Something about 'height advantage' and it's kin
lumpley:
Nope! Someone decides. If you think I've ever said otherwise, all I can suggest is that you reconsider and revise your understanding.
-Vincent
contracycle:
Quote from: Callan S. on May 04, 2010, 08:03:43 PM
Your confusing the issue one step early. Your car and it's position is a physically mesurable object. Switch it to this 'I'll give you ten bucks if your gods dick is longer than my gods dick'.
No, I'm not.
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You can't call someone on cheating when it comes to something you can't physically measure - not unless you want to start being a witch hunter.
I certainly can. I can bet that someone cannot recite:
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Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
... without making an error. But even this is beside the point. When the debt is called in, there is at that time, nothing to measure. All there is is the memory of prior event. And what we have in the IS is the memory of previous definitive statements. Exactly the same principle applies.
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What is the rule on who decides whether you get +2? Is it you? If not, your breaking the rules.
Once again, no I'm not. I'm entitled to invoke a rule, even if it's not technically within my right to decide. Players in sports can appeal to the referee; the referee's decision may be the one that is final, but that doesn't prevent the players putting their case and even suggesting what the right decision would be.
We agree to treat the IS as if it were real and we can draw conclusions from it as if it were real too.
Christian:
Callan : yes the economics around bonus / malus leads to interesting play exeriences. What I like is the "no fudge" and the "story pushing" effects.
To precise things a bit, if you're interested, in my game the GM has Threat tokens he spends to give malus, and the players "use" Traits and spends Resolution points. The important thing is that the use of Traits is part of the economy too.
To use your example of the table :
GM : ok, the goblin leaps toward you, this is the conflict, what's your objective ?
Player : I want to get the chest and leave.
GM : the goblin draws a black dagger glowing with red light! (I spend 1 threat token, that's a 1 die malus for you) (the GM could have said "He calls his friends", or "He jumps on the table and attacks from above" or whatever, this is just color)
Player : I draw my sword (I use my Fighter trait) I jump on the table (I use my "Raised in a tavern" Trait) and I spend 1 Resolution point.
etc etc...
The trick is : use whatever you want, but tell the story, and what you use is never free. You can't use again a used trait before you "rest", and rest is, of course, "not free" (rest is linked to trait availability and to the rythm of the session).
Cheers !
Jim D.:
Quote from: Callan S. on May 04, 2010, 08:03:43 PM
Hi Jim D.,
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and so it is now an inarguable part of the fiction until circumstances change.
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Your agreed-upon framework for the game determined the existence of the table and its benefits. The only "set in stone" portion of this whole thing is the rule in the D&D book that states height advantage => +2. It's then up to the players to determine that existence and who has the credibility to firmly establish that (the GM, narrator, whatever).
And here we are at 'existance', when I'm assured no one at the forge is saying this exists. No, actually, people saying these 'things' exist is happening - here, for example.
I mean, in the last line of your example, if the GM said 'Nah, no +2. Just roll' am I right that you'd argue NOT based on the idea he promised you +2, but instead you'd argue based on the idea the table exists, right? That it had been 'established'?
It's like me saying I'll pay you for some bread you have, but only if A: You hand me the bread and B: lord Odin gives the nod. You ask if lord Odin is nodding. I say yes.
So you hand me the bread. I give you no money. Then you start arguing lord Odin was nodding. No, he stopped nodding I say. You get angry because I'm cheating or suchlike.
How do you determine cheating on such a matter, when there is no evidence? When it's just something locked away inside someones head?
I mean, in every other boardgame or even sport, there is some physical object you can physically measure to determine a result of cheating or not.
Do you really feel secure enough to call anyone a cheat on the existance of the established table/bonus given? It's a hard question.
I see where you make that point, Callan. I confess I have played with capricious GMs like that who manage to change the rules or behavior of abilities or the environment on a whim, and the lack of consistency does become aggravating. The question, I dare say, then becomes one not of the hypothetical existence of the table or the height advantage, but the coherence of the SIS.
We're using, incidentally, two different senses of the word "exists". Physically, tangibly, the table is unreal, of course. A figment of our imagination. This, I believe, is the hangup a lot of us are having, this hypothetical argument (that perhaps no one has made!) that the table and cleric are real in the physical sense. On the contrary, I'm trying to use the term "exists" to refer to the manifestation of the concept that the table is present in the scene. Since when role-playing, we, being human, expect consistency and some reliance on the rules of the real world, we expect that if the person(s) with credibility has established that there is a table in the scene, it provides height advantage, and height advantage adds 2 to your attack roll, that when I stand on that table, it ought to provide me that +2! If I did stand on the table, and the GM then declared, "nope, that table no longer provides +2," or to speak closer to your point, "you don't get +2 because I said so," you are, I confess, absolutely right that I'd be a little cheesed off. I don't believe that weakens my argument; indeed, we may well agree that the table becomes something we can look up once it is established in the SIS. I believe you have my point exactly right; that said, I fail to see where we disagree. Let me know what I'm saying is jarring to you and we can debate it further.
