Has Veeky Forums any experience on minimal/simple tabletop rpg systems? such as: Savage Worlds, Dungeon World, FATE...

>Savage worlds
>Minimal
Why do people keep saying this?

The only minimal systems there are Risus (assuming the simple system is that one RPG with the same name with the failed kickstarter. If not, I wouldn't mind a link to a pdf or wiki page or something).

Our terminology mostly sucks, with nebulous terms and preference filling in for Good. GNS theory fell out of favour for a variety of reasons. Here's a neat blog post by a guy who did Yoon-sun about terminology. It might have some ideas.

>monstersandmanuals.blogspot.ca/2017/01/the-fundamental-principles-of-rpg-style.html

Because the core mechanic isn't 2d6+stat, it's "2-6 fail, 7-10 succeed with complication, 10+ success" regardless of your stat. your stat is a modifier to the actual mechanic, not part of the actual base mechanic itself.

If it weren't for the moves that say "chose a move from someone elses class" you might have a point, but you don't.

That's what makes it fluff based and uninteresting to you? Neat. I can see arguments of static target numbers being about tension, agency, etc. But what actually makes much of a difference there to you?

Not even looking at flat curves vs bells.

d20: DM sets difficulty with target number, apply relevant mods, roll.
pbta: DM sets difficulty with how many rolls/context, apply relevant mods, roll.

I'm interested in what differences there do things to your immersion and fluff things. It also sounds like you enjoy a large degree of mechanical e with mods and stuff than I'd be inclined towards

I played Numenara and it was shit on a fundamental level.

Essentially all character building was irrelevant outside of abilities that indirectly improved your ability to use grenades and your luck on finding grenades in chests.

A system where you can fly around shooting lasers out your eyes and the most effective use of these powers is to search for grenades.

If a task is especially hard, the DM can just apply a penalty to your roll, just like a DM inD&D can increase the DC.

It's literally the same shit, all the table does is add degrees of success, instead of binary pass/fail.

Not that user, but a complaint in that vein I've seen from people who rock PbtA games is that since the Moves have their results baked in, there's no way to model difficulty or changing conditions. It creates mechanical dissociation, and since the stats are so close together, it can feel like they don't matter.

Blades in the Dark tries to get around this with there being three different versions of the base mechanical Move that you roll depending on how fucked you are.

I've not read all of dungeon world, nor all of the billion other PbtA systems, but from what I know GM can't just give penalties outside of stuff set in rules in DW or AW or many other PbtA games.

What GM can say is that triggering a move is impossible in which case it can't even be thrown.

Not sure about DW with it's HP systems for monsters and such, but generally difficulty can be increased or decreased in PbtA systems by how the results are interpreted.
In The Sprawl if you Mix It Up successfully against big group of heavily armed dudes you might hurt some of them and get some breathing room, but they are still after you and gunning your ass. Meanwhile successful Mix It Up against random security guard means that he is dead, what you do with the body.

There is also Defy Danger or similar move in most PbtA games, which is basically "shit is hard" -move. So if players try to do something super risky, they probably have to first Defy Danger and then do what they were going to do.

I've been running a no magic medieval Japan Savage Worlds game for a few weeks now. After running Rogue Trader for a year and a half with players who don't read the rules and aren't great with player driven play it's refreshing to be able to explain all of the rules as necessary and have them be easy to remember. And also to not have to prepare nearly as much before hand if I want a fun, challenging combat experience.

I have issues with the lack of content in some areas such as gear, and it's difficult to create new interesting gear as well as balancing price and quality, but for the most part it's much easier to handle than Rogue Trader with my group.

If any of you anons have a good complete gear book that can be sensibly switched to the silver standard I'd love to hear about it.

Currently I've been using the below list with a little repricing in the transportation and jewelry area as well as the complete Pathfinder gear book for weapons and armor repriced as well.

kimberlychapman.com/rpg/equipment.html

>I've not read all of dungeon world, nor all of the billion other PbtA systems, but from what I know GM can't just give penalties outside of stuff set in rules in DW or AW or many other PbtA games.

You absolutely can. I heard the DW designer (writer? Creator is a bit of a long shot, considering it's just a hack) hands the penalties out like candy in the games he podcasted or streamed or whatever.

