Hello?
razoredge
Tim C K
there's something of particular interest.
--
Tim C Koppang <> http://www.uiuc.edu/~koppang
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
- e.e. cummings
razoredge <ceo...@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:rneq7.75$OO1....@news2.news.adelphia.net...
> Anyone still use this?
>
>
Warren J. Dew
Yes, the newsgroup is still used. Traffic is down, and comes in spurts, but
people seem to check in occasionally. Certainly I do.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
Mary K. Kuhner
a series of nasty flame wars a year or so ago finally pushed us below
the critical mass of stable posters to maintain a discussion.
Last week I got to play face-to-face with another rgfa regular,
Irina Rempt, in her ongoing game. It was an interesting experience.
I didn't feel up to trying to play my previous PC, twenty years
and a lot of water under the bridge later, so we created a new PC
on *very* short notice. I don't think I've ever had so little written
on my character sheet. (Name: profession: '12 points of psi skills
and we'll figure out what they are if we need them'. Full stop.)
The session was political, and my PC was someone from far away
just feeling her way into local politics, so it actually worked. She
was, maybe, more vocal than would have been quite realistic
for such an outsider, but not to the point of straining my suspension
of disbelief.
My main difficulty with the game was in understanding the NPC
names. The players graciously spoke English for me, except for
one brief spate of Dutch, but the NPC names were designed with a
Dutch ear for differentiable vowels. I couldn't hear them clearly
enough to fix them in my head, and spent the evening saying
"Your uncle" and "The Baroness" and "our new candidate" because
I didn't think I could retrieve their names.
It was fun. I'm sorry that we live on different continents; our gaming
styles dovetail pretty well.
Too many years of playing one-on-one games have left me uneasy
about the social division of spotlight: I'm never sure now, when
playing with a group, how much effort to put into getting other players
into the spotlight. One of Irina's other players was playing a PC
seven months pregnant and understandably housebound, and I
felt uneasy that I might be upstaging him. I think things were okay,
though. (I had enough culture shock problems in Europe that I
don't want to say with confidence that people were/were not
annoyed with me. I couldn't even reliably figure out how to stand in
queues or open doors, for heaven's sake.)
Anyway, that's my summer vacation report.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Dave
> Anyone still use this?
Still reading faithfully, but regrettably nothing interesting to say. Hoping
someone will soon break the silence.
-Dave
Irina Rempt
> I still check the group, but usually don't consider posting. I
> think a series of nasty flame wars a year or so ago finally pushed
> us below the critical mass of stable posters to maintain a
> discussion.
>
> Last week I got to play face-to-face with another rgfa regular,
> Irina Rempt, in her ongoing game.
Ex-regular, for much the same reasons. The few times I've posted in
the past year or so I've usually been either flamed or ignored.
> My main difficulty with the game was in understanding the NPC
> names. The players graciously spoke English for me, except for
> one brief spate of Dutch, but the NPC names were designed with a
> Dutch ear for differentiable vowels.
Never perceived that as a Dutch ear :-)
> I couldn't hear them clearly
> enough to fix them in my head, and spent the evening saying
> "Your uncle" and "The Baroness" and "our new candidate" because
> I didn't think I could retrieve their names.
Well, you know what the Baroness is called (this is Mary's previous
PC, and I'm very pleased that Mary still recognized her) and I'm sure
most of the other people at the meeting didn't know everybody's name
either. Boudewijn noticed that we used many more titles: we don't
usually call people "Lord" even if they are.
> One of Irina's other players was playing a PC
> seven months pregnant and understandably housebound, and I
> felt uneasy that I might be upstaging him. I think things were
> okay, though.
Perfectly okay; he can fend for himself, and the PC is usually a
rather quiet woman.
> (I had enough culture shock problems in Europe that I
> don't want to say with confidence that people were/were not
> annoyed with me. I couldn't even reliably figure out how to stand
> in queues or open doors, for heaven's sake.)
Somehow, small culture shocks usually seem to work out worse than
really major culture shock. More tricky to adjust to, anyway. And
we're so used to having people from everywhere around that *we*
hardly noticed.
Irina
--
ir...@valdyas.org
http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html (English)
http://www.valdyas.org/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)
Brian Gleichman
> Anyone still use this?
I check in every now and then. The place is almost as dead as r.g.f.mod,
basically killed off by a couple of trolls that too many of the regulars
couldn't ignore. First time in fact that I ever saw trolls succeed. First
time for everything.
If I get time, I may be posting one of my reviews this month and that may
produce a short discussion with the author.
--
Brian Gleichman
Age of Heroes: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/
Free RPG Reviews: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/Reviews.htm
Mary K. Kuhner
Brian Gleichman <bglei...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I check in every now and then. The place is almost as dead as r.g.f.mod,
>basically killed off by a couple of trolls that too many of the regulars
>couldn't ignore. First time in fact that I ever saw trolls succeed. First
>time for everything.
I think the line between the regulars and the trolls got a little
blurry.
I'd be very happy to see another of your reviews. I've been wrestling
horribly with our Feng Shui derivatives lately and am almost ready
to contemplate using some other system instead. I can't seem to
predict difficulty levels of combats well enough to meet our game
contract.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Clifford A. Anderson
news:9og285$cik$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu...
> I'd be very happy to see another of your reviews. I've been wrestling
> horribly with our Feng Shui derivatives lately and am almost ready
> to contemplate using some other system instead. I can't seem to
> predict difficulty levels of combats well enough to meet our game
> contract.
I am new to this newsgroup, and am curious about your last statement
there. My group has had a hard time keeping everyone happy (of coz, any
group would) and we were thinking of a more collaborative effort toward
building our campaign. Is this anything like what you are talking about?
I'm curious to hear how your group handles it.
Cheers!
Jason Corley
> I am new to this newsgroup, and am curious about your last statement
> there. My group has had a hard time keeping everyone happy (of coz, any
> group would) and we were thinking of a more collaborative effort toward
> building our campaign. Is this anything like what you are talking about?
> I'm curious to hear how your group handles it.
"Game contract", like most words and phrases, has a meaning on rgfa that
is different from the way people use it in the rest of the world.
Essentialy it is like the social contract - an imaginary agreement amongst
the players and between the players and GM as to certain salient points of
the game. Which points those are, and what the agreement is, varies from
game to game.
A game contract need not be collaborative. The players and GM may
(explicily or implicitly) cede essentially all power to the GM, including
things like forcing PCs to do something against their player's will if the
GM thinks it is appropriate.
--
***************************************************************************
"I was pleased to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't
know."----- Mark Twain, _Life on the Mississippi_
Jason Corley | le...@aeonsociety.org | ICQ 41199011
Robert Scott Clark
>Clifford A. Anderson <cliff.ba...@fix.it.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> I am new to this newsgroup, and am curious about your last statement
>> there. My group has had a hard time keeping everyone happy (of coz, any
>> group would) and we were thinking of a more collaborative effort toward
>> building our campaign. Is this anything like what you are talking about?
>> I'm curious to hear how your group handles it.
>
>"Game contract", like most words and phrases, has a meaning on rgfa that
>is different from the way people use it in the rest of the world.
>
>Essentialy it is like the social contract - an imaginary agreement amongst
>the players and between the players and GM as to certain salient points of
>the game. Which points those are, and what the agreement is, varies from
>game to game.
>
>A game contract need not be collaborative. The players and GM may
>(explicily or implicitly) cede essentially all power to the GM, including
>things like forcing PCs to do something against their player's will if the
>GM thinks it is appropriate.
And to further answer your question, the game contract isn't about
*directly* making the game more fun for all involved. It merely sets
the standards upfront, so no one is caught off-guard by incorrect
assumptions - and, hopefully, this makes the game more fun, or at
least less confrontational, in the longrun.
RSC (who is, also, still here, even though he thinks he is likely one
of the "group killing trolls")
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John S. Novak, III
> I am new to this newsgroup, and am curious about your last statement
> there. My group has had a hard time keeping everyone happy (of coz, any
> group would) and we were thinking of a more collaborative effort toward
> building our campaign. Is this anything like what you are talking about?
> I'm curious to hear how your group handles it.
I think you'll be more likely to find examples of gaming contracts in
this group than a hard and fast definition of what one is. I think
everyone uses theirs a little differently.
In my standard games, for instance (standard, for me, being something
typically fantasy, once in a while science fiction, on a largely drawn
background) is something along the following:
"The GM will create a setting in broad to middling strokes,
incorporating several areas of conflict in it. The GM will present
some detailed background information to the players. The players will
listen and ask questions, especially about the areas of conflict. The
players will discuss with themselves and the GM what area sounds
interesting to play in.
"At that time, with the GM's guidance, the players will create a
groupd of characters who, althogh they may not like each other, have
some basic reason to stick together (eg, all members or associates of
an extended family) and some loose but common goal regarding one of
the conflicted regions.
"The GM and players will also be clear on the expcted tone and
atmosphere of the game, whether it be lighthearted, four-color or
cinematic, or dark and gritty; action packed, political, or mystical.
"Finally, the GM will take the above input from the players and fill
in more background, especially in the area around which the players
wish to play, trying to work the characters and character hooks into
the setting."
Now, I don't give out a speech to that effect, much less of piece of
paper for people to sign, but I make it pretty clear that this is my
style and this is what I expect of my players. I do that because I
know what my strengths as a GM are, and what things immediately snap
me out of having fun as a GM.
Players are encouraged to bring up aspects of conduct that they want
to see covered as well, so that everyone knows what they're getting in
to.
For me, a gaming contract has nothing to do with collaborative world
creation, because I'm too much a control freak to allow anyone to
meddle with my creations. Advise, yes. Meddle freely, no. My worlds
are mine. Mine, mine, mine.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Peter Knutsen
Brian Gleichman wrote:
> If I get time, I may be posting one of my reviews this month and that may
> produce a short discussion with the author.
With luck, FFRE v0.1 will be ready in a few months, giving you
something more to chew up. I'm aiming for a release date of
November 30th.
But as I've said before, I like your reviews, and I look forward
to reading more of them. Many of them have helped me when making
design decisions for FFRE.
There has been a new version of Quest FRP, a quietly released
v3.0, but almost nothing has been changed.
> --
> Brian Gleichman
--
Peter Knutsen
Peter Knutsen
"John S. Novak, III" wrote:
[contract]
> For me, a gaming contract has nothing to do with collaborative world
> creation, because I'm too much a control freak to allow anyone to
> meddle with my creations. Advise, yes. Meddle freely, no. My worlds
> are mine. Mine, mine, mine.
Sounds like a game contract I could use, with only a few trivial
modifications.
> --
> John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
> The Humblest Man on the Net
--
Peter Knutsen
Mary K. Kuhner
some fairly explicit discussions, especially after one or two
failed games with a given group....
Here are some points I think a group may want to address, unless
they already know they have consensus.
--Who is pushing the game? Is the GM responsible for finding something
for the PCs to do, or is that a player responsibility, or is it shared?
--Are we trying to make things work out to be dramatic, or specially
exciting, or to have a satisfying resolution? If so, whose job is
that?
--Are we trying to keep the PCs alive, and if so whose job is it, and
how far are they allowed to go? Are they allowed to fudge rolls?
Change situations? Break character or world consistency?
--Whose job is it to keep the PCs together, and how should they
do it? Careful PC design? "PC glow" manuvers after design?
Forcing scenarios?
--Who controls the game-world? Do the players have any say in it,
or is it purely the GM's turf? If they hae a say in it, what's
their area of control? How is it limited?
--Is someone supposed to be looking after player/player fairness,
and if so who, and how?
--How hard are the challenges in the game supposed to be, and who
is responsible for setting the challenge level? How are they
allowed to do so? How much information are the players guaranteed
about challenges?
--Is the game trying to model a particular genre or work of fiction,
and how important is it that it succeeds, if so? What is the group
willing to do to keep to the model?
The campaign in which I'm currently playing is a mix of player-
and GM-driven; there are periods when all of the action is being
guided by PC plans, and there are periods when the GM contributes
a forcing line of events. Probably it's more player- than
GM-driven, in that the player can always refuse a line of
action if that's physically possible, whereas the GM doesn't have
much freedom to say "I'm not willing to go there." (He can,
if he really feels he can't run a certain continuation--it's
happened once or twice.)
There's some effort on both sides to get to good conclusions,
particularly to avoid tragedies. We're inclined to use drastic
tools like pretending a given session didn't happen, rather than
more subtle ones like having the GM change an NPC's behavior
repeatedly to keep something from happening.
