Basically classes make character creation easier and faster because you don't often have to make many choices. If you have to pick up skills completely free, it can cause analysis paralysis especially if you don't have a strong character concept in mind. Then there are sort of templates with various names like roles (Cyberpunk), occupations (Mythras and BRP) and actually templates and lenses (in GURPS) that helps to choose skills that makes sense to choose for certain professions etc. Those are really time savers with large skill lists.
Our current Mask of Nyarlathotep campaign has been going on for over a year. We are at 38 character deaths (including a few reserve characters we generate to facilitate troupe play) after NYC, England, and Cairo. Just enough crunch, tons of role play. We don’t use optional luck rules, though we’ve incorporated the skill augmentation rules from Runequest: Glorantha. Our Keeper doesn’t pull punches and we love it. I feel like this is how Call of Cthulhu was meant to be played. It’s meant to be deadly, and that’s what we do it. Anyhow, love your vids. Stay cool.
It is true that certain skills are used more often than others, especially combat skills and perception. But then again it is up to GM AND players to invest in other skills and make sure there are situations where they come handy, even necessary.
The reason Pathfinder goes off the rails at high level is because instead of making wizards less powerful, they made fighters more powerful. The whole reason for quadratic wizards and linear fighters in D&D is that originally play transitioned from dungeon crawling to wargaming at high level, and fighters got followers and permission to build a castle (which is why they NEEDED all that gold people complain about today). Wizards HAD to be powerful to fight off an army attacking their measly tower led by a 12th level fighter armed with a +5 vorpal blade. When domain play fell by the wayside, D&D foolishly never scaled back the spellcasters.
Mixing beasties in WOD: you are on point. I speak from personal experience. If vampires and werewolves can get along enough to have a chronicle, they are role playing both incorrectly. The games are written that way intentionally.
Yes, in Mythras you don't have to actually succeed using a skill to be able to roll for increasing a skill. In RAW, you don't even have to use the skill to increase it, just use experience to buy the advancement rolls. In BRP you actually have to sucseed (I take your word for fumble working, too) to get the roll. The actual advancement roll is pretty similar although it is a bit easier in Mythras.
Love the streams. I have other things over the time slot unfortunately. I do agree that level games have a genre shift. Its actually my main issue with it. My group runs level games at least half the time, but most characters are in the 1-6 range as you acknowledged in the video. We like the more sword and sorcery genre feel there. I do mean heroic in terms of the characters becoming more powerful than would probably be mortally attainable. Keep up the good work boys.
I personally like the pathfinder 2e class system because of the archetype system that accompanies it. I could be a bow wielding, bear taming, vampire ranger that dips into magic and occult crap. Or a gunslinging alchemist that jumps into combat with dual pistols and slinging Molotovs. It’s admittedly quite bad in the combat “roles” in early levels, but it feels like it opens up after level 5, but it is also harder to make you’re own little snowflake since a lot of these archetypes have prerequisites that are quite difficult to achieve. E.G, my ranger can lean into archer (from the fighter class) quite easily since they both use a bow, but can’t be a vampire unless they are already a Dhamphir or the GM allows it and can’t use a magical archetype without a high enough stat (attribute or skill) and corresponding feats/other archetypes. That’s my experience anyway, I know other people love to figure out ways to break the system.
That's an interesting take. I have a copy of the core rules but haven't really taken to it. It reminds me of 3.5 because it was great in terms of player options and customization, but kind of a nightmare to DM, especially at higher levels. Have you GMed Pathfinder? Does that match your experience?
@@JackMcCarthyWriter I haven’t played Path1e (outside of crpgs) or GM any game (not for me). But the way I look at the classes is that they’re a toolbox and the feats and archetypes are the tools that go in it and you use all of it to build a character. Just based on the crpgs I can see how much of a nightmare 3.5 could be, but 2e seems a lot easier since most level ups are fixed (you don’t get 3 attribute points and pile everything into dex, you get 3 points that you can use to upgrade attributes by a set amount). I really recommend it as a system and I want to bolt a few more for a setting I have planned.
