... And why I play them anyway
I've been playing roleplaying games since 1989. As of this essay, that's over 30 years. I mention it to suggest that my taste in
game play has developed over a long period of time and is now pretty settled. I've tried a lot of different game systems, and I've
run a good number of campaigns, mostly in
GURPS
because that's the system I love. But in that time what I've played more than anything else is
Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D 2e, D&D 3.0 + 3.5, D&D 4)
and
Pathfinder (1e).
How did that happen? Well, those games are more popular than GURPS. My groups of friends that like to play RPGs generally prefer
those systems. If I wanted to play at all, it had to be in those systems. So, in a way I'm answering the second question first. Why do I
play those roleplaying games despite hating them? Because it's the only option I have that keeps me in touch with long-time friends.
About that second question: Why do I hate class/level/d20 based roleplaying games? The answer is very long. I'll try to organize it well
so you can skim section headers. I'll start though with explaining what I mean by "class/level/d20". A class based system is one where a character
created for the game is defined by a category called their class. There's a difference between a fighter and a wizard for example. A level based
system is one where there are discrete levels of power that represent your progress in the game. A level 1 fighter is not as a dangerous as a
level 5 fighter for example. And a d20 based system is one where the primary determination mechanic uses a twenty-sided die. What that means
is that if your character wants to track a monster through the woods, they will have a skill that allows them to do that, and you roll 1d20 (one
twenty-sided die) to see if they succeed or fail. All three of those things are a bad choice for my enjoyment of the game. The first three sections
of this essay are devoted to them...
Class System
If you make your character as a fighter, they can't cast any spells, but they're really good with swords, shields, and armor. If you make a wizard,
you're going to be pretty weak physically, but you can cast spells and by the end of the game your ability to sling magic is the stuff of legends.
And there are lots of classes to choose from. There are clerics, druids, monks, paladins, rangers, rogues (thiefs), bards, and more. Lots more.
They offer multi-classing, which is a way of picking multiple classes that determine your abilities so you can mix and match. You could make a
Wizard/Fighter for example and get some sword fighting and some magic. With all of that, you'd probably guess that you can do pretty much
whatever you want in the system. And you do have some flexibility to do what you want, but multi-classing is generally a bad idea.
Multi-classing sucks because you pay for the flexibility with effectiveness. A level 10 fighter is excellent at physical combat. A level 10 wizard
is excellent at magical combat. A multi-class wizard/fighter that is a level 5 wizard and a level 5 fighter is only okay at each thing. It makes sense.
You spread yourself out instead of focusing and you won't be the best at anything. And the game is balanced assuming players min/max and tweak
their characters until the thought of character story and depth is a weak voice in the distance that can't get your attention. I guess I'm speaking more
specifically about D&D 3.0 and above. I don't remember AD&D 2e well enough to talk about its game balance. So, the games I'm referring
to are balanced assuming you have laser focused maxed out improvement and that your character is decked out in the best possible gear. If you fail
in either of those areas, your character won't be very useful. So, claiming that there's flexibility in the system is misleading.
Now that you understand you should pick one class and stick with it, you understand that if you pick a wizard, your character will get all their
defining characteristics from that class choice. No wizard is going to play with a low intelligence score, so there's really no character depth from
attribute variance. Every wizard has access to the same list of spells, and there are definite no brainers in the list. The feats might result in some
variation but even those have no-brainers for wizards or whatever class you're looking at. A fighter that doesn't take Weapon Focus, Weapon
Specialization, Greater Weapon Focus, and Greater Weapon Specialization is missing out on probability to hit and some extra damage. It would be
stupid to not take those feats. The parts of your character that vary and set them apart from other members of the same class is dwindling.
And that's really my big problem with a class-based system. You pick your character definition from a list of templates. It's basically a video
game. Video games can be fun, but they fill a different gaming need. Why anyone would choose to play a paper and pencil table-top game that
is essentially a less efficient form of video game is not within my ability to understand. Yet I have many friends who prefer it. What I want from a
roleplaying game is freedom to create a person. Not a video-game character. GURPS does this exceedingly well. No classes. You create a character
that could fit right into a novel. In Pathfinder (really the game I play now), if I tell you that I'm playing the Ranger in the group, you know exactly
what that means, and the variances don't really matter. It's like characters creation on rails. Pathfinder and the other class systems I mentioned
are like riding a train. It can be nice, but it's extremely limiting. GURPS is like getting in a car. You're still limited to the road, but you can take
whatever path you want and your list of destinations is much more expansive.
