Mind Magic
Athanasia Steele
effects that were impossible. Among other things, there existed
no necromancy, spirit magic, or mind magic. Consequently, I
never had to deal with the question of how to handle the effects
of magical mental coercion upon characters.
I've been contemplating running in a setting where such magic
does exist. I always try to run in a fashion that would accommodate
my own preferred playing style, and I'm one of those people who
detest personality and behavioral mechanics first on the ground
that they interfere with my version of immersion, and second
because having anyone or anything else controlling my character
is repugnant. It is, therefore, technically difficult to figure out
how to GM mind magic in a fashion that I would find tolerable.
Mary's already given me one handy tip in the form of distinguishing
between inputs to the character model and outputs. I think I could
probably handle it, as a player, if it were portrayed in the fashion
in which it occurred between Valentine and Aaron; but it also seems
as if it would take very considerable artistry to do it that well. I
think I can do that sometimes; I'm not sure I could do it reliably
(although perhaps if I didn't do it well, it could simply be that the
effect failed).
What else is there to be said about running mind magic? Have you
seen it handled well? How did it work and why? And have you
seen it handled badly? Why didn't it work well?
If I don't think I can manage it with respect to PCs in a suitably
light-handed manner, there's the possibility of setting it up so
that it only works on particular sorts of magical creatures, and
doesn't work on humans. Then I'd build the campaign so that the
PCs would all be human.
If it does work on humans, how do you feel about one PC trying
to use it on another?
--
Athanasia Steele
airaz...@mail.com.clip
http://azurite.betterbox.net/
Remove '.clip' from address to send email.
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
wrote:
>
> What else is there to be said about running mind magic? Have you
> seen it handled well? How did it work and why? And have you
> seen it handled badly? Why didn't it work well?
When I build magic systems, mind-magic is common, simply because it
makes magic feel magical to me. There are four kinds of mind magic
that I distinguish: mind control, mind reading, and emotion-dependent.
o Emotion-dependent. This is magic that depends on a character being
in a particular emotional state in order to work.
For example, a shapechanging spell might only work when the caster
is disoriented and unsure of her boundaries, and a deathspell might
only work on subjects the mage truly hates.
o Mind control. This is magic that makes a person do something. It
can range from altering memories and motivations to turning the
target into an animate puppet.
o Mind reading. This is magic that permits the magician to read a
person's mind.
They are listed in rough order of how hard they are to run IME.
One thing that makes mind-control *much* harder to roleplay is if they
are subtle effects -- it's just really hard to roleplay, if a PC's
memories can be altered without his realizing it. This is because
memories aren't single thing; there are whole chains of connections
that get disrupted and figuring out what is and isn't affected is a
real pain in the ass. The only time I've managed it successfully I
needed a lot of GM coaching to help me remember, *and* I was playing a
basket case who mostly didn't notice incoherencies in her perceptions.
Another thing (that's true for all supernatural powers, not just mind
magic) is that the abilities and limits of the magic should be public
knowledge. This permits your characters to take magic into account in
their planning. In this vein there should also be some effective ways
of detecting people and removing under mental influences.
I find mind-reading to be more campaign-busting than mind-control,
because it means that keeping secrets gets very much harder. A lot of
character concepts and institutions require secrecy to work, and this
makes them harder to manage.
> If it does work on humans, how do you feel about one PC trying
> to use it on another?
I'd okay it. But I'd also accept it if the other PCs became angry to
the point of murder at that kind of intrusion. This is a response you
may wish to institutionalize -- eg, in the D&D game I play in charms
and enchantments are regarded as a death-penalty-with-no-resurrection
crime.
Neel
Strider Starslayer
magic and necromancy into your campaign- here's one of the big ones, and the
balance issues that should keep either in check
1) Is magic known <The answer that's easiest to work with here is actually
yes>- If it is then there are LAWS regulating it's use, and most of those
laws will fall upon mind magic, and necromancy. <Shooting someone with a
fireball would be considered assault with a deadly weapon, but it's not
going to be completely illegal to use.>. Now since there are laws, the
crimes around certain magic use will be pretty severe, since it can be
agured that a person is nothing more then a compilation of memories changing
memories could be constituted as murder, or at least attempted murder; more
then enough incentive to get a 'good' person to avoid it, and enough reason
for a 'normal' or 'evil' one to use it only in extreme situations. Next
since rape could be construed as 'forcing someone to perform acts for you'
use of any charm or dominating spell could be constituted as rape, or at the
very least, forced imprisonment- something you could use in a fight for your
life without too many questions, but not something you could use on a
shopkeeper to get a good deal, or a woman to get a date, once again the
above restrictions on the 'type' of personalities that will use this magic
apply.
If magic is not known;
If no one except mages know about magic, and they keep it's existance a
secret, then mind magic becomes not only untracabal, but nessassary <moreso
if the grewsome results of necromancy are viewed by someone who shoulden't
see it.> every time the 'secret' is in danger some mage somewhere is going
to have to use mind magic to prevent it from getting out. In a world where
magic is unknown and there isin't some band of mages who personally take it
upon themselves to make sure the secret is kept it would be somewhat foolish
to not build a mage without at least the ability to change memories. Charm
and dominate spells would be the standard for when a mage goes shoping, but
some care would have to be taken to not *abuse* the power so that you start
attracting attention <angry villagers with torches and pitchforks, or far
more frightening is there modern equivalent- frightened city-folk with guns
and molitov cocktails. These factors should keep mages in check, using
there powers only when it's convient and safe, or when someone's life is in
danger- the alingment of your players dosen't really matter, save that the
'neutral' will get stuff almost for free, and the 'evil' will be a rich
cassanova without having any social skills or money making ability.
Russell Wallace
<airaz...@mail.com.clip> wrote:
[mind control magic]
>If it does work on humans, how do you feel about one PC trying
>to use it on another?
How do you feel about one PC trying to rape another?
A reasonable solution to that is to timeout and tell the player to
tone down his behavior, play a different character or find a different
campaign to play in. Mind control is IMO the equivalent of rape, and
can be handled the same way.
The major difference is that there _are_ circumstances in which mind
control is morally justified - e.g. making an enemy not kill you.
Named villains will usually be pretty resistant to it, so in practice
this usually comes down to using it on average grunt bad guys. ("These
aren't the droids you're looking for.") A dice roll generally handles
that reasonably well.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
mailto:rwal...@esatclear.ie
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace
Athanasia Steele
Wallace) wrote:
>On Sun, 29 Apr 2001 03:19:52 -0400, Athanasia Steele
><airaz...@mail.com.clip> wrote:
>
>[mind control magic]
>
>>If it does work on humans, how do you feel about one PC trying
>>to use it on another?
>
>How do you feel about one PC trying to rape another?
I'd toss anybody who suggested it.
<snip>
>The major difference is that there _are_ circumstances in which mind
>control is morally justified - e.g. making an enemy not kill you.
>Named villains will usually be pretty resistant to it, so in practice
>this usually comes down to using it on average grunt bad guys. ("These
>aren't the droids you're looking for.") A dice roll generally handles
>that reasonably well.
I'm currently toying with the idea that with most forms it takes
both time and physical contact, and isn't something that could be
done to someone passing on the street, say. This would certainly
reduce the effects I don't want to deal with. I'm thinking about
that; I'm not sure whether it's sufficient yet.
Bradd W. Szonye
>There are four kinds of mind magic that I distinguish: mind control,
>mind reading, and emotion-dependent.
I'm sure that it's just an editorial mistake on Neel's part, but this
sentence makes so much more sense if you read it as:
There are four kinds of mind magic that I distinguish: mind control,
mind reading, [fnord,] and emotion-dependent.
Then again, I suppose it's redundant, with mind-control already in the
list.
--
Bradd W. Szonye Work: br...@cup.hp.com
Software Design Engineer Home: bra...@concentric.net
Hewlett-Packard Cupertino Site, iFL Phone: 408-447-4832
Wayne Shaw
>does exist. I always try to run in a fashion that would accommodate
>my own preferred playing style, and I'm one of those people who
>detest personality and behavioral mechanics first on the ground
>that they interfere with my version of immersion, and second
>because having anyone or anything else controlling my character
>is repugnant. It is, therefore, technically difficult to figure out
>how to GM mind magic in a fashion that I would find tolerable.
>
>Mary's already given me one handy tip in the form of distinguishing
>between inputs to the character model and outputs. I think I could
>probably handle it, as a player, if it were portrayed in the fashion
>in which it occurred between Valentine and Aaron; but it also seems
>as if it would take very considerable artistry to do it that well. I
>think I can do that sometimes; I'm not sure I could do it reliably
>(although perhaps if I didn't do it well, it could simply be that the
>effect failed).
As a side note, and this may be a nonissue with the people you play
with, the "input" approach only works when you have players who can
get beyond their own antipathy to outside control of the character.
If they consciously or subconsciously resist, it's a useless
procedure, as they simply won't respond to the input modification
unless you hide it with consummate skill, and there are situations
where that's not possible (magic being used to create internal strife
in a party by coloring their views of their interactions, for
example).
>
>What else is there to be said about running mind magic? Have you
>seen it handled well? How did it work and why? And have you
>seen it handled badly? Why didn't it work well?
I think it's simply the slightly easier case of the problems created
by in-character social skills; the latter always, to some extent,
abrogate player choice if they're to be meaningful. The best I've
ever seen is to get the group contract worked out such that the
players understand you actually expect them to factor in such things,
and such that you understand the limits to which they're willing to do
it. It's ground frought with hazard, though.
>If it does work on humans, how do you feel about one PC trying
>to use it on another?
Well, personally I don't find it any more or less acceptable than I do
any other in-group conflict, but it compounds the problem I discuss
above. But then, I'm far more tolerant of influence mechanics as a
player than many are, and am willing to go along with the flow as long
as I'm permitted to express the response rather than have it expressed
for me.
Mary K. Kuhner
Athanasia Steele <airaz...@mail.com.clip> wrote:
>What else is there to be said about running mind magic? Have you
>seen it handled well? How did it work and why? And have you
>seen it handled badly? Why didn't it work well?
Our Shadowrun game had a PC telepath. We found it helpful to
limit her via the following:
(1) It was possible for people, even mundane people, to notice
that their minds were being read, and if they did notice they'd
have a fair guess who it was. Channa spent a bad afternoon in
a police station over this one.
(2) It was far from guaranteed that Channa could find the information
she needed, unless she knew to look for it. The most awful instance
of this in the campaign went something like "How come you didn't
notice the toystore owner was a werewolf?" "Well, it wasn't the
obvious thing to look for! And he had it pretty well repressed."
(3) Reading the minds of people who were inhuman in one way or
another--highly cybernetic, highly magical, or insane--was hard
on Channa, and risky, and tended to give difficult-to-interpret
results. This required a lot of player cooperation as it wasn't
something the GM could really enforce, only describe.
There were several people in the setting (eventually including
one of the other PCs) whose minds Channa flatly refused to read.
I have found that if you don't make telepathy (or truth magic, but
telepathy is worse because more subtle) somewhat limited, it
tends to kill many otherwise interesting events and plotlines, and
also to destablize situations so badly that it's hard for the GM
to work out what would happen. Almost nothing produces such a
sudden and disasterous PC "turtle" as realizing that all of your
plans may be open knowledge to the enemy.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>There are four kinds of mind magic that I distinguish: mind control,
>>mind reading, and emotion-dependent.
>
>I'm sure that it's just an editorial mistake on Neel's part, but this
>sentence makes so much more sense if you read it as:
>
> There are four kinds of mind magic that I distinguish: mind control,
> mind reading, [fnord,] and emotion-dependent.
>
> Then again, I suppose it's redundant, with mind-control already in the
> list.
The truth is much more prosaic, sadly. :)
In the original draft of my article, I had distinguished memory
alterations from mind control, but decided to glom them back together
because the difficulties in play IME are much the same. Apparently
I failed to adjust "four" to "three".
Neel
Bradd W. Szonye
>As a side note, and this may be a nonissue with the people you play
>you have players who can get beyond their own antipathy to outside
>control of the character. If they consciously or subconsciously resist,
>it's a useless procedure, as they simply won't respond to the input
>modification unless you hide it with consummate skill, and there are
>situations where that's not possible (magic being used to create
>internal strife in a party by coloring their views of their
>interactions, for example).
Strangely enough, I've played with people who handle mind control just
fine but who would balk at an attempt to force the result of a diplomacy
skill check on them. Pull a player aside and say, "The vampire has
dominated your will. You are his ally now. Behave appropriately." In my
college group, players would just take that in stride -- they'd take it
as a rare opportunity to compete with the other players instead of
cooperating with them.
Compare this to social-skill mechanics: Tell them that they believe the
foreign diplomat, and they feel like you're abrogating their free will
and player skill. Tell them to kill the rest of the players (but that
they're otherwise unconstrained), and there's no problem; you haven't
affected their ability to play the character, just a small part of his
personality.
(That's not to say that they always *enjoyed* being turned by the enemy.
However, it wouldn't result in the same howls of protest as eliminating
a social option. There's a subtle but important difference in there
somewhere.)
>>What else is there to be said about running mind magic? Have you seen
>>it handled well? How did it work and why? And have you seen it handled
>>badly? Why didn't it work well?
>
>I think it's simply the slightly easier case of the problems created
>by in-character social skills; the latter always, to some extent,
>abrogate player choice if they're to be meaningful.
Yep. Personally, I see it as a big problem as a GM, even as a gamist GM:
I'm simply not that good of a diplomat or bluffer, so I *need* the
skills of my NPCs as a crutch. This is one of the many reasons why I'm
occasionally inclined towards personality mechanics despite the fact
that I'm a gamist GM.
One thing that's actually helped me out is the D&D "Sense Motive" skill.
This is how it works in my current campaign: Sometimes, I'll say
something as an NPC that just doesn't quite sound right. Sometimes it's
because I'm lying, and sometimes it's just because I stuttered or didn't
have something prepared properly. The players call for a Sense Motive
check. I use the result of the check to let them know whether the
character believes the NPC, and they act on it appropriately. This is
*much* better than having the players simply act on my (bad) portrayal,
because (1) it sometimes allows my NPCs to lie better than I can, and
(2) it deals with the situations where the NPC is honest but I just
didn't play it properly. While the players may still be suspicious, they
usually firewall that suspicion properly.
In a way, it's a very low-key personality mechanic: It still allows for
player choice, but it smoothes over some of the problems of having a
less-than-stellar roleplayer as a GM.
--
Bradd W. Szonye Hewlett-Packard: Home:
Software Engineer br...@cup.hp.com bra...@concentric.net
408-447-4832 http://www.concentric.net/~Bradds
Bradd W. Szonye
>Our Shadowrun game had a PC telepath. We found it helpful to
>limit her via the following:
>
>(2) It was far from guaranteed that Channa could find the information
>she needed, unless she knew to look for it.
>another--highly cybernetic, highly magical, or insane--was hard
>on Channa, and risky, and tended to give difficult-to-interpret
>results.
Hey, this is really elegant. I'll have to tuck it away somewhere in my
mind ... hopefully I'll remember when the chance comes up to use it.
Wayne Shaw
wrote:
>Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>>As a side note, and this may be a nonissue with the people you play
>>with, the "input" approach [to mind-influencing magic] only works when
>>you have players who can get beyond their own antipathy to outside
>>control of the character. If they consciously or subconsciously resist,
>>it's a useless procedure, as they simply won't respond to the input
>>modification unless you hide it with consummate skill, and there are
>>situations where that's not possible (magic being used to create
>>internal strife in a party by coloring their views of their
>>interactions, for example).
>
>Strangely enough, I've played with people who handle mind control just
>fine but who would balk at an attempt to force the result of a diplomacy
>skill check on them. Pull a player aside and say, "The vampire has
Some people have the, to me, slightly strange border condition that
magical compulsion (and even stranger, influence) is okay, but mundane
methods aren't. As far as I can tell, it's based around the odd idea
that only the weak minded are subject to influence.
>Compare this to social-skill mechanics: Tell them that they believe the
>foreign diplomat, and they feel like you're abrogating their free will
>and player skill. Tell them to kill the rest of the players (but that
>they're otherwise unconstrained), and there's no problem; you haven't
>affected their ability to play the character, just a small part of his
>personality.
I think the best way usually is to say "your character finds the
diplomat's arguments persuasive", but as I noted, that only works if
the players are capable of at least somewhat stepping back from their
association with the character.
>>I think it's simply the slightly easier case of the problems created
>>by in-character social skills; the latter always, to some extent,
>>abrogate player choice if they're to be meaningful.
>
>Yep. Personally, I see it as a big problem as a GM, even as a gamist GM:
>I'm simply not that good of a diplomat or bluffer, so I *need* the
>skills of my NPCs as a crutch. This is one of the many reasons why I'm
>occasionally inclined towards personality mechanics despite the fact
>that I'm a gamist GM.
Actually, I'd argue that they're a quite legitimate gamist concept.
The problem they run into cuts across styles to a large extent: player
autonomy.
>
>One thing that's actually helped me out is the D&D "Sense Motive" skill.
>This is how it works in my current campaign: Sometimes, I'll say
>something as an NPC that just doesn't quite sound right. Sometimes it's
>because I'm lying, and sometimes it's just because I stuttered or didn't
>have something prepared properly. The players call for a Sense Motive
>check. I use the result of the check to let them know whether the
>character believes the NPC, and they act on it appropriately. This is
>*much* better than having the players simply act on my (bad) portrayal,
>because (1) it sometimes allows my NPCs to lie better than I can, and
>(2) it deals with the situations where the NPC is honest but I just
>didn't play it properly. While the players may still be suspicious, they
>usually firewall that suspicion properly.
Counterskill rolls certainly can help, but only if people can accept
they actually need the skills, and can't just blow it off.
Unfortunately, that's not always the case.
>
>In a way, it's a very low-key personality mechanic: It still allows for
>player choice, but it smoothes over some of the problems of having a
>less-than-stellar roleplayer as a GM.
As I said, there's a lot of light personality/infuence mechanics that
can work if people aren't utterly diehards when it comes to opposition
to paying attention to mechanical influence systems.
John Kim
whole thread here (sorry).
Anyhow, in my experience, the cases of mind control which worked
best with the players were either (1) a subtle influence where the exact
extent is left up to the player; or (2) totally possessing the PC, where
the player is now secretly playing the controlling personality. I have
had several cases of #2, and in all of them the player has had no problem
with it -- and in fact has usually enjoyed actively playing the bad
guy or alien.
The key, I think, is that it is vital to leave the *player* in
control even if the PC is not. Strong mind control where the PC is
being ordered about but trying to resist generally leaves the player
with little to do.
--
John H. Kim | Whatever else is true you
jh...@fnal.gov | Trust your little finger
www.ps.uci.edu/~jhkim | Just a single little finger can
UC Irvine, Cal, USA | Save the world. - Steven Sondheim, "Assassins"
Bradd W. Szonye
>Anyhow, in my experience, the cases of mind control which worked best
>with the players were either (1) a subtle influence where the exact
>extent is left up to the player; or (2) totally possessing the PC,
>where the player is now secretly playing the controlling personality.
>I have had several cases of #2, and in all of them the player has had
>no problem with it -- and in fact has usually enjoyed actively playing
>the bad guy or alien.
Yes! In general, I've found some things that work and some that don't
when it comes to controlling a PC's attitudes and actions. In general,
the more leeway you give the player, the better the result. Obviously,
you don't want the player's portral to stray too far, which means that
(1) you need to trust the player, and (2) the situation needs at least a
little flexibility.
And some (most?) players definitely enjoy playing the bad guy sometimes.
>The key, I think, is that it is vital to leave the *player* in control
>even if the PC is not. Strong mind control where the PC is being
>ordered about but trying to resist generally leaves the player with
>little to do.
Actually, I first experimented with giving the players a lot of leeway
because the alternative left me with too much to do. Part of my GMing
philosophy is, "You have plenty of responsibility already. Don't take on
anything you don't need to." This is just practical recognition of my
limitations -- heck, some of my best techniques are those rooted in a
desire to reduce the amount of work I need to do. The nice thing is that
the experiment worked: I had less work to do, and the player was much
happier about the situation.
