Diceless Roleplaying
Allan Carey
groups like these and a new passion.
All games I have ever run have concentrated on the story as opposed to the
mechanics. Story was all.
Now I find a facsination for DRPG's . Not having one myself or even
understanding how they work I would be very much interested in your views
and advice on the subject.
For myself it has to be the way to go. Pure narrative.
Allan Carey
Dark One
Allan Carey <alc...@mcmail.com> wrote in article
<377d3...@news1.mcmail.com>...
My experience with diceless role-playing is limited to Amber Diceless
Role-Playing. I had a very good time and it does promote imaginitive
role-playing problem solving. It resolves conflicts by not just using
abilities but how you use those abilities. For instance it is possible to
defeat an enemy who is much better in combat skills but you happen to know
that a particular type of plant where you are fighting entangles anything
caught in it. During the fight you manuver yourself to appear vulnerable
from a particular angle, your oppenent comes charging in but at the last
moment he he is dragged down by a tangle of vines. Just one minor example.
Sea Wasp
>
> Having almost let the fire within burn out for roleplay I have discovered
> groups like these and a new passion.
>
> All games I have ever run have concentrated on the story as opposed to the
> mechanics. Story was all.
> Now I find a facsination for DRPG's . Not having one myself or even
> understanding how they work I would be very much interested in your views
> and advice on the subject.
>
> For myself it has to be the way to go. Pure narrative.
Only if you AND your players trust your judgement implicitly in all
things, no matter how complex, no matter how "iffy". I've been running
for more than 20 years now, and some of my players have known me for
nearly that long. They think I'm one of the best GM's they've ever met.
But I don't trust myself to pure narrative. Nor would I want my players
to do so. Oh, LESS dice, yes. There've been entire sessions where I
haven't picked up a die except to toy with it. But eliminate them
entirely? No. I'm not God. I am not, and cannot be, perfectly and
completely unbiased in all areas, nor can I take into account all the
possible factors that may have an effect on a situation. Thus, whenever
there is a situation or an event that can go one way or another, and the
outcome is not utterly foregone, I roll dice.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.html
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Darrel x
its all about trust isn't it? nobody wants to hail a taxi and find Scorsese
in the driving seat, metaphorically speaking.
RPG without dice is fear, it's whimsical and out of control.
Of course I'll play
Darrel X
Mark Apolinski
> Having almost let the fire within burn out for roleplay I have discovered
> groups like these and a new passion.
>
> All games I have ever run have concentrated on the story as opposed to the
> mechanics. Story was all.
> Now I find a facsination for DRPG's . Not having one myself or even
> understanding how they work I would be very much interested in your views
> and advice on the subject.
>
> For myself it has to be the way to go. Pure narrative.
Hi Allen. I run almost only diceless rpgs nowadays. I have played _Amber_,
but for the last several years I've been using a system called _Theatrix_
which has the advantage of being a generic system that I've had lots of
success using with many different genres and sourcebooks from other games.
Glad to see there's one other diceless fan on this newsgroup. :) Don't get
too discouraged when people attack you for your heresy.
Mark
Nightshade
>Glad to see there's one other diceless fan on this newsgroup. :) Don't get
>too discouraged when people attack you for your heresy.
I don't consider what I've done 'attacking you for your heresy'; I
consider it demonstrating why your preference for it derives from
specific things you want out of the game, and why it's badly suited
for many players.
Mark Apolinski
That was a joke Nightshade. And not directed at anyone specific.
Mark
Sea Wasp
BURN, HERETIC! BURN! YOU HAVE DEFILED THE HOLY GAME AND ABANDONED THE
DIVINE DICE FOR THE MORTAL SIN OF DRAMATISM!
Nightshade
>Nightshade wrote:
>
>> Mark Apolinski <apol...@ioc.net> wrote:
>>
>> >Glad to see there's one other diceless fan on this newsgroup. :) Don't get
>> >too discouraged when people attack you for your heresy.
>>
>> I don't consider what I've done 'attacking you for your heresy'; I
>> consider it demonstrating why your preference for it derives from
>> specific things you want out of the game, and why it's badly suited
>> for many players.
>
>That was a joke Nightshade. And not directed at anyone specific.
Sorry. As I often note, my sense of humor was surgically removed at
birth and it's been a somewhat trying week.
Justin Bacon
<itmo...@itmonkey.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>A game without dice is like a kiss without a moustache :{
Good? :-)
>RPG without dice is fear, it's whimsical and out of control.
I think dice are perhaps the greatest con of all time -- they seem to actively
convince players that they are NOT subject to the GM's whims.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Alain Lapalme
> Allan Carey wrote:
> >
> > Having almost let the fire within burn out for roleplay I have
> discovered
> > groups like these and a new passion.
> >
> > All games I have ever run have concentrated on the story as opposed
> to the
> > mechanics. Story was all.
> > Now I find a facsination for DRPG's . Not having one myself or even
> > understanding how they work I would be very much interested in your
> views
> > and advice on the subject.
