/tg/ - Traditional Games

>>225666

Nice trips.

Each system has its positives and negatives. If you're handling a larger party and want to balance assuming thought, competence, co-operation and communication then a class based system will most likely allow your players to focus more effectively.

If you're building a game more along the lines of WoD, focussing on 'Muh Narrative' to the exclusion of most else then a classless system makes more sense as it's a lot less work to set up and you limit the amount of playtesting and balancing you need to do.

>>225666

I like point buy, mainly looking at Mutants and Mastermind's 3e.

Mainly because I don't have to wait for homebrew or official splatbooks for me to create the character, whether PC or monster encounter, I want. You buy the effects, but you attach the descriptor to make it whatever you want without asking "how would I stat this spell or weapon completely from scratch without breaking the game?".

Currently working on a homebrew system that's mainly classless, but there are a number of character archetypes to enhance your character with that you can fall under. Combining them is possible to some degree, but the more you take in one archetype the less powerful you are in the others. These are:

- Techie: A mix of cybertech and biotech to make your character a powerful cyborg with inbuilt weapons, bulletproof skin, flesh and bones, super strength allowing you to carry heavy weapons and other such fun stuff.

- Mage: Fireballs, lightning bolts, gravity fuckery, lasers, mind control and the lot. Magic can be learned but costs mana to cast, which restores after a good night's sleep. It can also be integrated into your very being, allowing it to be cast on the cheap.

- Hybrid: You can turn your limbs or even your entire body into something straight outta Lovecraft. Claws, talons, teeth, tentacles and stingers, oh my.

- Spirit: Allows you to learn all sorts of crazy shit including running up walls, dodge bullets, become next to invulnerable, tell Mages and Hybrids to cut that shit out by puncing them until they stop casting or transform back, or just outright kick a demon so hard in the teeth it goes back to whatever hell it came from.

- Mundane: Don't pick any of the above. You'll be able to spend more skill points and money on other stuff.

Taking anything in the first three will limit how much you can take in the other archetypes (they share a total point pool for that), but any of those three will limit what you can do with the fourth.

>>225686

> Or you get the systems that allow you to hyperfocus on a specific ability and pull off some retarded game-breaking shit.

That's why I prefer arrays to point-buy. Like, you put 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1 in your skills and 4, 3, ,2 ,2 in your ability scores, that kind of shit.

>>225687

to elaborate, I do this because FATE does it instead of having pointbuy. I play games like Savage Worlds where you can just dump all your skill points into a single skill and get a d12 in fighting from the get-go. Which is okay, but it means your character can only advance in Edges from then on. Or GURPS. Why WOULDN'T you dump all your character points into Swordfighting to get a high-as-fuck parry?

>>225708

Not him but I'm pretty sure that's how it works, from what I recall the actual powers themselves are pretty generic but then have a bunch of potential modifiers to customise them and then the game basically leaves it up to the players to describe what exactly is going on with the descriptors/general fluff. So if you wanted to be able to throw fireballs then you'd buy a number of ranks in the Blast power equal to the number of damage you do and say "I can throw fireballs because magic". If you then wanted it to add other side-effects such as hitting multiple targets at once then you buy the right modifiers (and fluff it as something like "I'm firing multiple fireballs at once") and then if you wanted to get a discount on the price of the power you would also attach flaws to it such as it requiring a skill check to use you'd attach the right flaw and then include that in the fluff for the power (I attack by chanting a complex incantation…").

The end result being that the character creation is fairly flexible since the entire system is based around you picking up stuff and then introducing some fluff to explain it.

>>225666

>Using Skyrim as a good example of anything

Hail Satan.

That said, I like both kinds of systems, to a point. A classless system lets me be as off-the-wall with my character as my GM and the system/setting will allow.

A class system, however, lets me slip right into an archetype that I can play to the hilt, subvert in a fun and interesting way, and so on.

A class system with built in flexibility and multiclassing.

The best example of this that I've found so far is Iron Kingdoms, where you choose two classes out of 30+ and make your own character. It's pretty neat.

>>225809

A lot of class systems do tend to be too rigid and limited. Few ever break from the handful of archetypes (swordymans, sneakymans, and magicmans) and most tend to make it prohibitive to multi-class or mix and match, because the underlying mechanics punish you for trying to do something outside of the intended style of play..

And by trying to keep classes restricted and adding in all kinds of caveats and catches, they typically end up creating some sort of paradoxical theorycrafting bullshit like Pun-pun.

