KhorasForum

Certainly! 

I haven't been doing much work on my own game for a few years due to increased school commitments—I should finally finish my undergrad next spring, and am spending this summer reading something like 3,000–4,000 pages of self-assigned texts for my Departmental Honors—but I understand completely your frustrations with D&D and excitement about your own game. I look forward to seeing what you've come up with once it's where you're happy with it!

I will say that, personally, I was somewhat concerned that any chance for my game to sell even slightly would dry up once the next edition/ruleset of D&D dropped, but honestly, with the way that Hasbro and Wizards have fumbled their IP, I'm much less concerned. But I do like to keep an eye on some of what's going on in the wider industry, both in terms of the major publishers and the indies. I figure it can't hurt to know the landscape in which players will be encountering my game. Glad you found some interest, if not amusement, in the video. 

Gah, fucking copyright trolls.

But yes, I concur; having ironclad sourcing for everything on the site is a best practice, and will save you the worry if something like this happens again.

So, here's just a short little video with an interview with Mike Mearls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGFHTAe-wnc

There are a number of interesting points, but one in particular amused me, and I thought I'd point it out: 4th Edition was, in fact, absolutely intended to make D&D more like World of Warcraft.

Anyway, just thought it was worth a watch, and I'd love to hear any thoughts anyone else has.

Indeed, lol.

A large portion of my free time consists of just such information consumption. I'd say research, but... it's really more like sticking a dry sponge in a filled tub and then letting it drip all over the house.

As for the game, take your time, obviously, but I'll be here ready and waiting for the buzz when it comes.

Also, it's worth mentioning that I periodically check the forum, even when I don't have anything to say, so I at least will continue to be around whenever someone pops their head back in to say something. No worries on the slowness of posts, I just keep the tab open until something happens.

That's too bad. 

I agree, it's weird how the internet connects us through our words with likeminded strangers. R.I.P. Sid6.7.

Glad to hear that the game is coming along, and especially that all of your research is beginning to feed back into your worldbuilding!

Due to a number of factors, including finally beginning to wrap up my undergrad, I haven't had much time to devote to my own game, but I look forward to seeing what you come up with when you get there!

As far as research, obviously I've mentioned channels and other sources before, but two in particular that you might find enlightening while you're continuing your research are any talks or interviews with Dr. Tobias Capwell (who was involved with Tod's Arrows vs. Armor project; many interviews with him have been conducted by the channel Schola Gladiatoria) and the channel Sandrhoman—which does a lot of videos about historical warfare, but in particular a lot of coverage of pike-and-shot and other periods of early Modern warfare along with the siegecraft of the period, all of which have actual military history texts cited in video which might help you with the more Renaissance-level cultures in particular.

Anyway, keep up the work, man! All the best.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and happy holidays!

Congratulations on completing a long-term project, however long postponed!

I'm working on some research for a school paper at the moment, but I'll attend to it when I'm free. 

It's quite alright.

In fact, it's loading correctly on my browser now, which it hadn't been for a while due to an OS switch, so yay!

Sorry for your losses, both of you. My parents have been ailing a bit as well, and I know it's devastating when the worst arrives. Good luck with your surgery, as well.

Quote from: Drul Morbok on September 15, 2022, 01:08:13 PM
Unfortunately, the 5-feet increments translate into increments of 1.5 meter, which is a bit awkward.
But when describing any distance or size, I use the metric system.

That's exactly what I was thinking of with regards to combat. Five feet is pretty much exactly the natural basis of distance in hand-to-hand and melee combat, because of human proportions, and it doesn't convert to an integer number of meters, which makes things awkward to deal with. I suppose that's what happens when you derive your base unit from a planetary basis rather than a human one. Inherently good for measuring planets, not necessarily as good for measuring people-centric things.

I (and Dave) obviously have the advantage of being based in the US where most people are more familiar with US Standard units than metric ones, so it's easy to just say, "Just use the cleaner option.", but it does force one to consider how to proceed outside of the Anglosphere—which is the only place where most people are likely to have a ton of familiarity with British Imperial or US Standard units (I've known Brits who remain Imperial-dominant, as well as Brits for whom Imperial is as alien as it is to the French, who invented metric and have used it for centuries)—and I agree with you and Dave. It's probably easier to either plan ahead of time to put in the work to localize everything, or else to include both.

Of course, then you have to deal with the procedural necessities stemming from either of those decisions, but that's as may be.

As I have also, quietly (if not particularly actively of late), been working on an RPG system of my own, I've also thought about this, and I'm kind of two minds about it.

On the one hand, I think that, at the end of the day, anything we do as game designers needs to be for the benefit of play. I've made no secret of my personal preference for trying to foster verisimilitude to support players' suspension of disbelief, even to the point of actively attempting to subconsciously retrain mistaken intuitions through more historically grounded play abstractions, but... if the players can't actually relate to or understand our mechanics, then they can't effectively interact with the game.

In short, many systems need to be, at the end of the day, geared primarily toward reducing cognitive load and rendering our system usable. When it comes to measurements in a tactical combat- and exploration-focused game, this means providing people with whatever standard weights and measures they're familiar with, so that they can picture and intuitively grasp relative distances and such, without the additional barrier of needing to learn and build new intuitions from whole cloth with unfamiliar units that they might only ever interact with in the realm of fantasy—especially if it's their habit to run entirely theater-of-the-mind games.

On the other hand, I think that game worlds are an opportunity to explore historical and theoretical systems and standards of measure, as well as cultural systems very different to those of European systems whose primary reason for dominance is simply that they had been adopted by societies which became global hegemons in our actual past; the metric system is great in terms of standardization, but there are actually all manner of fascinating historical systems, and there are systems not based on the decimal system which are, in many ways, far superior to the metric system, and which could be standardized upon today, however unlikely such adoption might be at this point. Both from an historical and a worldbuilding perspective, it's easy to see the value in using unfamiliar systems, even if only insofar as most people outside the Anglosphere and Commonwealth countries aren't terribly familiar with US Standard or British Imperial measurements.

Personally, though, I like using feet primarily because the scale of that unit is particularly well-suited to the sorts of distances relevant to combat, and makes the math a bit cleaner. Having said that, I imagine that in the event of attempting to localize my game, I will inevitably convert everything to metric in order to privilege the players over their characters.

GMs are of course perfectly welcome to use in-fiction units, and I imagine some particularly nerdy players would be thrilled to explore the intricacies of societies with standards of weights and measures based on locally important agricultural products, regional terrain features, or even metricized standards based on bases as diverse as 6, 12, 20, 60, and 42.

As an addendum to this, there's a YouTube channel I'm fond of which covers a fairly eclectic range of topics (though mostly constructed languages, spelling reforms, and the occasional bit of math nerdery) which has a number of good videos on different units and standards of weights and measures, and I think this is a good opportunity to share one of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJymKowx8cY

It's not the only one he has on the topic, but it tackles some of the common arguments about metric versus US/Imperial in an interesting and transformative way, and it might be of interest.

There's also this one, from Numberphile featuring Tom Scott, on various number systems around the world other than decimal, which might also be of interest, if only for worldbuilding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4bmZ1gRqCc

I understand that. I just like to collect as much inspirational/educational material as possible; I like honing skills, even if there's not an immediate payoff. I think it makes my baseline higher than if I focus just on what's immediately useful.

Besides, on the sort of timescale that a setting like Khoras has existed on—as opposed to a more standard session-to-session campaign timescale—there's always time to add little details, right? 

Really smart, cool question; and really well-thought out answer!