I hate the class system
Level System
Imagine your character is looking to learn a new language, and they're practicing with swords to get better at using them. In GURPS, you earn
points during game play and you can spend them to improve skills. For a language, you can start with spoken-only, and get it at a broken skill level
to suggest you are a beginner. With swordplay, you spend a point and get a sort of weak skill with it. And then as you play you can say you're
focusing even more on the sword play and learning that language, and your character improves gradually, but also at a rate relative to other things
that you determine. You might ignore your archery skills and leave them at a low level, or never get them in the first place. You might leave your
language skill at a weak skill for a long time suggesting you haven't used it enough to get better. You have total control over all the progress of your
character.
In a level based system, there are landmarks where suddenly your character gets more powerful in a whole bunch of ways. In between, nothing
changes. You can play a half dozen game sessions without anything changing at all. And when it does change, it's like flipping a switch. You want
to learn a new language? You spend your resource and suddenly your character is fluent. You want to improve your weapon skill? Well... you don't
choose that at all. You just automatically get better at that sword skill if it's the right level for an improvement. And that archery skill? Well, if your
class is given access to a weapon, all of them progress exactly the same. There are feats to focus on one type of weapon, but the base level of skill
with the weapon is controlled by your level instead of what the player wants to do.
The level system takes away a natural and flexible growth pattern and sticks a rough segmented framework on you that effectively removes all
choice and all flexibility. And it just doesn't feel natural. Going from zero ability to speak Draconic to being fluent when you level-up is just jarring.
There another huge problem with the level-based system of progressing: relative power. In these systems I've mentioned there are common
rules for levels 1 to 20. A level 1 character is pathetic and can barely accomplish anything. A level 20 character is near god-like and could wipe out
and army of level 1 characters without ever being in danger. No, the adventuring group shouldn't be running off to face the ancient dragon their
first time out. There should a power increase over time. But the fact that the ancient evil dragon exists in the setting at all problematic. If there
are beings growing in power and working against the dragon, why isn't the dragon slaughtering those growing threats before they're actual threats?
Rumors of a powerful wizard gathering resources and knowledge in their tower might cause the dragon to go stop all over that wizard when they're
level 10. And what about ALL the other people in the setting? If there are ancient dragons, terrifying demons, hordes of undead including vampires
and angry ghosts, cities of giants that are intrisically evil, and any number of threats that could simply dominate or destroy every civilization of peaceful
folk around them, who is stopping them while the adventurers are getting up to speed? This sounds like a full time job for a lot of really powerful
people that are probably getting sick of it. How does civilization actually survive? Most people are common folk... at best a level one character. A
single troll is probably enough to wipe out most towns. Without a resident powerful person to fight off the regular threats of destruction, why hasn't
the goblin tribe invaded and killed gobs of people? And if that ancient dragon or a major demon decide to go cook a town at the beginning of the story,
who's stopping them? The power difference between a level 1 and level 20 character is WAY too much for all those high level bad guys to exist in the
setting waiting around until the good-guys get there. It just doesn't make sense. At all.
OH! Another reason the level system is ridiculous is because the adventures are written such that no matter what level you are, the challenges
will match you exactly. Got excited because you leveled up from 14 to 15? Got your +1 to hit? Well, guess what... the bad guys are 1 point harder
to hit too. It seems like the system is designed to keep your probability of success somewhere close to 50%... at best 60%. And the bad guys
improve in their ability to hit you so much faster than your ability to hit them. At high levels, it almost doesn't matter if you have defenses because
they don't matter.
I hate the level system
d20 Resolution System
This one is going to include a little probability math, and to make things clearer I'll have to explain the GURPS dice resolution system too. So, I'll start
with explaining the two systems. You probably already know that in a d20 system, to figure out if you succeed at a task, you roll 1d20; apply a modifier;
and hope to reach a target number. For example, a level 1 fighter might have a +7 (your skill and also called the modifier) to hit a foe with a sword. The
target number is the foe's armor class (AC) which for the example we'll say is 16. That means you have to roll a 9 or better on the 1d20 to succeed at
hitting. That means a 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, or 20 will be a success. That's 12 of the possible results on the die. That means a 60% chance
of success. 12 of 20 of the faces of the die are good results for you.
