[From Beyond]
stefoid:
Quote from: David Berg on March 08, 2011, 09:32:02 PM
Steve, it's vital to this style of play that players not get to make up what they're investigating. (At least, that's how I feel, and I'm pretty sure Dave feels likewise.)
Although, if there was some 100% foolproof way to keep the players from knowing the GM was incorporating their theories, I guess that might have some potential.
Dave, I assume that's not what you're going for here, but I mention it in case you're looking for yet more ways to reduce some of the load on the scenario designer.
Maybe its because the games where Ive played CoC have been, dysfunctional, but I am scarred by 'investigative style play'.
Dave or anyone, can you tell me what functional investigative play looks like?
My concerns are that the story basically stalls when the players (NOTE: not the characters) cant think of what to investigate next.
My dysfunctional play looks like this:
1) something relevant to the characters occurs - (a bang in other words)
2) players arrive and investigate the scene looking for clues (invoke task resolution such as 'observe' to notice clues) potential confrontation/conflict may occur.
3) players may or may not find clues - potential story stall.
4) players that do find clues then research clues (invoke task resolution such as research to understand clue significance)
5) players may or may not research well - potential story stall.
6) assumption: either (2) and/or (4) go well enough to lead to the next investigative scene. rinse and repeat (2)->(6) until case closed.
Note that (2) and/or (4) often do both go well enough to lead to the next investigative scene, for a couple of reasons. One is that task based resolution goes badly, leading to insufficient information and the second is that the players (not the characters) are not 'smart' enough to guess what the GM thinks the clues are supposed to mean.
So the above is perhaps just a personal experience, does it ring any bells for anyone else?
But Dave, even if the above was turned into something functional by removing the reliance on task resolution and player guesswork to advance the story... How would the players helping to define the end result of the clue trail break it? To my mind it would be more fun, particularly for the GM to riff off during play - "oh, you surmise that the green ectoplasm was actually disgorged by a pregnant XLotalp'ilth after she sublimated the caretaker of the museum? that cool!....
contracycle:
The points you make about play (not "story") stalling are valid, but let me offer an alternative point of view. If I found out that the GM was synthesizing my own guesswork into an "answer", I wouldn't just be disapointed, I'd be enraged. If thats how it works then as soon as I've made my character I might as well just say "It was Colonel Mustard in the Drawing Room with the Lead Pipe, The End" and go home; the entire exercise of playing a game would have been a pointless fraud.
Yes, the stalling thing is a problem that needs to be addressed somehow, but IMO the cure you propose is worse than the disease.
stefoid:
Quote from: contracycle on March 08, 2011, 10:44:53 PM
The points you make about play (not "story") stalling are valid, but let me offer an alternative point of view. If I found out that the GM was synthesizing my own guesswork into an "answer", I wouldn't just be disapointed, I'd be enraged. If thats how it works then as soon as I've made my character I might as well just say "It was Colonel Mustard in the Drawing Room with the Lead Pipe, The End" and go home; the entire exercise of playing a game would have been a pointless fraud.
Yes, the stalling thing is a problem that needs to be addressed somehow, but IMO the cure you propose is worse than the disease.
Two separate issues actually, but I have to chuckle at 'enraged'. Different strokes for diffrent folks
David Berg:
Steve, I agree that there's plenty of whifftastic investigative play out there, and your numbered breakdown might be a good comparison from which to evaluate Dave's game.
Don't throw the baby (actual player discovery from genuine ignorance) out with the bathwater, though. There's other games for that.
How the GM generates The Truth is certainly an open question, though...
David Hallett:
Lots of rapid responses, thanks all. I will take a little time to respond to Dave's excellent points in full. But a few quickies...
Dave, I think it's essential to keep PC death on the table for exactly the compromise with reality that you mentioned. And heroic deaths over something that really matters are great. I just don't want early deaths over something no-one cares about.
As Doom, the way I think of it is that early in the story, the PCs are lucky. Even if a house collapses on them, they get trapped in a hollow rather than crushed. As the story progresses, however, their luck steadily runs out. Does that work for you? I'm reluctant to have another per-character gauge in the system, esp. as Fraility is probably just the inverse of Health.
Humanity I think of as long-term morale, whereas Energy is short-term morale. So it feels right to me to be able to recover it, though group preferences will govern how much and how often.
I agree I don't have the trade-off between Shadow and Insight right yet. It needs to be a real dilemma. How about if making the attempt to increase Insight in itself costs 1 Humanity? If it succeeds, then the loss becomes permanent, otherwise it's just temporary. That way there's more of an incentive to "save up" Shadow. I'm looking to get an accumulation effect here, as seen in HPL's fiction, where a dozen tiny hints eventually add up to something that blows the protagonist's world view away. Well, sometimes, anyway.
If you have a better suggestion as to how to deal with excess Shadow rather than spilling over into Health, I'd be *most* interested. Nothing I've come up with yet quite satisfies me.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page