Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Rake]

Um Roguey I am pretty sure that playing and gaming are the same thing.

Remember that P&P has a Dungeon Master and if you try to be a rule exploiting faggot they can shut you down straight away.

You're talking about POWER GAMING.

Houserules are a sign that the rules themselves have failed.

So when PE gets modded (maybe even AD&D conversion mod) will mean that Sawyer failed as a designer?

 

[Sensuki]

Man I can just see Roguey trying to play 3rd or 4th edition P&P. It would be just like watching Summoner Geeks.

DM: "okay you gain 2000 experience"

Roguey: "Um excuse me, those monsters were clearly CR 8 not CR 7, we should be getting 2450 XP."

DM: "Well too bad, 2000 XP, one of the Trolls was slightly weaker"

Roguey: "That's bullshit, he had exactly the same stats as the other ones"

DM: "And how would you know that"

Roguey: "They all were rolling +12 to hit, you rolled a 15 to hit my AC 27 and a 9 to hit our Rogue's AC 21 and their hit points were all the same"

DM: "Whatever, 2000XP, sorry"

... later on

DM: "The trolls have a bunch of mundane equipment and a Longsword +2"

Roguey: "We aren't level 9 yet, we should be getting 2 x +1 items instead to match the assumed number of magic items to the party's EL. My character doesn't even have one yet"

DM: "Well perhaps you didn't look hard enough, and arguing about the rules every 5 minutes isn't the way to go about getting magic items now is it"

 

[Rake]

 

[Ninjerk]

Man I can just see Roguey trying to play 3rd or 4th edition P&P. It would be just like watching Summoner Geeks.

DM: "okay you gain 2000 experience"

Roguey: "Um excuse me, those monsters were clearly CR 8 not CR 7, we should be getting 2450 XP."

DM: "Well too bad, 2000 XP, one of the Trolls was slightly weaker"

Roguey: "That's bullshit, he had exactly the same stats as the other ones"

DM: "And how would you know that"

Roguey: "They all were rolling +12 to hit, you rolled a 15 to hit my AC 27 and a 9 to hit our Rogue's AC 21 and their hit points were all the same"

DM: "Whatever, 2000XP, sorry"

... later on

DM: "The trolls have a bunch of mundane equipment and a Longsword +2"

Roguey: "We aren't level 9 yet, we should be getting 2 x +1 items instead to match the assumed number of magic items to the party's EL. My character doesn't even have one yet"

DM: "Well perhaps you didn't look hard enough, and arguing about the rules every 5 minutes isn't the way to go about getting magic items now is it"

My DM punished this sort of behavior. Hell, he punished us for my cousin rolling a Holy Avenger.

 

[Grunker]

An obsession with rules and systems is, in my experience, purely indicative of a poor tabletop GM. The rules exist, yes, to provide a framework to play the game in, but they are *not* the point of the game

You're no better than Roguey, in your '98 way of telling people how to play.

There are a million ways to play. I play both super rules-detailed tactical P&P where light roleplaying just sets the scene and super indepth indie RPGs with barely any rules. And indeed heavy RP games with a heavy ruleset (aforementioned Witcher GURPS campaign, for example) where sometimes rules take precedence, and sometimes they don't.

The truth of most games is just this - the situation between rules, calls and group agreements are always... fluid.

Saying that something isn't the point of the game is saying "the way I play is surperior to the way everyone else plays" and it is ultimately a futile endeavour that most of the P&P community grew out of somewhere around 2007.

That's not how I read his post at all, more along the lines of "rules are there to help you, not to be blindly followed." I certainly didn't get any my way or the highway vibes from it.

My point is that there are plenty of game forms where rules are there precisely to be blindly followed. The feeling of conquering something like modern Tomb of Horrors or some of the others Pure Challenge adventures (or arena combat stuff) come directly from outsmarting GM tactics and dangerous foes with strange tactics without having to rely on on-the-fly calls.

