What makes a bad system?

Jesus Christ i swear i think 3.5 books killed his parents and raped his wife. every thread he spews vitriolic salt. Its not the best system but its perfectly fine and i like to run it fuck you i don't piss on other systems

This is pretty awful and full of internal contradictions and circular reasoning. Worse still, it basically says nothing about good and bad game design, only that he's extremely frustrated by people with opinions that differ from his own and that he can't convince people to accept what he considers objective.
The "fallacies" are particularly silly, and seem to just be something he's hoping he can summon to try and make people take his own arguments more seriously when there's very little reason to. The "band-aid" fallacy in particular is amusing, because the "scratch" argument could be set up to counter it, in that the person is arguing about a flaw so minor it could be called a scratch while they are claiming it is a mortal wound. Of course, he would call it a fallacy to say a flaw is minor or not important or to otherwise demand that a flaw's importance cannot be treated with subjectivity beyond exaggerating how important it is, but that's because the foundation of most trolling is taking any molehill and turning it into a mountain.

In the end, the bullshit about hoping to make arguments "more civil" is the worst part of the whole thing. It's all just particularly awful system warring, with a heavy focus less on actually critiquing systems and more of a demand that flaws be treated with neurotic obsession. This isn't healthy discussion, but an attempt to steer system examination into the most caustic arguments.

I think a possible problem with quantifying a "bad" is the fact that humans run it, and humans have different preferences, it becomes hard to pinpoint which flaws are in the people playing, and which are in the system at large.

Houserules are an excellent example. A flawed game can be houseruled, and said houserules can make a game better than it's competition. Say, you play in a game the GM has houseruled a bit, but the GM never tells you he's houseruled stuff, he just runs it that way because he can. The game is better than the other game that should by all rights be better, but because it's run by a person, it's better in your vision because you don't know the game has been modified.

It's really muddy.

You call it a possible problem, while it's more fair to call it an inevitable consideration.
Some games don't work great right out of the book, but with a few commonly known houserules can be amazing.

What's fair to say? That those games suck and that no one should ever play them, or that a few tweaks can lead to great games? Is it really fair to omit the human element from the game's evaluation, to demand RAW only like there's anyone who's ever played a game without tweaking it somewhat?

Some games don't have anything that makes them worth adapting, but take for example D&D 4e, which suffered from odd math early on that made the game rather slow and somewhat tedious. A flat HP/Damage adjustment makes the game run a lot better and the other merits of that game can then be discussed, but is it more important to do nothing but lament how that game is so slow, when that's not even an issue to people who actually play the game?

>but what makes a system shit

That question is broad enough to be meaningless. A comprehensive answer would be longer than all RPGs ever printed put together.

D&D 3.5 ruined a generation of roleplayers. Everyone who worked on it should get cancer, they have fucked up so much. Even today we are struggling to undo the damage 3.5 did to the hobby. It fucked up so much it's unbelievable. It basically created munchkinry and magical realm bullshit. It set the precedent for casters to be OP. It made overcomplicated, roll-play-focused games okay. Dungeon World undid some of the damage, but it will be many years before the RPG world is back to the way it should be.

Wow, you've convinced me. Can you start using a name and tripcode, so that you can spread your message with more pride? It'd be a shame to not have your efforts in your crusade realized.

>3.5 created magical realm bullshit
i'm going to call bullshit unless you can give me something other than vague assertions.
>created munchkinry
Maybe but who cares, stop being such a whiny cunt or use a trip so we can know you just ignore your hit posting

Munchkins existed since the start of roleplaying games. Even Gygax's own original crew contained munchkins, and their exploits are particularly cheezy.

It's only "awful" because if you took it at face value you would have no justification for screeching and derailing threads you worthless shitposter.

>What makes a bad system?
Things you like.

>What makes a good system?
Things I like.

