Rambling about Character Sheets in RPGs
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- Here we discuss the nature of character sheets in RPGs and I highlight what I think is the most crucial component of a character sheet.
Sorry if the music is a bit loud at points. I turned it all the way down and yet it can still overpower my voice when the crescendos are ramping.
Get a coffee, a beer, or a crisp glass of water, sit back and enjoy!
Some Oblivion mods that I can't play the game without:
Alternatvie Start
Cmaping
Capes and Cloaks
Darker Dungeons
Darker Nights
Fading Torches
Illumination Within
Illumination Without
Living Economy
Map Marker Overhaul
Morrowind-like Health
No Respawn or Essential NPCs
Oblivifall - there are lots of versions, grab all of them
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Quest Item Tag Remover
Reneer's Guard Overhaul
i would love to live in the world of oblivion. if i were in oblivion i'd be a goblin. to have my last moments at the end of the steel blade of the player's abandoned level ten spell sword would be a great testament to my pride in the after life. every other goblin will envy me, i'm sure of it.
I would love to live in the world of oblivion. If I were in oblivion i'd be a rat. i'd scurry around in the dark, making bandits jumpy.
Haha I love it. If I lived in the world of Oblivion I'd be imp. I'd hang around an abandon fort until one day an adventurer would kill me and take my gall for alchemy...
I would love to live in the world of oblivion. If I were in oblivion, I'd be a slaughterfish and explore the vast waters of the bay. I could also scare and eat fisherman that would need to ask adventurers to kill me.
I would love to live in the world of Oblivion. I would be the most fearsome critter in the land. The mudcrab. I would claw an unaware passer-by.
I would love to live in the world of oblivion. I would be a deer and live peacefully until one day a bug will transform my earthly body into a grotesque joke and my limbs will stretch into the infinite.
These videos are so chill, and there's something genuinely cathartic about hearing you have the same discussions that I've had with myself. Not to be so "OMG, literally me!", but the more you tell about your own experiences and tastes with RPGs, the clearer it becomes why I've gone down the same trains-of-thought as you, lol.
Also I really appreciate how you include some points about how RPGs relate to other media and the comparisons between TTRPGS and videogames.
I love the specificity + the universality of these, simultaneously. I love that the videos re-create the semi-meditative state I get playing games like these that are already chill, familiar, & comfortable to me, but always have the potential of newness. These videos are casually brilliant.
Thank you for being my introduction to daggerfall. It’s now my comfort game and it has opened me up to a whole new genre of games.
What in particular made you pick up Daggerfall? If you feel comfy answering ofc. Just wondering if it was an aggregate of points or a specific thought or incident in a particular point of a video?
Also omg I desperately want to know what you did for your first character! Only if you want to share but I love hearing about peoples' character builds.
Every time you upload a ramble i get so excited lol. I love these casual videos
In tabletop inventory management and tracking is my favorite part no joke. I love keeping track of arrows, torches, seeing if I bought enough rations for a 2 week trip by foot
Psychopath
ngl I'd watch a 2 hour video about your systems + tools to track while I draw every kind of apple from the supemarket on a chill night.
Genuinely think the most fun thing on a character sheet is something unique to your character. It's one of the reasons I love ttrpgs like Risus where your "stats" are just things you pick for yourself, or more freeform games where you get to sort of designate what your Special Ability is not off of a list but just sort of out of your brain for what you think a cool thing would be. Games that have very flexible abilities and powers are a good second best to that, where you can customize them somewhat.
Agreed. In a CRPG, the nitty-gritty meta-gaming stuff can be fun, but in a TTRPG that is just tiresome. (I usually refer to it as "Spreadsheet: The Roleplaying Game" :D ) The main function of a character sheet in a TTRPG is to express how your character differs from the other party members.
