[Lord of the Rings] Oh, CODA!?!
masqueradeball:
Going into the advancement system a bit
There's suppose to be a story objective, which gives 1000 points to divide amongst the characters
Then, each scene leading to the story objective gives away I think 100 XP to the characters who managed to complete that objective
and then the "story related" roles
and optional RP awards
I got the impression that the rolls were supposed to be mapped out before play started
Gregor Hutton:
I've not read the GM bits about the ins and outs of XP myself, so I'll not get into what the book says, or doesn't say, on setting and meeting story objectives (which fearfully to me sounds like the GM planning the story, or hoops to jump through, though I hope it means the GM setting big opposition that must be met and defeated).
Anyway, Conor's plan was to have my character adventure a little in Arnor (which he narrowed down to Rhudaur) as a sort of "prelude". I had enough Lores to be an expert on a lot of Middle Earth, but we narrowed the areas of Lore down from things like "Arnor" or "Eriador" to smaller regions like the Misty Mountains or Mirkwood. Steve's Elf will get the same sort of thing and then we're going to do some adventruing together.
Conor had a rough outline in his head (which as it turned out was a weary traveller attacked by some Men of the Ettenmoors, who I happen to stumble across on my travelling north of the Great East Road) and we played it from there. As I put the injured man on my horse and instructed Whisper to take him to the Inn a few leagues away I then fought off some more brigands before making my own way on foot to the Inn. With time aplenty Conor had some enemies attack the Inn in the morning in revenge/for loot. We were firmly planted in the colour of the world.
I don't know what Conor's background to Middle Earth is. I got my love for it from my father. He read the books long before I was born so they were always around me growing up. I loved the Hobbit as a child (and then the excellent radio serialisation on the BBC), I fought my way through LOTR about the same time I was getting into gaming at high school and I bravely/naively ventured into the pages of the Silmarillion too (luckily armed with my Dictionary of Middle Earth). But before I got into RPGs I had played the War of the Ring boardgame when I first moved to Cumbernauld (some pre-ZX Spectrum gaming for me!) with some neighbours (who ultimately got me into RPGs) and I had an unhealthy admiration for the Nazgul.
So, from my point of view I'd be quite satisfied with a simmy, gamey or narrey take on Middle Earth (the board game was gamey). From playing this CODA game it felt a little like the disconnect I have between MERP and Middle Earth. I don't feel that fits well either.
The dice curve works well when you're keenly matched to an opponent, but when someone gets 5 up then the odds have shifted heavily in their favour. This was quite pleasant in a battle when I was able to injure my opponent, then his totals reduced and I could force my hand. The problem was that the GM could always bring more opposition if he wanted and I'd be worn down in the long run. So the momentary thrill or gaining or losing advantage to a specific opponent became a wearying in the face of more enemies.
Natural healing seemed very slow. A box a week or twice a week? Did it mean Level? We presumed so as I had so many boxes. Still, that was tough to heal with angry Ettenmoors Men at my heels.
Conor, of course, was able to read when the tide had turned against me and not to bring any more heat on me once I had defeated the last three men of the Ettenmoors (even though a few more watched from a copse of trees nearby). But was that just his benevolence to not kill me off in my prelude, right?
The rules set, of course, does create a world from its levers and pulleys, but I'm sure it's not the world of Middle Earth as I see it. And it's not like facing up to hard difficulty is well incentivized. Its far, far easier to beat rolls of 10 than of 20 (in fact the odds of the game make it likely that my character Maladorn could pass something like 3 times as many 15s as he could 20s).
I also should mention Courage. I had two points of Courage that I could use to get a +3 on a roll. Conor had given his brutes a point of Courage each. That worked out well in one-on-ones between us in a fight. And it was a nice if limited resource, though there were times where the +3 was swamped by circumstance (on both our rolls).
It was interesting to me that I had taken a Flaw which disallowed me from using Courage on Lore rolls. Having seen the use of Courage in game I wasn't dissatisfied with my choice. In fact, it seemed to really vindicate my choice. Perhaps the rules were encouraging all characters to deliberately be Dullards in some great quest to replicate the mood of the books. In the end though I doubt that was the plan.
Silmenume:
Hey Gregor,
Sorry to hear about you gaming experience. I really don't have anything to say about CODA as I know absolutely nothing about the system, but you did bring up a subject or two, perhaps in passing, that I believe ricochet quite strongly off of critical core Sim issues and misunderstandings. The parts that I wish to focus upon, if you find it so suitable, are where you A. state that you wanted to “revel in Tolkien's Middle Earth” and B. where you lament how System failed or worse confounded the process of “A.” The two issues are closely intertwined but as the process of Sim play has never been elucidated it makes all too common sense that there are continuing serious problems with creating any System to support functional Sim play.
I would like to start with your hope of “reveling” in Middle Earth. I believe that revelling in a given pre-existing fiction is a fairly common desire that is indicative of Sim play desire. One of a number of “tells” if you will. So the questions become what does one mean by “revelling” and how can role-play facilitate that desire. By role-play I mean the Exploration process as described in the provisional glossary.
I don't know if its still the case or not, but several years ago there was employed a musical analogy to describe role-play in general. I would like to expand on this analogy in reference to Sim play for a number of reasons. One of which is run as far away as possible from the sticky and troublesome problems associated with the words “Story,” “Character,” “Conflict,” etc., for the time being as they are so impossibly bound up with not only Nar play in particular but they have a corrupting effect on the discussion in general. Ron had analogy of differing CA's that employed the use of a bicycle as the exemplar. In one CA a person would ride the bike and use if for transportation while a person with another CA would have a completely different and incompatible use for said bicycle – in Ron's example the other use would be to use the bike as a work of art hung on the wall to be looked at. (I hope I am not misremembering!) I sidetracked to this example to illustrate just how different and ultimately incompatible CA's are. The problem with the words I temporarily proscribed is that they often lead to confusion whereby the two CA's, Nar and Sim, are conflated leading to unexamined conclusions and thus cock up the conversation to ruin
So let's talk music.
