Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

I was obsessed with D&D in junior high and high school despite never actually playing for more than a few hours. I had binders full of NPC character sheets, a multiple continent world designed (which included, among other things, Middle Earth and Prydain plus many modules, both the letter-number'd ones and modules from Dragon magazine.

In college, there was a group who played in the dorm lounge and hearing them play, I ended up losing interest in the game. My imagination of how the world I'd designed would come out and the reality of a game just didn't conform to each other.

View on HN

There are so many different ways to run games. It can be disheartening to see people play very energetically to what is essentially one's own point of least interest.

Maybe it's similar to seeing someone speed run a video game where you mainly go for the sensory thrill of taking it slow. And you feel some pressure to get "better" but it doesn't exactly sound fun. Maybe something like that, anyway...

Personally I like to house-rule away just about everything that bugs me about any given game, if I like the setting for example. (And I also appreciate games with optional rules like "here are some ideas for making this game more heroic and less depressing for your PCs")

For example I was using one system and realized the writer didn't care very much about how one weapon differed from another, except in terms of raw damage. So I found a way to take the game in the complete opposite direction and I called my rules framework PaG, for "Play as Gun." (As opposed to playing as a character)

Every rule that the original game used for creating baroque characterizations was applied across to weaponry, and then ammunition. I started getting into all kinds of crazy smart ammo and it was a lot of fun.

This got me thinking of the idea of Ammo As Character in which you could effectively write up your ammunition as an archetype and play it as a character in the game.

That world got really cool fast, IMO. And mostly just to me. But that own-world, own-prefs stuff is a huge part of TTRPG culture.

Weapons functioning the same is mostly about playability. A player can learn their character class and then be set, if they find a new weapon they don't have to learn a new class. But if the complexity lies in the weapon it means that every time a characters weapon breaks or they have to use something new, their entire playstyle now changes and they have to learn new rules, that really slows things down and most players aren't that interested in reading about the rules of new things. Even the basic character rules in dnd are said to be too much for newbies.

Having more complex weapon behavior like that works much better in computer games where players can just play without having to understand what things does.

There are roleplaying systems that do embrace the complexity (and well beyond CPRG).

Here's an "attack table" for one specific weapon in Rolemaster: you roll a 1-100, add and subtract a whole lot of offensive and defensive bonuses and end up with a result like "15DK" -- 15 hit points of damage and a severity D critical hit on the K (Crushing) table. The broadsword can give both Crushing and Slashing criticals. That again has 20 random outcomes such as "Strike lower level; tear tendons. Foe is at -25%. +3 hits. Foe is stunned and unable to parry next round"

https://i.stack.imgur.com/SPCmu.png

Rolemaster? That's rules light. Try Hârnmaster:

https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/hulk-smash/hrnmaster...

https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/images/14470f59529fa...

Holy flashback to my 90s gaming days!

Rolemaster is probably my favorite system, to this day. Had a devil of a time finding anyone to play it with though. Somewhere around here I have a couple boxes full of ICE Rolemaster books. I like the complexity, and the ability to run either a low power or a high power game.

I still think ShadowWorld (the main Rolemaster campaign setting) is the most detailed and well put together setting I've ever seen.

Just checked, ICE and Rolemaster are still going.

I think I'd love to play, I just wouldn't want to GM... ever!

I found that FantasyGrounds virtual table top platform supports Rolemaster, automating much of the table lookup and rolls (no more sticky notes marking pages with certain tables). I haven't tried it myself, but have read good things. Virtual table top platforms (FantasyGrounds, DNDBeyond, etc.) are an interesting market to examine the history of, from inception to the success they currently enjoy.

I know some people like those hyper crunchy systems but they're just not for me. It always feels like they're better suited for the backend system for a computer rpg where all the tables and math can be simplified away.

I agree, if you have to consult 50 charts and formulas to calculate damage in a single round of combat that's going to slow the game down too much. No need to go full computer rpg though, I could see a DM pulling out a laptop and writing some scripts to handle some of the math while keeping the rest of the game tabletop though.

That could ease some of the burden yeah but you still have to know the tables pretty well to be able to predict and plan what your combat is going to look like.

Yeah, that strikes me as much too complex. I like the games where you get something like ‘3 damage points, pick any effects you want (optionally limited per weapon type) or just pure damage’

Easiest way to avoid that: don't let weapons break and only introduce new weapons when players ask for it.