>>225817

That sounds pretty neat. I've always liked a more flexible and relaxed system that lets you piece things together on your own and make your own fun combinations. Like playing with Lego and each class is its own set of unique pieces.

That's part of why I like Fantasy Craft. The heavy emphasis on feats as replacement class features makes it so your class doesn't shackle you with strict restraints. You can be a gunslinging mage or a divine caster who does wu-xia martial arts, and in just about every situation, it works perfectly fine.

>>225666

Classes are easier to balance and define solid roles, also are also easy to add flavor and can have much more of a sense of belonging to the world, like how paladins belong to orders, druids to circles and so on

Open systems allow much better customization and freedom, but are much harder to stop min-maxers from breaking the game and also harder for begginers to make a character that doesn't suck balls without guidance

>>225738

Basically, yeah. It's extremely easy to game for maximum power but players who aren't dickheads will start with a concept, then stat that concept, rather than starting with some absurd game-breaking combo and then working backwards to try and come up with a fluff excuse to have those effects.

The only thing, the only thing that class systems add to a game is to make it easier and more accessible for newcomers and casuals.

Now that's not a terrible thing in itself, because newblood is important for our hobby and casuals deserve to have fun in games that cater to them too, but I personally can't stand class systems. Classes make players stupid. They're used as crutches, and they're used as an excuse, they encourage lazy character creation and lazy game design.

>>225881

>The only thing, the only thing that class systems add to a game is to make it easier and more accessible for newcomers and casuals.

Not really, they also complicates min-maxing, as there's always a very great chance of overlook leaving some mighty loopholes.

>>225679

This sounds pretty cool, anon. Would be interested in the fluff.

>>225894

It goes something like this:

In the beginning there was the Monad, the being of concept. As the only thing in existence the Monad was bored out of its mind, so it split into two to observe itself These things were called Aeons. These two split into two as well to observe itself better. This went on until it hit 32 pieces of the Monad, where the strain of all this splitting caused the 32 Aeons to shatter. They began to reassemble themselves, but bits of them began to cluster together and formed something that was the opposite of the Monad: Azathoth, the concept of being. Azathoth and the Monad saw each other as impure fragments of themselves, and Azathoth and the Aeons (guided by the gestalt mind of the Monad) did battle. Azathoth was able to greatly injure the Aeons and add bits of them to itself, but because of their number the Aeons were capable of taking from Azathoth and adding to themselves. This went on for a bit until Azathoth got the idea to take chunks of itself and making them into the Outer Gods.

With the Monad on one side and Azathoth on the other, bits and pieces of concept and being went all over the place. Most were gobbled up by the Aeons and the Outer Gods to heal themselves some bits began to cluster together. Normally one side would overtake the other and turn the other bits into their own, adding to their number. In one case however, they combined into one, something entirely new. This entity became known as the First Soul. It looked upon the struggle of the Monad and Azathoth and saw only folly. It remained away from this conflict and began to take bits of concept and being from both sides to add to itself. When it became so large it risked detection it split off eight parts of itself. These entities were named the Scions, who aided the First Soul in gathering the refuse of the battle of the Monad and Azathoth. They gathered this in nine Realms of the First Soul's making, places within the nothing. They worked in secrecy as to avoid detection, and they existed as such.

However, when the battle between the two forces lulled due to a lack of resources they discovered the Realms and the existence of the First Soul and the Scions. Apart from each other they attacked in order to get what they needed in order to undo the other. They fought a three-way war inside of the Realms, with the forces of the Monad and Azathoth fighting each other just as much as they did the Scions. The Scions had learned from the invaders and had created forces of their own to do battle with their enemies. In the eight Realms terrible wars were fought, while in the ninth the First Soul worked to unmake both the Monad and Azathoth. When learning of this they used their forces to push the other Realms aside and the two leaders sought the destruction of the First Soul. The weapon it had devised was not ready yet, and in a bid of desperation to avoid destruction it was activated.

The blast drove out but did not destroy the two invaders. The nine Realms were shattered into three each, sealing the Monad and the Aeons into one set, Azathoth and the Outer Gods into another set, and finally the Scions into the final set. The First Soul however was obliterated in the blast, being rent into many pieces and thought of as destroyed.

This event would later become known as the Big Bang.

