Clarity/gameplay as a design priority in PNP

When I opened up D&D 4e, just reading the book was enjoyable to me and the way it was laid out was fresh. Up until that point, every tabletop book I've read had pointless obfuscation, bad page layouts, and a severe lack of templating.

Unfortunately, the backlash to 4e seems to have prevented a focus on clarity and gameplay from becoming a trend. While there is nothing wrong with criticizing games, it seemed to me that there was an older legacy of gamers that saw improvement as a threat. Sort of like what happens when people that have a "back in my day, things sucked, and it was BETTER!" attitude and then go vote on policies that make life more difficult for people in a new age long after they are dead of old age.

Are there any other tabletop RPG books that have decided to go against the backlash by writing and designing in a style that uses templates, layouts, and mechanics to be as clear and playable as possible?

Ultimately I got tired of 4e just because the way powers were implemented had memory issues. It was clearly designed to require power cards or a character builder, and it saddens me that trying to play the game by the book involved an excessive amount of page-flipping. I'm looking into other systems and trying to find a game that adheres to some of the positive principles in 4e, including clarity, balance, and a focus on gameplay.

Nice essay. Seriously.
I find highly clarified mechanics have in a subtle way moved to boardgames. How many boardgames are in the style of D&D rheme and setting wise?
Boardgames have picked up the slack from when ttrpgs moved into more freeform collaborative storytelling. D&D 4th edition tried to do both. Arguably sucessfully when helmed well. Like all D&D it needed house rules.
Boardgames with strong theming are often more focused on creating a narrow set of feeling and stories through mechanics. Rpgs today largely offer mechanics to help the players tell whatever stories they want.
Posting from phone sucks. Am i making sense?

stop acting like you know what you are talking about.

You sure showed him.

Boardgames are fun and all, but what if I want to make a map? What if I want to have a character or use some imagination? I enjoy RPGs, I just dislike their legacy.

D&D !4e has sort of ingrained into people that obtuse=roleplay when I've had the opposite experience. Bad balance and clarity is extremely distracting. Unfortunately, I've played exactly one RPG where the designers gave the slightest fuck about balance and clarity. I'm really curious and eager to see if there are any others.

I was motivated to make this thread when I went through the chargen of making a level 1 druid in 5e D&D. The page layout and language used made me re-read it several times to confirm how many spells I know, how many I can cast per day, and how I prepare them. I was impressed at how poorly it was composed. I cannot comment on the balance because I haven't really analyzed 5e much, but the information could have been organized so much better. The D&D writers basically took zero lessons from how professional writing is done.

I'm not saying D&D should be written like an IEA assembly, but there is a clear room to improve it without sacrificing any flavor.

Feel free to post something useful. I would love to be proven wrong.

>pshhh, there are dozens of RPGS made by skilled writers. Here is a bread crumb to help you find them.

4e sucks.

>backlash
>OLD PEOPLE NOT UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY AND VOTING
>#FeelTheBern
Please fuck off to Plebbit.

4e is a heroic fantasy capeshit minis game, not an RPG.

Whatever your opinion on 4e, it's a fact that it had superb formatting and clearly written rules.

This is such a shitty and dishonest way to try to discredit something.

Like, sonic the hedgehog 06 was a pretty poor video game, but you don't see people going around saying "sonic 06 was literally NOT a video game!" You also wouldn't tell somebody who liked the soundtrack "There is no way you could like the soundtrack because this other element of the game was bad."

But it can't be the only game that succeeds in these areas and focuses on gameplay, can it?

I'm honestly looking for a way to NOT play 4e. I would be glad to move on to another game and have no desire to write another 4e campaign unless some heavy changes were made.

>not an RPG
>actually heroic fantasy capeshit minis game

I'm fairly sure I've played a role during it, and it's very much a game. Sounds like an RPG to me, so I reckon it would fit. Besides, the whole capeshit thing never made much sense - there aren't any superheroes, the heroes in 4e are very much more of epic heroes from stories, especially at higher levels. Considering all the heroes from mythology and all the crazy shit they've done like hit a guy by throwing a lance from behind the horizon line, filling someone with so many weapons their body can't even touch the ground, or even spending over a week underwater battling a monster and coming out alright.