I've never really had problems with the players pulling punches, either;
in fact, they tend to be harsher on the other PCs than I would have been
had I kept control. It's a bit like the non-fudging GM who uses the
impartiality of rules as a shield (ie., me): "I didn't kill your
character, the game did!" If a mind-controlled PC kills another, the
players don't blame each other, they blame me. (Oh well.)
By the way, I noticed something curious in a recent game session. This
ties in with your recent thread on magic systems. (WARNING: Spoilers for
my campaign; please, please don't read this if you play in my game.
You're only spoiling your own fun.) An NPC charmed several of the PCs; I
took them aside and explained that she was very attractive, and that
their characters would be inclined to protect her if it came down to it.
One player winked and said, "Oh, I know exactly what you mean." I'm
pretty sure he guessed correctly about the magical compulsion.
Now, this gives me an idea. I didn't tell them that they were charmed; I
described it in game-world terms. What if it *wasn't* a charm, but
merely a simple matter of attractiveness and gallantry? I think the
players accepted it because they thought it was a spell, but what if it
wasn't?
In fact, what if normal, physical attraction and magical charms are the
same thing? Infatuation is a powerful thing. Just maybe, you could kill
two birds with one stone here: (1) You side-step the usual aversion to
personality mechanics by presenting them in the same light as magical
compulsion. It's my experience that players will accept the latter but
not the former. (2) You end up with a nice bit of magic: infatuation and
mind control are really the same thing -- it's just that one is
happenstance and the other one is by design. Heck, you could go one step
farther and say that infatuation *is* magic. It certainly feels that
way.
It doesn't solve the PM problem in general, only for certain fantasy
campaigns. However, it looks to me like it might be an elegant solution,
if it works. I think you'd capture the medieval, magical mindset
*perfectly* if you ever saw this exchange:
NPC: Isn't she just the most beautiful girl you've ever seen? I
could *burst* just thinking about her!
PC: Yeah, she's a looker. [To PC #2, quietly] He's under some sort
of spell! Do you think the pretty girl is the witch, or is it
the old hag we met in the market?
I think that would just be *wonderful*. It captures just the sort of
thing you were talking about in your discussion of magic.
Rupert Boleyn
wrote:
>Some people have the, to me, slightly strange border condition that
>magical compulsion (and even stranger, influence) is okay, but mundane
>methods aren't. As far as I can tell, it's based around the odd idea
>that only the weak minded are subject to influence.
Obviously if it's magic "it's not my fault", whereas being weak-willed
is.
--
Rupert Boleyn <rbo...@paradise.net.nz>
"Inside every cynic is a romantic trying to get out."
Bradd W. Szonye
>wrote:
>>Some people have the, to me, slightly strange border condition that
>>magical compulsion (and even stranger, influence) is okay, but mundane
>>methods aren't. As far as I can tell, it's based around the odd idea
>>that only the weak minded are subject to influence.
Rupert Boleyn <rbo...@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>Obviously if it's magic "it's not my fault", whereas being weak-willed
>is.
Good point. I brought this up in my discussion of how vicious a
mind-controlled PC can be: The players don't pull their punches as much
as you might expect, because if they kill somebody, they can always
blame it on the game or the GM. "I didn't kill your PC! It was all a
set-up!"
That can be a pretty powerful argument. Most of the time, it can remain
unspoken; the players simply assume that all bad things come from the
GM, never from other players. Once, a player took advantage of this to
the fullest: his evil PC totally screwed over another character,
including stealing the victim's best gear and killing the victim's
game-world wife. He made the arrangements with me so that it wasn't
obviously his fault. The other player never suspected the PC, because
it's always the GM who's out to get you, never the other players.
(Ordinarily, I discourage this kind of PC in-fighting, but the plan was
simply *brilliant*. It was so good that I willingly took the heat for
the guy. Eventually, everybody in the group knew about it but the
victim, and they all gloated and grinned devilishly. When I eventually
told the victim the whole story, years later, he didn't believe me at
first. Brilliant.)
Steve Mading
: A short note about mind control. I haven't followed the
: whole thread here (sorry).
: Anyhow, in my experience, the cases of mind control which worked
: best with the players were either (1) a subtle influence where the exact
: extent is left up to the player; or (2) totally possessing the PC, where
: the player is now secretly playing the controlling personality. I have
: had several cases of #2, and in all of them the player has had no problem
: with it -- and in fact has usually enjoyed actively playing the bad
: guy or alien.
: The key, I think, is that it is vital to leave the *player* in
: control even if the PC is not. Strong mind control where the PC is
: being ordered about but trying to resist generally leaves the player
: with little to do.
Absolutely. Take away his ability to act out the character as he
wants to, and the player has no reason to bother showing up to the
game. Let the player play out the mental change. It's more fun
for the player, and harder for the other players to notice right
away that something is wrong.
Er...@ix.netcom.com
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>Some people have the, to me, slightly strange border condition that
>magical compulsion (and even stranger, influence) is okay, but mundane
>methods aren't. As far as I can tell, it's based around the odd idea
>that only the weak minded are subject to influence.
I suspect it's an assumption clash. I see the sort of "influence" you're
talking about as being extraordinarily powerful and arbitrary. It's
reaching into my character's mind, grabbing, and twisting. If a GM
tells me "you believe the diplomat" or even "you find the diplomat's
arguments persuasive" I see it as analogous to a bar-brawl where the
GM says "the bouncer waves his hands at you and you go flying 40 feet."
It's something that "feels" both powerful and supernatural to me.
I'll buy that 40 foot throw as the result of the bouncer having magic
powers, but if you try to tell me that it was the result of an ordinary
joe bouncer making mundane use of a mundane brawling skill, I'll balk.
Rudely. Just like I'll balk if you tell me that my character is convinced
by the application of a mundane persuasion skill.
Now if you see "influence" as being much less powerful and exotic, as being
analogous to "the bouncer grabs you and shoves, and you go flying four
feet" then you'll find it odd that I insist on the bouncer or the diplomat
being a powerful mage. Assumption clash, wrt the power of "influence."
[quoting Bradd Szonye]
>>Compare this to social-skill mechanics: Tell them that they believe the
>>foreign diplomat, and they feel like you're abrogating their free will
>>and player skill. Tell them to kill the rest of the players (but that
>>they're otherwise unconstrained), and there's no problem; you haven't
>>affected their ability to play the character, just a small part of his
>>personality.
IMHO it's not a matter of abrogating the PCs free will, but a matter of
doing so *cheaply*. If powerful and exotic juju is needed to bend the PCs'
minds, that at least pays proper respect to the strength and solidity of
the PCs' wills.
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com (mail drop)
Er...@ix.netcom.com (surfboard)
Wayne Shaw
>analogous to "the bouncer grabs you and shoves, and you go flying four
>feet" then you'll find it odd that I insist on the bouncer or the diplomat
>being a powerful mage. Assumption clash, wrt the power of "influence."
And that's exactly it. Given there are people who clearly are
persuasive in real life, and effect others all the time (even against
their better judgement) I really don't see that having some influence
being beyond the player's control is unreasonable. Now if I told them
how to _act_ in regard to that influence, that'd be a different
story...but in many cases they don't seem to want to accept that it's
even possible for their characters to be influenced. This seems a
rather peculiar form of absolutism based on the assumption,
apparently, that such things only effect "other people" in the real
world.
>IMHO it's not a matter of abrogating the PCs free will, but a matter of
>doing so *cheaply*. If powerful and exotic juju is needed to bend the PCs'
>minds, that at least pays proper respect to the strength and solidity of
>the PCs' wills.
As does, to me, the ability of a strong willed or well trained PC to
resist the skill roll. I still fail to see the intrinsic difference.
Wayne Shaw
>wants to, and the player has no reason to bother showing up to the
>game. Let the player play out the mental change. It's more fun
>for the player, and harder for the other players to notice right
>away that something is wrong.
I agree this is the idea, but it only works if people can get beyond
their antipathy to such control in general. Not everyone can.
Er...@ix.netcom.com
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>>Now if you see "influence" as being much less powerful and exotic, as being
>>analogous to "the bouncer grabs you and shoves, and you go flying four
>>feet" then you'll find it odd that I insist on the bouncer or the diplomat
>>being a powerful mage. Assumption clash, wrt the power of "influence."
>
>
>And that's exactly it. Given there are people who clearly are
>persuasive in real life, and effect others all the time (even against
>their better judgement) I really don't see that having some influence
>being beyond the player's control is unreasonable. Now if I told them
>how to _act_ in regard to that influence, that'd be a different
>story...
But you are telling them how to *think* in regard to that influence,
which is just as bad.
>but in many cases they don't seem to want to accept that it's
>even possible for their characters to be influenced. This seems a
>rather peculiar form of absolutism based on the assumption,
>apparently, that such things only effect "other people" in the real
>world.
I don't see that. Real-world persuasiveness is a subtle thing. You're
emphasising its effectiveness and underestimating the power of the game-
play devices you use to emulate it. As a result, I perceive your "influence"
as being about an order of magnitude too powerful. As a GM, you may *think*
you're using a light touch, but as a player I *feel* a strong and painful
slap.
If real-world persuasiveness were as powerful as you claim, we wouldn't
be having this discussion. Some brilliant poster would have come along
and convinced us both of the One Right and True Way ;-)
>
>>IMHO it's not a matter of abrogating the PCs free will, but a matter of
>>doing so *cheaply*. If powerful and exotic juju is needed to bend the PCs'
>>minds, that at least pays proper respect to the strength and solidity of
>>the PCs' wills.
>
>As does, to me, the ability of a strong willed or well trained PC to
>resist the skill roll. I still fail to see the intrinsic difference.
You're making persuasion as easy as resisting persuasion, when a "proper
respect" for a character's willpower should make it much harder. You're
treating a character's will as metaphorically weighing 20 pounds when it
ought to weigh 200.
GM: "The diplomat sounds very persuasive."
Player: "I wish to make a Persuasion roll to convince myself that the
diplomat is wrong. Since I know myself so well, and trust myself so
absolutely, I ought to get a huge bonus - say +20."
Glenn Butcher
Compare "the diplomat sounds very persuasive" to "the diplomat persuades you".
One is a factor to take into account, the other removes all other factors.
An example:
GM: "The diplomat sounds very persuasive."
Character: "Hmm, maybe they are telling the truth. Nahhh, this diplomat
always lies. I wouldn't believe them if they swore on a stack of bibles."
-or-
GM: "The diplomat persuades you"
Character: *break*
Player: "Uh, ok. Tell me what my character does"
I can see why some people would not like the latter.
--
Glenn Butcher gb_...@ichr.uwa.edu.au
Horse, you are truly a creature without equal, for you fly without wings
and conquer without sword. - The Koran
Glenn Butcher
I've had a character begin to crash and burn due to this.
Near the start of the first session of the campaign, my character
is mentally dominated for most of the session. Strangely enough,
I was rather annoyed by this. I didn't exactly try very hard,
and the other players quickly guessed I wasn't in control.
The rest of the crash and burn was due to a character with mostly
magical skills receiving a curse (also in the first session) which
prevented the use of magic. When the character died, I decided not
to continue.
Ahh well, novice DMs.
Athanasia Steele
<snip>
>If real-world persuasiveness were as powerful as you claim, we wouldn't
>be having this discussion. Some brilliant poster would have come along
>and convinced us both of the One Right and True Way ;-)
Heh. Good point. :)
Wayne Shaw
>>persuasive in real life, and effect others all the time (even against
>>their better judgement) I really don't see that having some influence
>>being beyond the player's control is unreasonable. Now if I told them
>>how to _act_ in regard to that influence, that'd be a different
>>story...
>
>But you are telling them how to *think* in regard to that influence,
>which is just as bad.
I tell people in games how to think all the time; it's intrinsic in
most of the games I run that have Disadvantage mechanics. In other
games, the very experience system is based on my evaluation of them
playing their characters properly. Yet few people object to these
mechanics. Somehow an actual in-world process is worse than a
metagame process. :P
>
>>but in many cases they don't seem to want to accept that it's
>>even possible for their characters to be influenced. This seems a
>>rather peculiar form of absolutism based on the assumption,
>>apparently, that such things only effect "other people" in the real
>>world.
>
>I don't see that. Real-world persuasiveness is a subtle thing. You're
>emphasising its effectiveness and underestimating the power of the game-
>play devices you use to emulate it. As a result, I perceive your "influence"
>as being about an order of magnitude too powerful. As a GM, you may *think*
>you're using a light touch, but as a player I *feel* a strong and painful
>slap.
Unfortunately, experience has taught me that subtlty simply gets
ignored. I see no point in messing with a process unless the results
are going to be payed attention to.
>
>If real-world persuasiveness were as powerful as you claim, we wouldn't
>be having this discussion. Some brilliant poster would have come along
>and convinced us both of the One Right and True Way ;-)
I'd say someone came along and convinced us of something or we
wouldn't be _having_ this discussion. And Usenet isn't exactly the
place the really skilled are liable to exercise their skills; too
little gain.
>>As does, to me, the ability of a strong willed or well trained PC to
>>resist the skill roll. I still fail to see the intrinsic difference.
>
>You're making persuasion as easy as resisting persuasion, when a "proper
>respect" for a character's willpower should make it much harder. You're
>treating a character's will as metaphorically weighing 20 pounds when it
>ought to weigh 200.
>
>GM: "The diplomat sounds very persuasive."
>
>Player: "I wish to make a Persuasion roll to convince myself that the
>diplomat is wrong. Since I know myself so well, and trust myself so
>absolutely, I ought to get a huge bonus - say +20."
I'd buy that if the degree of effect was as powerful as physical
processes. It's not. Past that, I'd argue it _is_ as easy to
influence someone as to resist influence; it's just not as easy to
influence them enough to have major effects. Past that, bluntly, I
think most people have an idealized view of how well they resist
influence in real life, largely because much of society has the same
delusion.
Wayne Shaw
>One is a factor to take into account, the other removes all other factors.
>
>An example:
>GM: "The diplomat sounds very persuasive."
>Character: "Hmm, maybe they are telling the truth. Nahhh, this diplomat
>always lies. I wouldn't believe them if they swore on a stack of bibles."
>-or-
>GM: "The diplomat persuades you"
>Character: *break*
>Player: "Uh, ok. Tell me what my character does"
>
>I can see why some people would not like the latter.
Me too. But to me, people who object to the former are essentially
declaring their character utterly immune to influence until the player
damn well decides they aren't. That's a level of autonomy I don't
find any more credible in a game than I'd find a claim someone was
similarly immune in real life.
Er...@ix.netcom.com
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>
>Unfortunately, experience has taught me that subtlty simply gets
>ignored. I see no point in messing with a process unless the results
>are going to be payed attention to.
Are they really being ignored, or are they just not being incorporated
as strongly as *you* think they ought to be?
[snip]
>I'd buy that if the degree of effect was as powerful as physical
>processes. It's not.
From my POV you're playing it as if it were. That's where a large part
of the assumption clash comes in: You perceive the degree of effect you
put in your games as weak - much less powerful than a physical process.
The players perceive that same degree of effect as being much stronger -
as powerful as a physical process, or nearly so. And even leaving out
degree-of-effect, your implimentation feels "solid" the way a physical
process would.
>Past that, I'd argue it _is_ as easy to
>influence someone as to resist influence; it's just not as easy to
>influence them enough to have major effects. Past that, bluntly, I
>think most people have an idealized view of how well they resist
>influence in real life, largely because much of society has the same
>delusion.
>
And that's where the other part of the assumption clash comes in. I don't
think that most people have an idealized view of how well they resist
influence in real life; I think that you and many others have an idealized
view of how easy it is to influence people.
There's an old saw that "One never convinces another person of anything.
Instead, one presents arguments and lets the other person convince himself."
From my pov, your methods treat persuasion as if the persuader
*does* actually convince his subject. Even leaving aside levels-of-power
arguments, this feels to me like something magical or supernatural, rather
than like the working-out of mundane, real-world-style persuasion.
Arne Jamtgaard
If not, read no further.
Er...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> But you are telling them how to *think* in regard to that influence,
> which is just as bad.
> If real-world persuasiveness were as powerful as you claim, we
> wouldn't be having this discussion. Some brilliant poster would have come along
> and convinced us both of the One Right and True Way ;-)
> You're making persuasion as easy as resisting persuasion, when a "proper
> respect" for a character's willpower should make it much harder. You're
> treating a character's will as metaphorically weighing 20 pounds when it
> ought to weigh 200.
> GM: "The diplomat sounds very persuasive."
> Player: "I wish to make a Persuasion roll to convince myself that
> the diplomat is wrong. Since I know myself so well, and trust myself
> so absolutely, I ought to get a huge bonus - say +20."
You're still there? Cool.
Is there any way to make the situation more gradual? To use your
'bouncer' example, if the bouncer throws you around enough, you'll
eventually end up where he wants you. If a diplomat can talk to
you long enough, maybe you'll end up where he wants you as well?
GM: The diplomat starts off by appealing to your sense of duty to
the crown. It's a pretty good argument.
Erol: My PC doesn't care about that. I roll to resist.
GM: Okay, roll at +10.
GM: He next starts talking about your PCs family, and how this
would benefit them.
Erol: Hmmm, my PC really does care about his family. But I still
roll to resist.
GM: You have made a big deal about your family connections in
the past. You can resist, but at -5.
Erol: Dang, I failed to resist. What has he talked me into?
Notice that the PC could terminate the discussion at any time,
similar to retreating from the bouncer in a combat situation.
Would this work better? A more combat-oriented model, with the
NPC trying different 'attacks', trying to find the PCs weak
spots?
Just curious,
Arne
--
Arne Jamtgaard | Qui me amat, amat et canem meam.
Boulder DevTest |
1-720-562-6331 | Love me, love my dog.
ajam...@cisco.com |
John Kim
arguments). To some degree this is just the old argument over
personality mechanics: the question is who is the best judge over
what a PC would do? For my own style of play, I hold that the player
is a better authority than the GM. The player knows his own character
far better than a GM who is trying to simultaneously run a world of
NPC's, write background, judge events, etc.
Thus, in my style, even if the PC is being influenced, I would
say the player is still the best judge of what the PC would do. (i.e.
better than me, if I am GM). As GM, I will give information about how
glib a diplomat is, and how well her arguments are presented, etc.
However, the player is still a better judge than I am about what
effect this will have.
I also agree with Erol below that the mechanic of persuasion
as a direct control over the PC's attitude doesn't seem to model how
I view real-world persuasion.
Erol K. Bayburt <Er...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>There's an old saw that "One never convinces another person of anything.
>Instead, one presents arguments and lets the other person convince himself."
>From my pov, your methods treat persuasion as if the persuader
>*does* actually convince his subject. Even leaving aside levels-of-power
>arguments, this feels to me like something magical or supernatural, rather
>than like the working-out of mundane, real-world-style persuasion.
I agree with this. A similar case is GURPS' law mechanic which
suggests that a case be resolved as a contest of Law skills of the
lawyers involved. On the one hand, I agree that the lawyers skill has
an influence on the case. However, this approach at least gives a
feel which puts the lawyer's skill over the facts of the case, the
testimony of the witnesses, and so forth.
Real-world persuasion works by giving the target *reasons*
to do what the persuader wants. Persuading the target to do something
against their real interests usually works by lying to them -- i.e.
the mechanism is making them believe a lie, not changing their
actions against their will.
Now, you can abstract away the reasons which the persuader
gives (i.e. "OK, he rolls a 20 and thus he convinces you"). However,
this can cause a problem for role-playing because it usually matter
what that reason is.
John Kim
Arne Jamtgaard <ajam...@cisco.com> wrote:
>GM: The diplomat starts off by appealing to your sense of duty to
> the crown. It's a pretty good argument.
>Erol: My PC doesn't care about that. I roll to resist.