The game has script immunity. The player is supposed to take
reasonable precautions, but the GM has final responsibility for
either keeping the PCs alive or making it clear that he
can't. ("If you do that I will have to withdraw script
immunity."--has happened once so far.) Our experience is that
we need script immunity to prevent the player from "turtling"--
becoming so cautious that nothing interesting happens.
(With a less pessimistic player we'd play differently. One-on-
one has a problem that if the single player loses morale, there
is no one to pick up the slack.)
There is no obligation to keep the PCs together. This is
easier in a one-on-one game where it doesn't risk sidelining
a player.
The player can design parts of the gameworld, such as her
PCs' homeworlds, but the GM always has final say. The player
has final say only over her PCs and their actions. (In
practice I do quite a lot of world design, and name many
of the NPCs. But it's always subject to veto.)
There's not really any player/player fairness issue with one
player. I've complained once that an NPC was unfairly
superior to a PC in her area of expertese, but it really doesn't
come up much. This would be a *much* bigger issue with
more players.
The game contract is that the PCs should be able to find
tractable challenges, and if the GM forces them into a situation,
it should be one they can handle. The gameworld can have
insoluble situations, but the GM is supposed to provide some
information hinting that this is the case, and try to avoid
having the PCs tackle a problem they can't possibly solve,
especially one where failure is lethal or very harmful.
This is the campaign's perpetual stress point, the thing that
makes it likely to fall apart, because the GM's view of
a tractable challenge is very different from mine. We
also have a problem with escalation, where an initially
reasonable problem tends to get bigger and bigger as it's
explored.
Finally, we're not trying to stick to any genre or particular
source material: it matters if something is true to the
world, but not really if it's true to genre, so neither party
has to work on that.
I'm not putting this forward as a general-purpose game contract,
since it would suit a lot of people very badly; the script
immunity, particularly, is a response to our specific needs
for this game. It's just an example of what a worked-out
agreement might look like. After seven years of play we
have worked this one out fairly thoroughly, though the
"challenge" part is still, always, a problem.
What kinds of problems was the original poster encountering?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
John S. Novak, III
> Here are some points I think a group may want to address, unless
> they already know they have consensus.
Even if a group thinks they have a consensus, it's useful to have the
discussion.
> --Who is pushing the game? Is the GM responsible for finding something
> for the PCs to do, or is that a player responsibility, or is it shared?
Yes, I knew I was forgetting at least one point, and this is it.
In my general campaigns, I usually prefer to have pro-active players,
but I can usually deal with it if I don't. In other games, such as
Amber, I find it essential to have pro-active players, and I try to
state that outright.
> --Are we trying to make things work out to be dramatic, or specially
> exciting, or to have a satisfying resolution? If so, whose job is
> that?
This is a little harder for me to work out with players.
It's been my experience (although I don't do as much gamaing as I used
to) that most players know what they want, but aren't very good at
articulating what they want if they're new to the idea of talking
about that sort of thing.
I have to admit, I haven't been very good about asking for those
details, either.
I'd be interested to see how people home in on the desires of players,
in this area, especially when they're GMing for new players. (Note,
this specifically includes players who are well known to them, but
with whom they've never gamed or never GM'd before.)
I've had some success in PBEM campaigns running flashbacks or solitary
set-pieces, because some of my players are very good about saying,
fairly up front, "Wait, that breaks my character concept," or "Wait,
that really bugs me."
Even then, some of the players seemed to think they were being weird
or too picky, and I've had to emphasize to more than one player that,
regardless of what my preferences as a player would be in the same
circumstance, it is my job as GM to gauge their tolerance for, say,
short-span retcons, extemporization of background details, or
whatever.
> --Are we trying to keep the PCs alive, and if so whose job is it, and
> how far are they allowed to go? Are they allowed to fudge rolls?
> Change situations? Break character or world consistency?
Some of this is already dependent on the genre (Amber games, in my
experience, have a pretty strong assumption that few if any players
are *really* going to get killed-- look at how hard Eric tried to keep
his hated enemy Corwin alive.)
If it's not, yes, this needs to be brought up.
> --Whose job is it to keep the PCs together, and how should they
> do it? Careful PC design? "PC glow" manuvers after design?
> Forcing scenarios?
My contract focusses on this one, because groups that don't work
together (and especially, groups who try to kill each other) are a
main peeve of mine in general.
What is "PC glow?"
> --Who controls the game-world? Do the players have any say in it,
> or is it purely the GM's turf? If they hae a say in it, what's
> their area of control? How is it limited?
Heh.
I can't imagine anyone in one of my general games being at all
confused on that point.... I'm known as a tight-ass when it comes to
world development. (Unless it's a game specifically run around
someone else's world, like an Amber game, or a hypothetical Wheel of
Time game.)
> --Is someone supposed to be looking after player/player fairness,
> and if so who, and how?
Again, my game contract puts that on the line, because it's a huge
peeve of mine. In the process of giving my expectations, I make that
clearer (if I need to) than it may have been in what I wrote down.
> --How hard are the challenges in the game supposed to be, and who
> is responsible for setting the challenge level? How are they
> allowed to do so? How much information are the players guaranteed
> about challenges?
As a tangent, there's also, "What does the GM do if the players are
missing something obvious?"
(I had to ask that outright, recently, and damn if I didn't get a
different answer from each player. Oh, the sacrifices we GMs make for
our gaming groups....)
Wayne Shaw
Usually (and I expect this is the context in which Mary was using it)
"game contract" is used in the same sense "social contract" is; the
set of shared expectations people have of what the GM and the players
are to expect out of the game. Of course, conflicts in perception of
what that contract is are not only possible, but fairly common.
Wayne Shaw
>for the PCs to do, or is that a player responsibility, or is it shared?
I had an Alternity game die a slow death not too long ago specifically
because of conflicts between the way I and my players saw this one.
>--Is someone supposed to be looking after player/player fairness,
>and if so who, and how?
One of the areas most likely to be murky in how different people
percieve it in a game, in my observation. Often because it simply
doesn't come up often.
>--Is the game trying to model a particular genre or work of fiction,
>and how important is it that it succeeds, if so? What is the group
>willing to do to keep to the model?
And to what degree is the genre considered to be directly portable to
the medium of a game. I've long argued that some problems occur
specifically because people don't recognize that genre isn't identical
from medium to medium.
>This is the campaign's perpetual stress point, the thing that
>makes it likely to fall apart, because the GM's view of
>a tractable challenge is very different from mine. We
I run into chronic problems with my available players in this area,
also.
>also have a problem with escalation, where an initially
>reasonable problem tends to get bigger and bigger as it's
>explored.
Though I usually don't have this one.
Peter Knutsen
"John S. Novak, III" wrote:
>
> In article <9oi0ea$fuo$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> > --Whose job is it to keep the PCs together, and how should they
> > do it? Careful PC design? "PC glow" manuvers after design?
> > Forcing scenarios?
>
> My contract focusses on this one, because groups that don't work
> together (and especially, groups who try to kill each other) are a
> main peeve of mine in general.
>
> What is "PC glow?"
I'm not sure, but maybe the PCs have a mystical ability to
sense who among the people around them are also PCs. For
instance in the first session, one PC enters a bar, and
among the three dozen people at the bar, he is somehow
attracted to a group of three sitting at a booth. These
turn out to be the other PCs.
> --
> John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
> The Humblest Man on the Net
--
Peter Knutsen
Robert Scott Clark
>
>
>"John S. Novak, III" wrote:
>>
>> In article <9oi0ea$fuo$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>
>> > --Whose job is it to keep the PCs together, and how should they
>> > do it? Careful PC design? "PC glow" manuvers after design?
>> > Forcing scenarios?
>>
>> My contract focusses on this one, because groups that don't work
>> together (and especially, groups who try to kill each other) are a
>> main peeve of mine in general.
>>
>> What is "PC glow?"
>
>I'm not sure, but maybe the PCs have a mystical ability to
>sense who among the people around them are also PCs.
Yes, but not limited to PC to PC contact, it's also the aspect of PCs
that makes the mysterious old man pick THEM over everyone else in the
bar to protect his daughter/treasure/kingdom/whatever instead of any
of the other indistinguishable groups in the bar.
> For
>instance in the first session, one PC enters a bar, and
>among the three dozen people at the bar, he is somehow
>attracted to a group of three sitting at a booth. These
>turn out to be the other PCs.
>
>> --
>> John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
>> The Humblest Man on the Net
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>In article <9oi0ea$fuo$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>>
>> --Whose job is it to keep the PCs together, and how should they
>> do it? Careful PC design? "PC glow" manuvers after design?
>> Forcing scenarios?
>
In the groups I play in, PC glow represents the willingness of players
to accept new PCs into the group even though it might strain consistency
and probability.
For instance, if the game is a paranoid conspiracy game, then it could
really badly strain credibility for the PCs to accept a new PC who has
no past with the group into their inner councils. However, since all
the players want to accept the new player, they will agree to take one
for the team and accept the new guy, trusting that after a few
sessions the break in the game-reality will be forgotten.
Neel
Lance Dyas
>
> I'd be very happy to see another of your reviews. I've been wrestling
> horribly with our Feng Shui derivatives lately and am almost ready
> to contemplate using some other system instead.
I was considering using Feng Shui as a basis... because its dice method
corresponded somewhat close to my YinYang dice. How far derived has your
play been and what kind of results did you get?
*****************************************************************
Dragonlord Garthans - Decision Driven Gaming - Role Play center
http://www.dyasdesigns.com/roleplay/
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*****************************************************************
Ingeborg Denner
>
>
> And to further answer your question, the game contract isn't about
> *directly* making the game more fun for all involved. It merely sets
> the standards upfront, so no one is caught off-guard by incorrect
> assumptions - and, hopefully, this makes the game more fun, or at
> least less confrontational, in the longrun.
It also helps on a different level by its existence alone, because as
soon as you think about what consists your GC, you know that there *are*
certain assumptions and meta-rules in every gaming group, and that a
clash of different assumptions and expectations will most likely cause
problems. Which is a lot better than searching for the 'guilty' party
when a gaming group doesn't work out OK.
inge
--
"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular."
- Adlai Stevenson
===
<http://home.foni.net/~lyorn> -- Stories, RPG & stuff.
Ingeborg Denner
>
> Here are some points I think a group may want to address, unless
> they already know they have consensus.
Good list!
Mary K. Kuhner
Lance Dyas <lanc...@inetnebr.com> wrote:
>I was considering using Feng Shui as a basis... because its dice method
>corresponded somewhat close to my YinYang dice. How far derived has your
>play been and what kind of results did you get?
We dropped the idea of mooks, which required us to rewrite some
shticks; other than that we're still pretty close to the original.
One major problem is that many Feng Shui shticks call for a test of
AV versus a stat. This *may* be okay at beginning PC level. It is
seriously not okay later on; all such attacks become automatic successes,
since AV goes up quite a bit faster, on the whole, than stats (you have
only one or two core AVs, and quite a few stats).
They are disasterous right at the start if the stat in question is Chi,
since many book archetypes have little or no Chi.
My biggest problem, though, is just being able to predict the outcome
of combats among "named characters". I was running a game with
martial arts tournaments. The PCs understandably wanted to know the
scuttlebutt on who would beat whom, but I found that I had no
idea. The shticks interact in too-complex ways, and also an extra point
or two in an apparently unimportant stat can be devastating under
certain circumstances. One begins to see why there is no character
design system in Feng Shui.
Just as an example, some shticks vary wildly in power depending on
your Initiative score, because you need several attacks after you use
them in order for them to pay off. Other shticks actually prosper in
situations that reduce everyone's Initiative. So if you stage a fight on
a rolling log, the outcome may be totally different than if you stage
it on flat ground.
I killed off the PCs several times in the previous game, always in
situations where that had not at all been the design intention.
It's a quick and versatile system for small combats. Contrary to the book,
I find it tedious and awkward for large ones. It's one of the few
RPGs I know where one-on-one duels are (sometimes) exciting,
though you have to watch out for characters whose powers are dominated
by others (gun bunny versus monkey or turtle fu, for example, is just
drastically unfortunate for the gun bunny).
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
John Mack
>"Razoredge" asks if anyone still uses this newsgroup.
>
>Yes, the newsgroup is still used. Traffic is down, and comes in spurts, but
>people seem to check in occasionally. Certainly I do.
I hailed the group shortly after the WTC bombing; most regulars have
checked in, or else I've seen them post elsewhere. I guess the rest
_probably_ have other things on their mind than responding to Usenet
(touch wood).
