The Impending Malifaux RPG

[Kadeton]

I good RPG doesn't ask for anything, it doesn't need a narrative, no matter how good an RPG is it can never tell a story, a good RPG is a tool used by a GM to tell a story

A bad RPG can interfere with a story, preventing the players and GM from building the story they want to tell. Also, with the comment "[A] good RPG... doesn't need a narrative" you have made it clear that we are talking in completely different directions, wavelengths, and perhaps languages. As far as I'm concerned, narrative is everything in an RPG, and if the game doesn't support or encourage it, I play a different game.

[Sliver Chocobo]

A bad RPG can interfere with a story, preventing the players and GM from building the story they want to tell. Also, with the comment "[A] good RPG... doesn't need a narrative" you have made it clear that we are talking in completely different directions, wavelengths, and perhaps languages. As far as I'm concerned, narrative is everything in an RPG, and if the game doesn't support or encourage it, I play a different game.

Yes a narrative is everything in an RPG, but narrative comes from the GM not the RPG. The GM is the story tell, the PC's are the charactors and the RGP is the stage

[Adran]

Well you extrapalated that I wanted a more realistic system to mean a more complicated one. Which wasn't what I said, or meant.

What I meant is I don't want a combat system where the rules put in unrealistic loopholes I have to exploit every turn to make the most of it. The Miniture combat systems I have used often suffer from those positional things being over inflated in importance. I don't know much about DnD 4th, but it seems to have many similarities with 3.5 in that regard.

My personal experience has been that on the whole I have found systems which don't require a board and exact measurements to be simpler. Partly that is because you have to abstract some things which miniture based combat systems can make precise rules on, such as attacks of oppituinity and threat zones.

Yours obviously differs. It could be you and I think differently, or one of us has had unnaturally bad experiences with a certain form of combat.

[Sliver Chocobo]

If you need to exploit loop holes ether you GM isn't very good or the game is unbalanced, the way you want the RPG to be, is asking too much of Wyrd. Yes an RPG should have mobs for you fight, but unlike a skirmish game the PC should never now there stat and it should alway be asymmetrical, differently powerful in different way. It should have NPC, but a good GM will always make there own (unless on short of time)

Now here is the important bit, if you write a narritive for the GM follow, it way be derailed at some point, the Narritive needs to be written on the go by the GM

And on mini's Wyrd is a miniature company, people have been asking for ages for civilian models and alternative sculpts, so yeah don't need to be genus to fugue where the RPG is going

[Metalhed]

If you need to exploit loop holes ether you GM isn't very good or the game is unbalanced, the way you want the RPG to be, is asking too much of Wyrd. Yes an RPG should have mobs for you fight, but unlike a skirmish game the PC should never now there stat and it should alway be asymmetrical, differently powerful in different way. It should have NPC, but a good GM will always make there own (unless on short of time)

Now here is the important bit, if you write a narritive for the GM follow, it way be derailed at some point, the Narritive needs to be written on the go by the GM

And on mini's Wyrd is a miniature company, people have been asking for ages for civilian models and alternative sculpts, so yeah don't need to be genus to fugue where the RPG is going

Perhaps I can give more clarity on the other side of the argument (or more likely not):

The older RPG games (D&D 2nd ed and older, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire the Masquerade etc) had combat systems. These varied in their details, but there was no requirement for minis. There was nothing saying you could not use them. The games were successful (in varying degrees) not because of those combat systems but because of the inspiration that inspired from the game play itself.

Many players fear that if you build an RPG that REQUIRES minis the focus will be on utilising the minis in a super efficient fashion, and placement of the minis etc. These are great features about tabletop wargaming, but not necessarily about playing an RPG.

Obviously a great GM can run ANY system. What the old school RPG players are hoping for is an RPG that gives a rich and characterful setting, gives more insight into the world and inspires great roleplaying. Rather than a system that pushes you towards a variant of tabletop wargaming.

Yes Wyrd is a mini company. It is likely that they will create minis that can be used in the RPG. But they have also inspired us with the stories of the world of Malifaux...and people would like to see more of that side.

Personally, I don't care. I will pick it up for the background fluff and ideas and I will probably run it using the GURPS system.

[Adran]

With shifting being a free action and the best way to deal damage is through flanking,

Just for reference sake, thats the kind of rules loophole I was refering to. In this case, slight movements which give you vast bonus's to your damage.

I don't think any of my requests have been unrealistic, in that I want a combat system that doesn't force you to use figures, and thus get tied up in the minutia that I have found occurs in those systems.