>>225921

As they regrouped, both the Monad and Azathoth realized their creations were no longer fully under their control. They still believed in the cause (destroying everything not like them), but the how became contested. With the blast the Realms became attuned to their inhabitants, aiding in the cause. Certain forces believed that direct intervention was needed to change the taken-in matter, while others believed that it would be inevitably altered while in their Realm with no effort needed, so more can be spent on gathering. Some groups believed that enhancing the desired parts of what they gathered to the point that it overtook the undesired parts would bring about the best result, while others believed that taking out the undesired parts until only the desired parts remained was the way to go. Meanwhile, the Scions believed the First Soul to have been destroyed and each wanted to carry out its will as they saw fit. This brought the various forces into conflict, and raids between the Spheres began.

It turned out that the Spheres had taken up some kind of pattern. Even with no physical borders in place, they seemed to touch one another in a pattern. Nine Spheres of the same group (Aeons, Outer Gods, Scions) formed what was roughly a 3x3 pattern, with those with a same general outlook on how to handle the conversion process on a row. Meanwhile, the flat end of the Realms of the Scions was bordered by the flat ends of those of the Aeons and the Outer Gods, creating a 3x3x3 pattern. Only those directly touching each other could be traveled between, meaning that each of the Realms bordered on three to five Realms. However, the one in the center was the odd one out, where none could enter. At least, not at fist.

The various forces kept an eye out on the center-most Realm. Things kept changing unlike anything in the other Realms, and finally they spotted something unique: creatures made of concentrated concept and being. Rushing to discover these new creatures the beings of the Realms discovered that if one of them entered this central Realm one amongst the opposite Realm would be automatically be called to the central Realm as well. This became known as the Balance: if an entity from the Realms entered our Realm an opposite would be called as well. The two would seek each other out and did battle. If one of them was vanquished one like it would enter and the battle would continue until both destroyed each other. Now, these new creatures carried the ideal mix of concept and being: the soul, a fraction of the First Soul. All the Realms saw this as an immense source of power, exactly what they need to dominate the other Realms and prove their right. Their small-scale wars to gather souls from the creatures on Earth lasted for a fair chunk of the Mesozoic Era. They also discovered that the more complex a creature was, the more power its soul had, making harvesting even more aggressive but not as such that it would threaten all species on the planet. Near the end of it however their ways became less and less subtle, even uplifing the soul-vessels to fight each other. This was a terrible time where intelligent dinosaurs ravaged the world, with them using magic, ways to give themselves parts of the Outer Gods and their minions to become terrible hybrids, enhance themselves with stone and wood to become even more potent in battle, giving the souls of their slain foes to their masters. But as the ways reached a peak a freak accident in the form of a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs and their terrible works. A number of them fled into the Realm of one of the Scions where they became its personal servants, but for the rest none survived. The souls escaping were harvested, but as a seemingly endless resource the Realms were not yet to give up on them. However, it took them quite some time to rebuild to their old soul-gathering operations.

>>225922

Flash forward to 2070. Over the course of human history they have had stories of vicious demons, fierce monsters, crafty devils, terrible angels, things that lurk in the woods, goblins that would come in the night and break all your stuff, spirits that would judge travelers and take them away and so on. Humanity, you see, was very wary of the beings from the Realms and would often either flee or attack them. Cults formed here and there in worship of the beings, but Realms opposing said worshipped beings would engineer their downfall somehow. The Realms had learned of their earlier folly and took to a more cautious approach at first. But as the years went on and humanity put itself at the brink of destruction, they struck in force. Full-scale invasions of part of the globe took place. Many were struck back at first, but in several places footholds were gained. The Ardennes became overrun with dinosaurs, displacing the Walloons into the Netherlands, Germany and France. Fairies overran southern Japan, turning everything south of the Chubu (alongside some 40% of Japan's population) region into an orgy of violence, madness and extreme body altering. Dragons began to fly over eastern Europe. The entirety of Detroit and everyone in it got disassembled by a horde of goblins and turned into a mobile and near-indestructible fortress. Angels gathered around the Vatican, causing the Pope to call for a crusade against all other beings of the Realms. The Mexican government (now actually the cartels instead of just in name) deals with a race of bees that netted them a super-honey more potent than any drug made by men. Kim Il-Sung returned from the dead and now rules over North Korea as the Eternal Lich, with an increasing number of subjects being turned into zombies, skeletons, ghouls, death knights and other such nasty critters. Central Australia now hosts a city of magnificent spires, obliterating anyone and anything that comes too close with an unstoppable laser blast. Devils have set up shop in Somalia, enslaving everyone they can get their hands on for forceful conversion. Zimbabwe was overrun but has been recently reconquered by a coalition of PMCs, founding New Rhodesia and helping the locals fight back the hordes of giants besetting the country. Tibetan monks have mastered a technique where they can force people into a Zen-like state and use it to regain their home lands and more. The earth and water of Canada rise up against its people, with the elements themselves trying to destroy them. The Amazon is just straight up fucking everyone's shit up. The shadows themselves rise up in Karelia, the region between Russia and Finland where Russia seems to make no hurry to get their territory back, instead driving the creatures of dark into the guns of the vengeful Finns. Strangely enough they have recently sent pretty much all of their Russian minority to Russia with hefty sums of money, something that they would normally never would be able to afford with their GDP, war or not. The Finns keep their mouths shut about how they afforded this and Russia does not seem to press the issue, but there is one source that mentions the Finns having something called Project Sampo.