How did words manage to pass through you so easily? Was it not just explained how that picture is nothing but a lame attempt at justification for screeching and derailing threads?
It's a shitpost of the highest caliber, because it's nothing more than a way of trying to add false legitimacy to the most banal of trolling, complete with a baseless claim that his troll fuel would somehow bring civility to system discussions.

So, quit shitposting yourself, especially if you have to go through such roundabout methods in order to do so.

>What makes a bad system?

For me, too intricate rules, or rules for literally every circumstance one could possibly conceive.
>Rules for swimming, adjusted according to character weight, the time of day, weather conditions, the pull of the moon's gravity on ocean tides, etc.
Just leave this shit abstract. It's doubtful any GM wants to waste time micromanaging rolls for every small detail.

Also, superficial / padded text. D&D rules really don't need to come in three individual manuals. Having to look up a specific term or item really boggles the mind when you have to juggle so many supplements. Rulesclones manage to spell out entire game systems in under 100 pages in many cases, and with a fair amount of flavor text to boot.

>Was it not just explained
Wrongly explained. Nothing in that image is incorrect.

it's not suited for the fluff. for example, if you want to run gritty cyberpunk action, running a D&D style system with characters that each have over 70 hitpoints is not a good idea. or, on a similar note, if you want a fantasy campaign that his aiming long-term heroic play, you don't want to run a very lethal dark fantasy RPG. fluff and crunch should match.

beyond that there are 3 main different playstyles, pic related. if a game is strong in one playstyle but a neckbeard here doesn't like that playstyle, he will probably call it bad because it doesn't support his playstyle as good. this is the majority of those cases aka the game isnt really bad, just not one's cup of tea.

and as an addendum people have certain preferences regarding the complexity (and thus lack of abstraction) of games. if a game is too complex for their taste or too rules-light, they will call it bad. but as you can see, this is again an issue of taste.

Developer bias is a pretty good indicator that a game is going to be if not bad, then not nearly as good as it could be. I'd say that every developer has a bias, but good developers recognize their own biases and try not to let the game get bogged down by it.

Bad developers, on the other hand, will gladly devote 30-40% of the core rulebook to the rules for that single option that they like better than all the others. Typically this option has significantly more fluff, and it tends to be the most versatile, often to the point that the right selection of abilities within that option will invalidate other options entirely.

It's like how a wizard in D&D can learn and prepare spells to disarm traps, charm or outright control minds, climb, fly, understand languages, deal huge damage either to a single target or a wide area, enhance his defenses, and more. And, if he is unsatisfied with his spell selection, he can just change it the next time the party takes a nap.

It even includes the "Stormwind Fallacy," which is a phrase basically guaranteed only to be uttered by the worst kind of munchkins.

It's a thoroughly terrible screencap, because it's not even lame enough to be a joke, it's just lame enough to be stupidly reposted by people who think any post longer than a few sentences must certainly contain at least a scrap of wisdom.

of course there will always be times where a neck-beard's idea of "fun" comes at the cost of everyone else's fun. He will wind up being a bad fit for any play style.

>It set the precedent for casters to be OP.
dude... seriously... this is so wrong, you wouldn't believe it. try some high-level rolemaster, for example. caster always sucked a low-level and became way too OP at high levels in games.

what about games like Roge Trader, Black Crusade, and FFG Star Wars?

>Roge Trader
"Rogue Trader"
I cannot spell...

That entire post is just one troll imploding on himself. Pay him no heed.

You mean something that's nothing but a properly applied false dichotomy?

What about them?

They are fine games if you don't mind that 2 of the ones listed are 40k role playing games.

You mean what shitty munchkins try to call up when called out for being shitty munchkins?

In the munchkin mind, they probably think of calling it up as some defensive skill that allows them to negate any attack, when all it really does is re-emphasize that they are really bad at basic human interaction and communication.

No, I mean the basic application of logic. Picking Power Attack doesn't make you less capable of roleplaying when it's the best feat for you.