John Mack
Role-Playing Games: Theory and Practice
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~tarim/rpg/rpgpage.htm
"I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons for all those years without learning something about courage".
John Mack
wrote:
>Ex-regular, for much the same reasons. The few times I've posted in
>the past year or so I've usually been either flamed or ignored.
A lack of response doesn't necessarily mean you're being ignored.
People may be refraining from "me too" posts, and may simply agree
with you so thoroughly that they have nothing to add.
John Mack
<bglei...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I check in every now and then. The place is almost as dead as r.g.f.mod,
>basically killed off by a couple of trolls that too many of the regulars
>couldn't ignore. First time in fact that I ever saw trolls succeed. First
>time for everything.
There were no trolls. There were just voluble people on all sides with
sincerely held views, and those views just happened to be
incompatible.
That's the way of the world; two weeks ago today, we saw another
result of intractably clashing world views. However on Usenet, unlike
real life, it's always possible to just walk away.
Irina Rempt
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2001 09:24:45 +0200, Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org>
> wrote:
>
>>Ex-regular, for much the same reasons. The few times I've posted in
>>the past year or so I've usually been either flamed or ignored.
>
> A lack of response doesn't necessarily mean you're being ignored.
> People may be refraining from "me too" posts, and may simply agree
> with you so thoroughly that they have nothing to add.
I'm not so conceited that I think I express such superior views that
nobody has anything to add; I hope I haven't become so fearful of
flames that I only say things nobody can disagree with.
I used to be in a lot of vehement discussions, but I gave up trying
to express disagreement politely because I was being flamed anyway
(and I couldn't afford the energy all the anger was taking out of
me), so the latter may be the case. On the other hand, someone mailed
me privately to say that he usually agrees with me when I do post
something (but this is someone I used to agree with when we were both
active earlier).
Clifford A. Anderson
news:9ohekq$cna30$5...@ID-100778.news.dfncis.de...
> For me, a gaming contract has nothing to do with collaborative world
> creation, because I'm too much a control freak to allow anyone to
> meddle with my creations. Advise, yes. Meddle freely, no. My worlds
> are mine. Mine, mine, mine.
Thank you, that was a very good example. We haven't actually decided to
do the collaborative thing yet, it's just that we're having problems with
meeting everyone's expectations and I was hoping that might help.
Clifford A. Anderson
> > --Who is pushing the game? Is the GM responsible for finding something
> > for the PCs to do, or is that a player responsibility, or is it shared?
>
> Yes, I knew I was forgetting at least one point, and this is it.
> In my general campaigns, I usually prefer to have pro-active players,
> but I can usually deal with it if I don't. In other games, such as
> Amber, I find it essential to have pro-active players, and I try to
> state that outright.
This is certainly one area where I have difficulty... my players, I
swear, actually WANT to be rail-roaded. Well, maybe not quite... only one
of them (who is currently in the Gulf) will come up with any activites of
his own. Everbody else expects me to come up with everything, which while I
can accept this... anytime I put something in front of them they will then
turn 180 degrees and go the opposite direction. If they had SOMEWHERE they
were going, it would be cool, but they don't. They're just NOT pursuing any
of my plot ties. It's a tough group who I'm beginning to think derive their
enjoyment from torturing ME.
Clifford A. Anderson
news:3bacf3be...@news.newsfeeds.com...
> Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk> wrote:
> >"John S. Novak, III" wrote:
> >> What is "PC glow?"
> >
> >I'm not sure, but maybe the PCs have a mystical ability to
> >sense who among the people around them are also PCs.
>
> Yes, but not limited to PC to PC contact, it's also the aspect of PCs
> that makes the mysterious old man pick THEM over everyone else in the
> bar to protect his daughter/treasure/kingdom/whatever instead of any
> of the other indistinguishable groups in the bar.
A very interesting concept, but it does fit in with a LOT of fiction...
I'll hafta remember that one.
Peter Mork
The players will quite quickly learn to follow the plot ties.
Peter Mork
"Clifford A. Anderson" <cliff.ba...@fix.it.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:tqv7b2c...@corp.supernews.com...
Robert Scott Clark
It's just that with fiction they slap some lame disclaimer on it.
"Look, at this mole, the young one has the mark..."
"There's just something about his eyes, I know we can trust him..."
Brian Gleichman
news:3baf6292...@news.ozemail.com.au...
> There were no trolls.
Oh yes there were. And there are trolls in the real world too. In both
causes they seek out others who think differently purely order to attack. In
this, they justify their existence.
People who just have sincerely held views find other ways of managing
things.
--
Brian Gleichman
Age of Heroes: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/
Free RPG Reviews: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/Reviews.htm
Mary K. Kuhner
Clifford A. Anderson <cliff.ba...@fix.it.yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is certainly one area where I have difficulty... my players, I
>swear, actually WANT to be rail-roaded. Well, maybe not quite... only one
>of them (who is currently in the Gulf) will come up with any activites of
>his own. Everbody else expects me to come up with everything, which while I
>can accept this... anytime I put something in front of them they will then
>turn 180 degrees and go the opposite direction. If they had SOMEWHERE they
>were going, it would be cool, but they don't. They're just NOT pursuing any
>of my plot ties. It's a tough group who I'm beginning to think derive their
>enjoyment from torturing ME.
Ouch.
I've seen this too, more than once, and it's terribly frustrating. I think it's
related to the Tigger Syndrome (you ask your players what they want to
do, they say "Anything you want", but they don't like what you actually do....
There's a nice essay on this at RPGNet.)
I don't have a good solution. I've never been able to make a group like
this work for any length of time.
One possibility would be to keep asking them "So, what are you going to
do next session?" Wave off any replies of "Hey, that's up to you." Keep
on asking them. Eventually they may provide an answer; then you
prepare for that, and if they walk away from your prep complain long
and loud that THEY LIED TO YOU. Call the session early on the grounds
that they didn't tell you the truth. And keep asking them what they're going
to do next session. Maybe eventually they will realize that if they want a
good game, they have to do something about it.
Players who learned to roleplay when they were young teenagers (not
a very cooperative age in our society) sometimes have this esthetic that
the GM is really a bad guy and you shouldn't cooperate with him.
This makes the GM's job very hard indeed, especially outside of a
narrow structure such as a dungeon crawl. The only thing I have seen
fix this attitude successfully is playing in a group of players who don't
hold to it; this usually seems to get the point across. I don't know what you
do with a whole group that plays like this.
If they are, in fact, deriving their enjoyment from "beating" you...this is
not a game I would be personally willing to play. GMing is hard enough
without being treated as a bad guy. Maybe suggest they switch to
MtG or something else more naturally competitive.... Or ask one of
them to GM for a while, and concentrate your own efforts on being a
role model as a player.
If that's not an option, try running games in extremely narrow settings:
a sailing ship in the open ocean, a snowed-in ski lodge, a classical
dungeon. Don't roleplay through the process that gets the PCs there
(as that will give the players a chance to go elsewhere): just start there.
The "PCs meet in a bar" stuff is totally dispensible, and can often be
omitted to good advantage.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
Robert Scott Clark <cla...@mindspring.com> spake:
> Peter Knutsen <pe...@knutsen.dk> wrote:
>>"John S. Novak, III" wrote:
>>> What is "PC glow?"
>>I'm not sure, but maybe the PCs have a mystical ability to
>>sense who among the people around them are also PCs.
> Yes, but not limited to PC to PC contact, it's also the aspect of PCs
> that makes the mysterious old man pick THEM over everyone else in the
> bar to protect his daughter/treasure/kingdom/whatever instead of any
> of the other indistinguishable groups in the bar.
There are a few solutions to this that actually make sense, all based
on the PCs being rare or unique in the game world:
In _SLA Industries_, the PCs are Operatives on the same team.
Assigning them a new partner can be done from "on high".
_Paranoia_'s the same - not surprising, since SLA is in many ways just
a serious version of _Paranoia_ (1st Edition tone, and then some).
In _Purgatory_, the PCs are all Penitents, who can identify each other
by symbols on their foreheads. Admittedly, there's a lot of other
Penitents, but it cuts it down to a small fraction.
In _Exalted_, the PCs are Solar Exalted, and probably the most
important of them, and can identify each other by symbols on their
foreheads (damn, that sounds familiar...)
I've had to use a lot of "touched by the gods"/"something weird about
this guy" stuff to give players an in-character reason to band together.
If you don't, the hardcore always-in-character types often end up
murdering each other. <sigh>
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"You have grown old in the fine art of bastardy. My compliments."
-Suresh Ramasubramanian
Mary K. Kuhner
Brian Gleichman <bglei...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>"John Mack" <tarim.SP...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>news:3baf6292...@news.ozemail.com.au...
>> There were no trolls.
>Oh yes there were. And there are trolls in the real world too. In both
>causes they seek out others who think differently purely order to attack. In
>this, they justify their existence.
>People who just have sincerely held views find other ways of managing
>things.
I have to agree with Brian here. It's gracious to assume that someone
really wants to communicate until proven otherwise, but it's naive to
suppose that everyone always does. And after a point continuing to pretend
that the person wants to communicate is just unfair to those who really do--
people of good will are drowned out or driven away, which is what seems to
have happened here on rgfa.
I have, in my own life offline, occasionally broken something just for the
sheer pleasure of destruction. I don't see any reason to suppose that
that same unholy joy can't be found on the Net now and then, and if a
poster says flatly "I don't care about the discussion, I just wanted to yank
your chain" I think it's reasonable to believe him/her.
I would personally be a lot happier about participating in this group
if, when someone saw fit to respond to my postings about gaming with
irrelevant filth about my sexual practices, the newsgroup community did
*not* treat this as "reasonable expression of a different opinion". I would
very much prefer that when someone stops dealing with us in a reasonable
manner, we'd stop dealing with him/her. This has been effective in the
past, but the last time around, for some reason, it didn't happen; and I
firmly believe that the current near-silence (hopefully we're recovering
now, but it's been grim) comes from this misjudgement on the part of the
community.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Clifford A. Anderson
First, let me say thanks much for a great reply...
> MtG or something else more naturally competitive.... Or ask one of
> them to GM for a while, and concentrate your own efforts on being a
> role model as a player.
It's funny, but we are almost 50% GMs! I am starting up a new game in
which my players will either create their own detiny, or they will die of
boredom. If it doesn't work, oh well, but I gotta try to teach them to get
more into character I think.
Sometimes I feel like Wick, but that's OK - I like his stuff. ?D-)
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
<mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <3BAEABDE...@inetnebr.com>,
>Lance Dyas <lanc...@inetnebr.com> wrote:
>
>>I was considering using Feng Shui as a basis... because its dice method
>>corresponded somewhat close to my YinYang dice. How far derived has your
>>play been and what kind of results did you get?
>
> AV versus a stat. This *may* be okay at beginning PC level. It is
> seriously not okay later on; all such attacks become automatic
> successes, since AV goes up quite a bit faster, on the whole, than
> stats (you have only one or two core AVs, and quite a few stats).
Yes. The hack that I like is that stat vs. stat and skill vs. skill
checks work as usual, but that for skill vs. stat checks the stat is
doubled. Intimidating someone with a Will of 5 is then diff 10, at 7
is 14 and at 10 requires an action result of 20.
> It's a quick and versatile system for small combats. Contrary to
> the book, I find it tedious and awkward for large ones.
I don't think the system could handle a large fight if you threw out
the mook rules -- each named character is too complicated. However,
even with mooks there's a lot of extraneous dice rolling.
The rules I use to streamline mooks is to bunch them into squads.
Mooks have a base AV as before, and for each additional mook in a
squad, they get a +1 to their attack rolls. So a squad of 6 mooks with
an AV of 7 would get a single attack at AV 7+5=12, rather than 6
attacks at AV 7. Their defense remains at AV 7, and each mook downed
in a squad will lower the squads attack rating. So if a grenade blew
up three of the mooks in that squad, their attack would fall to 7+2=9.
This can reduce the die-rolling in an attack of 20 extras by a factor
of 4 or 5, easily.
> It's one of the few RPGs I know where one-on-one duels are
> (sometimes) exciting, though you have to watch out for characters
> whose powers are dominated by others (gun bunny versus monkey or
> turtle fu, for example, is just drastically unfortunate for the gun
> bunny).
In the long term, the most unbalanced characters are transformed
animals, since they have a high Chi and access to special animal kung
fu in addition to the regular fu shticks. Their supposed weakness is
also unusable -- it's an all-or-nothing mechanism that will kill the
PC, or not.
