John Wick on Rpgs and game Balance

[Salsa]

These are things Crafty has done well. People who like Spycraft actually love it, and they try to sell it.

Teos

I'm an endorser myself and so are my friends.

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The above says a lot about the game... Even though it's a joke. Why are these jokes specially funny? Because we know the game has such an extensive record of hack and slash (it even made some fellas create a game called Hackmaster), that when we hear: "Roll for initiative"; you know what's coming next.

I believe that everyone should start with a common RPG. As Alex said before, we need to begin with something that we can find everywhere. If I never tried different games, I wouldn't have read different books with different scopes, styles, rules, options; and the best of all: Tips for better roleplay!

Now take all that and adapt it to your favorite game. You'll have the best experience ever. It's not the system or that single book, that is supporting that to your entertainment. It's yourself. If you get personally involved with the intricacies (like John Wick seems to be) you'll miss the big picture. D&D was made to be fun in no particular way. The only difference is that sourcebooks were made (by people who maybe didn't write the original game) and they added depth to the experience. Each one of us has the right to apply that depth or not.

What if you're not that creative, or you just don't feel like writing down a bunch of lines of backstory. Will that forbid you of having fun with your friends? Not at all. But maybe after years "roleplaying", you'll build your own method.

What we have here are "roleplaying movements", unlike genres (horror, comedy, adventure, action etc), but definitions of styles. So one can say, we had the Raiderism (you just worry about going through the dungeons stockpiling goods), this was what started it all, mid 70s. Then we had the Universalism in the 80s (GURPs could be considered the milestone of what we know as roleplaying games today), during that period, everyone would want to create their own settings and rules. Not to mention that GURPs also brought the successful idea (along with HERO) of setting an amount of points to be distributed in character creation, and a lot of established writers began with GURPs (C.J. Carella is one of my favorites). Then, we had Glamourism (basically what World of Darkness is). White Wolf came into play using dice pools (maybe trying the Shadowrun recipe) and with the additional spice of using point-based character creation (anyone saying GURPs?). People got fascinated with simple rules, simple sheet (hey, marking dots is easy) and an enormous complex plotline set in modern age. All that could be done with GURPs, but there were two things that the system didnn't have: Simple sheet and simple rules.

Now we have a period that I'd like to call Heroism. With the settling of cinema, videogames and narratives as a whole (books released after movies, movies released after comics, comics released after games, games released after movies, movies released after books... you get the picture), people are getting more and more interested in the Hero's Journey; they also are into character development (almost every TV series nowadays has character development). Even videogames have movie elements (one of those elements is drama). So what will an experienced RPG, and cosumer of said videogames, TV series, comics and movies do? Insert drama in his games, it's perfectly normal, that someone will instinctively seek for such tool for additional catharsis.

What do we get out of all that? People who want one or maybe all of the following: simple rules, simple sheet, character development and the hero's journey...

Voilà, I present you the reason why most devoted RPG players aren't satisfied with the changes in D&D 4th edition. It's because they are getting only half of that. However, as any other company, WotC wants to profit. We all know they will do ANYTHING to achieve that goal (anyone remembers the Player's Screen?). Now consider, that also as a company, they want to affect masses, and who are the closest targets right now? MMORPG players.

As sad as this may sound, I'll use a common saying: "Over 10 million people can't be wrong."

[iconoplast]

Couple random follow-ups...

2. AFAIK, an "indie" game is one which is creator-owned.  (Hence, Spycraft 2.0 is, in many ways, an indie game).  More cynically, they're developed out of theories from either the forge or story games, and they're distributed by IPR.  Indie is a fairly rediculous term, though, since they represent a miniscule fraction of a percent of RPG players, who are already a miniscule percent of the population.  In music industry terms, it's like arguing about indie vs. mainstream polkacore bands.

1. There's something really interesting there.  On the one hand, you've got the monkeys-typing-shakespeare odds that someone writes Your Perfect Game.  On the other hand, increased competition for marketshare is going to make it harder for game designers to make a living designing games.  I don't think the RPG industry is facing a music industry style collapse.  Books have a tangible value that CDs don't have, and bringing PDFs to the table is both a hassle and (rightly) socially stigmatized. 

[Argonnite]

Voilà, I present you the reason why most devoted RPG players aren't satisfied with the changes in D&D 4th edition. It's because they are getting only half of that. However, as any other company, WotC wants to profit. We all know they will do ANYTHING to achieve that goal (anyone remembers the Player's Screen?). Now consider, that also as a company, they want to affect masses, and who are the closest targets right now? MMORPG players.

As sad as this may sound, I'll use a common saying: "Over 10 million people can't be wrong."

Sorry, I had a little trouble following your argument.  What "half" will players be missing in D&D 4th edition?

[Falkus]

Voilà, I present you the reason why most devoted RPG players aren't satisfied with the changes in D&D 4th edition.

Most? That's a rather bold statement.