I would probably buy figures for the game anyway, I just don't want to have to use them.

[Sliver Chocobo]

Just for reference sake, thats the kind of rules loophole I was refering to. In this case, slight movements which give you vast bonus's to your damage.

I don't think any of my requests have been unrealistic, in that I want a combat system that doesn't force you to use figures, and thus get tied up in the minutia that I have found occurs in those systems.

I would probably buy figures for the game anyway, I just don't want to have to use them.

Yes having the ability to jump to one side is a loophole

[DaLoon]

Silver... why so serious? People are simply expressing their hopes for the new game. Why is their opinion any less valid than your own.

We aren't writing the game. We are just talking about it. Doesn't hurt anyone. And if some of us feel that games that are glorified tactical combat simulators are lame... well... It doesn't mean we are saying you're lame for liking them. Just... different. No harm, no foul.

[Forar]

Roleplayers I know do not like 4th edition, most commonly saying things along the lines of "If I wanted to play WoW, I'd play WoW".

Which is funny, because 3.5E has a literal WoW conversion book. Which is to say, that was a trend long before 4E was anywhere near release.

My limited understanding of what they mean is that in 4th edition, it apparently feels more like you have to construct a party like you do in most MMO's with niches that are appropriately filled like tanks and ranged and Damage-melee and healer, etc...

I feel this is a misrepresentation, with earlier editions (3/3.5 in particular, but earlier ones as well) having a much higher emphasis on making sure a heal-bot Cleric was on hand for some of the best results. I played a Cleric in those editions, and memorizing/converting all my spells to various flavours of Heal ____ Wounds was far more 'healer as a role' centric than what 4E did with the abilities, which had both direct healing and healing effects tied to attack abilities as well.

Yes, 4E also introduced more of a 'tank' role to the game, but it made for a nice explanation as to why the (presumably intelligent) monsters would bother focusing on the burly fighter in plate that they couldn't hit, when they could instead just walk over and murder the hell out of the guys in cloth and leather that were generally much more dangerous as well.

And while 4E 'baked in' the idea of having X magic items at Y level to a degree, that certainly shows up heavily in the previous edition as well, perhaps moreso, as everyone strove to have their giant stat bump items, along with weapons and armour. Really not so much different from the "weapon/armour/neck" trifecta of priority gear most characters in 4E tried to keep up on. Sure, D&D/AD&D didn't expect characters to snag giant piles of loot every level, but the D&D DM's guide is like 1/3 dedicated to magic items, artifacts, creating both, destroying the latter, and tables upon tables upon tables of rolling for them. Oh god the tables...

As for party balance, I don't see how codifying that having a Defender (tank), Leader (healer), striker (dps) and controller (crowd control) is all that different from desiring to have variations on a Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard that many groups ended up with in one form or another. "But my groups didn't do that!" Of course, and thankfully most of those classes can be 'built' in such a way that they do more damage, or are harder to kill, or provide significant bonuses to their allies or negatives to their foes, leading people to build groups that lacked a 'true/proper' leader, or defender, or whatever. It wasn't always as efficient, it might take the DM a little effort to make sure their encounters reflected that composition (or not, and let the PC's really understand how useful X role being filled could be), but really at the end of the day what party didn't have X class on hand for scouting/traps, or Y class for healing, or a Wizard. Always with the wizards. >.<

Hell, one of my favourite 4E groups lacked either a 'proper' Defender or Leader; I ran a hybrid Cleric/Paladin, designed to survive a beating and dole out healing as well, if not as effectively at either as someone dedicated to just one might've been.

My favorite D&D was FIRST edition.

The "combat system" was not so detailed that you had to worry about it. The DM just dealt with it and filled in holes for weird situations.

I remember playing parties of ALL thieves and sometimes ALL mages. "Balance" was not a concern, because it was not about balance. It was about deciding the character that you wanted to pretend to be and doing so.

This in some way doesn't surprise me, because Wizards were generally broken by 5th-6th level in everything prior to 4E (pretty much Fireball and on). :-P

But as noted, with the right group, roles could be more of a polite suggestion than a hard and fast requirement. And while balance might not have been a consideration for you or your group, accepting inherent imbalances in the system can lead to issues for the group overall. The DM has to account for some characters/classes simply not being up to snuff, or others being vastly over par, needing to be challenged while hopefully not wiping out the rest of the group at the same time. Even in a cooperative endeavor, it's nice to have everyone capable of contributing, at least to a vaguely similar degree. Personally, I've never met anyone who demanded every have the exact same stats, abilities, skills and feats, but there is a vast disparity between "I deal 1d8+5 damage" and "I can probably kill everything in a 30 foot radius".

