I don’t see the issue. Just make your own, it’s way more fun.

Time to break the displays I guess.

Ira Gamagori hours in this game

No worries, I am just opinionated about D&D ;)

So you decide that before the game starts? Weird.

The type of person that gets deep into TTRPG systems for their rules design will eventually want to apply what they learned (or think they learned) towards making a system themselves. Like with any skill, you want to flex it once you acquired it.

I am so done with D&D discussions. It’s a 10 year old system at this point and the new version won’t be meaningfully different. Heck, a lot of it’s systems are actually as old as it and it fucking shows.

Play different games. There is an almost unlimited number of them out there. If you stop talking about D&D, if you stop giving it this singular attention, you will feel better and,who know,s the authors of D&D might be forced to actually make something good, as opposed to focus testing subclasses like pasta sauce flavors.

I disagree that the system is simple. It’s dead easy. Which is why it is unacceptable and frankly terrible that it plays so badly.

And no I will not let you say ‘oh a good DM will just fix it’ because that’s true for any game. Just going off of the examples BitD gives for when you are supposed to roll makes it clear that they did not consider how their own damn game plays:

This is how they define a Controlled roll, aka the least risky roll you can make: “You have a golden opportunity. You’re exploiting a dominant advantage. You’re set up for success.” This is how thy define a Risky roll: “You go head to head. You’re acting under duress. You’re taking a chance.”

The phrasing of ‘you go head to head’ under risky means that any time I am rolling against an NPC, it’s a risky roll. By their own definitions, controlled rolls almost never happen. They state this again saying that your default roll is risk,y because if there is no risk, why roll? That’s fair enough as a guideline and I agree with the statement in principle, but the fact remains that you’re one failure away from a desperate roll in any situation where dice come up. That’s bad.

Since you need a 6 to succeed without issues, if you have 3 dice, that’s a 42% chance to actually get a 6 on one of them. Not great for what amounts to a great stat for a starting character.

I could trawl for more examples but I’d rather not read this book again.

As for me: I have played CoC, yes, though my TTRPG background is in Shadowrun, Feng Shui, Vampire, Mage and D&D mostly. But no, BitD is not comparable to COC is my opinion, because in CoC I can make a character that can almost always succeed in the things I deem important for the character. Sure they will be a bit of a lump otherwise, but since there is nothing keeping you from having 80+% in your main skills, when it’s your time to shine, you can more or less depend on that working out. And sure once the eldritch horrors come out you may die, but so much of a CoC session is sleuthing around, finding clues and unraveling mysteries at a slow pace…I have trouble imagining your average BitD session would feel similar. maybe on one of the guild types I didn’t play, but with the default of a thieves guild, I don’t see how it would.

I guess what it boils down to for me is that at no point did I feel I was playing a competent character in BitD. Any roll, even in your supposed expertise, was a crapshoot. I played a Lurk and tried to play to their strengths and it just didn’t work at all, which felt like bad luck because I didn’t think the DM was piling on unnecessary rolls.

Well, the main issue stems from pure success being unlikely to attain because most rolls will not be for ‘sure things’. Your combined chance to fail a roll outright or succeed at a cost is far far higher then succeeding a check, so when I played it, we entered a failure cascade pretty fast whenever we had to roll to do something.

Like, in any situation, you only succeed without issue if you roll a 6 in your die pool. Typically, that pool is between 2 and 4 dice, so your chance to roll a 6 is, at lest, okay. And if you don’t get that 6, you either have to escalate the situation or suffer complications, or you just fail, if you only have 1-3s on your dice. It’s just…I dunno.

edit wasn’t done typing: If you had more dice, this system would probably work, but each class is only good at very few things, so as soon as you are out of your characters comfort zone, you are in such high risk of failure that it’s just not very fun. When I played it (one time), it felt like a comedy of errors and not like a bunch of hardened criminals doing a heist.

Hell yes! Striking that ice-cold iron!

Blades in the Dark is a horribly shallow system that is terribly balanced in that your character is meant to fail most tasks so that ‘Drama’ can happen as you bargain with the DM for success at a cost, which then heavily penalizes your character with injuries or stacked odds for future rolls, making the whole thing a slip and slide into guaranteed failure.

It’s bad. Like, real bad. I understand the idea of it and it could have worked, but the default success chance is simply too damn low for it to work without heavy DM fudging and that’s really really bad for a game with such simple rules. And since the author seems to like Blades, I cannot value her opinion on TTRPGs

It must be fun to miss the point days after it’s been sarcastically made.

Linking every TTRPG thing directly back to D&D is system reductionism! Under communism, there won’t be D&D as we know it because it promotes and valorizes monarchism!

Under communism, we will have one big dice and everyone will get to roll it.

Welp I guess 'all just play D&D.

The trick for that is to get really really invested in the other characters backstory and really want them to succeed and get their revenge or happy end. That way, you are always in the spotlight too.

hottest of takes: Personal tragedies in your backstory are overrated. Heck, having a large, complex backstory is overrated too. Many of the best characters I have ever played have had the most basic of backstories and motivations. It’s so much more fun to throw your all into the story the DM is telling my inventing a reason why you care super hard, rather then wanting to have the story be about your character specifically.

Rolemaster manages it by making each spell utterly static, give only a minimal and insufficient description and make these spells either pointless or stupidly OP depending on our DM.

Just look at this: http://www.merp.se/spell_lists/Fire_Law.pdf

Boil Liquid — For each level of caster, one cubic foot of liquid can be heated to boiling at a rate of 1 cubic feet per round.

Literally the whole spell description outside of a tiny list of stats. So can I boil oil with this and throw it in people’s faces? Does it work on water in a container? Does it have to be a cube of water or can it be a puddle of 1 cubic foot total volume? All left to DM fiat.

Warm Solid — Any solid inanimate, non-metal material (up to 1 cubic foot per level) can be warmed to 37°C at a rate of 1 cubic foot per round of concentration.

This is a spell they wrote. Most low level spells in Rolemaster could be replaced by a prestidigitation effect.

Woodfires — Causes any wood to ignite and burn. All wood ignited must be within a one foot radii.

Another one that just doesn’t answer anything. Can I ignite wood that’s painted? Can I do it under water? Does plant fiber count as wood? What about barkskin? Can I set a treant on fire with this? If so, how much damage does it do? The spell does not say.

Rolemaster is terrible.

Nat 19, or roll + mods = 19?

One is pretty normal, the other is a problem.

Session zero is your friend.

Personally I am of the opinion that some party rivalry is good. You stole that on your own? It’s yours, sure. It’s not real stuff after all. Who cares?!

But if you are obviously just taking shit in full view of everyone, in a hostile location, with no intention to share…well now that’s a dick move and won’t be tolerated. Still a good RPing opportunity. I have actually told people before: “my character needs to learn this lesson so please teach it to them”, before doing stuff like this. With the understanding in place, it’s a cool RP opportunity.