If you go into a discussion about the system and see people saying things along the lines of "well the rules don't matter, it's about ROLEplaying not ROLLplaying, balance isn't important" etc etc then that's almost a 100% guarantee that the system is complete shit

>If people discuss it here and play it, it's not shit.
lmbo

Some of the signs of a bad game are...
>The rules are too complex and slow down the game without adding anything meaningful to it
>The rules are too shallow for any meaningful choices to be made during character creation or advancement, every power or ability is the same with a slightly different coat of paint
>The rules don't cover or even give guidelines of tons of actions players can attempt
>The rules don't match the tone of the setting that the game is built around
>The rules don't allow meaningful character improvement, they're as powerful or as competent as they start off and they never get any better
>The rules are heavily skewed so that a few options are far, far better than the rest to the point where characters who choose those options invalidate the importance of characters who do not choose them
>The mechanics of play make sense from an in-universe perspective; people understand what Spell Slots are and can quantify them, for example
>The setting is bland, boring, and/or has no interesting hooks for adventure
>The setting is the real world plus magic but history played out exactly the same for some reason

My ideal game is pretty simple with more complex rules at higher level play. All rolls use the same method of stat + dice + circumstance vs difficulty and they cover everything you might ever want to do in-game. The setting and the rules are connected and are internally consistent. It's reasonably balanced with interesting options as you grow in power and influence. The setting is interesting and takes queues from reality so you can make comparisons but it's different enough to be its own thing.

Honestly? Don't Rest Your Head is one of my favourite games ever. It only lacks the character advancement, Scars are decent but it needs rules for mystical equipment and additional skills and powers as you get stronger.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2050/roleplaying-games/revisiting-encounter-design

>fighter as a class does not even function
Monk doesn't function, Cleric and Druid are excessive.
If you don't go above level 10, everything else is fine.

>even at level 1 wizards beat fighters pretty much 99% of the time.
They have to win innitiative, and even then the odds aren't that good.
And 2 level 1 fighters can beat dozens of level 1 wizards (one at a time) in one day.
...why are your level 1 fighters fighting level 1 wizards?

>there are so many rules it is impossible to learn them all.
Unless you're memorizing the feat and skill lists, it's actually really light.

This image is okay.

It's annoyingly focused on D&D, but in general what it's saying aligns with my views.

Great post, I bet >>>r/rpg really liked it

Good idea. Shame that it's precisely those to whom it is addressed will dismiss it out of hand because it represents a train of thought that diverges from their own and is therefore evil.

Your absurdly hyperbolic expression of your opinion is noted.
That said,

>D&D 3.5 ruined a generation of roleplayers. Everyone who worked on it should get cancer, they have fucked up so much. Even today we are struggling to undo the damage 3.5 did to the hobby. It fucked up so much it's unbelievable.
None of this is a criticism of the system.
This is a criticism of how you perceive the system affected the community.
To illustrate the difference, "It helped launch Nicholas Cage's career." is neither valid criticism or praise of the film "Raising Arizona".

I am not defending the system, I'm just pointing out that your stupid post was stupid.
If you want to bait D&D 3.5 defenders, I can't stop you.
But if you post stupid posts, you'll only ever be a stupid poster.

I agree with all but character advancement, which is entirely dependent on tone.

>The setting is the real world plus magic but history played out exactly the same for some reason
There's a few ways this can work - history working the way it did because of behind-the-scenes magic, or hidden magic world/communities. Or the magic only recently came back.

It's only when the magic is highly overt, impactful and yet did nothing to history that this is shitty

Trying to defend that post is kind of silly. At best, you might be able to convince someone of one of the empty truisms sprinkled throughout it, the ones that actually say next to nothing about actual game design. At worst, you're likely going to be committing your own grave fallacy by referencing it and failing to realize that it's much more concerned with trying to invent empty counterarguments. It's basically the "Fallacy-Fallacy" post, but without the benefit of using any real fallacies.

Also, good game design? You can find a thousand games that follow his three criteria, and none could be good games.

Anything Palladium puts out.
Anything PbtA.

