Re: Interview with Vincent and me
Ron Edwards:
It can be done lots of ways. The specific difference I was talking about is more complex that my quick comment could capture.
The first issue concerns who rolls at all.
In many games, the GM rolls for his or her characters' actions much as players do for theirs. This is neither good nor bad; it's what happens in Sorcerer, for instance, just as much as in GURPS or whatever.
I think the first game in which the GM never rolls, just the player, was Legendary Lives. There are a few others too. Elfs is like that.
The second issue concerns who calls for rolls, or rather, when someone rolls, who had to speak before that. In most of the play I experienced before 1996 or so, this was highly tuned by a given group. In one Champions group, for instance, people played much as you describe - the players say lots and lots of stuff, and when some of is a conflict or difficult in some way, the GM says "roll." In another group, it might be very different - during most of play, the GM hits the characters with a lot of stuff that absolutely demands specific rolls, most typically Perception or defense rolls of some kind, and the player-prompted rolls usually occur only within the strict framework of combat routines. (One can also find these extremes, and the spectrum between them, across Call of Cthulhu play.)
Now let's put these together. In Elfs, only players roll. Taking damage, for instance, is the result of an abysmally missed attack roll. Also, in Elfs, what the characters do is fantastically wide open across all the options, regardless of the situation, and there's really no way for the GM to say "X happens, therefore you have to roll for [whatever]." Although the GM can and should set up outrageously funky mini-situations (the model is early AD&D modules, in fact), what ensues is indescribably unpredictable. That's so because the players do God Knows What and the GM has the fun of responding totally verbally, riffing off and mechanically applying the results of their rolls.
Does that make sense? I'm fond of Elfs and I am sad that it hasn't been more widely played. It ain't parody; it's satire, and as such can cut pretty deep.
Best, Ron
Marshall Burns:
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
And it seems I'm gonna have to check out Elfs at some point. I won't lie to you, when I saw the ad for it in Sorcerer (which I bought not too long ago) I went, "ern." Ordinarily, I'd go, "arrgh," because I don't like fantasy in general (I like Tolkien, Bradbury, Gaiman, Dunsany, Howard, and that's pretty much it), and because I absolutely HATE the way the word "elf" is used by fantasy; it makes me want to punch things (Tolkien had his thing and he did it well, and he knew what the word really means, so I'm cool with that). The reason I said "ern" instead of "arrgh" is because I suspected that maybe this was something different -- which it seems it must be.
And I'm way off the topic of the interview. Which I rather enjoyed, by the way.
-Marshall
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