I recently started making my own rpg ruleset just for my own group, and I have leaned more and more into this. Instead of making a bunch of rules for different abilities, perks etc, just make a couple of base rules for how to create that stuff and when the character can acquire it, then leave it up to the player to design it (with the GM having final say, to avoid exploits) and name it. Everyone is just a baseline version of their race except for the stuff they have named. So a "Stubborn, Clumsy, Human Farmer" will do what it says on the tin. He'll have extra willpower, he'll be worse at agility stuff and he'll have skills conductive to working on a farm.
@@Ralzar I haven't heard of this! Man if I'm about to go down a 3 hour rabbit hole online it's ON YOU...(so...um...probably thank you...thanks).
Hey Micah, just wanted to say I love your videos and commentary. Your ability to bridge role playing games with real life is very imagination inducing just like the fantasy worlds you love so much!
I really enjoy playing these videos in the background of my own RPG games, thanks for uploading a nice video to just chill and listen to
Such a joy to listen to you ramble Micah
CLUB lock is an oldie but a goodie; you made all the pertinent points:
Hinders theft/makes theft more obvious
Makeshift weapon
I was like "someone has to be listening to this who mods; there'd better be a car lock club as a modded-in weapon in all the TES soon".
I've grown bored with the murder hobo play style that TES games have come to incentivize. Something I'd like to do with OpenMW is fork it into having mechanics from both Daggerfall and Fallout New Vegas hard coded, rather than having them scripted, along with a shuffled not random, chore and NPC scheduling system. Daggerfall and Morrowind had sophisticated faction and disposition systems that needed to be refined, not thrown out. I like the Fallout New Vegas karma system, but it just wouldn't really work for a game inspired by Gamma World, which seems to have only been used for direct inspiration in Kenshi. I love Kenshi, but it's purely a sandbox and needs some in starting factions and in game missions to give playing it direction and context.
This is a really interesting line of thought, thanks.
It isn't just nostalgia. I recently beat it like a little less than 2 years ago and the music is amazing and soothing.
Agree.
Glad this video popped up in my recommended. Oblivion scenery, check. Daggerfall let's plays, check. TTRPGs and Old school games, check. Shit talking the 5E power-fantasy, check. I'll go check out your other videos now.
Super talk. You have inspired me and now I am considering to build my own advanture pack with water and flint and steel and so on!
I don't want to pry into his personal world but when Micah referenced being a teacher, I was like "yeah that tracks, he'd be a great one" specifically bc he inspires so much + makes me think, but really gently. I can totally see him having his class build Adventure Packs.
I never really considered inventory as part of the actual character sheet, I always saw the character sheet as just the starting point/characteristics of the pc rather than what you get during actual play, ya know? Like it's describing the actual character and not their possessions, so it's a good point to think of all interface we have with the world/character as part of the character sheet.
Yeah that part blew my mind! It felt so obvious in hindsight. It feels like I found something out that will make me think about a few things in a different way now, in gaming + beyond.
About magic users and robes, in my opinion it's a pragmatic choice since a lot of spells need somatic components in DND, so they need to move around and make gestures that you couldn't in heavy armor. I imagine the gestures are very minute and detailed, so using something like a heavy gauntlet would make it too clunky and wouldn't "register properly" with whatever theory of magic the setting has.
I think I remember reading this as well, the idea didn't come to mind during recording though.
Magic users are typically weaker too, so they'd find clunky armor very exhausting in addition to being restrictive.
I think Big Train ?? has a sketch where a sci-fi dude in armour gets his beard caught in a helmet hinge & it just really bothers + distracts him during this epic battle so I can see the wisdom of soft fluffy robes.
I am glad I was randomly recommended this video and decided to watch it to the end. To answer the querstion from my DM perspective: "What is the most important part of the character sheet"
My observation has always been magical items. It can be either heirlooms at the start the player received for whatever reason or something cool they acquired from a dungeon or purchased with a trader. Players rarely ever sell, trade, or discard these items and will take great offense if you have ever destroyed one or informed them the item had been looted or something of the sort. I think so some these items become a part of their character and to deface the item an any way is sort of an attack on the characters ego which may be worse than death. I feel this is quite a taboo scenario but perhaps depends on the system you are playing. From what little player perspective I find myself having a hard time answering the question. I am a big "roleplay" character person so my initial thought is the identity of my character (Name, appearance, ete). In some sense your character's name has power, maybe you are a renowned champion of the people, so anyone hearing your voice will bow at you, or maybe you have a huge bounty on your head and your TRUE name isn't well known.