A game is shit if
A) It doesn't do what it says it does
and
B) If it isn't fun to play

Anything that requires to be reread three times and to take notes for the average player or DM to understand how more than half of the rules work.

Don't listen to Generally, if a game is well made but has a relatively small community, you'll never hear about it on here because there's no way to shitpost about it because either a) there aren't any memes for the average shitposter to gravitate upon to generate (you)'s and b) most people in any given thread won't care enough to argue over its quality like they would if it was D&D or WH40K.

This is true for anything btw, if you see a shitload of threads dedicated to one thing, either it's new or its not really worth your time.

In a nutshell, a bad tabletop game is one where the rules inhibit the way that the player can approach obstacles within the game using the character that they made during character creation.

For example, a low level fantasy setting where the focus is on a gritty conan inspired setting while having a mage with the power to cause tidal waves and summon demons as a base character option.

>i'm going to call bullshit unless you can give me something other than vague assertions.
Not him but

Explain to me how picking "sleep" or "color spray" or "magic missile" as a level 1 wizard makes me inherently incapable of roleplaying my character.

Oh wait, you can't.

>You can find a thousand games that follow his three criteria, and none could be good games.
Such as?

Personally, I think it's always a matter of how well the rules support the GM and the premise of the game.

A good systems mechanics will represent and reinforce its fluff and provide useful assistance to a GM, making their job easier.

A bad systems mechanics will contradict or undermine its fluff and make the GM's job harder, forcing them to struggle against them or ignore them entirely.

Of course, many systems have elements of both, so it's about the balance of them and which ones are more prominent and important. There are also neutral systems, which simply function, neither helping or hurting a GMs attempt to run them.

FATAL works as advertised (it doesn't try to be anything but a terrible rape simulator), the crunch represents fluff (anal circumference is used to measure at what size of insertion your character can take before taking damage), and the game is generally balanced, since all options either lead to you raping or being raped, according to your preference.

You being an awful roleplayer is what makes you an awful roleplayer.

>magic missile

And a bad munchkin too.

Man, this is such a great image. Glad to know there are other sane people on Veeky Forums who actually understand how to assess systems.

False!
>1
FATAL advertises itself as being a violent rape simulator yet the rules are so complicated that most people will drop the game before even finishing character creation.
>2
Because the rules are so needlessly complex, any sexual interest that the could feasibly have is gone by the time you're finished character creation. Not only that, but the actual rules for playing the game itself are also needlessly complex so at the end of the day, you're not even going to be able to use most of the rules because you'll be too focused on dealing with the most basic of bullshit.
>3
Because of the nature of how RNG works in the game, you can end up as a character who is unable to perform a job that he rolled for due to age, sex, height, weight, anal circumference, etc. which basically means that you can end up as a gimped character right out the gate while another dude ends up getting a combination that actually works .

Nice try though.

>You being an awful roleplayer is what makes you an awful roleplayer.
Exactly, it has nothing to do with whether or not my character is properly built, if I'm a shitty roleplayer, I'm going to be one whether my character is viable or not.

1. That doesn't stop it from being a violent rape simulator as advertised. It being too complicated is of no concern to his three principles.
2. Once again, the complexity doesn't really have anything to do with the crunch representing fluff.
3. You fail to understand what the game is trying to do, and putting your own interpretation on it. The game isn't just about raping, but being raped, and the RNG helps force players into situations where they can't help but be raped. Like they say, you can't rape the willing.
And, once again, the RNG has nothing to do with whether or not the game is balanced, because as far as "options" go, all the players have equal opportunity to get a rapist or rapee.

So, yes, it's a great game, up until you go ahead and look beyond the "three meaningless principles of game design".

No, you might have a chance of being a good roleplayer if you spent more effort on being a good roleplayer and less effort worrying about being a munchkin.