>GM: Okay, roll at +10.
>GM: You have made a big deal about your family connections in
> the past. You can resist, but at -5.
>Erol: Dang, I failed to resist. What has he talked me into?
>
>Notice that the PC could terminate the discussion at any time,
>similar to retreating from the bouncer in a combat situation.
Hrrm. This suggests that the only way (or only effective
way) to resist being persuaded is to run away covering your ears.
This fails to match my view of reality. Or at least personally
I have never felt the need to do so. For example, I went to talk
to car salesmen when I was thinking about buying a car. I was
determined not to buy a car at that time, but rather would test
drive and then wait until I had compared with others and decide later.
While they tried to convince me otherwise, the only thing this did
was make me angry.
While I can see that some people might feel the need to cover
their ears and run away from a persuasive person, I personally have
never felt this -- so I don't think it should be required of PC's
either.
Arne Jamtgaard
> Arne Jamtgaard <ajam...@cisco.com> wrote:
Not at all. At the car dealership, you weren't there to listen. So
nothing they said was going to make a difference. You were there
with your figurative fingers in your ears. I wouldn't see this as a
situation where any sort of skill roll would come up. There is no
negotiation or interaction going on.
The only time I see something like this situation occurring is when
both parties are there, and are trying to achieve some interactive
outcome. In order to get what you want, you have to listen. And
talk. It's two-way communication.
That's what I assumed in the above example. When I spoke of 'retreat'
I meant giving up trying to get anything more out of the interaction.
You did that before you walked onto the show room floor.
Why is Erol's PC talking with this diplomat? If he doesn't care what
the man is saying, (if he's checking the exits for getaway routes, or
admiring the pate' on the smorgasbord), he is not participating. If
he does care, he's trying to get something from the diplomat, at the
same time the diplomat is trying to get something from him. I
outlined possible angles that the diplomat might use to 'pitch' a
negotiation point. Erol might disregard things, as in the first part,
or he might start to be persuaded by the second part.
I was just trying to address the 'all-or-nothing' nature of PMs that
Erol had a problem with.
Sorry if it led you to believe that people can only avoid being
persuaded by running away with their hands over their ears. You have
to admit, that's pretty ludicrous.
Hopefully, things are clearer now.
Wayne Shaw
>In article <xBXxOpj0YcOCbA...@4ax.com>,
> Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Unfortunately, experience has taught me that subtlty simply gets
>>ignored. I see no point in messing with a process unless the results
>>are going to be payed attention to.
>
>Are they really being ignored, or are they just not being incorporated
>as strongly as *you* think they ought to be?
Since the effect is invisible, if they're not being ignored, there's
no way to tell the difference.
>From my POV you're playing it as if it were. That's where a large part
>of the assumption clash comes in: You perceive the degree of effect you
>put in your games as weak - much less powerful than a physical process.
>The players perceive that same degree of effect as being much stronger -
>as powerful as a physical process, or nearly so. And even leaving out
>degree-of-effect, your implimentation feels "solid" the way a physical
>process would.
By that standard, any mechanical effect at all is "solid". If that's
the standard being used, my sympathy goes up from minimal to
nonexistant.
>And that's where the other part of the assumption clash comes in. I don't
>think that most people have an idealized view of how well they resist
>influence in real life; I think that you and many others have an idealized
>view of how easy it is to influence people.
Then we have an irreconcilable reality clash, and nothing much to say
to each other.
Steve Mading
: Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
:>>Absolutely. Take away his ability to act out the character as he
:>>wants to, and the player has no reason to bother showing up to the
:>>game. Let the player play out the mental change. It's more fun
:>>for the player, and harder for the other players to notice right
:>>away that something is wrong.
:> I agree this is the idea, but it only works if people can get beyond
:> their antipathy to such control in general. Not everyone can.
: I've had a character begin to crash and burn due to this.
: Near the start of the first session of the campaign, my character
: is mentally dominated for most of the session. Strangely enough,
: I was rather annoyed by this. I didn't exactly try very hard,
: and the other players quickly guessed I wasn't in control.
: The rest of the crash and burn was due to a character with mostly
: magical skills receiving a curse (also in the first session) which
: prevented the use of magic. When the character died, I decided not
: to continue.
: Ahh well, novice DMs.
I've had recent experience with possession in a Deadlands game. (I
hope the people who play in that don't read this group. But even if
they do, I think they pretty much already figured all of this out.)
My 13-year old huckster, "Billy", is a prankster/troublemaker who
hadn't fully grasped the dangers inherent in hex slinging, so he was
reckless in how he used his spells. (His father was a skeptic
who studied the occult to debunk it, and so has lots of "fun"
books laying about the house that little Billy read as he was
growing up. That's the explanation for how a 13-year old ended up
knowing how to cast hexes. The fun part is that his daddy doesn't
believe Billy can do any of this stuff, and Billy has kept it secret
from him all these years, because he doesn't want daddy to spoil
all his fun.)
Anyway, with that kind of a setup, Billy tends to get in trouble
a lot. Due to a relic deck of cards he had, for a while Billy
was operating under a "special" backlash rule that made possession
by the manitou a lot more likely than it normally would be for a
hex slinger. Well, numerous times so far in the game, Billy has been
taken over by the manitou and wreaked havoc, only to wake up later
not remembering any of it. Some of the time, the GM let me decide
what the possessed Billy would do, other times he just told me without
letting me play it out. By far I had a lot more fun playing out the
manitou inside Billy than I did just having the GM tell me what I do.
And in general, I screwed myself worse when I got to play it out on
my own than when the GM told me what to do. (I even gave the GM the
idea of the manitou using Billy's "forget" hex on Billy himself,
making Billy forget not only the period of possession, but also much
of what led up to it. This ignorance is what caused Billy to keep
getting possessed over and over again. I played him like he wasn't
learning from his mistakes, because he didn't remember making them.
He kept on using the cursed hexslinging deck, thinking, "hey neat,
this thing's pretty powerful, and so far I don't remember anything
bad happening because of it...")
In general, a lot of roleplayers don't mind getting their characters
screwed over so long as they actually get to act it out. It's the loss
of spotlight time that frustrates most gamers. If you let the players
play out how they get screwed over, often they have no problem with
making something *bad* happen to themselves, so long as it's not
something that removes the player from participation. I would much
sooner play a character that gets possessed, gets forced to act
stupid for a while, or just plain goes nuts, than play a character
that falls unconsious for most of the session.
Wayne Shaw
> A comment about mundane social influence (i.e. a diplomat's
>arguments). To some degree this is just the old argument over
>personality mechanics: the question is who is the best judge over
>what a PC would do? For my own style of play, I hold that the player
Actually, it's broader than that; as I've said, I won't tell someone
what to do, but just what effect the roll has had; it's one level
removed from directly affecting their actions. But apparently (and
Erol is evidently well into this camp) even that's unacceptable for
some. But I do really think if you don't distinguish controlling
input and controlling output you do a disservice to the discussion.
> Thus, in my style, even if the PC is being influenced, I would
>say the player is still the best judge of what the PC would do. (i.e.
>better than me, if I am GM). As GM, I will give information about how
>glib a diplomat is, and how well her arguments are presented, etc.
>However, the player is still a better judge than I am about what
>effect this will have.
>
> I also agree with Erol below that the mechanic of persuasion
>as a direct control over the PC's attitude doesn't seem to model how
>I view real-world persuasion.
And if you'll note, I never said it should influence the attitude
directly. To me there is, as someone else said, an enormous
difference between "the diplomat seems convincing" and "you find
yourself convinced." Frankly, I don't know any way to have the
mechanics be meaningful at all that are more indirect than the first
statement.
John Kim
Arne Jamtgaard <ajam...@cisco.com> wrote:
>John Kim wrote:
>> This suggests that the only way (or only effective way) to resist
>> being persuaded is to run away covering your ears. This fails to
>> match my view of reality. Or at least personally I have never felt
>> the need to do so. For example, I went to talk to car salesmen when
>> I was thinking about buying a car. I was determined not to buy a car
>> at that time, but rather would test drive and then wait until I had
>> compared with others and decide later.
>
>nothing they said was going to make a difference. You were there
>with your figurative fingers in your ears. I wouldn't see this as a
>situation where any sort of skill roll would come up. There is no
>negotiation or interaction going on.
>The only time I see something like this situation occurring is when
>both parties are there, and are trying to achieve some interactive
>outcome. In order to get what you want, you have to listen. And
>talk. It's two-way communication.
Well, I listened to what the features of the car was and what
price they would sell it to me at -- that was why I went. I also
didn't sit there silently the whole time; I spoke to the person.
However, you are right that I was ignoring his arguments about why
I should buy right away.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>Why is Erol's PC talking with this diplomat? If he doesn't care what
>the man is saying, (if he's checking the exits for getaway routes, or
>admiring the pate' on the smorgasbord), he is not participating. If
>he does care, he's trying to get something from the diplomat, at the
>same time the diplomat is trying to get something from him. I
>outlined possible angles that the diplomat might use to 'pitch' a
>negotiation point. Erol might disregard things, as in the first part,
>or he might start to be persuaded by the second part.
Another way of phrasing this is that Erol's PC *wants* to be
persuaded by the diplomat to do something. If he didn't want to be
persuaded, then he wouldn't be listening to the diplomat's arguments.
It seems to me that this is what Erol said -- i.e. he say "I am not
persuaded", which means that he isn't listening to the arguments.
I guess this would be easier with a more full example. Can
you give a more full example which gives reasons why each party is
there? It seems to me that in most real situations, the scope of
what happens will be sharply determined by the internal attitude of
the characters. i.e. I went into the showroom with my mind set, which
limited what could happen.
Kiz
> >think that most people have an idealized view of how well they resist
> >influence in real life; I think that you and many others have an
idealized
> >view of how easy it is to influence people.
>
> Then we have an irreconcilable reality clash, and nothing much to say
> to each other.
>
You can also run into clashes of character concept. I've known one
player whose characters just about all shared one defining characteristic-
they'd die before they'd let themselves lose. However rare such a person is
in real life, that was the kind of person he liked playing.
His characters would die or get really badly beaten up in play because
to them, personal risk was irrelevant compared to their personal honor and
code of duty.
Actually, I know another player, who would let his PC be tortured to
death before betraying a trust, and nearly was in play. The GM found it very
unlikely that his PC would display such resolution when faced with mobsters
who were breaking his bones to make him talk, but the player insisted... and
the GM respected his decision.
So there's another common clash- the _player_ insists that his PC has an
exceptionally strong moral code or personal determination while the GM would
prefer more "realistic" characters... but the player isn't interested in
playing an "ordinary" fellow, he wants a _hero_.
Kiz
Bradd W. Szonye
>>GM: "The diplomat sounds very persuasive."
>>Character: "Hmm, maybe they are telling the truth. Nahhh, this
>>diplomat always lies. I wouldn't believe them if they swore on a stack
>>of bibles."
>>-or-
>>GM: "The diplomat persuades you"
>>Character: *break*
>>Player: "Uh, ok. Tell me what my character does"
>>
>>I can see why some people would not like the latter.
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>Me too. But to me, people who object to the former are essentially
>declaring their character utterly immune to influence until the player
>damn well decides they aren't. That's a level of autonomy I don't find
>any more credible in a game than I'd find a claim someone was similarly
>immune in real life.
I wonder how much of these bad reactions is natural, and how much is
conditioned by game propaganda and bad DMs? Two things here:
1. RPGs have been telling us for years that morale checks apply to NPCs
but never to PCs. That social skills can influence NPCs, but PCs
should always make their own decisions. While as a gamist I fully
appreciate the importance of leaving decisions to the players, but I
also accept certain constraints when I play an RPG. How many players
reject personality constraints because they don't like them, and how
many reject them because Gary Gygax told us all that they're bad back
in the 1970s (and most game designers have followed the "rule"
since)?
2. Many (if not most) of us have encountered a railroading GM who
basically wanted to play your character for you. Because of this, we
tend to have averse reactions to *any* constraints on what our
characters believe or what we can do -- it's a painful reminder of
the bad GMs of our youth.
I think that some level of constraint is appropriate; heck, we accept
self-imposed restraints on our characters all the time, and we will even
accept pretty harsh constraints so long as they're not in the "what your
PC believes" department. Am I on the right track? Is it some combination
of tradition reinforced by bad experiences with GMs who break the
tradition?
Bradd W. Szonye
>>which is just as bad.
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>I tell people in games how to think all the time; it's intrinsic in
>most of the games I run that have Disadvantage mechanics. In other
>games, the very experience system is based on my evaluation of them
>playing their characters properly. Yet few people object to these
>mechanics. Somehow an actual in-world process is worse than a metagame
>process. :P
Note that most of those constraints are self-imposed, or they resulted
from some failure (like falling victim to a magical compulsion, a curse,
or some bad phobia-inspiring experience) that "eases you into" the
constraint.
>>If real-world persuasiveness were as powerful as you claim, we wouldn't
>>be having this discussion. Some brilliant poster would have come along
>>and convinced us both of the One Right and True Way ;-)
>
>I'd say someone came along and convinced us of something or we
>wouldn't be _having_ this discussion. And Usenet isn't exactly the
>place the really skilled are liable to exercise their skills; too
>little gain.
I actually agree with this: Part of it is role-playing tradition. Early
role-playing games put a premium on player decision-making with an
especially strong focus on "the GM shalt not tell the player how his PC
feels." For some reason, in the transition from wargames to RPGs, the
designers decided that the morale rules shouldn't apply to PCs anymore.
Later designers either agreed with the sentiment or took it on faith;
many, many games make a point of telling us that you shouldn't impose
morale or persuasion effects on the PCs unless they're under the
influence of something like magic or drugs.
This is half the problem: We've been trained to believe that PM-like
rules and situations are a bad thing; game designers have enshrined PC
free will and free thinking. It's a Chaotic Good sentiment gone out of
control.
>Past that, bluntly, I think most people have an idealized view of how
>well they resist influence in real life, largely because much of
>society has the same delusion.
This definitely contributes to the problem. At least in the USA
(birthplace of RPGs), there's a strong sentiment that your mind and your
beliefs are your own, despite the fact that everyone wants to sell you
something, and many of them succeed.
The finishing touch is the bad GM who practically seizes control of the
PCs, or who makes them irrelevant to the game. That pretty much destroys
any last remnants of open-mindedness toward this kind of thing.
Athanasia Steele
>
> Real-world persuasion works by giving the target *reasons*
>to do what the persuader wants. Persuading the target to do something
>against their real interests usually works by lying to them -- i.e.
>the mechanism is making them believe a lie, not changing their
>actions against their will.
>
> Now, you can abstract away the reasons which the persuader
>gives (i.e. "OK, he rolls a 20 and thus he convinces you"). However,
>this can cause a problem for role-playing because it usually matter
>what that reason is.
I agree with everything you've said in this post, emphatically.
I'm afraid there's no substitute, for me, for a certain level of
skill on the part of the GM.
I'm willing to bear with a certain amount of "The diplomat sounds
very persuasive" if the GM can't pull off the presentation, as long
as the GM doesn't actively undercut the effect the diplomat's
presentation is supposed to give. But presentation alone will not make
up for having a paucity of cogent arguments to deliver. If someone
really wants to persuade my character to do something, then they
must explain why it fulfills my character's needs or desires to do
it, and they have to be close enough to right that my character
agrees.
I'm not going to play out of character and reject a proposal my
character would accept. I'm not going to play out of character
to accept one my character would reject, either, just because
someone thinks that being glib is a substitute for finding out
enough about the character to know what would appeal to them,
and for seeming able and willing to deliver it in good faith.
Bradd W. Szonye
>Another way of phrasing this is that Erol's PC *wants* to be persuaded
>by the diplomat to do something. If he didn't want to be persuaded,
>then he wouldn't be listening to the diplomat's arguments. It seems to
>me that this is what Erol said -- i.e. he say "I am not persuaded",
>which means that he isn't listening to the arguments.
Well, there are a lot of situations where there's going to be no
convincing one way or another. Skill or persuasiveness isn't really an
issue there. There are still plenty of situations, however, where
persuasion, intimidation, etc., are possible, either because you start
with no preconceptions or because it really can go either way.
Truth is, I'm just not very good at negotiating, and if I try the
players can probably smell my intentions a mile away. Unlike you, it's
not a good idea to send me alone into a car dealership. Therefore, it
would be a big deal to me if I could cover up the gaffes in my
presentation with a few doses of "the diplomat presents a very good
argument" and expect the players to honor that.
It's important for other situations too. While I may not be able to
seduce Fred (or even Sally) at the game table, sometimes you really need
the superspy PC to fall for the obviously-bad-news temptress. Again,
it'd be nice to add a little bit of "Ms. Luce offers, uh, some very
compelling reasons to take her to bed" and expect the players to honor
*that*.
While that sounds reasonable enough, and there are even players that
*will* honor it (I've been blessed with them occasionally), there are
plenty more who will react with, "Hey, who's playing my PC anyway?"
Athanasia Steele
wrote:
<snip>
>I think that some level of constraint is appropriate; heck, we accept
>self-imposed restraints on our characters all the time, and we will even
>accept pretty harsh constraints so long as they're not in the "what your
>PC believes" department. Am I on the right track? Is it some combination
>of tradition reinforced by bad experiences with GMs who break the
>tradition?
Not for me. The process of determining the character's reactions
to what has been played is the point. It's the principle thing that's
fun to do; and anything that shortcuts that by giving control to
mechanics pretty much cuts the heart and life from play.
It's like building a ladder and leaving out the rungs. It's like
making shoes and leaving the soles off. It's like leaving the
peanut butter and jelly out of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
If I just want to see how a series of events turn out, I can read
a novel or tamper with a computer simulation. If my getting into
character and staying there isn't important -- and how important
can it possibly be when we're going to *overturn* my character's
reactions with a die roll? -- why don't I do something that doesn't
call on me to put out the effort of getting into character to start
with?
Note that I'm not saying that it works this way for everyone. I
think from what Rusty described that he might find mechanics
an assistance to discovering how the character was going to react
instead of an interference in some circumstances.
But for me it's an interference. I already have the character
model inside my head. An external model, provided by mechanics,
is redundant where it accords with mine and a confounded
nuisance where it clashes -- you know how much I like broken
models.
Wayne Shaw
> basically wanted to play your character for you. Because of this, we
> tend to have averse reactions to *any* constraints on what our
> characters believe or what we can do -- it's a painful reminder of
> the bad GMs of our youth.
And contrary to what my recent, somewhat acerbic posts on the subject
might indicate, I do have some sympathy on this grounds; in fact, last
time the question of personality mechanics came around, I was rather
more on the anti-side. I do find the complete antipathy to the idea
on any useful level problematic, however, and tend to get a little
quarrelsome about it, probably because I saw the logical conclusion of
it as a principal on consent based MUSHes and didn't find it at all
appealing.
>
>I think that some level of constraint is appropriate; heck, we accept
>self-imposed restraints on our characters all the time, and we will even
>accept pretty harsh constraints so long as they're not in the "what your
>PC believes" department. Am I on the right track? Is it some combination
>of tradition reinforced by bad experiences with GMs who break the
>tradition?
Well, if we're to take my recent conversation as an example, some
folks apparently don't believe in any meaningful level of effect on
such skills and mechanics, and as such object to them in principal.
At that point I really doubt any "fix" is going to address the
problem, as it's based on a fundamental axiom difference.
Wayne Shaw
>exceptionally strong moral code or personal determination while the GM would
>prefer more "realistic" characters... but the player isn't interested in
>playing an "ordinary" fellow, he wants a _hero_.
Most game systems that use social skills have a solution for this
problem, though: an appropriate skill or ability that permits
effective resistance. If the player isnt' attached enough to his
concept in this area to invest in said skill, I don't really see it's
the GM's obligation to allow him to do it for free just because it's
"in character". It can be "in character" for someone to be quite
bright, too, but if they don't set up the character that way, it's the
player's fault.