Thought-provoking livestream, as always. All the best campaigns I GM/play in are very slow in character ability/skill/attribute/power advancement. It's one of the things that makes these games great. Focusing on advancement sucks, unless I'm playing D&D, in which case it's kind of the point and doesn't suck. D&D is what it is, and it facilitates a certain type of game that provides a certain kind of experience. I love D&D but only for playing a game that is supposed to feel like D&D, if that makes sense. The more grounded and realistic (even in a fantastical context) types of games need other systems.
Stars/Worlds/Cities Without Number actually use d20 for Attack and Saving Throws, but use 2d6 for Skill Checks. The Gaussian Distribution resolves the swingines of the d20 and cuts down the math. Also, a lot of people love them for the GM facing tools, the tables for sandbox campaigns and faction background play. In Stars Without Number the GM can play mini-games between sessions and generate what the factions did and how they interacted. It's a frequent occurance that people that don't play the system get the books for the GM tools. Those are pretty much system neutral. Think of these games as a more "gameist" counterpart to ACKS 2e's "simulationism".
I don't see a problem with this in terms of games that actually take the time to figure out the math at every level (example: pathfinder 2, not at all pathfinder 1). The entire narrative of your bog standard heroic journey's narrative of farmhand to legendary hero is well represented precisely because the math encourages struggle at all levels (often with deadlier threats at higher levels). As a recent youtube video painted, the pathfinder 2 level 1 fighter that started out unable to even hit the dragon burning his village ends the campaign being able to periously take him on.
About your point on having multiple splats in your game (Having mages, werewolves, etc in your vampire game), I do understand not wanting them to intermingle, but It could be argued that having the occasional glimpse into another splat could enhance the setting and make your players realize that there are other threats that can either make them fall in line or be a potential big bad. A sabbat pack might become acquainted with the technocrats if they're particularly open about their monstrous actions, a wraith might interact with a Giovanni (or the rare tremere that knows necromancy) and make a deal, a camarilla coterie might take a wrong turn in the woods and encounter a werewolf, etc. I think that can make the world feel more lived in and give it life IF DONE RIGHT. Saying that, there are people who insist on running games with mixed splat parties, all I have to say is "I hope you have a fun session or 2", because i'm damn sure that will end up as a clusterfuck, especially if you put a vampire, the thing that most other supernatural creatures view as an abomination, in the party. Another thing, I do think, on paper, the Giovanni are fine, cool even. In my mind, the big reason why the Giovanni can remain independent is the same reason why the Tremere, a clan that was insanely hated at one time, was able to not be wiped out, and that is magic. If Thaumaturgy is the reason the Tremere lasted so long despite having enemies on every corner, It stands to reason the Giovanni would have been fine after doing something similar. I understand not liking necromancy, I've never played a necromancer vampire and I may never do so, but in my opinion, it's better than just lumping a bunch of clans into the "Hecata" and making them minor variations of the same clan because streamlining. In any case, Love your work guys.
"Aren't there actually more productive things you could be doing?" Couldn't the same be said for any TTRPG? I don't think I have, ever, sat down to a gaming table, with the thought of being productive. I can understand why Solo RP would not be for you two. It seems to me that you have, at least, a couple of groups to play with, working with a selection of genres. However, speaking for my self, my group is primarily a 5e group. And, I can't stand D&D 5e as a game (nor WOTC as a company. I don't want to give them oxygen on any level). So, it pretty much is my only port in that particular storm.
Solo play isn't the *same* thing, but it is it's *own* thing. Hitting the solo flow state is a challenge to achieve and doubly so to maintain, but when you're in it it's almost perfect immersion. Actually, I find the roleplay aspect of play to come very naturally and spontaneously. It's definitely not for everyone, but it is a legitimate style of play whose roots go back to the beginning of the hobby. You either grok it or you don't, and that's fine.
