shoot out in the kitchen!
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
training/cool from old FNFF, but it probably still isn't "fun".
Scott
news://news/4ktt9v$p...@xring.cs.umd.edudelta5 <del...@pop.dakotacom.net>
wrote:
>Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) 4/08/96
>(condensed by poster)
>
>Burgler armed with Glock m17 and high cap mag had shootout w/ homeowner
>in homeowner's kitchen (approx 15 ft long). Homeowner was armed with
>Glock also (also m17 with high cap); 34 shoots were exchanged!!!! This in
>an area the size of a workshop! *AND NO ONE WAS HIT!!!!!*
>
>Perp apprehended following day; charged w/ 1st dg burglery attemp. murder
>and 4 other counts. Total charges carried 35 yr sentence if convicted.
>
>************************************************************************
>TIME TO LEARN HOW TO SHOOT! START ON A REVOLVER! HIT YOUR TARGET; BE
>SAFE! AND SAVE THE STATE SOME MONEY :)
>************************************************************************
>
>
Andrew Finch
: From the newsgroup rec.guns I found this gem. It supports my position on
: training/cool from old FNFF, but it probably still isn't "fun".
Fact is that most gun fights happen in the dark, at 15' or less, and
something like 70% or more of all shots are misses (and I think it's
higher than that). But FNFF had lots and lots of problems of its own.
David
Jeff Stehman
: From the newsgroup rec.guns I found this gem. It supports my position on
: training/cool from old FNFF, but it probably still isn't "fun".
: >Burgler armed with Glock m17 and high cap mag had shootout w/ homeowner
: >in homeowner's kitchen (approx 15 ft long). Homeowner was armed with
: >Glock also (also m17 with high cap); 34 shoots were exchanged!!!! This in
: >an area the size of a workshop! *AND NO ONE WAS HIT!!!!!*
But needed to change their shorts, I'm sure. Not the basis of a good ad
campaign for Glock, however. ;-)
This is why I thought the final shootout in Unforgiven was so well done.
--
Jeff Stehman Senior Systems Administrator
ste...@southwind.net SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
voice: (316)263-7963 Wichita, KS
URL for Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce: http://www.southwind.net/ict/
Frank Pitt
>>Burgler armed with Glock m17 and high cap mag had shootout w/ homeowner
>>in homeowner's kitchen (approx 15 ft long). Homeowner was armed with
>>Glock also (also m17 with high cap); 34 shoots were exchanged!!!! This in
>>an area the size of a workshop! *AND NO ONE WAS HIT!!!!!*
Reminds me of my favourite story of automatic weapon fire.
During a British commando raid on Norway, a commando kicked in the door
of a radio shack, a small building probably about 12ft x 12ft
with four radio operators sitting in front of their sets.
As it was imperative that none of the operators be allowed to pass on
word of the attack, the commando emptied the magazine of his Sten SMG
into the small room.
Not one of the radio operators hit, though afterwards two were treated
for minor cuts from flying glass. All four, and the commando, were stunned
for several seconds, until the radio operators carefully raised their hands
above their heads.
That one is matched by the story of the British tank which
(I think it was in a Matilda or a Valentine_) in the heat of battle
took a direct hit on the turret, which the commander was was currently in.
there was a deafening clang, and he felt/heard something whizz through
the turret, and looking down saw a huge exit hole in the metal of the
turret directly in front of him, about stomach level.
Scared, he looked behind him to see the still smoking molten steel dripping
from the entry hole _directly_ behind him, at the same height.
Now, terrified, he tried to summon up the courage to look down, fully
expecting to see matching carnage where his torso used to be.
However, he was completely unharmed. The shell, afterwards identified as
having come from a 75mm cannon, had penetrated the turret and travelled
round the inside perimeter of the turret ( the scouring and other damage
on the inside of the turret showed this) and then exited exactly 180
degrees round the turret from the entry point.
Now, whose gonna make up the missile special effect table to handle
those events ?
:-)
Frankie
Steve Rennell
>Now, whose gonna make up the missile special effect table to handle
>those events ?
>:-)
I read an account of a duel across a corridor. One gentleman fired his .45
Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
That is my big problem with combat systems. I players to have _system_
reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
.45 story above to be possible.
Steve
A Lapalme
handle this. It just would require too much dice rolling to achieve the
results shown in this thread, in a believable way. For example, The turret
example Frankie gave would shatter my SOD if it happened in a game unless
it was in a genre where fluckie things like this happen a lot.
The only way I can see this working is by using a computer to run the
simulation but then, you are stuck feeding it so much information....
To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
Alain
John Campbell
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
> Steve Rennell (wu...@sea.southern.co.nz) writes:
> > Frank Pitt wrote
> > <snip>
> > That is my big problem with combat systems. I players to have _system_
> > reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
> > .45 story above to be possible.
> >
> I don't think a workable dice system can exist or will ever exist to
> handle this. It just would require too much dice rolling to achieve the
> results shown in this thread, in a believable way. For example, The turret
> example Frankie gave would shatter my SOD if it happened in a game unless
> it was in a genre where fluckie things like this happen a lot.
>
> The only way I can see this working is by using a computer to run the
> simulation but then, you are stuck feeding it so much information....
>
> To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
> demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
> moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
> them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
>
> Alain
I agree with you, Alain.
The question to me is:
Is a good game based only on dice. Or only on subjective play
development. Or both.
My answer:
Have a dice system that takes care of the probable outcomes, and have
subjective input for
the "special" results that can cover the unusual.
Problem solved. ;-)
Really, how many GM's using dice never ad-lib.
As for the diceless systems.........there is no issue.
--
John Campbell
A Lapalme
John Campbell (med...@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu) writes:
>I said:
>> I don't think a workable dice system can exist or will ever exist to
>> handle this. It just would require too much dice rolling to achieve the
>> results shown in this thread, in a believable way. For example, The turret
>> example Frankie gave would shatter my SOD if it happened in a game unless
>> it was in a genre where fluckie things like this happen a lot.
>>
>> The only way I can see this working is by using a computer to run the
>> simulation but then, you are stuck feeding it so much information....
>>
>> To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
>> demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
>> moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
>> them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
>>
>> Alain
>
> I agree with you, Alain.
Ah, that's good. :)
>
> The question to me is:
>
> Is a good game based only on dice. Or only on subjective play
> development. Or both.
>
That's a loaded question. How do you define subjective play?
> My answer:
>
> Have a dice system that takes care of the probable outcomes, and have
> subjective input for
> the "special" results that can cover the unusual.
>
> Problem solved. ;-)
>
Dream on!
The thing is that probable outcomes are as easily handled with or without
dice. It's the oddball events which are the problem in that they either
break the dice system or look bloody artificial in diceless play.
> Really, how many GM's using dice never ad-lib.
>
Well, there was one person about 18 months ago, on .misc, who swore up and
down that he never ad-libbed (his point was that a die roll should NEVER be
fudged) and that, if the GM prepared properly, than there was no surprise
roll, hence no need to ad lib. Let's say I'm sceptical.
> As for the diceless systems.........there is no issue.
>
Ah, good...
Alain
Terry Austin
involving some street gang members. They drove by the house of some
game member from a rival gang, and opened up with automatic weapons.
Gang members piled out of the house, and opened up with automatic
weapons as well. Mind you, we *are* talking fully automatic weapons,
submachinguns for the most part. The gang members on foot chased
after the car, which was moving slowly and shooting back. This
running firefight lasted a couple blocks before the car ran out of
ammo and sped off.
The final results:
Several hundred round fired by both sides (the car had something like
200 each 9mm and AK ammo empty casings), and NO ONE injured on either
side.
Guess that's why the good guys usually win---the bad guys are bad
shots.
Terry Austin
tau...@ni.net
You can't enslave a free man. Only person can do that to a man
is himself. The most you can do to a free man is to kill him.
------ Robert A. Heinlein
Edward McWalters
>I read an account of a duel across a corridor. One gentleman fired his .45
>Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
>That is my big problem with combat systems. I players to have _system_
>reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
>.45 story above to be possible.
Have you tried TSR's AD&D system? It produces results like this all
the time. The guy with the .22 is obviously about 10th level, and the
guy with the .45 is 1st or maybe 2nd level. Simple, isn't it?
Edward J. McWalters edwa...@ix.netcom.com
John Campbell
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
> John Campbell (med...@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu) writes:
> > The question to me is:
> >
> > Is a good game based only on dice. Or only on subjective play
> > development. Or both.
> >
>
> That's a loaded question. How do you define subjective play?
I could only give you a subjective reply. ;-)
>
> > My answer:
> >
> > Have a dice system that takes care of the probable outcomes, and have
> > subjective input for
> > the "special" results that can cover the unusual.
> >
> > Problem solved. ;-)
> >
> Dream on!
>
> The thing is that probable outcomes are as easily handled with or without
> dice. It's the oddball events which are the problem in that they either
> break the dice system or look bloody artificial in diceless play.
Sure, but only if handled in a subjectivly poor manner! :-)
.
.
.
--
John Campbell
Carl D. Cravens
>Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
Even though it really happened, I'd have trouble buying this in a game.
I *don't* want results like that... I want something a little more
predictable.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* If at first you don't succeed, try 2nd or shortstop.
Xiphias Gladius
> The final results:
> Several hundred round fired by both sides (the car had something
> like 200 each 9mm and AK ammo empty casings), and NO ONE injured on
> either side.
> Guess that's why the good guys usually win---the bad guys are bad
> shots.
Internal data from the New York City Police Department show that the
bad guys hit with about 11% of the bullets they shoot.
You wanna know how good the police are? 10%.
Okay, the difference is probably because the bad guys are allowed to
do things like set up ambushes and shoot without warning anyone, but
still. . .
The good guys aren't great shots, either.
- Ian
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
>
>Steve Rennell (wu...@sea.southern.co.nz) writes:
>> Frank Pitt wrote
>>>those events ?
>>>:-)
>>
>> achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>> him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>>
>> That is my big problem with combat systems. I players to have _system_
>> reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
>> .45 story above to be possible.
>>
>handle this. It just would require too much dice rolling to achieve the
>results shown in this thread, in a believable way. For example, The turret
>example Frankie gave would shatter my SOD if it happened in a game unless
>it was in a genre where fluckie things like this happen a lot.
>
>The only way I can see this working is by using a computer to run the
>simulation but then, you are stuck feeding it so much information....
>
>To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
>demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
>moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
>them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
>
>Alain
Forgive me for saying this, but you are looking at this backwards. Those with the education in those matters firearms related events=
like this would engender amusement, not incredulaty, or a painful snapping of SOD. It is not a problem of the system, but a problem=
with the player's lack of knowledge. It is those who have derived their knowledge from Hollywood will invariably get a lot of thing=
s wrong. If your game is an accurate evocation of Hollywood, then there is no problem, but if there is a disparity within the group =
in the knowledge of firearms, there will be assumption clashes and a chorus of snapping suspenders.