[The above assumes the system permits enough control over character
generation to produce this result of course. Systems that constrain
design enough to prevent this, either by lack of sufficient resource,
randomization, or contraint on available abilities can prevent this,
but if someone is extemely hard nosed about character design, that's
going to cause much bigger problems than just in this area.]
Mary K. Kuhner
> I guess this would be easier with a more full example. Can
>you give a more full example which gives reasons why each party is
>there? It seems to me that in most real situations, the scope of
>what happens will be sharply determined by the internal attitude of
>the characters. i.e. I went into the showroom with my mind set, which
>limited what could happen.
Here's one (a pretty complex one, but interesting situations are
usually complex):
Chernoi has already agreed with the captain of a Rastur warship
that the warship will take her party to Steryx, in return for
knowledge of the route to Steryx. One point of contention remains:
will this be accomplished by Chernoi (who knows the route) piloting,
by Chernoi trying to teach the route to the Rastur pilot, or
by the Rastur pilot getting into Chernoi's head and using her
knowledge directly?
The argument plays out between Chernoi and the pilot, Nirnur,
while the captain and quite a few other armed Rastur listen.
Chernoi wants to get to Steryx badly. She really does not want
anyone else piloting--she has strong hangups about this--and
particularly doesn't want Nirnur in her mind. However, she also
doesn't want negotiations to collapse, both because then she
won't get her ride, and because the captain may lose patience
and shoot her.
Nirnur wants the route badly. He would love to get into Chernoi's
mind, and probably rifle it for its contents, and possibly try
staying in control after the Jump. He is not too confident of
his ability to learn the route by being taught; humans and Rastur
envision Jump too differently. He has some limits due to the
audience too; he daren't seem so greedy for Chernoi's power that
his captain will see him as a threat. And, like Chernoi, he
is afraid of what the captain will do if negotiations break down.
Chernoi is higher status, as the Rastur see it, than Nirnur, but
not higher status than Nirnur's captain.
There's also the issue of ability: Chernoi is known to be able
to make the Jump; Nirnur is not. Nirnur is known to be able to
fly the ship; Chernoi is not. Both are non-trivial, and a Jump
failure is probable death.
So, they negotiate. Neither one can easily afford to break off
negotiations; they really have to reach a deal. The question
is, what deal?
We used no mechanics here, but in another mood we might have
used them informationally. For example, Nirnur might try to
judge, from Chernoi's unfamiliar body language, whether she
wanted a deal badly enough to risk mental contact. Chernoi
might look at the captain to try to guess whether he'd
shoot her or Nirnur on a failure of negotiation. Chernoi might
try to estimate Nirnur's piloting skill, or vice versa.
All of these work well as skill rolls for us.
I would be at a loss, personally, to use coercive mechanics
here, except possibly for one nuance. Chernoi *really* doesn't
want to go through Jump with someone else piloting. I might
accept a mechanic or GM call saying that, though she could
negotiate such a deal, she couldn't go through with it. I
would hope, though, that such intervention wouldn't be necessary.
It's hard for anyone but the player to know the intensity of that
hangup accurately.
I might ask for a GM call if I got in the difficult situation of
believing, as a player, that Chernoi's refusal would lead to her
death. That kind of pressure can make immersion harder to reach and
trust.
But I won't know what to do if the GM rolls and says "Nirnur
wins the argument." Wins it *how*? What state of mind does that
imply for Chernoi? What did Nirnur offer, or threaten? Did
he have any way to assuage her fears?
And I won't know what to do if the GM says "Nirnur points out that
only he can fly the ship, and so you accept his argument." Again,
I don't know what Chernoi's state of mind would have to be for
that to work, and unless we go through the steps, I won't know.
(And given that Jump depends on the mental state of the
participants, I *really* need to know. If Chernoi ends up
essentially doing this at gunpoint it is going to be a very,
very bad Jump. If Nirnur convinces her to trust him, that's
another matter.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Strider Starslayer
have any effect on PC's.
The obvious answer is- if the NPC has skills like fast talk, diplomacy,
intimidation: then there good at it and can take a person not prepared by
suprise, and even wear down a prepared person over time.
However that would be forcing the results of skill rolls onto PC's, and I
really hate to do that- so I take a somewhat different approach <This is for
the GURPS system usually, but applies to others>
1- how good is the NPC at convincing people- moderately skilled <skill 12>
good <skill 15> amazing <skill 20+>- figure that out and use it in the
persons description- IE for a skill 20 diplomat
He stands tall and strong and his lighthearted attitude but never beguiles
the truethfullness of his words, or the frevor with which he belives what he
says. <This could be false- he could be a lechrous liar who coulden't tell
the truth if he tried; but that's not how he's precieved.>
2- Can any of the PC's see through this disguise- have them make skill
rolls, but be sure that a normal failure is simply 'you can't get a reading'
and that a sucess is checked against the other's skill to find out if they
get the truth, or if they get the carfully construted aritfical person there
putting forward IE- All PC's make there skill checks, but none excede the
margin by which the diplomate made his roll in acting
His light attitude and interesting sence of humor provide a great deal of
entertainment, whenever you corner him with a question about his past or the
truth he calmly lists the answer and apologised for a minor faux pas he
commits in regard to the condition of the lizardman concentration camps
3- the actual conversasion; here is the party where it played to be a glib
GM, but even without that you've laid the proper groundwork so that the
players will be inclined to belive the diplomat regardless- just make sure
that his argument is not full of holes.
Diplomat "About those lizardman camps- I was wondering if I could ask you a
favor?
Party "What kind of favor?"
Diplomat "Well, I'm quite sure that there being mistreated there, but I
can't get proof- whenver I go the camps they have enough time to clean
things up since my beurocratic ties mean about a weeks worth of red tape
before a given visit..."
Party "We see, how dose this effect us?"
Diplomat "Well being such upstanding people such as yourselfes I was
wondering if I could emplore upon you this mission of mercy; I need someone
to break into the camp and see if the lizardmen are being mistreated- if
they are, don't bother collecting any more evidence then what's easily
avalibal- I'll mobalise my people immediatly."
*Boom- most partys would be convinced by such a story from such a reputabal
source, there are no obvious flaws in the story, but the diplomat just
convinced the party to commit a crime for him- of course there might be a
few members of the party who still don't belive him, but these are the same
people who never trust period, or are ones who are playing out of charecter
and should be penalized- and they'll most likely be convinced by the other
party members anyway. The actual truth however could be very different from
fact- it could be a trap, or maby the diplomat just wants the party gone so
that his spy can sneak into there room and steal some artifact, regardless
of the exact reasoning what you told the players dosen't have to be what is
the truth- just how there PC's precieved it.
Athanasia Steele
wrote:
<snip>
>I have found that if you don't make telepathy (or truth magic, but
>telepathy is worse because more subtle) somewhat limited, it
>tends to kill many otherwise interesting events and plotlines, and
>also to destablize situations so badly that it's hard for the GM
>to work out what would happen. Almost nothing produces such a
>sudden and disasterous PC "turtle" as realizing that all of your
>plans may be open knowledge to the enemy.
Yes. Very likely. And I discovered in the course of setting up a
culture where mind magic existed for a written work that if it
isn't sufficiently limited, it's possible to construct a society
whose model I don't grasp satisfactorily even with all the time
I want to work out the implications of the magic.
I am thinking of saying that, Liavek-style, focus-pieces are an
essential part of the magic of this world, although I don't know
that the rationale will be the same. I'm also thinking of saying
that amulets to ward off adverse influences, including sickness
and mind magic intrusions, are ubiquitous. It means it's possible
to deprive a criminal mage of magic by taking their focus away,
and it also means that people don't generally have to fear the
exercise of mind magic in most everyday affairs. It becomes
possible to keep secrets, and it becomes possible to enforce
laws against the misuse of mind magic. It'd still be misused,
naturally, but not so commonly as to make the society intolerable,
perhaps. I could expect not to deal with it all the time, and I
could expect not to have it wreck the political game.
Off the top of my head, the times I can think of when it might come
up with respect to one of the main PCs is their voluntarily setting
the amulet aside -- a character suffering from melancholy might
seek the assistance of a mind-healer, who might conceivably be
unscrupulous -- and their falling into the hands of an enemy. I'm not
finished thinking through how I'd go about playing it, in these
circumstances. It'd have to be a technique I could live with myself.
Strider Starslayer
Saying that there is an ubiquidus sorce of aniti-mind reading amulets is
kinda counterproductive, because the presence of such things will increase
the fear of mind magic and blow out of proportion the number of mind mages
that exist <IE- everyone has an anti-mind magic amulet: oh my god there must
be mind mages EVERYWHERE!> some other ideas that might limit the ammount of
paranoia and possibly fit your campiagn better <Feel free to combine a few
of these if you want>
1- Mages look different then normal people; maby the government marks them,
maby the mystic energy flowing through them frys every hair on there bodies,
maby that mystic energy causes there eyes to be solid or arc with energy =>
as long as the change dose not make mages hideous is should only be worth -5
points twoards there purchase of magic. it can also actually be useful, if
you look like a mage you might not have to say or do anything to get a
person to spill there guts in an instant.
2- The use of mind magic actually created 'waves' that can be detected by
other magical devices, or even just sensitive individuals- Every story with
some sort of counter-theft mechanisim would have one of these, and sensitive
individuals would probabally acompany every diplomat/important person in
your game world
3- The mind block skill is commonly avalibal- not just useful for throwing
off mental probes, it can also be used to defeat pain or increase focuse,
making it reasonabal that almost everyone could have it but not create a
paranoia about 'thought stealers on every corner' <Works well with #1, since
seeing a mage may make you want to use this to cover thoughts you don't want
picked up.>
4- Mages are a different species then normal humans: This gives normal
humans who have no mental recourse to a mental probe an increased chance of
blocking it- meanwhile other mages who do have the means to repost a mental
attack are free to assault each other without penalty.
5- Someone under the infulence of mind magic is obvious; there eyes glass
over, they have a bad gaunt to there step- whatever; it makes the perfect
spy scenario out of the question.
6- It requires regnants to cast mind magic; even if it were something as
simple as chewing a eucaliptus leaf <Which is still moderatly discrete and
can still fit into a 0 casting time for very good mages> it gives the
observer a chance to say 'shit here comes a mind attack' and activate ther
emind block, dive for cover etc. If you really want to restrict mind magic
it could require an alchemical potion, or something illigal, or perhaps
something genuinly odious- like consumption of brain <any brain, cow,
monkey, etc- but you got to eat it.>
7- Mages touch is required for mind magic: makes long range evesdroping out
of the question, coupled with some of the others it removes mind magic from
everything except willing compliance and assaulting and incapacitated foe.
Bradd W. Szonye
[Step 1: Establish the NPCs]
>He stands tall and strong and his lighthearted attitude but never
>beguiles the truethfullness of his words, or the frevor with which he
>belives what he says. <This could be false- he could be a lechrous
>liar who coulden't tell the truth if he tried; but that's not how he's
>precieved.>
[Step 2: Determine whether the PCs actually pick up on important cues]
>His light attitude and interesting sence of humor provide a great deal
>of entertainment, whenever you corner him with a question about his
>past or the truth he calmly lists the answer and apologised for a minor
>faux pas he commits in regard to the condition of the lizardman
>concentration camps
[Step 3: Play out the conversation]
>Here is the party where it played to be a glib GM, but even without
>that you've laid the proper groundwork so that the players will be
>inclined to belive the diplomat regardless- just make sure that his
>argument is not full of holes.
This is very close to the approach that has been working splendidly in
my own game. In a moment, I'll describe how it works in both directions
(NPCs trying to influence PCs and vice versa). First, I've noted that
players will accept a lot of input about what their characters see and
believe, so long as you don't clash with player knowledge. While that
may sound obvious, it's actually fairly tricky to manage in play, so I
think it's worth discussing.
There are two things in particular that work well for me. One is
describing the things that aren't obvious from the portrayal, either
because you can't see them in the player world (ie., subtle
body-language clues) or because they don't really come across in the
portrayal (ie., the kind of raw charisma that some people have but I
don't). Another area with some leeway are verbal cues like hesitation
that could come from either the NPC or the GM. The other major point in
my favor is lack of knowledge about the game-world: the players often
don't know whether something is a good deal, or whether a threat is
credible, things like that.
Basically, there's a lot of information that might influence the outcome
of a conversation but that doesn't come across when you're talking
around a game table. That's where I think social mechanics can work
smoothly, instead of feeling forced upon the players. You can use them
to supplement the actual verbal exchanges; they can provide just enough
influence to make the difference when the outcome is uncertain, which is
exactly when character skill *should* make a difference.
Here are a few situations to exemplify how it works for me:
1. Interactions in general.
First, I need to establish the NPC's attitude. Sometimes, the answer is
obvious; there might already be an established relationship. That's
often the case when the party priest talks to the villagers in his
hometown -- most people are friendly; a few people are indifferent,
suspicious or even hostile. A lot depends on the NPC's attitudes toward
church and authority -- often, they're reacting to the priest's role
rather than to the character specifically. Every now and then, I'll call
for a reaction check just so that I don't fall into a rut.
Basically, sometimes I roll the dice and sometimes I don't. If I have a
good idea of the relationship, I skip the check. If there's a lot of
uncertainty, or something is out of place, I call for a check. For
example, if the half-orc barbarian walks up to a farmer and starts
chatting, I'll call for a Diplomacy (or Intimidation) check, because his
friendly demeanor is at odds with the farmer's expectation that orcs are
nasty people. If Wallflower Sue tries to talk her way out of a mugging,
I'll just assume that the mugger is hostile, but if a paladin with
supernatural charisma and social skills tries it, I'll make the check.
The two major reasons for making the check are (1) because I think it'll
make a real difference, as when Mr. Personality tries to convince the
robber to reform, or (2) to remind a player of his character's
limitations, as when the farmer is likely to take the half-orc's grin as
a sign that he's hungry, not friendly. This second reason is a
significant one: quite often a player is aware that his character is not
a good talker, but he'll forget it in the heat of conversation. Asking
for a check is a little reminder to tone down the glibness:
Half-Orc: Hi! Do you have a minute? I have a couple of
questions to ask you. It'll only take a minute.
GM: Make a Diplomacy check.
Player: Oh crap. [Rolls.] Uh, I rolled a 9.
Farmer [pointedly ignoring half-orc, a little afraid]: Uh, hello,
Father Sargiento ... this ... troll ... is a friend of yours?
Priest: Don't worry, child. He won't harm you.
Of course, I'd also make the check any time a player actually asked for
one. This might come up if the player has very high social skills but
doesn't seem to be getting what he paid for -- or even if an
unimpressive character gets too many "ignored by fiat" results.
2. Questioning a potential witness or wrongdoer.
First, we exchange a few words to make a first impression. Based on
that, I decide whether I need to make a reaction check, as above. Next,
we play out a bit of the conversation. Most of the time, the outcome is
obvious; there's no need to make any checks, because it's basically
straightforward and informational. There's no reason to expect any
deception, the NPC seems sincere, and the PCs either find out what they
were looking for or determine that the NPC is ignorant of the matter.
In more complex situations, I might quietly make a Diplomacy or Bluff
roll for the NPC and note the result. If it's a good result, I try to
play the character as sincere and confident (with OOC notes to the
effect that the NPC seems earnest). If it's a bad result, I'll give
verbal cues that something is up.
As we play it out, the players often get suspicious. They'll ask for a
Sense Motive check. If it's a simple misunderstanding (ie., I stuttered
while trying to think on the fly), I'll correct it and skip the roll.
Usually, though, I let them make the opposing roll. If they fail the
check (or the NPC really is sincere, just flustered), then I assure them
that the NPC seems earnest. If they make it, then I'll confirm the
suspicion: the NPC is being evasive (or is plainly lying).
This is one of those times where it's okay to tell players what their
PCs believe -- it's okay because the player doesn't know the facts for
certain, so he must trust to his PC's limited perceptions. Now, as in
real life, sometimes the players/PCs remain suspicious. Just as in real
life, you occasionally talk to somebody who seems sincere, but something
rings false. When this happens, the questioning usually ends: there
might be something fishy, but the PCs aren't going to find it out just
by talking.
3. Persuading or intimidating an NPC.
Determine initial reactions as above. Give a rough description of the
NPC based on his abilities and attitude. Play out a bit of the
interchange. Depending on the situation, the outcome may or may not be
in doubt. For example, it might be a situation like getting a call from
a telemarketer: you just have nothing to offer the NPC, or no credible
threat, so trying to coerce him will only make him angry. In those
situations, no roll is necessary; there's nothing in doubt, nothing to
"win." Similarly, there might be no conflict at all. Again, there's
nothing in doubt.
If there is some question about the outcome, then make the check as soon
as possible as I described in my article a couple of days ago. (Get the
actual result, decide whether the PCs should *think* they've won, and
play it out. Note that sometimes you can come away from a conversation
thinking you're ahead when really you're not.) Why make the check early?
Because if the PCs fail to persuade, they might notice it quickly enough
to try a different approach, which could allow another check.
4. An NPC tries to persuade or intimidate a PC.
This is a bit trickier, especially for intimidation. This is where
players are notoriously resistant to being told what to do. Generally,
you should handle it like the reverse case, or like the questioning
scenario above. First, play it out a bit to determine whether there's
any conflict at all. If the players immediately want to cave in, or if
it's obvious that the NPC can't possibly win, there's no need to make a
check, no need to risk a GM-player conflict.
When the outcome is in doubt, make the check, and try to get the players
to abide by it -- but remember that it's important to be tactful about
it. Don't tell the players garbage that conflicts with what they know.
While some players will give you a little leeway on player knowledge
that should be firewalled, definitely don't try to tell them anything
that conflicts with what the PCs know to be true. All you'll get out of
it is animosity.
Instead, set things up so that the players believe the outcome to be
fitting and correct. As Strider recommended, tell them that the NPC is
earnest and confident, even if he's lying through his teeth. Play the
NPC to match that statement. Assure them that what the NPC says agrees
with what they know, or at least that it doesn't conflict. Stretch the
truth a bit; while you don't want to outright lie to them *as a GM to a
player*, you might want to state uncertainties as fact, or downplay
minor inconsistencies. Reassure them that the NPC's slight hesitation
was probably meaningless. The idea is to take advantage of the players'
trust in you without abusing that trust.
In a way, you're trying to convince the player of the outcome; it's
important that you don't simply *tell* them the result. While you might
not totally convince the player, you should at least do a good enough
job that they can accept it at the game-world level. While this does
require some persuasiveness, you don't actually need to have an 18
Charisma and 20 ranks of Diplomacy to play an NPC who does. You just
need a little tact plus players who are willing to meet you halfway.
Basically, you want them to suspend disbelief just enough to accept your
interpretation of how the PCs perceive the situation, to see the things
beyond the verbal portrayal that influence the outcome.
There's a fine line between accurately relating the PC's perception of
the conversation and deciding what the PC thinks. It's probably a good
idea to stay away from that line. However, the players do need to
depend on the GM for some of this information and interpretation, just
as they rely on him to describe what a dungeon looks like (and smells
like). If you present it as perceptions and hunches, it goes down a lot
easier than if you say, "The diplomat convinces you to sign the treaty."
Present the situation properly, and the player will want to sign it
because that's what makes sense, from his character's point of view
(partly provided by you).
Mary K. Kuhner
[PC vulnerability to telepathy]
>Off the top of my head, the times I can think of when it might come
>up with respect to one of the main PCs is their voluntarily setting
>the amulet aside -- a character suffering from melancholy might
>seek the assistance of a mind-healer, who might conceivably be
>unscrupulous -- and their falling into the hands of an enemy. I'm not
>finished thinking through how I'd go about playing it, in these
>circumstances. It'd have to be a technique I could live with myself.
A potential ally might demand mindreading to prove good faith.
A court or lord might demand truthtelling or mindreading to prove
innocence. Even a merchant, for a big transaction, might want
truthtelling or mindreading to prove authenticity and ownership
of the goods.