I think Stormwind is a shitty concept because it's a distraction from the real problem

The real problem is that taking spells that aren't munchkin choices will invariably make you less viable. Taking a way to control fire so you can entertain a caravan with a campfire punishes you mechanically, by taking up a slot that could've gone to a better cantrip, like Firebolt. This repeats in higher level spell lists. Spells that work as roleplaying aids are always worse than spells that only have combat effects, because apparently the people designing the game balance them that way: "This spell is interesting? Then it can't deal damage. We can't have spells be interesting AND useful!".

There are a few exceptions, of course, but most of them are spells that come from past editions, where this design philosophy wasn't as common. I shouldn't need to hope for a houserule when playing with another GM, just to not be gimped for my roleplay-based decisions.

>1. That doesn't stop it from being a violent rape simulator as advertised. It being too complicated is of no concern to his three principles.
The complexity of the game stops it from being a violent rape simulator because you're spending more time calculating for the angle of the wind than actually, y'know, violently raping people.
>2. Once again, the complexity doesn't really have anything to do with the crunch representing fluff.
See above
>3. You fail to understand what the game is trying to do, and putting your own interpretation on it.
Wut?
>And, once again, the RNG has nothing to do with whether or not the game is balanced, because as far as "options" go, all the players have equal opportunity to get a rapist or rapee.
Equal opportunity is not a quality of a balanced game though, what you're looking for is equal outcome.

At this point, I'm assuming you're shitposting for the sake of it.

But me picking the best options for my characters doesn't mean that I stop knowing how to roleplay either. It wouldn't make sense for a practiced wizard not to take spells that give him (and the party) the best odds of surviving the dungeon just because I, as a player, want to appear as a "good roleplayer."

I mean, it seems silly when you think about it, especially when roleplay has nothing to do with how well you understand the game or the mechanics that it employs.

>The complexity of the game stops it from being a violent rape simulator because you're spending more time calculating for the angle of the wind than actually, y'know, violently raping people.
You're committing the "All the Rules, All the Time" fallacy, where you pretend that a game with a lot of rules forces people to use all of them. That's just a weak way of hating on larger games that provide more material.
And, you're still trying to confuse "it's bad because it's complex" with "it's bad because it does as it advertised." It's not like being a complex rape simulator stops it from being a rape simulator. In some ways, the discomfort its rules give you merely enhance the experience, because rape, contrary to popular knowledge, isn't really all that fun.
>See above
See above.
>Equal opportunity is not a quality of a balanced game though, what you're looking for is equal outcome.
Not in the case of a game where players are to be both rapists and raped. Equal outcome is not the intended goal here.

At this point, I fear that you recognize that those three principles really have very little to do with whether a game is good or not (seeing as how you need to look beyond them in order to condemn FATAL), but are just being stupidly stubborn.

You're talking trash and using an extreme example to prove how much you hate the idea of games you like not being good.

>You're committing the "All the Rules, All the Time" fallacy, where you pretend that a game with a lot of rules forces people to use all of them.
Have you even read FATAL? It DOES force you to use a lot of its goddamn rules for the most basic of shit and it's usually needlessly complex for what the game is supposed to be.
>Not in the case of a game where players are to be both rapists and raped. Equal outcome is not the intended goal here.
Well how are you being both a rapist and victim if RNG forces you into being either the rapist or the victim due to RNG?
>At this point, I fear that you recognize that those three principles really have very little to do with whether a game is good or not (seeing as how you need to look beyond them in order to condemn FATAL), but are just being stupidly stubborn.
Okay, now I know you're a shitposter, I gotchu senpai. Here's a little attention to keep you going.

broadly?
if you arent having fun playing it, but this is subjective

so lets take a look at the one game we can all tell is bad, since we agree on bad things more than good things
FATAL

i have many things to say about it, but i am terrible at saying them
so here is some reading material, shamelessly lifted from 1d4chan, that will give you a rundown on the one thing we can all agree is bad
anthonypryor.com/?p=2030

Splitting it up into utility spells and other spells is a good move, not sure about 4e's split between them and how well it worked in the end but it's certainly better than other modern editions. Selecting spells in 5e is fucking minefield of traps.

