It's 2016

>Thinking that debates become less common as time goes on.
>The year Em-em-ecks-vee-eye
Dude, the arguments over the meaning of the bible have only gotten worse, not better.

The farther we get away from the lifetime of the creator, the more divorced of context that anything has. Eventually, gamers will even say the word "Thaco" as some other disjoined concept likely heavily divorced from what it was back in the 80s and 90s.

I guess he was trying to have his cake and eat it too by making demi-humans 'better' from a narrative perspective yet 'balanced' in game, but christ he really went about it all wrong.

>nerds are STILL arguing about shit that REALLY doesn't matter
5 internetz says there's someone, somewhere, arguing about whether Kirk was gay for Khan RIGHT NOW, and winning the argument using MLA citations from the script.

Don't even joke about that shit.

You know OP, if anything's worthiness was dependant on nobody arguing about stuff anymore, then the only worthwhile endeavour is human extinction. And we're working on that, so there's nothing for you to be mad about.

>D&D was a mistake.
And there still isn't a better alternative.

>there still isn't a better alternative

GURPS exists.

FantasyCraft.

>And there still isn't a better alternative.
For generic adventure fantasy? Torchlight, Dungeon World, any of the better-designed OSR clones.

For everything else? There's everything else.

that's a lie, [MY ESOTERIC RPG SYSTEM] exists!

>Dungeon World

>Dungeon World
I don't think I've ever seen anybody actually play DW for more than a couple of seasons without coming to hate it.

It's not all or nothing. It's quite possible for somebody to make a meaningful contribution somewhere along the progression of something, but then get left behind when that thing continues to progress. When you stand on the shoulders of giants, it's easy to look down at some of the things they've done wrong. Hindsight is 20/20 and all of that, and it's easy to take for granted the current, more sophisticated perspective on whatever it is.

But while, say, Space Invaders is primitive compared to what we have now, that doesn't mean it was bad for its time. And keep in that we learn and adapt best to our environment when we are young. So we use Gygax's accomplishments as our springboard, while Gygax is stuck building on the foundations of the world that existed when he was young.

>5 internetz says there's someone, somewhere, arguing about whether Kirk was gay for Khan RIGHT NOW, and winning the argument using MLA citations from the script.
As long as they aren't using Turabian, because fuck that shit.

well gygax is stuck in the ground now but you make a good point

Now wait just a second. You don't get to excuse garbage like Cyborg Commando, Dangerous Journeys, and Lejendary Adventures just because they were old.
They were shit even back in the day.

user was just talking about watershed works throughout the ages, not 'good because it's old'

How are you defining "better" in this context?

What about APA?

Better System Bros, have any of you used Hackmaster? It's still d20 but it makes a lot of changes that appeal to my tactical side, I wanted to know if it was worth trying out.

Nobody hits homeruns all the time. Gygax had what it took to, under the right conditions and in conjunction with folks like Arneson, do an amazing thing and fundamentally create role-playing games as we know them. But just because somebody does one great thing doesn't mean that everything they do will be great. And remember that D&D isn't the baseline he was working from--it's the baseline other folks were working from. His baseline was a world before D&D.

And I've looked over Dangerous Journeys, and while I found it overly involved and without any particular magic, I don't know that it was entirely without merit. And we're talking about something that was published 18 years after D&D. Just because the '90s were "back in the day" for you doesn't mean they were early days for Gygax.

Wow. I'm on an OSR kick right now and those stupid level limits on demi-humans are by far my largest gripe. Didn't know Gary was such a prick about it.

>Legendary Adventures
>Bad

Faggot

I really hate Hackmaster, because it revels in the obnoxious, pointless crunch that weighs down AD&D*... and actually multiplies it whenever possible. Being rules-heavy makes a game harder to learn and play, but it's justifiable if there is a good trade-off. Frequently that trade-off is increased realism, but you're never going to get anything remotely realistic using the core D&D system, so that only goes so far here. Improved gameplay is the other big reason: making the game more tactical and giving greater choice to combat. But as far as I can remember, most of additional rules in Hackmaster simply add detail or granularity to things (like subdividing all attributes using percentile scores, regardless of how high they are), which frankly doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Granted, some of the detail makes it into a more "sophisticated" system, but the problem with this is that it's still tied to the old D&D system, creating a Frankenstein's monster with parts that interfere with each other's best qualities.

*Not that AD&D doesn't have its good points, just that Hackmaster seems to revel in its worst ones and say: "Wow, that's pointlessly intricate and serves no real purpose other than to be a detail that 'masters' of the game can use to make themselves feel superior to others; let's add a bunch more of those!"

