Something about 'height advantage' and it's kin
contracycle:
Theoretically the what-was-said of play could be recorded and referenceable, make it as robust as a rules text. But I suspect the more interesting case arises when someone should have had the +2 for high ground, but everyone at the time forgot to invoke it and it was not applied. That sort of thing certainly happens, and has happened to me, and sometimes has significant inplications for rolled outcomes. A similar case is when I have some aspect of the character or peice of equipment recorded in my character sheet, which I forget about. Is a "ring of defence AC+1" a rule or a part of the IS?
Similarly, the high ground place could be disputed; that is, the GM could say, no, standing on table isn't enough to justify the +2. Or it could be negotiated, and the group could come to the agreement that while not high enough for a +2 bonus the table could justify a +1 situational advantage.
So I think all of thse cases could summed up as process in which a claim is "invoked and agreed"; it might fail due to not being invoked, or not being agreed. A GM or other system-empowered player might be able to invoke without needing agreement as such, just like the writer of a module text, but in this regard their authority to do so exists explicitly.
Caldis:
I think this all really boils down to Lumpley principle stuff, somehow the group has to come to an agreement about whats happening in the game. There are a million different ways to do it and each is going to be specific to it's own game. As has been pointed out there are several games where things like this dont matter, if you are using a system with fortune at the beginning then those details come up after it's already been resolved and you can narrate in the use of height advantage as the reason for success.
I do get a hint of a problem in the discussion that reminds me of something from boardgames, the distinction between abstract games and thematic games. Abstract games are things like Chess or Go where the movement of the pieces are apropos of nothing save themselves and it's a clear contest of moving the pieces. Thematic games have a theme applied to them like say owning a plantation or building a farm in the middle ages and the game is supposed to have the feel of doing that theme even if it is still a contest of who builds the best farm or biggest plantation. Maybe I'm deluded but I get a sense that Callan is valuing the game on the abstract level as a contest of numbers and less on the thematic level?
Christopher Kubasik:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on May 13, 2010, 07:09:33 PM
And I say, "I jump up on the table to fight them from there," and then I say, "So I get +2!!"
Huh. Rules-use? Open to judgment and possible negation by anyone? What the fuck? I hope my point is clear, that something else is involved, and at the moment, I think it has a lot to do with group attention to what's going on, and to some kind of validation that the fiction has been altered enough to include such an application of the rules. What that validation consists of, and what standards are applied in providing it ... man, I dunno. That is very, very interesting.
I, too, think this is very interesting, and have been thinking about it a lot over the last week. Specifically the notion of "validation" and "standards."
What those standards are, how they are arrived at, is the nub of a big issues.
In my play I've observed this: the fiction built by the group is never fully concrete, but always in a state of flux. Different people of course have different notions of what the specific are in fiction. When those differences clash ("Is my guy on the table or not?") the group then focuses on the details of that fictional element and make it more concrete -- never completely concrete, but concrete enough to continue moving forward with building story.
There's nothing strange about this in terms of story. But the point is, this is about story creation. When Filip says he is talking about "game as game" I'm completely with him in terms of, say, Sorcerer being something that isn't "game as game." My own view is that Sorcerer, In A Wicked Age..., and lots of other things we call "games" are actually "tools for making stories socially." Like a piano is a tool for making music.
And rather than depending on "rules-use" alone to navigate the session the whole time, there are moments of "validation" and "standards" where the table says "Yes" or "No" or "Fuck you."
I'm bringing all this up to make sure I'm on the same page of the discussion. This is the stuff I've been thinking about, and I think it's where this thread is going.
But I want to ask something: A lot of the original focus was about the physical aspect of the fiction (whether there's a height advantage, whether or not something is available in the market). But I think the conversation Fillip and I had about "With Love" is equally a part of the conversation.
I, too, think that the notion of whether or not there is a "reality" to the SIS is a red herring (No, it isn't real; yes, it gets more defined enough for play to continue as required). But this notion of what gets validated and what standards are applied and how those standards are applied moves across all interactions of fiction and rules, from +2 height bonus to "With Love" for dice selection to "My character's Trait does apply to this conflict, so I'm bringing in an augment" to "Oh, no, I'm sorry... I had a different picture in my head. I thought you were all the way across the starport. You can use a ranged weapon if you want, or take two rounds to close on the guy you want to help."
To me, they are all under the same umbrella. But that might not be the umbrella of this discussion. So, I'm checking in here.
I have an actual play example from the starport scene ready to go, with observations about validation and standards if I'm on track.
CK
Roger:
Some of this might seem a bit familiar to some people; it's something I've written on before (but that was a long time, and I should really get around to putting more work into it.) I think the missing link that breaks us out of the loop of circular logic doom is what might be called "The Real World", but really all I mean is everything outside of the game, which might include other fictions and such as well. What the lit majors would call "extra-diegetic."