But those literally account for 2 of the picks out of all of them for each class. Hold up let me actually count.
Including race but excluding base moves and replacements:
Bard: 19
Cleric: 22
Druid: 20
Fighter: 21
Paladin: 20
Ranger: 22
Thief: 14
Wizard: 20
Seems pretty decent, now lets look at D&D 5e...
13 races/subraces, so lets count that as 13 unique choices.
Barbarian: 10 choices, most of them in totem master.
Bard: 2 choices
Cleric: 7 domains
Druid: Moon druid, or circle of land druid with lots of choices for a total of 9 choices. Though it's unfair, because many of the extra spells from circle of land druid are already on the druid spell list
Fighter: Now we're getting somewhere. 6 fightning styles alone. Champ doesn't get any options, so that's +1. Eldrich Knight is a spellcaster but I haven't been counting spells so that's another +1. Battle Master is juicy, at 16 choices.
Monk: 3 choices. Way of four elements is effectively letting you choose spells just flavored for monks. Literally some of the choices tell you: look at that spell.
Paladin: 3 choices. + 4 fighting styles.
Ranger: 4 fighting styles, 2 class options, but rangers get even more choices: +11 total
Rogue: 3 choices.
Sorcerer: 2 choices. Ouch. At least you get a choice from among 7 metamagicks.
Warlock: 3 pacts. Not counting invocations, as they are essentially spell list spells and not unique.
Wizard: 8 choices.

AW total: 158
5e: 116. You might want to add a dozen or so more in case I missed something, but there's no way I missed enough to make up that gap.
Even if you want to add skills it's only +4 ( 2 from class, 2 from background )

Whoops, looks like AW has more mechanical character customization that 5e despite taking up a fraction of the pages. Who would have thought?

I've noticed this in pbta games I've played and run too. One of the things I think moves can do if you're not careful is overdictate as the only options rather than be what happens when specific conditions occur. People tend to look for their moves and engineer to have them come up rather than just describing what they're upto. The other thing I've noticed is move proliferation, having too many, with too much shit going on that isn't open ended enough to be useful. They have to be specific, but trying to have one for every situation defeats the point. 2nd edition seems like it went the other way with this, jamming in more moves that will probably come up more but feel more limiting.

Yes 5e is best

Full rules to Risus:
nopaste.xyz/?3ae5bb0c872b5c80#1cksqFwERx6kyCOyCNzPlFC iXXHDOutmPKGpud7gNI=
risusiverse.com has bunch of content for the system

There are people saying that the system has evolved so that it could be used for serious sessions also, but nut sure about that.

Bit of a mixup there I think. I know Risus, I meant Simple System as in youtube.com/watch?v=z1gVeG4X_aw

>I put all that effort into that post and no reply
>Not even a "whoops I was wrong sorry"
Come the fuck on son.
Fuck you.

It's about how the mechanic is used. D&D isn't the best example, but even then, the base mechanic of 1d20+modifier has a lot of different mechanical applications, leading to damage or status effects or more rolls, giving each character a mechanically distinct playstyle.

Things like PbtA, meanwhile, lack this. They're purely distinct due to the fluff consequences each Move has.

This isn't innately a bad thing, it just detracts from the longevity of the system for me.

whoops, you're right. My bad. I read that Risus was a simple system.

>Our terminology mostly sucks, with nebulous terms and preference filling in for Good.
When it comes to classifying games into rules-heavy, -medium, and -light, I agree that boundaries are rather arbitrary. But I really can't see a scheme under which Savage Worlds is labelled rules-light, much less "minimal". To me, rules-light is more the realm of Moldvay/Cook Basic D&D and Barbarians of Lemuria, all the way down through minimalist one-page deals (unless you want to further subdivide things, labeling the latter as "ultra light"). With this in mind, I think that Savage Worlds is clearly rules-medium. Rules-heavy is shit like 3.5.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Everyone_Is_John

The most simple one I know.

Here's two other options if you're looking for minimalistic.

GURPS Lite (no, really, I mean it, GURPS): 32 pages. The trick to GURPS is that if you strip everything out in terms of options, then you have a pretty light system where you have four attributes that modify your skill list. Then every roll is 3d6 and roll under your skill rating. The only other kinds of rolls are damage rolls (listed under the weapon description, what you roll is how much damage you do), defense rolls (when someone tries to hit you, roll dodge, block, or parry to cancel the hit), and reaction rolls (roll to see if a random NPC likes or hates you-- strictly at GM discretion). That's pretty damn slim.

Then there's world of darkness. Not only is that system fairly slim to begin with, it's very much theater of the mind so you pretty much can wing everything. Same as with GURPS Lite, actually, including the part where basically everything is a skill check including combat.

Both have a merits/flaws system (GURPS calls them advantages / disadvantages) and the rules for each of them are self-contained in the text. Most of GURPS's complexity comes from endlessly stacking customized lists of Advantages and Disadvantages or turning on combat options. Obviously WoD doesn't do that, but you can add complexity via each core game's special rules (ie Disciplines, Rage, Magick, etc).

The tricks is that a game's core should be very very small, and then with the ability to make it more complicated later. With GURPS, the problem is that most players try to start with the core rulebooks (and that's on the devs for encouraging that) rather than Lite, which is really the core ruleset. It's like you drink from the firehose before you even start playing.