In GURPS, the dice you roll are three six-sided dice (3d6). The possible results are 3 to 18. This is a narrower window with only 16 possible results.
But GURPS does things opposite of d20 systems. Instead of wanting to roll high and achieve a target number, you want to roll low... below your skill
level adjusted by modifiers. For example, you might have a swordsman with a skill of 11. You roll 3d6, and if you roll 11 or below, you succeed. You
might be thinking "what? the target doesn't have anything to do with how hard they are to hit?". They do, but it's because d20 systems abstracts this
exchange into one roll, while GURPS says the target gets to try a defense (like dodging or parrying the attack). We could use a different scenario for
our example like trying to climb a rock wall. That would mean a difficulty number in d20 and a modifier in GURPS. But it's not super important to the
comparison. You'll see. I'm using the sword skill because it feels more important than a climbing skill.
I mentioned the probability in d20 for the example already, but I didn't mention it for GURPS and that's because 3d6 follows a
bell curve
instead of the linear progression. If you roll any sized single die, the probability that any result comes up is exactly equal to the other other possible
results. If you roll multiple dice, the sum of the results of those dice will begin to follow the bell curve. The more dice you roll, the more likely you
will get a result in the middle of the possible sums. I'll go back to speaking more specifically about 3 six-sided dice. instead of 20 possible end results,
there are 216 possible combinations of results on the dice. You can roll 1/1/1, 1/1/2, 1/1/3, 1/1/4, 2/4/6, 3/1/5, 6/1/1, 2/1/1, and so on. That's important
because it means that the possible sums (end results) can be achieved different numbers of ways. To roll a 3 or an 18 each have exactly 1 combination that
makes that result. You have to roll 1/1/1 or 6/6/6. To roll a 10 or an 11 each have 27 possible combinations. You can make 10 by rolling 1/3/6, 2/2/6, 3/3/4,
and 24 other combinations. What that means is that you are FAR more likely to roll a 10 or an 11 on 3 six-sided dice.
As I already mentioned in our GURPS side of the example, we're using a skill of 11 for our sword wielder, which is pretty close to average. But that's
not important at the moment. Our GURPS swordsman has to roll an 11 or less to succeed at his attempt to strike. If you add up the percent chance of
each result from 3 to 11, it comes out to 62.5%. It's pretty close to our first level fighter from Pathfinder up against a foe with AC 16.
In the linear probability of 1d20, every side is just as likely to come up as the others meaning all the results are just as likely as each other. Rolling a
2 is just as likely as rolling a 14. So, when you roll to hit your target and you keep rolling 8 or less to miss, it's well within the probabilities to have a string
of really bad luck. In the bell curve probability of 3d6, you are most likely to roll a string of 10s and 11s. The dice balance each other out and you get a
more reliable pattern. You're really unlikely to roll a string of failing results with 3d6 if your skill is above average.
Now to make the distinction even easier to see. Let's pick a level 16 fighters with a +30 to hit. Normally that would mean all the bad guys would have an
armor class around 40 so your percent chance to hit is still around 50%, but lets say our Pathfinder fighter is going up against a foe with only an armor class of
33. He has to roll a 3 or above to hit giving him a 90% chance to succeed. Our GURPS fighter spends some points to up their skill to 14 giving them a 90.74%
chance. It's pretty close. Because the d20 sides have the same probability of coming up as the final result, it is possible to have those strings of bad luck
rolling 1s and 2s and missing even those the fighter's skill is arguably insane at +30. With the bell curve helping out the 3d6, we have a genuine 90% chance
and when the single bad roll happens, the likelihood of a string of bad results is really low.
Now imagine the amount of effort to have a skill like +30 or 16 that means a 90% chance of success. And imagine how frustrating it would be if while
your pathfinder +30 is rolling 1s repeatedly, the the +6 pathfinder fighter is rolling 20s to automatically succeed. How likely is it that someone so experienced
and powerful would perform worse than the beginner? A fluke? Sure. But a pattern? That pattern of bad luck with 1d20 happens. I know because it happens
to me frequently. I have many roleplaying exeriences where I rolled like crap two through six times in a row in a situations where I was 75% to 90% likely to
succeed and have a good result. But in my years playing GURPS I've never had two automatic failures (17 or 18) in a row. This reliability on the probability of
the results on 3d6 seems to me to be a more logical representation of reality. Someone highly skilled SHOULD succeed more often than a beginner... and
that doesn't always work that way in d20.