There is a book, touted in the latest issue of Film Threat magazine entitles "Everything You Know is Wrong", and it basically debunk=
s the myths perpetrated by Hollywood, such as American Cars exploding, the myth of knockback, It is written in a humorous tone, but=
it works to correct common misconceptions.
Now is a system was written from research statistics, it will probably have results like mild wounds from large caliber weapons, or =
fatalities from BB's. These things not only happen, but have been documented, but again the results would be rare. Then again, the =
artificially inflated amount of combat your avaerage player character gets into, then even these "rare" events will become common. I=
remeber a lot of games where improbable results happened and as the dice said it, we just took it and worked the results into the g=
ame.
Scott
Bertil Jonell
In article <4lije4$j...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>> I read an account of a duel across a corridor. One gentleman fired his .45
>> Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>> achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>> him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>> caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
>
>handle this.
It *could* happen in TimeLords using Advance Damage: .45 is DV14 or
something like that, ie 8 damage points, the clothes soak 2 points, and
convert 1 to type III damage, everyhting beyond two points is doubled
as it is torso hits, and the target is a big guy (30BP, instead of 27BP),
for a damage level of 5: I don't have the books here, but if you roll
a '1' six times in a row for that damage level, there would be very
minor impairments.
>Alain
-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."
A Lapalme
Bertil Jonell (d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se) writes:
> In article <4lije4$j...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
> A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>>> I read an account of a duel across a corridor. One gentleman fired his .45
>>> Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>>> achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>>> him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>>> caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
>>
>>I don't think a workable dice system can exist or will ever exist to
>>handle this.
>
> It *could* happen in TimeLords using Advance Damage: .45 is DV14 or
> something like that, ie 8 damage points, the clothes soak 2 points, and
> convert 1 to type III damage, everyhting beyond two points is doubled
> as it is torso hits, and the target is a big guy (30BP, instead of 27BP),
> for a damage level of 5: I don't have the books here, but if you roll
> a '1' six times in a row for that damage level, there would be very
> minor impairments.
>
The chance to roll siox 1 in a row is 1 of 279,936. Is that reasonable?
Is that statistically true? Does it matter?
A lot of people would get annoyed at having to roll the dice so often.
Others would think that the odds or way too high or way too low.
MY point is that, at the extremes, systems break down and you end up
having to make a GM or a group decision on how this sort of thing will be
handled. One of my peeves about systems, is that most assume that people
want these extrreme events to happenmore often than is realistic. Well,
that's fine but, really, if you want unrealistic odds, I can do a much
better job of generating out of the top of my head and, on top of that, I
can even make it interesting.
Alain
A Lapalme
"Scott. A. H. Ruggels" (scott....@3do.com) writes:
> ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>>
>>To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
>>demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
>>moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
>>them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
>>
>
> Forgive me for saying this, but you are looking at this backwards. Those with the education in those matters firearms related events=
> like this would engender amusement, not incredulaty, or a painful snapping of SOD. It is not a problem of the system, but a problem=
> with the player's lack of knowledge. It is those who have derived their knowledge from Hollywood will invariably get a lot of thing=
> s wrong. If your game is an accurate evocation of Hollywood, then there is no problem, but if there is a disparity within the group =
> in the knowledge of firearms, there will be assumption clashes and a chorus of snapping suspenders.
>
I'm the first to admit that I know nothing about guns. I also very rarely
run modern games either so it doesn't really matter if I know about guns
or not.
In any case, you missed my point. We were using guns as example but this
can apply to anything. Really weird events are really weird and I don't
know of any system which can generate them at a statiscally acceptable
level. Going back to Frankie's tank example, what is the chance of this
happening? My answer is that no one knows. The number of time s that
this happened is too low to provide a good model.
Alain
Terry Austin
i...@cs.brandeis.edu (Xiphias Gladius) wrote:
>The good guys aren't great shots, either.
Assuming that you put the cop into the "good guys" catagory, of
course. I *do* live near Los Angeles, after all.
Terry Austin
tau...@ni.net
The idea that a government can give the people freedom is
ridiculous. Any power strong enough to give the people what
they want is also powerful enough to take it away. Freedom
is handmade. It only occurs when individuals manufacture it
for themselves
----David Gerrold
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>
>Steve Rennell (wu...@sea.southern.co.nz) writes:
>> Frank Pitt wrote
>>>Now, whose gonna make up the missile special effect table to handle
>>>those events ?
>>>:-)
>>
>> Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>> achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>> him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>> caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
>>
>> reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
>> .45 story above to be possible.
>>
>results shown in this thread, in a believable way. For example, The turret
>example Frankie gave would shatter my SOD if it happened in a game unless
>it was in a genre where fluckie things like this happen a lot.
>
>The only way I can see this working is by using a computer to run the
>simulation but then, you are stuck feeding it so much information....
>
>demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
>moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
>them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
>
Forgive me for saying this, but you are looking at this backwards. Those with
the education in those matters firearms related events
like this would engender amusement, not incredulaty, or a painful snapping of
SOD. It is not a problem of the system, but a problem
with the player's lack of knowledge. It is those who have derived their
knowledge from Hollywood will invariably get a lot of thing
s wrong. If your game is an accurate evocation of Hollywood, then there is no
problem, but if there is a disparity within the group
in the knowledge of firearms, there will be assumption clashes and a chorus of
snapping suspenders.
There is a book, touted in the latest issue of Film Threat magazine entitles
"Everything You Know is Wrong", and it basically debunk
s the myths perpetrated by Hollywood, such as American Cars exploding, the
myth of knockback, It is written in a humorous tone, but
it works to correct common misconceptions.
Now is a system was written from research statistics, it will probably have
results like mild wounds from large caliber weapons, or
fatalities from BB's. These things not only happen, but have been documented,
but again the results would be rare. Then again, the
artificially inflated amount of combat your avaerage player character gets
into, then even these "rare" events will become common. I
remeber a lot of games where improbable results happened and as the dice said
it, we just took it and worked the results into the g
ame.
Scott
Bertil Jonell
In article <4lqhpf$4...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>Bertil Jonell (d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se) writes:
>> It *could* happen in TimeLords [...] if you roll
>> a '1' six times in a row for that damage level, there would be very
>> minor impairments.
>>
>The chance to roll siox 1 in a row is 1 of 279,936. Is that reasonable?
>Is that statistically true? Does it matter?
As long as it is *possible*... That said, I doubt it has happened more
than once in reality so the odds against it are probably rather large.
Jerry Stratton
In article <4lije4$j...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
>demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
>moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
>them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
Absolutely--this kind of thing should really be integrated more fully into
the game. I think it was Mark Twain who said that, of course truth is
stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.
I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
Unless, of course, it is important to the story that the victim live, and
in that case it is too important a decision to leave to the dice.
Dice don't know what's important. Players do.
Jerry
je...@acusd.edu
http://nspace.cts.com/ finger or e-mail he...@nspace.cts.com
"In this game, there's a real advantage in going last after everyone else has made idiots of themselves."
-- Teenagers From Outer Space
russell wallace
>In article <4lqhpf$4...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
>A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>>Bertil Jonell (d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se) writes:
>>> It *could* happen in TimeLords [...] if you roll
>>> a '1' six times in a row for that damage level, there would be very
>>> minor impairments.
>>>
>>The chance to roll siox 1 in a row is 1 of 279,936. Is that reasonable?
>>Is that statistically true? Does it matter?
> As long as it is *possible*... That said, I doubt it has happened more
>than once in reality so the odds against it are probably rather large.
In theory yes, but I've seen a *lot* of anecdotes about similarly
improbable rolls. Even discounting a certain percentage of them as
exaggeration, there are far more than pure random chance would suggest
as likely, which IMO means that dice are decidedly imperfect random
number generators.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwal...@vax1.tcd.ie
A Lapalme
Jerry Stratton (je...@acusd.edu) writes:
> I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
> with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
> Unless, of course, it is important to the story that the victim live, and
> in that case it is too important a decision to leave to the dice.
>
> Dice don't know what's important. Players do.
>
Them's fighting words. I'll side with you though. :)
Alain
A Lapalme
russell wallace (rwal...@tcd.ie) writes:
>>A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>>>Bertil Jonell (d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se) writes:
>>>> It *could* happen in TimeLords [...] if you roll
>>>> a '1' six times in a row for that damage level, there would be very
>>>> minor impairments.
>>>>
>>>The chance to roll siox 1 in a row is 1 of 279,936. Is that reasonable?
>>>Is that statistically true? Does it matter?
>
>> As long as it is *possible*... That said, I doubt it has happened more
>>than once in reality so the odds against it are probably rather large.
>
> In theory yes, but I've seen a *lot* of anecdotes about similarly
> improbable rolls. Even discounting a certain percentage of them as
> exaggeration, there are far more than pure random chance would suggest
> as likely, which IMO means that dice are decidedly imperfect random
> number generators.
>
This is going to sound strange, coming from me, but dice are a perfect
random number generators. It's how this random number is implemented in
an RPG which is far from perfect, ie, it is the interpretation of the
result which is imperfect (not surprising since the interpretation is made
by humans and humans are notoriously imperfect).
Alain
Aerron
wu...@sea.southern.co.nz (Steve Rennell) wrote:
>Frank Pitt wrote
>>Now, whose gonna make up the missile special effect table to handle
>>those events ?
>>:-)
>
>I read an account of a duel across a corridor. One gentleman fired his .45
>Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
>
>That is my big problem with combat systems. I players to have _system_
>reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
>
>Steve
GURPS.....
_____________________________________________________________________________
"Somos um exercito (o exercito de um homem so`)
um bando de vampiros que odeiam sangue"
E. do H.
John Morrow
je...@acusd.edu (Jerry Stratton) writes:
>Absolutely--this kind of thing should really be integrated more fully into
>the game. I think it was Mark Twain who said that, of course truth is
>stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.
>I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
>with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
Steve Rennell (wu...@sea.southern.co.nz) said he had heard of a person
getting hit in the torso six times and living, at least for a while
(anyone have any references?). I know of at least one transit police
officer in NYC that took 4 hits (probably with a 9mm) to the torso (no
vest that I know of -- he was under cover and was mistaken as a
criminal by an NYPD police officer) and survived. So, "of course", it
isn't going to definitely kill a victim. It might. It might not.
Could go either way. So not only is your fiction blander than reality
(replacing many possibilities with one simple one) but also less
believable to anyone who watches the evening news instead of fictional
police dramas. Even watching the evening news, two people could draw
very different conclusions about gunshot wounds.
In any event, most role-playing games have a real problem of
simulating "television kills" where the person grabs their chest,
falls over, and instantly dies. Real people quite often take a while
to die and medical attention plays a large role in whether or not they
survive.