Pic is a character sheet for Hackmaster Basic. Fucking Basic.

I never really had to use APA much, so I can't say. It was mostly Turabian and MLA.

...

RuneQuest came out like 2 years later...

I don't really remember any styles, I mostly remember my Math and Comp Sci courses. My wife did most of her papers with APA citations.

Turabian is persnickety while MLA is more permissive/easy going. Or at least that's the way it was. It's been a good while since I was in college.

Seems like a lot of work to get going but I'm kind of a sucker for crunch.

I'm browsing because my group will pretty much only play D&D, even though I wouldn't mind trying some other systems.

Oh wow, the game with ducks that no one outside of England has heard of. Get real.

There are a whole bunch of retroclones and OSR games. Are you specifically looking for something extra crunchy? Because there's less of that (I'd still recommend Dungeon Crawl Classics before Hackmaster though). If you're not looking for extra crunchy, but something that makes some changes, check out Castles and Crusades (streamlined and significantly tweaked AD&D that uses the universal d20 mechanic) or Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Moldvay Basic with tweaks and a gritty horror atmosphere).

>Oh wow, the game with ducks that no one outside of England has heard of.
I'm not that guy, and RQ is a bit crunchy for my taste (though simpler versions of the system aren't bad), but anybody who hasn't heard of RuneQuest doesn't know much about role-playing games. It's sort of like being unfamiliar with Traveller.

>RQ is a bit crunchy for my taste
I only really know OpenQuest and BRP, is RQ that much more crunchy than BRP because it seems really simple to me.

>almost 40 years ago
You need to check your math.

The system wasn't great, but it paved the way. Julius Caesar wasn't so great either.

He asked for *better* alternatives not popular ones. Anyway, who the fuck doesn't know about RQ?

>You need to check your math.

2016 - 1974 = 42

FORTY-TWO YEARS OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS

THAT'S AS MANY AS SEVEN SIXES

AND THAT'S TERRIBLE

>is RQ that much more crunchy than BRP
I can't speak for all editions, but yes. RQ is more involved. Like, each different body part has its own individual number of hit points.

It's rather like military history where it's pretty easy to think something like "why weren't stirrups invented earlier" with all the power of hindsight.

Gygax did pretty well with the tools that were available to him.

That's an optional BRP rule, doesn't seem like it adds that much overhead.

It's because, within the game, thse are objective values but they rely in our subjective interpretation. DO you think the assholes who flew planes into buildings thought they were evil? A few million people would disagree. So... were they evil?

We can debate it but, in the D&D world, there IS an answer. A single answer. And the only person who can tell you what it is is your GM... which means that single answer can be different from table to table and if you're a player, you should clear that shit up before you even sit down to play.

>why weren't stirrups invented earlier
When were they invented?

It's been too long since I've played RQ, but I remember when I first looked at BRP thinking that it was basically the same thing, but streamlined. At least with the basic game. I think that BRP with all the options might start to look like RQ, but from what I've seen and everything I've ever heard, RQ is on the complicated edge of that family of games.

Marc Miller would have come up with something resembling Traveller out of his various wargaming projects. Or Steve Jackson might have ended up extending the campaign/character rules in Car Wars beyond all sense.

It's really the next logical step after skirmish-level wargaming.

Weren't there already Napoleonic wargamers doing role playing?

But Kirk -was- gay for Khan.

There are plenty of alternate rules to replace the level limits, but the honest truth is that most characters wont have to deal with them, and if they do, retire the character and continue play as one of their Henchmen.

...

>

Charismatic Bad Guy vs. Dickish Good Guy
Personal Codes vs. The Laws of the Land

>chaotic means I'm a loose cannon cop with nothing to lose
No, not really.

...

No, that is the mutation it became when they decided to add good/evil into the mix.

It is being supernaturally on the side of good, chaos, or not being on a side.

I have to wonder, if gygax disliked magic casters so much why did he play one?

Maybe he didn't actually dislike them and people are just parroting exaggerated nonsense?

Nah, the problem isn't quite as much the level cap. I can at least understand that for B/X because a cap of 10 isn't so huge for a game that slows progression at 9 and hard caps at 14. The issue is that it means inherent demihuman superiority in the lower levels because humans don't get anything special other than being exempt from a handicap way later on and that is a shitty way to balance. There's good reason no other game follows that school of thought.

I think it's tied to shitty justifications for NPC power levels. Without the caps the most powerful human wizard would never ever compare with even a mediocre elven elder purely because the elf has had several hundred years compared to the human's meager decades.