Let me try one more way to making it clear. If you roll 10 twenty-sided dice, the sum result will be somewhere near the average (approximately 100 to 110).
You are very unlikely to roll ten of any single result. So, you are very unlikely to roll a sum 190+ or 10-. It's going to average.
But each roll could be anything from 1 to 20, and it's each result that determines the success or failure in d20, not a summed result that gets skewed toward an
average result. It's really the luck of the die with d20 rather than the probability of the dice with 3d6.
And I'll mention again too that Pathfinder tries to balance things so your probability of success doesn't really improve at high levels. In GURPS, if your character
is built with your resources spent to focus on a sword skill, you can actually improve your chances relative to the challenges. Two characters in the same group might
have 12 and 16 for their sword skills (24% difference), and they are both able to participate without being crushed. If a Pathfinder character has a +10 and their friend
has a +5 (25% difference), the one with the +5 better have something different to do in that fight. Or if the one with the +10 didn't take the right feats and only has a
+5, they're failing at their job.
I hate the d20 resolution system
Gear and Balance
I set myself for this on in the last section by suggesting that a fighter with only a +5 attack mod when different feats and choices could have gotten them to +10
is failing at their job. Gear is a major way to make a difference in attack and damage in the d20 systems I've played. Magic swords (for our example) are literally
essential for a sword fighter. If you don't have that +5 sword at the upper levels, you are screwed. It's a 25% difference in probability. The game is balanced
assuming you have the best feat choices; the best class feature choices; and the best gear possible. And that gets you to the roughly 50% chance of success for
what they consider balanced.
If our fighter has the right feats and class features to hit with their sword at level 15, the have roughly a +25 to hit. That's +15 from Base Attack Bonus, +2 from
two feats of Weapon Focus, +3 from a class feature that grants a bonus, and an assumption of a Strength score of 20 (another +5 to hit). The bad guys at that level
have ACs around 40, which would mean the fighter has to roll 15 or higher to hit... a really low chance. This is a freaking 15th level fighter that has been around
the adventuring block for a long time. But if they don't have that +5 sword, their chance to deal with the challenges at that level are low. With the +5 sword, the
modifier goes up to +30, and suddenly they have to roll a 10 or above, which is a 55% chance instead of 30%. This is ridiculous and broken.
I hate the necessity of maxed out gear and the intention to balance at 50%
Economy
Normal people deal with a few gold pieces a years in total income and expenses. Copper pieces are enough for meals and ale and stays at inns. But a good sword
costs golds pieces... how rich are blacksmith's? What about clergy who can make healing potions? One Cure Light Wounds potion costs 50 gold pieces. That's enough
to feed five normal people for a year easily. If $2500 in the real-world is enough to feed a person for a year (I think that's a good estimate... a bit over $200 per month),
and one cure light wounds potion can feed five people for a year that means one Cure Light Wounds potion is roughtly the equivalent of $12,500. That one potion that
can be used exactly once to heal 1d8+1 hit points would cost $12,500. That's already stupid.
A Ring of Protection +1 costs 2000 gold pieces to buy. Two thousand. The shop owner that sells low level magic trinkets figures a town guard has 2000 gold to spend
on a +1 to Armor Class? How much are town guards paid when there are people living off of 10 gold a year? Or maybe it's an expectation of financially successful adventurers
stopping by to purchase from them. I suppose they'd only have to sell one ring and they're set for life. Why aren't there thieves breaking into these shops ALL THE TIME?
I mean literally ALL THE TIME. And why would the town guard getting paid 10 gold a year stop the thieves when the thieves will probably bribe them with a cut of the sales?
Or why become a town guard at all? Just steal something and sell it once. Just once... and you're set for life. And that's just the super basic thing that adventurers sell
back to stores at half price because +1 is too low. It's not useful to any adventurer past 5th level.
And that's where things get super broken. Adventurers find magic gear that they can't use. It's everywhere. What the frak am I going to do with five +1 longswords?
