simplicity results in more clarity. Different premises same conclusion.

Over the years I have designed many video games and many boardgames and I always considered a diffeerent ruleset the ideal one. You simply design those completely different way. As a rule of thumb, from designer's perspective and ommiting the "players are familiar with it already" benefit (which can be huge, like for using AD&D rules) it is always better to not use boardgames rules for a video game (and the opposite: using video game rules for tabletop are much, much more devastating).
Sure, I suppose there are some exceptions. But still, for a designer it's simplier & more efficient to craft ruleset for the medium and the game you are making.

It is more plausible for a designer to create more shit especially at the tail of the system (without using an already 10k hours playtested system that has recived several revisions), than to create a good functioning system.

For example: note that tabletop RPGs were designed exclusively for "one player controlling one character" not for controlling 4, 6, or 7 characters at once. Which might result with information overload (you can remember all traits and skills, no matter how many are those if you are playing this one character in a compaign you play with friends for months, but when you are playing a cRPG with a bunch of characters and you need to control them all then... well, you are not going to remember which character has the +1% to fire resistance trait/item :D) Overall rule, the more characters you control the easier to grasp the stats/traits should be (because you need to multiply the information overload by the number of characters you need to control). But that can be countered by offloading calculations to the machine, but to use this advantage you have to forge your own system rather than reuse tabletop one (with the exception when sometimes you can reuse the tabletop rules and those will work :D)

Because developers think this way that is why RPG systems are dumbed down on computers. Have more confidence in the intelligence of the players, at least if you are making intelligent RPGs. Everyone here in the Codex will remember who out the 7 controlled characters has/uses the +1 fire resistant trait/item.

Chis. I admit that you are thinking about this topic quite well, but your strict assumptions have already turned you to a concrete (cement) head.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe be glad there is OGL because some people/companies....

 

[curds]

you can even die during character creation

What a stupid fucking idea.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

But simplicity results in more clarity. Different premises same conclusion.

I meant simplicity of calculations in tabletop, you need to prioritize those since it will be humans doing those, with video RPGs you don't care since computer will be doing this. So you can add any amount of saving throws or layers on layers of mechanics, the only limit is clarity of the rules (so the player can comprehend what's going on). This allows more sophisticated mechanics on video RPGs than on tabletop (which I admit is not always utilized).

It is more plausible for a designer to create more shit especially at the tail of the system (without using an already 10k hours playtested system that has recived several revisions), than to create a good functioning system.

As a designer I would not overestimate the importance of a tested and a balanced system. At least not without to context of an actual game. The impact on the game play of the system is actually quite low. Surprisingly low I would even say. Much more impact has the world design, how much exp monsters grant, how many monsters there are, when the player will meet them, if those respawn, which areas the player can access and when (danger zones), etc.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yes, you can die during character creation in MegaTraveller by the way. Character creation is the best part of the game, past the discovery time the game is not really good, there's not much use of the utility skills and the combat is some real time mess.

As much as I like the Traveller system, the PC game is a great example of why translating pen and paper rules to a CRPG verbatim is not always a good idea.

The devs implemented the ruleset very faithfully, but half the skills are completely useless because they never get used.

So you have two options when faithfully adapting an extant ruleset:
- end up with some skills being useless or almost useless because you barely made any content for them
- end up with the system dictating what kind of content you can/have to put into the game

If you create your own system, you already know what kind of content you want it to cover, so you tailor the system to your game's content.

 

[Darkzone]

But simplicity results in more clarity. Different premises same conclusion.

I meant simplicity of calculations in tabletop, you need to prioritize those since it will be humans doing those, with video RPGs you don't care since computer will be doing this. So you can add any amount of saving throws or layers on layers of mechanics, the only limit is clarity of the rules (so the player can comprehend what's going on). This allows more sophisticated mechanics on video RPGs than on tabletop (which I admit is not always utilized).

Yes i agree that you can handle more of this things in the background, especially to achieve a certain uninterrupted flow. Nevertheless i think that the player needs to know what could happen to his party, to make an informed decision about the build up of the party, the character build and in leveling up of the characters.

It is more plausible for a designer to create more shit especially at the tail of the system (without using an already 10k hours playtested system that has recived several revisions), than to create a good functioning system.

As a designer I would not overestimate the importance of a tested and a balanced system. At least not without to context of an actual game. The impact on the game play of the system is actually quite low. Surprisingly low I would even say. Much more impact has the world design, how much exp monsters grant, how many monsters there are, when the player will meet them, if those respawn, which areas the player can access and when (danger zones), etc.

For me it is very difficult to estimate the impact of the system in a cRPG. But even if assume that you are strictly correct, i can state about your mentioned points, that some system already handle partly this (and have also tested them), like the encounter design ( in monster kind and their amount ). Example: DnD 5E has the CR as a basis of encounter design. And in previous version it tried to handle this by XPs count and encounter recommendations (in various adventure books and monster manuals) by character levels and Hit Dice.
About designing of systems and where i come from there exists the following statements:
"Experimentation over Study of Theory" and "No Theory survives its first contact with Reality" as an abrivation from the Moltke quote.