The rules shouldn't be a straightjacket dooming the players to a death spiral of despair and boredom. Especially so if they're your own houserules.

Personally I don't even understand why people buy rulebooks anymore. Just for the art I presume, or to cannibalise for their own systems and settings.

I played back in the day. I was terrible, insisting on omnipotent characters and unable to accept misfortune.

If I were ever to return to play, I would aspire to have disposable characters die glorious deaths and weave an epic tragic tale instead.

My brother was much better than me. He was a Dungeon Master. Now he writes fantasy novels.

Today D&D 5e is made for powerful fantasy heroes that rarely die and earn XP by killing things. If you aren't aware there is a whole movement called "osr" which put more emphasis on finding treasure in very dangerous situations. There is even a game called Dungeon Crawl Classic that suggest doing a "funnel" to create new characters: each player starts with 3/4 weak characters. At the end of the dungeon you pick your official character among the survivor.

Osr authors have produced many wonderful books. Definitely worth checking out. So games like OSE are carbon copies of older games. Other like knave try to modernise and streamline things while keeping the spirit.

It's a bit complicated what OSR is about and to be honest I'm very confused about it.

There seem to be two categories of OSR games, as far as I can tell.

One is a category of games that are more or less faithful reproductions of some pre-3.0 edition of D&D rules, without any setting information. This is possible apparently because of an (untested?) understanding that rules cannot be copyrighted.

Most of those games are free downloads. Just the ones I have on my drive:

  OSRIC (Old School Reference and Index Compilation)
  Dark Dungeon (2nd ed. D&D?)
  Labyrinth Lord (1st ed)
  Old School Essentials
  Swords and Wizzardry
  Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland (1st ed. BX)
  Lamentations of the Flame Princess
  Lightmaster
  Dungeon Crawl Classics

Some or all of those games are referred to as "retro-clones".

As far as I've read up, DCC and Lightmaster seem to be the ones that depart the farthest from the original rulesets.

The other category is a category of rules-light, low-effort games that are often no more than a commentary on D&D and TT-RPGs in general, sometimes in zine format.

I don't want to give too many examples of those because my description probably sounds disparaging enough, but see this link for some such games (or "games"):

https://liberludorum.com/2021/03/29/sword-satire/

And I'm probably missing a few categories of OSR games. For instance, The Black Hack, Rogue, Troika and Into the Electric Bastionland seem to be OSR, but I haven't had the chance to read them and figure out what they're about. Anycase, the OSR movement seems to have started around the time of this essay:

"A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming"

https://archive.org/details/a-quick-primer-for-old-school-ga...

If anyone understands what OSR is, or means, better than I do, please help because I'm just confused. I don't even know what the comonly accepted definition of the "OSR" acronym is supposed to be (or if one exists even).

To speak to Troika just a bit as someone who read the rule book and played like one session:

A lot of the Troika book is character profiles/archetypes/etc. if you tell someone this is a wild game, make up your craziest character, they will probably not be as “out there” as the provided archetypes. You roll 2d6, and get a refined alien cannibal (well, not exactly a cannibal, I guess, someone who wants to eat other characters) or a character that has become “enlightened” (chemically, surgically? I can’t remember) to the point they have very little thought. So anyway, between wacky characters and wacky skills, that’s what in the troika book. Some simple rules, No setting aside from a one session adventure, but flavorful skills and character ideas.

Thanks! I kind of got that sort of vibe from descriptions of Troika I found online, but I looked for a quickstart and couldn't locate it, so I wasn't sure.

What I don't understand is what common elements Troika and Electric Bastionland, for example, share with Dungeon Crawl Classics or Old School Essentials. They seem to me like completely different kinds of game, in tone, mood, rules, and everything else besides.

Not that this is a bad thing, I just get confused about what's OSR and a bit frustrated that it seems a bit cliquey in the end. Like you gotta be an insider to get it and if you don't get it then you don't need it explained.

I think the troika connection to OSR is somewhat tenuous, but the game system is inspired by the Fighting Fantasy series of “interactive” novels that were popular in the UK in the 80s. But I think it is essentially a cliquey thing. It is general approach or attitude, plus just who is friends with a game designer that makes something OSR. It’s a scene.

It's not just a kookie idea they've come up with though it's coming from Baker v Selden and the Copyright Act of 1976 which says:

> In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work

The core rules have no copyright protection and it's "untested?" because the language of the law and the interpretation of it is pretty clear and consistent.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law...