It is now 2075. For a long time technology has been on the rise, but the war sped up developments even more. Lost limbs can now be replaced by either regular cybernetics, superior cybernetics or a new one can be printed and grafted onto your stump, good as new. Magic has become commonplace, with the easier types being taught to the public (but with significant screening and very harsh punishments for abuse). Clean and efficient energy is available to all. With the advances in synthetic food world hunger (at least prior to the invasions) was largely stopped, with the prices of regular (and better-tasting) food having gone way up because of its increasing scarcity.

>>225923

The invasions however make life less than idyllic. Many nations are in a state of war with martial law in place. Countries are increasingly trigger-happy with those supporting the invaders (or in certain cases, the wrong kind). People who do and are caught often face life-long sentences in prison, but in most places it’s death. Many of them won’t even bother reprimanding police officers and the like executing cultists wherever they are found. Luxury is available but expensive. TV is a mix of propaganda, lies and patriotic TV shows downplaying the danger of the invaders. Many countries have instated the draft, a good deal of them for both genders. Soldiers are a worryingly common sight in even unthreatened countries. Riots are common, uprising have already happened many times, and even relatively safe places like the Netherlands are just one big spark away from outright revolution. Some countries like Switzerland have chosen isolation. Not all of them have managed so far. The EU collapsed after Brussels was attacked by a strike force of dinosaurs, slaughtering the Eurocrats and leveling the Espace Léopold. With the ongoing invasions a new European Parliament could not be chosen, and as a union Europe ceased to exist. On paper it’s still there, but a lot will be needed to be done to rebuild it, something not everyone on the continent will agree with.

The UN has declared a world-wide peacekeeping mission to relieve the besieged areas of the world. The traditional force of peacekeepers has been augmented with forces from all over the world, creating the UNPLF: the United Nations Peacekeeping and Liberating Forces. They support nations where needed to protect displaced refugees, help rebuild in newly liberated areas and if needed they will fight to protect threatened enclaves of civilians. It is currently being debated whether or not the invaders, some of whom seemingly not having human-level intelligence, have rights according to the law of war. As of now though, most national forces and the UNPLF will execute any invader encountered with impunity without anyone making much of a fuss about it.

While the UNPLF works to some extent, they leave various cults working with or outright worshipping the invaders untouched. As such, a group of the rich and powerful all over the world pooled their funds, resources, connections and influences to create the Nemesis Group. They are a clandestine organisation dedicated to locate people with the right skill and mindset to engage in a global underground war against the cults, worshippers and other followers of the invaders. They locate cults in cities, discover hideouts in the wilderness, deal with illegal transports and the spreading of digital information. Frequently this results in a cell of operatives (ranging from two to a dozen, depending on the location) kicking in the door, killing all the cultists inside with a brutal efficiency, rescuing any hostages (often followed by a short-term mind wipe to keep the Nemesis Group’s existence secret) and torching the place. Because of the terrifying power that some of their enemies wield they willingly enhance many of their operatives by making them Techies, Mages, Hybrids or train them in the ways of the Spirit. However, the Nemesis Group will keep a tight eye on its operatives and any threatening to go off the deep end are quickly eliminated. While the full extent or mandate of the group is unknown to most of the world (most of this thanks to their friends and benefactors in high-up places) out of safety concerns, the soldiers and intelligence agency operatives of the various nations often don’t know about them and treat them as cultists or invaders themselves, so discretion is always a point of great concern for the Nemesis Group.