Neel
John S. Novak, III
>> What is "PC glow?"
> I'm not sure, but maybe the PCs have a mystical ability to
> sense who among the people around them are also PCs. For
> instance in the first session, one PC enters a bar, and
> among the three dozen people at the bar, he is somehow
> attracted to a group of three sitting at a booth. These
> turn out to be the other PCs.
Well, that's why I have my game contract default the way I do-- I
never had a name for that concept, but never liked it much.
John S. Novak, III
>> Yes, I knew I was forgetting at least one point, and this is it.
>> In my general campaigns, I usually prefer to have pro-active players,
>> but I can usually deal with it if I don't. In other games, such as
>> Amber, I find it essential to have pro-active players, and I try to
>> state that outright.
> This is certainly one area where I have difficulty... my players, I
> swear, actually WANT to be rail-roaded. Well, maybe not quite... only one
> of them (who is currently in the Gulf) will come up with any activites of
> his own.
Well, I think there's a spectrum between railroaded players and
completely pro-active players. I can put together a campaign with a
definite sort of a plotline without railroading players.
Railroading, in my vernacular, doesn't mean "stringing the characters
along a little bit," it means, "making sure that no matter what the
players do, they experience what I want them to experience."
> Everbody else expects me to come up with everything, which while I
> can accept this... anytime I put something in front of them they will then
> turn 180 degrees and go the opposite direction.
And this doesn't seem to follow on any level.
Can you explain in more detail?
Irina Rempt
> Try converting the Dragonlance modules to whatever game you are
> running. The players will quite quickly learn to follow the plot
> ties.
I played almost a whole Dragonlance campaign some years ago, with a
GM who *wanted* to follow the plot, but couldn't keep his inventive
players on track. When the hobgoblins or the draconians, I forget
which, had locked the PCs in a cage, two of us actually managed to
bend the bars and get out; he was at a complete loss.
It became very frustrating as it dawned on us, in the course of the
campaign, that there really wasn't any world outside the plotline,
and that we weren't to beat the major villains until the very end.
A better GM would either have called it off at that point (or never
started it in the first place) or found a way to bend the tracks. As
it was, we plodded on until we were allowed to kill at least one big
villain, then it just gradually dissolved, IIRC (and I don't recall
very clearly, it was that muddled near the end).
John Mack
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>In article <3KOr7.11614$W83.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
>Brian Gleichman <bglei...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>"John Mack" <tarim.SP...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>>news:3baf6292...@news.ozemail.com.au...
>
>>> There were no trolls.
>
>>Oh yes there were.[...]
>
>I have to agree with Brian here.[...]
Just to clarify before I post any further: I've assumed we were
talking about the personality mechanics flamewar in July last year,
under the heading "Abstract vs. specific task resolution", where
Brian, Justin, and Scott were the main combatants. However, I while I
vaguely remember the "I'm here to yank your chain" guy you refer to, I
don't recall him in connection with that or any other lengthy
flamewar, and I didn't see any sexual aspersions at all.
Is everyone else referring to something more recent? If I'm on
completely the wrong page (which is entirely possible - my newsfeed
sucks), then I will withdraw.
Peter Knutsen
"John S. Novak, III" wrote:
>
> In article <3BACDF02...@knutsen.dk>, Peter Knutsen wrote:
>
> >> What is "PC glow?"
>
> > I'm not sure, but maybe the PCs have a mystical ability to
> > sense who among the people around them are also PCs. For
> > instance in the first session, one PC enters a bar, and
> > among the three dozen people at the bar, he is somehow
> > attracted to a group of three sitting at a booth. These
> > turn out to be the other PCs.
>
> Ah, I see.
> Well, that's why I have my game contract default the way I do-- I
> never had a name for that concept, but never liked it much.
I've thought of an alternative to "PC glow".
FFRE suggests that each player is given 100 Goodie Points to build
a character on. But an optional rule is that each player gets only
95 GPs (or #-5) and then he can earn extra points during character
creation, by doing various things.
Connecting his character to one other PC gives 1 GP. If he can
find good explanations, he can connect his character to all the
other PCs and earn several extra GPs.
Connecting his character to one other PC in a strong way gives
2 GPs. A strong way could be to say that they are blood brothers,
or in love or in lust with each other (or the attraction could
be one-way only) or closely related (siblings, parent and off-
spring).
Writing a 100+ word backstory gives 1 GP, writing a 600+ word
backstory gives 2 GPs.
Building an "Individuality" worth 2-3 or 9+ IPs gives 1 GP,
building one worth 4-8 IPs gives 2 GPs. The player is not
obliged to stick to the Individuality for the entire game,
but can request permission to change it if he sees problems
or potentials later on.
Drawing a family tree with 6-12 people on it gives 1 GP, drawing
one with 13-24 people on it gives 2 GPs, drawing one with 25+
people on it gives 3 GPs. This is cumulative with the
"connections" mentioned above.
Inventing a famous ancestor (at least a great-grandparent or
of similar temporal distance) gives 1 GP. Cannot be taken
more than once.
There may be a few other options, but I can't think of any. It's
a way to encourage the players to think about their characters
and tie them to each other and to the world.
Let's see how many GPs an enterprising player can scrape up,
starting at 95. He connects himself strongly to one other
PC and less strongly to another. That's 95+3=98.
Writing a 750 word backstory is +2 GPs, up to 100. (This is
the default if not using this system).
Building an Individuality worth 6 IPS gives +2, at 102 GP now.
He draws a family tree with 19 people on it, gaining 2 GPs, at
104 now. Then he invents a famous ancestor, a great-grandparent,
and gets 1 GP more for this. He actually invents a second
famous ancestor just for the hell of it, but gains no bonus for
this.
So he lands at 105 GPs. Mean while a player less into DAS and
world-based play ends up only getting 1-3 bonus GPs, so his
character is at 96 to 98 GPs. Might not sound like a lot, but
due to the exponential nature of point purchase, it means
quite a lot.
Perhaps I should halve all bonus points? That way the example
player would only get 100 GPs, and the second example player
would get 95 to 96 GPs...
> --
> John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
> The Humblest Man on the Net
--
Peter Knutsen
Robert Scott Clark
>On 24 Sep 2001 23:31:12 GMT, mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu
>(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>
>>In article <3KOr7.11614$W83.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
>>Brian Gleichman <bglei...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>>"John Mack" <tarim.SP...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>>>news:3baf6292...@news.ozemail.com.au...
>>
>>>> There were no trolls.
>>
>>>Oh yes there were.[...]
>>
>>I have to agree with Brian here.[...]
>
>Just to clarify before I post any further: I've assumed we were
>talking about the personality mechanics flamewar in July last year,
>under the heading "Abstract vs. specific task resolution",
Hey, that was my post. (and I love how it had nothing to do with PMs,
yet turned into that anyway)
> where
>Brian, Justin, and Scott were the main combatants.
That is also what I assumed until the "sexual aspersions" comment.
.. except for the part about both Brian and me being major combatants.
Brian KFed me after my second post to the group, so I have never been
a "main cambatant" against him. I have made many more post *about*
Brian than to him.
>However, I while I
>vaguely remember the "I'm here to yank your chain" guy you refer to, I
>don't recall him in connection with that or any other lengthy
>flamewar, and I didn't see any sexual aspersions at all.
>
>Is everyone else referring to something more recent? If I'm on
>completely the wrong page (which is entirely possible - my newsfeed
>sucks), then I will withdraw.
>
>John Mack
>Role-Playing Games: Theory and Practice
>http://www.ozemail.com.au/~tarim/rpg/rpgpage.htm
>
>"I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons for all those years without learning something about courage".
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
Wayne Shaw
>> can accept this... anytime I put something in front of them they will then
>> turn 180 degrees and go the opposite direction.
>
>And this doesn't seem to follow on any level.
>Can you explain in more detail?
I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
irritating.
Mary K. Kuhner
>I played almost a whole Dragonlance campaign some years ago, with a
>GM who *wanted* to follow the plot, but couldn't keep his inventive
>players on track. When the hobgoblins or the draconians, I forget
>which, had locked the PCs in a cage, two of us actually managed to
>bend the bars and get out; he was at a complete loss.
We had a similar experience *even with the player trying to cooperate*.
It was really hard to find reasons for the PCs to do what they
were supposed to be doing.
The game died around module 4, when in quick succession we had (a)
a tower the PCs didn't see any reason to go into, but the GM
said they should, so they did and two of them died, and (b) a
tomb that the PCs wanted to go into for only one thing, so they
went straight to where that one thing was rather than scouring
the dungeon room by room. So they missed the magic items that
would have allowed them to succeed, and all of them died.
>A better GM would either have called it off at that point (or never
>started it in the first place) or found a way to bend the tracks. As
>it was, we plodded on until we were allowed to kill at least one big
>villain, then it just gradually dissolved, IIRC (and I don't recall
>very clearly, it was that muddled near the end).
It's excruciatingly hard to fix this kind of problem with a module.
I don't think I'd expect it even of a really good GM. One picks
up a module in the first place because it's supposed to make
things easier, and grafting world-logic onto Dragonlance would
make it *harder* than doing your own game. It's terribly brittle.
Jon and I resort to modules when work stress is too high for one
of us to prepare a regular game. We have seldom had good results.
_Feast of Goblyns_ actually almost works as written, except
for the last arc (I can't imagine what the PCs were supposed to
do about that). Jon had good results with _Masks of Nyarlathotep_
converted to Feng Shui, but I think he did a *lot* of work on
that, and parts were still bad (the Mountain of the Black Wind
in particular).
The most infuriating experience I've ever had with a module, worse
than Dragonlance, was an Oriental Adventures module whose title
I've forgotten--we called it "Valley of the Valleys". In it
the PCs are chasing two armies, one of which is pursuing the
other. Okay, 'armies' may not be what is really meant here--
perhaps they're each a small squad by this point. The module
pursues these armies through a dozen backcountry valleys, which
is kind of an interesting premise. However, the module not
only does not give the armies' route, but takes pains to make
it impossible to figure out. It has *random encounters* with
signs of the armies' presence. It has signs of the armies'
presence in disconnected places, and lacks signs of them in
necessary places. It has no timeline or usable map of the route,
and I couldn't come up with one either.
So the PCs come to a village, and find that an army has been
there. "Yes!" they say--they are chasing the army, after all--
and try to question the villagers. How long ago? From what
direction? Where did it go? And the poor GM *cannot* answer
these questions, because the material can't consistently
support any answer. If you say they went west, and the PCs
try to go east, they may still connect; if the PCs go west they
may never connect. You might put one or two of these down to
dishonest or stupid villagers, but over time the pattern becomes
painfully obvious.
The only way to run this thing is as a totally blatant railroad.
"Go west now. No, don't look to see where the army you're
supposedly chasing went. That's just stage dressing. Move
along briskly to the next encounter area, there's a good group."
Argh!
Jon is making interested noises about _Return to the Temple of
Elemental Evil_. The original _TOE_ did not run well due to
massive logic problems, somewhat similar to the above. Has anyone
tried the new one? Any better?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
>Just to clarify before I post any further: I've assumed we were
>talking about the personality mechanics flamewar in July last year,
>under the heading "Abstract vs. specific task resolution", where
>Brian, Justin, and Scott were the main combatants. However, I while I
>vaguely remember the "I'm here to yank your chain" guy you refer to, I
>don't recall him in connection with that or any other lengthy
>flamewar, and I didn't see any sexual aspersions at all.
I'm sorry. I was conflating recent with much earlier events.
I did feel in July that there was no point in trying to calm
things down or get back to reasonable discussion, because the
amount of standing venom on the group had been above my
comfort level for so long. It seemed as though just about any
post might get an escalating, aggressive response, and it
just wasn't worth it to do the work needed to carry on a
conversation.
But I'm not particularly interested in dissecting the past; I'd
just like to see us handle future conflicts a bit better.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
[Feng Shui]
>In the long term, the most unbalanced characters are transformed
>animals, since they have a high Chi and access to special animal kung
>fu in addition to the regular fu shticks. Their supposed weakness is
>also unusable -- it's an all-or-nothing mechanism that will kill the
>PC, or not.
I wish game designers would stop doing this; I don't think "You
have a terribly powerful character with one completely fatal
weakness" works at all as a balance mechanism, nor is it good for
the game in other respects, unless you play only games of one or
a few sessions.