>Unless, of course, it is important to the story that the victim live, and
>in that case it is too important a decision to leave to the dice.
What if there isn't a story, per se? Or what if it could be
interesting either way? An important decision does not necessarily
imply that there is only one interesting or satisfying option. I can
think of some very interesting alternatives for _The Empire Strikes
Back_ had Darth Vader managed to kill Luke (e.g. had that antenna
conveniently not been there). And if I were playing Luke, I'd
certainly be disappointed if the GM wouldn't allow for the possiblity
of death in such a situation. For me, it cheapens the experience of
risk if there really isn't any and I've see a lack of feeling any real
risk have an adverse affect on people's role-playing.
>Dice don't know what's important. Players do.
Yes. And some of us don't want the game changing when things become
important. For me, anyway, it damages SOD for a variety of reasons.
John Morrow
Carl D. Cravens
On 27 Apr 1996 17:21:24 GMT, rwal...@tcd.ie (russell wallace) wrote:
>In theory yes, but I've seen a *lot* of anecdotes about similarly
>improbable rolls. Even discounting a certain percentage of them as
>exaggeration, there are far more than pure random chance would suggest
>as likely, which IMO means that dice are decidedly imperfect random
>number generators.
The dice generate perfectly random numbers... the problem is, they never
generate an *average* when you want or expect them to. If you take all
those wild results and average them together, you'll get a perfectly
valid middle-of-the-road average. But the extremes are often to great
for stable game play. (This is one of my pet peeves with dice. I'm not
a diceless advocate, but I certainly am a fudge-factor advocate.)
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* If I want your opinion, I'll take you out of my killfile.
John H Kim
Sheesh. The dice wars have gotten to the point that we can't
even seem to agree that dice are random!
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>Russell Wallace <rwal...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>>In theory yes, but I've seen a *lot* of anecdotes about similarly
>>improbable rolls. Even discounting a certain percentage of them as
>>exaggeration, there are far more than pure random chance would suggest
>>as likely, which IMO means that dice are decidedly imperfect random
>>number generators.
>
>The dice generate perfectly random numbers... the problem is, they never
>generate an *average* when you want or expect them to.
Uh, but isn't that the point? It's *random*. It doesn't respond
to your wishes (unless you have psychic powers).
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>If you take all those wild results and average them together, you'll get
>a perfectly valid middle-of-the-road average. But the extremes are often
>to great for stable game play. (This is one of my pet peeves with dice.
>I'm not a diceless advocate, but I certainly am a fudge-factor advocate.)
Fudge factors are certainly a valid option. However, in my
opinion this is not an inherent problem with dice. Rather, both the
system and the GM tend to assign too much weight on fairly common
rolls (like a "20" on a 20-sided die, say). This is especially
exacerbated in open-ended roll systems like _Rolemaster_, which
generate really huge-sounding numbers regularly.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
P.S. Back in my anal retentive days I had tested a few dice for bias --
this after getting somewhat annoyed at players' claims to "lucky dice"
and such. I did indeed find that some of the dice did not have flat
distributions - perhaps due to wear or poor construction. However, I
also found that my measured bias bore relatively little resemblance to
the claims people had of which dice were "lucky".
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim | "Faith - Faith is an island in the setting sun.
jh...@columbia.edu | But Proof - Proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Columbia University | - Paul Simon, _Proof_
russell wallace
> Sheesh. The dice wars have gotten to the point that we can't
>even seem to agree that dice are random!
>Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>>Russell Wallace <rwal...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>>>In theory yes, but I've seen a *lot* of anecdotes about similarly
>>>improbable rolls. Even discounting a certain percentage of them as
>>>exaggeration, there are far more than pure random chance would suggest
>>>as likely, which IMO means that dice are decidedly imperfect random
>>>number generators.
>>
>>The dice generate perfectly random numbers... the problem is, they never
>>generate an *average* when you want or expect them to.
> Uh, but isn't that the point? It's *random*. It doesn't respond
>to your wishes (unless you have psychic powers).
Perhaps I was unclear in my original post - while *ideal* dice (by
definition) are certainly perfect random number generators, real
physical dice are not. They aren't perfectly moulded or weighted, and
roll only a finite and quite small number of times, so the particular
way they're rolled does have an effect on the number they land on. Even
without any cheating even of the subconscious kind, there's liable to be
some pattern in the way people tend to roll, which will somewhat reduce
the randomness of the results.
(I actually saw an ad in a magazine once for dice which were claimed to
be made to a much higher degree of precision than the competition,
therefore preferred for use in convention games, though it was years ago
and I don't remember the details nor know whether this was hyperbole
:))
>-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>>
>>If you take all those wild results and average them together, you'll get
>>a perfectly valid middle-of-the-road average. But the extremes are often
>>to great for stable game play. (This is one of my pet peeves with dice.
>>I'm not a diceless advocate, but I certainly am a fudge-factor advocate.)
> Fudge factors are certainly a valid option. However, in my
>opinion this is not an inherent problem with dice. Rather, both the
>system and the GM tend to assign too much weight on fairly common
>rolls (like a "20" on a 20-sided die, say). This is especially
>exacerbated in open-ended roll systems like _Rolemaster_, which
>generate really huge-sounding numbers regularly.
I agree entirely with this. Requiring and using such rolls for
relatively normal actions is IMO bad GMing plain and simple.
>-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>P.S. Back in my anal retentive days I had tested a few dice for bias --
>this after getting somewhat annoyed at players' claims to "lucky dice"
>and such. I did indeed find that some of the dice did not have flat
>distributions - perhaps due to wear or poor construction. However, I
Which was my original point.
>also found that my measured bias bore relatively little resemblance to
>the claims people had of which dice were "lucky".
Now, I can well believe that.
(BTW, considered simply as random number generators, I do believe dice
are quite adequate for the task as for as RPGs are concerned, and
certainly better than humans. Whether random numbers per se are needed,
and if so what is done with them, are of course quite separate issues.)
Bertil Jonell
In article <4ltl2k$4...@web3.tcd.ie>, russell wallace <rwal...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>In <4lr0vi$9...@nyheter.chalmers.se> d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se (Bertil Jonell) writes:
>>than once in reality so the odds against it are probably rather large.
>
>improbable rolls.
Large sample size, or in plain language, lots of people get shot so
some strange things happen. 20k a year in the US, just counting deaths.
No campaign is going to come even close to dicing for 20k shootings.
But the same thing happens in games: I had a case where a PC FBI agent
shot a Waffen-SS/Ahnenerbe in the head from the side with a hunting rifle
outside the Patton Museum (TimeLords), but due to some improbable rolls
the nazi wasn't dead, he wasn't even unconcious (although he had a hell
of an impairment).
My explanation when the player started to quetch about the nazi still
moving was that he'd hit him in the cheek/jaw, and that minus some teeth
he hadn't lost anything vital.
>Even discounting a certain percentage of them as
>exaggeration, there are far more than pure random chance would suggest
>as likely,
Wound ballistics does seem to be ruled by chaos.
>Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
-bertil-
Jaana A Antikainen
Jerry Stratton (je...@acusd.edu) wrote:
: Dice don't know what's important. Players do.
True!
But when we think of making a system where impossible (or very
improbable) things can happen, aren't the Fate Points or Karma Points
that some systems have just this? I mean, when you're about to die, you
don't because of unbelievable luck... Give major NPCs fate too, and the
problem is (at least half) solved.
--
Jaana Antikainen------------email: jant...@cc.helsinki.fi---
Iivisniemenkuja 4 F 70---------------------------------------
02260 Espoo----------------"My problem is that I have--------
FINLAND---------------------gone sane in an insane world."---
Carl D. Cravens
On 29 Apr 1996 18:20:58 GMT, jh...@ahnnyong.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
> Uh, but isn't that the point? It's *random*. It doesn't respond
>to your wishes (unless you have psychic powers).
Right, it's random. And random number generators have yet to produce
reasonable stories, which is why the randomness of the dice can have
devastating effects on a roleplaying game if not handled properly.
Sure, rolling X three times in a row may be 1 in 1,000,000 odds... but
you just rolled it. An odd set of circumstances, from which your
character would have emerged unscathed had he rolled average or above on
even one of those rolls, and suddenly your character is dead because of
quirky die rolls. This is what I mean by the dice not producing the
kinds of "average" results we expect. We don't *expect* the
one-in-a-million results when they matter... we expect something closer
to average. Something I learned about dice when studying them for my
back-burner game system... they have to come up in SOME combination. If
a roll only has 1 in 200 chance, be sure it'll show up often. And don't
count on it not showing up twice in a row.
Another problem is selecting poor die rolling methods. Take for
instance, 3d6. A darn popular method a few years ago (HERO, GURPS,
etc.), but really unworkable in a roll-x-or-less/more system when you
start thinking about it. 50% of the range is held in four results, the
stuff out near the ends becomes trivial too fast. There are jumps as
high as 12.5% between skill levels at the center, which quickly taper
off.
If you want curves, a good die is going to have a fair center-weight,
but be a moderatly shallow curve. 2d20 is really nice, except I don't
like adding double-digits. I'm pretty much in favor of flat curves now
(single die) with the end points leading to a possibility of something
unusual, but not always. (For my game, I actually settled on a single
d6 and I think it worked rather well. I've since switched to playing
FUDGE and use FUDGE dice (4dF) which I find acceptable.)
>opinion this is not an inherent problem with dice. Rather, both the
>system and the GM tend to assign too much weight on fairly common
>rolls (like a "20" on a 20-sided die, say). This is especially
Granted, it's a problem. It's especially become a problem with the
introduction of those damnable dice pools. (Where you have a target
number for your task, you roll your skill in x-sided dice, and the
number of dice that equal or exceed the target is your level of
success.) You ever try to figure the probabilities on one of those?
It's very complicated, especially if the rolls are open ended. Now what
GM is going to be able to assign appropriate situational modifiers when
they haven't the SLIGHTEST idea how those modifiers are affecting the
odds? The modifiers affect the outcome differently depending on the
skill level being used. It's this big, nasty three-dimensional graph
and no GM is going to reasonably be able to keep any of it in mind.
(Especially when they don't even realize that a 20 from d20 happens
about once every twenty rolls!)
>P.S. Back in my anal retentive days I had tested a few dice for bias --
>this after getting somewhat annoyed at players' claims to "lucky dice"
I think the claims of "lucky" are because the players aren't seeing a
wide enough sample, but just seeing a lucky (or unlucky) streak. People
just don't understand probabilities most of the time.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* Why get even, when you can get odd?
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
news:4lom2k$m...@badger.3do.com
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>
>Steve Rennell (wu...@sea.southern.co.nz) writes:
>> Frank Pitt wrote
>>>Now, whose gonna make up the missile special effect table to handle
>>>those events ?
