Biggus Geekus: Fixing D&D, Part 2
Didn't know there was going to be a second part, which you can watch here for full context (part one is here), and while I was able to catch it live this time, I neglected to keep notes so I had to mostly watch it again, anyway.
At around the 32 minute mark Joe brings up a topic that is apparently making the rounds but I've as of yet been blissfully unaware of, which is to remove the attack roll and/or hit points from what I assume are D&D and/or D&D-like games.
Starting with the attack roll nonsense, Joe mentions Matt Colville and his latest vapidware trash grift, but it actually reminded me of a conversation that was so long ago it might have been on G+, where a guy was talking about his particular brand of vapidware trash grift: instead of rolling to determine success or failure, you always did whatever you were doing, the roll was merely to determine how "awesome" you were. It essentially turns the game into a participation award circle jerk, which sounds very much on-brand for Colville and the simpettes.
So it's not only not original, it's not even particularly interesting or useful, but this is the guy that pinched out a beneath the bottom-of-the-barrel "stronghold" book so what did you expect? It's the best he guy can do, perhaps because no one expects or asks for anything even approaching baseline quality, so he panders to the lower than the lowest common denominator, recycles existing ideas and pretends that he's some sort of talented and innovative game designer. He's making a bunch of money, which won't make him happy, and in exchange he might one day toss his mentally deficient supporters yet another under-produced incomplete vapidware trash derivative which also won't make them happy.
Frankly, they all deserve each other and I'm glad he's lured them off into one of many shadowy corners of the hobby. Good riddance, I say.
Joe states that one reason "these people" want to remove attack rolls is to speed up combat, which sounds absurd (not his reasoning but the concept). Yeah, he's right that you can roll your attack and damage dice at the same time, but how much time is actually being consumed by rolling to hit, calculating the results, and then rolling a damage die? Because even if you roll both at once you still need to take time to determine whether it was successful or not.
So, what's the time it takes to just pick up and roll the damage die? Well, I timed it and it took like three seconds. But, even rounding it up to five this means that over the course of a dozen combat rounds you'll save maybe a minute, and over the course of over seven hundred rounds you'll save an hour. This sounds like a lot, but the people whining about speeding up combat in this regard would just piss it and many more hours away watching crap on Netflix and/or Amazon, and pretending to be outraged on social media, because not only do they not even really care about or play games, they don't have jobs or even anything remotely resembling responsibilities.
Another nonargument that Joe heard that makes much more sense was that it's "not fun to miss", and while this is technically true what these participation award beneficiaries who are the mental, emotional, and if we're being honest probably even physical inferiors to children fail to grasp is that failure will make your successes more rewarding because, and I'm sure there are a variety of equally applicable quotes but this is the one that sticks out the most for me, the sweet is never as sweet without the sour.
It's what makes it feel so rewarding in a game like, say, Monster Hunter World, where after a half dozen or so tries against, say, raging brachydios, you finally manage to slay him (which, assuming you want his armor and/or weapons will be the first of like a dozen times). But then these people are lazy, entitled, pretentious and pathetic narcissists who want to reap the rewards without putting in any amount of effort. which is why you see innumerable vapidware trash games like Mork Borg, Troika, Index Card, DarkityDarkDark and, in all likelihood, whatever the fuck Matt is working on, assuming he even bothers to push anything out.
And while removing the attack roll is utterly and objectively retarded, because it's a game and a major factor of what makes games enjoyable is at least the possibility of failure, removing hit points isn't something I take much issue with, so long as you aren't just removing them so that in addition to being unable to fail at anything, ever, that characters will also be unable to die (which wouldn't surprise me). We actually developed a functional wound level system last year, but probably won't utilize it for Delvers 2nd Edition for the following reasons:
- We don't want to readjust most everything. It works fine with more or less normal attacks, even against something like an ogre, but I'm concerned how it will hold up against spells that inflict a lot of damage. It could easily turn into a one-shot kill, or at least cripple a monster to the point where it would be trivial to wrap up the fight. This means that I'd need to reduce the damage spells inflict, increase the cost, or both.
- Healing might be tricky. Clerics aren't an adventuring class, and mending potions now trigger a healing check to determine WP recovery, but that might still play odd with the system.