4e kinda has the same problem, even though it has 'utility' powers, most of them are combat focused.

I'd prefer it they made combat utility into 'Support' powers, but had a separate category for pure out of combat effects just called 'Utility'.

Then again, in general, being forced to pick between mechanical potency and something fluffy or flavourful is something I fucking hate in RPG systems.

>Have you even read FATAL? It DOES force you to use a lot of its goddamn rules for the most basic of shit and it's usually needlessly complex for what the game is supposed to be.
It's seems that you just have a very different idea of what a rape simulator is supposed to be like. I personally would find anal circumference to be one step more complex than I needed it to be, but for the people who play the game, tearing apart people's assholes may be what they find most compelling.
>Well how are you being both a rapist and victim if RNG forces you into being either the rapist or the victim due to RNG?
If you thought that was what I was saying, allow me to clarify. Players can end up in either (or both) roles.

>Okay, now I know you're a shitposter,
How about you just give up, if you already recognize that those three principles really have very little to do with whether a game is good or not.

Because those three principles are a great guideline, you're just arguing from an extreme in a strange attempt to cripple reasonable discourse and the ability to discuss and analyse systems?

Jesus fuck man, I hate 3.pf too but I've still managed to run games in them where people had fun, even the martials. The level of mad you have has ceased to be funny and has begun to be incredibly worrying. This is a really unhealthy outlet for you, user, can you please just calm down before you stress yourself into an aneurysm?

Please, watch this gif and drown your anger in confusion, that will not kill you as quickly.

Yeah their definition of utility is weird, but I still think it's better than "fireball or counterspell or create food/water" since you have to pick x utility powers and I don't think there were any/many useless utility spells. I never looked at rituals, maybe the true utility spells were tackled with that.

This gif makes me angry

>being forced to pick between mechanical potency and something fluffy or flavourful

This. I don't know why there isn't a real effort to kill this thinking in game design. What a waste

>I personally would find anal circumference to be one step more complex than I needed it to be, but for the people who play the game, tearing apart people's assholes may be what they find most compelling.
Which isn't what I'm referring to, I'm referring more to all the hoops you have to jump through before you reach the asshole tearing part, which is somehow more complex and unintuitive than 3.PF's grappling system.
>Players can end up in either (or both) roles.
Unless they get fucked over by RNG, then they're decidedly the victim for the rest of the campaign unless they decide to kill themselves and play the lottery again.

>I never looked at rituals, maybe the true utility spells were tackled with that
They are. Virtually everything people said was missing in 4e's utility spell was a ritual. Strange how changing the name of a thing can make people completely ignore it

It's easy to ignore a rule when you haven't read the rules in the first place.

He's already done that... This is just another classic Virtpost, especially the bit about Dungeon World. It may be Virt, or, more depressing, a Virt Imitator

...

It doesn't inspire any GMs.

They're useless and extremely subjective, and are hardly guidelines so much as they are arbitrary points of contention.

Balance is generally good. But, that's hardly the core of what makes good games great, and the question of "does the crunch match the fluff" and "does this game do what it advertises" is open to so much interpretation that it is nothing but an empty argument starter.

Underrated post.

FATAL advertises itself as "the most realistic fantasy RPG" or something along those lines.

Needless to say, it fails that.

The fluff is... I don't even know, I think you are just supposed to be fantasy people, but you can be a person who can cut solid slabs of steel with his piss stream. I mean, I guess that could be considered fantastic.

If your criteria for balance is "every option you take either makes you win or lose" that's impossible to not fulfill.

They're very clear, unambiguous and simple principles that you continue to argue against because they likely show a game you like in a bad light.

Grow up. I like some bad games, but I know they're bad and I'm able to accept that. Being able to honestly analyse them is a part of appreciating them that you'll always miss out on if you just keep trying to remove and and all ways of criticising them.

