Adventure vs Abstractions and Buildfaggotry

[Emphyrio]

Pointbuy and its consequences have been a disaster for the roleplaying rpg genre. My understanding is that when paper rpgs were invented 100 years ago by Josh Ronald Reagan Tolkien, character stats were random, and you could only play a class that met your stats. There was no such thing as a "build". The game had some combat but was mostly about trying to get gold, while avoiding traps and solving riddles and puzzles.

Now 200 years later we have slop like Pathfinder: Cumtaker, where your guy's entire life and career need to be planned out at character creation. I like tactical combat games a lot, but there's something very unsatisfying about it in RPGs (in the D&D sense). Tactics and strategy are less important than system mastery and picking the "right" stats. The build becomes the game. Which little stat arrows you're gonna click and which perks you're gonna pick at level up- total abstractions- become more important than the physical rpg world and the things actually happening to your guy.

These buildfag rpg games can only handle combat so that's mostly all you see. Are there games that have organic, well-developed systems doing "adventurous" things that aren't fight fight fight? Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert, escape a prison (without murdering everyone)? I can imagine doing that kind of stuff working well in a Bethesda-type game if it was made by people more competent than Bethesda. Most devs "non-combat" options are limited to a half-assed stealth or persuasion system (that default to combat when you fail). In Pathfinder, you can roll dice to jump over a log or something... wow. Or there's the CYOA segments Rusty hates.

I place heavy emphasis on being able to interact with the world using my character, and as simple as that sounds most RPGs are actually missing this and shifted heavily away from it in favor of CYOA-style garbage.
You've got later Ultimas(incl. Ultima Underworld), Arx Fatalis, and Fallout then nothing for a very long time then Larian games starting with Original Sin, which was heavily inspired by Ultima VII.

It's very much a lost strain of design philosophy.

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there games that have organic, well-developed systems doing "adventurous" things that aren't fight fight fight? Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert, escape a prison (without murdering everyone)?

First thing that comes to mind is BG3. You can activate turn-based mode whenever and they do use it for scenes that would be CYOA-style adventures in similar games.
e.g., There's a scene where you have to save people from a burning inn working against the clock. You need to make use of your speed boosting abilities, any magic that creates water to temporarily douse the flames, etc., to help get people out. Pillars of Eternity has a similar scene in its first DLC where a building is burning and it's a much more boring CYOA section.

[Emphyrio]

Are there games that have organic, well-developed systems doing "adventurous" things that aren't fight fight fight? Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert, escape a prison (without murdering everyone)?

First thing that comes to mind is BG3. You can activate turn-based mode whenever and they do use it for scenes that would be CYOA-style adventures in similar games.
e.g., There's a scene where you have to save people from a burning inn working against the clock. You need to make use of your speed boosting abilities, any magic that creates water to temporarily douse the flames, etc., to help get people out. Pillars of Eternity has a similar scene in its first DLC where a building is burning and it's a much more boring CYOA section.

do you have a video demonstrating what you're describing?

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there games that have organic, well-developed systems doing "adventurous" things that aren't fight fight fight? Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert, escape a prison (without murdering everyone)?

First thing that comes to mind is BG3. You can activate turn-based mode whenever and they do use it for scenes that would be CYOA-style adventures in similar games.
e.g., There's a scene where you have to save people from a burning inn working against the clock. You need to make use of your speed boosting abilities, any magic that creates water to temporarily douse the flames, etc., to help get people out. Pillars of Eternity has a similar scene in its first DLC where a building is burning and it's a much more boring CYOA section.

do you have a video demonstrating what you're describing?

Not without some obnoxious streamer talking over it, so take your pick: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... s rest bg3

[Anon]

Imo that's the big appeal of procedually generated world roguelikes: you need to adapt to whatever the RNG algorithm throws at you. That means the starting build is nothing more than a small detail, where there isn't even a "meta" starting build as you have to also adapt it to the potential environment you've chosen. Best example of such that I can think of is dwarf fortress and cataclysm DDA.