The word "cheating" or "cheat" is a very hard line; D&D is a tough example in this instance because I believe it has very strong gamist elements, so at the extreme of that paradigm you might encounter players who declare behavior like that "cheating" on the part of the DM. I'm hesitant to use "cheating" so much as "inconsistent". Which, to you, and reasonably so, might be the same thing. The bit about witch-hunting wrt. "cheating" and rule-breaking is valid; this is why you don't see D&D played professionally. :) Honestly, if the GM is capricious enough to randomly declare a table as granting advantage or not, with no explanation in the context of the SIS, I might speak to him privately, or go find another game. Since in most RPGs the GM has credibility, he more or less has that say; that doesn't mean I have to like it. I can't, and wouldn't, call him a cheat, but I can "vote with my wallet" (or in this case, more accurately, "vote with my time", but that's not quite as punchy). But it's not the kind of thing over which I'd lunge across the table and start throwing punches.
I have yet to find anyone that professes some kind of "official Forge position" on the existence or non-existence of this table and +2, and the nature of that existence from a tangible or philosophical standpoint. This is so much a philosophical question at this point that I'm uncertain we are going to arrive at some kind of satisfactory agreement.
Filip Luszczyk:
Callan,
Quote from: Callan S.
This is perhaps a slightly different topic. But although there are a few things I'd examine with you thought experiment, I'll cut to this - machine code does not compute the words 'height advantage'. Go type that into a programming language compiler. It'll either spit out an error or ignore it entirely. Because it is not concrete - it has not been put into concrete numbers. Your idea that you can just be 'hardware' for 'height advantage' is incorrect - because even real hardware cannot be hardware for the words 'height advantage'. If I were to program it, it'd go something like "On collision, if x >= other.x-z bonustohit = 2;'. With Z as the ammount of pixels it has to be higher than the other object. How many pixels?
Human-hardware does process words, though. You feed human-hardware with data and height advantage is either 0 or 1. When the computer would measure the amount of pixels or whatever, human-hardware can measure some other quality and proceed accordingly.
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Hardware cannot and does not decide this. Your blurring human artistic choices and pure procedural following into one (perhaps harmful) thing.
Heh, but how do you measure if a choice is artistic or not? It's like you could refer physically to there being an art in the choice or not.
And, not really, I wouldn't say I'm blurring anything here. Upthread, I'm specifically considering the possibility that sometimes it's decision and sometimes it's identification, don't I?
(When it's decision, I'd say some strategic choice is necessarily involved in the context of playing a game (whatever the strategic goals of the player in a given case), while with identification, no choice other than to follow the procedure or stop playing the game as is.)
Caldis,
Quote from: Caldis
It's not quite that simple. Someone has to place the figures on the battle grid and move figures on or off of it so in the end someone is always deciding.
Say, I decide the initial distance of our characters is 15 feet (3 suares). Then, you decide how to spend your movement points, and I decide how to spend mine, and we move around the battle grid for a few turns. Then, you decide to shoot at me. The rule says it's -2 to hit when your target is more than 30 feet (6 squares) away.
We count squares on the grid and our current distance is 60 feet (12 squares). You take -2 penalty to hit.
The moment we count squares, do we decide it's 60 feet? I did decide it was 15 feet initially, then both of us did decide how to spend our movement (how to spend our movement at that point, not what the distance is at this point), then you decided to shoot at me. But is there any decision involved in establishing range penalty, or do we just identify it?
And if we actually decide it's 60 feet and not 30 or 45 or 97, would it be different if it was explicitly a miniature wargame rather than "tabletop RPG"? Or, how is it different if we imagine the grid and perform all operations in our heads rather than based on physical representation? Or, how is it different if the grid only exists as data in computer memory, and all measurement is performed by virtual tabletop software?
Christian,
This might be a bit off topic, or it might not, I'm not sure. However, in your ruleset, is it fine for me to say: USS Enterprise appears and evaporates the goblin with photon torpedos (I use my "Raised in a tavern" trait and spend 1 Resolution point)? Or, is it fine for you to say "He calls his friends" every time you spend threat tokens for the goblin, over and over again?
With both, is it fine when the person saying that is genuinely convinced they are telling good story? With both, is it fine if they are just saying it, for reasons?
What happens when other players don't think it fits the story? USS Enterprise aside, what if I object to your goblin's dagger glowing red?
How does your ruleset process that? Does it at all?
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