I'm thinking of a number...
Callan S.:
I think there's some practical merit to keeping a target number a mystery, either to engage a certain sense of wonder about the world that makes you think about the world rather than the books numbers, or to heighten step on up in gamist play (or both).
But yeah, it's bloody easy to slip into illusionism (yes, I use the word slip...as in, not a well thought out concious choice - guilty actual play acounts flit through my mind...).
One method to still make that transparent is to write down the target number before the roll, then show it after the roll. So you get mystery and transparency.
But in terms of your player wanting to keep the difficulty secret, you can't prove that you should be transparent. Honesty is a choice - it can't really be proven to be the thing you should be doing. At a certain level, it comes down to 'I'm gunna be transparent and I don't give a damn' :) That's why I so value informed consent, because you can be like that, but since people know in advance you will be like that they can decline to come, of course. I don't think there's any way to prove one should be honest - it just comes down to just damn the torpedoes and doing it! :)
Filip Luszczyk:
Quote
Philip, when you played D&D, did the GM ever reveal the 'roll over' number, or was it played like what Simon describes so well as 'Chicken Entrails', eg, "you roll the dice, and the GM scrutinises them, before pronouncing success or failure"?
Which DM? :) Some of them made all target numbers open, some only those that weren't designated as "hidden checks" by the book, some didn't reaveal the number and didn't seem to cheat, some cheated blatantly and I played with a few who discarded the dice and the rest of the rules and still called it "D&D". Myself, I generally kept them open when DM-ing.
My general experience was that the more the DM "cheated" on target numbers or ignored the rules, the more the game sucked.
The Dragon Master:
Just thought I'd pipe in here as the ITOA# method of task resolution has been used by most of my GMs (and myself on occasion though I'll get to that).
Let's start with Amber. At CopperCon this year I was involved in a handful of Amber games, and as has been said ITOA# is the way the game is supposed to be played. The problem is that it does feel an awful lot like GM Fiat. In one instance my character is trying to keep a suspected spy contained till her identity (and her right to be there) can be verified. I'm playing a character whose whole thing is that he is the strongest of the childeren of Oberon (the then king). And two of the others come up to free the suspected spy. Well, it comes down to something amounting to a brawl (using the Strength stat) and my character get's knocked unconcious. After the game it is revealed that both of them had through a randomized character selection ended up with Oberon and Dwarkin respectively (who are both stronger than my character), but till that reveal it felt like the whole thing came down to the GM was bored with that scene and was steamrolling past it.
The thing with Amber is that if played out as it's supposed to (starting from character creation where you bid against one another to see who get's the highest attributes) the feel that it's GM fiat is diminished. I played a one shot of Amber last week in which we started from the attribute auction. When a conflict came about (so long as it was between me and one of the other players at least) it felt... fair. I'd had an opportunity to have a higher score in the attributes that mattered to me, and if they beat me it was due to me not having been willing to out bid them for rank. Though in other conflicts it still felt like winning or loosing based on what the GM wanted to have happen. I'm not sure whether it is possible with that system to feel otherwise, but then a big part of the setting is conflict between the siblings (i.e, player characters).
Another example of ITOA# from my gaming history would trace back to a Rifts game I was involved in some months back. The GM of this game had a house rule that rather than use the skill percents given in the book, your actual skill would be determined by the first roll you make with that skill. Roll a 2 and you have a 2, role a 79 and you have a 79, which always felt a little clunky in actual play (particularly as the skills are supposed to be determined by the classes you take). In addition to this the GM never would let you know what the target number was, much less whether you'd suceeded. He always said "in real life you don't know whether you suceeded or not, so why should you in the game". He also had a quirk of not using the system if he could get away from it, though he still required the rolls. So a normal skill roll would work out like this:
GM "roll survival"
Player " I don't have survival"
GM "Oh, then roll stealth"
Player "Again, don't have stealth. Neither skill is included in my OCC, or RCC"
GM "Okay, add survival to your skill list and roll percentile"
/roll/
Player "83"
GM "Okay, now write 83 next to the skill" after a moment of considering the number rolled "you fail"
Player "so what was the target?"
GM "you wouldn't know in real life what it was, so why should your character know?"
Granted, there was a lot more disfunction going on in that game than just the style of task resolution, but in that case ITOA# was being used to facilitate Illusionism.
I ran about 12 sessions of Shadowrun starting at the begining of January this year, and found myself using ITOA# quite a bit. The issue there was that I really didn't know what the target number should be. I had only played a few sessions of Shadowrun before being volunteered to run that campaign and was still learning the resolution system, combat, magic, etc. More than half the times when I'd need to have the players roll against a target number, I didn't know what number was needed, much less where I needed to look to find it. So, rather than bog down play digging through the books and scouring the GM Screen trying to find the right number I'd make one up and have them roll. I always tried to predict the type of roll before it came up, and spent the time up till it was time to roll looking for the right table to have them roll off, but usually would end up rolling of a "close enough" table. The vision table for hearing for example. Given time I probably would eventually have known where to look well enough (or known the tables well enough) that I would have been able to move towards a more disclosure oriented playstyle, but the campaign ended due to lack of player interest (apparently they didn't want to play a game that focused on their characters as the source of the story/plot/complications. Though that may be due to a difference in CA (or even just in expectations about what the game is about).
Steenan:
All posters here seem to be strongly against hidden target numbers or any other kind of mechanics that strenghtens GM's control.
I agree only partially.
I like to have difficulties defined by hard rules - but I prefer when they reflect what I'm trying to do. Some activities should be trivial, some should be hard. I definitely wouldn't enjoy a game that would give me a success in every non-opposed activity: I would lose fun either by not trying difficult things or by having them succeed every time, breaking my suspension of disbelief and feel of risk.
Similarily, I prefer hidden target numbers (and the best of both worlds are hidden target numbers that the GM may show after the play, ensuring he was acting fair). I typically play from the actor's stance, so being given information that's unavailable to my character (but definitely might affect his choices) is at least a bit uncomfortable. If I don't trust the GM, I don't play with him. If I trust him, there is no need to avoid any risk of manipulation on his part.
It's very similar most of the time when I GM. I prefer having objective rules specifying resolution and difficulties, to assure I'm not biased, but don't give my players information that is not available to characters.
The Dragon Master:
Steenan: Personally, I prefer Author stance. When I play a character, I have a goal in mind for his story and like to choose the direction he's going to go in. Sometimes that means having him throw himself against odds he can't possibly beat (and doesn't), and sometimes that means having him walk away from a challenge he could easily overcome without ever trying. But to be able to create those situations (which are the more enjoyable parts of the hoby for me) I need to know what the difficulty is. Of course, this type of play also requires a level of transparency that most people I play with aren't comfortable with*.
Could the stance in question be the difference? What about others here, how much do you think the stance you take effects your preferences regarding ITOA# and Disclosure?
*Usually this leads to accusations of "metagaming"** along with confused stares when I don't use the OOC knowledge to "beat" their characters. The group is still learning that I use the meta-knowledge for a different reason (and to a different purpose) than the players who were kicked out of the group for "metagaming" used it.
**For my group the term is used to refer to any use of out of character knowledge. This has gained a bad reputation within my group due to a few former players who would use that knowledge to take over the game (I could provide examples from in-play but that wouldn't much serve the purposes of this thread).
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