Maybe this town guard can use them at 1000 gold per sword? That's a nice income for selling five swords I looted from my foes. Except... why does this town guard have
5000 gold to spend? And why would they give guards that are paid 10 gold a year swords that worth literally 100 to 200 times that much? That would be like a really rich
person in the real world telling me they'll pay me $50,000 a year if I hang on to their bearer bonds worth $5,000,000 dollars. If I'm smart, I can retire on that. So, are we
back to selling to the little magic shop that has the Rings of Protection? Maybe they're doing enough business to turn around five magic swords... but now... how much
business are they doing? How many low level adventurers are walking through and picking up gear from this one shop? And how many low level adventurers have to be
around to support the junk that the high level player-characters are selling here?
And of course it gets worse. Eventually the group is selling +3 weapons. A +1 weapon is purchased for 2000 gold and sold back for 1000 gold. A +3 weapon is purchased
for 18,000 gold and sold back for 9,000. When the group is trying to offload spare magic items they don't need worth tens of thousands of gold on a regular basis... what is
going on in the city to support that? Relative to a normal person surviving on 10 gold a year, these adventurers are casually getting rid of things worth thousands of times what
normal people turn over in a year. It's worse than the real-world income disparity between CEO's and their employees by many fold.
I'm confident in saying that this wouldn't work. It just wouldn't function. Unless adventurers are selling to a rich king that just want to collect everything, it wouldn't work.
And those small magic shops wouldn't be possible either because they'd fail to sell in quantity. If the normal customer of a guard (town, caravan, shop, palace, etc) wants a +1
sword and a +1 ring, the price would have to be a few gold pieces for both to make it a viable economic option. And the shops would still get robbed regularly.
The economy is super broken.
Save or Die Magic
Save or Die Magic refers to spells or other effects that force a character to making a saving throw or die. Just in case you don't know what a saving throw is, it's a defensive
roll you make against some dangers to avoid some or all of the effects of the danger. For example, a Fireball spell lets you roll a Reflex Saving Throw to take only half damage
from the explosion. There are more powerful spells that just make the target of the spell make a saving throw, or they die.
This is the stupidest thing they kept in the game. I get why people might have made this stuff in the early days where the concept seems kind of cool. Players could have their
characters learn the spells and use them on the bad guys, and the group could cheer if the bad guy was defeated quickly. It just feels powerful. But, that's anti-climactic. Why
would you want the big fights to end with one spell? Isn't one of the reasons for playing to feel the tension of danger of combat? Why would players want things to end so fast?
But the other side of the coin is worse. Bad guys can use these spells on the player's characters. And then of course the player gets to roll that 1d20 that has just as much chance to
roll a 1 (or other failure result) as it does to roll any success value. A player's character can die because of one bad roll, and there's nothing they can do to stop it. There's no chance to
save yourself. It has happened to my characters a lot in my time playing these d20 games. And in a recent game, my character set off a trap that killed one of the other characters.
It completely wrecks the fun for me.
I play roleplaying games to enjoy myself and help others enjoy themselves. When I GM, I consider my job to be to facilitate enjoyment for everyone. I'm not a robot. I'm
not running a video game that is cold and uncaring. I'm actively trying to help my players enjoy their time. If I was to run a d20 game, I would alter save-or-die effects somehow
so that people don't have characters die for one bad die roll. Honestly, I'd adjust the whole magic system, but I'll address that in the next section. What confuses me is that
Paizo (Pathfinder) and
Wizards of the Coast (D&D)
left this stupid crap in their games. I don't understand why any players would enjoy having their characters killed by one stupid die roll. I totally get characters dying as part of
good story or because of a series of events that allowed the player to try to save themselves with clever choices that just fails dramatically. Save-or-die effects are obnoxious.
I hate save-or-die magic.
Stupid Magic System
The magic system is crappy in general. If you go way back to when it was designed, it's based on
Jack Vance's concept of magic
from one of his book series. And I'm sure it was fine writing and a good story, but I find the system distasteful. His concept of magic was that to cast a spell, you had to prepare
yourself in advance with rituals, spell components, and so on. And the preparation was for a specific effect. If you wanted to be able to cast a spell that sheds light so you can
see in the dark, you'd prepare that light spell, and then be able to cast it once. Any spell you can cast that day would have to be prepared in advance that way, so you have a
specific list of spells you can cast and that's it. For an easy comparison, think about Harry Potter. I'm not suggesting Harry Potter is an excellent robust system, just using it as
something most people are likely familiar with. Once you learn a spell, you can cast it as needed. And you can see that when they cast particularly powerful spells it begins to
exhaust them. There are plenty of options for how to handle magic, but D&D and Pathfinder chose to stick with an obscure and unpleasant system.
