• Registered: 2013-08-29
  • Posts: 7

Topic: Fiddly Bits Needed

The people I usually end up RPGing for are universally used to games where your character has lots of "fiddly bits" - whether it's the 2-3 pages of Pathfinder skills and feats and special abilities, or your Dark Heresy talents. Are there LoTFP compatable fiddly bits I can give to the players that won't break the game balance? Or do you find that when you run it often enough people don't care.

  • Registered: 2010-09-07
  • Posts: 13

Re: Fiddly Bits Needed

Its a nicely written 0th edition D&D clone, with a nice very simple skill system. 

The only fiddly bit is that its been setup in the Weird genre (ie. horror, before Fantasy/SF/Horror went their separate literary ways) by making the Fighter best at fighting, eliminating spells, paring down spell lists and Cleric/MU spell list overlap, etc.

  • Registered: 2013-08-08
  • Posts: 285

Re: Fiddly Bits Needed

While I wouldn't describe my players as particularly interested in fiddly mechanics just for the fiddliness (?) I think they were a bit skeptical about it at first.  However, now that we've been playing, they really enjoy thinking as players and not always having to rely on character skills.

In this game, charisma does not mean you have to make your character ugly, nor does a low intelligence mean your character has to act stupid all the time. 

Also, many traps, monsters and encounters rely more on clever thinking, preparation, or problem solving than on skills.  Also ends up being more fun than just constantly rolling dice to see if you succeed or not...

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  • From: Merritt, BC, Canada
  • Registered: 2012-02-07
  • Posts: 213

Re: Fiddly Bits Needed

The way I look at it, the old school D&D (and by extension games like LotFP that are based on it) gave you a basic framework for how to handle all the really common actions; things you'll be doing on the regular. Anything else you came up with, you just made it up as you went along with spot rulings and hand waving.

Newer games (like Pathfinder and modern D&D) kept all the basic framework, and then also tried to codify and balance ALL the different spot rulings and hand wavings; they tried to make the rules cover every possible situation. That's why you need 5 kilograms of book to play Pathfinder.

The problem I have with the new game approach is, it creates a mentality of rules informing playstyle. When you want to do something, you look up the rule for how to do it, and then follow that rule; if there's no rule that tells you how to do it, you can't do it. Old school D&D stays out of your way much more often.

Over the last few years, I've been migrating away from all the games with fiddly bits, heh. I still play and enjoy Pathfinder and Warhammer RPG (Rogue Trader/Deathwatch/etc) and Shadowrun and all them, but they are never my first choice anymore. I tend to go for the rules-lite systems, like LotFP, Savage Worlds, Dresden Files (Fate system), and the like.