Tbh I've never played another game like it, and personally I'm pretty content with the game as-is, but I have your curiosity as well.

Blades in the Dark focuses on gameplay and clarity a lot in my opinion, compared to other games that I've read/played.
The game makes it clear on what is its design goals and how it should be played to achive those goals. It's not a game about tactical combat though so "balance" in that sense is out of the question. I suggest you give it a read.

I think the spells issue is something every player encounters in their first time with the Spell Slot system of 5e, Pathfinder, etc etc.

I learned it in Pathfinder and I understand how it works and it makes sense. But with my first character in Pathfinder I couldnt make sense of it on my own.

Now in my experience with 5e i had no trouble playing a spellcaster as my first character, but some of the other people I play with who came from 4e were less able to do this. Mind you, i found that only really New or Lazy players had this problem.

Alot of people just look at that chart at the beginning of their Class in the PHB and look up specific things, and when they see Spellcasting they think "oh spells are such a standard thing, i just need to look at this chart and pick spells from the back"

I had a player come to a session once with a Wizard character who had spells from every other class because they thought Wizards were the most Spell-castery class and has access to all spells.

Another player, a Warlock told me he didn't have to use Material Components for spells because he had a Spellcasting Focus when said components had a related gold cost. I told him that's the only time a Spellcasting Focus cannot subsistute the Material Components for a spell. Got called a Rules Lawyer.

Ranger in the group I DM for, all new players, never played any type of D&D, thought Spell Levels corresponded to Player level, so we had this level 3 Ranger running around with 3rd level Ranger spells. I thought it was cute.

It mostly comes down to people not reading the PHB. I can understand it with a new player, because they dont have the book and they dont want to sit at the table reading rules, they want to play. But most players are just to lazy to even read the rules.

That being said, I still don't know the rules in 5e for managing a your Hands when spellcasting involving things like Somatic and Material components, especially not when you have a Weapon and/or a Shield

The problem with the druid was that "spell slots" weren't defined anywhere except for in the example text. The text for how druidic casting works was split up over two half-pages when it could easily be on the same page, and spells known mean a different thing for druid cantrips and spells that have levels. The table in the page before spellcasting had labels, but they were not explained. I left my 5e book at home, so I can't get it right now for reference to point out exactly what I found ambiguous.

Lad, B/X was written nearly four decades ago and it is without a doubt one of the most well designed RPG books of all time. To this date very very few systems have the clarity of what Moldvay accomplished in 1981. Ten or twenty years from now and it will still stand out as being one of the greatest pillars of our hobby.

Yea, it is definitely hard to grasp the first time playing a spellcaster in that kind of system.
Really all it comes down to is actually seriously reading it and thinking about it with mindfullness. Not trying to disparage your efforts here. The effort I am talking about is more than people generally put in for games.
I DM specifically for new players, I see it all the time. People come to to the table, we start making characters, it starts out nice and easy, but eventually the book-keeping starts happening and their spirit is crushed. They wanted Zelda, not Dwarf Fortress.
They realize how much of nerd you have to be to enjoy all aspects of D&D RAW.
Which is why you get games with homebrew rules for "efficiency"

I've played in games where I was the only player tracking my rations and when I told the DM I needed to stop in town and buy more everyone gave me a look like
>Dude, thats just a thing on the sheet it doesnt matter

People generally hate sitting down and seriously reading rules for games. It's why you see compilations on Youtube of Athletes getting mad at Referees.

Player
>I wanted do this thing I think is cool and good
Ref
>Sorry, no can do, rules say otherwise
Player
>Fuck you! This is a game, I shouldn't have to do "work"

>Lad
I want to disregard your post completely, but let me engage you for a moment. Older editions of D&D all share the same issue: You need a great DM who knows you really well and makes extra effort to make it work as anything but a wargame.

