Something about 'height advantage' and it's kin
Christopher Kubasik:
Filip,
I apologize for using your name in my previous post.
What you said about IAWA is as true for Sorcerer as anything I know, and exactly what I meant by tool for making stories.
All WoD materials have nothing to do with what I'm referring to.
I'm just going to assume we're not going to communicate too well on any of this. You now have nothing to defend.
Seriously, everyone, forget I mentioned Filip.
Christopher Kubasik:
I forgot to add this:
Yes, Filip, al the examples at hand are mechanically the same. I pointed out that we already agreed on this point two pages ago.
Ron has brought up the more interesting point, to me in any case, that the question at hand is HOW the decision to allow the mechanic to be invoked -- and I'm asking how broad the types of these decisions are in this discussion.
Simon C:
I really, really don't get what's controversial about this argument.
Actual Play: We played Savage Worlds without miniatures for a long time. In Savage Worlds, you get +2 to hit if you charge, providing you charge in a straight line and nothing gets in your way.
So the characters are in a fight with some zombies. I've described the situation, and the players say what their characters do. One of them says "Rothgar charges the lead zombie." Now it's my job to decide if Rothgar's player gets +2 to the roll. I decide.
But! I make my decision by thinking about the things that have already been agreed to by the players. I've said "You're standing in a wide open street" and the players have all gone "uh huh", because I'm the GM and I get to say that kind of thing. I haven't said "The zombies are standing behind a barricade" which is also my perogative. I have to consider all this stuff when I'm making my decision. I absolutely COULD decide that the player doesn't get the +2, but I'd have to say something like "oh, there's a barricade in the way" or "the cobblestones are too uneven to get a good charge going" or something like that, or else I'm breaking the rules. If I did decide that, the player would justifiably be confused. He'd be like "Hey! You didn't say that before!" and I'd be like "Fair cop" and then probably let him describe the character doing something else instead, if he wanted to.
So yes, Callan, you're correct, someone decides. But "Someone decides" isn't the same as "someone chooses randomly". Someone decides, usually based on an agenda of remaining consistent with things that have already been said and agreed to.
Is that complicated? Am I missing something?
Ron Edwards:
I'm with you, Simon. The fundamentals aren't especially at issue here, as far as I can tell ...
... unless it's to highlight that some, or possibly many role-players have never experienced a functional SIS in the first place. I've observed such play, or suffered as a participant sometimes.
I think we've all experienced "hiccups," in that someone thought their character was standing on the table, but no one else processed that, and subsequent rolls or described events were predicated on the character being on the floor. In such cases, every group finds ways to cope, either back-writing or updating what the character is "actually" doing in the present wave-front of action, sometimes passing over a mis-application of certain mechanics and simply carrying forward.
But I'm not talking about a mere hiccup. I'm talking about every aspect of play being subject to negotiation in the negative sense of the word, such that merely moving forward in fictional time requires immense effort in the face of advantage-seeking, or bored inattention, or confusion. It doesn't surprise me that such play results either (i) in slamming all play as hard as possible toward the more formalized mechanics, such as rounds and initiative and rolls to hit; or (ii) in slamming all play as hard as possible toward the exact opposite. In (i), it happens because the interpersonal yip-yap is so traumatic that it halts play in its tracks. In (ii), it happens because the interpersonal yip-yap comes under the dominance of a single personality, or a very tight team of at most three people.
I would certainly like to talk to other people who played a lot of Champions during the 1980s (pre-4th edition), because my impression is that that game, in particular, became extremely characterized either way for a given group, and only a few groups were able to find another way, in which the mechanics and the talking were harmonized.
As an aside, I think this dual failure is the origin of the false roll/role dichotomy enshrined in RPG rhetoric during the 1990s. We're not talking about roll vs. role at all, we're talking about play which fails at establishing its most basic medium, as if soccer players were trying to play without quite being sure of what a "goal" is or whether we're using this "ball" thing or not, or if a painter were not entirely sure what the colored gunk is for.
I have no idea whether what I'm saying applies to either Callan or Filip, and don't mind if it doesn't. I do think that what I've read from them in this thread, and in many previous to this, is consistent with the notion that they have zero trust in people talking, and seek formalized procedures of play which restrict all talking and imagined content to what is provided by sources external to the people playing. It so happens that I think Dungeoneer, a card game which I enjoy immensely, would suit this desire perfectly. Whether the Dungeoneer RPG, associated with the card game and using some of its mechanics, would suit this desire, I don't know. There seems to me to be a hard conceptual break between the two activities, which lies directly in this topic of actual human speaking and imaginative input being a component of the role-playing medium.
