Bad gm

games aren't beings, they can't be bad.

people use games badly

A good GM can make a bad system playable, just like a bad GM can ruin a good system.

A system is MADE of such niggling things.

In particular with most rule-heavy crunchy systems what would you say is the most important parts, and what are the little niggles?

Hyperbolic example; you don't HAVE to run shadowrun with six sided dice, you could use eight sided dice. Why so mad at that little niggle and worry about the parts of the game that REALLY matter?

Or using d10s instead of d20s for D&D. Is it really that important?

protip: it's a key component for both systems so yes, and it can ALSO be patched if you dislike it

Who determines what a valid criticism is? Who decides what's 'easily' patched or avoided? Who chooses what parts of the game actually matter?

>The gm can do everything
Except when it goes against the wishes / expectations of the players and thus damages the game.

>Flip the system
Except this is usually a bad idea. Better start with a good or at least solid system than make a weird house ruled version of a bad game.

The people who aren't weenies, obviously.
A good sign a person is a weenie is if they constantly need to resort to hyperbole.

>I get to decide these things because I'm right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong

Wonderful logic you have there.

Whoa, slow down with that hyperbole and strawmanning there.

Your weenie is showing.

>strawmanning

You mean, the type where you depict people who may have legitimate complaints as the equivilent of people whining about the lack of a cupholder they can replace for six dollars?

Also

>Somebody disagreed with me
>Better call them a weenie

You know what that makes you? A double-weenie.

Not even the cupholder guy.
You sound like you've got issues you need to resolve before you try arguing on the internet.

No, no, no. You don't understand. I called you a double-weenie.

If I'm following your logic, that means you don't get to decide things. I'm right, and you're wrong.

Of course, we could have an actual discussion about this, but I think that went out the window once you implied everyone who disagreed with you was a weenie.

This shows the fundamental point with any attempt to argue that 'Rule as written' isn't a valid basis for discussion and critique of RPG's- A complete failure to replace it with anything solid. If you're going to dismiss a commonly accepted standard, you better have a very good replacement for it.

Not having a cupholder is about the level of complaint you can find in most of these system arguments, especially when dealing with the larger systems with thousands of various components in play. These complaints turn into a list of memes, and get oft-repeated like they are somehow all game-breaking flaws that make the system unplayable, when even just a casual look at people actually playing the game reveal that these flaws are minor at best, but typically insignificant.

People who argue about systems on the internet tend to go a bit insane on denouncing one system or another, and rarely because the system is genuinely bad.

Commonly accepted standard? By who? 1d4channers?
In any case, on a technicality, "Rules as written" would have to include "Rule 0" in any game that has it written, which almost all do.

But really, you're just sort of hoping to argue for the sake of arguing, without really having any purpose. If you want a standard, a solid one, it's already used by people who discuss systems with the intention of actually finding and playing games that would suit them, rather than just hoping to steer people away from games you personally dislike.

That standard revolves around evaluating rules by a degree of actual impact on a game, how easy or difficult it is to fix, and all the other considerations that make a hard and fast rule like "as written" meaningless. When you look at how broad the more popular systems are, and how narrow people have to focus down their attentions in order to produce complaints to try and construct an argument to label these systems as "bad", you get a clear sense that these are no longer humans evaluating largely interchangeable games of pretend, but bizarre trolls hoping to destroy potential threats and competitors to their one true love.

I'm not dismissing all gaming criticism. Far from it. What I'm dismissing is the largely pointless and purposeless niggling that people perform in their vain attempts to label systems as "bad."

>once you implied everyone who disagreed with you was a weenie.

Only thing I implied was that hyper-sensitive babies really shouldn't be the ones who decide if a criticism is valid or not. If they need to use hyperbole to take a tiny complaint and exaggerate it to the point where people actually can see it, it's hardly a complaint.
If someone needs to stretch every molehill into a mountain, it doesn't sound like they'd be a great judge for these sort of things.
Sorry you got so buttflustered that you interpreted that as "I'm right you're all wrong," but that's probably just your hypersensitivity acting up.