If there is any expectation of script immunity at all, this puts
the GM in a really tough position. Even if there isn't, the
other players may find themselves rooting for the animal to
die, since nothing else prevents him from being unfair.
We just abolished the transformed animals and moved their shticks
into the general shtick list (except for the abusive ones).
I never connected with the idea that the animal-people hate magic
and are resolutely non-magical, nor with the idea that an
appropriate Feng Shui villain organization is one that is
secretive, unflashy, and relies on group rather than individual
power. It seems out of place.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Robert Scott Clark
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>[Feng Shui]
>
>>In the long term, the most unbalanced characters are transformed
>>animals, since they have a high Chi and access to special animal kung
>>fu in addition to the regular fu shticks. Their supposed weakness is
>>also unusable -- it's an all-or-nothing mechanism that will kill the
>>PC, or not.
>
>I wish game designers would stop doing this; I don't think "You
>have a terribly powerful character with one completely fatal
>weakness" works at all as a balance mechanism, nor is it good for
>the game in other respects, unless you play only games of one or
>a few sessions.
>
>If there is any expectation of script immunity at all, this puts
>the GM in a really tough position. Even if there isn't, the
>other players may find themselves rooting for the animal to
>die, since nothing else prevents him from being unfair.
Wow, you guys did it. Ever post I have seen about FS made me think,
"this game must be perfect for me". Thankfully, someone hit the
achiles heel finally. I can't believe companies can add something
like this and think it is good for the game.
Since I don't know, what is the nigh-fatal weakness of being a
transformed animal?
Mary K. Kuhner
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
>provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
>the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
>irritating.
It's possible that this sometimes comes from having had a GM
who subscribed too firmly to the "only bad events are interesting"
school of plotting. I have played under a GM or two where avoiding
the prepared line was important to us because it meant avoiding
repeated capture and humiliation cycles. The group may reckon
that they have a better chance with improv than with prep.
In my experience, though, it's more often an overall
philosophy of gaming. It's similar to players who go into horror
games with the firm determination not to be scared, because
that would show weakness or admit that the GM has "won".
I think there's a big gap between realizing that railroading is
not what you want (as a player) and knowing how to manage a non-
railroaded game. People get stuck in between, where they
dislike and resent direction from the GM, but have no idea how
to provide any themselves. (I spent a year in a low-direction
experimental school, and hardly got anything done--I had't
figured out the corresponding problem.)
The original poster might have an extra problem because his
most proactive player had to leave. Perhaps it would help to
say "What would so-and-so [the proactive player] have been
doing here?" I suspect that the rest of the group relied on
this person to make things work and never bothered noticing how
he did it, or considering that someone else has to take up the
slack now.
Another possibility is to scour one's GMing style for anything
that the players might be perceiving as discouragement for
proactive play. Sometimes the GM is sending, or is thought to
be sending, signals "Don't do this, I'm not going to support
it." If a player seems to need information to construct a plan,
you may want to be extra-generous with the information, and
you may want to be extra-generous towards the success of
early plans. Be sure to give plenty of spotlight time and
attention to anything vaguely player-driven. (This can
be trouble, because inexperienced proactive players often come
up with plans that only involve their own PC. Particularly
encourage ones that involve the group.)
Things you want to avoid are having information only about
what the GM wants to do and not what the players want; having
NPCs brush off PC plans; abstracting PC plans and playing
out GM plans in detail; or bullying the players when they
need to do their planning. Proactive players spend more time
just sitting around discussing what to do next than reactive
ones, and the GM needs to allow for this.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Irina Rempt
> I've thought of an alternative to "PC glow".
>
> FFRE suggests that each player is given 100 Goodie Points to build
> a character on. But an optional rule is that each player gets only
> 95 GPs (or #-5) and then he can earn extra points during character
> creation, by doing various things.
[snip various things]
> There may be a few other options, but I can't think of any. It's
> a way to encourage the players to think about their characters
> and tie them to each other and to the world.
Hmm, that wouldn't be for me: those are all things a *player* does to
give the *character* advantages.
[more of that, with calculations]
> So he lands at 105 GPs. Mean while a player less into DAS and
> world-based play ends up only getting 1-3 bonus GPs, so his
> character is at 96 to 98 GPs. Might not sound like a lot, but
> due to the exponential nature of point purchase, it means
> quite a lot.
So if people tend more to develop-in-play, or lack the time outside
gaming sessions to do extensive backgrounding, or simply have no
writing ability, their *characters* are massively disadvantaged. Is
that really what you intend?
Irina Rempt
> Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>
>>I played almost a whole Dragonlance campaign some years ago, with a
>>GM who *wanted* to follow the plot, but couldn't keep his inventive
>>players on track. When the hobgoblins or the draconians, I forget
>>which, had locked the PCs in a cage, two of us actually managed to
>>bend the bars and get out; he was at a complete loss.
>
> We had a similar experience *even with the player trying to
> cooperate*. It was really hard to find reasons for the PCs to do
> what they were supposed to be doing.
>
> The game died around module 4, when in quick succession we had (a)
> a tower the PCs didn't see any reason to go into, but the GM
> said they should, so they did and two of them died, and (b) a
> tomb that the PCs wanted to go into for only one thing, so they
> went straight to where that one thing was rather than scouring
> the dungeon room by room. So they missed the magic items that
> would have allowed them to succeed, and all of them died.
Oh yes, I remember that tower and the tomb. I think one of those is
where we tied the kender to a rope and threw him into the air. We
didn't have enough of the magic items either... Later, the kender did
die, but that was because he walked too close to an angry red dragon
<whoosh>.
> It's excruciatingly hard to fix this kind of problem [i.e.
> railroading with a module. I don't think I'd expect it even of a
> really good GM. One picks up a module in the first place because
> it's supposed to make things easier, and grafting world-logic onto
> Dragonlance would make it *harder* than doing your own game. It's
> terribly brittle.
We had a GM recently who did a very good job with a module in a
castle: the module expected the PCs to either fight their way in or
start exploring dungeon-fashion once they were in, but our group came
in as guests and didn't actually do anything against the inhabitants
until we had figured out which ones were the bad guys (having an 8th
level cleric around helps a lot, though being a dwarf she was too
stubborn to realize that the old councillor was a polymorphed demon,
not vice versa).
Mary K. Kuhner
Robert Scott Clark <cla...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Wow, you guys did it. Ever post I have seen about FS made me think,
>"this game must be perfect for me". Thankfully, someone hit the
>achiles heel finally. I can't believe companies can add something
>like this and think it is good for the game.
I think it is a carry-over from the card game. The transformed
animals in general strike me as very alien to the rest of the game--
they don't fit the "flashy before subtle" theme, they aren't well
balanced, and they don't have obvious connections (as presented)
to Hong Kong cinema like the rest do. (There are animal-people
in Hong Kong cinema, certainly, but I've never seen this particular
kind. Perhaps there's a movie I'm missing?)
>Since I don't know, what is the nigh-fatal weakness of being a
>transformed animal?
If you are exposed to magical energy you may turn back into an
animal, permanently. You are then removed from play. There are whole
areas of the Feng Shui setting which are unsafe for transformed animals
to visit--tough luck if the GM wants to set a scenario there.
It is also easy to design an NPC who can totally screw over transformed
animals.
In general I think that "balance" mechanisms which cause a player
to want to sit out an entire scenario are a horrible idea. If the GM
runs a lot of games where the disad comes up, the player is
miserable. If he doesn't, there's no balance effect.
If I were going to bring the transformed animals back, I would
try to give them some continual but less severe weakness, like
a vulnerability to technology; or just balance them in the first
place.
The arcanowave folks have similar problems. It's surprising how much
of the arcanowave tech actually harms its user more than it helps.
Perhaps both arcanowave users and transformed animals were
meant to be NPCs only, but the core rules do provide archetypes
for both.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Ben Brown
>Robert Scott Clark <cla...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>Wow, you guys did it. Ever post I have seen about FS made me think,
>>"this game must be perfect for me". Thankfully, someone hit the
>>achiles heel finally. I can't believe companies can add something
>>like this and think it is good for the game.
>
>I think it is a carry-over from the card game. The transformed
>animals in general strike me as very alien to the rest of the game--
>they don't fit the "flashy before subtle" theme, they aren't well
>balanced, and they don't have obvious connections (as presented)
>to Hong Kong cinema like the rest do. (There are animal-people
>in Hong Kong cinema, certainly, but I've never seen this particular
>kind. Perhaps there's a movie I'm missing?)
>
The closest I've seen is _Green Snake_. they're not afraid of magic,
but there's this monk running around who causes animals to revert to
their original form. My guess is that it's borrowed somewhat mangled-like
from there. I remember reading how reassuming human form was easier,
but got changed during playtesting in order to maintain some idea that
these critters wanted to be human and turning back into an animal was a
bad thing.
-Ben
Peter Mork
using those modules. The first DL modules are the most linear, weakest
modules ever seen. The only think keeping the characters on target is the
arrival of 10 draconians a turn until the PCs return to the plot, or die (or
quit).
Peter Mork
"Irina Rempt" <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote in message
news:1701502.PeGttiIbC2@turenay...
Clifford A. Anderson
Hmm... I guess what I'm saying is this. If I don't give them anything
to do, they will sit on their asses for the entire 3 or 4 hour session
coming up with absolutely nothing at all to do. If I >DO< put something in
front of them, they will then turn around and do exactly the opposite of
what is in front of them and expect me to be prepared for this other
direction. However, they WOULDN'T have gone in that direction in the first
place if I hadn't planned for the other direction, and if I plan for BOTH
directions, then they will pick yet a third arbitrary direction.
Clifford A. Anderson
news:9oq9jj$s2g$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu...
> it." If a player seems to need information to construct a plan,
> you may want to be extra-generous with the information, and
> you may want to be extra-generous towards the success of
> early plans. Be sure to give plenty of spotlight time and
> attention to anything vaguely player-driven. (This can
> be trouble, because inexperienced proactive players often come
> up with plans that only involve their own PC. Particularly
> encourage ones that involve the group.)
That's a good idea. Maybe they'll be more inclined to come up with
their own stuff if THAT is the path of least resistance. Tnx1.0e6
Robert Scott Clark
>If you are exposed to magical energy you may turn back into an
>animal, permanently. You are then removed from play. There are whole
>areas of the Feng Shui setting which are unsafe for transformed animals
>to visit--tough luck if the GM wants to set a scenario there.
>It is also easy to design an NPC who can totally screw over transformed
>animals.
I am amazed at how many games put things like this in. Even mundane
disadvantages like "bloodlust" have this basic effect.
Wayne Shaw
>to want to sit out an entire scenario are a horrible idea. If the GM
>runs a lot of games where the disad comes up, the player is
>miserable. If he doesn't, there's no balance effect.
I always called these "Gold Kryptonite" disadvantages when someone
tried to take them in Hero. Named after the weakness the Silver Age
Superman had (in addition to the more consistent Green) which would
permanantly take away the powers of a Kryptonian on exposure, in
practice this set of disads has three possible effects: the two you
mention, and taking the character permanantly out of play with little
or nothing to be done about it. As a limiting factor, I consider them
pretty much useless on a PC at least.
Wayne Shaw
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>In article <b194755cadddb53e...@spamfreenews.com>,
>Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>
>>I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
>>provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
>>the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
>>irritating.
>
>It's possible that this sometimes comes from having had a GM
>who subscribed too firmly to the "only bad events are interesting"
>school of plotting. I have played under a GM or two where avoiding
>the prepared line was important to us because it meant avoiding
>repeated capture and humiliation cycles. The group may reckon
>that they have a better chance with improv than with prep.
>
That'd be understandable if they actually _did_ anything by
themselves, but in this case the only thing that motivates activity at
all was dropping a plot hook...and then it motivated active and
persistant avoidence. Far as I can tell, the group had, whether
deliberately or accidently built characters who simultaneously could
not walk out of the campaign (because initial setup constraints gave
them properties which wouldn't let them walk away) and wanted nothing
to do with actively engaging in it. It was astoundingly frustrating
in combination.
>In my experience, though, it's more often an overall
>philosophy of gaming. It's similar to players who go into horror
>games with the firm determination not to be scared, because
>that would show weakness or admit that the GM has "won".
I will freely admit that there are GM/player competitive aspects
locally, and I can deal with that _when_ the players are
self-motivating. But it seems somewhat pointless to both be contrary
_and_ passive.