That's never made sense to me because: A) most people in the world aren't adventurers with PC character classes, and B) if you followed the argument to its logical conclusion, almost every elf you met would have already hit the level cap. But most elves aren't 10th level, and if you look at their monster listings, they're like 1+1 HD.

Right, what's why it's a shitty justification rather than a good one.

I wasn't arguing against you, just adding my two cents about the top of discussion.

Two questions guys

One is there a better system to use if me and my group want to just go balls to the walls with random anchronisms and shit, and have guns and robots, but also traditional knights on horseback and wizards in robes?

Also should I turn one of my player's alignments to evil.
They are nominally chaotic neautral, but have done crimes such as.

>Murdering prisoners
>Attempting to rob party members
>Attempting to not share the loot (granted almost everyone who isn't lawful good has tried that)
>Purposely alerting a Goblin hoard of half the parties assassination attempt at their leader, for the purpose of getting them into a semi-enclosed space to maximize AoE and kill them
>Only justified the last thing with "Well the party would most likely have survived"

Unless you have a really strong narrative There is almost no point in using it. The system itself is so shallow.

FATE
>FATE
>>FATE
>>>FATE

Is the general the best place to ask? Is there even a general?

Also what about my second question.

No, [Name of Derivative RPG system that I like] exists!

We have the occasional general. It either dies without much activity or gets derailed with shitposting and pointless arguments.

And for your 2nd question (even though I'm not the user you're responding to), murdering unarmed prisoners is definitely evil. The other things are debatable, but that alone is enough as far as I'm concerned

>mfw I've been here for 12 of those years

Fuck me sideways what am I doing with my life?

user, I certainly hope that you play [Name of Derivative RPG system that you like] [earlier iteration] because it's way better than [later edition]. People that play [Name of Derivative RPG system that you like] [later edition] are [slur]s.

>D&D was a mistake.

Nah. SOMEBODY had to take the first step and be the pioneer, even if we may lament all its failures. But it got the ball rolling and the conversation started.

Now there are definitely some concepts we can point to and say "Don't do THAT in your game, or it will suck." And then call each other faggots if we disagree.

Got any download links?

Also the murder happened while they were interrogating the prisoner. It wasn't exactly on purpose, but then again there was the lead up where they killed other unconscious enemies and captured the one.

>divisive comment that garners attention I desperately crave but don't get from anywhere else.

I'd say wasting it, but your crippling autism doesn't leave you much more opportunity than this.

>Got any download links?
Just use drivethroughRPG. It's pay-what-you-want there, as are most of the many supplements

Oh, and that sounds suspiciously like torture

...

It sort of was they had convinced the guy he was being tortured in a sex dungeon, but the rest of the party wasn't planning anything other beating him a bit at worse. Mostly they hoped to bluff him into spilling everything. This all ended when he decided to stick just the tip of a (dragon) dildo into the dude causing him to have a panic attack impale himself further and die.

>46911036
>it's 2016
>D&D came out almost 40 years ago
>people are STILL talking about D&D
>people are STILL playing D&D

D&D is a great success.

That's... Horrible.

Which edition was the first one to change the definition of Chaotic Neutral to "does literally whatever they want all the time, is totes bananas XD XD XD" because whichever one did it is officially the worst D&D edition.

2e. Blame David Cook.

The paragraph that ruined a thousand games (courtesy of PCs rolling up Kender thieves who steal from their own party)

>mfw I've been here for 12 of those years
>Fuck me sideways what am I doing with my life?
Well ya know, it isn't much different than going to other social media sites like Facebook or Reddit and do the same shit. They are a dime a dozen, at its core Veeky Forums is really not that much different.

...

underrated post

Huns I think.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup#Early_development
That does not appear to be the case.

My bad. At least I had double dubs.

Compare the 1e paragraph:
>Chaotic Neutral: Above respect for life and good, or disregard for life and promotion of evil, the chaotic neutral places randomness and disorder. Good and evil are complementary balance arms. Neither are preferred, nor must either prevail, for ultimate chaos would then suffer.

>fighting-men as Gygax intended
Mordenkainen was literally Gygax's self-insert who mind-controlled Bigby into becoming a good* guy
(*: of course the only true good is ABSOLUTE NEUTRALITY FOREVER)

>Mordenkainen was literally Gygax's self-insert
I thought that was Zagyg.

I know, isn't it wonderful how one man's idea can grow and change with time and be interpreted in so many different and wonderful ways?