Let's say you're playing one of those 'rules heavy' games -- if as a GM you feel that you have to adhere, completely, to the rules and make no adjustments or expansions, then you are unnecessarily restricted in the scenarios you can create in your game due to the fact that no rules system, no matter how extensive, can cover every single possible scenario you could come up with. Unless you want the game to have literally nothing but combat."

This proves to me without a shadow of doubt that you have never played in the way I mention above. Otherwise you would never make these claims. Or, if you have, you're not the type to enjoy that shit or have played with a bad GM. Either way, you have no solid argument to go against what I just said above blind rules adherence. Blind rules adherence has relative strengths in many cases, just like most games draw more advantage from being fluid.

I, for one, prefer not to unecessarily restrict myself to one playstyle.

 

[Aeschylus]

I, for one, prefer not to unecessarily restrict myself to one playstyle.

o_O
The *whole point* of what I'm saying is not restricting yourself to a play-style.
But it's clear you're just feeling argumentative, so whatever.
Oh, and since you feel the need to take a condescending attitude, I should point out that I'm probably the only person on these boards with more tabletop RPG experience than you, based on your previous run-down.

 

[Grunker]

I, for one, prefer not to unecessarily restrict myself to one playstyle.

o_O
The *whole point* of what I'm saying is not restricting yourself to a play-style.

No, your point was that one should never play with blind rule-adherence. Thus, you are limiting yourself to never play these kinds of games:

My point is that there are plenty of game forms where rules are there precisely to be blindly followed. The feeling of conquering something like modern Tomb of Horrors or some of the others Pure Challenge adventures (or arena combat stuff) come directly from outsmarting GM tactics and dangerous foes with strange tactics without having to rely on on-the-fly calls.

Where a totally objective party - the rules - decide the outcome of every action. This is a legitimate design choice that gives legitimately different games.

I, for one, prefer not to unecessarily restrict myself to one playstyle.

o_O
The *whole point* of what I'm saying is not restricting yourself to a play-style.
But it's clear you're just feeling argumentative, so whatever.
Oh, and since you feel the need to take a condescending attitude.

If you feel I'm being condescending, then I apologize, but I'm not sure why you feel I'm being a prick just for telling you that there are plenty of fun games that can arise from blind rules adherence and I therefore disagree with your earlier statements.

I should point out that I'm probably the only person on these boards with more tabletop RPG experience than you, based on your previous run-down

I'm pretty sure Alex does too (Ulminati as well, perhaps), but judging by the conversations with both of you, neither of you play as broad variety of games as I do, and you've both expressed disdain for certain ways of play. Needless to say, my only disdain in this regard is for people who tell other people that the way they play the game is wrong. As I said, if I misjudged you, I apologize, but I'm not sure how to read a post that says "you should never adhere blindly to the rules" in any other way than you dismissing that style of play.

 

[Dreaad]

House rules are not a sign of anything at all. If you play poker but with house rules say for a drinking game, that does not make either poker or your house rules a bad thing. You should be able to use entertainment however you want with whatever shit you can come up with. At the end of the day it's YOUR fun and no system EVER will be designed so fucking perfectly, that it will fit everyone's model of a good/balanced/hard/easy/perfect time.

I personally am very skeptical about sawyer's stats system, it really DOES sound like 4th edition D&D. The problem with that edition was that it was not roleplaying at all, it was an MMO. The way sawyer is designing it... it sounds (just like 4th ED) that "classes" will not matter, it will just become some derivative of party roles i.e. tank, striker, leader. A perfect little game world where every build is equal, everyone does the same amount of damage, has the same chance to hit enemies, has the same benefits/losses in conversation except through different stats (oh goody), there's no way you can GOD FORBID make sub optimal choices while making your character, sunshine will shine brightly out of everyone's asshole and everyone wins. Hurrah.

A bit exaggerated perhaps, but it is heading in that direction by the looks of things.

 

[Roguey]

Of course Roguey hasn't played a tabletop RPG, that would require interacting with people in real life. Likely misogynerds and other cis priviledged trash as well.