RPGs on the other hand are typically previously generated and if you played the game or watch a guide you'll be able to fully predict all events that will happen. So build optimization faggotry becomes a natural course.

[Metalhead33]

@aweigh is gonna be real dissatisfied.

I personally agree though.

[Norfleet]

Pointbuy and its consequences have been a disaster for the roleplaying rpg genre. My understanding is that when paper rpgs were invented 100 years ago by Josh Ronald Reagan Tolkien, character stats were random, and you could only play a class that met your stats. There was no such thing as a "build". The game had some combat but was mostly about trying to get gold, while avoiding traps and solving riddles and puzzles.

Buildfaggotry definitely seems to be a detriment to games in general, particularly when accompanied by a very narrow gameplay spectrum. And it's not just RPGs that suffer from it. Buildfaggotry is a detraction across many genres.

Take the Cool Spaceship Genre. In the old days, your spaceship came with a bunch of assorted systems, like the tractor beam (at least after Tuesday), and it was on you to figure out how to use your cool spaceship to take on any challenges that you encountered. Maybe you rarely used the tractor beam, but it was still there, and a good commander figured out creative ways to use it, like clubhauling your ship with it.

Enter buildfaggotry: Suddenly it became norm to leave spacedock without a tractor beam, so you could use the points to simply install more guns. People would get MAD at you when you still kept the tractor beam and get even MADDER at you when you actually USED it on them, until devs just straight stopped letting you do awesome shit with it and then just stopped putting it in the game at all.

So now instead of having a well-rounded character or cool spaceship or whatever capable of taking on a variety of different potential encounters, everything has come down to murderhoboism.

[rusty_shackleford]

Pointbuy and its consequences have been a disaster for the roleplaying rpg genre.

Even worse than pointbuy is pointbuy that lets you bank points. It explicitly encourages metagaming.

[WhiteShark]

Builds are ok so long as they don't make characters into one-trick ponies. Being a little better at X and Y and having useful but niche technique Z is fun and helps differentiate playthroughs, but most buildfag games encourage (or outright require) you to dump all your character development points into X such that doing anything but X is a waste of your time.

Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert,

I can't think of any, and to be honest, I can't imagine any game tackling environmental survival in a deep way that doesn't completely center on it. Maybe some roguelikes or imsims.

Even in tabletop this stuff is usually just making a roll and consulting a chart, or bypassing it with no roll if you did something clever or used a spell. You'd have to really gamify it to make these interesting challenges in and of themselves, and usually that ends up being an abstraction too far removed from the activity it's meant to represent. Combat can be deep because you can really get pretty far down into the nitty gritty of individual actions, but every attempt I've seen to make non-combat challenges as detailed in tabletop has merely resulted in doing, say, three swim checks instead of one.

[Rigwort]

These buildfag rpg games can only handle combat so that's mostly all you see. Are there games that have organic, well-developed systems doing "adventurous" things that aren't fight fight fight? Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert, escape a prison (without murdering everyone)?

What's funny is that I think that Survival mods for Skyrim showed this the best. For instance, there is a quest you need to do to get the okay to join the rebel army. It requires you to go North to an island and kill some ice creatures. Only problem is that now the water can freeze you to death, it's already cold up there, and the creatures can whittle you down fast. But if you've played before this is a nothing quest that isn't hard at all. So what happens is that you prepare your best, getting warm food, warm clothes, and other heat sources for your travel. But then when you get to shore you can actually hop between ice floes, though occasionally you have to jump in the drink. So it's a race where you need to be fast and precise with your jumps and keep your resources up for the fight. Of course, this all worked out by happenstance, no doubt a dev would make it so that you could jump all the way there on the ice floes and reach the location with full health. But that is one time where I've seen such a thing.

The problem is, as per Whiteshark, I think you'd need action-game mechanics to make this doable in multiple occasions and not just a one-off. Otherwise, I've also only ever used dice rolls.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I enjoy character building but I like when I do that during the game. I don't like when I have to get everything right at character creation and I'm screwed if I don't read a guide ahead of time. This seems to be a common WRPG problem. Morrowind, Shadowrun, etc.

