Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

HeatDeath · 05-06-2019, 01:01 PM

"Conan the Wizard" isn't the only problem the new XP guidelines are trying to solve.

Any old-school dungeon-crawl system is going to have a distinct tendency to degenerate into a bunch of teenagers (mental, if not physical) indulging their sociopathic tendencies as a bunch of medieval superhuman murderhobos, but the old system of XP for landed blows and coups-de-grace positively encouraged it.

Steve writes at length in the Companion essay about how distasteful he finds that style of play. It's no surprise whatsoever that he took the opportunity to rip that dynamic out by the roots.

The increased emphasis on talents at high experience levels is a pretty clear attempt to shift the emphasis from raw progression-as-a-goal-in-itself to roleplaying, per se. I'm not seeing how the proposals here are much more than just an attempt to re-enshrine murderhobo-ism at the heart of the progression system.

[ Not to be construed as an attack, mind you. I'm of the tactical combat school of TFT - slamming roughly equal squads into each other and watching the blood spray is great! But these contests are frankly more interesting at low-to-middling power levels. And balance is absolutely necessary. To invoke Ogre, if you run a MkVI against a MkIII defense, neither player is gonna have fun, no matter how hard the MkVI player worked to "earn" it. ]

05-06-2019, 01:01 PM	#52
HeatDeath Join Date: May 2012	Re: Alternate XP progression schedule "Conan the Wizard" isn't the only problem the new XP guidelines are trying to solve. Any old-school dungeon-crawl system is going to have a distinct tendency to degenerate into a bunch of teenagers (mental, if not physical) indulging their sociopathic tendencies as a bunch of medieval superhuman murderhobos, but the old system of XP for landed blows and coups-de-grace positively encouraged it. Steve writes at length in the Companion essay about how distasteful he finds that style of play. It's no surprise whatsoever that he took the opportunity to rip that dynamic out by the roots. The increased emphasis on talents at high experience levels is a pretty clear attempt to shift the emphasis from raw progression-as-a-goal-in-itself to roleplaying, per se. I'm not seeing how the proposals here are much more than just an attempt to re-enshrine murderhobo-ism at the heart of the progression system. [ Not to be construed as an attack, mind you. I'm of the tactical combat school of TFT - slamming roughly equal squads into each other and watching the blood spray is great! But these contests are frankly more interesting at low-to-middling power levels. And balance is absolutely necessary. To invoke Ogre, if you run a MkVI against a MkIII defense, neither player is gonna have fun, no matter how hard the MkVI player worked to "earn" it. ]