> >
> > For myself it has to be the way to go. Pure narrative.
>
> Only if you AND your players trust your judgement implicitly
> in all
> things, no matter how complex, no matter how "iffy".
> But I don't trust myself to pure narrative. Nor would I want
> my players
> to do so. Oh, LESS dice, yes. There've been entire sessions where I
> haven't picked up a die except to toy with it. But eliminate them
> entirely? No. I'm not God. I am not, and cannot be, perfectly and
> completely unbiased in all areas, nor can I take into account all the
> possible factors that may have an effect on a situation. Thus,
> whenever
> there is a situation or an event that can go one way or another, and
> the
> outcome is not utterly foregone, I roll dice.
>
If, in a diceless situation, you cannot take all factors into
consideration, how can that be fixed by a die roll? You still don't
know all the relevant factors. If you are trying to avoid bias, I
don't see how rolling the die is going to do that.
Diceless: you don't know all the relevant factors, so you decide one way
or another. Is the decision affected by your personal biases.
Absolutely.
Diced: you don't know all the relevant factors, so you decide by
rolling a die and a number comes up. What does it mean. In a freeform
system, you still have to interpret the number (say high is good, low is
bad). Is the decision affected by you personal biases. Absolutely.
The biases will come up during interpretation.
Diced: you don't know all the relevant factors, so you decide by
rolling a die and a number compes up. What does it mean? In a farily
well defined dice system, the number you come up with will usually
provide a precise outcome. Is the decsions affected by your personal
biases. Absolutely. How you ask? The die roll has been modified for
whatever factors you can account for. However, there is a whole set of
factors you cannot account for, the ones the die roll is supposed to
handle. Either you decide to apply a special roll modifier (which will
introduce bias) or you decide to ignore the unknown factors (which
again, introduces bias).
That dice can make your life easier, I'll buy; that their use can add
some stability/consistency to a game, I'll buy that too (with some
reservations though); that die rolling can add a certain level/type of
suspense, I'll buy. But, that using dice will remove GM bias, no way.
You are stuck with GM biases. You can't get rid of them. A good GM is
usually one who's biases you like or agree with or can live with. A bad
GM is one who's, well is bad, biases notwithstanding.
Alain
Sea Wasp
> But, that using dice will remove GM bias, no way.
Way.
Remove ALL bias, no. As you note, selection critera for rolling can,
and probably will, be affected by bias. But in a diceless game, if my
bias is to prefer Course X of events, I will ALWAYS, given an iffy
situation, choose Course X. If I am biased but using dice, I may give
Course X a BETTER chance than it ought to have, but Course Y will still
be represented.
I may not want Baron Badguy to die in this combat; if diceless, I can
arrange his escape whether or not that's properly fair to the player.
With dice, assuming that the player character and Baron Badguy are
closely enough matched that the PC has a chance, I may give Baron Badguy
an unreasonably (viewed from a perfectly objective POV) good chance of
getting away, but he still has a chance of getting whacked. And THAT
means that my bias is at least partially blunted.
Dice also help to remove dithering; you have 5 likely outcomes, and you
and the players disagree on which one is the right one. Rather than
spend an hour arguing, you say "Okay, I think I'm right, you think
you're right. We'll roll on it."
Psychohist
If, in a diceless situation, you cannot take all factors into
consideration, how can that be fixed by a die roll? You still don't
know all the relevant factors. If you are trying to avoid bias, I
don't see how rolling the die is going to do that.
Diceless: you don't know all the relevant factors, so you decide one way
or another. Is the decision affected by your personal biases.
Absolutely.
Yes. We're talking about the unknown factors here; if it's a good gamesmaster,
the known factors will be accounted for fairly, without bias.
Diced: you don't know all the relevant factors, so you decide by
rolling a die and a number compes up. What does it mean? In a farily
well defined dice system, the number you come up with will usually
provide a precise outcome.... Either you decide to apply a special
roll modifier (which will introduce bias) or you decide to ignore
the unknown factors (which again, introduces bias).
Again, if it's a good gamesmasters, modifiers reflect known factors, not
unknown factors, so a good gamesmaster will account for them fairly, without
bias. As for the unknown factors, you are letting the dice determine them -
you are ceding part of the world determination to the dice.
It could be argued that this introduces error, in the same way as the diceless
gamesmaster's use of 'personal biases' introduces bias. Both the dice and the
diceless gamesmaster are making a decision based on lack of knowledge.
But it doesn't introduce bias unless the dice are loaded. Bias is different
from error.
(Now, it could be argued that both the diceless and the diced gamesmaster may
also be biased in their treatment of known factors. Again, the difference
would be in the treatment of the unknown factors, which introduce gamesmaster
bias only in the diceless case. Now both situations are biased, but the
diceless situation has more biases - though not more error.)