There are no technicalities in Rules As Written. It's there or it isn't. Rule Zero or a close approximation thereof is part of every TTRPG I've played in years. As written. In the rules.

>They can literally flip the system on its head and take only the parts they want
And they can drive a screw into the wall with a hammer, but that won't stop other people from thinking they're a bit touched in the head, considering the screwdriver is right next to them.

And, a person can screw in a screw with a blue screwdriver just as easily as they can with a red one, regardless of whether red or blue is your favorite color.

But that's completely unrelated to the topic.

Only from your perspective.
I could actually ask what you think your analogy really has to do with game systems that function more like tool boxes rather than individual tools.

If both systems have screwdrivers, but of different colors, what is the issue? The issue only really appears when some guy demands that you use the hammers instead.

I was talking about systems as individual tools.

Yes, and that's where your analogy breaks down.

By anyone who has discussed RPGs ever. And I invite you to propose a different, superior standard. Because until you do, 'what is written in the book' is literally the only way to prevent every RPG discussion turning into a monumental game of moving the goalposts.

And your suggestion is not a standard. It's vague wishy washy nonsense which can be interpreted and twisted so many ways it does nothing to provide a stable place for discussion to take place.

Also, as mentioned in the very first post in the thread

>You can enjoy bad systems, and you can have fun games with them. But it's still worth being aware of a systems flaws and not letting personal bias compromise you on that front.

Nobody is saying bad systems are unplayable or that it's impossible to enjoy them. But it's active intellectual dishonesty to try to cover for systems you like and justify ignoring all their flaws by handwaving them away.

Not really.
Key word "repurposing".

Repurposing a tool that does the job just as well with a few adjustments would suit the analogy better. Still, it's not really what's being discussed.

Yes, you were talking about using just about any system, so we might as well use a crane to drive that screw in.

1) A good system can reign in even bad players and GMs.
Good players can have fun even with bad system.

2) I'd rather blame the publicity vicious cycle. People don't play it, so it falls into obscurity, making people hesitant to play it, ad infinitum.

3) Nah, it's just me being lazy. I can't be bothered to find a group.

>That standard revolves around evaluating rules by a degree of actual impact on a game, how easy or difficult it is to fix, and all the other considerations that make a hard and fast rule like "as written" meaningless. When you look at how broad the more popular systems are, and how narrow people have to focus down their attentions in order to produce complaints to try and construct an argument to label these systems as "bad", you get a clear sense that these are no longer humans evaluating largely interchangeable games of pretend, but bizarre trolls hoping to destroy potential threats and competitors to their one true love.

What about this doesn't require discussion of rule as written? I don't entirely disagree with you, but all of this is pointless if people can respond to anything with 'But my group does x'. Rule as written isn't the be all and end all of RPG discussion, but it's a fundamental and necessary element of it to prevent it devolving into endless contradictory anecdotes.

You seem to be taking things to a certain extreme, and ultimately a pointless one.

If we go by "what is written in the book", almost every major system offers not only variant choices, options, and recommendations not to use material you think might conflict with other material, but often explicitly says "just do what you feel is right." By the book itself it says that you shouldn't get hung up on minor issues that may only be issues to yourself. The games are designed to provide GMs with structure, tools, and ideas, and trying to evaluate a system by demanding it to be some rigid construct is simply not looking at it the way the designers intended it to be used nor how the people who play it use it.

People evaluate games by how they play, not by an esoteric comparison of written rules. The ultimate test of a game isn't a vague dive into floating hat mathematical formulas that pretend to provide a stable place but ultimately shift and often dissolve without any relevance to an actual session.

What you seem to fail to realize is that the "wishy washy nonsense" is the truth of the game. It's what people see and interact with, and ultimately what determines if it's a good system or not. You are trying to cling too hard to something you deem objective in an extremely subjective world, and all that does is detach your personal subjectivity from any shared experiences that others may have.

And yet you continue to dodge the fundamental point- Provide a stable ground for discussing RPGs, or all your arguments are worthless.