Imagine for the sake of argument that Sim is the verbal equivalent as jazz is to pre-existing works of music. That the piece of music in question is pre-recorded or just composed on the sheet matters not. What does matter is that the piece of music in question is well know by all the players in the jazz ensemble. Jazz, understood in this fashion, could be described as a process of “revelling” in a given piece of music. So we have musicians with instruments all playing together riffing together both with the source piece and each other, but what they aren't doing is playing willy nilly. There's a huge amount of highly informed structural work being done on the source piece of music. To do this effectively the musicians must all be skilled with their given instruments, they must know the source piece of music intimately and most critical of all they must have a thorough and vast (implicit or explicit) understanding of music theory. So, in order to effectively participate in this jazz session one must have a deep understanding of what gives said piece of music its identity. The players must understand at some level what it is they like enough about a given piece of music to “revel” in it. Note that we are not talking about doing covers (exact copies) but jazz – the process where the source music is altered and play with in a creative, recognizable and celebratory manner. To do that one must understand music theory. Why?
Music is not the random playing of notes. It is a highly structured process but it is ultimately based on what is pleasing to the human ear. To understand a piece of music one must be able to break it down, abstract it to make it understandable. Once understood one can then be able to intentionally play on the various structures of the piece. Different yet similar. Theme and variation. Creating and the already created. In music there has been described and thus we can talk about and thus intentionally modify pitch, rhythm, melody, harmony, structure, form, texture, scales, timber, etc. What's neat about all this structuralism is that these “rules” are not necessarily hard and fast – they are subject to interpretation and innovation.
...and this is brings us back to Sim and its similarity to jazz. Sim is not about product but process. Its not so much the created as the process of intentional creation of structure in the here and now. And like jazz what happens in a given session is typically best enjoyed by the ensemble and not the audience unlike a the playing of a scored piece of music. Jazz/Sim operates on a bajillion levels, is incredibly transitory and usually fairly opaque to those outside the ensemble. I draw very broad strokes here, but this is argument by analogy so please allow some latitude – this will be an imperfect fit even if the gist generally holds true.
So what does this relate back to Sim role-play and “revelling” in a given fiction?
First of all it means we must reconsider the terms story, plot, character, etc. in the traditional sense when discussing the Sim game play process. This in and of itself is not much of stretch given the how Narrativism is defined and uses the aforementioned terms. I'm going to have to lame out because I don't have a vocabulary to offer at present, but I do want to hammer home the notion that there is an identifiable structure to Sim play and that it is most significantly not founded in “Story-play” memes. Like's Ron's illustrative CA bicycle, many of the parts (story, character, plot, cultural norms, social mores, history, healing is slow, combat is deadly, conflict, action, etc. - an interesting thread that tangentially touches on these ideas can be found at A Language for "The Package") are similar on the surface to those parts as used in narratives/stories but they are employed in substantially different ways and for differing reasons.
In keeping with the music analogy Music Theory is to Role-play Theory (The Forge) as “(musial themes)/semantic structures” from the source material are to mechanics in G/N play. So instead of having conflicts or challenges in Sim play you have “tension”. By tension I don't mean low grade hostility but rather something akin to music imbalance/disharmony/discord with regard to the semantic structures of the source material. The process of play would then be the return to “harmony” - structurally. In resolving the structural disharmony the player tries to adhere/interpret as many of the established semantic structures as possible in resolving the issue at hand. Let's look at the Dunedain example used before.
The semantic structures might include (and this is by no means exhaustive):The History of NumenorThe History of MaladornThe gifts of the decedents of ElendilThe values of the DunedainThe struggle of the Dunedain to keep the peoples of Arnor free of supernatural predatorsThe relationship of the Dunedain with the ElvesThe relationship of Maladorn with his horse “Whisper”The gifts of “Whisper”The personality of “Whisper”Maldorn's geographic knowledge of the Mirkwood, Anduin, the Misty Mountains, etc.If the system tries to hold to the books magic is very rare and there is no magical/clerical healing, i.e. healing is very slow.The theme of “eucatastrophe” (and others which can be found in his On Fairy Stories)That there is absolute good and evil in the world...and it matters.The inhabitants of the fictional world rather live in peace.What the other players were doing (if any had been present)The relationship between the Maladorn and any PCs (if any had been present)That the encounter was near the retreat of the Witch-king after the Battle of Fornost.
The major source of “tension” in the set up was that a man was beset by brigands in an area that the Dunedain feel is theirs to protect. The return to harmony (the resolution of this structural “tension”) while adhering to as many of the semantic structures as possible would be to “revel” in Middle Earth. Thinking and acting like a denizen. How well one does this is the source of pride and regard.
Food for thought.
David Berg:
Quote from: Silmenume on March 17, 2011, 01:35:09 AM
In resolving the structural disharmony the player tries to adhere/interpret as many of the established semantic structures as possible in resolving the issue at hand.
Yes! Not only adhere, but re-invoke! Now is when I play the "History of Numenor" catchy hook on my instrument!
Interpreting is harder, but even more rewarding. You played the catchy hook in double-time, or in a different key! Neat!
As for the necessity of tension and disharmony, or the requirement for a consonant resolution, I'm not familiar with that, but it makes sense to me that that's certainly one way to revel...
Ron Edwards:
Look out for false agreement. Jay hasn't said anything about the crucial step you're describing, David.
Also, Gregor, let us know whether this issue is something you want to see developed on this thread.
Best, Ron
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