Ok that's really fascinating! Thanks for answering! Both those perspectives sound reasonable, esp if you think about real life analogs.
Like, I remember being SO RELIEVED when I was robbed but they didn't take my personal oddball stuff box, which had sentimental jewelry in it that was actually valuable but more than anything else, irreplaceable bc if the circumstances it'd be given to me or found or the experiences I'd had wearing them or the fact that 2 of them were heirlooms & the rest were either gifts or something I treasured for deeply personal reasons otherwise. Absolutely that'd be seen as violation enough to be almost taboo, that was such good phrasing on your part.
Also the name. I know several fantasy authors/settings have magic or other abilities or implications tied into character names, but I was considering your comment & it's true in real life as well. Professionally, I go by a career long variation of my full name. When introduced to humans, I acknowledge my career name if it's a professional setting or how I'm introduced, but it's a long name that feels pretentious in personal interactions, so I shorten it to my initials & invite them to call me that. I only use my first name in legal/administrative or medical situations. With closer friends, I go by a shorter derivation of my middle name, & the people who knew me as a child use a childhood derivation of that same middle name; it's just that my childhood one sounds "kiddie", which is why I modified it in high school to a more mature variation of the same name. When my Mom got mad at us, she'd use our full names, & we knew how much trouble we were in by how many of our names she actually used to call us. If I added a "magic or spiritual name" to what I already have it'd just be an additional context + a broadening of my established identity, which is broad to me bc I encompass all these identities, all of them are "me", even if from the outside looking in, other people only know pieces of me, & those pieces are highly correlated with what they get to call me.
I wish video games did more work to take this "pieces of identity are gifts/keys to how you know me" element as a given in games. Maybe I don't want to introduce myself to every innkeeper as Gørlök The Mostly Sane of the Clan Sœdma. Maybe after a few quests together, I want my party-mates to "just call me Gør; that's what my friends back home call me".
I couldn't agree more with your opening remarks. I also have an urge to go back to Oblivion, to experience its surreal beauty. The vibe of the game is dreamlike and wonderful. The soundtrack is amazing. Its the first RPG I played as a kid too, back in 2010. So nostalgic. I might play this weekend.
I love your content and your ramblings, man. Thanks for these awesome rants
lol they should be called ramblings + rants = "rantlings"
too gentle to be rants; too focused to fully ramble lol
This was a really chill and refreshing commentary on RPGs, I wish you were my teacher back in school lol
Had same thought at same point in video lol
I enjoyed your ramblings 👍
For pathfinder the class and feats are honestly the most important.
I love RPGs bro this, this is comfy.
Agreed, I mostly play OSR games where feats aren't really a thing. Though there are "foci" in Worlds Without Number which are basically the same thing as feats and they're a lot of fun to pick out
great points in the video! wanting to get oblivion molded the way id like is like a drug, I must resist the urge to try again!
You sound like you've played Ad&d :). I'm having a similar problem with my players. They haven't understood just how important equipment is no matter how many times I tell them 😭
Good video! Gonna look forward to more of your videos.
lol now you can send your crew these videos with specific moments marked
good luck!
love you micah thanks for the video
love you too, bud c:
AIR BUD
Love these chill commentary rambly videos and an intriguing topic as I'm designing a ttrpg inspired by pathfinder 1e rn
Are you documenting your game dev somewhere public or is it Buddies Only? (Which I'd understand, bc Internet.)
@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 i've not made that much progress on it all truth be told.
I love the roll and rock method of character gen in TTRPG's. 3d6 down the line and play what you get. if the option for races is available in the system of choice, without prerequisits, I'll roll that as well. Basically, I try to let as much stuff that would be random, be random. The type of things that are outside a persons control in the real world, I give up that control in the fictional world as best I can, and make the choices as that type of person rolled randomly would make.
