Game Mechanical Musings

[athelind]

In a recent post, doc_mystery betrayed his grognard roots by arranging the Attributes of his newly-generated Dungeons & Dragons character in the Aulde Manner (STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA), rather than the moderne trend of assigning Physical Attributes First (STR, DEX, CON), followed by Mental Attributes (INT, WIS, CHA).

This, of course, led my mind into other realms, drawing parallels betwixt the Attributes of Body and those of Mind. The Moderne Manner retains some measure of the Aulde arbitrary nature; I would, were I involved in the design and redesign of that hoary system, propose arranging the attributes functionally:

     BODY     MIND    FUNCTION
     DEX      INT     How precise you are, physically and mentally.
     STR      CHA     How forceful you are, physically and mentally.
     CON      WIS     How much you can endure, physically and mentally.

This owes something to the old DC Heroes mechanics, and suggests an approach to task resolution in which the parallels are more deliberately drawn. Having little interest in this particular game, and seeing no convenient application to the system of my preference, Your Obedient Serpent shall leave the details as an exercise for the class.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

Like lots of people I've daydreamed about making a game system, and in my case I always figured you'd have four categories - body, mind, social, movement - and each of those would in turn have a couple of stats assigned to them. I do like the way you break things down here though.

You know, the old order (str-int-wis-dex-con-cha) is one of those things from my childhood that makes absolutely no sense, now that I think about it.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've sorta always more or less segregated them in my mind that way in the first place (save for charisma and strength, I never thought of it in the terms you present) -- they were two aspects of the same thing expressed in different ways.

I too prefer Ironclaw, but practically everyone we know has thrown the d20 around enough to look at this and rub a chin in response.

If I ever play d20 again (doubtful, since people don't like players being monster races for some reason), I'll be sure to distill my character's design into this mold.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Players don't like being monster races in d20 because the rules are such a kludge. You have to jump through half again as many hoops to get a character three-quarters as effective.

Rules Endorse Behavior, and in d20, the behavior they endorse is "fit in".

[paka.livejournal.com]

The workaround is to allow people to treat monster levels like any other sort of multiclassing, and to make house rules about the monster levels.

Okay, so; I don't want to play a gnoll because I desparately want all the benefits, I want to play a gnoll because mangy hyena guys are cool. I'd imagine that most other players just want to be drow, svirfneblin, trolls, minotaurs or whatever, because blackskinned elves, bald underground gnomes, huge hulking green slabs of muscle, and gigantic bovine-headed guys are cool. Powergaming isn't the focus although they want their character to have traits of The Fast Moving Dextrous Race, or The Big Race That Hits Things Real Hard, or whatever.

I think allowing players to break up monster levels helps with that, because I don't think the average player cares as much for example, about being a powerful troll, as much as he wants to play a cool fighter who happens to be huge and green, with monster levels as a nifty option for making his huge green fighter even huger and greener.

Which brings up the next problem, as you've noted with the "three quarters as effective" business.

The monster levels SUCK ASS. Even just going through the Player's Handbook, you can see that the designers critically failed their "make game fair" roll here. Just at first level and with no special halfling monster levels, you can make Odo the Wonder Druid while his poor half-orc buddy gets to be sort of strong, real dumb, real ugly, and that's about it. You have to apply house rules to make half-orcs vaguely okay, let alone gnolls and minotaurs and weird stuff with no exceptional benefits.

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

I don't want to play a gnoll because I desparately want all the benefits, I want to play a gnoll because mangy hyena guys are cool

Damn right! That was entirely why I used them in 'Chainmail' -- that and they were fun to paint. I was creeped out by the multiboobed Gnoll Tiefling mini at first, but now she sits next to my computer.

Playing monsters is cool because they're monsters. Even when you're playing a monster with a heart of gold, he still thinks like a monster. My kobold (whom was the only monster PC I ever got away with) was a good guy; but he still was skittish, sneaky, and yappy. I planned on taking a few levels of rouge as time went on, but we never got past a few sessions, due to the GM not wanting such a group of weirdo characters. I was *not* the strange one in the group.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That's why I've ALWAYS played Exotic Creatures, when given the opportunity -- and tend to shrug in disinterest when I DON'T get the opportunity.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Heh. Mike Mignola is on record as saying his rationale for Hellboy is that no matter what else is going on he always gets to draw at least one monster.