>WoD
>Rules Light

Seriously? WoD is a clunky piece of shit. It has about as many rules as fucking 3.5, completely at odds with its claims to be the 'storyteller system'.

Oh yeah, I was trying to not get badwrongfun, I was more interested in what about that detracted from longevity in a more detailed way. I hear this a thing people note about pbta games, but haven't experinced it with me or my group, and am interested in how/why.

Yeah, it's very much a personal preference thing.

I just really like the options on my sheet to feel different and mechanically distinct. Even if I play the same system twice, I want the actual game side of the experience to provide something new beyond just fluff. Systems with really simple, universal mechanics are great for their elegance and ease of use, but I've never really seen one achieve that without sacrificing that clear mechanical distinction between characters.

Not him but at it's core WOD should have been roll dice of Attribute + Skill +/- modifiers and you got successes you're good. They just really quickly went to shit with making everything a fucking D&D spell instead of letting the STORYTELLER HAVE A SAY IN IT.

Honestly I think the stat grid is a really bad design decision at the core of the system.

The three by three grid sounds nice in principle, but assigning an arbitrary number of stats by default for every permutation of the system is a really fucking bad idea.

Systems are always better off building their stats off of what the game cares about, focusing the numbers towards the things that matter. This also helps ensure that every stat matters, since you don't make something a stat unless it's worth it.

Meanwhile, the Strength/Finesse/Resistance and Mental/Social/Physical categories line up in really uneven ways, with some stats almost always godlike (Dex), while others are fucking worthless.

The bad design decisions just get worse from there, but such a massive flaw at the base of the system set them up for bad times.

I think get what you mean. What games do this sort of thing for you/your group? I'd be interested in looking at them. It seems like having enough separate mechanics gives you more to mess with over time?

The primary system I play these days is Legends of the Wulin. It's an odd one, because despite being quite a crunchy/mechanically focused system, its design is highly narrativist.

It draws a lot from the Wuxia genre, making combat the center of its storytelling, building its mechanics around making fighting both an interesting mechanical option and a key part of the narrative. A fight isn't just about hurting the enemy, your characters ideals and beliefs can have a real, mechanical impact on your chance of victory, making every battle a clash of personalities and ideologies as much as blades.

It's also the best system I've ever played for PvP for that exact reason. Instead of being mutually destructive, a battle between two PCs can be a growth experience for them, and the system fully mechanically supports that.

Although as much as I love the system it comes with some heavy caveats. It's a very unusual system with a lot of different assumptions to usual, which isn't helped at all by the core book being an awfully edited piece of trash which makes actually figuring out how to play the game a total fucking pain, and the core book is imbalanced at points. Nowhere near 3.PF bad, but it still needs a bit of tweaking to run smoothly.

I love it though. Character creation is relatively quick and easy but there are a huge number of different options available, especially if you use the Wulin Legends homebrew wiki, and the selection of styles and secret arts you choose for your character gives them all really distinct playstyles and mechanical options.

Might just be the people I play with, but I've found people tend to put more effort into a game they've put more effort into learning.
The problem I've had with simple systems is that people assume they can just pick it up and play, so they don't think in advance about their character. They just build something that works mechanically but doesn't have a life of its own. It's just them, but with a shotgun and possibly a different name.
Fine for one-shots, but they don't tend to last much beyond that. Rules-lite systems i've played tend to focus on the story-telling over deep action, but because hardly anyone's created a character with any personality, the story quickly runs out of steam.

> Savage Worlds

Crappy system, badly balanced, overpowered shotguns, bennies dominate the game and define the combat balance and add to bookkeeping, requires shitty deck of cards to play

> Dungeon World

Utter gunk made from AW with zero understanding of how AW works. Got popular due to jewstarter and reddit. And because it is pleb fantasy. Badly designed game where hitting a master swordsman is as easy as hitting a 1st level goblin

> FATE

Special snowflake dice, good idea that got bloated by evil hat fucktards who had to keep updating it.

> Risus

About the same level of RPG as Everyone is John, except minus the interesting premise. Complete garbage.

> Apocalypse World

Not at all minimal or simple, but a well-designed RPG, certainly not your average game, good vision of world without filling in the blanks too much. One of the best RPGs out there.

> Simple system

There are so many RPGs named this I don't need know what you're talking about. But, it probably sucks ass like most of them do.

really depends on which type of game your aiming at : intrigue oriented work really well with light systems, while combat oriented might lack depth. I've actually run a cthulhu oneshot without any dice rolls, and it was awesome

Someone can suggest a good one page RPG?

I've been hearing the murmurs about Legends of the Wulin as a mixed narrative arts game, I'll check it out. At least to see how they keep character generation fast but diverse. Thanks.