For example, consider these two rules:
1. When a character is standing on the high ground, he gets a +2 to hit.
2. When a character is standing on a rug, he gets a +2 to hit.
From a purely mechanical and legal viewpoint, these two rules are virtually identical. There's nothing inherent there that should make one of them any better than the other.
But I think that with an average group of average people, it'll be easier to accept rule #1 on a visceral level than rule #2. This often gets pawned off on the basis of "rule #1 is more realistic" but I think that's misleading at best. "More consistent with all our other Outside-This-Game knowledge and experience" is a lot closer.
There are all sorts of implications around this. Every set of rules is going to depend, to greater or lesser degrees, on this Outside-This-Game knowledge of the audience and players. On the 'to a greater degree' side of things, we have every edition of D&D (but increasingly-so as one travels back in time to the earliest editions,) and Primetime Adventures, to pick a couple examples.
When the players have a different set of Outside-This-Game experiences, or one player's are different from the rest of the group's, things can get... interesting, and unpredictable. I don't know enough to say if that describes Callan in situ, but it seems like a possibility.
Filip Luszczyk:
Callan,
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Filip
I recall having a design not unlike Christian's, where it didn't matter what weapon your character was using, it only mattered what attack value and resource points you had on your sheet. It didn't even matter if your character was using any weapon at all or some wild kung-fu, since you could describe your attacks according to your aesthetic preferences, all being mechanically equal. This addressed some of my issues with Exalted at that time, which punished the player mechanically for most weapon choices other than the grand daiklave (boring). When I pitched this game to some gamers I used to hang out with (not my regular gaming group at the time), here's what they told me: "You're kidding? Everybody will go overboard with weapons!"
I think Ron has an anecdote about writing a game called 'bullshit less' and someone he played with read it and said 'you can't just read this - you'd have to play'...and that was a stumbling block, apparently. People invent hurdles.
Oh, but they didn't invent anything, it was actually there. They were totally right. My rule was broken.
My rule said that you could describe your weapons and attacks however you wanted. However, if someone asked me the USS Enterprise question at the time, I'm sure my answer would be along the lines of "Uh, oh, not USS Enterprise. Describe your weapons however you want: kung-fu, big swords, mecha, airships, what have you, but no USS Enterprise." Magitek airships fine. USS Enterprise lame.
So, regardless what my rule said, the actual rule was different ("however you want, unless Filip finds it lame," i.e. too vague for any practical use). You could totally go overboard with weapons, though not necesarily the way those guys seemed to be thinking about.
(The one time I played V:tM with that group, my Brujah, Japanese martial artist with maxed out Melee, was not allowed to start with a katana. I was only given your standard issue handgun with a single clip of ammo. Taking a quick side trip to the nearest museum to steal the katana using Celerity was perfectly acceptable, though.)
Christopher,
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik
But the point is, this is about story creation. When Filip says he is talking about "game as game" I'm completely with him in terms of, say, Sorcerer being something that isn't "game as game." My own view is that Sorcerer, In A Wicked Age..., and lots of other things we call "games" are actually "tools for making stories socially." Like a piano is a tool for making music.
Nope, you're misinterpreting and misrepresenting my point here. When I'm talking about "game as game", I still have games like IAWA in mind. I don't know and don't really care about Sorcerer (we only tried it once, and didn't move far past chargen), but IAWA is firmly a game.
If anything, it's a tool for spending four hours with your friends playing some characters and rolling some dice. Granted, some story comes out, but it's a byproduct of gameplay, not an end in itself.
When you say "tools for making stories socially", I can only picture something like WoD, at least like I've seen it played by some groups. And come to think about it, it just occurred to me that I participated in some sessions of WoD where there might have been no "height advantage" equivalents. That's because the activity was pure storytelling and social stuff, with little to no actual gameplay: no rules application (other than perhaps Rule Zero), no significant choices or consequences, no in-fiction actions to resolve, with the characters largely in the position of spectators and commentators. That didn't seem like a "game as game" at all, "tools for making stories socially" sounds much more like it. Lots of story and social bullshit, little to no game.
Compared to that, IAWA is about as gamey as chess.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure about board games. I can think of some examples when we had "height advantage" equivalents in an explicit board game. All examples I can think of are also examples of dealing with ambiguous rules wording, however.
Quote
But I want to ask something: A lot of the original focus was about the physical aspect of the fiction (whether there's a height advantage, whether or not something is available in the market). But I think the conversation Fillip and I had about "With Love" is equally a part of the conversation.
Well, I started that part of the conversation being surprised this wasn't obvious from the opening post (the part about skill roll permissions, specifically). "With Love" is a bit tricky in that even if you had a module with textually rock solid relationships, it still wouldn't be unambiguous whether the character's particular actions are driven by love or something else. Still the same realm mechanically, though.
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