[Argonnite]

Voilà, I present you the reason why most devoted RPG players aren't satisfied with the changes in D&D 4th edition.

Most? That's a rather bold statement.

I agree.  When I tried the 4th ed. demos I was pleasantly surprised and I had way more fun than I expected.

[Salsa]

Sorry, I had a little trouble following your argument.  What "half" will players be missing in D&D 4th edition?

So far the only thing I see are rules improvement for combat. One of the reasons I like spycraft, We got interesting ways of using all of its rules and at the same time improvise without crippling the entire structure.

[Salsa]

Voilà, I present you the reason why most devoted RPG players aren't satisfied with the changes in D&D 4th edition.

Most? That's a rather bold statement.

Sorry it was meant to be "the most devoted players" as in the people like John Wick who expect depthness in terms of roleplay material.

[Argonnite]

Sorry, I had a little trouble following your argument.  What "half" will players be missing in D&D 4th edition?

So far the only thing I see are rules improvement for combat. One of the reasons I like spycraft, We got interesting ways of using all of its rules and at the same time improvise without crippling the entire structure.

Simple rules, simple sheet, character development and a hero's journey.  4th ed. shafts players on which two?

[Salsa]

Character development and Hero's Journey (and by this I'm meaning the whole concept behind it, not just going on a quest like a videogame), and remember that's my opinion until I'm proved otherwise.

Here's an example of how this is not missing in spycraft (and many other RPGs I played).

You get XP for "how well" you accomplished a mission or adventure. You also get additional XP (and in the form of action dice) for roleplaying "what your character would do". I think that's what is missing in D&D right now to please every party and I think that's what Wick should have said in his article but instead he decided to take a pejorative tone, because he doesn't like D&D; thus, he wasn't impartial. Shame on him.

[Argonnite]

Voilà, I present you the reason why most devoted RPG players aren't satisfied with the changes in D&D 4th edition.

Most? That's a rather bold statement.

Sorry it was meant to be "the most devoted players" as in the people like John Wick who expect depthness in terms of roleplay material.

I played a John Wick game called Cat.  Extremely simple game where you play (surprise) a cat.  Mechanics and "meat" for pragmatically describing the world were so simple that the GM bore much more burden than in other games to resolve actions and for fleshing out the tableau.  I had a lot of fun playing Cat also, but I do not see enough depth in it for sustaining a group's interest for repeat sessions nor do I see interesting character growth without the GM homebrewing custom game supplements.  I looked at Wick's other games and, in the words used by RPGPundit, they were essentially microgames in the same way Cat is.

There are those who say and those who do.  Wick strikes me as more of the former.

[Argonnite]

Character development and Hero's Journey (and by this I'm meaning the whole concept behind it, not just going on a quest like a videogame), and remember that's my opinion until I'm proved otherwise.

Is there anything in 4.0 that is not in 3.5 that you can point out specifically as stifling character development and hero's journey?

[Psion]

I played a John Wick game called Cat.  Extremely simple game where you play (surprise) a cat.  Mechanics and "meat" for pragmatically describing the world were so simple that the GM bore much more burden than in other games to resolve actions and for fleshing out the tableau.  I had a lot of fun playing Cat also, but I do not see enough depth in it for sustaining a group's interest for repeat sessions nor do I see interesting character growth without the GM homebrewing custom game supplements.  I looked at Wick's other games and, in the words used by RPGPundit, they were essentially microgames in the same way Cat is.

There are those who say and those who do.  Wick strikes me more of the former.

Heh. If playing D&D (even 4e) or Spycraft instead of Cat is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

[Argonnite]

I played a John Wick game called Cat.  Extremely simple game where you play (surprise) a cat.  Mechanics and "meat" for pragmatically describing the world were so simple that the GM bore much more burden than in other games to resolve actions and for fleshing out the tableau.  I had a lot of fun playing Cat also, but I do not see enough depth in it for sustaining a group's interest for repeat sessions nor do I see interesting character growth without the GM homebrewing custom game supplements.  I looked at Wick's other games and, in the words used by RPGPundit, they were essentially microgames in the same way Cat is.

There are those who say and those who do.  Wick strikes me more of the former.

Heh. If playing D&D (even 4e) or Spycraft instead of Cat is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

I have to applaud Wick though in finding an RPG niche for old cat ladies.

[Salsa]

Sorry argonite, I believe the answer for your question is now in my previous post in the form of an additional comment I was making while all these answers appeared

As for a thing that I haven't seen yet either in 3.5 or 4.0 would be some sort of rule for rewarding without battling. As I said before, I can totally come up with a rule for that, but not everyone will do it (and some players refuse to do it) unless it's in the book.

edit: had to correct my reply. I expressed myself incorrectly. That's what you get for fast replies

[Salsa]

Since I'm a brazilian, living in Brazil, I miss all the chances of playing such bizarre games. Which makes me wonder... Why would I play a cat? Cats do shit! They stay idle everyday waiting for their respective owners to feed them and caress them lol