>Grow up. I like some bad games, but I know they're bad

It just sounds like you don't understand what makes a game "good".

>They're very clear, unambiguous and simple principles

You're not even trying anymore.

>you continue to argue against because they likely show a game you like in a bad light.

The opposite. They show bad games in a good light, and are so ambiguous as to be meaningless.

They really don't. The whole FATAL example is laughably stupid, since it's entirely based on the meme the game became rather than the game itself.

Let's look at these three principles again and see how FATAL fails to achieve this.
>1. Features should work as advertised
FATAL advertises itself as being “the most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available" but the problem is that not only are many of the conventions in the book outright wrong (in more ways than one) but the game itself isn't even difficult unless you count "needlessly complex" and "tedious" as a sign of difficulty, which you really shouldn't.
>2. Crunch should represent fluff
The fluff is supposed to be that you're in a fantasy land that still operates off of realistic expectations yet you can be a dude who beats people to death with his dick. So realistic.
>3. Games should generally be balanced
Because of how complex the game is and how most options are decided through RNG and determined through shitty math, you'll never achieve balance because there's no solid base to stand on.

>laughably stupid

What's laughable is that you think those principles are unambiguous when they can't even clearly condemn FATAL without having to look beyond those principles.
FATAL was chosen as an extreme example to highlight the inadequacies of those principles even when set against an almost universally reviled game.

It's just chaff written on Veeky Forums.

Except you can condemn it easily, as shown by You were literally just talking shit based on the meme of the system to try to support your shitty point.

>FATAL advertises itself as being “the most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available"

I'm willing to wager that's tongue-in-cheek. Also, funnily enough, thanks to the wonderful contradiction of "mythically accurate", it's not wholly wrong either.

>The fluff is supposed to be that you're in a fantasy land that still operates off of realistic expectations yet you can be a dude who beats people to death with his dick. So realistic.

It's very mythical though. "Accurately" mythical too.

>Because of how complex the game is and how most options are decided through RNG and determined through shitty math, you'll never achieve balance because there's no solid base to stand on.

"Balance" in an RPG isn't so simple as "all characters are identical". Though Fatal produces characters with unequal statistics and attributes because of its RNG, the players all have the same initial options available to them, and the unbalanced statistics of their characters are part of the insane notion of historical/mythical "accuracy" the author is hoping to present.

You are literally just pulling things out of your arse at this point.

>I'm willing to wager that's tongue-in-cheek. Also, funnily enough, thanks to the wonderful contradiction of "mythically accurate", it's not wholly wrong either.
>It's very mythical though. "Accurately" mythical too.
Unfortunately, "mythically accurate" contradicts the realistic portion of the game and even if we look at how the more fantastical elements work, they still aren't accurate because few things in the game actually borrows anything from how things like elves, dwarves, and kobolds worked in olden myths.
>"Balance" in an RPG isn't so simple as "all characters are identical".
Okay, but that's not what I was referring to. "Balance" in this case was more in reference to the fact that there's nothing in the game that symbolizes what a balanced character would look like. Either you're an alpha who rolled well and can beat people to death with your dick or you're a bitch boy who can die at the moment of insertion because you rolled too low on anal circumference and age.

The Alexandrian is pretentious garbage, but honestly if you like the Alexandrian then I'm not surprised you like 3.5 so much

>the players all have the same initial options available to them
That should never be used as a hallmark of balance.

You mean easily countering weak arguments.

>Unfortunately, "mythically accurate" contradicts the realistic portion of the game

Hence why it's fair to call it tongue-in-cheek, especially considering it's a rape sim.
And, how can we even start to say whether it delivers as advertised is clear, unambiguous, or simple if what it advertises isn't clear, unambiguous, or simple?

>Balance" in this case was more in reference to the fact that there's nothing in the game that symbolizes what a balanced character would look like.

I think the best way to look at it is to ask the question "will rape be involved?"
If the answer is "Yes", we're looking at characters that both satisfy the big question of the system.