>>>:-)
>>
>> I read an account of a duel across a corridor. One gentleman fired his .45
>> Automatic pistol into another gentleman's chest 6 times, and failed to
>> achieve a functional kill, the single return round from a .22 pistol killed
>> him. The wounded gentleman retired to his room, changed his shirt, then
>> caught two buses to get to the hospital where he walked in.
>>
>> That is my big problem with combat systems. I players to have _system_
>> reasons for treating a .22 pistol with respect, and I want results like the
>> .45 story above to be possible.
>>
>I don't think a workable dice system can exist or will ever exist to
>handle this. It just would require too much dice rolling to achieve the
>results shown in this thread, in a believable way. For example, The turret
>example Frankie gave would shatter my SOD if it happened in a game unless
>it was in a genre where fluckie things like this happen a lot.
>
>The only way I can see this working is by using a computer to run the
>simulation but then, you are stuck feeding it so much information....
>
>To play the devil's advocate a bit here, aren't we all being a bit too
>demanding to expect systems to handles these odd events. Once in a blue
>moon events are just that: extremely rare.How can any system account for
>them? MOst which try make the event a once a week thing instead.
>
>Alain
Forgive me for saying this, but you are looking at this backwards. Those with
the education in those matters firearms related events like this would
engender amusement, not incredulaty, or a painful snapping of SOD. It is not a
problem of the system, but a problem with the player's lack of knowledge. It
is those who have derived their knowledge from Hollywood will invariably get a
lot of things wrong. If your game is an accurate evocation of Hollywood, then
there is no problem, but if there is a disparity within the group in the
knowledge of firearms, there will be assumption clashes and a chorus of
snapping suspenders.
There is a book, touted in the latest issue of Film Threat magazine entitles
"Everything You Know is Wrong", and it basically debunks the myths perpetrated
Carl D. Cravens
On 29 Apr 1996 23:34:21 GMT, rwal...@tcd.ie (russell wallace) wrote:
>Perhaps I was unclear in my original post - while *ideal* dice (by
>definition) are certainly perfect random number generators, real
>physical dice are not. They aren't perfectly moulded or weighted, and
>roll only a finite and quite small number of times, so the particular
>way they're rolled does have an effect on the number they land on. Even
>without any cheating even of the subconscious kind, there's liable to be
>some pattern in the way people tend to roll, which will somewhat reduce
>the randomness of the results.
The bias of even poorly-made dice in such a small sample is negligible.
A very large sample is necessary to detect bias, so it follows that a
small sample is going to be little affected by such bias.
That the rolls are biased by the individual rolling them is another
matter, but even then such bias shouldn't be significant over a small
sample.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* Some days it's not worth chewing through the restraints.
russell wallace
>In article <4ltl2k$4...@web3.tcd.ie>, russell wallace <rwal...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>>In <4lr0vi$9...@nyheter.chalmers.se> d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se (Bertil Jonell) writes:
>>> As long as it is *possible*... That said, I doubt it has happened more
>>>than once in reality so the odds against it are probably rather large.
>>
>>In theory yes, but I've seen a *lot* of anecdotes about similarly
>>improbable rolls.
> Large sample size, or in plain language, lots of people get shot so
>some strange things happen. 20k a year in the US, just counting deaths.
>No campaign is going to come even close to dicing for 20k shootings.
I wasn't commenting on real-life events like this (as you say, the
sample size is large, and ballistics seems to be a fairly chaotic
business in the first place), but about such events occurring due to
dice rolls in RPGs, where we can calculate the probabilities, and where
highly improbable events seem to happen more often than they would if
the dice were perfect random number generators.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
russell wallace
Over a small sample, no. For example, one campaign is unlikely to
provide a large enough sample for the effect to be significant - that's
why I commented elsewhere in the post you quoted that dice were
sufficiently random to be perfectly adequate for the purposes they're
commonly used for.
Over a sample the size of the Usenet community, the bias *does* show up,
which is my explanation for why there are far more anecdotes about
amazingly improbable dice rolls floating around on Usenet than one would
expect from pure chance.
Mr. M.J. Lush
In article <jerry-27049...@nspace.cts.com>,
Jerry Stratton <je...@acusd.edu> wrote:
>
>I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
>with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
>in that case it is too important a decision to leave to the dice.
>
Unfortunatly now the players _know_ the victim is important
has plot immunity, and will use him/her for cover during firefights.
--
Michael
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NPC rights activist | Nameless Abominations are people too.
John H Kim
Ugh! OK, some more scattered notes on "randomness" in reply
to Carl.
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>John H Kim <jh...@ahnnyong.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
>> Uh, but isn't that the point? It's *random*. It doesn't respond
>> to your wishes (unless you have psychic powers).
>
>Right, it's random. And random number generators have yet to produce
>reasonable stories, which is why the randomness of the dice can have
>devastating effects on a roleplaying game if not handled properly.
[...]
>We don't *expect* the one-in-a-million results when they matter... we
>expect something closer to average.
Oh, really? And I suppose you know how to handle them "properly"?
It is precisely the unexpected nature of randomness which some people
like in their games. Certainly it is why I use them -- because I
think it is fun and interesting for the game, regardless of whether
or not dice produce "reasonable stories".
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>Another problem is selecting poor die rolling methods. Take for in-
>stance, 3d6. A darn popular method a few years ago (HERO, GURPS, etc.),
>but really unworkable in a roll-x-or-less/more system when you start
>thinking about it. 50% of the range is held in four results, the stuff
>out near the ends becomes trivial too fast. There are jumps as high
>as 12.5% between skill levels at the center, which quickly taper off.
So why is this "unworkable" compared to, say, the 4dF FUDGE
die roll (of which you approved)? With 4dF, 50% of the range is held
in three results, and there are jumps as high as 23% at the center,
which quickly taper off. Comparing the two distributions:
4dF: +4 +3 +2 +1 +0 -1 -2 -3
1%, 6%, 19%, 38%, 62%, 81%, 94% 99%
3d6: 3- 4- 5- 6- 7- 8- 9- 10- 11- 12- 13- 14- 15- 16- 17-
0.5%, 2%, 5%, 9%, 16%, 26%, 38%, 50%, 62%, 74%, 84%, 91%, 95%, 98%, 99.5%
It seems to me like 4dF is pretty darn similar to 3d6, except that
it is more coarsely grained (9 possible results instead of 16). In any
case, as I was discussing with David, I don't think that the exact shape
of the probability curve is all that significant to the game. It's mean
and its variance can be noted -- beyond that is pretty subtle.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>>opinion this is not an inherent problem with dice. Rather, both the
>>system and the GM tend to assign too much weight on fairly common
>>rolls (like a "20" on a 20-sided die, say). This is especially
>
>Granted, it's a problem. It's especially become a problem with the
>introduction of those damnable dice pools. (Where you have a target
>number for your task, you roll your skill in x-sided dice, and the
>number of dice that equal or exceed the target is your level of success.)
>You ever try to figure the probabilities on one of those? It's very
>complicated, especially if the rolls are open ended. Now what GM is
>going to be able to assign appropriate situational modifiers when they
>haven't the SLIGHTEST idea how those modifiers are affecting the odds?
The idea, as I understand it, is that neither the GM nor the
players will know the exact odds -- but a GM can with some experience
get a decent "feel" for what a +1 means as opposed to a +3.
It is not to my tastes, either, but I guess I can see the logic.
_Storyteller_ is interestingly self-contradictory since on the one
hand it encourages the GM to play fast and loose with the rules, while
on the other it provides lots of detailed mechanics. Personally,
I don't see the point of the detailed mechanics if they are just
going to get ignored (and rightly so).
John H Kim
russell wallace <rwal...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> writes:
>>The bias of even poorly-made dice in such a small sample is negligible.
>>A very large sample is necessary to detect bias, so it follows that a
>>small sample is going to be little affected by such bias.
>Over a sample the size of the Usenet community, the bias *does* show up,
>which is my explanation for why there are far more anecdotes about
>amazingly improbable dice rolls floating around on Usenet than one
>would expect from pure chance.
Uh, I'm wondering exactly what you would expect from pure
chance? Outside of .advocacy, dice-using gamers are by far the
majority, and they make a *lot* of dice rolls. If, perhaps, we say
that there are 100 posters in a newsgroup - and that the average
poster is part of a group of 5 players who play 5 hour sessions 2
out of 3 weeks. That's about a million rolls per year.
You get a heck of a lot of "mere" 1 in 47000 events like two
18's in a row or Ars Magica rolls of 80+ and so forth. Plus, you
should remember how stories tend to grow in the telling or just
repeat themselves.
I certainly wouldn't take the number of anecdotes told on
the Net as proof of anything except perhaps that gamers on Usenet
like to tell wild anecdotes.
Ennead
russell wallace (rwal...@tcd.ie) wrote:
: Perhaps I was unclear in my original post - while *ideal* dice (by
: definition) are certainly perfect random number generators, real
: physical dice are not. They aren't perfectly moulded or weighted, and
: roll only a finite and quite small number of times, so the particular
: way they're rolled does have an effect on the number they land on. Even
: without any cheating even of the subconscious kind, there's liable to be
: some pattern in the way people tend to roll, which will somewhat reduce
: the randomness of the results.
Kip here, but One of Nine.
Hate to join split hairs (knowing, of course, that one of the guilty
pleasures of Usenet debating is the joy one can take in splitting ever and
ever smaller segments from a single strand), but maybe we need to define a
specialized meaning of the word "random" for use on the advocacy board,
something along the lines of:
"Being the generation of unpredictable contingencies."
Unpredictable, of course, given the level of technology and attention span
generally present at the average gaming session.
I suggest this, of course, less in commentary on what has gone before in
this debate, than (to attempt) to forestall some long, acrimonious,
repetitious, and (ultimately) useless debate on the true nature of
randomness and its existential meaning in a post-Nietszchean world.
The use of dice in RPGs is not about the generation of truly random
results.
kip, who realizes
he's opened up debate
on the meanings of
"technology"
"attention span"
"generally present" and
"avereage gaming session"
road to hell
and all that...
Carl D. Cravens
On 1 May 1996 18:47:05 GMT, jh...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
> Oh, really? And I suppose you know how to handle them "properly"?
Sure. One handles "them" (the extremes of the dice) by ignoring the
result when it seems appropriate.
>It is precisely the unexpected nature of randomness which some people
>like in their games. Certainly it is why I use them -- because I
There's a difference between "unexpected nature" and coincidental die
rolls that kill characters in the most absurd of situations. I don't
enter a game to lose my character to chance... if I'm going to lose my
character, it's going to be because of his actions and calculated
risks. For instance, I don't expect that every battle will hold a
chance of death... when a armored cyborg is attacked by a
pistol-wielding punk in the alley, I don't expect to die. The scene is
there for flavor. If the punk gets several lucky rolls in a row that
allow him to kill me... there's something wrong. (Generally, it's a
problem with the system, but no system can be fine-tuned well enough to
avoid the silly things dice can do.)