[Emphyrio]

First thing that comes to mind is BG3. You can activate turn-based mode whenever and they do use it for scenes that would be CYOA-style adventures in similar games.
e.g., There's a scene where you have to save people from a burning inn working against the clock. You need to make use of your speed boosting abilities, any magic that creates water to temporarily douse the flames, etc., to help get people out. Pillars of Eternity has a similar scene in its first DLC where a building is burning and it's a much more boring CYOA section.

do you have a video demonstrating what you're describing?

Not without some obnoxious streamer talking over it, so take your pick: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... s rest bg3

yeah that's cool i guess. I liked the puzzles in DOS a lot. Too bad that in bg3 it apparently comes down to die rolls a lot of times.

man that is so many lady fighters, girlbosses and out of place minorities i will never play this game

[Emphyrio]

What's funny is that I think that Survival mods for Skyrim showed this the best. For instance, there is a quest you need to do to get the okay to join the rebel army. It requires you to go North to an island and kill some ice creatures. Only problem is that now the water can freeze you to death, it's already cold up there, and the creatures can whittle you down fast. But if you've played before this is a nothing quest that isn't hard at all. So what happens is that you prepare your best, getting warm food, warm clothes, and other heat sources for your travel. But then when you get to shore you can actually hop between ice floes, though occasionally you have to jump in the drink. So it's a race where you need to be fast and precise with your jumps and keep your resources up for the fight. Of course, this all worked out by happenstance, no doubt a dev would make it so that you could jump all the way there on the ice floes and reach the location with full health. But that is one time where I've seen such a thing.

Yeah this is the kind of thing I want.

I think you could make a fun system in a die-roll system but you'd need a lot of party members so that it's not game over when one dies from a bad roll, and options to better your chances with good planning

[Oyster Sauce]

Now 200 years later we have slop like Pathfinder: Cumtaker, where your guy's entire life and career need to be planned out at character creation.

I liked that my guy was from Cheliax, but when the monarch of Cheliax arrived all of my dialogue options were "Whoa what's Cheliax? What goes on in Cheliax? Who are you?"

[rusty_shackleford]

Now 200 years later we have slop like Pathfinder: Cumtaker, where your guy's entire life and career need to be planned out at character creation.

I liked that my guy was from Cheliax, but when the monarch of Cheliax arrived all of my dialogue options were "Whoa what's Cheliax? What goes on in Cheliax? Who are you?"

Because it's all buildfaggotry with no real subtance in the game. You're probably the only person who noticed this because people who create pozzfinder characters don't read "From Chellax" but whatever stat bonus it gives.

[Acrux]

Rusty's not wrong, but the lack of reactivity was a common complaint against Kingmaker.

[J1M]

You can never have that time in your friend's basement back again via Steam. Systems are preferred over the "story" crafted by game writers.

[aweigh]

too tired right now to think or read everyone's posts but my thoughts on abstraction on rpgs is that rpgs are built on a foundation of abstractions, and that the further a game strays into concerns of simulation the less of an rpg it becomes.

hit points, encounters, armor class, skills, attributes, all of these and more are core abstractions on which the rpg framework is built upon.

[Metalhead33]

too tired right now to think or read everyone's posts but my thoughts on abstraction on rpgs is that rpgs are built on a foundation of abstractions, and that the further a game strays into concerns of simulation the less of an rpg it becomes.

hit points, encounters, armor class, skills, attributes, all of these and more are core abstractions on which the rpg framework is built upon.

So, nothing but combat then? The less combat and numbers, the less RPG?

[aweigh]

too tired right now to think or read everyone's posts but my thoughts on abstraction on rpgs is that rpgs are built on a foundation of abstractions, and that the further a game strays into concerns of simulation the less of an rpg it becomes.

hit points, encounters, armor class, skills, attributes, all of these and more are core abstractions on which the rpg framework is built upon.

So, nothing but combat then? The less combat and numbers, the less RPG?

