MechWarrior: Destiny

[Euphonium]

[snip]without being confused by a different set of rules for the same game.

Exactly! I'm playing a MW2e/BT game right now with two new players and the fact that the MW CHR sheet says "Pilot (Mech) 5+, Gunnery (Mech) 4+" exactly the same as the tabletop makes it so much simpler for them.

[Daryk]

Euphonium: Soul brother!  I was one of the ones advocating to a return to 2d6 (from 2d10?? in MW3e) for AToW.

Victor_shaw: My preferences are for consistent mechanics from top to bottom, which in my mind means 2d6 for everything.  Destiny sounds diceless, or at least so divorced from table top (TW) rules as to be completely alien.

[Sartris]

Is anarchy diceless? Valiant and cosmic patrol both use dice

[Ursus Maior]

Anarchy definitely uses dice. And CGL announced MWD to be d6-based.

[Daryk]

My mistake, but I stand by the second half of my sentence...

[victor_shaw]

Euphonium: Soul brother!  I was one of the ones advocating to a return to 2d6 (from 2d10?? in MW3e) for AToW.

Victor_shaw: My preferences are for consistent mechanics from top to bottom, which in my mind means 2d6 for everything.  Destiny  sounds diceless, or at least so divorced from table top (TW) rules as to be completely alien.

I was talking about pdf vs. dead tree preferences, but I agree that a RPG should flow into the mechanics from its connected system.
and believe me I am not looking forward to Destiny.

[Daryk]

Ah... as much as I like DTF, pdf is what I mostly have these days.  The extortionate prices on Amazon/eBay make me wonder how high those prices have to be to send a "reprint this" signal.

[Euphonium]

The extortionate prices on Amazon/eBay make me wonder how high those prices have to be to send a "reprint this" signal.

It's not just the price, it's the volume too. It doesn't matter if they're selling for $5,000 each on the secondary market if they're only selling one copy a year.

[SCC]

Ah... as much as I like DTF, pdf is what I mostly have these days.  The extortionate prices on Amazon/eBay make me wonder how high those prices have to be to send a "reprint this" signal.

Prices on eBay have nothing to do with a products actual value, someone once tried to sell a Baen CD on eBay for $100, and this a CD that you got for free inside a $50 book (And is stamped with a not for sale warning)

[William J. Pennington]

Euphonium: Soul brother!  I was one of the ones advocating to a return to 2d6 (from 2d10?? in MW3e) for AToW.

I've never seen the point of keeping the RPG tied to a 2d6 system. Its terribly limiting, and leaves no real granularity. Moving back to d6 was one of the biggest disappointments to me of ATOW.

[SCC]

I've never seen the point of keeping the RPG tied to a 2d6 system. Its terribly limiting, and leaves no real granularity. Moving back to d6 was one of the biggest disappointments to me of ATOW.

If anything moving the table top over to 2d10 might have been a better move.

[Daryk]

The point is integration with the table top.  Using different dice is the exact opposite of that.

[Lord greystroke]

3rd edition was the best RPG that was seen for battletech and if players couldn't read a simple table that translated the numbers into TT stats they shouldn't be playing the game it was simple I must point out that the book wasn't very well laid out but the system was better then 2nd edition and ATOW is awful and should never have been made so MechWarrior: Destiny cant be any worse then that

[Daryk]

I disagree.  3rd edition was using Traveler tactics from the 1970s in character creation (i.e., you could DIE, or end up with a character so handicapped as to be unplayable, and the spectrum wasn't just on that end... you could end up with wildly successful characters right out of the gate, completely out of balance with the other player characters).  AToW doesn't suffer from that.  The skill specialization system was also unwieldy in play.  To drive anything with a mixed armament (AC/Energy/Missile) required three different gunnery skills.  It was better in some ways than 2nd Edition, in that it gave you much more well rounded characters.  AToW achieves that with a simpler skill system and organic integration with the table top game.

Personally, I think AToW is the best RPG system BattleTech has seen so far, and Destiny is in no way poised to replace it.  Given the reaction to other incarnations of the Cue system, it sounds like there's plenty of scope to be worse.

And to be clear, every time I've said AToW isn't that hard, I've offered to help people work through their difficulties, not said "they shouldn't be playing the game".

[Sartris]

3rd ed character creation was nuts. if you ended up with a garbage character, the most exciting part of the campaign was literally over and you had very little incentive to stay alive.