This may not be the way you prefer to game.
>think it is fun and interesting for the game, regardless of whether
>or not dice produce "reasonable stories".
If your players like unreasonable events happening to their characters,
great. I don't.
> So why is this "unworkable" compared to, say, the 4dF FUDGE
>die roll (of which you approved)? With 4dF, 50% of the range is held
>in three results, and there are jumps as high as 23% at the center,
>which quickly taper off. Comparing the two distributions:
(I suppose my opinion of "unworkable" might be a little heavy-handed.)
In 4dF 50% of the range is held in 33% of the values; I consider this
preferable to 3d6, where 50% of the range is held in 25% of the values.
In 3d6, the difference between 14- and 18- is ~10% and these skill
values can become meaningless because there is so little difference
between them. Especially in Hero, where you can't have skills below the
11- range (except for an 8-)... the effective skill range becomes, 11,
12, 13, and 14 or above. (I realize that I am glossing over the
usefulness of those high skills in situations where the skill penalties
are very high. But if you look at the average Hero character, there are
few skills above 14. Maybe because few consider this usefulness?)
> It seems to me like 4dF is pretty darn similar to 3d6, except that
>it is more coarsely grained (9 possible results instead of 16). In any
>case, as I was discussing with David, I don't think that the exact shape
>of the probability curve is all that significant to the game. It's mean
>and its variance can be noted -- beyond that is pretty subtle.
I don't agree. In Hero, the functional difference between a 15- and 16-
skill is barely noticable, if at all. In a d20 "curve", it's just as
noticable as any other increment. In 2d20, the curve has a more uniform
decremental-progression (every step is between numbers is something like
.5 less than the previous) and there are fewer instances of the numbers
being too close together. But then we get into the problem of 2-40
being an unwieldy range.
You mention that 4dF is more coarse-grained... and that's where I feel
it's superior. (I have considered going to 2dF for much the same
reason, but I'm not sure about it yet. I don't like a lot of variation
from the center.) Another thing to consider is that the traditional 3d6
system (roll your skill or less) is tied to a scale of 3-18, where XdF
can be used with any scale... just add more dice if you want to get
wider results from your average skill. (Although more dice will do
funny things to the curve.)
> The idea, as I understand it, is that neither the GM nor the
>players will know the exact odds -- but a GM can with some experience
>get a decent "feel" for what a +1 means as opposed to a +3.
I don't think one really can. I've looked at dice-pool curves for hours
and I still can't get a feel for it. Even if one does get a feel for
it, I don't like the actual spread.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* Old beta-testers don't die, they just crash to DOS.
Mark Hughes
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> spake:
>The dice generate perfectly random numbers... the problem is, they never
>those wild results and average them together, you'll get a perfectly
>valid middle-of-the-road average. But the extremes are often to great
>for stable game play. (This is one of my pet peeves with dice. I'm not
>a diceless advocate, but I certainly am a fudge-factor advocate.)
Ah, but you have heard of averaging dice, haven't you? An averaged d6 has 2,
3, 3, 4, 4, 5 on its faces. You can do the same thing for other dice if you
don't like the normal range of results (you'd probably have to buy blank dice
from Gamescience or whoever sells 'em these days, since I don't think averaging
dice are made much any more). For that matter, you could just roll two dice
and average them or stick to games with bell curves instead of linear results,
and have pretty much the same effect.
I fudge my die rolls quite a bit, too, but that's because I have astoundingly
bad luck and I don't want all my NPCs to be incompetent fools. (I've also used
the average-two-dice method quite a bit, but it requires that you can add and
then halve very quickly, which a lot of players can't, so it's not very
convenient for most groups).
-Mark Hughes
"In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country
adding aol.com to people's usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of
the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for
a Nobel peace prize." -Mark Atkinson
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
In article <4mb7hj$c...@nadine.teleport.com>, enn...@teleport.com (Ennead) writes:
|> Kip here, but One of Nine.
|>
|> Hate to join split hairs (knowing, of course, that one of the guilty
|> pleasures of Usenet debating is the joy one can take in splitting ever and
|> ever smaller segments from a single strand), but maybe we need to define a
|> specialized meaning of the word "random" for use on the advocacy board,
|> something along the lines of:
|>
|> "Being the generation of unpredictable contingencies."
|>
|> Unpredictable, of course, given the level of technology and attention span
|> generally present at the average gaming session.
Ah, but then diceless games are random, because no can predict the
results of the interaction between players and GM, and that statement
is enough to start the great-grandmother of all flame wars. Don't
laugh. It's happened before.
Neel
Bruce Alderman
> > I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing
> > six times with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill
> > the victim. Unless, of course, it is important to the story that
> > the victim live, and in that case it is too important a decision to
> > leave to the dice.
> Unfortunatly now the players _know_ the victim is important has plot
> immunity, and will use him/her for cover during firefights.
If I was the GM, I'd let the victim die as soon as the players tried
something like this. If a freak roll of the dice gives a result which
would destroy the story, I have no problem with fudging the result. But
if the plot is ruined because of the players' deliberate actions, then I
see no reason to protect them from the consequences.
Further, if the victim is an NPC, he/she would not put up with being
used for cover during firefights. The NPC has no knowledge of the
meta-world the players inhabit, so he/she has no reason to suspect
his/her earlier survival was due to anything other than luck. Give
NPC's some backbone and the PC's will respect them.
--
Lee Short
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) wrote:
:
: >It is precisely the unexpected nature of randomness which some people
: >like in their games. Certainly it is why I use them -- because I
:
: There's a difference between "unexpected nature" and coincidental die
: rolls that kill characters in the most absurd of situations. I don't
: enter a game to lose my character to chance... if I'm going to lose my
: character, it's going to be because of his actions and calculated
: risks. For instance, I don't expect that every battle will hold a
: chance of death...
Then clearly you have some unreasonable expectations of battle. It's
not "absurd" for an underdog to slay a superior opponent due to a lucky
strike. Back in my college days, I fenced. When I had been fencing
about six months, an acquantance (friend of a friend) was going to the
US national fencing championships. One day, I happened to be the only
lefty in the gym -- so I got to fence him, despite our *large*
difference in ability. We fenced for about 20-30 minutes. He scored
some ridiculous number of touches against me, probably 100-150. But I
scored three touches against him.
Improbable events really do happen.
If you don't like this in your gaming, that's fine. But branding
"absurd" any game that does allow such things is pure prejudice.
: when a armored cyborg is attacked by a
: pistol-wielding punk in the alley, I don't expect to die. The scene is
: there for flavor. If the punk gets several lucky rolls in a row that
: allow him to kill me... there's something wrong. (Generally, it's a
: problem with the system, but no system can be fine-tuned well enough to
: avoid the silly things dice can do.)
Horse hockey. For my tastes, in any system which *does* *not* allow
such things, "there's something wrong." IMO, combat should be the last
resort. But those are just my preferences.
: This may not be the way you prefer to game.
:
But I'm "absurd" if my preferences differ from yours...
: >think it is fun and interesting for the game, regardless of whether
: >or not dice produce "reasonable stories".
:
: If your players like unreasonable events happening to their characters,
: great. I don't.
First, I'll point out the semantic difference between "reasonable
stories" (which roughly translates as plot structure, etc.) and
"reasonable events" (ie, believable, probable, whatever).
Clearly, what you really mean to say here is that only predictable
events are reasonable. This is the only rational interpretation of
your mixing of the two terms.
Sorry, the real world just isn't as predictable as you'd like it to
be.
Lee
------------------------------------------
Lee Short,
Software Commissar
Black Cat Solutions, Inc. Minneapolis MN
lsh...@empros.com
Carl D. Cravens
On Fri, 3 May 1996 22:33:01 GMT, lsh...@empros.com (Lee Short) wrote:
>Then clearly you have some unreasonable expectations of battle. It's
>not "absurd" for an underdog to slay a superior opponent due to a lucky
>strike. Back in my college days, I fenced. When I had been fencing
No, not absurd in real life. Absurd for James Bond to die from a stray
round. Absurd for Conan to be stabbed to death by a petty thief.
Absurd for Indiana Jones to be fatally impaled by spike traps during the
opening scene. Absurd for my character to die a random death. My
character is the star (or one of the stars) of the story... it is absurd
for him to die a random, meaningless death. That's not what I'm in the
game for. You can't roleplay being dead and you can't sing the praises
of someone killed by a lucky strike.
>Improbable events really do happen.
I'm not saying they don't. I'm saying I don't want them to happen in my
game without my decision being involved.
>Horse hockey. For my tastes, in any system which *does* *not* allow
>such things, "there's something wrong." IMO, combat should be the last
>resort. But those are just my preferences.
How or why combat was entered has nothing to do with it.
>: This may not be the way you prefer to game.
>But I'm "absurd" if my preferences differ from yours...
Those are your words, not mine. If you prefer to live with absurd
results (from a story standpoint), that's up to you. If you prefer a
game in which your character can die a meaningless death within a
shorter time period than it took you to create the character... I have
to admit I don't understand the preference. Maybe it's my uninformed
viewpoint, but I just don't see the point it in.
Obviously (or at least it should have been obvious) my viewpoint stems
from my experiences. If your experiences differ, then our viewpoints
are probably going to differ. If I say something from my viewpoint that
doesn't mesh with yours... why do you assume that I'm making a personal
attack on you? Just because I didn't smatter my post with In My
Opinion, It's Been My Experience, and other such assumed phrases?
>First, I'll point out the semantic difference between "reasonable
>stories" (which roughly translates as plot structure, etc.) and
>"reasonable events" (ie, believable, probable, whatever).
If these events are happening to characters in a story, I obviously (or
at least it should be obvious) am talking about events in a story (RPG),
not events in the real world.
>Clearly, what you really mean to say here is that only predictable
>events are reasonable. This is the only rational interpretation of
>your mixing of the two terms.
You're putting words in my mouth at this point. I've never been talking
about the real world... I'm talking about roleplaying and story
expectations.
>Sorry, the real world just isn't as predictable as you'd like it to
>be.
Sorry, straw-man arguments don't cut it. Your other points I can take,
but twisting my argument around to say something I never said just so
you can cut down an opinion I never had is hardly worthy of attention.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* I *wish* I could remember where I parked my hard disk.
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
>On 29 Apr 1996 18:20:58 GMT, jh...@ahnnyong.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
>> Uh, but isn't that the point? It's *random*. It doesn't respond
>>to your wishes (unless you have psychic powers).
>
>Right, it's random. And random number generators have yet to produce
>reasonable stories, which is why the randomness of the dice can have
>devastating effects on a roleplaying game if not handled properly.
