Scott Ruggels

and video games once upon a time had Homebrew, if you knew the toolset:
 
proof. Custom models for Quake 2. Werewolf with an AK-47. 
 

More info. 

My exploding dice were to buy the stun multipliers up on my killing attacks.  It also proved that Champions players really hate unpredictability 

And it gets worse!
 
 
 
The best thing about this thread is the News cycle prevents radical thread drift. 😁

My exploding dice were to buy the stun multipliers up on my killing attacks.  It also proved that Champions players really hate unpredictability 

Oh, Stun Lotto, which is so controversial and we tried so hard to fix for so long?
 
Critical hits and exploding dice are like Stun Lotto on Purpose. 
 
(Which just further illustrates the Duke's point, I think)

Honestly, I always thoight that had more to do with setting of traps than anything else:
 
The GM knows that the door is booby trapped at the latch handle, the peep hole, and the locking bar pivots.
 
If the thief proclaims "I use a small mallet and a drift to remove the hinge pins," then he will not encounter the booby traps.
 
Similarly, suppose there are pit traps on the left and right of a chest, and the thief has failed to detect them.  If he approaches directly from the front of the chest, he is still safe.  Of he remembers the acid spray trap in the last chest, however, and devides it is safer to siddle up edgewise, hw is going for a ride in the spikey chair fifteen feet below.
 
Things like that are the reason I never batted an eye at "describe how you are doing it."  It never struck me as "prove you know how tumblers or double-blind levers work" so much as "where are you standing (and are you crouching) and what bits do you touch?  Which way are you looking?  What are you prepared for??
 
That kind of thing there.  Expecting a twelve year old kid to describe the inner workings of a twist-push-twist-pull-countertwist wood-and-iron lock is preposterous, and any GM demanding that has.... Problems...
 
 

And it gets worse!
 
 
 
The best thing about this thread is the News cycle prevents radical thread drift. 😁

And it gets worse!
 
 
 
The best thing about this thread is the News cycle prevents radical thread drift. 😁

AIs apparently have a problem with the number of fingers to put on hands, and sometimes a problem with feet. If they add in lots of pouches, Liefeld may be out of a job.

You can accomplish the equivalent of a package deal bonus by allowing a custom enhancer, which is what I generally do in 6e. Such a custom enhancer costs 3 points, and reduces the cost of each ability allowed to be taken within it by 1 point. Just be consistent about what you allow them to apply to, and the scope of what you'll allow a given enhancer to cover (in fantasy and sci-fi, race and profession serve as easily applied bounds).
 
For instance...this character has one for race and one for profession; currently they are just breaking even on the Rogue enhancer (but can still get some future net gain there in future if they stick to concept and buy 1 or more abilities within it):

 
A different character leans heavily into their race and class, and gets more squeeze from it (but is putting less points into stats and misc abilities):

 
This character is fairly evenly spread across enhancers for race & class, getting a small net benefit from each:

You could make a statistically reasonable system using d20s, but you'd have to build the bell curve in somewhere else, exactly like how D&D doesn't.  D&D only sort of works in a sense because it's so abstracted.

I do like yaoi and don't see any of it in D&D. 
Pretty heteronormative, really with the hot girl demons/devils/fey/etc typically having the charm powers and boobs on half the art means we're not sexist.
 
5e has been getting a bit furry, tho

The bell curve follows my understanding of real world statistics of probability whereas a d20 does not. So 3d6 and 2d6 yields a certain measure of predictability that a d20 does not, and I prefer 3d6 for this reason. As a GM, this helps me in tailoring campaigns and requires far more bad die rolls than a d20 setup does.
 
It’s rarer to see a TPK of heroes using 3d6 than I’ve ever seen using d20 resolution mechanics. This is not to say I’ve never seen them, but they seem to happen far more frequently with a d20 resolution mechanic in my experience, especially when dealing with the lower levels of power.
 
I just don’t find d20 to be statistically reasonable in its outcomes.

Even Traveller has better mechanics, using 2d6 for combat and skill resolution and varying amounts of d6s for damage. If I wasn’t playing Hero, I’d prefer Traveller’s system over d20 mechanics.

It's tempting for a serious RPGer to want to look to the content of games for explanations of success.
 
But, D&D had a unique arc, it made a splash among wargamers initially, because it was quite different, but it became a fad when people started hearing about it in the mainstream.
 
Not because fledgling TSR had an advertising budget, but because of suicide, steam tunnels, and Satanism.  Yes, any free publicity is good publicity.
 
And, to this day, D&D remains the only TTRPG with mainstream name recognition.

BECMI, as it is now known, is oddly the best version of D&D because its initial simplicity allowed it to scale without collapsing under its own weight.  But that simplicity meant that you were playing one of ten different character race/classes so if you wanted to play a dwarven wizard, tough.
 
 
Near as I can tell AD&Dv1 was meant to be played almost as a wargame, with a platoon of randomly generated and entirely expendable characters from which you would choose a squad (reinforced with hirelings) for any particular dungeon crawl. 
 
 
(Excellent writeup/rant cut for brevity)  That is indeed the biggest difference and when I first started playing in a 5e campaign I played it wrong for like a year, because I didn't realize I didn't have to assign memorized spells to specific slots.  5e D&D spellcasting is a change-slots-only-during-a-long-rest multipower with level-specific charges.  (This may actually vary depending on spellcaster type, I'm not sure.)  It was the second most confusing thing about 5e, the first being the literal hours I spent hunting for the paladin experience table (there isn't one).
 
