Dragon Age RPG: musings on a once-off.
Alfryd:
Quote from: Callan S. on February 16, 2011, 12:21:32 PM
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As I understand it, gamism is, to a large degree, about personal pride in tactical and strategic problem-solving
Well, that's the myth. Gamism is about WINNING. If I can beat you by just pressing a single button, am I going to go and instead form some elaborate, multi turn strategy to beat you instead? Only if I was trying to simulate gamism. No, I'm gunna press the button, because gamism is about winning! Your right on the personal part, as in it's you winning and me losing, for example.
Hey Callan. I don't disagree, but again, I feel that if the results are purely down to random chance (and/or pre-generated stats that can't be manipulated in mid-battle,) then it's not you winning in any meaningful sense. The dice won for you. (Or lost, as, the case may be.)
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It really comes down to people and that positioning. Although some people actually use such things to determine thier and others real life pecking order, which just gets stupid and basically unfun.
Lately I've been thinking along the lines of how rolling multiple times for a win that you could have just rolled once for, is pretty pointless. So I was thinking of a mechanic where you can roll once, but you have slightly lower odds of winning than if you roll multiple times, ie, play out the battle.
Well, if you envision those multiple rolls as being purely randomised, so that player acumen doesn't really factor, I guess that makes a certain sense. But that kind of gives me the impression that describing what the rolls represented, retroactively, would come off as a chore, rather than actual fun. Otherwise, why would the players try to avoid it?
But again, winning or losing a combat is kind of a big deal, and having the outcomes of important, complex situations come down to a single roll tends to strike players as arbitrary, in my experience. Relying on a single roll should arguably improve the odds to compensate, particularly if an extended combat allows more 'entry points' for player acumen in terms of tactical choice.
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on February 16, 2011, 12:45:04 PM
As for gamism vs. luck, what Callan said - it's not a given that everybody would or should enjoy the hand of fate as a primary director of play, but there definitely are many very functional gamism-supporting roleplaying games that are dominantly fortune-based. The uncertainty before the moment of truth and the opportunity to embellish the results in the fiction are fun, and so is the decision to dare that the player gets to make when he announces that his character is going to do something, anything, that might cause the GM to call for a saving roll. The paralyzed hesitation of players who know that the wrong move will likely be a cause of death, and the brave risk-taking when somebody dares to grab the dice, all of that is very playable and very common in a certain sort of game.
Eero, I'm not inherently dismissive of the idea that randomness shouldn't be a factor- maybe even more significant than the impact of player choice- but I still take issue with a couple of these points.
(A) There's no reason why you can't retroactively embellish descriptions when using a tactical system. (As an aside, I don't see what this has to do with winning/competition per se when descriptions are mechanically irrelevant, unless it's a matter of personal pride in how well you describe things. It strikes me as more of a sim-oriented thing.) So I don't see how this impacts the argument. Variety in tactics == better gamism, AFAICT. Would it not be reasonable to say, then, that this style of play could be substantially improved, without significant drawback, if there were more tactical variety present, from the start, for all players?
(B) As far as I see it, there is no 'decision' to dare, aside from the decision to show up at the table in the first place. The plot is linear, combat has been foisted upon you, and you're in the thick of it. You can't just politely elect to have the opposition ignore you for the moment. By the same token, there is no 'wrong move'. There is only one possible move- the classic roll-to-hit maneuver. Whether that's 'right' or 'wrong' is beyond your control.
Again, I'm leaving considerations of battlefield positioning here, and players would still have a long-term arena for weighting strategic pros-and-cons in terms how they choose to build up their character over time (i.e, which feats, spells, skills etc. they invest in first, knowing how that is likely to impact their subsequent performance in the fray against expectable enemies.) And I mean, that can all be entirely fun, in my experience.
Eero Tuovinen:
Morgan, I think I'll have to write up a bit of actual play description to address the issue of fortune-based gamism properly. I'll try to get to it later this week, for now it suffices to say that tactical randomness does not translate into strategic randomness - your combat system can be random without your entire game being so, and it is definitely feasible for your game's tactical realm to mostly involve luck and daring as the main components of success. I'll demonstrate what this means with a report of a gamist game with random combat (Tunnels & Trolls) when I have the time to write it up; I played a suitable example session last month.
Alfryd:
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on February 16, 2011, 01:55:28 PM
Morgan, I think I'll have to write up a bit of actual play description to address the issue of fortune-based gamism properly. I'll try to get to it later this week, for now it suffices to say that tactical randomness does not translate into strategic randomness - your combat system can be random without your entire game being so, and it is definitely feasible for your game's tactical realm to mostly involve luck and daring as the main components of success. I'll demonstrate what this means with a report of a gamist game with random combat (Tunnels & Trolls) when I have the time to write it up; I played a suitable example session last month.
Sounds cool. I'll definitely look at that.
Callan- just on the earlier subject of instant-win-buttons vs. elaborate tactical victories- I can actually think of a recent counterexample. I was playing a DC Superheroes game, and the basic premise was that we were rescuing Xavier and all the other senior X-Men from this government facility (being guarded by Iron Man, no less. Yeah, I know these are Marvel regulars... sue me.)
What wound up happening was that, on the first round, I managed to free Xavier from his restraints and get him to tell me where the other mutants were and what was keeping their powers inhibited- a large pylon-generator-thingy above the compound, as it turned out. So, on the next round, I ordered my pet robot (acquired in an earlier combat) to self-destruct as it flew into the pylon. The GM thought that was actually really cool, and allowed it (as I apparently required permission for doing the obvious thing.) Of course, that released all the other senior mutants from their underground cells, and effectively meant game-over. We Had Won. But the GM wanted to play out the combat regardless, because the other players wanted a chance to exercise their powers and get the satisfaction of eliminating the remaining mooks (as there were still a few squads around.) Winning was not the point so much as pride in accomplishment and showing off personal skilz.
It's possible this is all wandering a bit off-topic, though, so maybe I'll write up the session in more detail another time.
Devon Oratz:
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Devon, if it really is a social faux pas to point out a possible mistake in someone elses estimation, I predict a dire future. I can only think that you believe I'm aiming some moral accusation at you and that's what you don't like. I'm not, I'm describing the mechanical process involved (as I estimate, which itself could be wrong, in practical terms (rather than in some social terms)).
To clarify, I don't feel that you are aiming a moral accusation although I see how you could be worried about coming off that way. I think you are stating your opinion as fact, and doing so in a smug manner. If I am bridling at something, it is more likely your tone than the content of what you are saying. The content of what you are saying may be merely factually "wrong" which is something I assign little or no moral or social value to. When people are aggressively and/or smugly wrong that tends to piss me off.
This is the last that I have to say about this, as this is A) Someone else's topic and B) About someone else's game experience. I am sure if I wind up hanging around here in the long term, we will all discuss these issues at length and elsewhere.
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