>
>I think there's a big gap between realizing that railroading is
>not what you want (as a player) and knowing how to manage a non-
>railroaded game. People get stuck in between, where they
>dislike and resent direction from the GM, but have no idea how
>to provide any themselves. (I spent a year in a low-direction
>experimental school, and hardly got anything done--I had't
>figured out the corresponding problem.)
I honestly can't figure out why I'd try to stay in a game where I was
neither willing to find my own direction nor utilize someone else's.
I've had games where I was feeling one way or the other, but not both
at once.
>Another possibility is to scour one's GMing style for anything
>that the players might be perceiving as discouragement for
>proactive play. Sometimes the GM is sending, or is thought to
>be sending, signals "Don't do this, I'm not going to support
>it." If a player seems to need information to construct a plan,
>you may want to be extra-generous with the information, and
>you may want to be extra-generous towards the success of
>early plans. Be sure to give plenty of spotlight time and
>attention to anything vaguely player-driven. (This can
>be trouble, because inexperienced proactive players often come
>up with plans that only involve their own PC. Particularly
>encourage ones that involve the group.)
Or even experienced ones. Two of my more proactive players will
quietly burrow off by themselves given a chance, and only involve
others when they've figured out they've gotten in over their heads.
And they've been at this a long, long time.
>
>Things you want to avoid are having information only about
>what the GM wants to do and not what the players want; having
>NPCs brush off PC plans; abstracting PC plans and playing
>out GM plans in detail; or bullying the players when they
>need to do their planning. Proactive players spend more time
>just sitting around discussing what to do next than reactive
>ones, and the GM needs to allow for this.
While this is certainly true, you can find yourself with a group that
if not prodded will _never_ make up their minds what to do. I've seen
at least two incarnations of the group I game with literally go around
and around on things for hours on end without moving forward at all.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu> spake:
> If they are, in fact, deriving their enjoyment from "beating" you...this is
> not a game I would be personally willing to play. GMing is hard enough
> without being treated as a bad guy. Maybe suggest they switch to
> MtG or something else more naturally competitive.... Or ask one of
> them to GM for a while, and concentrate your own efforts on being a
> role model as a player.
Or they could play _Rune_ or _Paranoia_, which are explicitly designed
as adversarial RPGs. There are other games that work well that way, but
few so blatant.
But it's not *THAT* bad if the players see the GM as "the enemy".
It's not a warm touchy-feely kind of gaming, but it can lead to a much
more intense and exciting game - in filmmaking, the equivalent on- and
off-camera would be _Apocalypse Now_.
It's a difference in gaming styles, not a mental defect that makes
them incapable of role-playing. Nor is it caused by learning as a
teenager, since most people learned as a teen, and most of them don't
play that way generally, while people who learned younger or older
sometimes play adversarially.
> If that's not an option, try running games in extremely narrow settings:
> a sailing ship in the open ocean, a snowed-in ski lodge, a classical
> dungeon. Don't roleplay through the process that gets the PCs there
> (as that will give the players a chance to go elsewhere): just start there.
> The "PCs meet in a bar" stuff is totally dispensible, and can often be
> omitted to good advantage.
"In media res" is a good way to start many games, anyway - there's
often a lot of crap you have to go through before you get to the
adventure that's exactly the same as last time... So why not just skip
that, check if there's any unusual preparations they want to make, and
start where the trouble is?
They're "driving scenes", like all the horrid old movies where someone
goes for a drive (or goes shopping, or whatever), and the camera has to
follow them in real time... Tarkovsky's _Solaris_[0] could lose at
*least* 15 minutes of actual driving scenes, not even counting the
non-driving "driving scenes".
[0] A 3-hour Russian movie with a 1-hour Twilight Zone plot. It's good,
but so slow that I believe it actually generates a black hole to distort
time.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"You have grown old in the fine art of bastardy. My compliments."
-Suresh Ramasubramanian
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
Peter Mork <pm...@cs.washington.edu> spake:
> (Pulling my tongue back from my cheek...) I wasn't seriously advocating
> using those modules. The first DL modules are the most linear, weakest
> modules ever seen. The only think keeping the characters on target is the
> arrival of 10 draconians a turn until the PCs return to the plot, or die (or
> quit).
The trouble is that they are interesting modules, so we keep foolishly
trying to use them. I'm strongly tempted to use them for Exalted, since
a linear adventure feels right for its Final Fantasy tone...
Boudewijn Rempt
> Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> wrote:
>>I played almost a whole Dragonlance campaign some years ago, with a
>>GM who *wanted* to follow the plot, but couldn't keep his inventive
>>players on track. When the hobgoblins or the draconians, I forget
>>which, had locked the PCs in a cage, two of us actually managed to
>>bend the bars and get out; he was at a complete loss.
> We had a similar experience *even with the player trying to cooperate*.
> It was really hard to find reasons for the PCs to do what they
> were supposed to be doing.
> The game died around module 4, when in quick succession we had (a)
> a tower the PCs didn't see any reason to go into, but the GM
> said they should, so they did and two of them died, and (b) a
> tomb that the PCs wanted to go into for only one thing, so they
> went straight to where that one thing was rather than scouring
> the dungeon room by room. So they missed the magic items that
> would have allowed them to succeed, and all of them died.
When we recently had a chance to dump all the children on grandparents,
godparents and the like, we decided we'd get together a group for a
one-off classic AD&D adventure. The adventure our GM chose was one
of an old Dragon - about a crystal palace floating up in the air.
This adventure was of the kind 'you're magically wizzed up to the
entrance of the castle. You get inside. You go left, passing through
all rooms clock-wise, finding lots of goodies. You arrive in the
last room. You have a big final fight with a demon - sorry Tanarri -
you win lots of gold. In fact quite what we intended for this session!
However, the GM had some real genius. He wove in a genuinely tragic
romance between the witch-queen and the demon, interesting allies
and lots of moral dilemma. Shall we help the witch-queen regain her
rightful kingdom, or not? And in the end we needed another night
to finish it, and it was even more satisfying than we had hoped for!
(write-up at: http://www.valdyas.org/rpg/01.crystal_palace.txt)
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Boudewijn Rempt
It makes old scars hurt with me, too. I once spent a lot of time
on a larp, only to have all the players decide that in order to
play their roles right, they had to sit still and do nothing. It took
divine intervention to get them moving!
Robert Scott Clark
>
> "In media res" is a good way to start many games, anyway - there's
>often a lot of crap you have to go through before you get to the
>adventure that's exactly the same as last time... So why not just skip
>that, check if there's any unusual preparations they want to make, and
>start where the trouble is?
I like to call this starting "Star Wars style".
Irina Rempt
> Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>> I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
>> provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_
>> with
>> the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
>> irritating.
>
> It makes old scars hurt with me, too. I once spent a lot of time
> on a larp, only to have all the players decide that in order to
> play their roles right, they had to sit still and do nothing. It
> took divine intervention to get them moving!
Well, we were playing rich people in the nineteen-twenties, what else
would they do? :-)
It also reminds me of the time I had the PCs' camp stalked all night
and dropped them in the middle of a conspiracy to depose the king the
next day, and the players complained that nothing was happening. That
campaign didn't go far.
Ben Brown
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
> They're "driving scenes", like all the horrid old movies where someone
>goes for a drive (or goes shopping, or whatever), and the camera has to
>follow them in real time... Tarkovsky's _Solaris_[0] could lose at
>*least* 15 minutes of actual driving scenes, not even counting the
>non-driving "driving scenes".
>
>[0] A 3-hour Russian movie with a 1-hour Twilight Zone plot. It's good,
>but so slow that I believe it actually generates a black hole to distort
>time.
Plus the fact that at the end of the longest driving scene, the person in the
car is promptly never heard from again.
-Ben (what city is it they're driving through? the signs all look chinese.)
Jason Corley
> It's excruciatingly hard to fix this kind of problem with a module.
> I don't think I'd expect it even of a really good GM. One picks
> up a module in the first place because it's supposed to make
> things easier, and grafting world-logic onto Dragonlance would
> make it *harder* than doing your own game. It's terribly brittle.
VERY much so. However, some of the modules are actually very very fun, and
the fun parts are not all at the beginning, some are at the end too.
My suggestion for any GM of any kind wanting to run the Dragonlance
modules is to buy some of the Dragonlance world materials (yes, including
Fifth Age if necessary) from wizards.com via ESD or some other method if
that's not available, read those /first/, then turn to the modules and
look over their edges and boundaries closely.
> _Feast of Goblyns_ actually almost works as written, except
> for the last arc (I can't imagine what the PCs were supposed to
> do about that). Jon had good results with _Masks of Nyarlathotep_
> converted to Feng Shui, but I think he did a *lot* of work on
> that, and parts were still bad (the Mountain of the Black Wind
> in particular).
He would have had to. _Masks_ has a /lot/ of "they're supposed to do
WHAT???" holes as it was written. However, you're quite rght that there
are all kinds of neat pulpy things that Feng Shui heroes could do in a
revised version of it.
> Jon is making interested noises about _Return to the Temple of
> Elemental Evil_. The original _TOE_ did not run well due to
> massive logic problems, somewhat similar to the above. Has anyone
> tried the new one? Any better?
It's better packaged and presented, and that may make it easier to revise
if necessary. I haven't read it closely.
--
***************************************************************************
"I was pleased to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't
know."----- Mark Twain, _Life on the Mississippi_
Jason Corley | le...@aeonsociety.org | ICQ 41199011
Jason Corley
> The trouble is that they are interesting modules, so we keep foolishly
> trying to use them. I'm strongly tempted to use them for Exalted, since
> a linear adventure feels right for its Final Fantasy tone...
*stares*
*runs back to his ESDs very very fast*
Damn. Even if that idea's bad, it's the best bad idea I've seen in quite
some time.
Steve Mading
: Peter Knutsen wrote:
:> I've thought of an alternative to "PC glow".
:>
:> FFRE suggests that each player is given 100 Goodie Points to build
:> a character on. But an optional rule is that each player gets only
:> 95 GPs (or #-5) and then he can earn extra points during character
:> creation, by doing various things.
: [snip various things]
:> There may be a few other options, but I can't think of any. It's
:> a way to encourage the players to think about their characters
:> and tie them to each other and to the world.
: Hmm, that wouldn't be for me: those are all things a *player* does to
: give the *character* advantages.
: [more of that, with calculations]
:> So he lands at 105 GPs. Mean while a player less into DAS and
:> world-based play ends up only getting 1-3 bonus GPs, so his
:> character is at 96 to 98 GPs. Might not sound like a lot, but
:> due to the exponential nature of point purchase, it means
:> quite a lot.
: So if people tend more to develop-in-play, or lack the time outside
: gaming sessions to do extensive backgrounding, or simply have no
: writing ability, their *characters* are massively disadvantaged. Is
: that really what you intend?
I have a problem with making a character background too rigid.
In some ways it actually makes it *harder* to mesh the character
with the party. I like to leave some things "mushy" at first
and then make them rigid as events occur in the first game session
or two. Perhaps at first I only know that my character lives
in a downtown apartment, but I haven't decided where. Then during
gameplay I discover that another player also said his character
lives in a downtown apartment. Seeing this as a chance to make
some "PC glue" I ask in character for his address and then reply
in character, "Gee what a coincidence, I live in the same building,
right above you..." Before then I didn't know that yet, but I
took the opening to solidify that mushy part of the background in
a way that ties me a bit to another PC. This style requires that
the GM *let* his players paint in part of the world, partaking in
a little of the world-building that is normally reserved for GM's
only, but I think it works a lot better.
With that kind of system, I would make the character point tie-in
idea you have be available for the first game session or two,
not just pre-campaign. That way people who take the opportunity
to hook themselves together believably get the same points for
it whether they do it as part of their backstory or if they do
it as part of the first hours of gameplay.
--
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Steven L. Mading at BioMagResBank (BMRB). UW-Madison
Programmer/Analyst/(Co-SysAdmin) mailto:mad...@bmrb.wisc.edu
B1108C, Biochem Addition / 433 Babcock Dr / Madison, WI 53706-1544
Steve Mading
One way to get around the railroading problem is to make the scenario
one in which you can predict reliably what the players' motivations
would be. For example, you might not know for sure whether the
players would want to rescue some random town besieged by orcs, but
what if you made it be *their* hometown that was besieged by orcs?
Perhaps the players might not normally want to rescue the damsel in
distress, but what if she was the sister of one of the PC's?