In terms of game mechanics, a wizard (or other normal spell caster... there are a couple variants) gets a certain number of slots for each level of spell they can cast. So, let's
just say they can prepare 4 first-level spells and 2 second-level spells. But in their spell book (that tells them how to prepare each spell), they might have dozens of spells listed.
The wizard has to decide what spells are most likely to be useful that day and then fill their slots. If they have spells 1-A through 1-M and 2-A through 2-H, they might choose to
prepare...
... whatever those spells are, they cast that preparation of the spell and then it's gone for the day. That's why they might prepare a spell twice, and maybe 1-B is a spell they
think they'll need to cast more often. Once you run out of prepared spells, you can't cast any more spells. D&D and Pathfinder have made some minor tweaks so that there
are a few weak spells that can be cast even after the prepared spells are gone, but the most powerful spells require preparation, and once they're cast, they need to be prepared
again the next day to be cast again.
In addition to this horrifyingly limited system, each spell can have components required to cast the spell. It can require speech, ritual movements, and spell components to cast
the spells. Remove the ability to use any one of those, and the wizard can't cast the spell. Gag them, tie them up (especially their hands and fingers), or just take away their components
and they can't cast spell that require those things. It's supposed to be balanced against the ability for a warrior to lose their sword. But to me, this framework is designed for
adversarial GMing. I mentioned earlier that when I run a campaign, I believe it is my job to encourage and support fun for the players. If I'm using rules to hamstring the characters
it becomes GM versus Players instead of a cooperative effort. The very existence of the rule that can only be used to hamstring characters is a problem with the system in my opinion.
If a GM says that a wizard lost their component bag thinking they're forcing the wizard to be more clever and that it's a fun roleplaying challenge, I consider that to be adversarial. It's
a primary feature of a fighter or wizard, and unless it's part of the story in a good way, chopping the legs out from under the character isn't fun. I could imagine the characters getting
captured and having to figure something out without their swords or spells. That can be a fun adventure. But if there's no good-story reason for it, just leave it alone.
Back to spell slots and prepared magic... if I was to try to use d20 rules to run a game, I would use a mana pool system. Wizards would have a number of points of mana that can
be used to cast spells. To cast a particular spell, they either need to cast it slower from their spell book; have a wand for that spell; a staff with that spell as one of its options; or have
the spell prepared in advance using the mana from the pool early which allows full speed casting without need for an implement. I can flesh that out more, but that's probably enough
to give you an idea. Sorcerers would have no book and would know fewer spells, but can use their mana pool freely for the few spells they know. eh. Okay. Anyway...
I hate the stupid magic system.
PFS Scenarios and Pre-Written Adventures
I'm not sure how much more I need to write convince anyone that I hate d20 roleplaying systems (that includes the Star Wars d20 system... what a stupid framework to represent
Force powers. It's not even close to how it's depicted in the source material). This one is specific to my experience with Pathfinder Society and the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. I'll
start with: They're pre-written. That's a bad thing. Here's why...
For me, roleplaying games are about story building. When I create a campaign, I build the setting and come up with a major story arc that is essentially a plan for the villains of the
story. I put some helpers into the game that might be NPCs that the PCs know or just news stories the characters hear about or an item that has some connection to the story or whatever.
The goal is to give the players ways to connect with the main story without telling them what to do. I set up the starting scenario that has all the players present and they figure out what
to do from there. After that introduction, we find out of the players follow any of the threads I ste up or if they have something else they want to accomplish. I have some things prepared
and ready, but there's a LOT of improvisation. And what happens is that the players direct the story. Also, if the players give me a good character background, I can spend some time considering
how that background might influence the future of the story and how it might tie into the main story arc I have proceeding in the background. Family members can be abducted, or turn out
to be on the other side. Indiscretions of the past can come back to haunt them. An old friend might pop up at an unexpected time to give them just a bit of help that they needed. Players
are MAJOR contributors to setting and to the way the story develops. In total, it's like an author of a novel who has help from a number of co-authors. The co-authors contribute in ways
that wouldn't be possible by playing a video game for example. You're stuck with the video game story, and that might be a really good story (I love
Final Fantasy 10 for example),
but table-top roleplaying games offer that extra option that is wonderful in my opinion.
