Roll-Playing Versus Roleplaying
John S:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on September 01, 2010, 09:27:10 AM
If it really matters to you, then ask them, and I mean collectively and in person, not just the GM and for God's sake not by email.
I just saw Ron's post, and this part applies to what I said too. If you're not on the same page as the rest of your group in terms of the creative agenda of play, showing your GM an article won't get you there.
Callan S.:
Just as a side note, to me it looks quite the opposite of Franks estimate (which you agreed with), where the GM acknowledged the point, then somehow took it away by asking for a roll. Quoting Frank
Quote
And the GM acknowledged you when he said, "good point". You were connecting, he was confirming your interpretation of the fictional situation, your understanding of the NPC and his motivation. The fiction was coming alive between the two of you, you were "getting into it", assessing it, judging it, and this meant something. And then the GM stepped back, taking away the acknowledgement, interrupting the connection by asking for a roll.
Indeed, why would he take it away if he was confirming your point so very much?
Perhaps because he wasn't confirming your point at this time, you and Frank just thought he was?
Instead perhaps your lines were enough to earn a roll that let's you change the mind of the NPC on the matter. You earned a chance by talking, you didn't just earn an automatic change of his mind. I'm thinking of what Gareth/Contra cycle said, but with the GM thinking "Hey, now he's made me/my NPC uncertain...I really don't know which way to go. I'll let the dice decide!". If that were the case, it's functional for me, atleast.
Indeed from your agreement with Franks comment, it seems to show your own priorities - you wanted it to all work at this talking level and some sort of connection and confirmation. It's like you want pizza - is ice cream gunna cut it as pizza? No. Here, you want it all at the verbal connection and confirmation level - are dice or some other mechanic gunna cut it for you? No. You have to want to use the mechanics instead of keeping it all loftily above all that at a verbal confirmation level. Your own priorities are against using dice. You can't have a priority against using dice, but then just somehow using the dice make sense and are fun to use.
Indeed I'd say you have to want to use mechanics first and foremost, always, for the mechanics to be anything more than decorative. But that's another thread.
In terms of the idea of railroading *long sigh* the thing is, the rules designate someone as a GM, and grant them a ton of resources. To call someone who uses their massive resources in game to do what they want a railroader, is essentially a sirlin scrub. Taking the word 'railroader' to mean something that's against 'how to play the game'. Because to use massive resources to do what you want when the games rules fully grant you that capacity, is obviously not against the game. It's the sirlin scrub who cries 'Throwing is cheap!' in street fighter, even though it's well within the games rules. In roleplay, the scrub cries that 'Railroading is cheap!', even though it's well within rules which grant the GM a metric shit ton of resources. Note: I've called the GM a railroader in various games. I'm not somehow above emotionally saying what I'm describing (though I am above seeing it as a functional. These days, atleast)
So I don't think this is about railroading, specifically. It's a mechanics design issue (how and how much of those resources are assigned to whom) - and it's an issue of whether you want to put mechanics first. If you don't, there's no way out of this for you, except to find people who exactly match up with you (or that you can tolerate the missmatch) and also that those peoples way of playing doesn't evolve or change in future (nor yours). Only putting mechanics first can shift you to a new way of playing. Without putting mechanics first, you will only play the way you've always played, and can only play well with people who exactly match up with you (or missmatch within your tolerance), and you hope that nobodies play style evolves, since that causes a missmatch, and instead hope their play style stays relatively static.
Callan S.:
That last post was for Nick, just in case I left it confusing...
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hi everyone,
Nick, I’m glad I interpreted your post correctly, I thought it was an excellent example and well presented.
I really see two linked follow-up questions. One of them is how to make mechanical skill checks, in particular concerning so-called “social skills”, meaningful and consequential. And the other is how to make in-character acting and moment-by-moment verbal negotiation between the real people at the table meaningful and consequential.
This thread is already deep into addressing the first question, which is good and well. My initial reaction was to tackle the second question because I personally have found that to be the crucial point of my enjoyment of play. It appears that not everyone places equal emphasis in this regard.