>At least to see how they keep character generation fast but diverse.
> diverse

What does that even mean?

Breadth of character options, presumably?

> Legends of the Wulin
>it's crunchy AND narrative!
Aaaaannnd dropped! Take your fuckfest of a shitstem and piss off. Like every single lotw shill, you go on and on about how perfect the system is - without ever once describing the mechanics of the system! Go on, fuck off, or describe how that shit game ACTUALLY works. I bet you can't.
Your post reads like pasta for god's sake.

I tend not to go on detailed rants about system mechanics unless asked, but if you want one then sure!

LotW uses d10 dicepools where you read sets. Dicepools generally have a set value, 7 dice for starting characters, which increases as you gain Rank, a general measure of power, and can also be influenced by spending in game resources or using certain powerful techniques.

When you roll your pool of seven dice you look for sets- That is, multiple dice showing the same number. A set has a value of ten for each die in the set, plus the number on the dice. So two sevens has a value of 27, four sixes has a value of 46. Single dice also have values, ten plus the number they show, but you're more restricted in the actions you can take on a single dice.

This creates one of the most interesting core mechanical properties of LotW- The ability to make multiple actions on a single roll. As long as you have enough sets, you can make any number of actions, giving you a lot of depth of options, especially in combat.

The other key concept of the system is Chi Conditions. Chi Conditions are very simple, being a narrative clause tied to a mechanical bonus or penalty. Beneficial Chi Conditions grant you their bonus as long as you obey the narrative clause, while harmful ones inflict the penalty unless you obey them.

Injuries are a common example of harmful Chi Condition. When you suffer an Injury, it creates a choice- Either limit your actions and descriptions in the way defined by the narrative clause, or suffer a penalty.

It creates a really interesting dynamic in combat, as injuring them doesn't necessarily force them into a death spiral, but always gives them hard choices. Figuring out the most effective ways to restrict your opponents actions is the key to winning the fight, but you always have the option to be creative and keep fighting, preventing it becoming a total death spiral.

I can go into more depth if you like?

Again, sounds nice, but it lacks specificity. Use numbers.

Any particular kind? I'm not sure quite what you're asking for, but if you can be more specific I'll do my best?

My complaint is this: everyone talking about lotw say pretty much what you've posted, but never do they provide concrete examples of play - it's all handwavium nonsense. Hell, I could describe dnd in lofty vague terms and sound exactly like your description of lotw. I want concrete examples of actual gameplay, with dicerolls. I want to actually see how this game works, not hear a bunch of vague platitudes.

Okay, concrete examples. I'll explain the flow of combat along with it to give context.

I'll use these two styles for the example, I'm familiar with both since I use them for a current PC of mine-

External Styles define your basic combat stats. They're generally passive and offer broad, general benefits.

wulinlegends.pbworks.com/w/page/59987937/Immortals' Supreme Boxing

Internal Styles are more active, each technique requiring Chi to be expended to use it and can provide a variety of effects, from stat boosts to various strange kinds of utility.

wulinlegends.pbworks.com/w/page/78769307/Ghosts and Shadows Manual

In terms of character building you purchase techniques from within your Internal and External separately, but I'll just point out the ones I'm using for the purpose of the example.

Combat starts with the Initiative Roll. This is something of a misnomer, as while defining your Initiative score is the key action, you can do a lot of other things.

Ah, I should explain Major and Minor actions- Major Actions are necessary actions for a roll. You have to make them, and they can be declared on a single die. Minor Actions are everything else, but can usually only be made on a set.

So, getting an example roll from my dicebot... Say I'm sitting at the following- 29, 23, 10, 12, 14.

The simplest thing to do would be to take the highest set- 29- and add my Speed score of +5 for a total Initiative of 34. However, I have two sets and, as I said above, there are some actions you can only take on sets, while your Initiative can come from a single dice.

Instead, I might take the 14 for my Initiative, a total of 19, and make use of the sets for different reasons. Focus on Breath is an action you can take with a skill depending on your archetype to regenerate extra Chi at the end of the round, so I could toss the 24+10 for 34 Focus on Breath to regenerate extra combat resources, since I'm planning to use some this round.

Those 9's could also be used for quite a few things. Moving between Zones is an action declared with a set on the Initiative Roll, as is assessing an opponents External style, learning its strengths and weaknesses for you to exploit. However, here I think we'll put the dice in the River.

The River is an area you can store dice. It starts at 2 slots for a starting rank character, increasing as you go. Dice stored in the River can be returned to the pool later, giving you an extra set or letting you expand a set to get a nice big number.

With a low Initiative like 19, we'd likely get attacked first, but I'll do my attack roll first to show how it works.