(Actually, it's also true that the diceless gamesmaster could ignore the
unknown factors, assuming the median result in all cases. This would not
introduce bias, but would result in a world where a bench rifle always shot
perfect groups.)
W
Alain Lapalme
> Alain Lapalme wrote:
>
> > But, that using dice will remove GM bias, no way.
>
> Way.
>
> Remove ALL bias, no. As you note, selection critera for
> rolling can,
> and probably will, be affected by bias. But in a diceless game, if my
> bias is to prefer Course X of events, I will ALWAYS, given an iffy
> situation, choose Course X. If I am biased but using dice, I may give
> Course X a BETTER chance than it ought to have, but Course Y will
> still
> be represented.
>
> I may not want Baron Badguy to die in this combat; if
> diceless, I can
> arrange his escape whether or not that's properly fair to the player.
Sure you can but why would you if it isn't fair to the players? And How
are you going to arrange the escape? If the fight is going badly for
the Baron, and you do make him escape, it is going to look awfully
suspicious to the players. So the diceless GM better provide enough
"reasons", within context, to make it acceptable to the players. And,
the moment you start doing that, the GM's biases start to get blunted.
The way they get blunted is different than in a diced game, sure, but
the blunting still occurs.
I've had too many encounters/combat end up with the "wrong" outcome from
the I-would-have-liked-to-see-this-outcome perspective. What I want and
what turns out are rarely the same thing, with or without dice.
> With dice, assuming that the player character and Baron Badguy are
> closely enough matched that the PC has a chance, I may give Baron
> Badguy
> an unreasonably (viewed from a perfectly objective POV) good chance of
>
> getting away, but he still has a chance of getting whacked. And THAT
> means that my bias is at least partially blunted.
See my comments above about blunting.
> Dice also help to remove dithering; you have 5 likely
> outcomes, and you
> and the players disagree on which one is the right one. Rather than
> spend an hour arguing, you say "Okay, I think I'm right, you think
> you're right. We'll roll on it."
Dice can make things easier, I will not argue that.
Alain
Alain Lapalme
> Alain Lapalme posts, in part:
>
> If, in a diceless situation, you cannot take all factors into
> consideration, how can that be fixed by a die roll? You still don't
>
> know all the relevant factors. If you are trying to avoid bias, I
> don't see how rolling the die is going to do that.
>
>
> Diced: you don't know all the relevant factors, so you decide by
> rolling a die and a number compes up. What does it mean? In a
> farily
> well defined dice system, the number you come up with will usually
> provide a precise outcome.... Either you decide to apply a special
> roll modifier (which will introduce bias) or you decide to ignore
> the unknown factors (which again, introduces bias).
>
> Again, if it's a good gamesmasters, modifiers reflect known factors,
> not
> unknown factors, so a good gamesmaster will account for them fairly,
> without
> bias. As for the unknown factors, you are letting the dice determine
> them -
> you are ceding part of the world determination to the dice.
>
> It could be argued that this introduces error, in the same way as the
> diceless
> gamesmaster's use of 'personal biases' introduces bias. Both the dice
> and the
> diceless gamesmaster are making a decision based on lack of knowledge.
>
> But it doesn't introduce bias unless the dice are loaded. Bias is
> different
> from error.
>
Sure, the dice aren't loaded. I'm not going to argue that since it
would be silly. It's the application of the dice roll result that I'm
refering too. That result will be subject to the GM's biases. [or
conversely, the application of pre-roll adjustments].
> Again, the difference
> would be in the treatment of the unknown factors, which introduce
> gamesmaster
> bias only in the diceless case. Now both situations are biased, but
> the
> diceless situation has more biases - though not more error.)
You'll have to explain that one again to me. I don't see how unknown
factors are free from GM bias.
>
>
> (Actually, it's also true that the diceless gamesmaster could ignore
> the
> unknown factors, assuming the median result in all cases. This would
> not
> introduce bias, but would result in a world where a bench rifle always
> shot
> perfect groups.)
>
Dull.!
Alain
Jeff Stehman
> But in a diceless game, if my
> bias is to prefer Course X of events, I will ALWAYS, given an iffy
> situation, choose Course X.
I have the opposite problem, as I'm overly sensative to gaming bias
in myself. In this case, I'd go with Y (at least until I realized
that I was showing a bias to Y, then I'd go with X.)
--jeff
Mark Apolinski
Poor Allan. Look what he started.
Mark
Sea Wasp
We are not talking about obvious bias here. If it were obvious, you
wouldn't need dice. It's the bias that even the GM isn't sure IS bias --
where the GM thinks it's perfectly reasonable, and even the players
aren't sure.
As far as the question Alain posed about how I'd arrange Baron Badguy's
escape, it'd be a matter of the specific situation. Bias would NOT be
obvious. The day ANY of my players can tell for sure when I'm winging it
and when I'm not is the day I stop GM'ing.
Psychohist
It's the application of the dice roll result that I'm
refering too. That result will be subject to the GM's
biases.