A major issue in all of these, even if the telepath is
not going to abuse his position deliberately, is whether
additional information (beyond the information the questioner
needed) will to leak out, and how it will be dealt with
if so. For example, a PC is accused of a crime she didn't commit,
and submits to mindreading to prove her innocence. Is it
possible for the telepath to notice other crimes she *did*
commit? (In my experience PCs with a spotless record are
few and far between.) If so, what is the likely response?
Very few societies have had limitations against self-incrimination
or against an investigation of one crime spreading to others,
but perhaps the telepath-ridden society needs them.
Truth magic has less of this than telepathy, unless it's the
"truthfully answer any question you're asked" mind-control
variety--that one really puts you at the mercy of the questioner.
But the combination of truth magic and a social situation where
refusal to answer is seen as implying guilt can be almost as
nasty as telepathy.
Something I'd find fascinating, though I'm not sure how to
do it, is to model searching someone's mind via telepathy
as a stylized conversation. The telepath would be looking for
things to say that would elicit the needed information. For
it to be a worthwhile interaction, we also need something
that the target can aim for to his advantage. Perhaps if
the interaction strays onto certain hot-button topics the
telepath will be noticed or even harmed, or perhaps there is
the possibility for information flow in the "wrong" direction
under certain circumstances.
The first time Chernoi managed a dream-sending to Honor, Honor
said very sharply "You can't hold me here against my will." I
suspect that Honor, who is a much better dreamsender, knows
that this is actually possible and may know how to do it. That
could be a fascinating struggle.
While for me this doesn't necessarily need mechanics, it
does need a stronger conceptual framework for what sorts of
things each side should be doing than I have at the moment.
But I think it would be very cool if it worked. Games
tend to model anything too complex or alien to play "straight"
as combat--computer hacking as combat, soul healing as
combat--and I'd love to see a different metaphor.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Athanasia Steele
wrote:
>Strider Starslayer <refa...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
<snip description>
>
>This is very close to the approach that has been working splendidly in
>my own game. In a moment, I'll describe how it works in both directions
>(NPCs trying to influence PCs and vice versa). First, I've noted that
>players will accept a lot of input about what their characters see and
>believe, so long as you don't clash with player knowledge. While that
>may sound obvious, it's actually fairly tricky to manage in play, so I
>think it's worth discussing.
<snip>
I do much what Strider's just described -- in fact, it took me
a bit to realize that he might have been suggesting a specific
technique, because extensive description is common and easy to
do online, where we play.
I think the medium I run in has something to do with my being
able and willing to resolve the social stuff strictly by roleplay,
without reference to social skills on the sheet. Unconvincing
body language, hesitation, and stuttering don't matter, and
since the pace of everything is slower, there's more time to
think. If one can write reasonably well, and if one can come up
with good responses in 15 seconds to a minute, that one couldn't
be half so convincing at the pace of spoken conversation might
not matter much. The physical skill that matters is typing
speed.
I'm not a good actor myself, and I tend to be a bit tongue-tied
often, so I'd have problems if we switched media.
Athanasia Steele
<refa...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
<snip>
>Saying that there is an ubiquidus sorce of aniti-mind reading amulets is
>kinda counterproductive, because the presence of such things will increase
>the fear of mind magic and blow out of proportion the number of mind mages
>that exist <IE- everyone has an anti-mind magic amulet: oh my god there must
>be mind mages EVERYWHERE!> some other ideas that might limit the ammount of
>paranoia and possibly fit your campiagn better <Feel free to combine a few
>of these if you want>
I don't see it that way, really. Amulets are a fairly common form of
folk magic, and people today carry around luckpieces and medallions
for similar reasons without being necessarily very fearful. So I'd
expect this sort of use of general protective magic to be common if
it's possible.
I'm not sure the setting doesn't have fey and similar creatures that
inspire the behavior, too. I'm getting the feeling it may have common
and comparatively subtle magic rather than, say, rarer exercise of the
flashy sort. But I'm not sure yet.
(This place isn't Debroa. I don't know its name yet, and I *think*
Shazemar ends up here after the major events of the story I'm
writing now, but I'm not sure.)
>3- The mind block skill is commonly avalibal- not just useful for throwing
>off mental probes, it can also be used to defeat pain or increase focuse,
>making it reasonabal that almost everyone could have it but not create a
>paranoia about 'thought stealers on every corner' <Works well with #1, since
>seeing a mage may make you want to use this to cover thoughts you don't want
>picked up.>
I really figure the amulet is just an object-based way of implementing
this, like salt, iron, and rowan being effective against fey and their
glamours.
<snip>
>6- It requires regnants to cast mind magic; even if it were something as
>simple as chewing a eucaliptus leaf <Which is still moderatly discrete and
>can still fit into a 0 casting time for very good mages> it gives the
>observer a chance to say 'shit here comes a mind attack' and activate ther
>emind block, dive for cover etc. If you really want to restrict mind magic
>it could require an alchemical potion, or something illigal, or perhaps
>something genuinly odious- like consumption of brain <any brain, cow,
>monkey, etc- but you got to eat it.>
I have a sense that magic in this setting might commonly involve
specific items as a general principle, so something like this doesn't
seem too unlikely. And I might make it moderately time-consuming.
>7- Mages touch is required for mind magic: makes long range evesdroping out
>of the question, coupled with some of the others it removes mind magic from
>everything except willing compliance and assaulting and incapacitated foe.
I'm thinking of this too. Telepathy might work at a distance between
mages who'd previously attuned foci.
Thanks. Good stuff.
Athanasia Steele
wrote:
<snip>
>Something I'd find fascinating, though I'm not sure how to
>do it, is to model searching someone's mind via telepathy
>as a stylized conversation. The telepath would be looking for
>things to say that would elicit the needed information. For
>it to be a worthwhile interaction, we also need something
>that the target can aim for to his advantage. Perhaps if
>the interaction strays onto certain hot-button topics the
>telepath will be noticed or even harmed, or perhaps there is
>the possibility for information flow in the "wrong" direction
>under certain circumstances.
>
>The first time Chernoi managed a dream-sending to Honor, Honor
>said very sharply "You can't hold me here against my will." I
>suspect that Honor, who is a much better dreamsender, knows
>that this is actually possible and may know how to do it. That
>could be a fascinating struggle.
>
>While for me this doesn't necessarily need mechanics, it
>does need a stronger conceptual framework for what sorts of
>things each side should be doing than I have at the moment.
>But I think it would be very cool if it worked. Games
>tend to model anything too complex or alien to play "straight"
>as combat--computer hacking as combat, soul healing as
>combat--and I'd love to see a different metaphor.
OK, I don't really know what I'm talking about yet, but here's
one possible take on it.
Suppose that the underlying principle of mind magic is that
there's a dreamland, a sort of quasi-astral realm of imagery
and phantasm, to which the unconscious mind has access, and
which one can learn to enter and manipulate consciously. It
becomes possible to reach other minds not directly through
the physical brain, but as they exist in this quasi-astral realm
-- which they all do, just as they exist in physical space. The
variety of imagery that could appear in this realm is immense,
naturally. It's largely created by the subconscious minds within
it, and the stable imagery within it is formed by ideas embraced
with passion. There's much that shifts, naturally: this place
is subject to dream-logic.
In a realm like this, mind-to-mind contact is possible, but finding
the assured truth could be highly problematic -- it seems almost
certain to be too unreliable for forensic use. Memory and fancy
mingle here; and while the meaning of some of the symbolism
might be apparent, other symbols might be obscure. For example,
could anyone but me ever guess that my dream in which we had two
lions and a bear in the living room was actually about drawing?
(I drew wildlife, and they were references to the Walter T.
Foster books I learned from as a kid).
Suppose that Sue the Clairvoyant often forms the imagery of her
mind as grounds and dwelling. Defenses might appear as a high hedge
of thorns, or a curtain wall, a path through a forest that twists back
on itself and never seems to lead inside. Her mood might be
represented by the weather and the season -- storm, fair weather, a
bleak grey day in winter. The dwelling could be a high tower from
which she can see for miles -- that might be appropriate imagery for
a clairvoyant. Memories might be pictures hanging on the walls inside,
or objects to which memories are attached, or collections of objects
whose names are puns and word associations. Things she wishes to
bury and forget might be hidden away in the cellar.
If Sheila the Mind-Mage enters Sue's mind -- let's say she was
invited -- and picks up a panoramic egg, and in it she sees Sue
killing someone, is she looking at a memory of homicide or a fear
or a fantasy? Sheila might not be able to tell without corroborating
evidence. She also might not be able to find what she's looking for:
she might find all kinds of other things instead. So if mind-magic
works this way, with dream-logic, it seems as if it could be pretty
hard to use it to establish guilt or innocence.
It ought to be usable for long-distance communication, since one
can travel widely and swiftly in dreams.
If I say that ideas strengthened by passion are firm in this realm,
then it might be that a character who has no particular training in
mind-magic has very strong defenses anyway. I like this: it means
that if I have players who passionately loathe the idea of having
their characters interfered with by mind magic, they can create a
character who has similar feelings on the subject, and thus be
well-defended by nature without me having to figure out how to
supply script immunity.
The equivalent of mind control in this setup isn't really mind
control. It's more an attempt to influence someone else's subconscious
by introducing to them imagery in the dreamland which will produce
a favorable or unfavorable response -- a conditioning effect might
be induced if it goes on long enough. The mind-mage might send someone
a dream every night in which performing a given action is associated
with something unpleasant, for instance. It isn't strict control, but
it might well produce subconscious bias.
Suppose Sheila the mind-mage wants to alter one of Sue's memories,
which are represented as pictures on the wall. She might paint over
one of the pictures -- and it might stay that way, if Sue doesn't care
about the incidents in the memory. But if Sue cares, Sheila's
alteration might start to fade, since Sue's image is reinforced by
emotion. It might leave Sue with two contradictory memories of the
same event for awhile, which might puzzle her. Or the alteration might
fade swiftly, and Sue might interpret the sense that she'd remembered
something different as a memory of a dream.
At the moment, it looks to me as if I can use a construction like
this. Aside from providing a good rationale for players to be able to
opt out of dealing with mind magic directed against their characters
if they don't want to, it means the exercise of mind magic is
roleplayable in dreamland sequences -- much better for my grasp of
a character's mental state than just saying, "You regard this person
as your best friend."
Jason Corley
> Suppose that the underlying principle of mind magic is that
> there's a dreamland, a sort of quasi-astral realm of imagery
> and phantasm, to which the unconscious mind has access, and
> which one can learn to enter and manipulate consciously.
For an interesting (and very different) treatment of this kind of
quasi-astral realm, check out "Shattered Dreams", a quirky RPG from Apex
Publishing that was out a few years back. It was long on ideas (the
villains were especially very memorable and good) but short on an adequate
system. For someone like me who never looks at systems until the third or
fourth time through reading the game, this tells you just how much I
didn't like it.
Still wanna run that game sometime...
--
***************************************************************************
"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
Wayne Shaw
>quasi-astral realm, check out "Shattered Dreams", a quirky RPG from Apex
>Publishing that was out a few years back. It was long on ideas (the
>villains were especially very memorable and good) but short on an adequate
>system. For someone like me who never looks at systems until the third or
>fourth time through reading the game, this tells you just how much I
>didn't like it.
>
>Still wanna run that game sometime...
The "dream warriors" concept is one I'm suprised hadn't seen primary
focus in a game before. Too bad about SD's game system, though...
Erol K Bayburt
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
Likely we do. I have this emotional belief in any argument that if
I can find the perfect line of argument, just exactly the right
words, then I can convince the other guy that I'm correct.
Intellectually, I've concluded that this is an illusion. If you
don't think that it's an illusion, that it *is* possible for a
technically perfect argument to always convince it's subject (or
even convince the subject only if the subject lacks special,
above-average resistance) then we do have a fundamental reality
clash.
(Digression: Even if you're right and I'm wrong about how easily
people are influenced, I still think you're mistaken and faintly
insulting wrt your reasons. I don't think it's because we think
we're "special" to resist influence - I think it's because we
think we're *not* special when it comes to influencing others.
When we try to convince others of something, it's hard and
uncertain, and we generally don't know why it did or did not work.
Others may be better than us at influencing and convincing people
- sometimes lots better - but we still think of it as only a
qualitative difference rather than a quantitative one.)
What I'm arguing for here is the difference between "You find the
diplomat's arguments convincing" and "The diplomat makes some
convincing arguments." The first tells the player what his
character thinks, while the second can at least be taken as only
describing the quality of the diplomat's arguments - "convincing"
on some general scale - without trying to directly mold the PC's
mind.
If the GM and players have internalized the mechanics, this can
even be put into mechanical terms:
GM: <rolls dice> "The diplomat makes some very convincing
arguments"
Player: "OK, how convincing?"
GM: "+3 Reaction."
Player: "Wow." <applies this information to his internal model of
the PC, which may or may not be Immersion> "OK, it's against her
better judgment but Brigette agrees to go with the diplomat."
--or alternatively: "No, Brigette is tempted but tells the
diplomat that she's not going with him."
The way I play, the Player can roll dice for PC reaction rather
than consulting an internal model (especially if the internal
model isn't working or isn't there), but usually won't. Likewise
the GM can consult an internal model for an NPC's reaction to a
PC's roll to influence, but will usually roll dice.
I guess what I'm calling for is a "player decides" mechanic for PC
reactions to NPC influence (with lots of advisory die rolls). Now
I am staunchly opposed to "player decides" for determining the
results of a NPC's physical actions on a PC (e.g. combat). But my
reasons are consistent:
When "player decides" is used to determine if the diplomat
successfully convinces Brigette, or if the troll successfully hits
Brigette, it's not the "real" diplomat or troll succeeding - it's
an image of the diplomat/troll in Brigette's Player's mind, an
image that might or might not accurately represent the NPC. For
combat this is a Bad Thing (IMO) because what "really" happens
depends directly on what the "real" troll does - not on the image
that the "real" troll creates in either Brigette's mind or
Brigette's Player's mind. "Player Decides" thus makes the combat
seem Not Real.
But when I try to convince you that my position is correct, it's
not *me* convincing you (or more likely failing to convince you) -
it's an image of me in your mind, an image that isn't the "true
me." Likewise when the diplomat tries to convince Brigette, it's
an image of the diplomat doing the actual convincing, rather than
the "real" diplomat. It is thus appropriate to model this by
letting the image in the player's mind convince Brigette (player
decides). If the player is Immersed in Brigette, then it's even
more appropriate because then it's the image of the diplomat in
Brigette's mind convincing Brigette - just like real life.
On the third hand, if the diplomat has Special Powers to directly
touch and change Brigette's mind, then it is the "real" diplomat
convincing Brigette, rather than Brigette's image of the diplomat.
In this case, a coercive diced mechanic seems more Real to me than
"Player Decides" - just like combat and (IMO) unlike "ordinary"
mundane persuasion.
Now if you have Gamist concerns about player "cheating" that
outweigh your Simulationist concerns about getting influence to
"feel right" to the player, then "Player Decides" isn't a good
answer for you. Or if your real-world view is that people do
directly convince each other, then you'll reject "player decides"
for influence for the same reasons I reject it for combat.
(And yes, I'm aware of the irony - I'm making such a long post
here because of my emotional belief in a "magic bullet" argument -
even though I'm arguing that "magic bullet" arguments don't really
exist, and would feel like, well, magic, if they did exist in the
game world.)
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com (mail drop)
Er...@ix.netcom.com (surfboard)
Glenn Butcher
> Likely we do. I have this emotional belief in any argument that if
> I can find the perfect line of argument, just exactly the right
> words, then I can convince the other guy that I'm correct.
> Intellectually, I've concluded that this is an illusion. If you
> don't think that it's an illusion, that it *is* possible for a
> technically perfect argument to always convince it's subject (or
> even convince the subject only if the subject lacks special,
> above-average resistance) then we do have a fundamental reality
> clash.
[snip rest of post]
Well said. This is what I was trying to get at.
--
Glenn Butcher gbn...@ichr.uwa.edu.au
Horse, you are truly a creature without equal, for you fly without wings
and conquer without sword. - The Koran
Wayne Shaw
>I can find the perfect line of argument, just exactly the right
>words, then I can convince the other guy that I'm correct.
>Intellectually, I've concluded that this is an illusion. If you
>don't think that it's an illusion, that it *is* possible for a
>technically perfect argument to always convince it's subject (or
I think it's possible for a theoretically perfect argument to
_influence_ it's subject, if that's what you mean. Convince implies
rather more to me.
>(Digression: Even if you're right and I'm wrong about how easily
>people are influenced, I still think you're mistaken and faintly
>insulting wrt your reasons. I don't think it's because we think
>we're "special" to resist influence - I think it's because we
I don't think that's the reason in all cases, but I do think it's the
reason in some cases, and to those individuals it's _intended_ to be
somewhat insulting, as I don't have a high opinion of that mindset.
And I think it's rather the more common one than one based in a sound
philosophical position.
>What I'm arguing for here is the difference between "You find the
>diplomat's arguments convincing" and "The diplomat makes some
>convincing arguments." The first tells the player what his
>character thinks, while the second can at least be taken as only
>describing the quality of the diplomat's arguments - "convincing"
>on some general scale - without trying to directly mold the PC's
>mind.
I suspect we're having, in part, a semantic argument. The two
statements you've made are to me, essentially identical.
>GM: <rolls dice> "The diplomat makes some very convincing
>arguments"
>Player: "OK, how convincing?"
>GM: "+3 Reaction."
>Player: "Wow." <applies this information to his internal model of
>the PC, which may or may not be Immersion> "OK, it's against her
>better judgment but Brigette agrees to go with the diplomat."
>--or alternatively: "No, Brigette is tempted but tells the
>diplomat that she's not going with him."
And this is generally what I expect to occur on my take on it.
>I guess what I'm calling for is a "player decides" mechanic for PC
>reactions to NPC influence (with lots of advisory die rolls). Now
I generally am, too. In those cases where I'm not, it's usually
because I've lost near complete faith in the player's ability to
accurately model his own character (and there can be several reasons
for this, some more benign than others). Even in those cases I rarely
enforce the matter, as I view doing so to generally do more harm than
good. When I do enforce it, it's usually because the lack of the
player's ability to model it is damaging the game for game or genre
reasons to the point where as far as I'm concerned there are only two
viable choices: 1. Pull the player into shape in this particular area
or 2. Tell him to go away. Since the first always provides him the
opportunity to chose the second instead if it matters to him enough, I
usually will chose it instead...but either is quite rare.
To my knowledge, I've done so only in three kinds of situations in
different campaigns: 1. Combat coolness, in gritty campaigns where a
player's unwillingness to embody the difference in experienced and
inexperienced combats was unacceptable; 2. Fear, in horror campaigns
where the unnaturally brave and inpreturbable individual was
unacceptable and 3. Game systems that specifically give benefits for
psychological problems, where I view enforcement as part of the game
contract. The first two have been very, very rare in my gaming
career; I recall one case of the first and two of the second in twenty
years of GMing. The third has been somewhat common, though it's
rarely been necessary for me to actually intervene, rather than simply
reserving the right to.
>When "player decides" is used to determine if the diplomat
>successfully convinces Brigette, or if the troll successfully hits
>Brigette, it's not the "real" diplomat or troll succeeding - it's
>an image of the diplomat/troll in Brigette's Player's mind, an
>image that might or might not accurately represent the NPC. For
>combat this is a Bad Thing (IMO) because what "really" happens
>depends directly on what the "real" troll does - not on the image
>that the "real" troll creates in either Brigette's mind or
>Brigette's Player's mind. "Player Decides" thus makes the combat
>seem Not Real.
This, however, is only a viable view if you consider the perception of
the diplomat to be something entirely outside the game model. Since I
don't entirely agree that's the case, I can't really agree with the
conclusion.
>(And yes, I'm aware of the irony - I'm making such a long post
>here because of my emotional belief in a "magic bullet" argument -
>even though I'm arguing that "magic bullet" arguments don't really
>exist, and would feel like, well, magic, if they did exist in the
>game world.)
