"Losing!? No, my imagination will have me win!"...over the other player...
Caldis:
It looks to me like the game you are playing sucks to put it nicely, if a player gets stuck in a death spiral of slowly depleting hit points and has no real options except to slowly play out being beaten to death. Your player is trying to be proactive, to create a more interesting situation in the game, the problem seems to be the rules dont support it. I dont see it as a failure on the players part rather that of the rules you've chosen, they dont sound fun and they dont allow for realistic options like moving to grappling. Facing risk and losing can be fun but stuck in a slow rut when you know you've lost but you have to stay there and have no chance to change your fate is just torture.
So there you have it. Get a better set of rules if you want the risk of loss to be acceptable rather than torture.
DWeird:
I know nothing about RIFTs, but this is what I would do, in broad strokes:
Look at the mechanics the game already has.
See if there is anything that is similar enough to the current situation to be applied.
Steal what I can from those mechanics.
Add in what is lacking to resolve the current situation WHILE:
Attempting my darnest to abstract my ruling from this particular instance, applying it, in my mind at least, as broadly as I can.
So, if the game had some sort of "skills" mechanic, I'd say "Alright, roll you "skill X" versus his "attribute Y" and we'll base the results on these general skill mechanics here, alright?" If the game instead said something of the 'You must have a particular power to do in-combat stuff.', I'd instead say "Sorry dude, you do not have Awesome Choking Training. I can write that up for you, if you want?"
Is this something you could do and stay true to your gaming philosophy? If not, why?
Callan S.:
Gareth,
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.
Quote
You say that nothing exists outside of the rules, but can that really be true? The characters walk into town, must you have rules to define everything they see, every person they might encounter, every building and vehicle, without exception? Because if not, surely, they don't exist, being not defined by rules. I have difficulty understanding what playing such a game would really be like;
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.
Quote
Without a referenceable IS, what is there to be an RPG?
Traditional games 'referencing' the IS method - ignore rules.
Another method: Having something like a book defined amount of currency, like up to 10 points a person at the table can hand out in reaction to the prior spoken fiction (your IS), at a point in the procedure as defined by the book.
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.
Callan S.:
Caldis,
Well, that's a solution/a method of climbing the mountain for the future - it's not one for right at this moment, as I'm kind of in the midst of play right now. Given the proposition that the losing PC escapes to fight another day, I've proposed to him via PM he could simply concede now and as GM I'd go to the 'miraculous escape events'. So he's got that option to end it right now. Perhaps I should say I'd place him somewhere away from the action and continue play - he might think it'd involve sitting out and so is inclined not to take the option for that reason (who wants to sit out, eh?).
DWeird,
I'm not sure what your describing - in as much as I don't understand why you'd do it? The player described some fiction and suddenly your off and racing, doing all this making new rules stuff - why? I'm not sure I could describe why I wouldn't do that, when I don't know why you do? If it's just because you want to do it, well then I don't want to do it, at this juncture, as much as you do want to.
Basically working with tradtional systems, by my measure, is always playtesting as they don't have a complete procedure. Sadly, really my entire (I think?) gaming history has only really consisted of playtesting, never just playing an RPG. Simply because of incomplete procedures. By that measure, alot of other people have only ever playtested as well, but gamer identity wouldn't let them admit that.
Phil K.:
Callan,
You have a player who wants to act creatively. My take is that your problem is not that he's being creative, but that he is only being creative to get himself out of a bind. Your posts give the impression that this is the first time the player has wanted to do something outside the rules and that he's not expressed particular creativity in general game play for color or non-consequential things. While creativity is normally encouraged in RPGs, it seems that the player's motivations are based on a desire to not lose. Please note that this is not the same as having a desire to win.
The rules system you're using doesn't seem to support the actions he wants to take, so you're left in bit of a lurch. I see two paths for you to explore:
1) explain to him that it really isn't part of the system and that he should find a different way to not lose the combat; or
2) accede to his requests and invent some grappling mechanics on the fly, making them as difficult or easy as you see fit.
Most people, when faced with a life and death situation, choose to flee. Why can this not be a valid option for the character? Concede the fight, run like the wind and live to fight another day.
I'm going to assume that the combat you're talking about is armed combat. It may help to explain to the player that his action isn't likely to succeed, either as a rationale for encouraging other action or for setting the difficulty of ad-hoc grappling rules. People use weapons is because, by and large, they are more effective than bare hands. If you get in a fight with a guy who has a knife, the best thing you can do is have a sword. If your opponent has a sword, bring a gun. Escalation has occurred throughout human history and is one of the primary motivators in the development of technology. We even have a term for it: the arms race. It's been going on for thousands of years. Basically, I'm saying that choking out an armed opponent isn't very likely, especially if the character is not an extremely talented martial artist.
I would handle it the first way. The middle of a conflict, especially against another PC, is not the time to invent or revise rules in a game. If a player doesn't like the way things are going in a fight you picked, s/he find a way to get out of it that works in the system. The social contract should guide players. Rules are there to describe the intent of the game and maybe the game you're playing isn't meant to have grappling as a valid means of defeating an opponent. Just my 2cp.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page