For that reason, as well, I don't like detailed, long backstories, but I do love a few small prompts. Central Casting books are good for this, but Xanathar's (I think, or maybe Tasha's?) book has a little section for roll tables with a few small prompts and results to flesh out, but not overburden, some narrative weight to a backstory. Like a sprinkle of salt as opposed to popping the screwtop off and dousing the steak.
I'm so invested in hearing other people's experiences + philosophies with gaming questions that are deep + related to storytelling + world integrity. That sounds super interesting, thanks for sharing.
Some TT players I know of have made specific backstory development + meet-&-greet experiences for new characters, not just new players. I don't know much about it, but apparently they started bc of their commitment to roll & rock. They have an onboarding care for new players + characters I've rarely seen, & I think most of them play in multiple groups but this one is invite-only & very particular to protect the integrity of their world. It's an offshoot of something already niche, further modded by the DM, with higher-than-usual player influence in co-creation + world-building & they work hard to be a harmonious game team so I don't blame them for how protective they are, even if it's a little insular. Different TT groups are so varied, it's interesting to me.
Great video, as always. I adore your insights about RPGs. I currently play Dwarf Fortress focusing on one particular theme to make game both challenging and interesting
Which theme, if you don't mind sharing?
@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 Oh shit, it was long time ago. I think I was making my fortress reliant on surface agriculture and animal produce. I was making wooden huts and and separate cottages. Quite challenging thanks to rather rudimentary building mechanics
Duuuuuuuude I haven't heard someone other than me even KNOW about GURPS in like 2 decades. I've known since the first video that we are cut from the same cloth!
My "canon" Skyrim PC was a Thalmor deserter leaving the province instead of trying to get back in (as the default Nord is said to be doing). I enjoyed spinning his narrative against the cosmic movements of Alduin, the dusk aspect of Akatosh; he abandoned his duty of eating the world, instead chose to rule it - My PC in-turn, as an Altmer somewhat evoking Akatosh's dawn aspect Auri-El, abandoned his duty to rule the province and instead was fated to devour dragons.
I likewise had Oblivion act as my gateway to roleplaying. lt truly was the first game to capture my imagination like that of books I'd read with its beautiful landscapes, numerous dungeons, and the magic system. It was even the source of my first video game dream. However, I haven't been able to go back to it despite many attempts. It's become my least favourite in the series. Maybe I'll try an new mod loadout.
For character sheets, I like having the background fleshed out as I play. My favourite part is determining attributes and starting equipment. I usually set up attributes a little wonky for whatever class I'm going for to give some personality and to allow for situations to easily occur that will refine what the background will be.
Yeah as much as I love Oblivion, I can't get lost in it like I used to. I'll have 3 or 4 nice sessions with a character, then I'll move on. It's nice to boot it up once in a while to soak in the atmosphere though.
LOOOOOOONG COMMENT. APOLOGIES, SKIP IF LENGTHY READS ANNOY YOU. THANKS TO ANYONE WITH THE PATIENCE THO.
1. The story of Micah's real world "inventory" is so funny I can already tell it'll live rent-free in my head, paired with when NeverKnowsBest asked us what we're supposed to get out of it as a role-player to be constantly encouraged to steal everything that isn't nailed down + some things that are, more + more, no matter the context or character class/RP personality, in games as a trend, & being told by mechanics/sub-systems/gameplay-loops to simply hoover everything up. NKB says this over footage of V picking Jackie's GF's place clean during a tender conversation. I'm paraphrasing but he confronts us with a "would you really be stealing this lady's ashtray for any reason, at any time, let alone for "game loop" reasons while she's RIGHT THERE pouring her heart out to you?" Between Micah + NKB I'm now converted into seeing all my stuff as INVENTORY & I can tell it'll make my life better somehow lol.
