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Post by boot on Aug 13, 2018 8:29:10 GMT -5
Part of that sounds like bad GMing. I'm sorry you've had that experience. I'll periodically use Doom to create an extra trap or give enemies a bonus due. I'm also perfectly fine with not using all the Doom available to me. I scale it with the adventure. If the players are getting cocky I'll throw something at them. Otherwise it's my discretion to leave it be. What I see here is a recognition of bad game design being corrected by the GM not using the rules as intended (ignoring the Doom). Another aspect of the game I can't stand is how players will change their play based on the size of the Doom pool. If the Doom pool is high, they may hold off on investigating the main objective for a while, giving the GM an opportunity to bleed off Doom points. If the Doom pool is low or empty, then the players go on with what they really want to do anyway--investigate the main objective. I can't stand that a game mechanic is so important to the game. Roleplaying should be the source of that motivation, not a game rule. The Doom Pool take the focus off of roleplaying and places it on a game mechanic. It turns the game so that it is more akin to a card game or a board game than a roleplaying game. None of these things are problems with Mongoose's d20 based game.
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Post by frangit on Aug 15, 2018 0:22:20 GMT -5
I've read all the 2d20 books thoroughly. Nowhere in any of them does it even suggest you should strive to use all the Doom available. It is simply another resource for you to implement if you so choose as the GM.
It seems as if you've had a bad experience with the game that mostly seems to stem from an incomplete understanding of the rules from whoever ran your game. If in fact youve played. It reads as if you may have just went with what others have told you/reviews? I'm not sure there.
Having played it I can tell you your concerns are unfounded if the game is GMed by anyone with a full understanding of the rules. Yes the Doom pool is there. That doesn't mean it's the center of the game. And if my players tried to metagame like that by trying to kill time to bleed the Doom pool I'd find new players. Metagaming is a cardinal sin at my table as it should be at all tables.
Either way I'm glad you found a Conan tabletop rpg you enjoy.
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Post by boot on Aug 15, 2018 9:12:08 GMT -5
Metagaming is a sin at my table, too, which is why I don't like the Doom Pool.
How would you stop a player from doing something else while the Doom Pool is high? How would you know? (A smart player would hide the motivation of his actions knowing how you feel about metagamig.)
Plus, how do you reconcile that, outside of Thulsa's mountain fortress, the player running Valeria eats up a lot of dice and produces a lot of doom fighting the outer guards. Then, Conan sneaks into the fortress but ends up having a harder time as the GM spends from the Doom pool--all because of Valeria's actions?
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Post by frangit on Aug 15, 2018 21:19:19 GMT -5
I'd use some of the Doom on the one who produced it. Plus the GM gets some regardless of the player's actions. Like I said though, you do you man.
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Post by boot on Aug 16, 2018 8:17:37 GMT -5
I'd use some of the Doom on the one who produced it. Plus the GM gets some regardless of the player's actions. Like I said though, you do you man. I got ya. And, we're just discussing here. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm just showing you my take on the game. You and I look at it completely differently. You see a great game. I see total crap. I see what you are saying above, but doesn't that lead to some characters getting super-human bonuses without "paying" for them? For example: Valeria creates a lot of Doom while she is scaling a peak to get a better view of the valley. When she gets to the top, she's just going to stay there as a look out. Meanwhile, Conan is infiltrating Thulsa's mountain fortress. Before, the GM was out of Doom from spending it earlier. Now, because of what Valeria did, climbing up that cliff, the GM does have Doom to spend. There's plenty of spends against Conan as he sneaks around the fortress. There's no real enemy that the GM can put against Valeria. She's just on the peak, looking at the valley. So, the GM can either spend those Doom points unfarily against Conan. Or, he can try to save them in order to put them on Valeria later. Or, he can just not spend them. That way, Conan is not penalized for Valeria's heroic climb. But, if he does this, then there is no consequence of Valeria's super-human actions. On top of this, there are going to be times where the GM has forgotten or doesn't really know where all the Doom points came from. It's just a wacky, gimmicky system that has no place in the Hyborian Age.
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Post by Von K on Aug 16, 2018 20:44:35 GMT -5
Boot, you are obviously an RPG connoisseur with your own tastes refined over many decades of gaming. You don't seem to subjectively be a fan of gameplay mechanics like doom/fate/hero points, and if so that's fine, but that doesn't make metagame point pools an objectively bad mechanic.