Usenet is the home of irony, if nothing else. :)
Warren J. Dew
And if you'll note, I never said it should influence the attitude
directly. To me there is, as someone else said, an enormous
difference between "the diplomat seems convincing" and "you find
yourself convinced."
To me, the difference is, as has been mentioned, that the former is an input to
the character model - the diplomat is objectively convincing - and the latter
an output from it. If you impose outputs to the model - effects on the
character's actions - the character can't actually be roleplayed.
But in an earlier posts, you said:
I tell people in games how to think all the time
This is, to me, as objectionable as 'you find yourself convinced', and far
removed from 'the diplomat seems convincing'. In this case, it imposes
something on the internals of the character model, again making roleplay
pointless.
Pointless, that is, from the standpoint of character stance roleplay. From an
authorial standpoint, it might be regarded as an intrusion, but it wouldn't
necessarily break anything. It might actually help actor stance play.
I think the reason magical influence is so much more acceptable is that magical
influences are not generally incorporated into players' character models.
Instead, it's regarded as an external input to the model. If it messes with
the character model, it messes with it at the character level, so the player
doesn't have to drop out of character to incorporate it.
I'd compare it to the difference between 'truths' that Niven's grogs were able
to instill, and truths that develop from one's own reasoning or experience.
Even though the character believes both, the character can tell the difference
between how they happened.
Robert Scott Clark
>Wayne Shaw posts, in part:
>
> And if you'll note, I never said it should influence the attitude
> directly. To me there is, as someone else said, an enormous
> difference between "the diplomat seems convincing" and "you find
> yourself convinced."
>
>To me, the difference is, as has been mentioned, that the former is an input to
>the character model - the diplomat is objectively convincing - and the latter
>an output from it. If you impose outputs to the model - effects on the
>character's actions - the character can't actually be roleplayed.
>
Wha???
How is "the diplomat seems convincing" objective?
It is a statement of the character's reaction to what the diplomat
said.
Take oratory as an example. I might listen to a speach and say , "he
was a moving speaker", while someone else listening to the exact same
speach might consider it boring drivel.
The statement as to whether or not the diplomat seems convincing is as
much a statement about the listeners reaction as it is about what the
diplomat said.
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Wayne Shaw
>
> I tell people in games how to think all the time
>
>This is, to me, as objectionable as 'you find yourself convinced', and far
>removed from 'the diplomat seems convincing'. In this case, it imposes
>something on the internals of the character model, again making roleplay
>pointless.
However, in the cases of those game systems it's intrinsic to do so;
the difference is that there's a perfectly good way for the player to
avoid having to do it. If it's a Disadvantage system, don't take any
Disadvantages of a psychological nature that are at a level of
"hardness" that I'm obliged to intervene if I don't view you as
followign them. In a system that awards experience points for
roleplaying, you don't have to play the way I think...there's just a
carrot to encourage it. In either case, it's effectively not possible
to run those games without doing some of that. And my real point was
that some people who seem to theoretically object to the principal
don't in those situations. This seems to me to indicate that the
principal is not absolute.
Bradd W. Szonye
>In this case [telling a player what his character thinks or feels], it
>imposes something on the internals of the character model, again making
>roleplay pointless.
>
>Pointless, that is, from the standpoint of character stance roleplay.
>From an authorial standpoint, it might be regarded as an intrusion, but
>it wouldn't necessarily break anything. It might actually help actor
>stance play.
I can see that. To a character stance player, such inputs might feel
contrived or at least clash with what the player feels about the
character -- and in character stance we usually assume that the player
knows the character best.
For actor stance, it really isn't much more intrusive than the
relationship between a director and an actor. The actor may sometimes
disagree or rebel, but much of the time actors are grateful to get extra
insight to their characters.
Wayne Shaw
<robson...@cyllene.uwa.edu.aus> wrote:
>Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> writes:
>
>>However, in the cases of those game systems it's intrinsic to do so;
>>the difference is that there's a perfectly good way for the player to
>>avoid having to do it. If it's a Disadvantage system, don't take any
>>Disadvantages of a psychological nature that are at a level of
>>"hardness" that I'm obliged to intervene if I don't view you as
>>following them.
>
>I can live with that, but it seems unfair. I can take two characters,
>both moderately claustrophobic and about equally likely to panic in an
>enclosed space. For the first, I choose to make an effort to model the
>character's internal (conscious and subconscious) thought processes and
>really feel that I am roleplaying well. I don't take the Disadvantage
>because that would break the model. For the second, I choose to
>play the character as a token, taking into account the phobia only
>when it is convenient or when the dice force me to do so. For the
>second character, I am rewarded with disadvantage points that I can
>use to strengthen my character in other areas. The first character
>must be weaker.
You're correct. It is unfair. I can find no way that a conflict
between the GM's perception of what is appropriate in the game and the
player's not ending up unfair to the latter unless it can be resolved
by negotiation, since if it matters significantly to the GM, he's
going to win. In this case, a primarily gamist mechanism to encourage
variety of attitude (and to protect those who want to have such from
game cultures that don't take well to players creating characters that
interfere with group effectiveness unless there's some payoff in game,
rather than roleplaying terms) has a price associated with it; by
necessity, it puts part of the character's personality under review
and override by the GM. You can either deal with that or you can't,
but the tool can't do what it's designed for and not produce potential
conflicts in this area.
>
>>And my real point was
>>that some people who seem to theoretically object to the principal
>>don't in those situations. This seems to me to indicate that the
>>principal is not absolute.
>
>If I play a game that uses disadvantage mechanics, I know about them
>in advance and I don't try to play the character immersively. There
>is no deep character model to break; just a story to tell and a game to
>play.
But apparently there _are_ people who at least play IC stance who have
no problem with them. I can't say I'm suprised an immersive whould
have problems with them, but immersives are, by best evidence, a
fairly tiny part of gamers as a whole.
John Kim
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
[Re: personality-related disads]
>In this case, a primarily gamist mechanism to encourage variety of
>attitude (and to protect those who want to have such from game
>cultures that don't take well to players creating characters that
>interfere with group effectiveness unless there's some payoff in
>game, rather than roleplaying terms) has a price associated with
>it; by necessity, it puts part of the character's personality under
>review and override by the GM. You can either deal with that or you
>can't, but the tool can't do what it's designed for and not produce
>potential conflicts in this area.
I'm not sure about that. _The Babylon Project_ (and probably
some later games) has an alternate implementation of disadvantages
which serves mostly the same purpose without requiring GM intervention.
You take a personality trait like "claustrophobia", but it gets you
no benefit during character creation. Instead, you get extra points
when the claustrophobia actually hampers you during play.
This has the benefit of not requiring GM override in order
to make disads fair -- if a player doesn't roleplay his claustrophobia,
it doesn't gain him any points. Also, a player cannot carefully pick
disads that she doesn't think will come up during play.
It has the problem that (as implemented in TBP), disadvantaged
PC's mysteriously improve faster than non-disadvantaged PC's. Disads
which are pay-at-start can explain in background why the PC has other
advantages -- but pay-as-you-go needs a lot more finesse to explain
away. This can cause some suspension-of-disbelief problems.
--
John H. Kim | Whatever else is true you
jh...@fnal.gov | Trust your little finger
www.ps.uci.edu/~jhkim | Just a single little finger can
UC Irvine, Cal, USA | Save the world. - Steven Sondheim, "Assassins"
Wayne Shaw
>some later games) has an alternate implementation of disadvantages
>which serves mostly the same purpose without requiring GM intervention.
>You take a personality trait like "claustrophobia", but it gets you
>no benefit during character creation. Instead, you get extra points
>when the claustrophobia actually hampers you during play.
At which point some would just argue that if you don't play it to suit
the GM, you get less experience, and as such the effect is the same.
You're still losing points for not playing to suit the GM. You'll
notice in my earlier post on this subject I mentioned experience
points in games with RP awards and the like as other mechanisms where,
when I was using such games, I was effectively having to tell my
players how to play their characters.
>
> This has the benefit of not requiring GM override in order
>to make disads fair -- if a player doesn't roleplay his claustrophobia,
>it doesn't gain him any points. Also, a player cannot carefully pick
>disads that she doesn't think will come up during play.
But of course the GM is still the one who gets to decide when it comes
up in play in a relevant way. So in practice, all this has done is
move the target back.
>
> It has the problem that (as implemented in TBP), disadvantaged
>PC's mysteriously improve faster than non-disadvantaged PC's. Disads
>which are pay-at-start can explain in background why the PC has other
>advantages -- but pay-as-you-go needs a lot more finesse to explain
>away. This can cause some suspension-of-disbelief problems.
Some people have huge conceptual problems with PCs in Disadvantage
systems getting rewarded at all, anyway. It's just a question of
where your sensetivity level on that issue is set.
John Kim
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>> _The Babylon Project_ (and probably some later games) has an alternate
>> implementation of disadvantages which serves mostly the same purpose
>> without requiring GM intervention. You take a personality trait
>> like "claustrophobia", but it gets you no benefit during character
>> creation. Instead, you get extra points when the claustrophobia
>> actually hampers you during play.
>
>At which point some would just argue that if you don't play it to suit
>the GM, you get less experience, and as such the effect is the same.
>You're still losing points for not playing to suit the GM.
Not entirely. In the TBP implementation, the GM just has
to decide whether the disad was a hindrance or not. For typical
personality disadvantages, the GM decides when a Willpower roll is
called for and what the exact results of a failed Willpower roll are.
In TBP, the player always controls exactly what the character
does and may get points in addition. This isn't the same as GM control,
since the GM might still agree that the PC was hampered by the disad
even if the player decides it comes into play at different times and
in different ways than the GM would have envisioned. With typical
personality disads, for the player to get any points at all she has
to sacrifice control of character behavior.
Personally, I am one of those who doesn't like most personality
mechanics -- and I see a *big* difference between XP bonuses and
enforced GM/mechanical intervention (i.e. make a Will roll or your
character has to do X as arbitrated by the GM). The former I can
easily accept, while the latter is a potential game-breaker. The
Babylon Project mechanic changes personality disads from the latter
into the former.
Robert Scott Clark
> Personally, I am one of those who doesn't like most personality
>mechanics -- and I see a *big* difference between XP bonuses and
>enforced GM/mechanical intervention (i.e. make a Will roll or your
>character has to do X as arbitrated by the GM). The former I can
>easily accept, while the latter is a potential game-breaker. The
>Babylon Project mechanic changes personality disads from the latter
>into the former.
I'll agree 100% here. There is a huge difference. One type forces a
character to do something, the other attempts to cause character
action by putting pressure on the player. I'll give you a guess which
I prefer.
Wayne Shaw
>to decide whether the disad was a hindrance or not. For typical
>personality disadvantages, the GM decides when a Willpower roll is
>called for and what the exact results of a failed Willpower roll are.
I'd argue that's a matter of degree, not kind.
>
> In TBP, the player always controls exactly what the character
>does and may get points in addition. This isn't the same as GM control,
>since the GM might still agree that the PC was hampered by the disad
>even if the player decides it comes into play at different times and
>in different ways than the GM would have envisioned. With typical
>personality disads, for the player to get any points at all she has
>to sacrifice control of character behavior.
Not in the case of the RP award situation I was talking about. And
I'll note that your situation works in large part because there's no
matter of degree involved: the psych limit either applies or it
doesn't, but there's no issue of how often it's supposed to apply.
> Personally, I am one of those who doesn't like most personality
>mechanics -- and I see a *big* difference between XP bonuses and
>enforced GM/mechanical intervention (i.e. make a Will roll or your
>character has to do X as arbitrated by the GM). The former I can
>easily accept, while the latter is a potential game-breaker. The
>Babylon Project mechanic changes personality disads from the latter
>into the former.
But also, as I noted, at the price of considerably greater coarseness.
And I've had other people object just as much to the kind of process
you're describing where it's implimented indirectly rather than
directly.
In part, this has been my argument: this doesn't seem to be a simple
"Yes outside influence is acceptable" "No it isn't" issue, but one
where some implimentations are acceptable to some people and others
aren't. There's no sharp line of demarkation.
John Kim
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
> John Kim <jh...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>> Personally, I am one of those who doesn't like most personality
>> mechanics -- and I see a *big* difference between XP bonuses and
>> enforced GM/mechanical intervention (i.e. make a Will roll or your
>> character has to do X as arbitrated by the GM). The former I can
>>easily accept, while the latter is a potential game-breaker.
>
>you're describing where it's implimented indirectly rather than
>directly.
>
>In part, this has been my argument: this doesn't seem to be a simple
>"Yes outside influence is acceptable" "No it isn't" issue, but one
>where some implimentations are acceptable to some people and others
>aren't. There's no sharp line of demarkation.
OK. I haven't noticed those. In my experience, players who
don't like personality mechancis (PM's) generally find XP bonuses
less intrusive than enforced GM/mechanical intervention. Those
players who objected to XP bonuses objected even more to direct
intervention. i.e. It isn't a binary "zero influence" vs "any
influence" -- but there is a scale of how much influence is
acceptable.
However, I might be missing something. You know people who
object to indirect influence but like direct influence? Is it anyone
here on rgfa? What are their reasons?
Wayne Shaw
>object to indirect influence but like direct influence? Is it anyone
>here on rgfa? What are their reasons?
What they object to is that the indirect effect...the experience...is
inescapable; over time if they've not interacted with my sense of
appropriate RP appropriately, their characters have lagged seriously
in experience gained. On the other hand, they can, if they wish,
avoid the Disadvantage problem entirely, simply by taking the bulk of
their Disadvantages either at sufficiently weak levels so that it's
unlikely we're going to have a serious discrepency in view on how
they'll apply, or ones that are social or physical rather than
psychological. Basically, they view that they have more control over
their vulnerability to GM override with the Disadvantages than they do
over the carrot/stick effect with the generic experience award issue.
And no, no one that I know of who's expressed this to me is on rgfa.
Mary K. Kuhner
> OK. I haven't noticed those. In my experience, players who
>don't like personality mechancis (PM's) generally find XP bonuses
>less intrusive than enforced GM/mechanical intervention. Those
>players who objected to XP bonuses objected even more to direct
>intervention. i.e. It isn't a binary "zero influence" vs "any
>influence" -- but there is a scale of how much influence is
>acceptable.
If you catch me really firmly in character, XP awards are invisible
and also completely useless (they don't end up influencing the
PC at all). If I'm not firmly in character, I tend to find them
a bit offensive--what, a bribe? You don't like my play and you
think you can *bribe* me to play better? Yeesh.
I would consider trying coercive mechanics (though with the
expectation that they'd totally screw up my usual play style) if
the group thought there was some interesting goal that could only
be obtained that way. I have trouble seeing a case in which
I would find *any* advantage to the XP award system. It's
less harmful, but what's the upside for me? (I put aside here
any desire to improve the other players' play. I don't think this
usually works.)
It's also an advantage of the coercive systems that the usual
implementation disrupts game balance at game start, where it
is easy to catch and fix, whereas XP award systems disrupt
game balance later on.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Bradd W. Szonye
>_The Babylon Project_ (and probably some later games) has an alternate
>implementation of disadvantages which serves mostly the same purpose
>without requiring GM intervention. You take a personality trait like
>"claustrophobia", but it gets you no benefit during character creation.
>Instead, you get extra points when the claustrophobia actually hampers
>you during play.
Theatrix does something similar. If one of your traits causes you grief
(ie., the "vampire" trait means that you need to stay out of the sun),
then you get points for that.
>This has the benefit of not requiring GM override in order to make
>disads fair -- if a player doesn't roleplay his claustrophobia, it
>doesn't gain him any points. Also, a player cannot carefully pick
>disads that she doesn't think will come up during play.
Yes. It's very elegant. It works nicely in conjunction with the opposite
mechanic, where you spend points during play to use your advantages.
>It has the problem that (as implemented in TBP), disadvantaged PC's
>mysteriously improve faster than non-disadvantaged PC's. Disads which
>are pay-at-start can explain in background why the PC has other
>advantages -- but pay-as-you-go needs a lot more finesse to explain
>away. This can cause some suspension-of-disbelief problems.
I have a possible solution to this problem in the game that I'm slowly
developing. First, you need to recognize that these mechanisms primarily
help with game and spotlight-time balance, not with realism. In truth,
disadvantages cause positive feedback: they limit your opportunities,
which usually leads to further disadvantages. However, that's not really
acceptable from a participatory point of view -- you don't want your
players sitting on their hands, generally.
My solution is to make them explicitly player rewards/costs, not
character points. Thus, you should award them for good things the
*player* does, like introducing a complication, portraying a difficult
character well, or entertaining the group. On the other side, you need
to make sure that the points are usable for things other than just
character development. In fact, it might even be a good idea to disallow
spending of "disadvantage points" on character development, because it's
unrealistic. Instead, let the players spend them on stuff like
introducing a new subplot, playing a second PC, or getting out of paying
for pizza.
Bradd W. Szonye
>What they object to is that the indirect effect...the [awarding]
>experience [for playing out disadvantages]...is inescapable; over time
>if they've not interacted with my sense of appropriate RP
>appropriately, their characters have lagged seriously in experience
>gained.
My solution to this is to make the reward a kind of "goody points" that
are usable for things *other* than character advancement. It's a player
reward, so you should spend it on player things, like who has to get the
next round of drinks from the fridge or who gets control of the NPC
allies. That way, you don't get the weird effect of disadvantages that
actually make you better, but you do get a reward for playing a more
difficult character.
Bradd W. Szonye
>If you catch me really firmly in character, XP awards are invisible and
>also completely useless (they don't end up influencing the PC at all).
>If I'm not firmly in character, I tend to find them a bit
>offensive--what, a bribe? You don't like my play and you think you can
>*bribe* me to play better? Yeesh.
Heh, heh. That said -- er, chuckled, I think that they encourage *some*
people. Also, I usually put my rewards in a different context: there's a
player in my group that always gets the biggest reward because he does
the best job of entertaining the group. (I sometimes use a technique
originally developed in a long-ago Shadowrun game: award discretionary
XP by player consensus instead of by GM decree. Thus, the rewards are
not a bribe but a pat on the back from appreciative players.)
>I have trouble seeing a case in which I would find *any* advantage to
>the XP award system. It's less harmful, but what's the upside for me?
I'm considering setting up a system where you don't get character
development awards; instead, the "goody points" you get are usable on
player-level things like getting more spotlight time, getting somebody
else to fetch you a beer, or getting to sit in the "shotgun seat" when
the group goes out for Burger King.
>It's also an advantage of the coercive systems that the usual
>implementation disrupts game balance at game start, where it is easy to
>catch and fix, whereas XP award systems disrupt game balance later on.
My solution: don't apply the rewards to game balance, apply it to other
things that players value. When I implement it, I'll need to keep in
mind the fact that some folks (like you) have little use for them during
actual play.
Mary K. Kuhner
>Yes. It's very elegant. It works nicely in conjunction with the opposite
>mechanic, where you spend points during play to use your advantages.
Do you have some practical experience with that scheme?
We had a disasterous time with it in Shadowrun, where you can either
spend EXP for rerolls and automatic successes, or save them for
advancement. Some characters naturally did one, and some naturally
did the other. (If you were in a field where you made many, many
key die rolls, you tended to spend. If you were in a field where
you made only a few--detective work, for one--you got to save.)
Over the course of a few years of play this had horrendous effects
on game balance. The front-line combat PCs were screwed. To
survive they *had* to spend on rerolls, so they never improved.
My detective ended up with so many EXP that spending them would have
been character-destroying.
I also have trouble thinking of very many advantages where spending
points is a reasonable model. It might make some sense for
appealing to your allies for help--the more you appeal, the less
willing they will be to help you. But surely this should not
cross over into points spent on, say, X-ray vision or combat
reflexes?
My PC Markus is Immune to Energy Weapons. If this were on a
point-spending system I would have to keep a large stock of
points in hand, always, because it would make no sense for an
energy weapon to suddenly hurt him for no in-game reason.