I remember hating when "skill systems" started appearing to "help personalize" characters. All it really did was codify and therefore pigeonhole what DMs had been doing anyway, but setting a prescribed and specific list rather than leaving things to the imagination of players and their DMs as had been normal. New players we'd meet really seemed to NEED these "crutches" of having things spelled out in the books and were not comfortable just "making stuff up".

Honestly, this is a predilection of the last 30 years to really start caring so much about rule mechanics and abilities and "class balance". OF COURSE a big bad-ass fighter was better at most things than a little healer cleric. But clerics were fun to ROLE PLAY because they could be Pious or a Zealot or conniving or whatever, and that's where the fun was. (NOT in their relative strength or importance or necessity within the party)

One of the key problems was that the mechanics didn't hold up well over the longer term. While 'martial' classes generally had enhanced survivability and even punch at lower levels, their actions were generally just verbose variations on "I swing my sword" or "I stab the ____ in the back", whereas not too many levels later the casters were raising the dead, summoning spectral creatures to do their bidding, annihilating entire rooms with fire and lightning, and rending the very fabric of existance. The martial classes were still swinging/stabbing away. Having a d4 for HD stops being much of a concern when you can stop time. ;-)

Also known as the concept of "linear martial classes, exponential casters".

Funny side note: it didn't take many levels (at least in 3/3.5) for the Cleric to be able to throw down a couple of buff spells and easily out-fighter the fighter.

It seems to me that generations that grew up with video games and computers in the house need so much more "structure" in their games and what I see of what many call roleplaying these days feels more like Pen and Paper MMO where accomplishing missions is the purpose of the night.

For how things are likely to be considering how ALL RPG's have gone, I don't really suppose this post has a lot of use... I guess I just felt like venting at the "video game generation".

I still have my D&D (old school) books sitting next to my AD&D books, my 3E books and 4E books (skipped 3.5). Personally, I've always advocated that the game is what the DM and players are willing to put into it. Building a measure of equity into the system no more innately restricts players than leaving it purely to DM fiat. If players find it limiting to know that they can do X, Y, and Z, I'm not sure why having zero idea what they can and can't do other than playing a protracted "Mother May I" with the DM is necessarily better. I've heard complaints over the years about 4E stiffling role playing, and yet I never needed a rule book to tell me I was allowed to flirt with a bar maid, bully a corrupt vizier, gossip with the captain of the guard or make nice between warring factions within a nation.

That all said, I do agree that the proliferation of video games has certainly had influences upon game design, and very likely on how many groups play together. However, it's not like having a weekly 'dungeon crawl' was any less feasible 20 years ago. And I have to wonder if the evolution of the market is necessarily influenced as heavily by games, or if it's simply meeting the needs and demands of the playerbase (which I see as distinct things).

I will give the originally mentioned crowd one thing; at its peak, WoW had over 11 million subscribers. I have to imagine that almost any game developer on Earth (not all, but most) would probably sign away their soul for that kind of ravenous demand. Note; I recognize that just because something is popular doesn't mean it's good (I give you: Jersey Shore), but when you're playing to a market, it's generally a bad move to ignore trends that might be the difference between barely breaking even and being lavishly profitable.

Overall, I just hope that the looming RPG scales well to player needs, but respect that as with all things, it cannot please all of the people all of the time. I found the list of influences heartening, personally. My experiences with 4E showed me a system that was highly balanced between classes (both in mechanical terms and progression), and my reading through the Dresden Files RPG books showed me a system with a strong basis in shared story telling, with the players and person running the game alike having input on the setting, the manner in which the history of each character was intertwined with that of others and the world they were collectively designing, etc. As much as I enjoy my 4E days, I don't expect or want the MRPG to be D&D with a reskin, but at the same time I feel that much of the anxiety over that system being mentioned to often be based in hearsay as opposed to experience with the system itself.

It's not like earlier editions were flawless. Prestige classes you had to plan for at level 1 (unless you were okay with getting access to it 4 levels later than you would've anyway), or an 'end game' that basically amounted to "your character builds a tower/temple/keep and retires, please re-roll". >.>

Hrm, silliness levels rising, time for more coffee.