I don't grok it but haven't given it a solid try yet. NightDanger has a similar view to yours and we agree with him on a lot of things, so we will see if he can convince us
Recent D&D (and perhaps Pathfinder) developers determined the level range that was most frequently played in, and how long campaigns tended to run, on average. It was just powerful enough to get stuff done, but not overwhelmingly in favor of the PCs. Players enjoy challenges far more than cake walks, and at a certain point the challenge may not feel genuine or natural, but instead forced and contrived. Advancement should (ideally) be relevant to the emerging narrative of the adventures the Characters are partaking of. Advancement should (ideally) also require in-world time (to train, study, practice). Small improvements over time, as opposed to big improvement dumps at arbitrary or plot intervals. Using XP can be good, as it allows the Players to make mechanical development choices for their Characters. Though, when those choices are not relevant to prior in-game play, seemingly "out of the blue" to make a specific "Character Build", it seems a bit contrived. On that, perhaps it can be justified that the Character is good at it, but it simply hadn't come up yet. Front-load the most probable, and back-load the lesser needed skills over time, during play and claim they were always there when the incidence does eventually arise. - I was in a 5e D&D campaign, levels 1-20, milestone. We didn't manage to take downtime, the action just kept going without a break. We made level 20 in about 68 adventuring days, which is over twice as fast as the expected/recommended pace in the DM Guide. Was still a fun campaign, but from the advancement perspective, it didn't really justify - it felt wrong and rushed, despite about 6 sessions per level-up. Accounting for "dialogue heavy" (Crit Role style..), it may have been equal to 2 sessions per level up had it been "dialogue lite". - I'm thinking that advancement is difficult prospect. In a game, it gets gamified, but may lose a bit of realism/immersion/verisimilitude in the process. It loses integrity when it doesn't tie to what is actually happening in the emerging story. The advancement needs to make sufficient sense. There are certainly tRPGs, cRPGs, JRPGs, aRPGs, that do the bulk gains at level up, but others that do incremental gains for accomplishing a specific level of mastery in a single skill or ability. The latter appeals to me a bit more, but everyone will have their own tastes.
OD&D and AD&D's leveling system developed out of wargaming. The idea of 'role-playing' in the sense that people do it now was not quite the same. For these games it was a secondary consideration and even though it happened, the wargamming aspect was still primary. The level based system supported the wargame orientation of these games and if you really read the AD&D rulebooks in detail this is obvious. It's simply a different style of play. However, it definitely doesn't support the same type of character development that people have come to expect today. It's an emergent character development through trial and survival whereas most gamers today want the special snowflake character from day 1. The typical consequence of this is that they don't want their character to do die, so now you have all kinds of games where any kind of risk/reward is mostly nonexistent.
I'm not a big fan of level based games as they're kind of harder to do long term campaigns with (at least for me). You have to "plan" the campaign and account for the zero to superhero approach, or just "stop" at some point. My favorite advancement is with % skills - as you get better it gets HARDER to get better (which is realistic), but at some point you're just as good as a person can be at that thing. there's tons of things I love about cypher but it's really built for limited campaign. At the end any character can succeed at any impossible task. I love gumshoe but it's really hard for players' to figure out what to spend their 6 dots of X investigative skill on.
It's been many years since i heard anything about Rein dot Hagen. Last i heard he had moved to Georgia (country) around the time the Russians invaded it. Circa 2008?
Harmony Ginge? Does Ginny Di have a challenger to her crown?
หลายเดือนก่อน
Pathfinder 2e classes are more confusing and convoluted than any other RPG system. Not even taking into account the labyrinthine combat crap you have to keep track of. Way too many classes. You only need 3 or 4. Warrior, Thief, Wizard, and Cleric if you're going to have classes at all.
That's fine if you don't like Solo, but don't bash people who enjoy it or say it's invalid. That's BS. I love playing in a group and I even have a group, but we can only meet once a week and only for a few hours, but sometimes I want to try different systems and play different types of games that wouldn't mesh well with my group. Pick up groups online are hit and miss and yeah, you can find a great group but you can also end up in a real disappointing game. You fellas have good RPG groups and experiences that's great, but don't shit on people who find it to be their preferred method to engage in the hobby.
@@blacklodgegames okay, wasn't sure what to make of you guys. I can handle opposing viewpoints (that was me voicing my own), but I see what kind of kids you are and now I'm sure you guys are worth blocking.