Not for Brian or myself - we're using systems that determine what the die roll
means; no gamesmaster discretion is involved, so there is no opportunity for
gamesmaster bias.
There might be some game system designer biases, of course, but that's
different from gamesmaster biases. The players are free to examine the game
system for such system biases before deciding whether to play.
[or conversely, the application of pre-roll adjustments].
Since we're talking about unknown factors here, there are no pre-roll
adjustments, and again, no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
Warren
----
Darrel x
there is no ego conflict in your group D) your experimental E)your that good
a GM to tell a dramatic story with dramatic action scenes and still remain
unbiased despite the random element having been removed leaving the more
controlling GM the opportunity to showboat and control :]
so in summary I'm impressed
Darrel X
Alain Lapalme
> Alain Lapalme posts, in part:
>
> It's the application of the dice roll result that I'm
> refering too. That result will be subject to the GM's
> biases.
>
> Not for Brian or myself - we're using systems that determine what the
> die roll
> means; no gamesmaster discretion is involved, so there is no
> opportunity for
> gamesmaster bias.
>
So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
> There might be some game system designer biases, of course, but that's
>
> different from gamesmaster biases. The players are free to examine
> the game
> system for such system biases before deciding whether to play.
>
> [or conversely, the application of pre-roll adjustments].
>
> Since we're talking about unknown factors here, there are no pre-roll
> adjustments, and again, no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
>
>
I don't get this. Can you give an example of how you would handle that
kind of situation?
Alain
John Kim
Alain Lapalme <lap...@intranet.ca> wrote:
>Warren Dew wrote:
>> Alain Lapalme posts, in part:
>>> It's the application of the dice roll result that I'm refering
>>> too. That result will be subject to the GM's biases.
>>
>> Not for Brian or myself - we're using systems that determine what
>> the die roll means; no gamesmaster discretion is involved, so there
>> is no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
>
>So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
I think this was meant as a joke -- but it's fairly true.
As long as there are players for all the characters in a combat,
then you can do without a GM in a number of systems. I've had it
happen in several games: in combats involving a "guest villian"
player or PC-vs-PC conflict, the players involved in the combat
run what happens pretty much on their own. I've had this happen
several times in the HERO system and maybe once or twice in GURPS.
Usually conflict is against NPC's run by the GM, however, so this
isn't an option.
In fact, I think a useful criterion of a combat system is
whether it can be used in this way.
Brian Gleichman
news:37813D2F...@intranet.ca...
> So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
As John Kim has already stated, there is a great deal of truth in this.
I see most of my job as a GM being done before and after those points that
are resolved by the rules. During them I am little more than an another
player.
I think the lack of power and control of this position is one of the things
that drive people towards simple or mechanic-less systems.
Psychohist
Not for Brian or myself - we're using systems that determine
what the die roll means; no gamesmaster discretion is involved,
so there is no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
Alain Lapalme posts, in part:
So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
Not during play, for my game. I'm just needed for world creation, which is
diceless anyway.
Me:
Since we're talking about unknown factors here, there are no pre-roll
adjustments, and again, no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
Alain:
I don't get this. Can you give an example of how you would
handle that kind of situation?
I guess so, though it seems obvious. Wolf dragon (scientific name Epanterias)
bites at Janistaar, needs an 8 on 2D10 to hit. Unknown factors include whether
the wolf dragon is particularly clumsy or dextrous, whether he's having a bad
hair day, and whether the fact that he's healthy but not that hungry helps him
or hurts him.
Since these factors are unknown, they don't result in a die roll modifier.
Instead, they are part of the stuff that I never bother to figure out, and are
abstracted into the die rolls. So they are decided by the dice, without me
ever having to bother with them.
Warren
wretc...@my-deja.com
psych...@aol.com (Psychohist) wrote:
> So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
>
> Not during play, for my game. I'm just needed for world creation,
which is
> diceless anyway.
Weird. So how do you handle NPC interactions without needing a GM
present. When I GM world creation is pretty much a joint effort in
which I don't have any special privilege, but I'm needed to roleplay all
the NPCs.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Alain Lapalme
> Alain Lapalme <lap...@intranet.ca> wrote:
> >Warren Dew wrote:
> >> Alain Lapalme posts, in part:
> >>> It's the application of the dice roll result that I'm refering
> >>> too. That result will be subject to the GM's biases.
> >>
> >> Not for Brian or myself - we're using systems that determine what
> >> the die roll means; no gamesmaster discretion is involved, so there
>
> >> is no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
> >
> >So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
>
> I think this was meant as a joke -- but it's fairly true.
Well, on this board, some jokes are more obvious than others... :(
> As long as there are players for all the characters in a combat,
> then you can do without a GM in a number of systems. I've had it
> happen in several games: in combats involving a "guest villian"
> player or PC-vs-PC conflict, the players involved in the combat
> run what happens pretty much on their own. I've had this happen
> several times in the HERO system and maybe once or twice in GURPS.