I’ll leave the “higher level” aside for now, and I’m with Ron that it isn’t predicated on abandoning dice. Me personally, I enjoy in-character acting and moment-by-moment verbal negotiation of the in-game events because I feel they provide context and substance to what happens to the characters. This is something I have found to be absolutely vital to my enjoyment of play. It challenges my imagination, wit and acting skill, and I enjoy it in particular when playing with imaginative, witty players who are good actors.
A key point in this type of negotiation is the point where the players at the table assess the fictional situation, using their real, human judgment, making a decision based on their idea of likelihood, or genre conventions, or tone which they imagine for the game. That decision may have mechanical consequences that lead to fictional consequences, or it may only have fictional consequences. And even if it’s the latter, it may still incorporate some mechanical scores into the process of decision making. Vincent Baker has termed this key point “Moment of Judgment” and you should absolutely read his excellent blog post if you haven’t already. It also quotes some great people. ;-)
Nick, I think you were disappointed by the GM because you felt he denied that Moment of Judgment. Your own interpretation of the fictional situation was that your argument could not fail to convince the caravan leader. There was no point of arguing about it, the argument made sense and he had no reason not to follow it. It had been established that your character had said what he said, so the GM would have had to assess this and act accordingly. There was no space for a skill check to determine how convincing your character had been—the argument stood for itself.
Now we don’t know if your GM really denied his judgment, or if he just has a different idea of what a skill check means. Here is where the Moment of Judgment and the Murk connect.
- Frank
Frank Tarcikowski:
Hm, this thread seems to have faded out which is a pity because there were some points I still wanted to make. I’ll just go ahead with some musings on the intersection of a Moment of Judgment and a skill check in a traditional RPG. I used to think it was rather clear. As I saw it and always applied it in my games (for all task resolution based systems), a skill check was meant as a tie-breaker in a situation of doubt. Can I swing across the chasm on that rope? It’s not impossible, but neither is it trivial, so the dice will tell.
Some rulebooks of traditional RPGs explicitly stated, and I used to think that those who didn’t took for granted two things:
1) If something was trivial, you’d succeed without a roll. “You don’t need to roll to walk down the street.” The German RPG, Das Schwarze Auge, has often been laughed at for a practice of not following this rule which somehow evolved among the players. With some GMs, a person who could swim reasonably well faced a statistical chance of ~50% of drowning when swimming in a lake on a sunny day. I used to think that common sense should suffice to see this couldn’t be right.
2) If something was impossible, you’d fail without a roll, or much rather, you just wouldn’t try because that would be silly. A normal human cannot jump straight up to the fourth floor of a building. Not even Jacky Chan.
And this would be the Moment of Judgment, the point where a player (usually the GM in a trad game) decided whether something was trivial, impossible, or somewhere in between, the last meaning a dice roll would determine the outcome. Sometimes a little bit of a debate would ensue and the GM might even change his mind. Sometimes a player would accept the GM’s final judgment only under protest, but by and large, in the groups I played in, there was a common understanding and usually the group would find the GM’s judgment mostly appropriate.
In the so-called “social conflicts” it was just the same, only the required judgment tended to be more complex and sometimes not as transparent. Let’s say your character is holding a knife to a little boy’s throat and telling the boy’s mother to hand over the ruby or else... Now if the mother is a normal person, I’d probably say this is trivial, she will hand over the ruby without you needing to make an intimidation check. But what if the mother isn’t a terrified normal person, but a ruthless scheming noblewoman in a Swords ‘n Sorcery setting who knows your character to be much too honorable for his own good? Suddenly I’m thinking the GM wouldn’t be out of bounds to simply have her laugh at you: “Or else what, you pathetic fool?” And I can imagine games in which I, as a player, would be totally thrilled by such a move. I find this kind of interaction to be the most challenging and fun part of role-playing, this is where strong contributions really shine and lame contributions really... don’t.
And that last bit, to my mind, is the core of the “roll-playing vs. role-playing” debate concerning “social conflicts”. Some role-players prefer to leave the outcome of social interaction entirely to the dice because they don’t want to submit themselves to their fellow players’ judgment in this field. And there may be valid reasons for them doing so. But me personally, I find play to be the poorer for it.
- Frank
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