What I find lost in modern conversation are that TTRPG are on a sliding scale between their origins as table top wargames and roleplaying. Rules and mechanics support one side of the spectrum or the other but the best games have a balance. While some games "encourage" one side of play or another whomever is the rules arbiter (DM/GM/Storyteller, etc) determines when they are brought forward. So to say PF2E roleplay is "bad" simply isn't true. I have seen great roleplay in grossly crunchy games like Champions and the inverse in in Vampire the Masquerade where the Gangrel's sole purpose was built to fight. At the end of the day what the table wants out of it's system is what matters. Our table want's to level up; they want perceived power whether by skill, items, prestige, or "in game power" such as lands and titles. The issue with skills only levelling systems often there is no transition to the dramatic. Having an 80 melee skill compared to 50 is dramatically different on your chance to hit; but what you can do with a "number" is limited until it empowers/allows some form of stunting, combined with a feat, etc. otherwise it remains simply a higher chance to hit that one other guy and remains mundane and you miss out on the epic nature of fantasy. Note on Traveller - you dont HAVE to play the starship get out debt spreadsheet game, which turns the game into ALL about managing cargo/jumps/mission to erase the debt. Just use the other systems and hand waive that side of gameplay or make it a story aspect.
The only reason you should be missing out on the epic nature of fantasy when using a skill based system is if 1) you aren’t using your character’s skills creatively and you either 2a) don’t have a creative GM and/or 2b) don’t have an epic fantasy setting. It’s not because the system is skills only, it’s all in the way the game is run and played.
Remember to put a sock on the door handle when you solo play.
You make it sound like solo players can't even afford a Hungry Man. 🫒🍆
Unless you like being watched
"Go away! I'm having my Special Alone Time!"
Basically classes make character creation easier and faster because you don't often have to make many choices. If you have to pick up skills completely free, it can cause analysis paralysis especially if you don't have a strong character concept in mind. Then there are sort of templates with various names like roles (Cyberpunk), occupations (Mythras and BRP) and actually templates and lenses (in GURPS) that helps to choose skills that makes sense to choose for certain professions etc. Those are really time savers with large skill lists.
"Solo rpg sounds like make believe with extra steps"
Correct!
It's also what a group session is
Our current Mask of Nyarlathotep campaign has been going on for over a year. We are at 38 character deaths (including a few reserve characters we generate to facilitate troupe play) after NYC, England, and Cairo. Just enough crunch, tons of role play. We don’t use optional luck rules, though we’ve incorporated the skill augmentation rules from Runequest: Glorantha. Our Keeper doesn’t pull punches and we love it. I feel like this is how Call of Cthulhu was meant to be played. It’s meant to be deadly, and that’s what we do it. Anyhow, love your vids. Stay cool.
That's a fecking great story, thanks for sharing
I'm game to speak with Macris about games.
I look forward to our Wraith experience~
It is true that certain skills are used more often than others, especially combat skills and perception. But then again it is up to GM AND players to invest in other skills and make sure there are situations where they come handy, even necessary.
The reason Pathfinder goes off the rails at high level is because instead of making wizards less powerful, they made fighters more powerful. The whole reason for quadratic wizards and linear fighters in D&D is that originally play transitioned from dungeon crawling to wargaming at high level, and fighters got followers and permission to build a castle (which is why they NEEDED all that gold people complain about today). Wizards HAD to be powerful to fight off an army attacking their measly tower led by a 12th level fighter armed with a +5 vorpal blade. When domain play fell by the wayside, D&D foolishly never scaled back the spellcasters.
ACKs both increases the fighter types, imposes domain play AS WELL AS scales back those post level 6 spells to ritual magic.
GURPS is quite good, but it does have a lot of elements that I would change.
Mixing beasties in WOD: you are on point. I speak from personal experience. If vampires and werewolves can get along enough to have a chronicle, they are role playing both incorrectly.
The games are written that way intentionally.
1:22:30 To quote Nietzsche:
"Life is a well of delight; but where the rabble drinks, too, all wells are poisoned."
Runeslinger was a great recommendation - I love the current Call of Cthulhu game and hope it gets more attention.
Yes, in Mythras you don't have to actually succeed using a skill to be able to roll for increasing a skill. In RAW, you don't even have to use the skill to increase it, just use experience to buy the advancement rolls. In BRP you actually have to sucseed (I take your word for fumble working, too) to get the roll. The actual advancement roll is pretty similar although it is a bit easier in Mythras.