So we declare the target of our attack and roll our dice, getting- 24, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19,

Not as good as initiative, but look! A tasty tasty nine. We can flow the 9's out of our river to make a whopping great set of 39, a very effective option.

Again, the simple choice would be to just add our Strike value of +10 to our highest set, 39, and call it quits. A Strike at 49 is pretty good, but we can do better.

Icy Void Hand, from Ghosts and Shadows, lets you make a Freeze attack at a +15 bonus. Elemental Attacks are a special kind of secondary attack, using their own modifiers instead of your External styles Strike and Damage bonuses. They ignore Toughness and Armour and inflict significantly nastier conditions than normal. So, we can take that beastly 39 set and add 15 for a Freeze at 54.

But we still have lots of dice left. While we could go for an attack on the single dice and do something else with a set, low attacks are often not worth it, so let's use that 24. Our base External Strike bonus is +10, so that'd give us 34, but our Internal style also has a Technique which gives +10 Strike, boosting it up to 44.

So we declare our actions from our roll- A Freeze attack at 54 and a Primary Strike at 44.

And now, because it seems weird but it works for the example, we'll defend against our own attacks

So we roll our dice for defence and get- 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19,

Which sucks, although not as bad as it might. While Initiative and Attack rolls only have one Major action, on the Defence roll every defence is considered a Major Action, so even if we don't have any sets we can still defend ourselves. Still, without good numbers on our side this is probably going to suck.

Two stats in LotW are used for defence- Block and Footwork. Most styles focus on one, although some go for a balanced defence since some attacks penalise one defence over the other.

For now, with our Footwork of +10 our base values are 27 and 29. Not enough to stop either, but hopefully we can blunt their impact. We can also use another Internal Technique for +5 dodge. However, we have to choose which set to apply it to, as each Internal technique can only be used once per round.

We have another option however. The rank 5 technique of Ghosts and Shadows is, amidst its other effects, a +10 Round Long bonus to Footwork. Round Long means that, as you might expect, its bonus applies to all uses of that skill for the entire round. We'll ignore its other effects for now, focusing on the primary math of the combat rather than the extra utility and depth that can be added by various techniques.

In this case, we use it to boost our defences up to 37 and 39. Now we compare our defence values with the attacks made against us.

44 against 37 has a difference of 7 points. The difference between attack and defence is meaningful in Legends of the Wulin. In this case, a difference of 0-9 mean all we suffer is a Ripple.

Ripples are an abstract measure of the cost of combat, doing nothing on their own but gradually accumulating over the course of the fight, creating more and more danger if you're hit by a particularly successful attack.

Speaking of particularly successful attacks, we're still facing down that nasty Freeze. 54 vs 39 is a difference of 15. It's greater than 10, so in addition to taking a second Ripple we also suffer a Rippling Roll.

A Rippling Roll is, as you might expect, a roll with the total number of Ripples you've suffered in the fight up until that point. Normally a Rippling Roll would make use of your Damage bonus, but as this is a Freeze attack it instead uses the bonus listed in the Technique- In this case +5.

So we roll two dice for our Rippling Roll and, lucky/unlucky us, we get a pair- two sixes for 26. That makes the total value of our Freeze 31.

We oppose this with Chi Aura. Usually, Armour and Toughness would help here, but the mystic ice ignores those defences, leaving us relying on raw dice. Each dice of Chi Aura costs 1 Chi, but we'll spend both points here, hoping to avoid a nasty early fight Chi Condition.

We roll and... 11 and 15. That aint good. We reduce the 31 by 15, leaving a remainder of 16.

From here, we compare it to our Chi Aura. Chi Aura is defined by your total amount of Chi. For starting characters, it's generally 12, but Armour increases it by 5. If this was an ordinary attack, the damage value of 16 would be less than our Threshold, so the condition would only be Trivial- Present, but not yet having any mechanical impact.

However, we aren't that lucky. Denied our Armour bonus, we suffer a Minor condition. Freeze penalties always apply to Breath, reducing the amount of Chi we regain each round by one. As an extra fuck you, Freeze conditions also freeze one of your River slots, denying you the option of storing dice in it.

And then we hit the end of the round. This round we've spent our full 12 Chi- 3 for the Freeze, 2 for the +10 Strike, 5 for the Footwork boost and 2 for Chi Aura.

The base Chi regeneration is 2 for starting rank characters. We regain an additional 1 from Focus on Breath, but are denied 1 by the Minor Freeze condition, so we only regain 2 Chi.

Generally, this would be really bad. Running low on Chi massively limits your options and makes you super vulnerable to attacks as you might not be able to buy Chi Aura, so alpha strikes like this are extremely risky. However, in this case it was for the purpose of example.