That sort of thing can work wonders. Another idea is to *not*
use the standard wander-around-the-world template for the campaign
and instead set the action in a small area, like a town and the
terrain surrounding it, with the PC's having a reason to stay in
town (like owning land there). Then problems they ignore come back
to rear their ugly heads later, and things like reputations start
to matter.
Mary K. Kuhner
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> wrote:
> But it's not *THAT* bad if the players see the GM as "the enemy".
>It's not a warm touchy-feely kind of gaming, but it can lead to a much
>more intense and exciting game - in filmmaking, the equivalent on- and
>off-camera would be _Apocalypse Now_.
I'm not talking about seeing the GM as analogous to a board-game
adversary. I agree, that can lead to good games, even if they aren't my
preferred type.
I'm talking about players who, at the extreme, seem to get into the mindset
"If I have a good time that's a win for the GM, so I'll try not to." I have
seen some pretty awful instances of this. The players did not seem to
be enjoying it, and that's my personal dividing line between "this is a
reasonable style that I happen to dislike" and "something is wrong here."
This is particularly common, in my experience, with horror games.
You know it's happening when the players start goofing off, pulling out
magazines, etc. whenever there is a possibility that they might be scared.
(This could also come from players who genuinely dislike horror, but
I've seen it from players who insisted that they did want to be playing a
horror game.)
I think it's easy to distinguish the two styles--you hit it on the head
with "intense" and "exciting". A group that tries to defuse whatever
excitement develops, on the grounds that they don't want to let the
GM/other players/module author have the satisfaction of seeing them
sweat, is not going to develop intensity or excitement.
I probably shouldn't make any guesses as to where this comes from. I
don't really know. Most of the people I know who play like that learned
to do so as teenagers, but then most gamers I know learned to play
as teenagers.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Ben Brown
to some players these things will matter. To others, they won't matter
as much. Even so, this doesn't really work except in broad outlines.
Sure, you can get them to respond to an event, but you can't guarantee
they're going to respond in a specific way.
Avoiding linear plots is, to my mind, not nearly as important as avoiding
the appearance of linear plots. Someone has suggested the term "magician's
choice" for a GMing technique where the PCs will discover the same plot
elements/encounters regardless of what choices they make. If done well,
with obvious, but in the long run unimportant changes based on the choices
the players make, a good GM can disguise a more-or-less linear plot so
completely that the players will barely notice.
This does require a bit of suspension of disbelief on the players' part, but
avoids the huge crashing of SoD that occurs when a giant dragon appears out
of nowhere in a blatant attempt to push the PCs back into the plot.
I am playing in a superhero game that's been going on for three and a half
years now. I know that very few of the choices that we as PCs make will
really change the flow of the plot significantly. the thing is, I don't
know which of the decision points are critical, and so I treat every one
of them the same.
The trick, for a GM, is not to tie specific events to specific locations and
have them unalterable. The fight in the train station could just as easily
occur on the street outside the stadium. If you block the players from going
anywhere but the train station in an effort to get them to your fight scene,
that's obvious railroading. If you let the fight come to them, you still get
your big fight scene and the associated plot developments, but without making
the players feel pushed around.
If the players are truly determined to avoid the plot, there's not much you
can do, but there are ways to avoid railroading (or the perception of
railroading) without just letting the characters wander off aimlessly.
-Ben
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
<mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <3bb0a6a8...@news.newsfeeds.com>,
>Robert Scott Clark <cla...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> Wow, you guys did it. Ever post I have seen about FS made me
>> think, "this game must be perfect for me". Thankfully, someone hit
>> the achiles heel finally. I can't believe companies can add
>> something like this and think it is good for the game.
>
> I think it is a carry-over from the card game. The transformed
> animals in general strike me as very alien to the rest of the game--
> they don't fit the "flashy before subtle" theme, they aren't well
> balanced, and they don't have obvious connections (as presented) to
> Hong Kong cinema like the rest do. (There are animal-people in Hong
> Kong cinema, certainly, but I've never seen this particular kind.
> Perhaps there's a movie I'm missing?)
Two of them, I think.
First, there's _Green Snake_, with Maggie Cheung, and directed by Tsui
Hark. The premise is that transformed animals are animals who have
cheated the machinery of reincarnation and used magic to become human
prematurely, before their karma will properly let them. Maggie Cheung
and Joey Wong are two snakes who have become human women, and one of
them (Joey Wong) falls in love with and marries a human scholar.
A Buddhist priest (translated as "a monk of unlimited power" -- an odd
but utterly appropriate phrasing) is attempting to track them down,
and return them to their proper animal state. Much chaos ensues, as
morality, romance and vengeance collide in a high-opera train wreck.
I recommend it -- it's not a perfectly made movie, but it is both more
thoughtful and more action-packed than almost all of the summer action
movies we get.
Second, there's _Wicked City_, which has evil Reptoids disguising
themselves as humans and insinuating themselves into the seats of
power. There's a somewhat nasty bureau of psychic police -- in the
vein of Blade Runner -- that exists to hunt them down, and the movie
plays a lot like what the Ascended-Buro transition of power might look
like.
I think Garcia and Laws decided to combine the Reptoids and the
transformed animals to produce the Ascended in Feng Shui. Personally,
I don't much like any of the Buro, the Jammers, or the Ascended:
they're the factions with the weakest links to the source material.
Neel
Leszek Karlik
<kami...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> disseminated foul capitalist
propaganda:
[...]
> "In media res" is a good way to start many games, anyway - there's
> often a lot of crap you have to go through before you get to the
> adventure that's exactly the same as last time... So why not just skip
> that, check if there's any unusual preparations they want to make, and
> start where the trouble is?
This is good for pulp-ish games, like Star Wars (where this technique
is used in all the ready-made modules, at least the WEG ones (I shall
not touch the D20 Star Wars with a proverbial 10 foot pole)).
However, in dark-future style games, like CP 2020 or Shadowrun
planning is the more important part of the game. Then starting 'in
media res' is, well, rather difficult.
(On a recent session we made a successful assasination without firing
a single shot, by obtaining samples of Ebola, geneering it
appropriately and then slipping it into the target's yoghurt. Slick
action, and almost all the session was planning and such. Practically
no action at all.)
[...]
> Tarkovsky's _Solaris_[0] could lose at *least* 15 minutes of actual
> driving scenes, not even counting the non-driving "driving scenes".
> [0] A 3-hour Russian movie with a 1-hour Twilight Zone plot. It's good,
> but so slow that I believe it actually generates a black hole to distort
> time.
Well, it's a movie based on Stanislaw Lem's book 'Solaris', and Lem
himself hates it (the movie that is). And yes, it is unbearably slow.
It is also good, but then, the book is brilliant. :)
Somebody in Hollywood is now going to make a second shot at
'Solaris'. I bet they will mangle it in completely different style
than Tarkovsky did. <grin>
Leslie
--
Leszek 'Leslie' Karlik; ailurophile by trade; SNAFU TANJ TANSTAAFL; /^\ lk
Do you want to join the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria? / (*) \
Put $ 3,125.00 in a cigar box and bury it in your backyard. / \
One of our *Underground* Agents will contact you shortly. /_____________\
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
<cliff.ba...@fix.it.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hmm... I guess what I'm saying is this. If I don't give them
> anything to do, they will sit on their asses for the entire 3 or 4
> hour session coming up with absolutely nothing at all to do. If I
> >DO< put something in front of them, they will then turn around and
> do exactly the opposite of what is in front of them and expect me to
> be prepared for this other direction. However, they WOULDN'T have
> gone in that direction in the first place if I hadn't planned for
> the other direction, and if I plan for BOTH directions, then they
> will pick yet a third arbitrary direction.
Could you give a specific example of this? I don't think I can give
any specific, constructive (as opposed to generalties) without a
description of a particular evening of gaming.
I will comment that in my group, there's fairly strong peer pressure
to avoid creating loner-orphans-with-shadowy-pasts. This means that
there are usually hooks that can be pulled on that the player created
himself.
Neel
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>
> That'd be understandable if they actually _did_ anything by
> themselves, but in this case the only thing that motivates activity
> at all was dropping a plot hook...and then it motivated active and
> persistant avoidence. Far as I can tell, the group had, whether
> deliberately or accidently built characters who simultaneously could
> not walk out of the campaign (because initial setup constraints gave
> them properties which wouldn't let them walk away) and wanted
> nothing to do with actively engaging in it. It was astoundingly
> frustrating in combination.
I can well believe it. I think there's a tendency for players to
figure out what the main hook of the campaign is and come up with a PC
who will resist being pulled along by it. I even think the motivation
is usually good -- if one of the PCs is a reluctant hero, then he or
she can act as a foil for the other, more enthusiastic PCs and make
the interplay between the PCs more colorful.
However, you lose when *all* of the players decide to be helpful in
this fashion. :)
Neel
John S. Novak, III
>> Ah, I see.
>> Well, that's why I have my game contract default the way I do-- I
>> never had a name for that concept, but never liked it much.
> I've thought of an alternative to "PC glow".
> FFRE suggests that each player is given 100 Goodie Points to build
> a character on. But an optional rule is that each player gets only
> 95 GPs (or #-5) and then he can earn extra points during character
> creation, by doing various things.
> find good explanations, he can connect his character to all the
> other PCs and earn several extra GPs.
[...]
Enh.
I'm more than a little lukewarm on the concept of awarding material
in-game rewards for meta-game considerations. I suppose it doesn't
hurt anything in, for example, Amber, to give out points in exchange
for contributions like writing a journal, but I don't think it helps,
either.
Generally, everyone signs up for them, some follow through, some
don't.
I'd rather just enforce it directly at the GM-player level, and give
the players however many points I want them to have.
And certainly, this is more difficult to implement in non-points
systems.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
John S. Novak, III
> I have a problem with making a character background too rigid.
> In some ways it actually makes it *harder* to mesh the character
> with the party.
How does that follow, if the players are creating characters as a
group process?
John S. Novak, III
>>And this doesn't seem to follow on any level.
>>Can you explain in more detail?
> I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
> provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
> the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
> irritating.
Why in the world would anyone run a game for players like this?
Wayne Shaw
>figure out what the main hook of the campaign is and come up with a PC
>who will resist being pulled along by it. I even think the motivation
>is usually good -- if one of the PCs is a reluctant hero, then he or
>she can act as a foil for the other, more enthusiastic PCs and make
>the interplay between the PCs more colorful.
>
>However, you lose when *all* of the players decide to be helpful in
>this fashion. :)
And that may well be what's happened. Of course in some of these
cases, unless you factor in PC glow, none of them would have gone
along individually if the other PCs had anyway, so it may be more
profound than that.
Wayne Shaw
>> provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
>> the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
>> irritating.
>
>It makes old scars hurt with me, too. I once spent a lot of time
>on a larp, only to have all the players decide that in order to
>play their roles right, they had to sit still and do nothing. It took
>divine intervention to get them moving!
It's not unknown on MUSHes either, where everyone complains that
nothing is happening, but as soon as something is, no one who actually
has a reason to get involved does (and some people who are entirely
wrong for the situation and unequiped to deal with it try to).
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
This sounds interesting -- could you describe some of the details of
the game and the PCs that were created?
Neel
Brian Gleichman
news:3bb02a0e...@news.ozemail.com.au...
> where Brian, Justin, and Scott were the main combatants.
Interesting that you recall this, as I don't. Not by the name of Justin and
Scott.
I'm not going to rehash it all for you because its rather pointless since
two of the three people that cause me to leave are still here. As such I be
leaving again. I have little to nothing to say in any "community' that would
accept their presence.
--
Brian Gleichman
Age of Heroes: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/
Free RPG Reviews: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/Reviews.htm
Robert Scott Clark
>"John Mack" <tarim.SP...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
>news:3bb02a0e...@news.ozemail.com.au...
>
>
>> where Brian, Justin, and Scott were the main combatants.
>
>Interesting that you recall this, as I don't. Not by the name of Justin and
>Scott.
>
>I'm not going to rehash it all for you because its rather pointless since
>two of the three people that cause me to leave are still here. As such I be
>leaving again. I have little to nothing to say in any "community' that would
>accept their presence.
Brian's open mind flows like water.
Clifford A. Anderson
news:9or6ka$eono1$5...@ID-100778.news.dfncis.de...
> In article <b194755cadddb53e...@spamfreenews.com>, Wayne Shaw
> wrote:
>
> >>And this doesn't seem to follow on any level.
> >>Can you explain in more detail?
>
> > I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
> > provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
> > the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
> > irritating.
>
> Why in the world would anyone run a game for players like this?
Lack of choice... small area.