Despite the welcome streamlining, 5e still has the core D&D flaws: class-based character creation and level progression, class power imbalances at the low and high ends, and literally hundreds of individually defined class and race abilities, feats, and spells with no underlying rule structure to govern their interaction.  Oh, and all-or-nothing saves.
 

Nailed it. The comparison between survival horror and YA is brilliant mate. 

Well, when I was 14, I picked up Moldvay’s Red book and pretty much taught myself how to play. I didn’t have a gaming group then and was the only person I knew that was interested in it. 

Oh, it's going to get released.  The plans have started. The general mechanics may not change, but the minor mechanics may on the edges, and definitely the tone is going to change.  OD&D was a tense survival Horror game, with tense resource management.  Current D&D is turning into a YA novel in tone. complete with magic academies, and proms. The new rules will move further in that direction, except with a subscription based virtual table top, and  micro-transactions.

Oh, it's going to get released.  The plans have started. The general mechanics may not change, but the minor mechanics may on the edges, and definitely the tone is going to change.  OD&D was a tense survival Horror game, with tense resource management.  Current D&D is turning into a YA novel in tone. complete with magic academies, and proms. The new rules will move further in that direction, except with a subscription based virtual table top, and  micro-transactions.

I can'tnt say that I have ever seen it, but if you are looking for any sort of feedback:
 
If it is an officially-endorsed build, it is going to be from before 4e.
 
I say that because of your 1x, 2x, 3x notation.
 
This was the mechanic for a number of mental or psyche-targeting powers: you rolled youe dice of effect then divided by (target characteristic+ appropriate defense) to determine hiw many levels of effect the attacker had achieved;  that is to say, one times the target number, two times the target number, etc.
 
That changed in 4e.  From 4e and onward, the dice of effect were rolled, then (target characteristic + approoriate defenses) were subtracted.   The results depended on how many points over the (characteristic + defenses).   Then compare to a chart that says target number or greater then this result; target number plus 20 points then this result; target number plus 50 points-
 
Etc.
 
 
I play 2e, though I dabbled,in 4e back in the 90s, and in my own experience, most of us subtracted the target number (target characterisitc plus relevant defenses) then divided by whatever the step number was on the chart (usually a 10 or a 20, but I cant remember which) and rounded down to get a whole number, then went to that line on the chart.  Same results, and for some reason was easier than subtracting 20 over and over until we talied up two or four or whatever.
 
 
Anyway, had this been an _official endorsed_ build, it would have had to have come from any of the "how much more than the target characteristic did you roll" powers (which are pretty much, as I called them, the psyche-affecting powers-- essentially the traditionally "mental powers" plus Presence Attack- because those were the only powers featuring those charts, and those were the only powers where varying degrees of "damage" meant very different results: there is quite a chasm between the 1x and 3x results on your chart, for example.  With all other powers, the greater the results, the more of the exavr same effect (usually damage) was applied to the target.
 
Going with what you have presented here, I think it was created for 3rd edition or anythng before that, as the results are keyed to a multiple.
 
I also strongly suspect that it is a home-brew creation (which saw life in many third party gaming magazines; I don't think Adventurers a club published anything that wasnt officially endorsed, even if it waant official (the Swarm rulws were made official for years, but they were officially endorsed, for example.
 
I do not think this Vertigo was officially endorsed simply because there is no 4x entry.
 
Even after the change from "multiples" to "success levels," there have always been _4_ levels for these charts.  Not sure why, but I suspect that if this had been an AC article, they would have either requested the submitter rework it into dour levels, or would have done so themselves with an "inspired by" note in the article.
 
If it was in a magazine, then it was truly a third party publucation such as Dragon or Different Worlds or White Dwarf (I can tell you that it wasnt actually in White Dwarf, if that helps) or one of the scores of fanzines and lower-profile gaming magazines of the day.
 
 
Also, --and I like to think most importantly--  consider this to be extremely stolen. 
 
I want to compare it to my own build for vertigo; the similarities are intriguing. 
 

I have always liked the overwhelming majority of people on these boards,but I have never had a higher respect dor anyone here than I do now, for you, after that comment.
 
"Crapsack world's" seem to be the majority of games the last dwcade plus a bit:
 
Dark
Dying
Forbidden
Forgotten
Dying again
 
"Hey, gang!  Let's put away our heroics and live the lives of a band of underlings powerless to help themselves in the face of encroaching entropy!  I mean, why should _we_ not enjoy clinical depression, too?"
 
If I enjoyed endless depression, I would browse memes....
 
 
 
 
 
 

I've harped on adventures for Hero in the past.  Not just adventures, but content: spells, monsters, and so on.
 
D&D 3.x had the OGL, and an explosion of third party content, meaning adventures, spells, monsters, and so on.  D&D 4e had a restrictive license, and no third party content.  D&D 5E had the OGL again, and again an explosion of content.  We're watching the slow motion trainwreck of D&D 6E happening in internet time. 
 
It's not that Hero has any kind of restrictive licensing terms at all, but you still have to contact Jason Walters and ask. And Jason is eminently approachable and one of the nicest guys in gaming and will in all likelihood say yes, but... however small a barrier asking for permission is, it's still a barrier.

The votes are in.  Hubby's Friday game will be...Serenity.  So the GM still gets to indulge in his crapsack world fetish.

Paizo just gave WoTC and Hasbro a pair of middle fingers, and may have built a foundation for them to surpass D&D