2. Akira OST on cassette 11/10. 🤯 Driving at night around Denver with that playing.
3. Can't wait to find a Micah video with Micah's Argonian in it. Argonians are my fave.
4. I admire Micah's commitment to not re-rolling or fudging. It def made me rethink whether doing that is ethically in line with my real life beliefs, not just gaming, which led to some very serious checking in on myself + what I believe & if I'm expressing those beliefs & showing up in the real world the way I want to. Real Life can be like driving, once you've been doing it awhile you can let shortcut or bad habits creep in or not keep up the vehicle properly etc, extend metaphor as needed. I don't want to complacently drift along assuming I already know myself until an accident or other hazard forces me to confront something, so I appreciate being able to use storytelling principles constructively, in a way that applies to the world I live in daily, analog life. I bet playing characters as you roll them could really be interesting + empathy-building as well as just fun.I had a tabletop era with a niche game involving sanity/horror mechanics & one dude always played "dumb" characters, & really committed to his RP. It was often just hilarious but also so creative. Plus, this prob sounds stupid, but I remember questioning a lot of my beliefs around that time too, about the merits of intelligence & prejudice against people who are not very bright, & how little that trait actually had to do with other aspects of people I value, or in myself, what it even means to "be smart" & when it's overvalued + undervalued in various people or situations. I recall being surprised at the end of the campaign how much I learned from playing with that guy. He moved, we lost touch, but I hope he's thriving.
5. I like the way that Micah says "background author" at the end & implies what I think he's been explicit about when other vids touch on it, that aspect of RP where you are co-author with the game overall & the author of your own story within it. I enjoy that mode of thinking about RPGs.
6.Micah's videos always have a cozy thoughtful nostalgia vibe but esp hit me hard mentioning Denver. We're Canadian but my Dad was posted in Colorado Springs for a few years & when he had us for summer, we went to Denver a lot --- the Planetarium! --- but also little road trips to discover treasures like Manitou Springs, which I romanticize to this day; loved the old hippie vibe there. A favourite memory is my Dad waking me up at 5am to ride through Garden Of The Gods at dawn with him on his big motorcycle...the pink light hitting the pink rocks & red sand of these giant rock formations, dwarfed yet crowned by the craggy majesty of the Colorado Rockies...that was really something otherworldly. Fiction + games can simulate beautiful amazing awesome experiences that expand something inside of you, but everyone needs real world reference points of those kinds of experiences too.
7. Ugh, it happened. Sorry + thank you, again. I've been deliberately trying to restrain myself from commenting other than some engagement tidbits to jangle digital keys at the algorithm so I keep getting shown the channel. I get secondhand Lost In Thought Cuz Roaming-a-game-you-cherish-&-know-well from these videos, I tend to engage with them like meditation videos, it's weird --- they're so personal + specific to Micah yet universal enough to put me in a transcendental headspace. Very odd. But cool. Anyways sorry for breaking down & commenting exactly the huge wall of text I was afraid it'd compel since Micah's musings while gaming provoke SO MUCH THOUGHT in me.
8. Hope everyone enjoys their adventures today🧚
I played oblivion for the first time around 2 years ago so I can tell you it's not just nostalgia, this game is beautiful and atmospheric. I found the roleplaying pretty boring but exploring the world with the physical map was magical.
I love darker nights in my Bethesda RPGs, but damn 0_0
This topic does have a LOT to do with the games you're playing. My favorite TTRPG is a game called Mythras and I think it focuses on very different stuff than most games (it's based on BRP and used to be an edition of RuneQuest). In Mythras, the most important things you choose when starting out are actually your character's culture and what they do for a living. Classes aren't a thing. It's a much less dungeon focused game where you're a little more integrated into the "regular world", and being traditional adventuring types can earn you a reputation as trouble-making homeless drunkards if you're not careful. Your inventory is STILL a huge part of who your character is- but you have a little less direct choice in the matter. If you're living in some city-state and you're too poor to be a citizen, are you even allowed to own "wartime" weapons or just a simple sword? If you're a mage of some sort, there's nothing stopping you from wearing armor (and armor is VERY effective in Mythras), but maybe you don't want the initiative penalty of something too heavy. I've seen people bring all the classic staples, but I've also seen shepherds bring their whole flock with them as a source of income they don't need to carry.