(In fact he has demonstrated this power only once, but
that could change tomorrow.)
I've become more and more convinced that what you should point-
cost is core skills and core powers, with particular reference
to the high values among them. Not flavor skills, not
disads of any kind except possibly for mechanical limits on
of a core skill. (If you are a mage only at night, that may be
a point-cost limitation.) Over the long term, the fancier
systems make a mess.
I wouldn't have much objection to your player-brownie-point
system, Bradd, but I don't personally have any use for it
either. Might as well just have everyone pay into the pizza
fund equally. But I distract really easily.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Robert Scott Clark
>
>Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>> John Kim <jh...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>>> Personally, I am one of those who doesn't like most personality
>>> mechanics -- and I see a *big* difference between XP bonuses and
>>> enforced GM/mechanical intervention (i.e. make a Will roll or your
>>> character has to do X as arbitrated by the GM). The former I can
>>>easily accept, while the latter is a potential game-breaker.
>>
>>I've had other people object just as much to the kind of process
>>you're describing where it's implimented indirectly rather than
>>directly.
>>
>>In part, this has been my argument: this doesn't seem to be a simple
>>"Yes outside influence is acceptable" "No it isn't" issue, but one
>>where some implimentations are acceptable to some people and others
>>aren't. There's no sharp line of demarkation.
>
> OK. I haven't noticed those. In my experience, players who
>don't like personality mechancis (PM's) generally find XP bonuses
>less intrusive than enforced GM/mechanical intervention. Those
>players who objected to XP bonuses objected even more to direct
>intervention.
Then let me speak up.
I hate, with a passion, XP awards given for PC/Player behavior.
I have no problem whatsoever with even the most coersive, no player
choice whatsoever PMs.
There, now you've seen one.
Warren J. Dew
Truth is, I'm just not very good at negotiating, and if I
try the players can probably smell my intentions a mile away.
Unlike you, it'snot a good idea to send me alone into a car
dealership. Therefore, it would be a big deal to me if I
could cover up the gaffes in my presentation with a few
doses of "the diplomat presents a very good argument" and
expect the players to honor that.
Honoring in the sense of taking it into account, or honoring it in the sense of
having their characters do what you want them to do? I'd suggest that
gamesmasters who aren't good at negotiation are probably not in the best
position to predict the results of attempts at persuasion.
It's important for other situations too. While I may not be
able to seduce Fred (or even Sally) at the game table,
sometimes you really need the superspy PC to fall for the
obviously-bad-news temptress.
Need? Only if the campaign is on rails. And if the players are amenable to
taking the train, there shouldn't be a problem.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
Warren J. Dew
My campaign has had mind magic as a big part of what is going on with the
player characters for a few years now.
I do not think that they are intrusive the way that personality mechanics are,
provided the players know it exists, so that they can identify it (or at least
have a suspicion about it) when it happens. Since it involves externally
imposed factors, it doesn't impinge on the players' turf the way that
personality mechanics do.
On the other hand, I think there's room for things to get very uncomfortable
for the characters. I also think, as others have pointed out, that it's
difficult to predict what steady state social system would result from the
presence of such magic.
I don't have that particular difficulty, as it's really just beginning to be
investigated, and only by player characters. Thus far, they've imposed a very
strict code of ethics on themselves. It will be interesting to see how things
develop.
Mary Kuhner:
Very few societies have had limitations against self-incrimination
or against an investigation of one crime spreading to others,
but perhaps the telepath-ridden society needs them.
Or perhaps a telepath ridden society will be crime free. That is not
necessarily a good thing, of course. One of the issues my telepaths are facing
right now is how to give the established power structure some measure of
defense against rogue telepaths, while preventing the established power
structure from using telepathy to make their power near absolute.
While for me this doesn't necessarily need mechanics, it
does need a stronger conceptual framework for what sorts of
things each side should be doing than I have at the moment.
But I think it would be very cool if it worked. Games
tend to model anything too complex or alien to play "straight"
as combat--computer hacking as combat, soul healing as
combat--and I'd love to see a different metaphor.
My mechanics are pretty similar to combat mechanics. There have still been
quite a few very interesting encounters, though, since much of what telepathy
has been used for to date has been communication with nonhumans, such as
animals and magic weapons.
Athanasia Steele
<snip>
>On the other hand, I think there's room for things to get very uncomfortable
>for the characters. I also think, as others have pointed out, that it's
>difficult to predict what steady state social system would result from the
>presence of such magic.
>
>I don't have that particular difficulty, as it's really just beginning to be
>investigated, and only by player characters. Thus far, they've imposed a very
>strict code of ethics on themselves. It will be interesting to see how things
>develop.
<snip>
I'd be interested in hearing how it turns out. The theme of Ao was
culture clash and war. I think the theme of my next campaign is likely
to be magic and law.
Somewhat off the subject, I'm going to have the LPC coding to
accommodate tabletop-style on the MUD done well before I understand
enough of the world or the campaign structure to run, it seems. And I
hadn't realized how much I've been missing GMing.
--
Athanasia Steele
airaz...@mail.com.clip
http://azurite.betterbox.net/
Remove '.clip' from address to send email.
Wayne Shaw
>spend EXP for rerolls and automatic successes, or save them for
>advancement. Some characters naturally did one, and some naturally
>did the other. (If you were in a field where you made many, many
>key die rolls, you tended to spend. If you were in a field where
>you made only a few--detective work, for one--you got to save.)
>Over the course of a few years of play this had horrendous effects
>on game balance. The front-line combat PCs were screwed. To
>survive they *had* to spend on rerolls, so they never improved.
>My detective ended up with so many EXP that spending them would have
>been character-destroying.
This was a problem with DC Heroes, too. The game was so fueled by
using Hero Points in combat that saving them up for improvement was
effectively selfish, but it was the road to permanant improvement.
This could breed fairly horrendous metagame thinking, and player
clashes. We finally speperated the two kinds of points out in awards
to make the problem go away.
R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh
<sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>This was a problem with DC Heroes, too. The game was so fueled by
>using Hero Points in combat that saving them up for improvement was
>effectively selfish, but it was the road to permanant improvement.
>This could breed fairly horrendous metagame thinking, and player
>clashes. We finally speperated the two kinds of points out in awards
>to make the problem go away.
That would be my solution. Reward being affected by disads in play
with plot points which can also be used in play (bonuses or re-rolls,
minor plot decisions - "I pick up the iron bar I find behind the
dumpster", etc.). These are all "small scale" effects and hence should
balance out. For the reasons Mary outlined, I'd keep advantage use out
of it, except to the extent that bonuses and re-rolls are applicable.
Advancement is big picture, so the points should (IMO) be earned by
big picture achievements - how far or how well you advance toward
scenario and character goals/how well you roleplay/how good the story
is (depending on campaign values) on a session or scenario scale.
Mixing the large and small scales causes problems.
Stumpy.
--
R.G. "Stumpy" Marsh Timaru, New Zealand
<http://members.nbci.com/StumpyNZ/>
Bradd W. Szonye
> Truth is, I'm just not very good at negotiating, and if I
> try the players can probably smell my intentions a mile away.
> Unlike you, it'snot a good idea to send me alone into a car
> dealership. Therefore, it would be a big deal to me if I
> could cover up the gaffes in my presentation with a few
> doses of "the diplomat presents a very good argument" and
> expect the players to honor that.
Warren J. Dew <psych...@aol.com> wrote:
>Honoring in the sense of taking it into account, or honoring it in the
>sense of having their characters do what you want them to do?
The former. I want them to react as if I'd made a good argument. Thus,
they may have good reasons not to accept the argument, but it's not
because I presented it poorly.
>I'd suggest that gamesmasters who aren't good at negotiation are
>probably not in the best position to predict the results of attempts at
>persuasion.
Perhaps. I can negotiate some things but not others. For example, I
completely fall apart when it comes to bartering.
> It's important for other situations too. While I may not be able to
> seduce Fred (or even Sally) at the game table, sometimes you really
> need the superspy PC to fall for the obviously-bad-news temptress.
>
>Need? Only if the campaign is on rails. And if the players are
>amenable to taking the train, there shouldn't be a problem.
Figure of speech. Again, perhaps I'd like to have a very seductive
character, but I don't want to actually attempt to seduce Fred around
the game table. (If my wife's around, I don't really want to make the
actual attempt with Sally either.)
Bradd W. Szonye
>>Yes. It's very elegant. It works nicely in conjunction with the
>>opposite mechanic, where you spend points during play to use your
>>advantages.
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote:
>Do you have some practical experience with that scheme?
>
>We had a disasterous time with it in Shadowrun, where you can either
>spend EXP for rerolls and automatic successes, or save them for
>advancement.
When we played Shadowrun, everyone pretty much devoted their karma
points to advancement; while people would use karma in play, they only
used the options that "temporarily" spend the karma, never the ones that
spent them permanently (and thus slowed your advancement).
>I also have trouble thinking of very many advantages where spending
>points is a reasonable model. It might make some sense for appealing
>to your allies for help--the more you appeal, the less willing they
>will be to help you. But surely this should not cross over into points
>spent on, say, X-ray vision or combat reflexes?
Well, in Theatrix and in the mechanic I'm considering, you don't use
goody points to boost your abilities, you use them in order to use your
abilities at all. The goal is not to balance power but to balance
participation (spotlight time). The idea is that if you're spending
points, then you're participating and making a difference. If you don't
get opportunities to spend your points, that indicates that you aren't
getting many chances to participate, but then you can spend the points
to broaden your character (but not necessarily make it more "powerful").
If your group's style allows, you could also spend those points to
influence the game in ways that don't directly involve your character.
Thus, spending all your goody points indicates that you're getting a
fair share of the spotlight. Ending up with a lot left over means that
you have room to develop your character in a way that will make his
abilities more relevant.
I think that this approach is significantly different from what you see
in Shadowrun, where most advancement points go toward making a character
better at what he already does. The problem you had does, however,
confirm a suspicion I had that it might be best to separate advancement
points and goody points.
To highlight the difference from Shadowrun, by the way, consider that
you'd use goody points just to *use* your character's abilities, not to
boost them. Thus, you're spending points any time you get involved,
whether you're wielding your favorite axe or directly adding some detail
to the world (in a shared-world style). There wouldn't be a point
imbalance between the combat monsters and your detective unless your
detective were being underutilized -- in which case, it's probably a
good idea to broaden his ability base.
>My PC Markus is Immune to Energy Weapons. If this were on a
>point-spending system I would have to keep a large stock of points in
>hand, always, because it would make no sense for an energy weapon to
>suddenly hurt him for no in-game reason. (In fact he has demonstrated
>this power only once, but that could change tomorrow.)
The way I handle this is to allow deficit spending: if you have an
established ability but no points to use it, you can take on a "bad
stuff" point instead of spending a goody point. Any time that you have
bad stuff accumulated, you can keep on doing things that are normal for
your character, but you can't extend your character or do other special
things that goody points normally allow. (The GM might also "spend" your
bad stuff for you by giving you bad luck -- when something bad is going
to happen, he might choose according to who has the most bad stuff,
instead of determining it randomly. Obviously, that won't work for all
game styles, but that kind of instant karma will work for many
non-simulationist styles.)
One other thing I'm considering is making things so that when you spend
a goody point on something normal, you can give it to another player
instead of just returning it to the GM. Like Shadowrun's temporary karma
expenditures, it lets players use their goody points without expending
them permanently.
>I've become more and more convinced that what you should point- cost is
>core skills and core powers, with particular reference to the high
>values among them. Not flavor skills, not disads of any kind except
>possibly for mechanical limits on of a core skill.
I generally agree with you. However, one traditional problem in RPG
design is in determining whether a skill is "useful" or "flavor" in the
first place. The idea behind my mechanic is that you determine what's
useful by seeing what actually gets used. If you never actually use your
basket-weaving skill, you pay almost nothing for it. If you use it every
session, you end up paying a lot for it. One nice effect of this is that
you could play a "combat monster" in a romance game without paying a lot
for it -- the fact that you're an ex-special forces guy is "flavor," and
therefore cheap.
>(If you are a mage only at night, that may be a point-cost limitation.)
>Over the long term, the fancier systems make a mess.
The idea here is not to make it fancy. When you use an ability, you pay
a little -- you pass the baton to somebody else. If your abilities turn
out not to be very useful, you get opportunities to expand into
something that sees more play time. No more problems with things like,
"but my rogue never gets to use his Find Traps ability!"
>I wouldn't have much objection to your player-brownie-point system,
>Bradd, but I don't personally have any use for it either. Might as
>well just have everyone pay into the pizza fund equally. But I
>distract really easily.
Well, extending the rewards (and penalties, for bad stuff) into the
player world is a new addition so that you have more uses for your
points if you don't feel that expanding your character would be
appropriate, and so that players have a greater incentive to avoid bad
stuff points.
I don't know that it's a great mechanic for everybody, but it strikes me
as very elegant conceptually, which is why I'm inclined to include it in
the game that I'm hypothetically designing.
Wayne Shaw
>you'd use goody points just to *use* your character's abilities, not to
>boost them. Thus, you're spending points any time you get involved,
>whether you're wielding your favorite axe or directly adding some detail
>to the world (in a shared-world style). There wouldn't be a point
>imbalance between the combat monsters and your detective unless your
>detective were being underutilized -- in which case, it's probably a
>good idea to broaden his ability base.
The one problem I can see with this is you could well end up with some
serious logic problems when you've run out of goody points because
your character's been busy, but events would logically still involve
them. Even a fairly heavily dramatist/gamist approach would run into
some jarring problems at this point, at best.
>instead of determining it randomly. Obviously, that won't work for all
>game styles, but that kind of instant karma will work for many
>non-simulationist styles.)
This creates a peculiar sort of backwards metagame effect, I'd think,
where once he's out of goody points, the player actively avoids
activity, even when the other players need his assistance to do
something.
Nis Haller Baggesen
>
> On Sun, 29 Apr 2001 03:19:52 -0400, Athanasia Steele
> <airaz...@mail.com.clip> wrote:
>
> [mind control magic]
>
> >If it does work on humans, how do you feel about one PC trying
> >to use it on another?
>
> How do you feel about one PC trying to rape another?
>
> A reasonable solution to that is to timeout and tell the player to
> tone down his behavior, play a different character or find a different
> campaign to play in. Mind control is IMO the equivalent of rape, and
> can be handled the same way.
>
There is the difference that the target of mind control might not be
aware of it. Mind control also has much more versatile applications than
rape.
Peter Knutsen
Mind control might also cause the target to do something that is
in the target's best interest. For instance the target may be
delusional or irrational and be about to do something that is
actually self-destructive, without being aware of the implications.
Someone then uses mind control powers to prevent the target from
comitting the self-destructive act.
How is that similar to rape, I ask?
--
Peter Knutsen
Strider Starslayer
Nis Haller Baggesen <n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote in message
news:3B028657...@daimi.au.dk...
way that the victim will never be aware of it? The point here is not the
violence of the act, but the violation of it- having someone jump into your
mind and move things around is a violation of that persons ability to think
for themselves- just like rape is a violate of the persons ability to
refuse. Doing this sort of thing WITHOUT your knowing is worse then knowing
about because if you don't know about it you can't take appropriate action
<Weither it be revenge killing, forced full frontal labotomy without
anestetics, or whatever else your PC's hurt fealings, and your sence of
personal justice can come up with>
And it's not that using mind controll will result in rape, it's that it IS A
FORM OF IT, if someone jumps into your head and forces you to think like
they want you to this is the mental equivalent of the physical act of taking
a person and forcing them to do what you want to do <Rape>. Now some people
may not agree with me, somehow claiming that violently dominating a persons
mind is not a violation, but I feal very strongly that it is.
Now of coruse there are more benine forms of mind magic, but usually these
spells fall into other catagories, such as divination <For things like
detect lie, or compel truth, or other such spells that can determine if a
person is lying> Healing <For spells that detect, or remove- madness and
maladies of the mind> Curses <For spells that inflict madness, halucinations
etc> Illusion <the halucinations again> Necromancy <For spells that move a
mind out of the body- perhaps to trasfer it to another one> and comunication
<For telepathy> - So when I'm refering to mind controll magic <and I belive
likewise for russell> I'm refering to spells like possession, hypnotic
sugestion, wipe memory, plant memory, loyalty, charm, enslave- spells that
are going to enter the persons mind and force them to think in a different
way, or perhaps dominate them utterly <enslave and possession>. These are
NOT friendly spells- and any mage who will cast them in anything but a life
of death situation shold at the least be catagorized as 'coldhearted' and
'unfealing'.
Bradd W. Szonye
>>To highlight the difference from Shadowrun, by the way, consider that
>>you'd use goody points just to *use* your character's abilities, not
>>to boost them. Thus, you're spending points any time you get involved,
>>whether you're wielding your favorite axe or directly adding some
>>detail to the world (in a shared-world style). There wouldn't be a
>>point imbalance between the combat monsters and your detective unless
>>your detective were being underutilized -- in which case, it's
>>probably a good idea to broaden his ability base.
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>The one problem I can see with this is you could well end up with some
>serious logic problems when you've run out of goody points because your
>character's been busy, but events would logically still involve them.
>Even a fairly heavily dramatist/gamist approach would run into some
>jarring problems at this point, at best.
Yes -- that's a common complaint about Theatrix, and I think it's a
serious one. For example, some people don't like the idea that you can
no longer use your vampire abilities/superpowers/whatever suddenly
because you're player's run out of points.
Theatrix's "solution," IIRC, is to quietly fade out of the spotlight
until you get an opportunity to earn more points, perhaps by introducing
a new complication. I'm not really happy with that solution, which is
why I recommend "deficit spending." You can still spend goody points
when you're out of them, but only on established activities that your
character is likely to be involved in. Furthermore, racking up a lot of
negative points is bad in itself. Thus, players are encouraged to "fade
out" if they've had too much time in the spotlight, but they're not
forced to -- which is a big deal when you're really the best character
to deal with a given situation.
>>Obviously, [goody points & bad stuff points] won't work for all game
>>styles, but that kind of instant karma will work for many
>>non-simulationist styles.)
>
>This creates a peculiar sort of backwards metagame effect, I'd think,
>where once he's out of goody points, the player actively avoids
>activity, even when the other players need his assistance to do
>something.
That's the idea, though. Since you get points by doing cool/smart things
and by entertaining the other players, the mechanic penalizes spotlight
hogs who are only in it for themselves. If you play your part as a good
team member, you shouldn't run out of points. Keep in mind that other
players can give you points, too -- if they want to. You just want to
avoid situations where one player gets all the glory all the time,
without the other players being able to participate. When you run out of
points, that's a sign that you're doing too much without giving anything
back.
Wayne Shaw
>until you get an opportunity to earn more points, perhaps by introducing
>a new complication. I'm not really happy with that solution, which is
>why I recommend "deficit spending." You can still spend goody points
>when you're out of them, but only on established activities that your
>character is likely to be involved in. Furthermore, racking up a lot of
>negative points is bad in itself. Thus, players are encouraged to "fade
>out" if they've had too much time in the spotlight, but they're not
>forced to -- which is a big deal when you're really the best character
>to deal with a given situation.
The problem I can see with this, as I indicated later, is that your
metagame desire to not get saddled with the problem of deficit
spending ends up with what everyone would really like you to do, and
what, logically, they'd have you do IC.
>>This creates a peculiar sort of backwards metagame effect, I'd think,
>>where once he's out of goody points, the player actively avoids
>>activity, even when the other players need his assistance to do
>>something.
>
>That's the idea, though. Since you get points by doing cool/smart things
>and by entertaining the other players, the mechanic penalizes spotlight
>hogs who are only in it for themselves. If you play your part as a good
>team member, you shouldn't run out of points. Keep in mind that other
>players can give you points, too -- if they want to. You just want to
Well, that mitigates it. At that point you aren't stuck with the
conflict that what's good for the group is bad for the individual
player--or worse, what's good short term is bad long term, for
entirely metagame reasons.