- It's more complex, which will be more apparent and annoying against lots of monsters, since you have to check for damage and then make a Constitution save to determine Wound Level loss. Since there's also an associated penalty, it would also be more annoying with lots of enemies because you would need to track which enemy suffers from which penalty.
Around 44 minutes Joe mentions one reason for replacing hit points is that they aren't well defined. However, despite any "official" explanations, even by Gygax, hit points are in fact quite well defined: simply put they're "meat" points. This is because the only thing that restores them are healing magic and rest, and in most editions the latter would replenish them very slowly. The only exception was oddly in 4th Edition, where the warlod's Inspiring World exploit would restore hit points (the idea being a sudden boost in morale or somesuch). Otherwise, nope, they can only represent physical injury.
Patrick's statement about a game where you just roll a die to defeat a bad guy reminds me of DiceDream, which is an incomplete vapidware trash game with other nonsense mechanics like magically completely healing merely by stepping a single foot out of the dungeon environment, which can be done an unlimited number of times whenever you please. Unsurprisingly it was written by a guy pretending to be neither male nor female, and who associates with RPG Pundit and likes to attempt to play the -ist and/or -ism card in order to deflect well-deserved criticism.
At 53 minutes Joe asks what's so hard about subtracting whole numbers. The answer is nothing, it's just you have a bunch of lazy hobby tourists who simultaneously want to keep dumbing things down yet don't even really play. This is partially why you have a deluge of vapidware trash games that utilize post-modern, tourist-tier mechanics like item slots (with other contributing factors that include incompetence, greed, and narcissism): for them, it's "too hard" to say that a character can carry 50 pounds of stuff, and then tally up basic gear to see if you exceed this amount.
No, instead you need to assign everything an abstract item slot value, and give each character an item slot cap. It's basically the same thing, except that the item slot values and caps never make any fucking sense. It's always something weird like 10 slots + Strength, with heavy armor only taking up something like 2-3 slots, but daggers somehow only take up 1, meaning that the so-called designer suffers from many delusions, one of which is that a dagger apparently weighs something like 20 pounds. Or, maybe that plate armor weighs like 3 pounds.
Something to point out is that my kids have been gaming for years (my oldest daughter starting when she was around 8), and neither have never had an issue tracking equipment using at least somewhat accurate weights, as well as a more gradual encumbrance system in which you can be lightly or heavily encumbered, both with their own associated penalties. Even better, it is structured in a way where characters cannot easily carry an absurd amount of weight without being hindered in any way (no, not even fighters). But then my kids are actual gamers that not only enjoy the challenge but create their own content as well.
Finally, at about an an hour and a half in Joe reveals more of their game. I didn't find it as interesting as last week's because it's mostly about the flavor behind their races as opposed to mechanics. Every race but human has one or more "restricted" classes, but I'm not sure if this means that they can only pick from those, or if those are in addition to more standardized options.
I'm not a fan of this, because last time this was brought up someone mentioned Adventurer, Conquerer, King, and in that system none of the race-specific classes made any sense. But maybe they will do something interesting with the concept. For Dungeons & Delvers we just use racial classes, which allows you to say, play a dwarf and take levels in a "dwarf" class in order to expand on your racial abilities (such as by having your skin harden and being able to craft items without using tools or a forge).
There was also mention about having races live about as long as humans do as a way to explain a lack of numbers or something. Another option is to have it so that most races don't even reproduce like humans. There could even be a set number, having been created through some other, more unusual means. For example, a specific number of dwarves might have been fashioned from the corpse of a giant, so there's only so many, and once they run out, that's that (and maybe in their world they're very close to finally running out).
Similarly, in Dungeons & Delvers kobolds are a spirit form: they don't reproduce like mortals do. Instead, they manifest spontaneously when certain conditions are met. Elves are an odd one, since the idea of half-elves exist, though their rarity could be explained by them tending to not want to travel to the mortal realm for some reason. Perhaps it causes a significant degree of discomfort or even causes them to gradually waste away, so they can only linger for so long before having to return home for a period of time.
In any case, it has given us something to think about for Delvers 2nd Edition.
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