John S. Novak, III
>> And this doesn't seem to follow on any level.
>> Can you explain in more detail?
> Hmm... I guess what I'm saying is this. If I don't give them anything
> to do, they will sit on their asses for the entire 3 or 4 hour session
> coming up with absolutely nothing at all to do. If I >DO< put something in
> front of them, they will then turn around and do exactly the opposite of
> what is in front of them and expect me to be prepared for this other
> direction. However, they WOULDN'T have gone in that direction in the first
> place if I hadn't planned for the other direction, and if I plan for BOTH
> directions, then they will pick yet a third arbitrary direction.
Huh.
Well, it's not that I doubt the existence of such, especially since
other posters have chimed in with their stories of same, it's just
that I don't think I've ever seen it, and am boggled at the concept.
I join the other poster who asked for an example, but I don't know
that I'd be able to give any cogent advice. I'm a little more blunt
than most people, and my response would be to talk to the players
directly, warn them that I get zero satisfaction out of such a
situation, and tell them that unless I enjoy the game, too, I won't
bother running it.
Steve Mading
: In article <9oqsan$j90$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu>, Steve Mading wrote:
:> I have a problem with making a character background too rigid.
:> In some ways it actually makes it *harder* to mesh the character
:> with the party.
: How does that follow, if the players are creating characters as a
: group process?
Most games I've played in had players trickling in and out over
time. The situation of trying to mesh your character with an
already existing group (rather than having a PC being made as
part of a pre-game character making party with everyone else)
is very common.
Also, there are some things you don't want to tell other players
because it's a LOT more fun to have it come out during gameplay.
Also, and maybe this is just me, but it seems that events that
get discovered during gameplay seem more "real" in some way than
events that are prepared as part of a backstory. It's much more
satisfying to me to have the party-glue events be mostly things
that I've actually been there to witness. The backstory made
ahead of time is more of a quick-fix party duct-tape thing rather
than a strong party-glue thing. At least for me it is.
Plus, often issues pop up in the first hours of gameplay that I
never thought of during background creation, and the on-the-spot
answer shouldn't be denied just because it wasn't specified
ahead of time. Often the on-the-spot answer is a better fit
to the rest of the party, because it was made *after* observing
how other characters are acting, and is based on that knowlege.
Irina Rempt
> Also, there are some things you don't want to tell other players
> because it's a LOT more fun to have it come out during gameplay.
> Also, and maybe this is just me, but it seems that events that
> get discovered during gameplay seem more "real" in some way than
> events that are prepared as part of a backstory. It's much more
> satisfying to me to have the party-glue events be mostly things
> that I've actually been there to witness. The backstory made
> ahead of time is more of a quick-fix party duct-tape thing rather
> than a strong party-glue thing. At least for me it is.
For me too. You've *been there*. It's like a character sheet: it's
one thing to have a Strength of 11 on it (in our homebrew that's the
95th percentile and up) and another to actually be able to lift a
whole burning roof-beam and hurl it into the street before it sets
the whole block on fire.
> Plus, often issues pop up in the first hours of gameplay that I
> never thought of during background creation, and the on-the-spot
> answer shouldn't be denied just because it wasn't specified
> ahead of time. Often the on-the-spot answer is a better fit
> to the rest of the party, because it was made *after* observing
> how other characters are acting, and is based on that knowlege.
That's why I prefer to start a new game very slowly, preferably over
a meal, while people get partly into character but nothing is
happening yet. Technical questions can be asked, last-minute
adjustments made (one of my husband's characters changed from a man
into a woman at the last moment and everything about that character
suddenly fell into place) and the PCs can get to know each other.
Ingeborg Denner
>
> This is particularly common, in my experience, with horror games.
> You know it's happening when the players start goofing off, pulling out
> magazines, etc. whenever there is a possibility that they might be scared.
I've seen this happen with *good* players who wanted to be cooperative
and liked horror, but switched automatically into 'defense'-mode when
things started to get really scary.
In that case it helped to call a time-out and demand that the players
switch of their ususal defense mechanism for the sake of the game, but I
feel that it requires an enourmous leap of faith on the players' side to
do that.
inge
--
"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular."
- Adlai Stevenson
===
<http://home.foni.net/~lyorn> -- Stories, RPG & stuff.
Ingeborg Denner
>
> On 25 Sep 2001 15:58:43 GMT, mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu
> >
> >>I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
> >>provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
> >>the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
> >>irritating.
> >
> >who subscribed too firmly to the "only bad events are interesting"
> >school of plotting. I have played under a GM or two where avoiding
> >the prepared line was important to us because it meant avoiding
> >repeated capture and humiliation cycles. The group may reckon
> >that they have a better chance with improv than with prep.
> >
>
> That'd be understandable if they actually _did_ anything by
> themselves, but in this case the only thing that motivates activity at
> all was dropping a plot hook...and then it motivated active and
> persistant avoidence. Far as I can tell, the group had, whether
> deliberately or accidently built characters who simultaneously could
> not walk out of the campaign (because initial setup constraints gave
> them properties which wouldn't let them walk away) and wanted nothing
> to do with actively engaging in it. It was astoundingly frustrating
> in combination.
Just some idle speculation here, but is there any chance that the
players feel clueless in the setting?
It happens rarely in the garden-variety fantasy game, but I've seen it
in a SF-game, where all the players only had fantasy/horror experience
and wouldn't recognize a plot hook, an information source or an
opportunity to act in the setting if it bit them in the nose. Needless
to say, the adventure was a desaster: The group got no info because they
didn't know how (they got a vague idea of 'looking something up on the
computer', but after one botched roll they gave up on that), they didn't
get contacts because they didn't know how to talk to people in that
setting, they didn't get equipment because they didn't know where, and
when in over their heads they didn't call for help because they didn't
know how...
Something similar happened years later in a StarWars game where the
players (more used to conspiracy than to space opera) assumed that the
Empire was far more organized, efficient and informed than the GM had
made it out to be, so they didn't take any action because they didn't
see how anything they did could lead to success. (Finally the annoyed GM
said, "Go on! *Do* something! The Empire is made up of morons! The
security droids are playing poker in the back room! Didn't you see the
movies? *Do* something!" -- now, that's what you could call stating game
contract! <g>)
Ingeborg Denner
>
> I'm a little more blunt
> than most people, and my response would be to talk to the players
> directly, warn them that I get zero satisfaction out of such a
> situation, and tell them that unless I enjoy the game, too, I won't
> bother running it.
I'd probably be a little less blunt, but it sounds like a good idea.
Meta-game problems should be addressed on meta-game level.
Wayne Shaw
Krishnaswami) wrote:
It was a varient supers game. The PCs got their powers from what was
basically an accident, caused by some individuals who knew a way to
imbue powers in others, but in a very limited way, and were trying to
find a way to do it more reliably. The kicker was each PC had the
ability to trigger powers in one (and only one) more individual in
their lifetimes, and that person could trigger another, and so on.
The people who set up the situation had not been trying to give the
PCs powers but their own people, and wanted to either bring the PCs
into the fold, or eliminate them (they'd be valuable, but supers not
under their control was _not_ something they wanted). Unfortunately,
the players were very sluggish about responding to the situation other
than on an individual basis, and even those that supposedly had
standing connections with each other couldn't seem to find agreement
on what to do with their new abilities (they weren't aware of the Gift
part of it at this time). This quickly turned into an ongoing
argument as to whether to stand their ground (among the more heroic)
or run for it (among the less) and in no case did anyone even vaguely
follow up on trying to track back the source of the problem, except
for one of the least cooperative characters, who didn't share his
information with anyone.
In the end, it was quite obvious that the opposition was simply going
to bring bigger and bigger amounts of force to bear until they
flattened the PCs or they scattered, because they were doing nothing
to curtail progressive attacks, but simply dealing with them as they
came.
Wayne Shaw
>> themselves, but in this case the only thing that motivates activity at
>> all was dropping a plot hook...and then it motivated active and
>> persistant avoidence. Far as I can tell, the group had, whether
>> deliberately or accidently built characters who simultaneously could
>> not walk out of the campaign (because initial setup constraints gave
>> them properties which wouldn't let them walk away) and wanted nothing
>> to do with actively engaging in it. It was astoundingly frustrating
>> in combination.
>
>Just some idle speculation here, but is there any chance that the
>players feel clueless in the setting?
It's possible, since it was a group of people that held only one
person I routinely play with, but supposedly they'd had much
experience playing in campaign types that were at least vaguely
parallel.
>Something similar happened years later in a StarWars game where the
>players (more used to conspiracy than to space opera) assumed that the
>Empire was far more organized, efficient and informed than the GM had
>made it out to be, so they didn't take any action because they didn't
>see how anything they did could lead to success. (Finally the annoyed GM
>said, "Go on! *Do* something! The Empire is made up of morons! The
>security droids are playing poker in the back room! Didn't you see the
>movies? *Do* something!" -- now, that's what you could call stating game
>contract! <g>)
Heh. Well, it could be that they thought the opposition was more
powerful than it at least initially was, but it's really hard to
figure out how they thought their total nonresponsiveness was going to
improve matters.
Wayne Shaw
wrote:
>In article <b194755cadddb53e...@spamfreenews.com>, Wayne Shaw
>wrote:
>
>>>And this doesn't seem to follow on any level.
>>>Can you explain in more detail?
>
>> I've seen this on a small scale; the players are lumps unless you
>> provide a plot hook; but the moment you do, instead of _engaging_ with
>> the hook, they start to actively _avoid_ it. It's immensely
>> irritating.
>
>Why in the world would anyone run a game for players like this?
Because I didn't realize it was going to be a persistent problem until
well into it, and by then I'd invested considerable work in campaign
setup.
Wayne Shaw
<Ingebor...@erlf.siemens.de> wrote:
>John S. Novak, III wrote:
>>
>> I'm a little more blunt
>> than most people, and my response would be to talk to the players
>> directly, warn them that I get zero satisfaction out of such a
>> situation, and tell them that unless I enjoy the game, too, I won't
>> bother running it.
>
>I'd probably be a little less blunt, but it sounds like a good idea.
>Meta-game problems should be addressed on meta-game level.
The problem was I was utterly boggled by the situation, and kept
expecting it to self-adjust. I've had players be lumps before, but
this was the first and only time I've had them be lumps _and_
contrary. And since it was mostly a group of players I was less
familiar with than my usual, I was trying to address it in a
non-confrontational way, which turned out to be a lost cause. All
this took quite a while to figure out, however.
Robert Scott Clark
>On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 13:56:15 +0200, Ingeborg Denner
><Ingebor...@erlf.siemens.de> wrote:
>
>>John S. Novak, III wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm a little more blunt
>>> than most people, and my response would be to talk to the players
>>> directly, warn them that I get zero satisfaction out of such a
>>> situation, and tell them that unless I enjoy the game, too, I won't
>>> bother running it.
>>
>>I'd probably be a little less blunt, but it sounds like a good idea.
>>Meta-game problems should be addressed on meta-game level.
>
>The problem was I was utterly boggled by the situation, and kept
>expecting it to self-adjust. I've had players be lumps before, but
>this was the first and only time I've had them be lumps _and_
>contrary.
I was buying this thread until I read your more detailed description
in another post.
You threw things at them, they either fought or ran.
I don't see how this is contrary in any way to the expected reaction
of having things thrown at you.
If you had wanted them to investigate something, it seems like there
would be better ways to accomplish that than by constantly attacking
them.
It is very possible that you were not "railroading" them as much as
you thought you were.
> And since it was mostly a group of players I was less
>familiar with than my usual, I was trying to address it in a
>non-confrontational way, which turned out to be a lost cause. All
>this took quite a while to figure out, however.
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
Wayne Shaw
>>expecting it to self-adjust. I've had players be lumps before, but
>>this was the first and only time I've had them be lumps _and_
>>contrary.
>
>I was buying this thread until I read your more detailed description
>in another post.
>
>You threw things at them, they either fought or ran.
>
>I don't see how this is contrary in any way to the expected reaction
>of having things thrown at you.
Because they never, ever tried to find out why they were being
attacked, or find a way to stop it. They ran around in circles and
carefully (I don't know any other word for it) avoided engaging in any
activity that might actually do anything about the problem, even
though they had good signs that until they did, it would keep pursuing
them.
>
>If you had wanted them to investigate something, it seems like there
>would be better ways to accomplish that than by constantly attacking
>them.
And they were given it. And did nothing. The only thing that
prompted any activity _at all_ was the attacks.