Personally, I think AToW is the best RPG system BattleTech has seen so far, and Destiny is in no way poised to replace it.  Given the reaction to other incarnations of the Cue system, it sounds like there's plenty of scope to be worse.

And to be clear, every time I've said AToW isn't that hard, I've offered to help people work through their difficulties, not said "they shouldn't be playing the game".

it's a good system. and things can always be worse. i think we use the wrong word with atow character creation - it's cumbersome... maybe confusing - but not hard.

[Daryk]

I agree with the first, and mostly with the second.  The layout could be better, but it is comprehensible.

[Sartris]

once i figured out you pay for the module, not the module and the items in the module (aka paying double), it went a lot smoother

[William J. Pennington]

The point is integration with the table top.  Using different dice is the exact opposite of that.

Integration with the table top inst needed on a dice level. it serves no purpose. Third had the solution. Compare your Success number to a chart, that's your tabletop game skill, if you weren't going to use the full RPG integration rules.

[Daryk]

Which doesn't solve any of its other problems...

[William J. Pennington]

And to be clear, every time I've said AToW isn't that hard, I've offered to help people work through their difficulties, not said "they shouldn't be playing the game".

I agree. ATOW isn't hard as RPG's go.

[General308]

So what is Shadowrun Anarky like?

[Lord greystroke]

is it really so hard to understand that 3rd editions character creation allowed rerolls with edge and losing its threshold that mitigated the worst of any disasters and well I agree that you could have someone very underwhelming made with poor results,
it was fast to ditch a character as you can tell in moments that the skills or traits were garbage and start again it didn't take long the hard part was the maths afterword to make sure your numbers added up still better then ATOW that had pointless maths for no value and made the system worse in every way it didn't modernises the system well and frankly to me was a step back not to mention 2 D6 is so limiting a factor for systems 

[Talen5000]

is it really so hard to understand that 3rd editions character creation allowed rerolls with edge and losing its threshold that mitigated the worst of any disasters and well I agree that you could have someone very underwhelming made with poor results,
it was fast to ditch a character as you can tell in moments that the skills or traits were garbage and start again it didn't take long the hard part was the maths afterword to make sure your numbers added up still better then ATOW that had pointless maths for no value and made the system worse in every way it didn't modernises the system well and frankly to me was a step back not to mention 2 D6 is so limiting a factor for systems

It was too random, it was too fluky, it took up a LOT of page space and time and content and it really wasn't worth the effort. The game itself was fine, and the character creation was fun in its way and...you said it your self...MATH. ATOWs character creation has its own set of flaws.

And, from my pov, many of the problems stem from trying to adapt a 2D6 system that lacks granularity (but doesn't suffer too much from that lack) into a gaming environment that requires granularity. As stated, it probably would have been a better idea to switch the TT game to a 2D10 or 3D6 system and then build the RPG combat system around that.

[dgorsman]

Trying to rebuild the core BattleTech system around different n-dice being the *best* solution?  For the sake of the much less popular RPG?   ???

[Talen5000]

Trying to rebuild the core BattleTech system around different n-dice being the *best* solution?  For the sake of the much less popular RPG?   ???

The 2D6 system not having sufficient granularity is a problem for the TT as well...just not as much as one.

[Ursus Maior]

The 2D6 system not having sufficient granularity is a problem for the TT as well...just not as much as one.

That's true, especially with pilots above veteran level. And with vehicle crews that benefit from multiple targets rules for mulit-crew vehicles.

[The_Livewire]

The 2D6 system not having sufficient granularity is a problem for the TT as well...just not as much as one.

An option might be to use the RPG to 'beta test' a new engine.  Think of how Elements of D&D 4th edition showed up in the late 3e optional rules. or how some of the stuff in Pathfinder and Starfinder showed up in pathfinder 2e.  I do think a 3d6 Battletech would be an option

[Daryk]

2d6 has the huge advantage of familiarity to completely new players (i.e., no prior TT or RPG experience).

I also find it odd to see complaints about too much math alongside "granularity" arguments for 2d10...  ::)

[William J. Pennington]

2d6 has the huge advantage of familiarity to completely new players (i.e., no prior TT or RPG experience).

If they are new, it has no advantage. Rolling any dice in an RPG format will be new to them, so no need to stick to a limiting, poor scaling 2d6 system

[DarkSpade]

So what is Shadowrun Anarky like?

I would recommend asking in the shadowrun forums.  There must be some people who like it since they've released at least one more book for it and I think destiny is their 4th(?) universe they've used the system.