I have. It was borderline LARP. Not adaptable to a computer game.

JSawyer.esp

A game isn't finished just 'cause it already shipped.

 

[AN4RCHID]

JSawyer.esp

A game isn't perfect just 'cause it already shipped.

Yes, that is the point. See also the fan mods that make F:NV not look like festering shit.

 

[Gurkog]

Just wait until the game is released and all the whiner idiots complain about how the rules, stats, etc... should be different. Arguing for a sideways change of direction and thinking it would be an improvement. There is more than 1 way to skin a cat.

 

[Dreaad]

Lucky then that a cat has nine lives....

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

As I said, if I misjudged you, I apologize, but I'm not sure how to read a post that says "you should never adhere blindly to the rules" in any other way than you dismissing that style of play.

Strange, what I read was "you should not always adhere blindly to the rules". Not obsessing over the rules and being able to occasionally improvise seems like a valid, or at least sensible concept (not only RPG-wise btw), not some "mine is bigger than yours" judgment.

Rest assured that mine is bigger than yours just the same.

 

[DalekFlay]

Why hasn't Josh Roguey got his her "on the line from Obsidian" title yet?

 

[Shadenuat]

Josh would probably say that game designer's job is still to create rules which you would want to buy and play with after you bought them, instead of replacing everything with your own stuff. And it will go in circles like that
There are concepts people will get butthurt about no matter the level of their execution. Item durability and repair for example, no matter what you'd think to make them work, half of your forum population would cry rivers and vote "no", because people are shits. It does't mean that your rule failed if it was homeruled or modded, it just means people have different preferences
It doesn't mean game designers favorite tool should be goddamn scalpel, which seems like Sawyer's favorite

 

[Hormalakh]

i wonder how many of you have read Josh Sawyer's blog posts. He's got some interesting things that he says in those: here's one from 2009

Spoiler

Tuning tips and tricks

At work, I am often directly involved in an aspect of game design that not all designers really deal with: system and content tuning. This is the process by which system rules and content are adjusted to produce a specific effect for the player. E.g. you want the player to feel like he/she really gains a great advantage when he/she gets the raccoon tail in Super Mario Brothers 3, so you space out the frequency of raccoon tail powerups and you make sure that the raccoon tail's flight powers allow access to useful/valuable areas.

RPGs are often difficult to tune for a few reasons:

* There are a lot of statistics
* Many of the statics are derived/connected to other statistics
* There are subsystems that govern access to various abilities (e.g. class systems, racial abilities, etc.) that create a player desire for egalitarianism/balance between those subsystems

This won't all be coherent, but I'd like to write down a few basic rules that I have developed over time.

* Avoid allowing a base value to be modified by more than three inputs. That is, if you have a base damage value for something, you should ideally allow it to be affected by no more than three things. The fewer inputs you allow to modify a value, the more significant the effects of those inputs are. Additionally, the range is generally more constrained and predictable for a player. In turn, this makes tuning content easier.

E.g. how long you can hold your breath underwater. It's affected by your Constitution score, your Swim skill, and your Breathing Bonuses (a catch-all of non-stacking bonuses specifically for holding breath). As long as you know the max Constitution score, max Swim skill, and the highest Breathing Bonus, you know exactly how long a character can hold his or her breath underwater at any given point in the game. Because you only have three inputs to worry about, it's easy to track everything that goes into this system. Player attempts to min-max the system are limited to those three categories, which means that non-min-maxers can still be "competitive".

Now let's say you decide to expand this system. You allow all Breathing Bonuses to stack. A player can have a Breathing Bonus from up to three different perks and Breathing Bonuses on any/all equipment he or she can wear, up to eight "slots" worth. Even if the values used on these perks and pieces of equipment were relatively minor, the spectrum of minimum and maximum have increased dramatically. It becomes more difficult to predict where a character will be on this scale at any given point in the game, and the min-maxer has an extreme advantage over the casual player, making content tuning difficult.