>you just rolled it. An odd set of circumstances, from which your
>character would have emerged unscathed had he rolled average or above on
>even one of those rolls, and suddenly your character is dead because of
>quirky die rolls. This is what I mean by the dice not producing the
>one-in-a-million results when they matter... we expect something closer
>back-burner game system... they have to come up in SOME combination. If
>a roll only has 1 in 200 chance, be sure it'll show up often. And don't
>count on it not showing up twice in a row.
Story this! story that! story story story! What gives! I do not get this. Not
at all! When I game it is the situation, and the characters that are
important. I have no care for "story". I am not trying to be insulting, or
pejorative, but it is getting damn frustrating in that I keep bumping my head
against this. As a GM, I am interested in giving a complex szituation and
environment for my players as I can.
As a player I am just concerned about the character, his motivations, and the
interaction with others and trhe environment. I don't see story anywhere here!
The character has goals and objectives and I will enjoy the characters
struggles in trying to attain them.
I not only cannot see the attraction of plotting, it seems I cannot see the use
of it. Often I cannot see it, unless it gets predicatable, and then I can spot
it from a distance of 500 yards on a cloudy day. Because I can see the glint
off the railroad tracks. I see no value of story. I see the value of an active
versus passive game. I see the value of mental engagement, but I get Into
character, and anything outside of my character's "perceptions" I strenously
try to ignore.
The way I game as a player is that I am wagering my character's health against
a chance for success. I try to have enough information so I can build a strong
mental picture of the situation at-that-moment. Maps help. So do minatures.
Sketches help, but for my goals, "story" isn't there for me.
Important is the effect that random numbers generate, no one knows the future,
and in a "safe" environment, one can only make broad general plans for the
future. In the middle of a conflict is not a good example of a good environment
for planning or expectations. Bad rolls? I live with it, and I do not tend to
game with fragile personalities that invest too much of them into their
characters, that they are devastated by a death, I will admit, that deaths too
often will engender a mood of pessimism, but not as much as frequent (but less
than lethal) failure in achieving their short term goals.
A war gaming element is important to me, but only f the roleplay give the
fights some meaning and context. I cannot see any sort of utility of any
"literary" models, other than a good source for reseach, and idea. Story? I
guess I just don't get it.
I go see movies, and friends come out of a movie that i mildly enjoyed, griping
about a "weak plot" I have NO IDEA what they are talking about. I take the
environment of the film, as a window on events in a universe on the other side
of the screen on one level, and (since I have worked on films) on an other
level, I look closely at the craft of the film image itself, costumes,
lighting, editing, cinematography. Writing? I have a rudimentary sense of good
and bad, but it centers around dialogue, not "The Plot". Jurrasic Park was a
relevatory movie for me because the images and the technology used. I didn't
care about anything else, I was just thrilled to see the Dinosaurs walk with
near perfect believability. They had observable animal behaviors, and were
"believable characters". I want that sort of believability for the "world" of
my game".
Now This is no doubt a taste issue, but I cannot even see things from this side
of the fence. Story? What gives?
Scott
Scott
A Lapalme
Neelakantan Krishnaswami (ne...@athena.mit.edu) writes:
>
> Ah, but then diceless games are random, because no can predict the
> results of the interaction between players and GM, and that statement
> is enough to start the great-grandmother of all flame wars. Don't
> laugh. It's happened before.
>
>
I won't laugh. I was in the middle of it.
Alain
A Lapalme
"Scott. A. H. Ruggels" (scott....@3do.com) writes:
>
> As a player I am just concerned about the character, his motivations, and the
> interaction with others and trhe environment. I don't see story anywhere here!
> The character has goals and objectives and I will enjoy the characters
> struggles in trying to attain them.
>
Well, you know what? I agree.
As a player I don't care about the story, much. Just about the character.
I think the differnce is that I don't mind it if the GM is also out to
tell a story. As long as I can play my character the way I think I should
play the character, then, whether or not the GM has a story in mind is
inconsequential.
The trap many players fall into, when playing in an
admitted plotting game, is to try to look for the plot, thinking they have
found it, and then either trying to derail it (a childish response) or to
go along with it. The trick, in a plotted game, is to ignore the plot.
Play the character an the plot is just an artifact of the meta-game.
> I not only cannot see the attraction of plotting, it seems I cannot see the use
> of it. Often I cannot see it, unless it gets predicatable, and then I can spot
> it from a distance of 500 yards on a cloudy day. Because I can see the glint
> off the railroad tracks. I see no value of story. I see the value of an active
> versus passive game. I see the value of mental engagement, but I get Into
> character, and anything outside of my character's "perceptions" I strenously
> try to ignore.
>
What you say in the last sentence makes sense. More on this later, though.
>
> I go see movies, and friends come out of a movie that i mildly enjoyed, griping
> about a "weak plot" I have NO IDEA what they are talking about.
Now you're confusing me. If, in a movie, you can't see or won't see the
plot, why does it bother you so much in an RPG?
>I take the
> environment of the film, as a window on events in a universe on the other side
> of the screen on one level, and (since I have worked on films) on an other
> level, I look closely at the craft of the film image itself, costumes,
> lighting, editing, cinematography. Writing? I have a rudimentary sense of good
> and bad, but it centers around dialogue, not "The Plot". Jurrasic Park was a
> relevatory movie for me because the images and the technology used. I didn't
> care about anything else, I was just thrilled to see the Dinosaurs walk with
> near perfect believability. They had observable animal behaviors, and were
> "believable characters". I want that sort of believability for the "world" of
> my game".
>
Hmm.. that's dangerously close on how I watched the movie. Mostly,
though, I find most movies are boringly predictable.
> Now This is no doubt a taste issue, but I cannot even see things from this side
> of the fence. Story? What gives?
>
Maybe not much for you. When you talk about past gaming experiences, what
do you tell others? What I mean, is what part of the game do you like to
reminisce about (not by yourself but when discussing it with others)?
Alain
Jerry Stratton
ml...@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Mr. M.J. Lush) wrote:
>Jerry Stratton <je...@acusd.edu> wrote:
> >I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
> >with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
> >Unless, of course, it is important to the story that the victim live, and
> >in that case it is too important a decision to leave to the dice.
> Unfortunatly now the players _know_ the victim is important
>has plot immunity, and will use him/her for cover during firefights.
Ah! True enough, if the victim is an NPC, but I rarely do that for NPCs.
>But when we think of making a system where impossible (or very
>improbable) things can happen, aren't the Fate Points or Karma Points
>that some systems have just this? I mean, when you're about to die, you
>don't because of unbelievable luck... Give major NPCs fate too, and the
>problem is (at least half) solved.
Yes, this is the way I do it. Men and Supermen (Brand X) uses "Editing
Points" and "Fate Points".
If you would like to be vulgar, Editing Points are like Experience Points.
Player Characters get them depending on how often they're played. They can
be used directly to say, "I've been practicing Marxist Tantric Rites", and
increase the character's skill in Marxist Tantric Rites. Most often,
however, they're used during play to say, "I'm one of the best Marxist
Tantrics around. No way is Harvey Mudd going to beat *me*," and the player
ups the character's roll using the Editing Points.
Obviously, Marxist Tantrism is important to the player's character
conception, so half the points used go into increasing the character's
skill.
Game masters (Editors) can fudge any roll they feel like, but they have to
keep track of how much the roll was fudged by, and these go into
increasing the NPC's skill or whatever. If Uncle Basil manages to dodge
six bullets at close range and I fudge that roll by 20 points so that
Uncle Basil dodges, Uncle Basil ends up being a world-class gymnast. So I
don't fudge the roll unless Uncle Basil really *is* a world-class gymnast
(or whatever) *and* it's important that he be able to dodge bullets at
close range, fine. But I'm not going to fudge things if the players just
decided to shoot him and it happens that he knows something important.
That's their tough luck.
Fate Points are accumulated by players. They get .1 Fate Point per gaming
session (each player character starts out with four), and they can give it
to whatever character they want (it doesn't even have to be their own,
although it of course usually is). Fate Points can be used to change what
has really happened, as long as the player/Editor can come up with a good
story. "It's a good thing Uncle Basil was wearing the bullet proof vest
that Uncle Harry gave him for Christmas last year." The Editor is expected
not to use more than two of these per game session, whether to save an NPC
or to bring a previously dead NPC back to life.
Jerry
je...@acusd.edu
http://nspace.cts.com/ finger or e-mail he...@nspace.cts.com
Internet Config: If one signature was good enough for grandpa, it's good enough for me!
Carl D. Cravens
On 4 May 1996 00:59:48 GMT, "Scott. A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>Now This is no doubt a taste issue, but I cannot even see things from this side
>of the fence. Story? What gives?
If you can't see the story, I'm not sure I can do anything about it.
I handled your message fine until the movie example... I know players
who want nothing but to play their scenes with no regard for any
over-all theme or plot; they're in it for the interaction alone.
But the movie... to come out of a movie and not see how the plot
influences things, after claming to have worked in film making and
knowing about fiction writing? If there's no point in having a story,
why not throw together a bunch of special effects and tense scenes and
forget about the whole thing that ties it all together?
Movies (and novels and RPG's) are more than just individual interactions
strung together, each interaction standing on its own. In a good movie
(or novel, or (IMO) RPG) those individual interactions are held together
by a common thread called the story. Without the story, the overall
work has no direction, no point. It's just a collection of individual
interactions.
When you read a good book, what makes it "good" compared to a "bad"
book?
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* The modems canno' stand the strain, captain!
Carl D. Cravens
On 4 May 1996 13:33:48 GMT, ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>As a player I don't care about the story, much. Just about the character.
>I think the differnce is that I don't mind it if the GM is also out to
>tell a story. As long as I can play my character the way I think I should
>play the character, then, whether or not the GM has a story in mind is
>inconsequential.
What about in retrospect? When it's all said and done, do you look back
on the story that's been told and say, "Um... the big picture doesn't
really make any sense"?
I'm sure there are different classes of taste here, but I like to look
back on it and be amazed by it... to have the same feeling as having
finished a good novel. Not to say "that was a good interaction" or "I
enjoyed this part and that part" but to say "I liked the work as a
whole."
As a player, I like my character's experiences to have meaning to the
story. Not necessarily to look for the story in the present tense, or
to make sense of all that has gone before, but to know, as a player,
that my character has some purpose. And when it's over, I like to look
back and know that my character's story was interesting, in and of
itself.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* You are in a maze of twisty messages, all alike.
Mr. M.J. Lush
In article <4m9164$h...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>,
John H Kim <jh...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
>russell wallace <rwal...@tcd.ie> wrote:
>>Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> writes:
>>>The bias of even poorly-made dice in such a small sample is negligible.