Love the streams. I have other things over the time slot unfortunately. I do agree that level games have a genre shift. Its actually my main issue with it. My group runs level games at least half the time, but most characters are in the 1-6 range as you acknowledged in the video. We like the more sword and sorcery genre feel there. I do mean heroic in terms of the characters becoming more powerful than would probably be mortally attainable. Keep up the good work boys.
I personally like the pathfinder 2e class system because of the archetype system that accompanies it. I could be a bow wielding, bear taming, vampire ranger that dips into magic and occult crap. Or a gunslinging alchemist that jumps into combat with dual pistols and slinging Molotovs.
It’s admittedly quite bad in the combat “roles” in early levels, but it feels like it opens up after level 5, but it is also harder to make you’re own little snowflake since a lot of these archetypes have prerequisites that are quite difficult to achieve. E.G, my ranger can lean into archer (from the fighter class) quite easily since they both use a bow, but can’t be a vampire unless they are already a Dhamphir or the GM allows it and can’t use a magical archetype without a high enough stat (attribute or skill) and corresponding feats/other archetypes.
That’s my experience anyway, I know other people love to figure out ways to break the system.
That's an interesting take. I have a copy of the core rules but haven't really taken to it. It reminds me of 3.5 because it was great in terms of player options and customization, but kind of a nightmare to DM, especially at higher levels. Have you GMed Pathfinder? Does that match your experience?
@@JackMcCarthyWriter I haven’t played Path1e (outside of crpgs) or GM any game (not for me). But the way I look at the classes is that they’re a toolbox and the feats and archetypes are the tools that go in it and you use all of it to build a character.
Just based on the crpgs I can see how much of a nightmare 3.5 could be, but 2e seems a lot easier since most level ups are fixed (you don’t get 3 attribute points and pile everything into dex, you get 3 points that you can use to upgrade attributes by a set amount). I really recommend it as a system and I want to bolt a few more for a setting I have planned.
Thought-provoking livestream, as always.
All the best campaigns I GM/play in are very slow in character ability/skill/attribute/power advancement. It's one of the things that makes these games great. Focusing on advancement sucks, unless I'm playing D&D, in which case it's kind of the point and doesn't suck.
D&D is what it is, and it facilitates a certain type of game that provides a certain kind of experience. I love D&D but only for playing a game that is supposed to feel like D&D, if that makes sense. The more grounded and realistic (even in a fantastical context) types of games need other systems.
GURPS is BEAUTIFUL! I LOVE HER *shows you ugliest dog you've ever seen*
Stars/Worlds/Cities Without Number actually use d20 for Attack and Saving Throws, but use 2d6 for Skill Checks. The Gaussian Distribution resolves the swingines of the d20 and cuts down the math.
Also, a lot of people love them for the GM facing tools, the tables for sandbox campaigns and faction background play. In Stars Without Number the GM can play mini-games between sessions and generate what the factions did and how they interacted.
It's a frequent occurance that people that don't play the system get the books for the GM tools. Those are pretty much system neutral. Think of these games as a more "gameist" counterpart to ACKS 2e's "simulationism".
I don't see a problem with this in terms of games that actually take the time to figure out the math at every level (example: pathfinder 2, not at all pathfinder 1). The entire narrative of your bog standard heroic journey's narrative of farmhand to legendary hero is well represented precisely because the math encourages struggle at all levels (often with deadlier threats at higher levels). As a recent youtube video painted, the pathfinder 2 level 1 fighter that started out unable to even hit the dragon burning his village ends the campaign being able to periously take him on.
About your point on having multiple splats in your game (Having mages, werewolves, etc in your vampire game), I do understand not wanting them to intermingle, but It could be argued that having the occasional glimpse into another splat could enhance the setting and make your players realize that there are other threats that can either make them fall in line or be a potential big bad. A sabbat pack might become acquainted with the technocrats if they're particularly open about their monstrous actions, a wraith might interact with a Giovanni (or the rare tremere that knows necromancy) and make a deal, a camarilla coterie might take a wrong turn in the woods and encounter a werewolf, etc. I think that can make the world feel more lived in and give it life IF DONE RIGHT.