There's Strike, which is something of a successor. Do yourself a favor, though, and convert the dice mechanic to 3d4 instead of a straight 1d6. Bell curves, man. Bell curves.

>capeshit
No.
>minis
Absolutely not necessary but I've been using minis since the 80s.

Stay mad, faggot. It's amusing af.

3d4? Never heard that one before.

The 2d6 is already supported/math'd out in the book, I'd use that before 3d4.

Also, it's sort of a bad example because the book itself isn't very well edited at parts, although I can say that at least it's fucking trying, unlike some bigger brands who embrace murky wording.

I have found PbtA games to be rather good at being straightforward with this. Indie designed games in general have a better track record than big names, in my experience (though it is of course a mixed bag).

It's not "hard" it's just poorly composed. Spell slots and their ilk aren't difficult to grasp, but every edition and every class does things slightly differently.

If somebody is fucking drunk, then they are hard to understand not because they are talking about complex concepts, but because they can't fucking speak well.

That's as disingenuous an argument as the one you responded to, "RPG" doesn't literally mean you play a role in a game, or every game with a player character is an RPG.

While I agree with you, spell slots are spelled out in the spellcasting chapter.
I do agree that the fifth edition books need a serious rewrite though, the natural language gets in the way of the mechanics and sometimes obfuscates the information.

What the fuck are you two even talking about, nigga? Operationally define "role" so we know what.

I entirely agree OP. I fucking despise the unnecessary obfuscation so many RPGs seem to indulge in.

It's one thing with indie games where they clearly can't afford someone to do a proper layout for them, but when you get groups like WotC peddling to outdated bullshit like alphabetical spell lists it's just fucking atrocious. Give me clear layouts and exact, technically worded rules explanations any day. 'Natural language' is bullshit.

Alternatively, accept that defining any genre is going to have some overlaps and exceptions, so that trying to trying to judge something by genre taxonomy is as asinine as a wet burka contest.

It's been a while (at least 5 years) since I played it, but I think Mutants & Masterminds 3e was like this.

>Considering all the heroes from mythology and all the crazy shit they've done like hit a guy by throwing a lance from behind the horizon line, filling someone with so many weapons their body can't even touch the ground, or even spending over a week underwater battling a monster and coming out alright.
the question is: why would you want to emulate such obviously bullshit myths? there is a reason why it wouldn't fly in LOTR or Game of Thrones - people would roll their eyes and call it shit. so why does it have a place in RPGs?

>inb4 why is Veeky Forums shilling Strike!

>My opinion is objective fact and all other preferences are inferior

>he doesn't want to play as Gilgamesh
Nigga you gay?

There is one point I agree with him on - that type of thing doesn't belong in every setting.

seems i hit a nerve with the question
>so why does it have a place in RPGs?

Because some people clearly enjoy it and having an RPG that caters to them has nothing to do with you enjoying the RPGs you like.

Dumb question desu.

3 replies, none of them bothered to answer the question. over the top movies/tv shows aren't as successful, why do the same people prefer it in RPGs? it's a perfectly valid question.

>Over the top movies aren't as successful

The most successful movies in this day and age are the Marvel movies

Now, I'm not sure where your standards lie, but I would generally consider them "over the top"

This. The Incredible Hulk is like Cu Chulainn but played by somebody's dad.

Barbarians of Lemuria does what you want. Its light, streamlined, and speaks directly to the reader about the intended tone and playstyle of the game in clear terms.

I feel that the text of 4e will always be with me. Because the first time I flipped through, the shitty chiggatronic print job bled right off the page and onto my skin, and I've never been able to get it to wash off. The tremors are fun in bed, though.

>3d4? Never heard that one before.
It's superior to 2d6

Bell curves aren't 'superior'. If you prefer them as a mechanic that's fine and all, but the reliable average of a bell curve isn't implicitly better or worse than a more random single dice system, they're just different and create different kinds of experience.