Late edit: also, pardon the Big Block of Text, it was a mix of providing opinion as well as context based on my experience with those 4 editions over the years. While I'm by no means someone who spent 5 years on each or anything, it was noted that some people had minimal or no experiences with 4E aside from second hand info or the (possibly unfounded) opinions of others, whereas I've actually played through a few 4E campaigns, and as such felt qualified to share those experiences. Mine are not necessarily indicative of all play experiences... but "it's totally WoW, isn't it?" is a definite misrepresentation of the system. Some DM's might run it that way, but it's no more inherent to the system than it is any other, in my opinion.

Edited November 14, 2012 by Forar

[nifoc]

@Forar: For me the problem I have with D&D (mostly the later editions, but the older ones have not aged well either) mostly have to do with immersion. The clear division between combat, which is a tactial boardgame, and everything else, breaks immersion for me both as a GM and a player. That, and the fact that combat does not become more exciting as you level up, it just takes longer and is thus more boring, makes me want to skip combat altogether. This also makes me realize that D&D does not have a good rules-set for anything besides combat, and its combat is not a good rules-set for roleplaying. I have DM'ed about 50 sessions in D&D 4e alone, about twice that in 3,5 and only a few sessions in the earlier editions, and roleplayed in about the same amount before making these judgements regarding the game.

I'll admit though, that for a "beer and pretzels"-gamenight it is usually easy to whip up a quick game, but I find myself turning more and more to Descent for a night of dungeonbashing.

@Metalhed: You are correct in that I fear that "correct" placement of miniatures will be more important than using common sense and tactics that I can relate to real-world combat. My experience with miniature based combat also makes me dread the time it takes to set up each combat, in D&D a combat would start out as an hour and then escalate into 2-3 hours at 12+ levels. This makes any combat that is not necessary to the central plot just a waste of A LOT of time. Few games manage to keep combat interesting beyond 5-8 rounds IMO.

[Forar]

@nifoc: No real arguments here. D&D evolved from Chainmail, a miniatures game, if I'm not mistaken. There's little support in any edition for role playing overall (the exception that comes to mind are splatbooks, which are usually just piles of flavour text/fluff with mechanical variations/options intertwined), which is something I feel seveal Storyteller style systems deal with better. The bulk of the rules are based around combat, as violent conflict resolution and hopefully compelling/thrilling/epic battles are an aspect that often needs something supporting it, lest it collapse under its own weight.

Which isn't to say that one can't just roleplay/talk out combat quickly now and then, but if you're going essentially rule-less for the combat and the roleplaying, there's not really much of a reason to be dropping hundreds of dollars on rules books either, well, unless you really like the setting (Rifts is an example of this for me; love the setting, hate a lot of the mechanics, ended up with pages of house rules by the time we were done playing that system, and oh god, it's so very terribly balanced).

And while I agree with you about having a combat system that can be used quickly (and/or at the very least, a DM who understands that not every band of 5 goblins needs to be a 20 min setup and an hour and a half fighting what is going to be an all but guaranteed victory), while the nitty-gritty emphasis on detail (jockying for position, etc) can be great for those 'lieutenant/boss/etc' encounters, where every action could be vital.

It's something the DM and players have to work out though. Too many 'filler' encounters and the group spends untold hours going through the motions. Skip most of those and just go for the meaty stuff and it can be hard to continue topping each battle, and there's something to be said for a mix of 'mid level' fights that simply drain a few resources (consumables/ammo/potions/scrolls/healing surges/spells/etc) and possibly give the players a chance to use their abilities in impressive ways that might be harder to fit into fights that are already designed to be highly challenging (economy of actions and whatnot).

[Jonas Albrecht]

There's very little information to go on at this point, but I'm intrigued by the notion of Fate in the RPG.

This is baseless imagination, but what if part of character creation is that your character has certian fate junctions that are supposed to come up during play, that can either be fought or embraced?

[WalkingInBlack]

Have there been any infomation about if you can be something else then just Human?

[Omenbringer]

The kickstarter page seems to strongly imply that all the factions will be playable.

[Sliver Chocobo]

The kickstarter page seems to strongly imply that all the factions will be playable.

There's no mention of the ten thunders

[Mister_Q]

There's no mention of the ten thunders

Shhhh ... it's a secret!

[Omenbringer]

There's no mention of the ten thunders

Well they are all dual faction models so...

They are probably in their hidden infiltrating the other organizations mode.

[Da Big Baws]

There's no mention of the ten thunders

Obviously the Ten Thunders will come in a future supplement. Duh.

:-P