I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I don't particularly want to see the new edition of D&D be set up with the traditional three-book model (PHB, DMG, MM), and the resulting 1,000 page monstrosity of a ruleset. Over on ENWorld, I've been advocating quite strongly for a one-book model - the game being presented as a single 250-ish page Core Rulebook. My argument is that if the game is so complex it cannot be presented in that space, with a decent set of options no less, then it is simply too complex, and should be simplified.
However, it's worth nothing that that is actually not my ideal presentation of an RPG. It's just that the format I would prefer is... radical.
The starting point for my preferred format is the new(ish) D&D "Red Box" - the starter set for the "Essentials" version of D&D. Great box, but in truth not a great (or even very good) product.
So, take your Red Box in hand. Now, open it up and tip out all the contents - the tokens, the battlemat, the dice, the booklets, and even that cardboard insert that exists to make it seem like the box has more in it than it actually does. With the sole exception of the dice, you can now get rid of those contents; we won't need them again.
Now...
The goal is this: it should be possible to fit everything you need for an entire campaign into the box. Rulebooks, dice, character sheets, the lot. And no, you can't put an internet-capable device in there and put the whole thing online!
Bluntly, RPGs took a wrong turn when they moved from boxed sets (waaay back in the old days) to hardback books, and those books have been growing progressively larger and more ornate ever since, bloating the games up beyond all reason. Conceptually, these are simple games - you declare what you want to do, you roll dice according to some simple rules, and get the result. Amazing how we've managed to mess that up.
So, what goes into the box?
First up, drop in the character sheets, the dice, and a pencil. That's the practical stuff out of the way.
Now, present the rules in the form of five (optionally, six) slim booklets, as follows:
- Rulebook: Presents the core mechanics for the game, followed by the rules for the "three pillars" - combat, exploration, interaction. (Since I'm writing primarily for a skilled audience, there's nothing much on adventure and campaign design here; if this were a real game, this would also have to go here.)
- Characters: Presents the rules for creating characters at the start of each tier of play, and presents each of the elements of a character (ability scores, races, classes, skills, and feats). In particular, this booklet does not present spells or equipment.
- The Armoury: Presents the equipment for the game, treasure items, magic items, and the rules for artifice. Basically, everything related to those wonderful toys.
- The Grimoire: Presents the spells, ritual magic, metamagic, rules for researching the same, and all rules associated with spellcasting.
- The Bestiary: A collection of creatures malevolent and benign.
- Setting (optional): A booklet outlining the default setting for the game.
Obviously, fitting all of that into a single box is a pretty damn tall order, especially since the game would need to be outlined up to at least 15th level in those booklets. But then, I didn't say it would be easy!
It's also worth noting that I specified that the box should include everything you need for play for those months. Obviously, people who want more should be able to add more to the game, and in particular there is considerable scope for adding miniatures and terrain, or electronic tools to help organise the game.
I think there's a certain amount of genius in this, you know. Purchase this one thing to run the game. I don't know if it does have to do up to 15th level though.
ReplyDeleteI've been pondering high-level characters ever since my game ended. The characters in that ended up 15th level, and a single turn for one character could take 10 minutes when you take into account all of his actions, modifiers, bonuses and GM-calls as to how specific powers or spells relate to one another. It really was horribly complex and slow at the end, and annoyed some of the players, understandably. It annoyed the GM too, since certain players were much worse than others at searching out obscure rule stuff and trying to play right on the edge of the rules for the maximum benefit. This led to a huge number of judgement calls being necessary.
So I've been wondering about a system where instead of accruing powers as we're used to, low level powers drop off as you advance in level. You lose all your first level spells, but who cares because you've got a bunch of kick-ass fifth level ones instead. It would stop magic users having unlimited spells (one of the cool things about them at low level is that they can run out of spells!) but maintain their powerful nature. Fighters lose some of their special attacks (and complexity of how they work together) but gain really cool ones in their place.
How this would work? I'm pondering an idea where the powers accrue for 5 levels (or something) and then at the start of 6th level you completely redesign your character. Keep the base abilities, but are able to reassign skills, feats and powers, choosing fewer powers from the new higher-power list. Or something like that.
I think it would keep the coolness of your character advancing, while taking away all of the rubbish of the complexity of high level characters. Huge number of low level spell debuffs disappear. It also lets you reconfigure your character somewhat for added coolness - so you might have been specialising in the mace from levels 1 to 5, but some time around level 4 you get a magic sword and suddenly from level 6 you're a magic sword wielding, dual weapon fighting (6th level power) badass. Breaks the continuity a bit, but allows players to experiment with cool stuff a bit more. And...in your scenario above, you could just provide the rules for levels 1 to 5 in your box and then sell the supplements for 6-10, etc. And as an added bonus, it makes creating new characters (if yours has died, or you're a GM creating an NPC) much simpler.