Saying that, there are people who insist on running games with mixed splat parties, all I have to say is "I hope you have a fun session or 2", because i'm damn sure that will end up as a clusterfuck, especially if you put a vampire, the thing that most other supernatural creatures view as an abomination, in the party.
Another thing, I do think, on paper, the Giovanni are fine, cool even. In my mind, the big reason why the Giovanni can remain independent is the same reason why the Tremere, a clan that was insanely hated at one time, was able to not be wiped out, and that is magic. If Thaumaturgy is the reason the Tremere lasted so long despite having enemies on every corner, It stands to reason the Giovanni would have been fine after doing something similar. I understand not liking necromancy, I've never played a necromancer vampire and I may never do so, but in my opinion, it's better than just lumping a bunch of clans into the "Hecata" and making them minor variations of the same clan because streamlining.
In any case, Love your work guys.
"Aren't there actually more productive things you could be doing?" Couldn't the same be said for any TTRPG? I don't think I have, ever, sat down to a gaming table, with the thought of being productive. I can understand why Solo RP would not be for you two. It seems to me that you have, at least, a couple of groups to play with, working with a selection of genres. However, speaking for my self, my group is primarily a 5e group. And, I can't stand D&D 5e as a game (nor WOTC as a company. I don't want to give them oxygen on any level). So, it pretty much is my only port in that particular storm.
Call of Cthulhu is awesome in campaign play and character really matters, CoC really calls for players to roleplayer more than most other games.
Why play long term? Immersion in setting and development of factors beyond one character. Story extended beyond the individual through the individual.
Solo play isn't the *same* thing, but it is it's *own* thing. Hitting the solo flow state is a challenge to achieve and doubly so to maintain, but when you're in it it's almost perfect immersion. Actually, I find the roleplay aspect of play to come very naturally and spontaneously.
It's definitely not for everyone, but it is a legitimate style of play whose roots go back to the beginning of the hobby. You either grok it or you don't, and that's fine.
I don't grok it but haven't given it a solid try yet. NightDanger has a similar view to yours and we agree with him on a lot of things, so we will see if he can convince us
The Uncle Ruckus comment floored me
Recent D&D (and perhaps Pathfinder) developers determined the level range that was most frequently played in, and how long campaigns tended to run, on average. It was just powerful enough to get stuff done, but not overwhelmingly in favor of the PCs. Players enjoy challenges far more than cake walks, and at a certain point the challenge may not feel genuine or natural, but instead forced and contrived.
Advancement should (ideally) be relevant to the emerging narrative of the adventures the Characters are partaking of. Advancement should (ideally) also require in-world time (to train, study, practice). Small improvements over time, as opposed to big improvement dumps at arbitrary or plot intervals.
Using XP can be good, as it allows the Players to make mechanical development choices for their Characters. Though, when those choices are not relevant to prior in-game play, seemingly "out of the blue" to make a specific "Character Build", it seems a bit contrived. On that, perhaps it can be justified that the Character is good at it, but it simply hadn't come up yet. Front-load the most probable, and back-load the lesser needed skills over time, during play and claim they were always there when the incidence does eventually arise.
-
I was in a 5e D&D campaign, levels 1-20, milestone. We didn't manage to take downtime, the action just kept going without a break. We made level 20 in about 68 adventuring days, which is over twice as fast as the expected/recommended pace in the DM Guide. Was still a fun campaign, but from the advancement perspective, it didn't really justify - it felt wrong and rushed, despite about 6 sessions per level-up. Accounting for "dialogue heavy" (Crit Role style..), it may have been equal to 2 sessions per level up had it been "dialogue lite".
-
I'm thinking that advancement is difficult prospect. In a game, it gets gamified, but may lose a bit of realism/immersion/verisimilitude in the process. It loses integrity when it doesn't tie to what is actually happening in the emerging story. The advancement needs to make sufficient sense.
There are certainly tRPGs, cRPGs, JRPGs, aRPGs, that do the bulk gains at level up, but others that do incremental gains for accomplishing a specific level of mastery in a single skill or ability. The latter appeals to me a bit more, but everyone will have their own tastes.