>>>A very large sample is necessary to detect bias, so it follows that a
>>>small sample is going to be little affected by such bias.
>[...]
>>Over a sample the size of the Usenet community, the bias *does* show up,
>>which is my explanation for why there are far more anecdotes about
>>amazingly improbable dice rolls floating around on Usenet than one
>>would expect from pure chance.
Well I have this awesome anecdote!
Well me and this other guy were crawling through the jungle
and we suprised lone triad, well I take a pot shot at the
with my rifle, it was short range and I had a 51% to hit.
I rolled and got a 55!!!!! so I roll 2d6 for damage and get 7!
Oooh! just above average, he was hurt but not too badly
so he shoots at me and misses (roll of 34) and I shoot at him
etc etc etc
as the provious guy said would you really tell anecdotes
about runs of about averege rolls?
Bruce Baugh
In article <vH9ixwIe...@southwind.net>, rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens)
<4lr0vi$9...@nyheter.chalmers.se> <4ltl2k$4...@web3.tcd.ie>
<tm7gxwIe...@southwind.net> <4m31aa$n...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>
<gIihxwIe...@southwind.net> <4mea64$a...@badger.3do.com>
<4mfmbs$h...@freenet-news.carleton.ca> wrote:
>What about in retrospect? When it's all said and done, do you look back
>on the story that's been told and say, "Um... the big picture doesn't
>really make any sense"?
Sure. About half of my favorite gaming memories are of scenes or
episodes in campaigns which did not, in the end, add up to much in the
way of coherent story. This doesn't seem to have any particular bearing
on the fondness I have for the moments in question.
>As a player, I like my character's experiences to have meaning to the
>story. Not necessarily to look for the story in the present tense, or
>to make sense of all that has gone before, but to know, as a player,
>that my character has some purpose.
I do agree, very much, here. I like to think that what I chose to try or
not try mattered to the outcome. This is true even when the outcome is
more or less raving incoherence - at least it's incoherence _I_ helped
build.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
A Lapalme
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) writes:
> On 4 May 1996 13:33:48 GMT, ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>>As a player I don't care about the story, much. Just about the character.
>>I think the differnce is that I don't mind it if the GM is also out to
>>tell a story. As long as I can play my character the way I think I should
>>play the character, then, whether or not the GM has a story in mind is
>>inconsequential.
>
> What about in retrospect? When it's all said and done, do you look back
> on the story that's been told and say, "Um... the big picture doesn't
> really make any sense"?
Now, that's a different question. In all honesty, I don't know. I've
never been in a game which lasted long enough for me to go beyond trying
to make the character click.
In theory, I would like to think so. However, I do have some reservations
about this though. The story is often in the eye of the beholder so, a
game which has a consistent story from the GM POV may not look like that
at all from a player's POV. Now, this doesn't mean the player doesn't see
a story; it just means that the story may not be the one the GM planned to
tell.
Under that kind of situation, I do question the point of the GM putting
too much effort in creating a story. It's been my experience that, unless
the GM makes things really obvious, the players will not see the same
nuances. This will change meaning and will change the story. So, my
question is: why bother planning a story?
As I've said in my answer to Scott, the reason I plot (when I do which is
about 50% of the time in the last couple of years) is mostly for my own
benefit. The players might get something out of it (and if they do,
that's a bonus) but my main goal is to make the GMing challenging (in a
different way than what I used to do).
>
> I'm sure there are different classes of taste here, but I like to look
> back on it and be amazed by it... to have the same feeling as having
> finished a good novel. Not to say "that was a good interaction" or "I
> enjoyed this part and that part" but to say "I liked the work as a
> whole."
>
As I said above, haven't had the pleasure of experiencing this. All long
term games I've been in we ran by either poor plotters or strong
simulationists. I've played in short term well plotted games but they are
a different beast.
Alain
Ennead
Alain wrote:
: >>As a player I don't care about the story, much. Just about the character.
: >>I think the differnce is that I don't mind it if the GM is also out to
: >>tell a story. As long as I can play my character the way I think I should
: >>play the character, then, whether or not the GM has a story in mind is
: >>inconsequential.
Carl then asked:
: > What about in retrospect? When it's all said and done, do you look back
: > on the story that's been told and say, "Um... the big picture doesn't
: > really make any sense"?
Well, plots that make no sense are a matter unto themselves.
If in retrospect the plot makes no sense, that's a sign of an inconsistent
or nonsensical story, not of an absence of an over-arching story line.
Personally, I do like to look back on the game and view it as
a narrative, but I don't think that this requires an intended "plotline"
to the game. I look back on my own life and view it as narrative all
the time, although I am reasonably sure that no guiding hand is creating
a plot for me to act in. When I look back on the game and view it as
narrative, I am doing so by judiciously selecting which parts of the game
I wish to focus on to form the narrative which seems to me the most
meaningful and powerful. If it's a really good game, then there are
usually many different narratives I enjoy forming from it.
Interestingly enough, I do this even when the game in question
*was* a plotted game. The story I make of the game, however, is not
necessarily either the story the GM intended or the story one of my
fellow players would make of it. It's one of the things about RPG as
a medium that I find fascinating, actually: this multiplicity of plot
and theme. Five people reading the same novel are unlikely to vary
too much in their interpretation of "what the story was about." Five
people playing in the same RPG, on the other hand, can make of the
shared experience five very different narratives.
It's really for this reason, I suppose, that I tend to agree
with Alain on the Big Plot Question. Although in the past I've usually
lept into the fray as a proponent of unplotted games, when it comes down
to it, I really don't care all that much. My enjoyment of (or irritation
with) a game is based on factors which, while they may be tangentially
related to how plot is *managed* in the game, are not really themselves
issues of plotted vs. non. Either way, I'll end up looking back at the
game events and forming them into narrative. Either way, I'll enjoy
the game in retrospect. If I *don't* enjoy the game in retrospect, it's
probably because the game was flawed in some way utterly irrelevant to
whether or not the GM had an over-arching story-line in mind when he
planned the game.
Alain's answer to Carl's question:
: Now, that's a different question. In all honesty, I don't know. I've
: never been in a game which lasted long enough for me to go beyond trying
: to make the character click.
: In theory, I would like to think so. However, I do have some reservations
: about this though. The story is often in the eye of the beholder so, a
: game which has a consistent story from the GM POV may not look like that
: at all from a player's POV. Now, this doesn't mean the player doesn't see
: a story; it just means that the story may not be the one the GM planned to
: tell.
I would say that the story very rarely ends up being precisely the
one the GM planned to tell. In my experience, the players always affect
the plot strongly enough to change it considerably from the GM's original
intent. Sometimes, in fact, they render it unrecognizable. That's part
of what makes the game so much fun, IMO.
: Under that kind of situation, I do question the point of the GM putting
: too much effort in creating a story. It's been my experience that, unless
: the GM makes things really obvious, the players will not see the same
: nuances. This will change meaning and will change the story. So, my
: question is: why bother planning a story?
Some GMs like the framework they provide and find that the
existence of such a framework improves their games considerably. David
Berkman has had quite a piece to say about this in the past.
: As I've said in my answer to Scott, the reason I plot (when I do which is
: about 50% of the time in the last couple of years) is mostly for my own
: benefit. The players might get something out of it (and if they do,
: that's a bonus) but my main goal is to make the GMing challenging (in a
: different way than what I used to do).
There's another reason. Besides, if you haven't intended a plot,
then how can you have the fun of seeing how badly it was mutilated by
player actions?
Even with no plot in mind, any GM will have *some* expectations of
what might occur in the game, and it is fun, I think, to see which of
these expectations are met and which are not, and why.
: > I'm sure there are different classes of taste here, but I like to look
: > back on it and be amazed by it... to have the same feeling as having
: > finished a good novel. Not to say "that was a good interaction" or "I
: > enjoyed this part and that part" but to say "I liked the work as a
: > whole."
Hmmm. Well, I don't think that people like me who undergo a
process of selection in turning the game into narrative precisely think of
it as "I enjoyed this part and that part." It doesn't have that
piece-meal feel to it, because in the process of viewing it as narrative,
one "re-invents" the game to become more holistic in memory than it really
was in play.
Since my group has started recording and transcribing our
game sessions, it has become much easier to see this process in action,
particularly as we're all procrastinators, and so never get around to
typing up the transcripts until considerable time has elapsed since the
game in question. It's interesting to see how much less, er...well,
*narrative-like* the games were in reality than they later became in
memory. And this holds true about equally for the games run by Kip and
the ones run by me. As Kip is a heavier plotter than I am, this would
seem to indicate that the degree of plotting of the game really doesn't
have all that much effect upon the way in which the game is later recalled
and "re-invented" as narrative.
: As I said above, haven't had the pleasure of experiencing this. All long
: term games I've been in we ran by either poor plotters or strong
: simulationists. I've played in short term well plotted games but they are
: a different beast.
Short term games *are* a different beast, aren't they. Looking
back on some of the arguments we've had around here in the past, I think
that many of the disputes might well come down to the difference between a
short-term, consciously-finite game and a campaign intended to run for an
indeterminate period of time. Very different animals.
-- Sarah
Jim Davies
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
snip
>I don't think one really can. I've looked at dice-pool curves for hours
>and I still can't get a feel for it. Even if one does get a feel for
>it, I don't like the actual spread.
Time for a technical intrusion
The variance of rolling n m-sided dice (ie ndm) is
V = n x (m^2 - 1) / 12
and the standard deviation is the square root of that.
Similarly, adding disparate groups of dice, ie ndm+ydz, gives
V = (n x (m^2 - 1) + (y x (z^2 - 1) ) / 12
So, for example, 3d6 has a variance of 3x35/12 = 8.75, so SD = 2.96
and 4dF (=4d3-4) gives 2.67 so SD = 1.63
Of course, the distribution only becomes normal-ish if you roll at
least 3 dice.
Of course,
Dr Jim Davies...PhD, BSc, etc but mostly BS
Mary K. Kuhner
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) writes:
>When you talk about past gaming experiences, what
>do you tell others? What I mean, is what part of the game do you like to
>reminisce about (not by yourself but when discussing it with others)?
>Alain
If I'm trying to entertain, I tell the funny parts--which are frequently
very unrelated to the plot. The story of how Joe Fighter set the
campaign record for damage to a monster--and discovered that it had Fire
Shield up, so it got to set the campaign record for damage to a PC....
This was a rather stupid, irrelevant fight, but the players were
retelling it for years.
If I'm trying for something else--to capture the experience, say--
I tell the bits that illuminate character, or setting, or theme.
I hardly ever recount plot, though, because frankly plot summaries are
usually boring. Sometimes the illuminating bits are part of the
mainline plot, and sometimes they aren't.