> Usually conflict is against NPC's run by the GM, however, so this
> isn't an option.
>
> In fact, I think a useful criterion of a combat system is
> whether it can be used in this way.
Agreed. However...
My experience with a wide range of TableTop combat system (Ancients up
to the Napoleonic period) has shown that while you can forego with a
referee for some systems, all of them eventually hit the wall of "the
designers forgot about this" and somebody has to decide. But, I agree
that, for some combat systems, these cases are not common.
Alain
Alain Lapalme
> In response to me:
>
> Not for Brian or myself - we're using systems that determine
> what the die roll means; no gamesmaster discretion is involved,
> so there is no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
>
> Alain Lapalme posts, in part:
>
> So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
>
> Not during play, for my game. I'm just needed for world creation,
> which is
> diceless anyway.
>
Hmm...are we talking only about combat here or all interactions?
> Me:
>
> Since we're talking about unknown factors here, there are no
> pre-roll
> adjustments, and again, no opportunity for gamesmaster bias.
>
> Alain:
>
> I don't get this. Can you give an example of how you would
> handle that kind of situation?
>
> I guess so, though it seems obvious.
Well, yes and no. I figured that what you meant is what follows.
However, I would rather ask a dumb question and get a clear answer than
make invalid assumptions.
> Wolf dragon (scientific name Epanterias)
> bites at Janistaar, needs an 8 on 2D10 to hit. Unknown factors
> include whether
> the wolf dragon is particularly clumsy or dextrous, whether he's
> having a bad
> hair day, and whether the fact that he's healthy but not that hungry
> helps him
> or hurts him.
>
> Since these factors are unknown, they don't result in a die roll
> modifier.
> Instead, they are part of the stuff that I never bother to figure out,
> and are
> abstracted into the die rolls. So they are decided by the dice,
> without me
> ever having to bother with them.
>
>
I hate to sound finicky and picky but the above paragraph is exactly
what I mean by Gm bias. The dice have not eliminated it, they have just
moved it elsewhere. Now, I will easily grant you that this might be
sufficient for many people. For me though, that kind of situational
modifiers is what adds spice and uncertainty to a game. If they are
ignored, well, I feel cheated. My preference obviously!
Alain
Alain Lapalme
> Alain Lapalme <lap...@intranet.ca> wrote in message
> news:37813D2F...@intranet.ca...
>
> > So, that means you don't need a GM at all, right!
>
> As John Kim has already stated, there is a great deal of truth in
> this.
>
> I see most of my job as a GM being done before and after those points
> that
> are resolved by the rules. During them I am little more than an
> another
> player.
>
> I think the lack of power and control of this position is one of the
> things
> that drive people towards simple or mechanic-less systems.
Not sure I follow you here. I thought the whole point of your approach
was to control the GM so as to prevent bias. It's not a lack of
control, it's a lot of apparent control.
Alain
Brian Gleichman
> > I think the lack of power and control of this position is one of the
> > things
> > that drive people towards simple or mechanic-less systems.
>
> Not sure I follow you here. I thought the whole point of your approach
> was to control the GM so as to prevent bias. It's not a lack of
> control, it's a lot of apparent control.
I was referring to GM when I said "lack of power and control", i.e. that
"power and control" are denied him. Sorry I wasn't more clear.
--
Brian Gleichman
Age of Heroes: www.netcom.com/~gleichmn
Justin Bacon
writes:
>> I don't consider what I've done 'attacking you for your heresy'; I
>> consider it demonstrating why your preference for it derives from
>> specific things you want out of the game, and why it's badly suited
>> for many players.
>
>That was a joke Nightshade. And not directed at anyone specific.
Nightshade, you have to understand, is a master of detecting hostility where
none is present and assuming it is directed towards him.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Denakhan the Arch-Mage
>
> then you can do without a GM in a number of systems. I've had it
> happen in several games: in combats involving a "guest villian"
> player or PC-vs-PC conflict, the players involved in the combat
> run what happens pretty much on their own. I've had this happen
> several times in the HERO system and maybe once or twice in GURPS.
> Usually conflict is against NPC's run by the GM, however, so this
> isn't an option.
How would a PC-vs-PC fight work in a diceless game? Just curious. I
can see it boiling down to one of two things:
1) "I win"....."No I win!"...."NO. I win!"...."No! I do!"...etc....
2) the smarter/more intelligent PLAYER will win; his characters actual
fighting ability won't matter much, after all, it is the players decisions
that will determine success and not "I have +3 to hit and you only have +1".
^_^
Denakhan the Arch-Mage
Reimer Behrends
[...]
> How would a PC-vs-PC fight work in a diceless game? Just curious. I
> can see it boiling down to one of two things:
> 1) "I win"....."No I win!"...."NO. I win!"...."No! I do!"...etc....
> 2) the smarter/more intelligent PLAYER will win; his characters actual
> fighting ability won't matter much, after all, it is the players decisions
> that will determine success and not "I have +3 to hit and you only have +1".