Pathfinder pre-written materials essentially take away that wonderful ability. The individual characters don't matter even a little to the shallow stories. Their background can't influence
what is already written. Their choices in the game don't direct the game play. It's riding the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney World. You try to turn around and look at displays longer, but
you can't get out of the cart, and the cart would keep going even if you did. It's a video game. And any combination of characters can be plugged into the story and it won't matter to the story.
Making a Pathfinder character is entirely geared toward being a power gamer because depth of character doesn't matter. Design your character to be as effective as possible. Tragic backstory?
Nope. No one cares. Want to travel to see a particular city and see if you can find an item there? Nope... not unless it's part of the scenario. GM's jobs in Pathfinder are to act like the computer
that controls the setting. For the convention style Scenarios, you're time-boxed and you try to play your video game and get the job done. For the longer Adventure Paths you might have a GM
that let's players control what they do, but really... you've got a long book to get through and characters are railroaded into the story as much as possible. You're still not going to get any kind
of melding of Player material and GM material... because it's not GM material. It's Paizo material. My last character escaped his home country to avoid persecution for a crime he didn't commit.
There was plenty of material there that could have been used to make the story deeper. But that's not what pre-written materials are for.
What you get is a damn video game. Maybe the players will push for some side quest and maybe the GM will write their own material... but... it seems unlikely. It seems more likely that
the GM will push characters back into the book that they have no control over and no effect on.
One last thing about why pre-written stuff sucks is that from the PFS scenarios on up to the PF Adventure Paths, they are shallow stories that are excuses to jump from one combat to the
next. Or challenge. Whatever. The players don't enjoy the interactions and have conversations in character just for the sake of the conversation. The players discuss choices, prepare for
combat (or challenge), participate in combat (or challenge if they are capable), and then follow along as the next combat (or challenge) is teed up. If what you're looking for is an environment to
see how skilled you are at crafting the most efficient character ever... dealing damage and stomping all over the bad guys... this might be for you. But why do it here when you could do that in
a video game with much better controlled setting? If you're going to play a table-top RPG, why play a video game style thing instead of a participating in a story with your friends?
I hate the pre-written adventures.
Final Thoughts
d20 sucks. I'm sure there are more things that annoy me about it that I forgot in the process of writing this essay. I mentioned something just bit earlier about what you might be looking for.
And I guess that's something you should consider here too. If what you want is a table top game that is all about combat and powergaming, this might be an excellent thing for you. But for me,
it's awful. I want creative influence. I want to share my imagination with friends. I want to end up with a story where players and GM alike have a great memory of the session where the characters
where sneaking up to their foe's home and end up arguing about a lamp-shade they saw in another house in the neighborhood. Or about the time the master sword-woman of the group got her
sword-arm cut off after some really bad luck, and then proceeded to stomp all over that foe with her off-hand... penalties and all. Don't worry... the setting allowed for her to get her arm re-grown, but
it turned into a recurring role-playing opportunity where the player made a point of flexing those regrown fingers and having trouble with the memory of having lost her arm. One of my players
decided to steal a cigarette truck in a campaign where he had forewarning of a financial collapse in society. It was funny. We roleplayed on our own at a separate time to avoid wasting time for the
other players. I accommodated the player. And these final thoughts seem to be focusing on my dislike of the pre-written stuff and my enjoyment of material created by the GM and players, so...
The d20 family of systems just seem to fail in every important way for a table-top roleplaying system from the dice resolution system to the framework to the game balance. Lots of people
seem happy with it, but I am not among those people. I guess this essay is primarily for people who have a vague sense they're unhappy with a d20 system, but don't know how to express it
yet. Hopefully this is helpful for people to find a more fulfilling game experience. I personally love GURPS and will always run my games using that system. But you can check out systems like
FATE,
Smallville Roleplaying Game which was a fun thing I got to playtest and is worth a try if you like the setting,
Big Eyes, Small Mouth (an anime themed system) and,
D6 System, which has the only published
Star Wars RPG systems that I liked.
I also remember enjoying
Shadowrun and
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness.
But seriously, GURPS is awesome. It's what's called a toolkit system where you use what you like and leave out what you don't need, making it as simple or complex as makes you happy. It can
handle any genre or setting and GMs can do whatever they want in terms of custom rules. I'm a big fan of writing rule sets for the Force for GURPS. It always fits so much better than d20
as a framework.
Anyway, there are a lot of systems out there. Lots more than I listed. You don't have to be trapped in d20. Good luck and have fun!
