"Losing!? No, my imagination will have me win!"...over the other player...
Callan S.:
Hi Phil,
As I said to Caldis, he has the option to concede early and I'd scene frame him as escaping and now on the edge of town, seething with a desire for revenge or whatever his PC feels. However, on the other hand I remember that players never retreat, never surrender. But that's okay in a way, as even if it seems a losing and worse, slow battle, it's the player himself making himself go through the slow part by sticking there.
Anyway, the NPC that punched his character prior, well the PC did a firebreathing attack on him already - so he's already gotten burning revenge to an extent.
contracycle:
Quote from: Callan S. on December 08, 2010, 12:48:56 PM
I don't know if I gave the impression I was, but you seem to be looking at this in terms of who's right and who's wrong? I don't care. This is just a mountain before me - the mountain isn't right or wrong, it's just a matter of how to climb it? What method? And indeed, whether climbing it has ceased to be fun, which is an indicator to potentially give up on these sorts of mountains. I'm attributing no moral tresspass to him - instead a very large mountain has suddenly shot out of the ground in my path.
I'm only looking at it in that light inasmuch you framed the issue as if the player was being a bad sport, trying to circumvent the rules. In addition, you describe the game as Rifts-like, and I'm suggesting that it would not be surprising for a player to therefore approach such a game with the much the same mentality they would have conventionally applied to Rifts.
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Capes was an early one to do that. 3:16 seems to have a complete procedure and has actual play just straight by the rules. More recently Dr Chaos - note Sams/SamuelRivs responce, as it may echo your own. There seem to be quite a few complete procedure games coming out over time now (them all beating me to it, dammit!), although none of the authors seem to talk about it as any different from what you see in traditional RPG books. It's a strange, eery silence on that subject.
That's certainly not my impression of either Capes or 3:16. Certainly for the latter, from the AP's I've read, and I've read quite a few, most of the normal scene setting and improvistion from terrain still relies on the IS, as far as I can tell. Much of what would have been IS referencing in earlier games has been proceduralised, yes, and I think thats good, but I'm unconvinced that it has all been eliminated, or that it ever can be.
Because in that light I could make the same claim for red box D&D. As was recently menioned in another thread, combat does not resolve blows but exchanges, and the exact means of damage is not concretrely defined; it could be choking as much as stabbing in any given case. This would lead to the slightly counterintuitive position that choking someone with a dagger in your hand would do 1d4 damage while the same choke-hold with a sword in your hand would do 1d8, but that interpretation would be perfectly consistent with the rules.
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I think the design age of having to be able reference the IS at any single damn moment is coming to an end, and an age, where referencing the IS just at discrete points in the design is becoming an accepted second option, is starting.
On the whole, I agree with this conclusion, but I will point again at my example of description of surroundings. The problem with attempting to totally eliminate the referenceability of the IS is that it would require rules so absolutely comprehensive that I doubt they can be built. Or at least, not built and used by human beings.
But my main point is this. You say, here, that these "becoming an accepted option", but if we are only at the start of this process, I really don't understand why you expect someone playing a game specifically described as "Rifts-like", to know to play in this manner, or why you attribute to them such psychological states as "zealous certainty that he doesn't have to just face, like, losing". Can't you just write it off to misunderstanding, or being confronted by something unexpected?
Thats why I said you're I think you're getting carried away; because you seem to impute malicious intent or dishonesty or simply idiocy. I don't see the grounds for that sort of thing if, as you acknowledge, you are probably trying to play in a manner with which this player would not be previously familiar.
Callan S.:
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That's certainly not my impression of either Capes or 3:16
I didn't explain well at all - as I'm reading you, your saying that either A: you must have rules to define everything they see, every person they might encounter, every building and vehicle or B: You/someone makes up/ignore rules on the spot, mid play.
Through sheer abstraction (which obviously weve been using since somehow a D20 roll represented all the intricacies of an attack), capes and such cover alot of ground without needing option B or A. And maybe they don't actually cover every situation, they just cover huge swaths of situation - to me, huge swaths is fine. For some, perhaps they'd say unless every single situation is covered, the whole sense of a world is utterly shattered. I'm inclined to think that's indicates a sim as a first priority, which doesn't match my priorities. So, ignoring the whole shattered issue, what I'm saying is neither A nor B is needed.
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Thats why I said you're I think you're getting carried away
I think your approaching this in some way that I am not. If I were talking about a car and what parts might be missing, there is no 'carried away'. There is only a hypothesis to test and check. Concerns about being carried away are for something else entirely. Top gear, perhaps.
contracycle:
As to the first point, I am not arguing that it is either A or B, I am arguing that its really C, someone interprets the IS. It seems to be your proposition, as I understand it, that interpreting the IS in that manner constitutes making up or ignoring rules. I'm not making any appeal to the consistenty of the world or whatever; I'm just extending your argument, if anything. That is, I don;t understand what the dividing line would be, in your scheme, between narration and world description, and breaking or making rules.
As to the second part, what is bothering me is that you have basically accused someone of cheating, or attempting to. This seems an overreaction. At the very least, if someone has been trained, as you say, to respond to the IS in certain ways, then doing what they ahve been trained to do, and which they have previous experience to indicate is a valid form of play, then it doesn't make any sense to accuse them of malice and being unwilling to lose. These two don't fit together. The way you approach it doesn't sound like an anodyne description of a faulty car, it sound like someone offended by bad behaviour.
Daniel B:
@Callan
Just my own humble thoughts: I would've approached the situation as a GM from the opposite angle.
As a player (at least in most games), you can't just arbitrarily say "I hit the goblin, so now I'll roll damage." Instead, you have to say "I'm going to TRY and hit the goblin." Nothing can stop the PC from the attempt.
It's the same thing with the grapple. Really, what's stopping the character from *attempting* the chokehold? Not gravity or a magic force-field.
If you think that such a move is impractical to pull off, make it impractical. Personally I agree that you couldn't really do a chokehold in the middle of swordplay combat without extenuating circumstances. I'd have advised the player that he can try it, but to slip in *that far* behind the enemy PC's defences without being deflected first requires an attack roll with the defender getting, oooh, say a +10 bonus to AC.
The player may still want justification, in which case, deflect to the other player and moderate. If it's his imagination versus yours, it can seem arbitrary (and it's tricky when NPCs are involved because this is usually the case). However, PCs are on the same level as each other, so they'll find it hard to argue if you settle a dispute between them while acting as a neutral party.
Daniel
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