3) The players are mature enough not to turn an inter-character conflict
into an inter-player conflict, but rather handle it to the best of
their ability. It's no harder (but also not easier) than just about
any other part of diceless gaming.
"Thou shalt not create straw men, lest they go up in flames."
Sarah Kahn had a great example of how this can work, but Deja News seems
to have decided to purge archives any longer than about a year back. Sigh.
Reimer Behrends
Mary K. Kuhner
> How would a PC-vs-PC fight work in a diceless game? Just curious. I
>can see it boiling down to one of two things:
> 1) "I win"....."No I win!"...."NO. I win!"...."No! I do!"...etc....
> 2) the smarter/more intelligent PLAYER will win; his characters actual
>fighting ability won't matter much, after all, it is the players decisions
>that will determine success and not "I have +3 to hit and you only have +1".
Frequently there is some way to look at the characters and situation
that makes the outcome pretty clear, and then all that's necessary is
for the two players involved to discuss the situation and mutually
arrive at the answer.
It's harder if the fight would naturally be very close. One helpful
thing is that PCs have styles, and so it isn't just the player's skill
involved, it's also the style-vs-style interaction. For example,
we might note that if Vikki can give Markus a chance to show off,
Markus will probably take it, and this will let Vikki have a shot at
him. Both Markus' and Vikki's players (okay, in this case there's
only one player, but I think the principle generalizes) have to
acknowledge that yes, that's what Markus would do, and yes, Vikki
knows it.
We don't do diceless combat, but our space-opera game has PC/PC
verbal struggles, and these are resolved dicelessly. It doesn't
usually seem too hard. Lethal conflict would be harder, but lethal
conflict among PCs is hard in almost any game.
I think the essential thing is a certain amount of externalizing of
the character and situation, so that you can separate the part of
you that's saying "Okay, who would win this?" from the part that's
being the character, and still do justice to both parts. I find
this somewhat distracting, which is one reason we don't handle
combat that way.
If winning PC/PC combat is a central theme of the game you almost
surely don't want to do diceless. It strikes me as about the worst
possible case for the techniques. But for a rare and exceptional
PC/PC conflict it can work.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Russell Wallace
> How would a PC-vs-PC fight work in a diceless game?
From context, you seem to specifically mean PC-vs-PC fights without a GM
present, so I'll address that.
IME, lethal fights of this type usually don't. It takes a very unusual
player to agree that you've just killed his character when he could come
up with a reasonable argument to the contrary, at least if "you" are
another player and therefore lack the GM's presumed moral authority.
The solution to this is to try to keep it nonlethal. Both players need
to be mature enough to refrain from saying "I blow your head off with my
shotgun" and instead say "I fire a shotgun blast at your head" and
accept, say, "I duck and dive out the window while you're reloading" in
reply. By keeping the stakes a bit lower, you can get agreement on
victory/defeat with a reasonable rather than extraordinary degree of
maturity on the part of the players.
So there is a sense in which dice+mechanics can handle this better, if
you want to be able to run lethal PC-vs-PC combat without a GM present.
(Since I generally don't like this sort of combat, I don't generally
find this to be an advantage.)
I should add that, where the PCs are closely matched, a commonly adopted
solution is to ask a third player to referee the fight, and/or to just
use dice for the occasion.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Psychohist
Hmm...are we talking only about combat here or all
interactions?
Oops, I wasn't clear. I meant diced interactions (including but not limited to
combat), and more generally, adjudications covered by the rules (which should
be most of them, by my preference).
The gamesmaster still has the same freedom in deciding what 'named' gamesmaster
characters do as the players in deciding what the player characters do.
> Since these factors are unknown, they don't result in a die roll modifier.
> Instead, they are part of the stuff that I never bother to figure out, and
are
> abstracted into the die rolls. So they are decided by the dice, without me
> ever having to bother with them.
I hate to sound finicky and picky but the above paragraph is exactly
what I mean by Gm bias. The dice have not eliminated it, they have just
moved it elsewhere.
I don't understand here. How is 'abstracting into die rolls' biased? (Keeping
in mind that the abstraction system is mechanical, written down, and not
subject to change by players or gamesmaster.) Or is that what you mean?
Or are we just using different definitions of 'bias'? I'm basically using the
statisticians' definition; by that definition, die rolls are not biased.
For me though, that kind of situational
modifiers is what adds spice and uncertainty to a game. If they are
ignored, well, I feel cheated. My preference obviously!
This part I can understand.
Warren
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
John Kim
a diceless game. He suggests that while lethal fights likely
will not work, but that non-lethal combat may -- depending on the
maturity of the players.
Russell Wallace <mano...@iol.ie> wrote:
>The solution to this is to try to keep it nonlethal. Both players
>need to be mature enough to refrain from saying "I blow your head
>off with my shotgun" and instead say "I fire a shotgun blast at your
>head" and accept, say, "I duck and dive out the window while you're
>reloading" in reply. By keeping the stakes a bit lower, you can get
>agreement on victory/defeat with a reasonable rather than extraordinary
>degree of maturity on the part of the players.