I agree, inventory is crucial in OSR style games but not so much in other systems.
Mythras sounds really cool! Interesting to see how being a shepherd or something along those lines can be so pivotal in a system like that.
There's so much creativity in the history of RPGs, with some whole worlds & systems invented just to solve some problem someone had with the games they knew, others to expand on concepts, themes, or ideas they loved so much they needed to incorporate or highlight it within a new game & mechanics. Some scholarly types could probably legitimately re-create a whole "family bush" from its original TT big bang games. I'd love to see a flow chart accompanied by some sense of how/why the branching happened where it did, maybe with an oral history component. My wishful thinking is big lol.
Tbh I'd love to see a gamer like Micah take on Disco Elysium, to hear him react to the system of characterizing Your Little Guy In DE & how character develops there. I love Micah's TES rumination series, just so curious how he'd meet + guide that kind of character + world building, despite saying he tends not to gravitate towards games that force you to be one person or limited choice of characters.
Ever since I was a kiddo I adored character sheets --- my Mom was an elementary school secretary + librarian who played D&D --- & tbh I could just spend all day just making characters. I doubt it's in the past lol I prob still could, on a Sick Day, given enough grilled cheese + gingerale. There's something so relaxing about it. I don't know why there isn't a line of paper activity books that capitalize on that impulse; let you fill out character sheets & give you other paper based activities or crafts to situate your lil' buddies in.
Colorado native, can confirm your point on car theft. Or just theft in general. I used to live near Pecos and highway 36. Good lord. Had my vehicle broken into multiple times. Nothing ever stolen (I had nothing worth taking), but it was nearly a weekly thing at one point until police increased their presence in the area.
The inventory is like a flavor package for a glass of carbonated water in most "RPGs". You will drink a glass of carbonated water but oh look, you did your own unique thing by choosing this particular flavor, just like you chose this particular set of items to go trough an area killing enemies only to end up with an exactly the same outcome. The items you have on are basicly the only distintive thing about our characters in most "RPGs" and people like to pretend choosing a playstyle and being forced to coming up with your own story in your head is somehow as satisfying as the game allowing you to create a narrative wihin the game itself.
you make excellent elder scrolls videos
laughed out loud at the Akira soundtrack cassette. Good taste though
Same, I was thinking how surreal driving at night in Denver with that blasting would feel.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on wayward realms. Are you going to support it? Do you think it will deliver a decent game?
I am excited to play it when my one year old son is old enough to vote c:
It has potential, but it really needs financial backing. There's only so much a group of volunteers can do.
I haven't kept up with it in a while, maybe these issues have already been addressed.
@micah_raygun_ I've been keeping up with it and they're about to launch a Kickstarter in the next week or two. I'll probably throw in some cash in the donation jar, because even if it amounts to nothing, I spent so much time playing Arena and Daggerfall and I never bought either game. Hundreds of hours of entertainment totally free. Worth it to me.
Nirnroots at 7:27 and 8:23.
I think the clerics not having blades originated from the old pagan priests. They weren't allowed to bear weapons or ride horses, which translated into the no swords thing.
I think any talk about character sheets in RPGs needs to go back to the primordial ooze that RPGs emerged from as a way to facilitate more rules for Braunstein games that themselves were a way to facilitate a more intimate form of roleplaying away from Wargames. Braunsteins didn't have character sheets but the players were assigned a role. And they had various abilities related to that role. And from there, the player could play as they saw fit within that framework. Character sheets spawned from this concept as there needed to be a more official way to determine what a player could and could not do. This ended up leading to many of the seemingly random rules you see in OD&D and especially AD&D 1e in particular a recently unearthed rule from the 1e DMG that talked about using 1:1 time in your games. Nowadays you have the BrOSR way of roleplaying. Which is a 1:1 time sandbox, with high level patrons playing a Braunstein game as Lords, Kings, and high level monsters with minions. Whilst players play an RPG in that world. You have multiple groups all working in real time in a sandbox with their own player driven goals. GMs don't have to design a narrative to drag the players through. They don't tell the players what to do. Both Patrons and players provide that narrative by simply playing the game and reacting to one another. It's completely player driven based on what is available on their character sheet and what they can translate that to in the game. If you've ever played Sandbox MMOs like Eve Online or Star Wars Galaxies this may sound familiar. Even games like Daggerfall have similarities. But what we really need is a more intimate kind of CRPG similar to Neverwinter Nights. Where you can have player run small pop servers of people in a game in various roles all just playing the game and immersing themselves into that world through their actions. No set narrative. Set your own goals and react to other players. That'd be the game.