The doom points mechanic is probably inspired by the fate point economy in Fate. Chris Birch, head honcho at Modiphius, is a big fan of Fate and (with Sarah Newman) wrote some groundbreaking stuff for the third edition, some parts of which have now been incorporated as standard into Fate 4th edition.
Fate is a more character centric narrativist/gamist system. You could technically say that fate points are metagaming, or hero points in Barbarians of Lemuria or fate points in the Warhammer rpg. Yet all of those games are beloved by their respective fans, not least for the character options provided by their respective metagaming mechanics. Not everyone gravitates to that and that's neither a mechanical flaw nor a fault of those who don't favor that style of gameplay. Fate, BoL and Warhammer RPG are very popular systems, but not everyone likes them.
There are three major areas of emphasis in game design: narrativist (story and character centric), simulationist (real world accuracy), and gamist (economical and fun game mechanics). As an example of each in the RPG field I'd say Fate is mainly narrativist, Phoenix Command is mainly simulationist and Savage Worlds is more gamist in it's emphasis.
Plus the Conan RPG always was designed to complement the Monolith Conan boardgame. A similar relationship existed back in the day between the old Warhammer game with it's miniatures range and the first edition Warhammer RPG. The RPG was designed as an extension of the wargaming rules and thus evoked them to some degree in the gameplay.
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Post by boot on Aug 16, 2018 21:44:17 GMT -5
My understanding is that the 2d20 System was created for the Mutant Chronicles rpg, published by Modiphus. In that game, there is an over-riding, Force or Ying-Yang idea called Dark Symmetry. For the game it was designed, Doom (called something different in MC) makes sense. The Doom pool represents the influence of Dark Symmetry on the game session--a mechanical representation of Dark Symmetry.
Modiphus made the (what I think is an) extremely bad call to make the 2d20 system its house system, and the system has been modified and shoehorned into all of their new games, starting with Conan.
But, the Hyborian Age doesn't have something like The Force in Star Wars or Dark Symmetry in Mutant Chronicles. In fact, Conan is singled out for his ability to succeed on pure guts and cold bladed persistence.
This is why the Doom Pool, and that mechanic where by one character gains a benefit, building the Doom Pool, allowing another character pays for someone else's gain. It's an extremely anti-Conan, anti-Hyborian Age concept.
Which is why I think Modiphus really screwed the pooch with their selection of game mechanics for this Conan game.
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Post by thulsadoom on Aug 16, 2018 22:03:11 GMT -5
I’ve never played any 2d20 stuff, but at least for the Conan game doesn’t it kind of make for an adversarial relationship between the DM and the players?
Like, “oh of course you’d have to pick THIS moment to use the Doom dice”
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Post by boot on Aug 16, 2018 22:20:39 GMT -5
I’ve never played any 2d20 stuff, but at least for the Conan game doesn’t it kind of make for an adversarial relationship between the DM and the players? Like, “oh of course you’d have to pick THIS moment to use the Doom dice” I think it would with my players. I can just see one character taking out guards and creating Doom for that fight all willy-nilly, while the conservative player watches the Doom pool grow. Then, it's time for the conservative player's actions, and the GM makes some Doom spends.... The Conservative players says, "Why are you spending those points on me, making my attempt to sneak into the fortress harder, when I had no hand at all in generating those Doom points?" I'd be a lot more at ease with the mechanic if each character's Doom were his own. If a character generates Doom points in one scene, then he knows that he will have to pay for that later. I'd like it even better if the Doom spends where immediate. If a character spends and benefits, creating Doom, then he suffers the consequences then. Maybe it just decreases the character's Momentum. Even then, though, I think it's an ill-conceived (for Conan) and fiddly mechanics system. I don't really like the choke collar it puts on the GM. In the core rulebook, there's an NPC called Teofilo de Zamora, one of of his "Doom Spends" is that he can produce a variety of spiders from his mouth, hands, or wounds if the GM spends 3 Doom. I balk at the idea that the GM shouldn't be able to do this with the character if it would enhance the combat and the fun of the game, even if the Doom Pool is empty. The GM is there to guide an exciting, breathtaking experience for himself and the players. Being limited on actions due to the Doom Pool makes the game less of an RPG and more of a table-top board game.
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Post by Von K on Aug 16, 2018 22:46:38 GMT -5
GM's usually coax the rules in favor of the kind of game they want to run. I've known GMs who minimize damage or downgrade crits on the players to normal hits (I've done so myself on occasion). Campaigns which use pure rules-as-written can sometimes be somewhat deadly on the players. I've also seen GMs in adversarial boardgames use their fiat decision making power to make the game more fun for the players rather than use it to totally pummel the players. Much can depend on the nature of the GM in question.
