The Campaign Builder's Guild

Thanks for the detailed response. I'm not going to do a point-by-point rebuttal because I don't want to drag Kindling's thread into a protracted debate about Apocalypse World's mechanics. I did read the whole thing, though.

I think the response that gets straight to my point is this one.

Quote from: HippopotamusDundeeyou can't mechanically make a move unless you're narrating the fictional triggers to activate it

This sort of thing is at the core of my objections about the game feeling "nebulous." I see what you're getting at, but I am just not too fond of game mechanics that are based on purely narrative triggers without any backing crunch. In practice, that means GM fiat governs what works and what doesn't-- which, of course, tends to be the opposite of player empowerment.

For example...

Quote from:  HippopotamusDundeeUnless a character narrates how they maneuver so their opponent is in range, they can't yet make the move to hurt them.

So why not just add "I run up to him and..." to the beginning of every attack description?

The answer, of course, is that doing that might not always be feasable, but the problem there is that without any tactical positioning mechanics of any kind, it seems to be left completely up to GM fiat as to whether the character can actually get there or not and what the opportunity cost is. There's no ability to count grid squares or zones or whatever, and that's the part where you lose me. I feel like enemy attacks are similar, because enemy attacks being based on narrative events means that concentrating on a dangerous foe-- which is, in my opinion, should be a valid tactic-- leads to that dangerous foe getting more chances to attack since there is no actual turn structure and the enemy only gets to do stuff in response to players doing stuff. Instead, the more efficient approach seems to actually be to ignore that foe, because then he doesn't have anything to react to. In practice, the GM probably wouldn't stand for that, and use a soft move to get that enemy involved anyway, but when and how the GM does that is, once again, seemingly based solely on fiat. I'm fine with the GM arbitrarily throwing in a monkey wrench when everyone's just standing around doing nothing and the game is dragging, but in general I prefer combat to be more orderly and systemic.

As for the other stuff, I can see how it's a flavor preference. It's one I don't personally share, but that is more subjective, and that much was probably obvious already. :grin:

Kindling, how did your LotFP session go?

Pretty good! It ended up being more than a one-shot though, and we actually had our second session today.

I'm definitely still getting to grips with the system but it does seem like it suits very well. Between it being new to me and me just being a bit rusty in my GMing anyway it's not been the smoothest ride, but then maybe that's to be expected from LotFP!

The first session was entirely taken up with one combat, which I thought went very well. It did, however, leave all but 1 PC on very low HP (and 1 actually unconscious on 0HP), so I can definitely see how LotFP is a high-lethality game. I really liked the way the combat played out though, it seemed very robust and a good balance of abstract and believable. The Fighter's combat options (press, fight defensively) as well as the parry option available to all classes meant there were tactical decisions to be made during the fight even though the rules are very stripped-down and basic, so that was fun - definitely more engaging than a simple repetition of roll-hit roll-damage round after round, while keeping the elegance of the simplicity.

Second session we had some more non-combat encounters which I think worked quite well until the last scene, when the party triggered a trap which I had, thinking about it, set up to do wayyy too much damage. I'm still getting used to how frail characters are in LotFP. Not only will 1st level PCs have very few HP, they will also fail their saves a lot. The result was a PC fatality, and the whole rest of the party except for an overly cautious Specialist who hung back being knocked unconscious...

I think part of the problem was that as well as the low HP for the characters, it's very hard to regain HP, especially if you fall below half, and as the set-up of the adventure I was running didn't really allow the luxury of extended bed-rest to recover from wounds, the party was still very beaten up from their first fight during the second session.

Overall I'd say I like the system so far, it's just taking a while for me to adjust to it, but once I've ironed things out a bit I think it will work really well. The problems are definitely with how I'm running it rather than the game itself I think. That said, it would be nice if the game had some kind of perception mechanic at times. I spot-ruled that rolling equal-to-or-under Wisdom on 1d20 would let you notice things and that worked ok, but seemed like a little bit of a bodge.

Sounds like a lot of fun! I'm pretty sure that for LotFP lethality is intended as a feature rather than a bug - character creation is pretty quick, right?

It's a bit crazy that there's no perception mechanic. Like most OSR games I get the feeling a certain amount of DIY hacking is sort of assumed. Which is a bit weird, but I guess the system is free...

Quote from: KindlingThat said, it would be nice if the game had some kind of perception mechanic at times. I spot-ruled that rolling equal-to-or-under Wisdom on 1d20 would let you notice things and that worked ok, but seemed like a little bit of a bodge.

Was looking into LotFP perception. You probably know all this but basically it looks like here's how it breaks down:

For Stealth, all non-Speclialists have a 1 in 6 chance of being successfully stealthy. Specialists must roll-under their ability (1-6). If they have a 6 in the ability they roll twice, and only on two 6s do they fail. So no one actually makes perception checks to notice hidden people, being stealthy is a state you're either in or you're not.

For searching, you have a 1 in 6 chance of finding stuff like secret doors or traps per turn of searching, although the GM might make some things harder to find. You have to actively search, though.

Yeah, I suppose I could have just used Search. Maybe I'll do that in the future instead. Basically the situation was to try and notice a small insignificant bird crawling around near your feet in the middle of being attacked by a weird claw monster. Search just didn't feel appropriate at the time.

Yeah, I can see what you're saying. I think your spot-roll was fine. There's no real RAW way of dealing with it in LotFP but since most "skills" are base 1 in 6, you might just say it's a 1 in 6 chance.

Attributes do have modifiers in LotFP (max is +3 for an 18), so you could also just do an ability check for Wisdom (1d20+modifier) kind of like a d20 Perception check.

If I were spot-ruling I would probably say that the character with the highest Wisdom just automatically sees the thing. I do this sometimes when I don't happen to have a Perception DC fixed for Pathfinder... whoever rolled highest saw the thing. Generally I do this when it's important that someone sees a thing, but it's still a thing that might not be easy to see. Unless everyone rolls really disasterously and then I might just hint at something being present.

EDIT: Also, I love how LotFP does Alignment. Truly love it.

Yeah the whoever-rolls-highest/lowest is definitely useful, but it has an immediate resolution, whereas in the bird/claw situation I wanted the action to hinge on how soon someone managed to notice the bird, rather than just whether or not they did, so I was having everyone make a roll at the start of their combat round until someone saw it. Like I said, it actually worked out fine in play, it just took me aback slightly that the rules didn't have anything to cover that particular flavour of perception.

EDIT: Also I'm still interested in hearing from HippoDundee about how Dungeon World played...