This is a cool comment thanks.
interesting perspectives!
i think you should really consider playing cdda sometime, i get the feeling of carefully considering my "possibles" the most in that game out of anything ive played
That's a curious about inventory. Take a closer look at most of footage of modern Bethesda's game. What do you see?
Player jumps from container to body, taking ALL without even thinking what to take. Glorified garbage collector simulator.
And what the most common complain and most common mod - more carrying weight.
No role-playing here "What my character would take?"
11:45 I'm in ABQ I have to use a steering wheel locks as well due to all the car theft. It's really bad down here! Lol
Oblivion is very fun with OOO, unfortunately I find the game is prone to save corruption on longer play-throughs.
Someone just put a new mod together called No Leveled And Balanced Oblivion. Unfortunately there's veeery little info but it seems like it still uses some of the same resources as OOO, it's just much more conservative about it, and it was specifically made to try and skirt around save corruption. I'm definitely checking it out the next time I do a playthrough.
What is your take on immersive sims or games that put you in the specific role of a character and not as open world as a bethesda game or a tabletop rpg. In my mind the thief games are fantastic at getting the player in the mind of Garett the protagonist through atleast purely game mechanics, better than any character sheet atleast.
I love Thief 1 and Thief 2 immensely, but tbh I haven't played many other games that are in that genre
Okay...
I appreciate that you speak about TTRPG game design but it sounds like you haven't really looked into most of these systems you mention and haven't played them either? Just to mention that DnD does have a rule for taking down creatures without killing them, and it's a very simple one.
The question you should have asked with every system is what it was designed for. Where does elements come from, what history does the design have, and how are the same problems solved in different systems. Where is player agency focused on and why.
And of course you'll have different player types prefering different ways to customize a character. How that is expressed in a system can differ wildly. And GURPS specifically isn't designed for a specific kind of setting, as most of the others are. What bag space means and how it can express the actor that your players create to interact with the system can't be compared that easily. Especially, if you keep in mind that, for example, DnD 5e isn't played as it was designed to. Not mentioned the differences in how important the balance of the system is, which in turn will offer different playstyles if rules are changed, which is easier done in DnD 5e than Pathfinder 2e. And of course how the story is told is also different, taking or granting agency to players in that regard, like in PbtA systems vs Numenera or Pathfinder/DnD etc.
A fighter in DnD 5e, just to name one example, doesn't have to be someone that is focused on melee. They usually are, yes, but don't have to be played like that. Most classes in DnD come from older tropes in fantasy, not from a specific logic.
I don't know if you have a background in this and just try to explain it in simpler terms. If you haven't played/looked into many systems but GURPS, than I would prefer that you look into them and the history of TTRPG design before speaking about other systems like you know these things. Just look at the math. Just Bag space alone isn't the main expression of player agency or abilities in most systems.
Character sheets usually reflect the intention how the actor of the player is intended to be played and what power they have over the system. PbtA for example is quite simple, but look at Pathfinder 1e and you'll go into crisis mode. I haven't seen one of GURPS, as I didn't look it it much, but it does sound simpler than other crunchy systems. A good comparison could be DnD and Pathfinder though, as both have skills, but their importance differs and how they are expressed. Even better would be feats. An afterthought in DnD, but the core element of Pathfinder 2e.
