Skip to main content

"At the Gates is a high fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about burgeoning heroes struggling to survive, fighting for what’s right, exploring dangerous places, and saving the world."

Look. I love The Onyx Path. I do. And I am sure At the Gates will be a good game. But who the hell came up with this promo blurb?

Hey, you, look at this RPG! It's about all the RPG things you like to RPG. Out of all the RPGs in the world, this is one of them.

#ttrpg #TheOnyxPath #AtTheGates

#TTRPG #TheOnyxPath #AtTheGates
Lester Ward
Lester Ward  
•
It also uses an almost-Exalted dice system, without correcting the very large mistakes they made using that dice system. They might even have made it worse, trying to bolt a partial success concept onto the mathematically terrible success scale chart.
Marko Vujnovic
Marko Vujnovic  
•

@wordman They are different systems. Exalted started as storyteller variant but Ex3 is its own thing, quite a departure from previous ones though obviously still with some clear evolutionary similarities. This one is storypath, so the same thing new Scion and Trinity Continuum use. It is current iteration if the storyteller system basically.

They are quite different once you get past d10 dice pools and successes. And if you didn't have a chance to see Ex3, take a look. It is much better.

@Lester Ward
Lester Ward
Lester Ward  
•
Whatever you call it, they are still ignoring the basic math of their dice mechanics.
(And, yes, Ex3 was a reorganized bucket of hot garbage that maintained nearly all of the underlying flaws of Ex2’s hot garbage. I built _Exaltation Prime_ to escape them both at my table.)
Marko Vujnovic
Marko Vujnovic  
•
@wordman what math was ignored?
@Lester Ward
Lester Ward
Lester Ward  
•

Mechanics, count "hits" from a d10 pool. At the center of the kickstarter description, a chart lists results based on scoring 0 to 4+ "hits".

A starting character can easily have a 10 die pool and, because of how successes are counted, they will roll 4+ hits 56% of time, and can score as many as 20. Plus "enhancements".

For "success with consequences" 50% of the time, you only need 4 dice, which means that result, the most interesting, will almost never happen at the table.

Marko Vujnovic
Marko Vujnovic  
•

@wordman Replying with ridiculous delay, sorry about that.

I thought you had some math issues with the story* system in general, based on the discussion, not just this specific one. For this one, I wouldn't go into too many details because we realistically do not know the details. A month ago I spent hours mathing out Our Brilliant Ruin only to realize basic assumptions about how the system should be used was wrong.

@Lester Ward
Lester Ward
Lester Ward  
•
If you use this anydice link (https://anydice.com/program/367b4), and click the "At Least" button, you can see probabilities for different sized pools.

AnyDice

AnyDice is an advanced dice probability calculator, available online. It is created with roleplaying games in mind.
Catlike Coding
This entry was edited (3 months ago)
silverwizard
silverwizard  

@Marko Vujnovic Didn't Luke Crane already make an Ta The Gates RPG?! I feel like that one makes me think this one will be depressing

#UnderASerpentSun

#UnderASerpentSun @Marko Vujnovic
⇧