Bell curves are strictly superior to a single die system. Especially one that has so few modifiers as Strike.

Why? You're just asserting that without any argument.

A bell curve means things tend towards a reliable average and are less swingy. That might be what you prefer, but the sheer popularity of very swingy single dice systems like the d20 clearly evidences that some people prefer that as well, enjoying the greater randomness and variability in results.

Chocolate ice cream is strictly superior to vanilla faggot. Disagree or have another perspective? Guess what, chocolate is just strictly better. I'm so fucking smart.

The d20 is the least popular part of D&D.

And you making yet another baseless assertion is relevant to the conversation because...?

Bitch you know Chocolate ice cream is the best.

Because it is? Take 10, take 20, and the evolution of general and specific rules that let you bypass the d20 or stack on so many modifiers that the actual result of your roll doesn't matter does not suggest to me faith in the d20.

>The Incredible Hulk is the same as a fantasy character spearing a dude behind the horizon.
nope, in fantasy there have been different standards

it's a matter of taste, faggot

Your taste is SHIT

>Bitch you know Chocolate ice cream is the best.
Gotta call steven colbert's law on this one. There is no opinion so stupid that if you say it in jest, nobody will agree with you.

I don't know about you, but I think 4e's system actually works rather well when transposed on to a modern-day superhero setting

But then again, modern superheroes and heroes of myth and legend are pretty damn similar in terms of the crazy shit they do.

Considering that today's superheros are mostly based on the myths of yesteryear that's a fair assessment. Superman = Hercules, Batman = Prometheus, etc ROUGHLY.

In many ways, superhero stories occupy the same cultural niche. A good number come straight from the old stories to, descendants of the Gods or Gods themselves. But they also draw power from new or foreign concepts, like internal energy or the boundless faith we have in the ability of science to solve problems.

I don't really get why people think 4e is some sort of a demigod simulator more so than other editions. A level 1 character in 4e is more like a level 3 character in 3.5 in terms of overall power above the average peasant, but level 3 characters are not demigods. Level 20 pcs in 4e feel less world-warping than level 20 pcs in 3e from what I have seen.

Challenge depends on the campaign anyway. You are free to make your game more or less challenging. 4e also gives the players mechanical consequences for encounters going badly other than death, so it was easier in my experience to create a scenario where a party has to use resources to survive, rather than have the two options just be live or die.

That's because 4e advances 3 levels when 3.5 advances 2. 4e's Level 30 is comparable to 3.5's Level 20. And by that point depending on the character they're killing Cthulhu with their bare hands as the last action of their life.

So 4e is has a slower rate of godhood ascension, and this makes people want to call it a superhero system more so than the game that powers up 50% faster, and with quadratic gains? That seems like a shitty unfunny meme.

They're looking at the low end of power, not the high end.

It's just an extension of the martial/caster double standard. People acting like casters Deserve to be gods, while getting uppity at martials being on par and frothing over it being 'unrealistic'.

It's because in 4e everyone gets to be reality-warpingly good at what they do at max level, not just the druids, clerics and wizards

It's just a meme.

I don't know, maybe it's because spellcasters are over there pulling a Merlin+Medea+Circe at the same fucking time while teleporting all over the place.

It's very well done, but it also insists on doing literally everything possible in a completely novel way that almost never exists in any other game so it's a pain to learn.

yeah, that's the root of it

To be fair, BoL is needlessly dense and muddled because there are barely any rules. I'm not complaining about that, mind you, but I am saying that you can't really credit its readability to good layout or format.

>the sheer popularity of very swingy single dice systems like the d20
I'm not sure this is true. Very few people consciously choose a dice system when choosing a game, they just get stuck with whatever the game has.

D&D and it's d20 derivatives are the most popular systems out there, and thus everyone playing them is stuck with d20, particularly the newer players that don't even know that alternatives exist.

>To be fair, BoL is needlessly dense and muddled because there are barely any rules.
is *not* needless dense and muddled, that is