There's a trend for the latter category to be renamed Free Kriegsspiel Revolution (see https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2500148/ancient-roleplaying... for a writeup). Kriegsspiel is a Prussian term for refereed war games, developed to enable better training for their army; the original free kriegsspiel movement arose because the rules felt too constrained.

These are not really all satires, although I like that post about satirical games a lot.

The Quick Primer is about as good a general definition of OSR as you're going to get.

That's pretty much it, they're for the most part strongly D&D flavoured RPGs with relatively simple mechanics. They're in many ways more inspired by pre-AD&D editions of the game and partly a reaction to the complication of the game and move away towards general skill mechanics in 3rd Edition. The designers of the 5th edition of D&D consciously took on board some of the attitude and game design culture of OSR.

The principle of having disposable characters is something I like about the new Alien RPG. It definitely helps that the adventures / campaigns are well-written.

the OG disposable-characters RPG is Paranoia. Friend Computer has 6 clones of you in reserve for your messy demise!

Any that I can buy? One of my favorite novel series is based off a gaming session: the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

He's written a few. Damnation Kane, the story of a time-traveling pirate, is my favorite:

https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Damnation-Kane-I/dp/138779...

> Damnation Kane: Irish pirate captain, born in 1650 to an English Puritan and an Irish druidess. Through means mystical and mysterious, somehow Damnation finds himself, with his ship The Grace of Ireland and his crew of scalawags, in strange seas. His ship damaged by battle and by storm's fury, Captain Kane and his men seek a safe harbor; in the process they make dangerous new enemies, and tensions among the crew worsen. Because they do not know where they are, nor how they came to be there. Is it Hell? An undiscovered country? The land of the Fae? No: it is Florida. In the year 2011.

The novel isn't D&D swords and sorcery, but my second favorite scene is fantasy-like, where Kane's druidess mother casts an elaborate spell in a desperate attempt to contact him across the sea and centuries. (My favorite scene is where the pirates invade a Home Depot, and the guy with no thumbs swinging chains attacks a table saw...)

D&D definitely played a role in developing his narrative talents. Amazing game.

Sounds interesting. Time shenanigans is one of the bingo square prompts this year on /r/fantasy, so I wanted to check this one. Any reason why Kindle edition is not available?

> Any reason why Kindle edition is not available?

Dunno why it's not on Amazon, but it's available as an eBook on SmashWords in several different formats including mobi (Kindle).

https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/33132

The first 8 chapters can be read for free on the SmashWords web reader:

https://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/823124/1/the-adven...

> Time shenanigans is one of the bingo square prompts this year on /r/fantasy

Oho?

The full title is "The Adventures of Damnation Kane Book I: Out of Place and Out of Time".

Here's a teaser (the story is mostly told from the perspective of Kane as a ship's log):

> But that thing that I saw when we came in sight of the shore! I thought it was a part of the land: the White Cliffs of Dover on the shore of the New World. Until it moved. Until it blew smoke from its back, like the spume of a whale, and sounded a horn that could have drowned out Gabriel’s trumpet, and then it sailed across the bay before us. Against the wind. Against the tide.

> It was a hundred feet high, two hundred. Pure white, shining like the clouds in a summer sky. It would have stretched from one end of the village where my mother raised me to the other, and beyond. It was smoking – there was fire on it – fire, the curse of ships, the terror of all sailors. And it sailed through the waves, without sail, without oars.

> I looked through my glass and I saw the faces of the men and women aboard. I saw children. They smiled.

> I looked at its bow and I saw written there in letters as tall as a man, “GRAND PRINCESS.”

> It was a ship. A ship the size of a mountain.

> We are in Hell.

Thanks for the links and teaser. I'll check it out :)

Here's the /r/fantasy bingo: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/ttrev1/official_rf...

"Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey", LOL. Any other D&D-adjacent novels on your bingo board?

Yeah, I read "Morcster Chef" (https://www.goodreads.com/series/341256-morcster-chef) for non-human main character square. A light hearted fun series about an orc who loves cooking.

I think that's the case too for 'The Expanse'. It seems it followed the path role game -> books -> tv show.

At the moment of watching the show I didn't realized but, after learning the fact, it was obvious that I had been watching a role campaign.

There is a new animated series on Amazon Prime Video based on a role playing session too: The Legend of Vox Machina

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Vox_Machina

I’d loosely describe it as Final Space set in Middle Earth. Though I found the humour far less forced than in Final Space.