It's funny you should mention that...
ReplyDeleteTo a large extent, the complexity in high-level 3e is down to those buffs/debuffs, and the way everything interacts with everything else. In particular, if you drop a Greater Dispel on the party at the start of a combat, you can then spend up to an hour working through all of the buff spells to work out which are removed, and then recalculate the sheet. It can be a real nightmare. (And don't get me started on the polymorph spells!)
Now, from a mathematical/engineering standpoint, I can only admire the stacking rules from 3e. It makes a lot of sense that different things can give different bonuses, and also that bonuses of the same sort don't stack - you only get the best one.
The problem is that in play you then have all of these different bonuses, all of different types, and any of which can change at any time. And when you strip off one spell, that may remove some, all or none of any given part of the total bonus.
4e actually did a great deal of good to clean this up, and I think they took the right lines. In that edition, there are pretty clearly a number of 'fixed' bonuses that you buy with feats, magic items, or whatever. These all stack with each other, and cannot change in play. So, on your character sheet you only need to note the totals. (The exception is the "magic item" one, but that's pretty simple, since it's obvious what happens when you lose your +1 sword.) Then, there is another bunch of in-play modifiers, all of which stack with the 'fixed' bonuses, but which tend not to stack with one another - again, you only get the best one. But that's okay, because there's only one layer to deal with, rather than a dozen or more.
Unfortunately, for everything that the 4e designers made simpler, they found a way to make it much more complex again. The effects in 4e are mostly extremely short-term, as are the conditions, and they keep getting applied, removed, and re-assigned. The upshot is that you never have the one-hour recalculation when someone uses a dispel... but you have a smaller recalculation every single round.
With regard to acquiring powers/rebuilding the character, that is also a thought I've come up with.
ReplyDeleteI've not played a lot of 4e, but I have been able to play at both very low level and quite high level. And the latter was extremely frustrating, because characters had dozens of powers to juggle... most of which were almost useless. The net effect was that what was supposed to be a 'throwaway' encounter for setting the scene ended up taking more than two-and-a-half hours, out of the three-hour game session. It was at that point that I concluded that I just could not tell the stories I wanted to tell in 4e, because the long combats would kill the pace of the story. (And since combat is the one area where 4e really shines, I didn't want to compromise that!)
Of course, high-level 3.5e casters suffer from much the same issue.
My feeling was much the same as yours - that 1st level characters should start with a minimal set of powers, and then gradually acquire more until they reached a maximum load (either at 5th or 10th level). Thereafter, rather than doing a full-scale rebuild, at each level they would choose one of their powers to upgrade to the next tier of effectiveness. So, that fireball wouldn't simply disappear, breaking continuity, but would instead become a greater fireball or whatever.
I felt that that would help make the game more manageable, but it would also help high-level play in another way. At present, the higher levels are under-supported, because nobody plays them. But nobody plays them because they're too complex to just 'jump in' at those levels - you have to spend hours choosing lots of minor powers that you'll probably never use.
Reducing the number of powers definitely reduces this, as you're picking the same number to start at 20th level as at 10th, you just have some upgrades to select. That way, more groups can hopefully 'jump in' at high levels, so more people will play, so WotC might actually bother to publish the support material that high level really needs.
(It is, of course, horribly ironic that high-level play desperately needs more support because of the increased complexity, but that same lack of support means that fewer people play it, and because fewer people play it it isn't worth them providing support for it!)
Yeah, greater dispel. The joy.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the beauty and logic of the stacking rules. I remember reading them and thinking "that makes sense - woo!" Now, if there was some kind of nice computer program or smartphone app that could keep track of the bonuses and bonus types at high level it might make it possible, but it's just impossible on paper.
The problem with the "upgrade" system you outline above is that then the "cool - new ability" factor disappears. Fireball just does 10d6 damage instead of 5d6. May I suggest that since you're focussing on learning the "Kill everything" spell, that you just forget how to cast "sleep" because you're never practising it any more? So all of your 1st level abilities are lost at 6th level, but instead you get your 6th level abilities. "Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain" from then on. If you lose "fireball" the new stuff might be "enhanced fireball" but it might be "enforced funky chicken".
Same thing works for fighters with their special fighting moves, and jazz like that.
Perhaps, also, abilities should not increase their damage by level either. Fireball just does 4d6 damage, whether the caster is 3rd or 8th level. It's just one of the most powerful in his repertoire at 3rd, but one of the least at 8th. Then they wouldn't miss it so much. And it deals with the other pesky problem of some spells increasing in power as you go through the levels, while other ones don't.