Monsters are cool, and being the outsider is cool and thematic. At some point any group of player characters is going to be a travelling circus anyway, so you may as well allow the weird stuff. The exceptions should be rooted in setting rather than rules.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

You know, there's a rationalization I hear now and then that never ceases to baffle me:

"If they made monster races as good as regular PC races, then nobody will want to play the regular races!"

...does anyone really play these games to be ORDINARY?

[paka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and if they made half-orcs vaguely as advantaged as gnomes or halflings, maybe you'd actually see someone play that "regular race" once in a while!

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

YAY! You can be a short human with a beard in one of two flavors, a short human with pointy ears and big eyes, a short human with a potbelly and fuzzy feet (or is it just a really small person in D&D now?), a big ugly human, or just a human! YAY.

I haven't looked at the book that has rules for playing monster races, but I do remember the pain in the ass that was level ajustment, where they dock you a level because you have blue skin and nightvision.

I was more refering to GM's though. Almost every GM I've played with can't wrap their head around wanting to play something outside of the DEGuH (is that right?) lineup. I remember someone accused me of minmaxing when I wanted to play a Kobold sorcerer. Yeah.

I recall in second edition they address this in a very common sense, matter of fact way. The example they gave was a giant. A giant spends way more on food and equipment than a regular PC, can't fit into most buildings, can't get a decent pair of pants, and people are terrified of you and think your friends are all insane. All those are reasons why a giant would have trouble as a PC.

Of course, I had those problems with my kobald. He was in enough heavy clothing to look like black mage (which wasn't a coincidence) and his best friend was a dwarf, so he tended to fit in just enough for people to think he was a halfling when they didn't see the tail trailing out the back.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

You're right -- well, half-right. The rank-and-file gamers assume that people who want to play exotics are looking for ways to rape the rules, not that they want a Role-Playing Challenge that the banalities of the Usual Suspects simply can't provide.

The problem is that the d20 rules were written by people who share that opinion, and not-so-subtly steered toward the "right" way of playing.

[taral.livejournal.com]

Mmm, power, precision, and capacity. :)

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

While I love playing up the roleplaying aspects of such games as Dungeons and Dragons, I'm sure that everyone knows they all come down to numbers. Nowadays, big is good. In 3.5 D&D, no matter how you look at it, 5 is a bad number and 17 is a good number. You start your character idea with a thought in mind to what you'd like to put the good numbers in: obviously the things that class needs and is best off with. Then, you roll your stats and find out you have to compromise. If you average out die rolls, you are likely to get one high, one low, and the other four in 9-12. I don't recall having ever assigned stats via this so-called 'modern trend' of physical before mental, I simply see what would fit best and put it there, or, as I said, compromise. Of course, I've no idea whether or not this helps out anything here, but I just like to talk D&D. Huzzah.

[katola.livejournal.com]

Not sure what this is on about so I'll just ramble. Yay rambling!

While that's a nice setup, I'd like to break it down a bit more so you'd have instead of just body and mind, you'd have: Body, Mind, Social, Magic

(Even though Cha covers this, I've never liked Cha... likely because it's a junk stat in D&D. That and it's a catchall for a fairly complicated bit of stuff.) You don't need to be smart to be good Socially or Magically. This would cover 'magicaly' inclined monsters fairly well as a lot of magic stuff is linked to Int. Or not ... it's been too long, maybe you could have a decent mage with 3 Int as the class levels provide all the spells.

Although... the set up you describe would make it very nice for 'battles of wits' or social shindigs. I like the idea of 'combat' for the mind or at least extended skill rolls, make that player describe how he's charming the dress of the countess, his CHA helping him wear down the countess' WIS, and his INT helping him keep the true conversation above the count's head.

What was I talking about...?

[athelind.livejournal.com]

One reason I liked my Mind/Body Power/Precision/Endurance paradigm was because it Gives Charisma Something To Do.

DC Heroes, if memory serves, had 9 stats, with Power, Precision, and Resistance in the Mind, Body, and Spirit categories.

[katola.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, nicely expanded tri-stat.