Hm. Actually, the third statement seems very much like
the first statement to me... the player declares not only his
attempt, but the success of his action and the implied action of
the opposing PC (reloading). Regardless of how the shooting player
declares it, how do you determine whether or not the shotgun blast
hits? Your example seems to assume that the target PC could at any
point successfully dodge by declaring so, but that the attacking PC
cannot declare a successful attack.
I think maturity on the part of the players is going to
keep them from getting angry, but to some extent it simply covers
over the basic problem of objectivity. The exchange of declarations
shown (where the intention to attack is declared and the target
responds) means that each player is responsible for resolving the
success of attacks against him.
One of the annoyances I have with this sort of narrative
combat is the tendency for results to be determined by non-standard
tricks and risky maneuvers rather than methodical techniques. An
extreme example of this is the phenomena in _Star Trek: TNG_ where
the Enterprise never actually defeats their foes by using their
weapons, but rather by jury-rigged plasma bursts, warp core
ejections, etc. The skills of fighting like fencing and karate
were developed because they work: and winning fights should
commonly be a matter of successfully applying them.
However, sticking to these generally means that the
situation is still unresolved. i.e. Player A tries a maneuver,
and player B attempts the trained counter-maneuver. Who succeeds?
It is unclear from the narrative. Thus, the narrative tries to push
the idea that jumping outside of trained skills will bring success.
I don't really buy it, personally.
-*-*-*-
>
>So there is a sense in which dice+mechanics can handle this better,
>if you want to be able to run lethal PC-vs-PC combat without a GM
>present. (Since I generally don't like this sort of combat, I don't
>generally find this to be an advantage.)
I agree that lethal PC-vs-PC fights are bad for a campaign
game (although I think they can be neat for one-off games). However,
many of the same basic features of PC-vs-PC are also present in
PC-vs-NPC. I think it is a useful case to study, at least.
>
>I should add that, where the PCs are closely matched, a commonly
>adopted solution is to ask a third player to referee the fight, and/or
>to just use dice for the occasion.
When you say "commonly adopted", what do you mean? How many
diceless PC-vs-PC fights have you actually seen without the GM
adjudicating?
Brian Gleichman
news:7mgc93$g...@news.service.uci.edu...
> An extreme example of this is the phenomena in _Star Trek:
> TNG_ where the Enterprise never actually defeats their foes
> by using their weapons, but rather by jury-rigged plasma
> bursts, warp core ejections, etc.
YES!
I hate that with such passion. Truly hate. Really really hate. Big huge
globs of hate. HATE HATE HATE.
It's done of course by people committed to the concept that violence never
solves anything. Plus there're the fact that they have a complete lack of
any military concepts. So one shouldn't expect anything better.
Did I mention I don't like it.
Oh, by the way John- agree with the rest of your post. Nicely done.
Russell Wallace
> Russell Wallace <mano...@iol.ie> wrote:
> >The solution to this is to try to keep it nonlethal. Both players
> >need to be mature enough to refrain from saying "I blow your head
> >off with my shotgun" and instead say "I fire a shotgun blast at your
> >head" and accept, say, "I duck and dive out the window while you're
> >reloading" in reply. By keeping the stakes a bit lower, you can get
> >agreement on victory/defeat with a reasonable rather than extraordinary
> >degree of maturity on the part of the players.
>
> Hm. Actually, the third statement seems very much like
> the first statement to me... the player declares not only his
> attempt, but the success of his action and the implied action of
> the opposing PC (reloading). Regardless of how the shooting player
> declares it, how do you determine whether or not the shotgun blast
> hits? Your example seems to assume that the target PC could at any
> point successfully dodge by declaring so, but that the attacking PC
> cannot declare a successful attack.
>
> I think maturity on the part of the players is going to
> keep them from getting angry, but to some extent it simply covers
> over the basic problem of objectivity. The exchange of declarations
> shown (where the intention to attack is declared and the target
> responds) means that each player is responsible for resolving the
> success of attacks against him.
Yes, that's precisely it. Indeed on some MUSHes, this is explicitly
stated as part of the game contract (this sort of contract is commonly
known as "consent based"): You can pose trying to harm someone else's
character, but it's up to them to decide whether the attempt succeeds or
not.
> One of the annoyances I have with this sort of narrative
> combat is the tendency for results to be determined by non-standard
> tricks and risky maneuvers rather than methodical techniques. An
> extreme example of this is the phenomena in _Star Trek: TNG_ where
> the Enterprise never actually defeats their foes by using their
> weapons, but rather by jury-rigged plasma bursts, warp core
> ejections, etc. The skills of fighting like fencing and karate
> were developed because they work: and winning fights should
> commonly be a matter of successfully applying them.