When discussing an RPG, the book is what you're working with. The rules as they are written are the structures and mechanics it provides to a GM to run a game, and those can be assessed on their own merit. Their strengths and weaknesses, their flaws and failings can be discussed, described and gone over in a way which anyone else with a copy of the book can understand and follow. And from this, you can give an assessment of the system.

Trying to go beyond that just leads nowhere. Every group who plays a game will use the system slightly differently, to the point that when you abandon rule as written you lose almost all sense of common ground. If you try to argue that you can't compare systems on the basis of their written rules, you fundamentally can't compare systems at all because every iteration of their use is a distinct and different entity.

> but all of this is pointless if people can respond to anything with 'But my group does x'

That's not a pointless response though. The classic example is 4e's HP bloat. By the rules, HP is way too high, but the fix is relatively simple (divide all monster HP by 3 and double the damage they deal). This response reveals a lot about the system, including issues with early playtesting, but also says that while the game is flawed, people were able to produce a simple solution that allows them to continue to explore the remainder of the game.

It's one thing to say "HP bloat is a flaw", and another to say "HP bloat decisively makes 4e a bad game."
If people were recommending games to each other, and someone wanted a game like 4e, does it make sense to just discourage them and say "4e is bad, it has HP bloat", or is it more useful to say "You might like 4e, but you need to watch out for HP Bloat, here's how to fix it"?

If you don't have fun, then you're all playing the game wrong.

It is a pointless response. the most useful comment to give in that scenario is '4e suffers HP bloat'. Whether it can be fixed or not and how it can be fixed is an entirely different subject matter. Although, where the heck are you getting the binary 'Good/Bad' game thing from? You seem to be the only person in the thread whose mentioning it. heck, even several posts you responded to said things explicitly opposed to it.

>you fundamentally can't compare systems at all because every iteration of their use is a distinct and different entity.
Well, you are close to getting why "white room theorycraft" is a pointless exercise, finally. Took you long enough.

Being a bit of a pedant here:

By 2, not by 3. By 3 and you'll get creatures that are made of glass. Even then, it mostly applies to Brutes and Solos due to action economy meaning they make a lot less attacks than PCs.

Honestly the biggest issue with early 4e monster is 'The devs played too conservatively with their own system'. They didn't give enough monsters Reaction or When Bloodied effects as they were worried they'd piss off players. Instead they went with the old classic of 'Give it more HP rather than a reaction trick'

When they started to play around with what a monster could DO more, they realized a lot of fun things. Like organized minions who granted a MBA to an ally next to them when they died or elementals who exploded into dangerous terrain zones when killed.

So you are literally saying it's impossible to compare or discuss RPG systems in a meaningful way? So we should just delete every RPG thread on Veeky Forums?

Oh gawd am I having a giggle at this! Thanks lads! I love watching people who are relatively smart get worked up about something and have both sides of the argument become idiotic even though it still sounds vaguely smart.

>Provide a stable ground for discussing RPGs, or all your arguments are worthless.

You need to judge games with your own experience. This needs to be understood.

There really are no objective answers. Half of all these arguments start because people pretend that they have something more concrete than the other person's personal experiences. Common ground only exists in similar experiences we may have had, and recognizing that is the first step to killing most of the senseless posturing that takes place in these discussions.

Yes, it can be taken to extremes of subjectivity, but the goal should be to try and seek out that common ground, rather than pretending there's firm objectivity in the rules that we can hope to use in place of attempting to understand one another.

A game doesn't exist simply in a book. It is a combination of book, company, community, players, GMs, and so on and so forth. It is an incredibly complex existence that is different for each of us, and even two people who play the same exact game may have dramatically different experiences through a single one of those facets changing. This is something that cannot be ignored for the sake of argument, because all it does is lead to pointless arguments that are far removed from the reality of the game.

You can go ahead and judge the books. As written. But that also requires understanding that the quality of the rules as written are not the final word on the quality of a system.