>>225924

Of course, with all this stuff going on there are companies that look to profit from all the confusion and the invasions. Mexico’s drug trade is more profitable than ever. Invader corpses are worth quite a bit when presented to the right people for whatever nebulous purpose they might have. Industrial espionage is rife, assassination of business rivals across borders has become way too common. And there are whispers here and there about groups working to make Mages and Hybrids that do not require the human element to make them work, with all the difficulties and threats that might entail…

And that’s where the players come in. They can be part of a national intelligence agency, be part of an army trying to defend your home, work for the UNPLF, be part of the Nemesis Group, work for a corporation or try to make a life for yourself in the war torn world of the 2070’s. Might you make a difference on the large scale of things? Probably not, but that’s not the point. Fight for what you believe in and care for. If everyone saves a small bit of the world, humanity can save the entire world. The spoils will bring about a new age of growth, wealth and power, and together as a species we can reach ascendance.

If you want to play someone else's game with their ideas, then go with classes. If you want to make your own characters without needing to conform to some idiot designer's idea of what your character should be, then go with a classless system.

I like how Dark Heresy does it, with classes but you get lots of choices. I also enjoy Savage World's system where you just pick and choose abilities, getting really vague edges and powers and then fluffing them to your character's needs.

Even with alternate class abilities I don't like classes in D&D and Pathfinder. It's too restrictive unless you read a thousand books to educate yourself. And even though the abilities are different it all ends up being the same and a huge bloated waste. I used to love the 'content' D&D offered when I was younger but it's a turnoff now.

I also like that Dark Heresy and Savage Worlds don't really punish players and GMs for having games when everyone isn't present. They can just earn some bonus talents or edges and call it a day and still be on part with the absent players. It feels weird in D&D, like awarding bonus feats will throw the whole system into chaos. Which is a shame because D&D always has so many interesting feats you never see.

Classless systems are really, really hard to get right; they work well for single-player games where you're expected to do everything yourself, but in team games, either everyone ends up the same or you all end up playing the same roles you would in a class system.

Class systems are a good shorthand for roles, and function fine in a team game as long as every class has a decent degree of customisation and can at the bare minimum do what they're meant to do, while having enough choices in play to be interesting. Though go overboard on customisation and you end up losing the clear definition of roles and just have an overly convoluted point-by system.

I don't see one being necessarily better than the other, they're different types of games.

I'm very slowly working on a little homebrew project that's going to have a ton of classes. The catch is that they are all very simple and without any strict progression, with the exception on each one with some minor prerequisites.

The intention is for players to be encouraged multi-class to create the ideal collection of abilities for their playstyle or character concept. It's kind of in-between class-based and classless.

I can deal with class systems alright, they don't absolutely kill my fun. But personally, I am definitely all for classless systems where anybody can potentially do anything. Doesn't matter if it's video games, tabletop, whatever.

Even if one is concerned about multiplayer teamwork, I find the mere fact that any one player can still be in only one place at a time and doing one thing at a time is enough limit to give multiple players some degree of teamwork interdependence. Redundant capabilities don't destroy teamwork and tactical decisions, so what if everybody can swing a sword and heal for example, any individual can't do both at once. So if monsters need killin' and teammates need healing at the same time, choices and plans must be made. If someone needs to be tanking and someone needs to be healing, is it really so different if those roles are decided on the fly versus set in stone permanently at character creation? I don't think so. I've never once played a game and found myself wishing my own or other's characters were forced into narrower choices.

Besides, just because a system allows for any combination of options doesn't mean every player is automatically good at every single one anyway. I'd just rather have a character who's exact combination of strengths and weaknesses was my choice, rather than the result of a limited set of general categories. And personally, I find there's no greater reward for going the total distance than being individually capable of doing everything well. Or at least, as well as any PC possibly can.

>>225666

Start that tends to strongly imply a role (as long as there is enough variations of "starting classes" or enough flexibility in customizing it to satisfy everyone) giving way to a freeform growth.

Or, to stick with your metaphor, Skyrim with one of the better Classic Classes-type mods.

>>225688

>Why WOULDN'T you dump all your character points into Swordfighting to get a high-as-fuck parry?

Who WOULDN'T want to be a retarded savant only competent in one tiny area?

Anyone who wants to do anything, that's who.