Bradd W. Szonye
>>Theatrix's "solution," IIRC, is to quietly fade out of the spotlight
>>until you get an opportunity to earn more points, perhaps by
>>introducing a new complication. I'm not really happy with that
>>solution, which is why I recommend "deficit spending."
Wayne Shaw <sh...@caprica.com> wrote:
>The problem I can see with this, as I indicated later, is that your
>metagame desire to not get saddled with the problem of deficit spending
>ends up with what everyone would really like you to do, and what,
>logically, they'd have you do IC.
Which is one reason why it might not be well-suited for folks who
strongly dislike meta-game influence. I like it from a game point of
view: it's a "soft" method of encouraging people to take turns. It also
gives feedback to the GM: if the same people consistently end up with a
deficit, it might be a sign that you're playing to those characters too
much.
>>Since you get points by doing cool/smart things and by entertaining
>>the other players, the mechanic penalizes spotlight hogs who are only
>>in it for themselves. If you play your part as a good team member, you
>>shouldn't run out of points. Keep in mind that other players can give
>>you points, too -- if they want to.
I wanted to expand on this a little. I was considering dealing with
"initiative" on the player level rather than the character level.
Whoever has the most goody points gets the first turn -- if they have a
bunch of points, then either they haven't had much action lately, or
they've been doing a great job of entertaining the group. When you take
your turn, you hand off a chip to somebody else. Thus it doesn't cost
the group anything, just the player. (Play then proceeds around the
table. If the player to your left has more chips than the one to your
right, then play goes clockwise. The GM acts when the turn comes around
to his spot at the table.)
>Well, [being able to pass chips around] mitigates it. At that point
>you aren't stuck with the conflict that what's good for the group is
>bad for the individual player--or worse, what's good short term is bad
>long term, for entirely metagame reasons.
I think it's a good idea to let people donate chips to other players.
That way, if the players really think it's in their best interests to
give somebody "extra turns," they can. There are two major reasons I
forsee for giving somebody a chip: to reward him for doing something
cool, or to give a player a break when he's low on chips but he wants to
help out the team. One concern is that the players might be inclined to
just put their chips in a central pool or make one player the "bank."
I'm not sure how to deal with that.
I'm honestly not sure how well this idea would work, even with this
addition, in a strongly anti-metagame group. I think it has potential
for game- and drama-oriented people, however.
R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh
bra...@concentric.net (Bradd W. Szonye) wrote:
>Which is one reason why it might not be well-suited for folks who
>strongly dislike meta-game influence. I like it from a game point of
>view: it's a "soft" method of encouraging people to take turns. It also
>gives feedback to the GM: if the same people consistently end up with a
>deficit, it might be a sign that you're playing to those characters too
>much.
Not necessarily. You're assuming focus time = spending goodie points,
but it's not going to be that simple.
A player could just as easily hog the spotlight with disads and wind
up with a huge credit balance, or have lots of good *and* bad things
happen and wind up even. Goodie points wouldn't stop spotlight hogs,
it would just even up the good and bad stuff that happened to their
characters.
A 'good' spotlight hog will just learn what it takes to get more
spotlight time - ie. keep those goodie points balanced - in fact it
may make spot hogs *worse* as they hog spotlight trying to get their
disads into play to earn goodie points to balance the times they hog
spotlight spending them. And of course denying them the opportunity to
play up their disads because they were hogging with the cool stuff is
now 'unfair' because you're not letting them buy off their heroics.
Of course your spotlight hogs may not figure that out... :-)
Bradd W. Szonye
>>it's a "soft" method of encouraging people to take turns. It also
>>gives feedback to the GM: if the same people consistently end up with
>>a deficit, it might be a sign that you're playing to those characters
>>too much.
R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh <rma...@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
>Not necessarily. You're assuming focus time = spending goodie points,
>but it's not going to be that simple.
>
>A player could just as easily hog the spotlight with disads and wind up
>with a huge credit balance, or have lots of good *and* bad things
>happen and wind up even. Goodie points wouldn't stop spotlight hogs, it
>would just even up the good and bad stuff that happened to their
>characters.
Hey, this is a good point! My original idea was that you get points only
for voluntarily sitting out a "turn" by activating some limitation,
helping out the GM, or doing something that entertains the group. In
other words, you get rewards for "selfless" things, not necessarily just
bad things. Many traditional disadvantages (like you find in GURPS or
Champions) might mitigate costs but not actually get you new ones.
For example, activating a blindness disadvantage might actually get you
a point, because it could keep you from participating in a situation.
However, a "disadvantage" like honesty would only mitigate costs: you're
still participating, so you don't get to act for free, but you wouldn't
need to spend as much as normal when participating in a negotiation.
Other things that could get you points are playing NPCs for the GM,
helping to create the culture of your foreign PC, making everybody
laugh, or maybe even getting up to get sodas for the group.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most goody points go from one
player to another. When you spend points on routine things ("I'm using
my sword in this fight"), you give those points to somebody else, not
back to the GM. You only really spend them permanently when you do
something out of the ordinary, like pushing an ability or expanding your
character definition. You get new points for doing things the GM
rewards, like introducing a new permanent limitation or helping him out.
(When the other players reward you for doing something cool, the GM
might also decide to match that reward. For example, if you make
everyone laugh, the players might all throw you a chip, and the GM gives
you a new one too.)
>A 'good' spotlight hog will just learn what it takes to get more
>spotlight time - ie. keep those goodie points balanced - in fact it may
>make spot hogs *worse* as they hog spotlight trying to get their disads
>into play to earn goodie points to balance the times they hog spotlight
>spending them. And of course denying them the opportunity to play up
>their disads because they were hogging with the cool stuff is now
>'unfair' because you're not letting them buy off their heroics.
Yeah, this is a potential problem. This is why it's important to let the
players reward each other, so that they can decide how deserving a
player is of more spotlight time, and to limit GM rewards to basically
selfless things. Specifying this mechanically might be tough, but I
think it can be done. I think that you can avoid the problem if you
simply don't give points for limitations that are activated in a
spotlight-hogging way -- sure, you may earn a point, but in playing it
up, you may just be spending the points you get back.
I'm actually much more concerned about the potential for favoritism and
"popularity contests" than I am about this kind of spotlight hogging.
I'm not sure how to cope with *those* things.
>Of course your spotlight hogs may not figure that out... :-)
Heh, heh. That's true. This certainly won't solve issues with problem
players; I'm assuming a certain amount of trust here. One issue I'm
anticipating is the player who just doesn't understand the "selfless"
part -- I think you're right that you'll get people who want to play up
the limitations for more attention. They're likely to be disappointed if
neither the GM nor the other players find their histrionics amusing. I
don't know if there's *any* good solution to that kind of problem.
dragon-...@geocities.com
>I've become more and more convinced that what you should point-
>cost is core skills and core powers, with particular reference
>to the high values among them. Not flavor skills, not
>disads of any kind except possibly for mechanical limits on
>of a core skill.
I don't like most advantage-disadvantage systems that I've seen.
Disadvantages/flaws don't actually seem like a balancing mechanic in my
experience. This is based on playing games like DC Heroes, Rolemaster, and
Storyteller, where it is generally possible to design a character so that
flaws have a minimised effect.
I've been in many sessions of DC Heroes where some players felt unable to
contribute due to other players possessing characters much more powerful than
the norm - typically due to flaws that weren't particularly limiting to their
character design, or were so severe that if the GM had introduced them into
the session, the character would simply perish (this is a gamble based on
emotional blackmail).
One thing that I appreciate about the new edition of D&D is that is contains
merits (in the form of feats) but doesn't allow characters to receive
additional feats in exchange for flaws.
In regards to personality mechanics, I'd consider making them all advantageous
in some way. Phobias might be a problem to people IRL, but it's possible to
design some advantage for characters who are played according to personality
"flaws" such as phobias, obsessions, and weaknesses. Unknown Armies does
something like this, giving each character a Fear Stimulus, Rage Stimulus,
and Noble Stimulus that actually advantages the character in game terms. the
Passions in Wraith also encourage players to portray both positive and
negative aspects of their character personality.
Cheers,
James O'Rance
http://www.geocities.com/dragon-dreamer
http://www.dragonlance.com/taladas
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Mary K. Kuhner
Bradd W. Szonye <bra...@concentric.net> wrote:
>I think it's a good idea to let people donate chips to other players.
>That way, if the players really think it's in their best interests to
>give somebody "extra turns," they can.
If having someone get "extra turns" has gameworld tactical
implications, you run a risk of having your players
minimax as a team. I know that in _Paradisio_ if the PCs could
have given Casey's combat actions to Argent or Duende it would
have been quite advantageous, and Casey wouldn't even have
minded (combat was not his forte anyway).
The absolute worst case would be having the lead player(s)
apply metagame pressure to get everyone else's chips from
them, "because it will make us more effective as a team". I
have certainly played with groups which would have been
tempted in that direction.
If there are no gameworld implications, this wouldn't be a problem,
though I think many players would see the chips as rather
pointless--why are we interrupting play for this irrelevancy?
>There are two major reasons I
>forsee for giving somebody a chip: to reward him for doing something
>cool, or to give a player a break when he's low on chips but he wants to
>help out the team. One concern is that the players might be inclined to
>just put their chips in a central pool or make one player the "bank."
>I'm not sure how to deal with that.
Schemes founded on player competition tend to break down in the
face of player cooperation, and vice versa. (The Amber auction is
pretty humerous if played by cooperative players, for example. "Let's
figure out a fair distribution of the top rankings, bid the minimum
to accomplish that, and--whoopie!--spend all the remaining points
on powers and Good Stuff." Ends up with a *very* well-stocked
party. I am greedy enough as a player that I would be very likely to
go in for such a scheme--I would rather have lots of neat powers
than be the strongest among a group of characters with few
powers. The temptation would be nearly overwhelming.)
I think you really have to know your player group. If your players
are competitive, this could work to encourage them to share the
spotlight more. If they are cooperative, it's going to have strange
effects, probably not what you wanted. And, as you say, if they
are metagame-averse it will either have no effect at all, or annoy them.
Have you ever used the TORG Drama Deck? What did you think?
The one time I saw it done, it was a disaster, but the group might
just have been ill-suited to it. (Play deteriorated to a kind of distracted
slapstick; it was too obvious that one's success was due to an
arbitrary mechanism, not the intelligence of one's plan.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
John Kim
>> values among them. Not flavor skills, not disads of any kind except
>> possibly for mechanical limits on of a core skill.
>
>I don't like most advantage-disadvantage systems that I've seen.
>Disadvantages/flaws don't actually seem like a balancing mechanic in
>my experience. This is based on playing games like DC Heroes, Rolemaster,
>and Storyteller, where it is generally possible to design a character so
>that flaws have a minimised effect.
Well, my experience is more with GURPS and HERO. I would
tend to agree with you that in these systems the effects of disads
can be minimized. Even without intentional minimaxing, a disad
generally gets you more than it costs you.
On the other hand, I think that this is a deliberate feature.
The system encourages PC's to take disads because it is perceived that
disadvantaged PC's make for more interesting games -- which I basically
agree with. Also, the effect of disads is usually capped at a fairly
low level, so that a character can often max out on disads without
seeming terribly odd or crippled.
While there are *definitely* problems with the implementations,
I think the principle here is at least reasonable. I tend to lower
the cap on how much can be gained from disads by 25% to 50%, for
example. As I see it, the goal is:
* A PC with zero disads is playable, but noticeably penalized.
* For a fairly broad concept (i.e. a template or genre type), you
can max out on disadvantages without varying much from the type.
* Players can try to minimax to get disads with less impact, but as
the GM can mitigate this by rulings on what given disads are
worth (i.e. the Hero system where the GM rates the frequency of
many disads).
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>One thing that I appreciate about the new edition of D&D is that is contains
>merits (in the form of feats) but doesn't allow characters to receive
>additional feats in exchange for flaws.
Well, D&D3 does this mainly by having more severe restrictions
on character variation than most games. For example, PC's have basically
no choice over wealth and equipment. There are no options for allies,
contacts, social status, etc. There are no personality mechanics, so
also no personality-based ads or disads -- which is not in itself a
bad choice, but there also is hardly any non-mechanical discussion
of character personality.
Also, I would note that the core rule set for Rolemaster and
most of the Storyteller games also do not have disads. Those were
added in with supplements along with other munchkinisms. It's not
clear to me that D&D3 won't later come out with such a thing.
--
John H. Kim | Whatever else is true you
jh...@fnal.gov | Trust your little finger
www.ps.uci.edu/~jhkim | Just a single little finger can
UC Irvine, Cal, USA | Save the world. - Steven Sondheim, "Assassins"
Brian Gleichman
news:9ec7cb$7i2$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu...
> Have you ever used the TORG Drama Deck? What did you think?
> The one time I saw it done, it was a disaster, but the group might
> just have been ill-suited to it. (Play deteriorated to a kind of
distracted
> slapstick; it was too obvious that one's success was due to an
> arbitrary mechanism, not the intelligence of one's plan.)
I'll second this.
That TORG mechanic is very much for those who don't what to count on skilled
play determining the outcome. The high deviation resolution mechanic further
enforces that mindset, almost to the point where the Drama Deck is the only
path to success.
--
Brian Gleichman
Age of Heroes: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/
Free RPG Reviews: http://home.earthlink.net/~bgleichman/Reviews.htm
Rupert Boleyn
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>Schemes founded on player competition tend to break down in the
>face of player cooperation, and vice versa. (The Amber auction is
>pretty humerous if played by cooperative players, for example. "Let's
>figure out a fair distribution of the top rankings, bid the minimum
>to accomplish that, and--whoopie!--spend all the remaining points
>on powers and Good Stuff." Ends up with a *very* well-stocked
>party. I am greedy enough as a player that I would be very likely to
>go in for such a scheme--I would rather have lots of neat powers
>than be the strongest among a group of characters with few
>powers. The temptation would be nearly overwhelming.)
When we first got our hands on Amder that was one of the immediate
responses, though it wasn't nearly as well articulated. I can see it
now - a quick little conference on who wants which top ranking and off
we go. :)
>I think you really have to know your player group. If your players
>are competitive, this could work to encourage them to share the
>spotlight more. If they are cooperative, it's going to have strange
>effects, probably not what you wanted. And, as you say, if they
>are metagame-averse it will either have no effect at all, or annoy them.
>
>Have you ever used the TORG Drama Deck? What did you think?
>The one time I saw it done, it was a disaster, but the group might
>just have been ill-suited to it. (Play deteriorated to a kind of distracted
>slapstick; it was too obvious that one's success was due to an
>arbitrary mechanism, not the intelligence of one's plan.)
Our group ended up being incredibly frustrated by the whole dramas
deck + possibilities thing. Possibilities were annoying because like
SR's karma you had to choose whether to be good now, or in the long
run. The drama deck was frustrating because careful use of it could
negate any skill advantage or disadvantage a character had over
another or over an NPC. It was also annoying because getting a series
of crap cards meant that not only was your character ineffectual
_this_ round (which you get with crappy dice rolls), but they were
going to stay that way for several rouns, and you knew it.
It's a pity, because there were some nice bits to TORG, but it never
seemed worth the hastle of ripping them off and porting them to
another system.
--
Rupert Boleyn <rbo...@paradise.net.nz>
"Inside every cynic is a romantic trying to get out."
Jason Corley
> That TORG mechanic is very much for those who don't what to count on skilled
> play determining the outcome. The high deviation resolution mechanic further
> enforces that mindset, almost to the point where the Drama Deck is the only
> path to success.
I adapted the "dramatic" part of the Masterbook (aka Torg Lite) drama deck
to GURPS. I consider it a fun way to implement both more cinema and to let
the players have more power over where the game's going.
It works out to be about a 10-20 point advantage, depending on how many
cards you hand out, and how many of the 'bad' cards you leave in the deck.
That is, if you have the players make 75-point characters, give them 3
cards if there are less than 5 players present, it turns out to be a 90-
to 95-point game.
http://cobweb.scarymonsters.net/~corleyj/gaming/cards.txt
--
***************************************************************************
"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
Bradd W. Szonye
>Well, my experience is more with GURPS and HERO. I would tend to agree
>with you that in these systems the effects of disads can be minimized.
>Even without intentional minimaxing, a disad generally gets you more
>than it costs you.
>
>On the other hand, I think that this is a deliberate feature.
I agree, especially for Champions, where most disadvantages are designed
to fit the genre. I think they're worth points so that you're encouraged
to take them, even though they might limit your character. That way, you
get characters who are more like superheroes, with all their tragic
flaws and secret identities.
I'm less fond of disadvantages in universal systems, at least as
implemented. I don't feel that static, cost-at-start systems do a good
job of reflecting the value of disadvantages, *especially* if you're
into dynamic characterization (rather than 2D cardboard characters). I
also feel that they're unrealistic; in real life, we rarely get
compensation for our disadvantages. They just make us weaker.
Bradd W. Szonye
>Bradd W. Szonye <bra...@concentric.net> wrote:
>>I think it's a good idea to let people donate chips to other players.
>>That way, if the players really think it's in their best interests to
>>give somebody "extra turns," they can.
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>If having someone get "extra turns" has gameworld tactical
>implications, you run a risk of having your players minimax as a team.
>I know that in _Paradisio_ if the PCs could have given Casey's combat
>actions to Argent or Duende it would have been quite advantageous, and
>Casey wouldn't even have minded (combat was not his forte anyway).
Yes, this is a valid concern. At the same time, however, I think that
one major thing mitigate it: If nobody has a problem with it, then it
really isn't a problem, is it? It might set a higher baseline for the
challenges that the GM needs to provide, but if everybody is happy with
the allocation of points, I can't complain *too* much.
>The absolute worst case would be having the lead player(s) apply
>metagame pressure to get everyone else's chips from them, "because it
>will make us more effective as a team". I have certainly played with
>groups which would have been tempted in that direction.
This, however, is a big concern! When you have inflexible turns, you can
keep such a player in check. There are definitely disadvantages to my
scheme. Here you have a case of a spotlight hog applying peer pressure
to get more spotlight time. My best hope for this sort of situation
would be that the other players would get fed up with the hog, refuse to
donate chips -- and eventually the hog will either learn to cooperate or
leave the group. Still, that's not a very happy situation.
Question: How would it work better in a more traditional turn structure?
>If there are no gameworld implications, this wouldn't be a problem,
>though I think many players would see the chips as rather
>pointless--why are we interrupting play for this irrelevancy?
One of the reasons I decided to go with literal chips (probably poker
chips) is so that they'd be as unobtrusive as possible. I'm very averse
to bookkeeping, and I often forget to keep track of points on paper. The
idea here is that you can just reach down and toss a chip to somebody
else (or back to the GM) without really needing to look closely or pick
up a pencil.
>>There are two major reasons I forsee for giving somebody a chip: to
>>reward him for doing something cool, or to give a player a break when
>>he's low on chips but he wants to help out the team. One concern is
>>that the players might be inclined to just put their chips in a
>>central pool or make one player the "bank." I'm not sure how to deal
>>with that.
>Schemes founded on player competition tend to break down in the face of
>player cooperation, and vice versa.
Good point. My scheme is definitely rooted in friendly competition. Like
locks, it only keeps out honest people -- we see above that it breaks
down if somebody just doesn't want to "play nice" with the others. I
also fear that it might break down if the group lacks competition
entirely. Then again, in that case it may just be "moving the
goalposts"; if the whole group is happy with sharing their points, I
can't really complain as a game designer.
>Have you ever used the TORG Drama Deck? What did you think?
Nah, I've heard a lot about TORG, but I don't know if I've ever even
seen it in stores.
Thanks for the feedback!
Wayne Shaw
>also feel that they're unrealistic; in real life, we rarely get
>compensation for our disadvantages. They just make us weaker.
On the other hand, how many games are really trying for realistic?
Heroic fiction is full of characters who are badly flawed, yet on the
whole are greatly capable despite those flaws. That's really the
effect those sorts of system are trying for.