Except anecdotal evidence and subjective opinion make a piss poor basis for discussion. Between wishy washy 'muh feelings' an an incomplete but solid set of objective rules you can assess, I fail to see why the latter is an inferior option.

>You can go ahead and judge the books. As written. But that also requires understanding that the quality of the rules as written are not the final word on the quality of a system.

The books are the system. Everything else is not the system. If you are assessing the books, you are assessing the worth of the system. You are not assessing the value of the experience, because that depends on other things. But given that the system forms a part of the experience, the ability to assess it on a more objective basis is a worthwhile aspect of the RPG community.

Because your "objective" rules are still largely subjective. They come into the game differently. They are used differently. People have different reactions to them, and they react to other rules that are being used in altered fashions than what you personally may have experienced, either through just a different combination of what is occurring or even direct alterations.

The difference is that you cling to this idea that book alone is the final testament, that you can compare hypothetical occurrences and treat them as objective circumstances.

I'm not disagreeing that comparing the rules as written isn't useful. But, it's not the bottom line, especially when it comes to quick fixes, community warnings and recommendations, and all the rest that surrounds a game.

Which would you rather play? An okay game as written, or a fantastic game that only needed a few fixes?

That something can be fixed doesn't stop it being a flaw. I wouldn't say Dark Souls has a good PC port just because dsfix exists. With an RPG system, I'd assess it based on the existing flaws, and add any comments about fixes afterwards. It's worth acknowledging they exist, but they shouldn't factor into an assessment of the system because of how much that muddies the waters.

I'd take the rewritten rules and count it as a different variation entirely.

Magical Burst 3rd edition was rather lackluster; the third party Magical Burst; Rewrite moved in a particular direction that a lot of people liked and was worked on hard enough that people could consider it a full edition in itself.

Then the creator grabbed a bunch of those ideas and merged it into 4th edition Magical Burst.

I would have said "if you must use MB, use the Rewrite rules, not the basic rules".

I would not have said "Use Magical Burst rules but overhaul about 3/4 of it and add huge amount of content yourself".

Which is what a lot of people DO say for many systems.

Addenum also not all third party "fixes" solve the problem, just make more people initially interested and then become jaded.

For example, Pathfinder was supposed to solve caster supremacy amongst other things - more direct damage, less solve-everythings and save-or-dies.

Look how that turned out.

Okay, you're obviously not going to even attempt to take me seriously, so I'm basically accomplishing nothing but bumping the number of contributors to the thread, but you really need to understand that "judging a system" means "judging the mechanics of a system" and not "judging whether or not it's possible to have fun when drawing inspiration from a system."

I don't think anyone you've been speaking to is trying to say it's literally impossible to enjoy a badly written game, much less what you seem to be implying with your responses: that a tiny little error makes a system unplayable. They're trying to say that when you're comparing systems you're comparing the core mechanics you are given to do your job as the GM, not the final product. Just because someone took the time to make the Mona Lisa out of match sticks doesn't mean I want to do all of my creative projects using nothing but matches and glue.

Just because it's possible to make what you're given work doesn't mean that what you're given is necessarily what people consider "good" materials.

I don't think the fact that you're not making a sensible argument has been pointed out enough, so I'll also throw in a pointless post.

But I hope you realize that what you're saying can also lead to the statement "FATAL is perfectly fine because you can let the GM fix all the various problems with the system or maybe find a group that enjoys its fuckawful mechanics as is."

Not that guy but what he's saying is there can be easily applied fixes that are recommended by veterans of the game, that make the game rules and system much less problematic/useful to run good games in.

The difference here is saying if you process the matchsticks to turn them into some sort of wood pulp you can make a pretty good sculpture of the Mona Lisa out of it, instead of using soley the matchsticks.

Usually, these veterans are eager to give you a wood chipper along with it so you can easily process the matchsticks (i.e. giving you the houserules to apply).

Case in point; Pathfinder is much more bearable if the GM simply makes sure all the player characters are of an equal power level and then eyeballs CRs to match.

That doesn't make it a good game. See the very first post in the thread.