That's an overview of a single potential combat round in LotW, but there's a lot I didn't get into. Marvels which let you penalise enemy stats or skills, Secondary and Area attacks, the whole mess of Secret Arts... I can get into some of it if you like, but hopefully this'll serve as a decent example of how the numbers actually work in play.

It's also worth noting that at any stage in the turn I could have chosen to do something different. Made use of the numbers presented to me and my resources in different ways. That's the thing I really enjoy about LotW- Almost every time you roll the dice, you look at them and have to consider your options, how to best make use of what you've been presented with to stay in the fight and push towards victory.

Damnit, I fucked up.

>From here, we compare it to our Chi Threshold. Chi Threshold is defined by your total amount of Chi.

Another disadvantage of LotW is some confusing and unintuitive terminology that can take a while to really internalise.

For the record I love you LotW guy.

I figure if I'm going to pitch my favourite system on Veeky Forums I might as well be willing to follow through on explaining it fully. It's why I also always try to give a good account of its flaws, too. Giving people a dishonest impression of the system just makes it harder to get into it if they're interested in trying it out.

You did a better job than the folks who wrote the game, I'll give you that. And thanx! You didn't hafta do any of this, and doubtless it will help someone.
However, as you can see, the complexity of one round of action is, well, fairly high. I will never, ever, be able to convince anyone to play that. How many people are in your group and how often do you play?

Nine or ten people split between... Four games at the moment. I run one and play in three others.

And yeah. LotW is a niche system, it has a lot of complexity that might put off the narrativist sort while the lack of granularity and realism in its mechanics puts it outside the interest of people who are usually into those games.

I don't suggest it on Veeky Forums because I think everyone will like it, but I hope that other people who have similar preferences will learn about it, or that people curious about the unique sort of experience it provides will get some fun out of it.

I'll also say that while each round of actions in LotW is rather complex, the ability to make multiple actions per round means that you'll have more things actually happening in a single round than in two or three rounds of a more traditional game, which can keep things feeling very active and engaging.

Well thanx again for the effort typing that out - it's clear you like it, and that's the important thing. However, my group needs ways to speed up combat rounds, not make them even longer. Still, very nice!

Personally haven't tried out any rules-lite systems, but this is how I imagine it going

LotW guy, I just wanted to say thank you. That is some effort you put into your posts. You are wonderful.

I'm talking about the core rules here. Just because you. An make things worse doesn't mean you have to.

Actually, I cut my teeth on oWoD, and for all its problems that was five minutes to explain to a new player and you were rolling. nWoD's system is even simpler as long as you don't turn on all the options. Admittedly that's harder than under GURPS, which learned its lesson after the calculus of 3e.

That's absolutely a problem, but the game at its core IS very simple and intuitive. You can get rolling very fast.

I try to run GURPS in a very oWoD way to get the best of both worlds. The big problem with GURPS is that because you could do anything, you're tempted to do everything. Discipline is critical.

Going theater of the mind helps a lot here.

>Shitting on Savage Worlds.

U wot m8?

I've just never bought the argument that the ability to ignore rules makes systems good.

GURPS works decently well, but WoD is a clusterfuck of unintuitive mechanics that don't achieve what they're meant to. Sure, you can ignore them and tweak them to fit, but that's still a flaw of the system worth discussing, it doesn't stop existing just because you can work around it.

He has shit taste.
>bennies add to bookkeeping
He doesn't use fucking tokens or poker chips
>crappy system
lol wut
>badly balanced
Nigga please, it's better than shit like 3.5 for sure

The only two things he has a point with, and how to fix them:
>shotguns are overpowered
Have the bonus to hit dropped to +1 and/or have the full +2 only apply to sawn-offs to compensate for their shite range
>requires a deck of cards to play
Replace initiative with d12+Agility roll at the start of combat only, natural 12 is a Joker, all initiative edges work the same

Not particularly on topic, but I hate games that use different dices for core mechanics (lie your rolls improving from d6, to d8, and so on) o special dice.

An understated criminal for this is the new SW FFG game.

I actually like the FFG custom dice systems. They do something interesting and fun which hadn't really been tried before, and it works very elegantly in practice.

>dice improving by size
Why do you hate this? I think it's a clever way of increasing stats without having to fuck around with adding up flat bonuses to a single fixed die

I agree with you, but it really annoys me because it feels like "changing the engine". Fixed dices mechanics creates an expectation in what you are probably rolling, and it becomes easier for less math inclined players to learn the probabilities behind it.

Also, in my experiences we will almost always lacks the number of dies needed for the game and people you will be confused all the fucking time with what they should be rolling.

Chessex Pound o'dice man. Buy one, have more dice than you ever need. Then buy like three more if you're a freak like me who just loves dice.