I believe your question is misguided, however I do believe combat is the primary characteristic of an RPG.

[J1M]

Chainmail was about the story!

[Norfleet]

Builds are ok so long as they don't make characters into one-trick ponies. Being a little better at X and Y and having useful but niche technique Z is fun and helps differentiate playthroughs, but most buildfag games encourage (or outright require) you to dump all your character development points into X such that doing anything but X is a waste of your time.

The thing is that if you DON'T dump your points into X, you can't do X worth a damn and therefore cannot do X. So what can you do? Nothing. This is actually amplified even more in skillcheck mechanics: Take "Speech". You either sink enough points into it to win at it, or you fail at it and every single one of those points was completely wasted. All or nothing.

[rusty_shackleford]

RPGs are simulations, don't see how anyone could think simulationism is bad when that's the definition of an RPG

[Xenich]

I don't mind complex systems that require some planning to a goal, but I do dislike ones that are entirely focused on the concept of numerous play throughs where the complexities of the system have to first be put into practice before an ideal implementation can be created. Unless they have a detailed manual on the systems that properly reflect the rules and systems for expected play, it ends up in numerous re-starts, which for me can result in lack of interest over time.

Builds are ok so long as they don't make characters into one-trick ponies. Being a little better at X and Y and having useful but niche technique Z is fun and helps differentiate playthroughs, but most buildfag games encourage (or outright require) you to dump all your character development points into X such that doing anything but X is a waste of your time.

The thing is that if you DON'T dump your points into X, you can't do X worth a damn and therefore cannot do X. So what can you do? Nothing. This is actually amplified even more in skillcheck mechanics: Take "Speech". You either sink enough points into it to win at it, or you fail at it and every single one of those points was completely wasted. All or nothing.

I think this is solved by putting in fail mechanics that produce alternate paths which while they may come with negatives in terms of the initial failed skill check, "may" still produce fruitful outcomes which are layered by various levels of the skill. This way, ideal isn't so specific to dump stat mechanics, allowing all levels of builds to produce various negative and beneficial results depending on circumstance.

For instance, high level intelligence might produce a specific result in an encounter that ends up being negative, but an average intelligence or even sub intelligence might produce a different result in the skill check (ie the Forest Gump result of stumbling into good fortune).

I think layering various outcomes in skill checks might provide a little more depth of play and move away from the dump stat mentality. The game would not simply be applying traditional concepts to encounters, but figuring out solutions based on the makeup of the character.

Just spit balling.

[Metalhead33]

RPGs are simulations, don't see how anyone could think simulationism is bad when that's the definition of an RPG

@aweigh seems to think that RPG = numbers & abstractions.

too tired right now to think or read everyone's posts but my thoughts on abstraction on rpgs is that rpgs are built on a foundation of abstractions, and that the further a game strays into concerns of simulation the less of an rpg it becomes.

hit points, encounters, armor class, skills, attributes, all of these and more are core abstractions on which the rpg framework is built upon.

I respectfully disagree, and agree with you instead, rusty.
As the OP pointed out:

Which little stat arrows you're gonna click and which perks you're gonna pick at level up- total abstractions- become more important than the physical rpg world and the things actually happening to your guy.

These buildfag rpg games can only handle combat so that's mostly all you see. Are there games that have organic, well-developed systems doing "adventurous" things that aren't fight fight fight? Trying not to drown in a raging river, survive in a desert, escape a prison (without murdering everyone)? I can imagine doing that kind of stuff working well in a Bethesda-type game if it was made by people more competent than Bethesda. Most devs "non-combat" options are limited to a half-assed stealth or persuasion system (that default to combat when you fail). In Pathfinder, you can roll dice to jump over a log or something... wow. Or there's the CYOA segments Rusty hates.

[Anon]

Pointbuy and its consequences have been a disaster for the roleplaying rpg genre.

Even worse than pointbuy is pointbuy that lets you bank points. It explicitly encourages metagaming.

