[Pitfighter] SBP: is there anything better to roll for than success?
contracycle:
Well, yes, if the GM applied it consistently, they would (eventually) learn the same lesson as if it were expressed mechanically. But there are problems with this approach; it relies on the GM being absolutely consistent, it assumes the players buy into what the GM is trying to communicate, it requires the players notice it i the first place. I just don't think it is reliable, and if we're discussing a sort of game in which this is the point, then that kind of vagueness just isn't good enough. If you want people mto behave in certain ways, then you have to set up incentives that prompt them t behave in those ways, and those incentives have tio be explicit and visible.
If I set up a game in the intention is that players should behave with the logic that would apply, say, to a samurai, then I don't really want to go through all the trial-and-error, bumping heads stuff that conveys what I mean, I want it to be right there on the character sheet, part of their character design decisions, fully visible from the start.
Anders Gabrielsson:
Does it have to be mechanical to be visible, though? Couldn't it be enough to make it clear in the game text that that is how things work?
Callan S.:
Mechanics are the way you make it clear how things work. When you want things to be deliberately less clear, you simply describe how things work. Generally if the A+ feature of your game that aren't in other games is described rather than mechanically implemented, I'd estimate that A+ feature generally wont happen.
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while enough empowerment makes them a major figure in the setting and likely the GM's plot.
How does that work? It sounds to disruptive of prior determined plot? I'm thinking if major NPC's are actually scripted to do big GM plot stuff but these fate rolls come through, instead it's the PC who does it. Perhaps with control of colour that is within the scope of what the NPC was scripted to do. Say the NPC was going to destroy the goblin village, well the PC can do so but maybe leave some supplies for the remaining fleeing goblins since that's still 'inside' what the NPC would have done.
Anders Gabrielsson:
In general, I agree. BNote that this was added to resolve having explicit game mechanics on the one hand and discovering the GM's way to decide how things go by trial and error on the other as the only two options. When a major game mechanic is "the GM decides if you succeed or fail" then describing how to act to have the GM decide that you succeed is as close as you're going to making those mechanics explicit.
contracycle:
Well, hang on. I'm not at all signed up to the idea that "the GM decides if you succeed" should be overt, or that it can't be taken care of with the right kind of system, hypothetically. That is historically the ways it's been done, but that doesn't mean that things have to stay that way. In addition, there is a difference between the GM-as-scenario-writer and the GM-as-system-administrator. I'm not committed to necessarily keeping "GM decides" on pricniple, anyway; if the decisions the GM would make can be offloaded onto system (or scenario, or some synthesis of the two) in some way that would be better.
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