Your thought process seems bizarre to me. I've ran Savage Worlds several times and never had much of a problem with what someone should be rolling.
Also, the only time I've needed more dice for that game was for rolling damage for stuff like rocket launchers and autocannons. Every basic roll is (skill/stat die, d4-d12) and 1d6, take the higher of the two.
What other games have you played using this mechanic?

I also really disagree with you on SW FFG, it's my favourite of all Star Wars RPGs with d6 a close second. But then I think d20 was AIDS so

The singular is "die". The plural is "dice".

There's a line from the old Vampire main book that's relevant here. They don't call them game mechanics, they call them "dramatic systems". There's a whole playstyle that encourages community storytelling where the dice are meant to introduce tensions and a sense of risk, but not to adjudicate some kind of gameworld simulation.

You can't really talk about mechanics without talking about the gaming philosophy that underlies them. ANY edition of D&D involves not just a lot of crunch but also a very specific set of opinions about what gaming is and why it's supposed to be fun and how you're supposed to play it.

I've seen people who spent a long period of time in one kind of gaming group try to move to another. The challenge for them isn't learning the new mechanics. It's adapting to the different way people play. Social psychologists and sociologists call this the "norming" process.

Anyway, different mechanics are built around different sets of norms. WoD works very well for the kind of game that it's trying to encourage you to play. Other game systems (like pathfinder, for example) work very poorly with a WoD-style game philosophy.

That still seems like kind of a cop out. The 'dramatic systems' the game presents you with still often don't work the way they're intended to, or do so in clunky and unintuitive ways.

It doesn't really matter what philosophy you play the system with, you'd still be better off if they were more fit for purpose and actually worked as intended, so that when you did draw upon them you didn't have to put in extra work as the GM to actually make things function.

...

I usually steal minor philosophies and crib notes off of rules light games for use in other, heavier systems.

I like having crunch available for use that I can also ignore or change as necessary for the benefit of me and my group. Rules light stuff usually falls flat in play for me, even though a lot of it reads great and can be impressive from a design standpoint. Also, strangely rules light systems for me usually feel both "too handwavey" and too restrictive at the same time.

I like a solid foundation that solves questions when it's called on, and otherwise just gets out of the way.

So, yeah. Now I mostly just read rules light 'heartbreakers' (to me they're heartbreakers) and steal shit I like to shove into other games.

Like what?

PLAYER: "I swing from the chandelier and then land on the bad guy, using my pogo stick as a battering ram to knock him off balance."

DM, depending on game system:

GURPS, 3rd edition: "Well, fortunately there are twelve rules over five supplements that handle just this problem and in less than an hour I'll find out what those rules are."

GURPS 4th edition: "It's in the the Basic Set and Martial Arts. First round do an Acrobatics check to see if you swing from the chandelier. Next round this counts as a Beat with your pogo stick."

Pathfinder: "Huh? What did you say? Is that a class ability? Um... no?"

D&D4e: "Huh? What? Is that a class ability? OMFG I CAN'T HANDLE THIS IT'S NOT ON YOUR CHARACTER SHEET WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!?!"

WoD: "OK Dex+Acrobatics to swing, and Dex+Melee to hit him. If you succeed then, um, -2 penalty to whatever he does next round."

BattleTech: "Shit, really? Yet another Death From Above attack using Mechanical Jump Boosters? I fucking have you this time, player!"

Yeah it's haphazard, but that's kind of the point. It's designed around a specific way of playing, and your complaints are structured around a very different approach to playing.

>D&D4e: "Huh? What? Is that a class ability? OMFG I CAN'T HANDLE THIS IT'S NOT ON YOUR CHARACTER SHEET WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!?!"

And you've just proven you know nothing about some of the games you're talking about.

I picked games that I've played extensively. However, ok, prove me wrong. Please cite chapter and verse on the D&D4 approach to my chandelier pogo-stick DFA gambit.

Page 42 of the DMG, titled 'Actions the rules don't cover'.

Heck, the given example is even pretty bloody close to your idea. Pasting in full-

Example: Shiera the 8th-level rogue wants to try the classic swashbuckling move of swinging on a chandelier and kicking an ogre in the chest on her way down to the ground, hoping to push the ogre into the brazier of burning coals behind it. An Acrobatics check seems reasonable.

This sort of action is exactly the kind of thinking you want to encourage, so you pick an easy DC: The table says DC 15, but it’s a skill check, so make it DC 20. If she makes that check, she gets a hold on the chandelier and swings to the ogre.

Then comes the kicking. She’s more interested in the push than in dealing any damage with the kick itself, so have her make a Strength attack against the ogre’s Fortitude. If she pulls it off, let her push the ogre 1 square and into the brazier, and find an appropriate damage number.