* From a single value, avoid deriving multiple values in different subsystems. When you do this, you have created a complex balancing problem for yourself. The classic example of this is the ability score system in pretty much all editions of (Advanced) Dungeons & Dragons. Ability scores affect skills, the use of class abilities (e.g. a paladin's lay on hands), and various class-neutral statistics (hit point bonus from Con, AC bonus from Dex). Every time you adjust one of these skills, abilities, or statistics, you affect the value of the stat that has an input into them. Logically, any time you adjust inputs into the value from which these other values are derived, you affect the expected range of the derived values. The fewer things a single value affects, the easier balance will be for you.

* Do not create drawbacks that are "opt-out" for the player if it still gives some benefit to the player. I.e. do not allow the player to take what is ostensibly a "drawback" that gives them a bonus to a skill pool, or some other sort of gameplay bonus, unless that drawback is very difficult/impossible to avoid. When people want to specialize a character in something, they already know what they want to do. What they don't want to do is pretty much everything but that activity. "You gain +4 to damage with broadswords but -20 to damage with wooden dowels and light maces," contains an effectively worthless drawback. The only way the drawback would ever arise in gameplay would be through some asinine heavy-handedness on the part of the game designer -- for which the player will almost assuredly resent you. A more even-handed drawback would be, "You gain +4 to damage with broadswords but attack 20% more slowly when using them." The benefit and the drawback are both realized within the same activity. The player cannot reap the benefit without suffering the penalty.

* When making trade-offs between items/skills/abilities, those trade offs must actually feel different in application or the player's choice isn't very important. For example, in the above case of +4 to damage with a 20% lower attack rate, there should be situations in which more damage per hit = better and situations in which faster attack rate = better. For example, if an armor system is threshold based (subtracts a flat damage value), doing more damage per shot always means that damage has a greater chance of getting through armor. In this case, the +4 bonus is better when used against opponents with armor. Against opponents with high health and no armor, raw DPS matters more than damage per shot. In such cases, having a 20% faster attack rate may be better if it outweighs the DPS value of the +4 in the overall equation.

* Show the player what he or she is getting, even if they don't necessarily understand how the underlying math works out. When players invest in something, they have an expectation that what they are increasing is affecting something. Make sure that this is happening, and happening consistently. If you have some sort of weird logarithmic adjustments going on behind the scene without informing the player, the player does not know what he or she is getting. In a case where you have a system where all points on a scale cost a fixed value to buy, each point should advance the derived values by an equal amount (a linear increase) -- or the player should be informed about how things are actually being increased on your wacky scale.

Okay that's enough for now.

Has this been discussed before?

edit: i found this hilarious. Josh reads the dex, clearly.

And when your companions, friends, enemies, lovers, haters, et al. react with jeers, whooping, or the RPG equivalent of a sustained Citizen Kane clap, you won't feel the invisible hand of the market designer at work.

 

[Ninjerk]

I don't know how to tag people's names, so look up his name.

 

[Sensuki]

Roguey bashes Obsidian but praises Josh - so that title would be crap

edit: i found this hilarious. Josh reads the dex, clearly.

You know what that blog post explains A LOT about Project Eternity's systems.

If that's from 2009 then Josh has had all of these 'pre-made decisions' about D&D style games ready to go for a long time

* Do not create drawbacks that are "opt-out" for the player if it still gives some benefit to the player. I.e. do not allow the player to take what is ostensibly a "drawback" that gives them a bonus to a skill pool, or some other sort of gameplay bonus, unless that drawback is very difficult/impossible to avoid. When people want to specialize a character in something, they already know what they want to do. What they don't want to do is pretty much everything but that activity. "You gain +4 to damage with broadswords but -20 to damage with wooden dowels and light maces," contains an effectively worthless drawback. The only way the drawback would ever arise in gameplay would be through some asinine heavy-handedness on the part of the game designer -- for which the player will almost assuredly resent you. A more even-handed drawback would be, "You gain +4 to damage with broadswords but attack 20% more slowly when using them." The benefit and the drawback are both realized within the same activity. The player cannot reap the benefit without suffering the penalty.