Regarding the applicability of doom in the Hyborian Age, Conan says of Crom: 'Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune!'
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Post by boot on Aug 16, 2018 23:41:08 GMT -5
Regarding the applicability of doom in the Hyborian Age, Conan says of Crom: 'Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune!' That may be Conan's belief, but all who know the Hyborian Age well, know that gods, if they really exist in the world, rarely make themselves known or rarely influence the world in any way (Black Colossus notwithstanding). It doesn't fit the Hyborian Age at all if you attest that the game effects of Doom are due to godly intervention. Conan does a lot of heroic things. But, nowhere in the Hyborian Age is is correct to think that Conan or his companions somehow have to pay for the heroic things that he does.
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Post by thulsadoom on Aug 16, 2018 23:50:30 GMT -5
I will say this... the sourcebooks that I’ve seen for the game are gorgeous. I know that’s completely secondary to the gameplay and mechanics, but presentation has got to count for something, and I wanted to buy the ones I saw just from looking at them and reading through them!
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Post by boot on Aug 17, 2018 0:06:07 GMT -5
I will say this... the sourcebooks that I’ve seen for the game are gorgeous. I know that’s completely secondary to the gameplay and mechanics, but presentation has got to count for something, and I wanted to buy the ones I saw just from looking at them and leading through them! Agreed. Oh, how I wanted to love this game. I like everything about it EXCEPT how it is played. Which is a biggie. A deal breaker. Especially when Mongoose's d20 version is so damn good.
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Post by Von K on Aug 17, 2018 1:49:55 GMT -5
Regarding the applicability of doom in the Hyborian Age, Conan says of Crom: 'Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune!' That may be Conan's belief, but all who know the Hyborian Age well, know that gods, if they really exist in the world, rarely make themselves known or rarely influence the world in any way (Black Colossus notwithstanding). It doesn't fit the Hyborian Age at all if you attest that the game effects of Doom are due to godly intervention. Conan does a lot of heroic things. But, nowhere in the Hyborian Age is is correct to think that Conan or his companions somehow have to pay for the heroic things that he does. I used that quote purely as an example of terms used by REH himself in referring to bad effects as doom and good effects as fortune, thus making them applicable terms for Modiphius to use for a Hyborian Age themed metagame mechanic. As to the existence of the gods of the Hyborian Age, that's a big topic beyond the scope of this thread. Suffice it to say in brief that they are a major manifestation of the supernatural linked to one of REH's themes: No game based on fiction is going to be a literal translation of it's source material. Conan doesn't literally have doom and fortune points in the books, but that doesn't mean that the players of a game based on those books can't have them. I think both Mongoose and Modiphius versions of the game are awesome. Mongoose were on a roll (if you'll pardon the pun) with their S+S iteration of d20 Conan, one of the best implementations of those rules, but that in no wise diminishes Modiphius achievement with their own version of Conan, which is it's own brand of awesome.
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Post by boot on Aug 17, 2018 9:22:34 GMT -5
We definitely agree on the sword & sorcery job that Mongoose did on the d20 game. And, I also agree with you that their Conan RPG is the best version of the 3.5E d20 game system that I've ever seen.
I would welcome a new set of game rules to Conan universe. I'm definitely not married to d20 Conan. I recognize it as a superior version of d20, but the game is not perfect. The required prep-time and d20 stat blocks keeps me from playing as much as I would like. I compare d20 Conan prep to something like D6 Star Wars, and it's a no brainer. D6 SW is something that a GM can set up in an instant, on the fly, as soon as a GM thinks of it. Not so with d20 Conan, and the d20 game has a much steeper learning curve.
I was onboard with Mongoose going the Runequest 6 route with the rules to Conan. Those would have been a good fit.
And, I'd be open to a lot of other game systems, even new ones, if they are implemented in a way that fits the Hyborian Age.
But, I can't agree that Modiphius has accomplished an achievement with their Conan 2d20 game. Yeah, I've seen the nominations and the awards. I agree that 2d20 is probably a good system for the game for which it was designed (Mutant Chronicles). But, it is a flat out horrible fit for Conan's universe.
2d20 uses a metagame mechanic that focuses the players on rules (the Doom Pool) instead of roleplaying. That's a cardinal sin right there. Never focus on dice at the expense of roleplaying. I've already explained that the take-now-pay-later motif of the Doom pool has no place in the Hyborian Age. The system is gimmicky and clunky and unnecessary. It's a very, very poor choice for Conan.
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