I will assume for the moment that a reader agrees with me that functional role-playing necessarily includes both functional talking/listening and functional mechanics (no matter how "diceless" or "story" one claims the game is), and without both, you fail to establish a medium for play. As an aside, I hope it also makes sense that this has nothing to do, or not fundamentally to do, with Creative Agenda, but rather with the very possibility of having a CA at all.
So: to me, the question begins with the observation that people can do this, i.e. role-play in the sense that I'm describing here, and not merely because someone "decides" stuff in an arbitrary and/or domineering way. Given that observation, the question is "how," and I do not anticipate the answers to be mysterious, mystical, or overwhelmingly profound.
Best, Ron
Filip Luszczyk:
Ron,
Quote from: Ron Edwards
It so happens that I think Dungeoneer, a card game which I enjoy immensely, would suit this desire perfectly. Whether the Dungeoneer RPG, associated with the card game and using some of its mechanics, would suit this desire, I don't know.
No, this assumption is incorrect.
It so happens that I played some Dungeoneer just a few weeks ago, with one of the players from my core player pool, with whom I normally game successfully. It sucked. The game felt somewhat similar to the little pre-3.x D&D play I had, only it sucked even more. It delivered less fun overall, while the ruleset was intrusive to the point that it just didn't feel worth the effort. Our conclusion was that if we wanted to play something like this again, which we specifically don't want, we would probably be better off playing one of those retro-clone things.
Important related data point: I've run a pretty satisfying campaign of Pathfinder not so long ago (prep was too demanding to keep things up on a satisfying level for much longer, though). On the other hand, the few sessions of D&D 4e we played in the past were mildly satisfying, as everything outside combat felt just too loose compared to 3.x.
I play various other board games with that guy and others from my core player pool, and it normally works fine. Abstract board games like Carcassonne or Samurai work especially well. Arkham Horror is interesting, as it includes some adventure game aspects, but as opposed to Dungeoneer works fine. It delivers entirery different sort of fun than games with solid imaginary content played with the same people, though.
I find it hard to relate to your comments about trust, but I notice the activity disconnect thing I was writing about here and there, where I just don't see how your words apply to anything I know or want. When I play games I specifically don't want to have to trust anyone in any special way. Likewise, I specifically don't want other players to have to trust me in any special way. Past the very basic level of trust when I know those people are not going to cheat or something, I expect the game to provide solid ground for whatever we are about to do, without anyone having to worry that some invisible lines get overstepped (e.g. see my posts above about rules that say one thing when the actual rule turns out to be different). A friend once described his experiences with multiplayer action games, where most players are largely anonymous and cheating is rampant, with people routinely using applications that change how the game works to gain unfair advantage. This is the sort of environment that plain doesn't meet that basic trust requirement for me; I wouldn't even consider playing anything under similar conditions. It's one of the reasons I avoid massive multiplayer games like fire. I used to play satisfying multiplayer video games with small groups of people I knew at that basic level, however. Past this basic level of trust, I expect the game to provide a safe and functional playground.
I expect this from video games and board games, and in vast majority they tend to deliver. I don't see why I shouldn't also expect this from roll-playing games, but with various weird attitudes permeating the hobby, those prove much less reliable in practice. They often push to the players what in just about any other commercial product under the sun would be the designer's job. At the same time, their texts tend to be oversized in comparison with games of other sorts (and consequently, more demanding in terms of time and effort). Oddly, this seems often not only accepted, but even praised in the hobby.
The result is that with every new roll-playing game I try, the first few sessions are a trial period when I'm focused primarily on figuring out whether the design is reliable enough (or worth fixing when it isn't). Only once I build trust in the ruleset, I shift to playing normally rather than in playtesting mindset.
Note that:
1). I initially came to rpgs looking for a different kind of games, largely based on my fascination with crpgs at the time. Back then, I specifically wasn't looking for "a fusion of theater, happening and literature," as some text I encountered early described them, though there was a relatively short period when I bought into that rhetoric wholeheartedly (incidentally, also a period of quite unsatisfying gaming and all sorts of high school social bullshit).
2). There was no one to introduce me to the hobby initially (no stable groups till college, in fact). From the beginning I had to figure everything out by trial and error, having only a handful of scarce texts as references. The first arguably complete game text I was exposed to was some Lord of the Rings based introductory system that was pretty much the distilled essense of 90s bullshit. However, I tried out or examined a relatively large number of games in those early gaming years (that is, compared to some established WFRP-only groups I've encountered at some point in high school), including stuff like FUDGE or GURPS Lite that I recall downloading as soon as internet access became available, and a substantial number of homebrews. I used to experiment a lot in those early years, e.g. I recall trying out GM-less gaming long before I even encountered any mention of such games.
Well, I've been cheated by the "game" part in rpg, I guess. Until D&D 3.x and later some Forge titles, it plain didn't work as games.
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