* When making trade-offs between items/skills/abilities, those trade offs must actually feel different in application or the player's choice isn't very important. For example, in the above case of +4 to damage with a 20% lower attack rate, there should be situations in which more damage per hit = better and situations in which faster attack rate = better. For example, if an armor system is threshold based (subtracts a flat damage value), doing more damage per shot always means that damage has a greater chance of getting through armor. In this case, the +4 bonus is better when used against opponents with armor. Against opponents with high health and no armor, raw DPS matters more than damage per shot. In such cases, having a 20% faster attack rate may be better if it outweighs the DPS value of the +4 in the overall equation.

There's the attribute system right there. That's funny - one of the things he mentions in this blog post as opposed to 'making no dump stats' is that he wants to reduce the gap between the min-maxer and the casual player.

 

[Infinitron]

That's not actually a bad thing. I want my games to be as hard for me as they are for the casuals. I don't want min-maxing to make things trivial.

 

[Volrath]

edit: i found this hilarious. Josh reads the dex, clearly.

And when your companions, friends, enemies, lovers, haters, et al. react with jeers, whooping, or the RPG equivalent of a sustained Citizen Kane clap, you won't feel the invisible hand of the market designer at work.

He used to post here too untill Rosh chased him away.

 

[Lancehead]

That's funny - one of the things he mentions in this blog post as opposed to 'making no dump stats' is that he wants to reduce the gap between the min-maxer and the casual player.

Which is a good thing unless you happen to be mondblutian.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Sensuki, or Infinitron, is there a chance one of you could ask this question to Sawyer (unless somebody already knows the answer):

Both in FONV and P:E you've gone from the old Fallout system of a flat damage reduction (DT) combined with a relative damage reduction (DR) for armor to DT exclusively, what is the reason for this? The old combination seemed to exist almost entirely for balancing purposes: a relatively high DT for armor results in weaker weapons becoming useless, while lower DT makes stronger weapons cut through the armor like it's butter. Opting for relatively low DT + DR allowed the old Fallouts to circumvent this problem. I especially ask because exclusively relying on DT seems to run counter to your views on the problems of "hard counters": why make it impossible for a character with a weak weapon to defeat a heavily armored opponent due to his high DT, when you can merely make it exceedingly difficult by the combination of a moderate DT and a DR?

 

[Infinitron]

Sensuki, or Infinitron, is there a chance one of you could ask this question to Sawyer (unless somebody already knows the answer):

Both in FONV and P:E you've gone from the old Fallout system of a flat damage reduction (DT) combined with a relative damage reduction (DR) for armor to DT exclusively, what is the reason for this? The old combination seemed to exist almost entirely for balancing purposes: a relatively high DT for armor results in weaker weapons being useless, while lower DT makes stronger weapons cut through the armor like it's butter. Opting for relatively low DT + DR allowed the old Fallouts to circumvent this problem. I especially ask because exclusively relying on DT seems to run counter to your views on the problems of "hard counters": why make it impossible for a character with a weak weapon to defeat a heavily armored opponent due to his high DT, when you can merely make it exceedingly difficult by the combination of a moderate DT and a DR?

It's not impossible because there's a minimum damage any weapon does even after DT. It's also not really a "hard counter" since it's not like one single weapon is the only effective way to breach the high DT. There are lots of weapons, and also spells, and other stuff that does damage.

 

[Grunker]

That's funny - one of the things he mentions in this blog post as opposed to 'making no dump stats' is that he wants to reduce the gap between the min-maxer and the casual player.

Which is a good thing unless you happen to be mondblutian.

What the fuck does being mondblutian (i.e. a complete gamist) have to do with this? If anything, mondblutians by definition should approve of a stat-system which serves gameplay and nothing but gameplay.

 

[Lancehead]

Deriving fun chiefly from breaking games.