The inventory space has to be designed with the intended gameplay in mind, right?
Like in the TES games I've played space is limited in DnD as well, but no table I know plays it like that. But in TES it is part of the gameplay loop. It's important for the player economy. Games like Diablo focus even more on this.
How important the inventory is, therefore also heavily depends on the game/system you play. As its limitations are a part of the intened experience and balance. So, maybe what you are saying rings true for GURPS (again, haven't looked into it, you tell me), but isn't true for most other TTRPG systems I am familiar with.
I do not intend to be rude, if I am too direct let me know. I do love game design though and maybe can go a bit overboard sometimes.
You're not being rude, but you are taking it too seriously. I'm just a guy with a mic who likes to talk about RPGs. I can tell by your post that we have very different taste, as you name dropped games that I'll never see myself playing and didn't mention any of the systems I was referring to. The fact that you stated DnD as having skills is a way of identifying that we're not talking about the same games.
Stay off of Reddit some, man. These are just subjective thoughts based on my experience and I'm not trying to insult the systems you like. There's more to life than arguing with every rando you find on the internet.
Buddy, you're saying that he's wrong for having different opinions, philosophies, and values in ttrpgs than you. Micah made it pretty clear that these points are what he values and not universal truths. It's ok for you to disagree, but to tell him to do more research? Yes, you went overboard and seem to be personally offended by a guy's ramblings about his personal opinions on role playing games.
@@toewoe He does claim things about other systems that are wrong. I just pointed that out.
@@micah_raygun_ I was only pointing out things that you say about other systems that are not correct. It's not about taste. It's a conversation. I didn't feel attacked, why would I? I just point out that you speak like you know these systems, when it is clear that you are not, and therefore say a few things that are just not correct.
But it does sound like that these things interest you, and so I pointed these out.
Maybe listen to your own recording? Because you do mention some.
@@doppelkammertoaster I apologize if I misrepresented a system that you enjoy.
What do you think about TTRPGs like Mausritter, where inventory is the character sheet?
Love em for what they are, granted I haven't played many. Knave is the system that came to mind for this sort of thing. You found armor? You are now a warrior. Found a spellbook? Congrats on becoming the magic user lol.
I think carry capacity plays a role in limiting characters in situations like that in Knave at least.
@@micah_raygun_ makes me also think of choose your own adventure books, where you're (usually) proficient in the things you carry. Interestingly, newer books like Into The Dungeon / Into The Tower have a selection of pregen characters related to the story, and different characters interact with different plot items throughout the book as relates to their background. Very fun!
Any good mod to play as vanilla as possible but with a more balanced difficulty system?
I would use Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul and Reneer's Guard Overhaul if you want something close to vanilla.
Check out the modlist in the description to cherry-pick as you like, but OOO is essential in my opinion.
Do you have a certain mod list you use with oblivion, or do you prefer vanilla?
Played plenty of vanilla in my day since is started on Xbox 360, but I really need to mod oblivion to enjoy it these days.
I updated the description with suggested mods. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul is a must, or a similar mod that removes the level scaling.
Thanks, I have only ever played vanilla.beaten each ES game dozens of times. But I have started playing modded since watching your videos.
I took your mod list for daggerfall and was super pleased with the change. When I finish it oblivion is next. Morrowind for me is perfect other than bug fix mods.
It raises the question, it doesn't beg the question.
Minecraft is an interesting example--I'd played it for a long time before I realized that the combat and exploration progression is essentially all inventory-based (or based on production capacity to affect inventory).
Algorithm bump
Oh no, you shouldn't have brought up PD2. It's not better than D2, it moves the opposite way of how I'd like D2 to change... And its idea of "balance" imo got it all wrong... "Everyone's got massive DPS and AoE" is stupid. All of the classes were already "viable", as in, fun to play and capable of beating the game and then some
Agree to disagree moment
A mekkah call out in the wild. Nice
You've taught? Your manner in these videos make more sense now :)
get this baw in the algorithm
based Fire Emblem enjoyer. play Vestaria Saga