If someone wrote up "FATAL REVISED EDITION: NO QUADRATICS THIS TIME AND THE CASUAL RACISM IS GONE BUT WE ALSO INCLUDED 500 FULLY FLESHED OUT WELL WRITTEN ADULT EROTIC ADVENTURES" it might be worth looking into.

Does it really need to get rid of the casual racism?

Also don't forget that the revised edition would need actually functional chargen instead of what it has.

Actually, now that I think about it I find myself wondering why nobody has tried to make a less shit version of FATAL, that would be an interesting thing to see them try.

Because you'd be better off starting from scratch than labouring yourself with trying to fix that complete pile of arse masquerading as a system?

It doesn't make it a good game on it's own, no. It doesn't mean the game with fixes applied can't be BETTER than the competition.

Neither assertion is made.

If a game's bad, it's bad. If a game can be modified to be better, and someone has in fact modified it to be better, and in fact have got these rules put together in a nice PDF file for everyone to use -
That revised game is better and should be judged on its own merits. It may still have many of the same flaws as its own source material, but it may have had those flaws removed.

Most systems are like that. But then some people go and do system rewrites for D&D 3.5 to make it work with giant mechs, so clearly SOME people are willing to put that time into it.

I will never understand the people who try to adapt 3.PF to every fucking setting and genre imaginable, even if it's obviously utterly inappropriate.

And 4e is a way better basis for a giant mech game. It sounds weird, but I looked into it and it works bizarrely well.

>And 4e is a way better basis for a giant mech game. It sounds weird, but I looked into it and it works bizarrely well.

I know, right?

Rogue: high mobility and optical camoflage mech.
Cleric: Engineering mech, supercharging systems and replacing damaged plating.

The only thing I'd really want with 4e is the ability to swap weapons more freely. Maybe give them a few weapon slots.

But then, I like my Battletech mechs with many guns on them.

>the ability to swap weapons more freely
Mechanically or fluff-wise?
Because if it's the latter, you can easily re-fluff different At-Wills as different weapons. And I vaguely recall one 4e designer stating that it's generally no problem to give PCs more than just the 2 At-Wills.

I meant more mechanically.

Still, you make a good point with the at-wills.

My thoughts were mostly stuff like 'Blade in the arm, rocket pod on the shoulder'

Still not too much of a problem.
I imagine it makes sense fluff-wise to tie specific At-Wills to specific weapons.
Make changing weapons a Free Action, only use At-Wills with their associated weapon and maybe give everyone all weapon-specific expertise feats for free to make the difference in weapons feel more significant.

Also, I imagine the Weapons in this case to be modifications to the weapons that represent At-Wills in game.
So it wouldn't be a problem to change At-Wills and their associated weapons while performing maintenance on your Mech.

Thks would work if your definition of "good" wasn't completely personal bullshit, demonstrating your inability to understand the different wants of other people.

Not that user, but are you trying to tell us that you want a system that works against you, constantly undermining whatever you want to do with it by design?

Ha! I remember when I thought this simple truth needed to be pointed out to morons.

Welcome, newfag.

"good" here is defined as "fits well with your goals for the game (whatever they may be)"

Isn't the standard definition of good "thing I like for mostly emotional reasons?"

Every system is a framework that ultimately helps you by laying the groundwork for some portion.

Most people can appreciate it if the work's all done for them leading to minimal effort taken to finish the damn job.

Systems that need a lot of personalisation to get the most out of it are in generally more labour-intensive than systems that are ready to go off the bat, and therefore are considered to be worse off since you need to do more work.

No, my friend. Ones that people don't like because they imagine they need to do more work are considered to be worse off.

The work is -always- mostly all done for them. The problem is in their wants, in them.

There's a significant difference between making a few tweaks based on personal preference and having to overhaul a system just to make it function.

Not every framework is helpful, though, at least for the game you want to play.

I wouldn't break out Vampire to run a game of realistic medieval warfare.

A system can be bad, and if you think otherwise, you've either never seen one, or have and don't know any better.