Another thing I hate even more is permanent stat increases. That means your buildfaggotry has to consider the whole game and many starting builds are unviable. In fallout 2 for example I'd be wasting STR points if I put anything more than 6, effectively making builds focused on STR seem stupid if you know anything about the game.

[Norfleet]

I think this is solved by putting in fail mechanics that produce alternate paths which while they may come with negatives in terms of the initial failed skill check, "may" still produce fruitful outcomes which are layered by various levels of the skill. This way, ideal isn't so specific to dump stat mechanics, allowing all levels of builds to produce various negative and beneficial results depending on circumstance.

For instance, high level intelligence might produce a specific result in an encounter that ends up being negative, but an average intelligence or even sub intelligence might produce a different result in the skill check (ie the Forest Gump result of stumbling into good fortune).

This sounds like a recipe for turning metagaming into a must as you're now playing a game of threading a needle to achieve the desired outcome. At least with dumps and sinks, you knew that if you dumped a stat, you were excluding yourself from anything involving that stat, and anything you maxed out, you were gonna be seeing/doing, unless it was just a fake check that was straight up impossible.

I think layering various outcomes in skill checks might provide a little more depth of play and move away from the dump stat mentality. The game would not simply be applying traditional concepts to encounters, but figuring out solutions based on the makeup of the character.

I don't think you're ever going to get away from the "dump stat mentality" as long as you have them. Sometimes I think we might be better off without having stat/skill allocations at all. There's at least one simple-RPG that does that: You just pick what your character's positive and negative attributes are. No skill checks or fiddly allocation of points. Either you have a thing or you don't. In a situation where your character's strengths and weaknesses are relevant, the resulting options or outcome apply.

[aweigh]

RPGs are simulations, don't see how anyone could think simulationism is bad when that's the definition of an RPG

Wizardry is a simulation of a dungeons & dragons adventure. An electronic simulation. It's gameplay is built around a framework of mechanical abstractions such as hit points, classes, "attacks per round", the concept of an 'encounter' in general, the concept of an armor class or any derivative of such, hell... the very concept of character attributes is a magnificent example of what I'm talking about.

We need to clarify what we mean by "an RPG is a simulation" here going foward. When I make a statement about "simulationist concerns" I am specifically referring to simulation as a game mechanic, i.e. something like 'every gold piece has weight so it adds to inventory management' or 'wearing heavy armor makes your character physically walk slower so now it takes longer to walk to the next town'.

An RPG fight is a simulation accomplished via mechanical abstraction. Sorry for repeating but yeah, we need to nail down what it is we're talking about here. I believe that my statement that RPGs are built off a framework of abstracted game mechanics is as objective as can be, it's the very definition of all of the concepts which comprise an RPG.

EDIT: Also, I've said this before but I've noticed in general that storyfaggotry is closely related to left-wing inclinations. I noticed that, without fail, every single person who advocated for in some way removing or minimizing combat in RPGs was a leftard. This is not an insult at rusty, I know he isn't a leftard, just editing this in becase I know it will annoy the storyfags reading this.

Disparaging the importance of combat in RPGs is a sure-fire sign that you're talking to a leftard. Mark my words.

[rusty_shackleford]

I am referring to simulation as a game mechanic, i.e. something like 'every gold piece has weight so it adds to inventory management' or 'wearing heavy armor makes your character physically walk slower so now it takes longer to walk to the next town'.

I like these.

[aweigh]

I am referring to simulation as a game mechanic, i.e. something like 'every gold piece has weight so it adds to inventory management' or 'wearing heavy armor makes your character physically walk slower so now it takes longer to walk to the next town'.

I like these.

Sure, and I don't see these things as a problem. Like anything else it's all in the execution. Were it up to me, however, I'd rather that instead of literally walking slower you accrued a more abstracted penalty to represent it. Maybe the possibility of losing a turn during battle (messes with your turn order), or an attribute penalty.

But this runs the risk into becoming specifically about 'walking slow' and I don't want it to be about that, like I said stuff like this can work just fine it just depends on the execution. I was merely putting that out there as an example of what I'm talking about when I ask for clarification regarding 'simulation'.