OD&D and AD&D's leveling system developed out of wargaming. The idea of 'role-playing' in the sense that people do it now was not quite the same. For these games it was a secondary consideration and even though it happened, the wargamming aspect was still primary.
The level based system supported the wargame orientation of these games and if you really read the AD&D rulebooks in detail this is obvious. It's simply a different style of play.
However, it definitely doesn't support the same type of character development that people have come to expect today. It's an emergent character development through trial and survival whereas most gamers today want the special snowflake character from day 1. The typical consequence of this is that they don't want their character to do die, so now you have all kinds of games where any kind of risk/reward is mostly nonexistent.
I'm not a big fan of level based games as they're kind of harder to do long term campaigns with (at least for me). You have to "plan" the campaign and account for the zero to superhero approach, or just "stop" at some point.
My favorite advancement is with % skills - as you get better it gets HARDER to get better (which is realistic), but at some point you're just as good as a person can be at that thing.
there's tons of things I love about cypher but it's really built for limited campaign. At the end any character can succeed at any impossible task.
I love gumshoe but it's really hard for players' to figure out what to spend their 6 dots of X investigative skill on.
It's been many years since i heard anything about Rein dot Hagen. Last i heard he had moved to Georgia (country) around the time the Russians invaded it. Circa 2008?
I'm working on a brp game. How many skills are too many? >9000?
What do you think about MCDMs Draw Steel (I hate that name so very much) only going to level 10? Is that a thing still.
Shout out to Night Danger for defending solo play
Oh oh, i feel so hurt, my heart is broken, so much hate for solo play lol
Harmony Ginge? Does Ginny Di have a challenger to her crown?
Pathfinder 2e classes are more confusing and convoluted than any other RPG system. Not even taking into account the labyrinthine combat crap you have to keep track of. Way too many classes. You only need 3 or 4. Warrior, Thief, Wizard, and Cleric if you're going to have classes at all.
That's fine if you don't like Solo, but don't bash people who enjoy it or say it's invalid. That's BS. I love playing in a group and I even have a group, but we can only meet once a week and only for a few hours, but sometimes I want to try different systems and play different types of games that wouldn't mesh well with my group. Pick up groups online are hit and miss and yeah, you can find a great group but you can also end up in a real disappointing game. You fellas have good RPG groups and experiences that's great, but don't shit on people who find it to be their preferred method to engage in the hobby.
@@stevelucido266 how about I keep saying whatever I want and you continue to be powerless to stop me.
@@blacklodgegames okay, wasn't sure what to make of you guys. I can handle opposing viewpoints (that was me voicing my own), but I see what kind of kids you are and now I'm sure you guys are worth blocking.
@@stevelucido266 goodbye!
What I find lost in modern conversation are that TTRPG are on a sliding scale between their origins as table top wargames and roleplaying. Rules and mechanics support one side of the spectrum or the other but the best games have a balance.
While some games "encourage" one side of play or another whomever is the rules arbiter (DM/GM/Storyteller, etc) determines when they are brought forward. So to say PF2E roleplay is "bad" simply isn't true. I have seen great roleplay in grossly crunchy games like Champions and the inverse in in Vampire the Masquerade where the Gangrel's sole purpose was built to fight.
At the end of the day what the table wants out of it's system is what matters. Our table want's to level up; they want perceived power whether by skill, items, prestige, or "in game power" such as lands and titles.
The issue with skills only levelling systems often there is no transition to the dramatic. Having an 80 melee skill compared to 50 is dramatically different on your chance to hit; but what you can do with a "number" is limited until it empowers/allows some form of stunting, combined with a feat, etc. otherwise it remains simply a higher chance to hit that one other guy and remains mundane and you miss out on the epic nature of fantasy.
Note on Traveller - you dont HAVE to play the starship get out debt spreadsheet game, which turns the game into ALL about managing cargo/jumps/mission to erase the debt. Just use the other systems and hand waive that side of gameplay or make it a story aspect.
The only reason you should be missing out on the epic nature of fantasy when using a skill based system is if 1) you aren’t using your character’s skills creatively and you either 2a) don’t have a creative GM and/or 2b) don’t have an epic fantasy setting. It’s not because the system is skills only, it’s all in the way the game is run and played.