I agree, this is a real problem, *with this particular type of combat
resolution*.
> However, sticking to these generally means that the
> situation is still unresolved. i.e. Player A tries a maneuver,
> and player B attempts the trained counter-maneuver. Who succeeds?
> It is unclear from the narrative.
In this type of combat resolution, yes.
Note that this is not at all the typical diceless/mechanicless case
though. The typical case is: the GM decides, based primarily on the
characters' combat skills.
Indeed, skills like fencing and karate often make a bigger difference
than they do for diced gaming (where random chance is often the dominant
factor).
(Amber gets a lot of press for the 'you have to find a special trick'
stuff. Remember, though, that the default situation for Amber is: more
skilled fighter wins.)
> I agree that lethal PC-vs-PC fights are bad for a campaign
> game (although I think they can be neat for one-off games). However,
> many of the same basic features of PC-vs-PC are also present in
> PC-vs-NPC. I think it is a useful case to study, at least.
This has not at all been my experience. IME, PC-vs-PC fights are very
dissimilar to PC-vs-NPC; and the difference becomes much greater with no
GM to adjudicate. The current case of PC-vs-PC with no referee I have
found to have very little in common with other types of combat.
> >I should add that, where the PCs are closely matched, a commonly
> >adopted solution is to ask a third player to referee the fight, and/or
> >to just use dice for the occasion.
>
> When you say "commonly adopted", what do you mean? How many
> diceless PC-vs-PC fights have you actually seen without the GM
> adjudicating?
Quite a few. Several tens to a couple of hundred (not very precise,
sorry, I haven't been counting :))
(PS. Someone - I forget who - said the DejaNews archives prior to last
year are no longer available. I checked with them, and apparently it's
temporary, and they'll be back as soon as a technical fault is sorted
out.)
Nightshade
>Yes, that's precisely it. Indeed on some MUSHes, this is explicitly
>stated as part of the game contract (this sort of contract is commonly
>known as "consent based"): You can pose trying to harm someone else's
>character, but it's up to them to decide whether the attempt succeeds or
>not.
Ironically, this is the sort of MUSH I regularly play on. Of course,
I've sighed rather loudly at it's failures in this setting on
occasion, too.
>(Amber gets a lot of press for the 'you have to find a special trick'
>stuff. Remember, though, that the default situation for Amber is: more
>skilled fighter wins.)
Except he does it every time, barring a special trick. That's part of
my problem with it. The little things that often make the difference
between closely...and sometimes not so closely...matched opponents are
washed away because they're below the GMs attention level.
Kevin R. Hardwick
>
> One of the annoyances I have with this sort of narrative
>combat is the tendency for results to be determined by non-standard
>tricks and risky maneuvers rather than methodical techniques.
Yes--I share this concern as well.
I think the aesthetic behind the adjudication matters a great deal. As a GM,
my first priority is the sense of verisimilitude of my players--so once it was
brought to my attention that there was a problem, I'd take steps to make sure
it did not recur. When you are working in a low-mechanics environment, the
substitute for the objective structure provided by the mechanics is the "sense"
of the group--so a game guided by this aesthetic depends, IME (take that for
what it is worth) upon constant communication between GM and players, and
between player and player for that matter--this is true in any game, of
course, but IME even more so in a low-mechanics game.
There are other aesthetic issues here too. There are several flavors of
diceless game. In the kind most often discussed here, the game is
anti-simulationist. That is, the GM substitutes criteria drawn from her sense
of the narrative for criteria that stem from an attempt to model objectively
the behavior of the game world. In the kind of diceless game that David
Berkman advocated, the GM determined outcomes based on her sense of what was
good for the game-narrative, a criterion entirely *exogeneous* to the model of
the game world. In that kind of game, the situation you describe above does
not *have* to happen, of necessity, although I agree with you that in practice
it often does. I think there is often a tendency towards over-the-top
melodrama in narrative-intensive games--it was something that we really had to
guard against when we experimented with it.
But the more interesting case, for me, is the diceless simulationist. Here the
primary concern is not with narrative but with producing an internally
consistent world. I think to some degree Amber diceless is an example of this
kind of game. I came to prefer this kind of game because the *ordinary*
results felt more real to me, subjectively. There is a real trade off to be
made here, and neither situation is entirely desirable: usable mechanics tend
to be fairly crude, and that does violence, for me anyway, to the subjective
experience I'm looking for. Reliance on the all-too-human judgement of the GM
and players is quite often inconsistent--and that does violence to the
experience too. I don't think there is an ultimate answer to this--you are
damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
I did ultimately come to the conclusion that some kind of random factor was
necessary in order to jog the GM out of ruts, and hence predictability. I
wrote about this, John, elsewhere in the thread, so I won't go into it again
here. So the issues I'm exploring here are not really diceless/diced per se,
but rather to what extent you want to rely on the judgement of the GM and
players, versus a common statistical model that operates to some degree
independently of human judgement.
My best,
Kevin