And very well written one at that!

Malazan fan here too! Coincidentally, Erikson and Esslemont are also Canadians like the OP :)

Before I went back to software development I found myself in some national task forces for enterprise architecture in the public sector, and as such got to do a lot of speeches on it at different conventions. For around the first year I literally had to do the presentation for myself. In the beginning I spent an entire day talking to the mirror, otherwise my presentation would be terrible. After a couple of years of it, I can now pull a presentation out my ass on the spot about basically any subject of which I have a solid foundation of knowledge.

I imagine game mastering to be a lot like that. Except when playing a game or D&D you also have a bunch of people participate in your presentation. I think you may have skipped the practice part a little too much, but I’d encourage you to get into to it as a player because it can be really fun with the right group.

I personally play AD&D with a bunch of other 35-40+ year olds, and the primary reason is to spend a few Saturdays each year drinking beer. Basically the reason for which I play blood bowl. The stories we go through are better than playing Baldurs Gate was though, largely thanks to our game master and the fact that nobody is too serious, and maybe because AD&D wasn’t designed to be as forgiving or “your character is now a God” as the modern systems. Anyway, we found our group through Facebook, and while there are two sets of “friends” in it half of it are solo players who joined us, so it’s certainly possible for you to find something if you look!

I've always thought there was an opportunity for professional dungeon masters. If you live in a large city, or think you can pull it off in Zoom, I am sure there is a market for a very curated and polished experience for players. I'd imagine there are hundreds of people out there that are really really good at this, just as there are really good speakers, narrators, and voice actors.

Yep..that's happening already

https://www.polygon.com/22525941/how-to-hire-a-dungeon-maste...

Then she saw the section for pay to play games, hosted by professional Dungeon Masters (DMs), that typically cost between $5 and $25 per session.

That quote makes it sound like peanuts, but it's per player:

> she runs about eight to 10 games a week, charging six to seven people $15 each for four hours of 5th edition D&D.

So $900/week for forty hours, a $45k self-employed job that a lot of people would be happy with if it lasted.

I started lecturing at the university at the same time as I picked up D&D again. I think both activities helped each other out. But I felt a bit like a living circus, pulling elaborate acts out of my head almost every day.

Dungeons and dragons groups lies somewhere on the spectrum between improvised theatre to strict rules boardgame. If you imagined it to be anything other than that you will be disappointed. But if you want one of those you can always find such a group, just note that most people are really bad at improvised theatre, so you need to find bad acting to be funny to enjoy it so you might not like it even if you like stories.

> somewhere on the spectrum between improvised theatre to strict rules boardgame.

And players can range from mildly disinterested in combat to tryhard min-maxers. Similar vein, but finding a group with the same overall style is helpful both from a balance and a fun perspective.

That was pretty much how I was. Played a little in middle school, but picked up an obsession with RPGs. I'd buy pretty much any RPG I could get my hands on and read through the rules, roll up characters, think about a campaign, but do nothing. Later this would translate into playing virtually every MMPORG that came out but only for the first few levels. At some point I realized I just liked understanding the systems, but didn't enjoy the games, particularly the social element. The upshot though was mastering all those rule systems prepared my brain for a career in programming. I now play around with programming languages the way I used to play around with MMPROGs and I enjoy digging around in cloud deployments the way I used to enjoy reading RPG lore.

This was me except with Vampire: The Masquerade. I had binders full of characters, all of the clan novels and trilogies, and held a repository of V:tM lore knowledge in my head. Used to doodle shadow tentacles onto little characters I made in notebook margins. I would argue on forums about what clan characters would be that borrowed liberally from the game’s aesthetics and settings (Blade and Underworld being the most egregious)

This was when I was in middle and high school. I’m 34 now and I’ve still not played a single game lol.

Having played the game (and the other White Wolf games), I think you maximized the possible enjoyment there. I really didn't care for the 'game' part of it, but the world building was amazing!

In junior high I was absolutely obsessed with character creation for some reason. I just built characters all the time to the point that I was creating my own classes too.

I have no idea why. Just a weird phase I experienced.

Looks like you were more into worldbuilding and maybe the bookkeeping/accounting. Those are their own kind of fun.

Sounds like you want to DM rather than play. Build that world! Get some friends together who might have an interest.

You might have liked the white wolf games better. A bit more slack in world building and what happens :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com