Use a normal damage expression from the table, because once the characters see this trick work they’ll try anything they can to keep pushing the ogres into the brazier. You can safely use the high value, though— 2d8 + 5 fire damage. If Shiera had used a 7th-level encounter power and Sneak Attack, she might have dealt 4d6 (plus her Dexterity modifier), so you’re not giving away too much with this damage

How is this even relevant to the original point?

>Heck, the given example is even pretty bloody close to your idea.

Almost as if I knew that when I wrote it. (I didn't recall the exact situation since my D&D4 books are at home, but I've had this argument before and know where it goes.)

Here's the thing. In a combat-oriented D&D-style game where you're kicking in doors and looting treasure, all is well. You have your fudge factor rule for exceptional cases, and everything else is covered nicely and neatly.

But in a game like you'd playing using WoD, nearly the entire game would take place on page 42. Every once in a while, combat would break out and you'd explore the rest of the rulebook, but for the most part there you'd be stuck on page 42 doing Actions The Rules Don't Cover as your players happily mess about telling their story.

WoD and systems like it are page 42 writ large-- a system for improvisation designed for campaigns where all kinds of crazy things are always happening. Especially out of combat. I've had came sessions that went on for 6-8 hours with no combat and yet everyone comes out happy and satisfied on the other end.

Highly structured rules like D&D (any version) are very good at doing a few things but in doing so they set very firm if unspoken boundaries around what things your players will be doing and how those games will go. To the point that people who marinade in those expectations for their entire gaming career get confused and annoyed when they see another game that doesn't follow those expectations. It almost feels like they're not even gaming anymore, that they're not doing it right. When if course what's really happening is that a game is violating their expectations and experience.

It isn't, but the trolls are scrambling for something new to start a fight over after getting BTFO by wulinguy.

Edge of the Empire seems simple enough for your purpose.

Pros: Easy to learn, fast paced, intuitive to GM.
Cons: Less to fiddle with, not easy to shore up defense while To-Hit increase steadily.

Nothing that couldn't be fixed with regular homebrewed perks that increase difficulty shooting you, if only under certain circumstances.

So you lied and misrepresented 4e for literally no reason?

How does any of this link to the statement in ?

If anything, the original statement exists outside of any gameplay philosophy to speak of, because it includes that in its premise-

'If a mechanic does not function as the designers intended, it is a bad mechanic'.

This applies to so much in WoD, whether it's the dark supernaturals accidentally becoming monster superheroes, Mage completely defying the tone of the setting, or the various weird rules things you can hit even with the base Mortals rules.

WoD has bad mechanics. Pretty much everyone I've known who has been into it has acknowledged that. it is a clunky, overly mechanically heavy system with an unstable foundation and lots of rather janky subsystems that don't work together that well.

If you're trying to say the bad mechanics matter less because it's not a mechanically focused system, that kinda makes sense? But that doesn't stop them being bad mechanics, or make it untrue that the system would be better off if the existing mechanics were better, so that when you did make use of them they functioned as expected/intended.

Con: requires novelty dice.

>Highly structured rules like D&D

Or like, you know... WoD.

>What did you like about it and did you find something lacking?
They lack physics. Which means: they have abandoned any attempt to simulate a living, breathing game world - they try to create stories.

Not my cup of tea.

I'm playing Strands of Fate presently. It's nice, a little bit of Mutants and Masterminds/GURPs mixed with Fate.

It plays well and it's pretty simple with still enough satisfying crunch.

I'll have to play more of it to get a solid opinion, but so far so good.

>I've had came sessions that went on for 6-8 hours with no combat and yet everyone comes out happy and satisfied on the other end.
I have had that in RIFTS

>storyteller system be too hard, yo!
>I wants to simulate reel lief, not tell stoopid stories!
You are one dumb cunt. Desperate, I'll grant you; but also dumb. Flip-flopping like this makes you weak, user. Don't be weak; be stronk. When you have something constructive to add to the conversation, please chime in!

>Runs out of points and arguments to make
>Resorts to abstract statements and insults while referring to multiple posters as the same person
>Tells other people to be constructive

lol

Git goad, faget.

>a complaint in that vein I've seen from people who rock PbtA games is that since the Moves have their results baked in, there's no way to model difficulty or changing condition

In PbtA games, you adjust difficulty not by tacking +1 or -1 on (well not much, if you go much past +3/-3 it breaks the curves) but by either adjusting the outcomes up or down (as the other user suggested) or by breaking the task up and increasing the number of rolls you ask for in order to accomplish a thing. Splitting a difficult task into two steps, and two rolls will step the odds of failure up, and often you'll wind up doing it in a more interesting manner than just saying "yeah take a -2," just because you took a moment to think it out.
It's "did you get past the mutant's psychic force field?" followed by "did you manage to stab the bastard before he could claw your face off?" The outcome will vary depending on the result of each roll, leading to an even wider array of potential results.