The only time I've really worried about narrative line is when I'm
actually storytelling, writing game-based fiction. There I find that
any good campaign can be stripped down to some kind of storyline,
with sufficient cutting--it need not have been plotted. _Paradisio_
makes a plausible linear novel, dropping seven of the fourteen
characters altogether and six more except for brief glimpses, and
deleting something over four-fifths of what happened in the game.
But except for a little bit of manipulation at the very end, for
closure of one thread, this game was emphatically not plotted (as you'd
see, painfully, if you tried to make the whole thing into a novel).
Story can be made in retrospect by the player; it need not be made in
prospect by the GM in order to exist. As others have said, this allows
more leeway for different players to make different stories.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 5 May 1996, Sarah (who has graciously returned to us!) wrote:
> Personally, I do like to look back on the game and view it as
> a narrative, but I don't think that this requires an intended "plotline"
> to the game.
I quite agree. I think the theoretical question hinges on the
desirability of GM intervention in this "natural" narrative process.
That is, if we take it as a given that the way that players will make
since of *all* (or most, at any rate--IME, IMHO, YMMV, qualify qualify
qualify, yada yada yada) rpg experiences is via the construction of
narratives, then the issue of whether or not it is desirable for a GM to
plot a game comes down to the question of whether or not the GM, by doing
so, somehow enhances the quality of the narratives the players
construct. Yowsa--that's a run on sentance. Sorry Lea!
> . . . When I look back on the game and view it as
> narrative, I am doing so by judiciously selecting which parts of the game
> I wish to focus on to form the narrative which seems to me the most
> meaningful and powerful. If it's a really good game, then there are
> usually many different narratives I enjoy forming from it.
> Interestingly enough, I do this even when the game in question
> *was* a plotted game. The story I make of the game, however, is not
> necessarily either the story the GM intended or the story one of my
> fellow players would make of it. It's one of the things about RPG as
> a medium that I find fascinating, actually: this multiplicity of plot
> and theme. Five people reading the same novel are unlikely to vary
> too much in their interpretation of "what the story was about." Five
> people playing in the same RPG, on the other hand, can make of the
> shared experience five very different narratives.
I think this selective process is to a large degree
inevitable--especially in an IC-intensive game, in which part of the
point is to experience the events of the game from a particular
perspective. Indeed, I would argue that it is this quality of rpg that
separates it from experiencing other narrative forms, like, say, novels.
This is why rpg narratives will tend to be much more fragmented than
other literary narratives, I think.
I've written elsewhere on the plotting techniques that our group has
developed to address this issue. I'm not sure if you read them or not,
Sarah (template plots and character sub-plots). Let me know . . .
> I would say that the story very rarely ends up being precisely the
> one the GM planned to tell. In my experience, the players always affect
> the plot strongly enough to change it considerably from the GM's original
> intent. Sometimes, in fact, they render it unrecognizable. That's part
> of what makes the game so much fun, IMO.
Again, substantial agreement here. I'm not at all sure that this
vitiates GM instigated plotting, however. For me, much of the pleasure
if rpg stems from the interactivity of the form--were the GM to *impose*
a plot, then the form would lose that aspect. It might still be fun, but
it would no longer be rpg, and would lose something, at least for me.
That said, IME GM induced plots very often enhance a game. Indeed, at
the grossest level I think they are unavoidable.
If we accept as a working definition that plot is the engagement of the
stuff that matters to character with the stuff going on in the setting,
then all GM by definition are engaged in plotting. That is because it is
the GM's responsibility to produce the stuff going on in the setting--GMs,
for example, choose the antagonists. Even in the most setting-based GM
style, it is the GM that designs the *universe* of antagonists from
within which the characters then selectively engage. If you accept this
<smile> then what we are really talking about is the *degree* of GM
plotting.
For me, when I GM, plotting is very much a synergistic process. I place
a premium on the interactivity of the narrative process in the game, and
so I want to empower my players (to the extent that they desire to be
empowered) to participate in the authorial part of the game. This means
that my plots are closer in form to the world-based style, at least
initially. But as players make choices within the universe of possible
narratives available, I (we!) hone in on particular themes, and develop
stories accordingly. That is, as players make authorial decisions, I
attempt to give those decisions resonance within the setting. Now there
are dangers to this--done too overtly it lends a false feeling to the
game that hinders the IC stance--but done with subtlety and judiciously,
selectively, my group has found that it enhances play.
> Hmmm. Well, I don't think that people like me who undergo a
> process of selection in turning the game into narrative precisely think of
> it as "I enjoyed this part and that part." It doesn't have that
> piece-meal feel to it, because in the process of viewing it as narrative,
> one "re-invents" the game to become more holistic in memory than it really
> was in play.
I think this reinvention process is fundamental to all narrative forms
(that's my theoretical bias showing :) Anyway, it is certainly prevalent
in rpgs, IME anyway. I do think that this is part and parcel of a strong
IC stance.
Hmm. I'm repeating myself :)
More when I've more energy . . .
Welcome back!
All my best,
Kevin
Carl D. Cravens
On 5 May 1996 12:30:06 GMT, ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>the GM makes things really obvious, the players will not see the same
>nuances. This will change meaning and will change the story. So, my
>question is: why bother planning a story?
It's interesting to note that David Berkman (in Theatrix) goes as far as
to throw in 'cut scenes' where important parts of the plot are revealed
to the *players* through scenes which the *characters* never see or even
become aware of at the end.
Although I can't play Theatrix as-is, it did stir up a lot of
interesting questions for me... and the biggest question was "player as
audience, how important is that?" The cut-scene approach is
interesting, but it purposefully puts non-character knowledge in front
of the players and challenges them to keep that knowledge from
influencing thier characters' actions.
This gets off on a tangent, but if it works, it does give the GM a tool
to help tell the "whole story" if needed.
Along those lines... if you had played out a long, story-based campaign
and brought it to a close, with no plans to continue with those
characters... would you, as GM, reveal the secret things behind the
scenes that the players might be curious about? As a player, how would
you feel?
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* So many idiots, so little ammunition.
John Campbell
In article <qJOixwIe...@southwind.net>, rave...@southwind.net (Carl
D. Cravens) wrote:
© On 1 May 1996 18:47:05 GMT, jh...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
©
© >It is precisely the unexpected nature of randomness which some people
© >like in their games. Certainly it is why I use them -- because I
©
© There's a difference between "unexpected nature" and coincidental die
© rolls that kill characters in the most absurd of situations. I don't
© enter a game to lose my character to chance... if I'm going to lose my
© character, it's going to be because of his actions and calculated
© risks. For instance, I don't expect that every battle will hold a
© chance of death... when a armored cyborg is attacked by a
© pistol-wielding punk in the alley, I don't expect to die. The scene is
© there for flavor. If the punk gets several lucky rolls in a row that
© allow him to kill me... there's something wrong. (Generally, it's a
© problem with the system, but no system can be fine-tuned well enough to
© avoid the silly things dice can do.)
The GM is the tuner. Where is there flavor without risk? :-)
Must risk only translate into death? I think not.
Steve Rennell (wu...@sea.southern.co.nz) wrote:
: I've played in a game where the hostage rescue went completely smoothly, no-
: one got hurt (not even the bad guys), and we were getting away clean, and I
: was climbing down a drain-pipe which gave way, and my trouser leg got caught
: preventing me from breakfalling out of it at all, and I landed on my head. I
: was almost dead through a series of really really bad rolls. If it had been
: a diceless game, how could the GM have produced this result without looking
: somewhat vindictive.
He went on to discribe how it made for very interesting play that was
not predictable and not part of the original plot as concived of by the
GM or percieved of by thew players
©
© This may not be the way you prefer to game.
©
© >think it is fun and interesting for the game, regardless of whether
© >or not dice produce "reasonable stories".
©
© If your players like unreasonable events happening to their characters,
© great. I don't.
©
How about replacing "unreasonable" with "unusual"?
To repeat my main point:
Must risk only translate into death? I think not.
--
John Campbell
Copyright 1996 John Campbell nyah nyah nyah! yadda yadda.
John H Kim
This is a reply to Carl regarding the importance of story in
RPG's. Obviously this is a matter of taste, so I just thought I would
share my own point of view on this.
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>Movies (and novels and RPG's) are more than just individual interactions
>strung together, each interaction standing on its own. In a good movie
>(or novel, or (IMO) RPG) those individual interactions are held together
>by a common thread called the story. Without the story, the overall
>work has no direction, no point. It's just a collection of individual
>interactions.
>
>When you read a good book, what makes it "good" compared to a "bad" book?
Hmmm. IMO, as long as there are causal links and characters,
there is *always* a story. It doesn't require a specific GM effort
to make a story out of the individual interactions in an RPG. A GM may
try to control the story produced by skillful handling, but I am not
convinced of the effectiveness of this.
As for books, I am usually swayed by the strength of the characters
and the inventiveness of the ideas. For example, I enjoyed Vinge's
_A Fire Upon the Deep_ even though I thought the plot was mediocre and
boring. I enjoyed it for the alien culture it presented, which fired
the imagination and made me think for a long time after I put the book
down. I was similarly impressed with his _Marooned in Realtime_.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>I'm sure there are different classes of taste here, but I like to look
>back on it and be amazed by it... to have the same feeling as having
>finished a good novel. Not to say "that was a good interaction" or "I
>enjoyed this part and that part" but to say "I liked the work as a
>whole."
Fair enough. In practice, I find that I tend to remember and
talk about individual interactions rather than a campaign as a whole.
Frankly, in my experience most GM attempts at an over-arching story
have resulted in interactions becoming more trite and/or limited.
This may not be a neccessary result -- but it is something I am
wary of.
-*-*-*-
>
>As a player, I like my character's experiences to have meaning to the
>story. Not necessarily to look for the story in the present tense, or
>to make sense of all that has gone before, but to know, as a player,
>that my character has some purpose. And when it's over, I like to look
>back and know that my character's story was interesting, in and of
>itself.
OK. As a player, I *know* my character's experiences have
meaning to the story. At least from my point of view, the story is
about my character -- hence her experiences neccessarily have meaning
to the story. My character's purpose isn't supplied by the GM, it
is created by me (in the form of goals and development).
-*-*-*-
As GM, I am currently running a more genre-based game which I
hope will emulate certain fiction. (It is a _Champions_ game with a
mystic theme, taking after _Books of Magic_ and similar comics).
I am paying attention to overall story, certainly, including
themes and development. However, when thinking up what to prepare for
the next session, I don't think in terms of plot twists, but rather
in terms of more pragmatic issues:
1) What are the NPC's doing (based on their background and current
situation)
2) What are the PC's likely to do
3) What PC should I focus on (I try to alternate which player gets
in the limelight - in practice this doesn't work very well)
Where "story" comes in most is when I add to the background.
This is usually a heavy genre/theme issue, as I try to make sure the
added characters/organizations/items/etc. fit in with the theme of the
whole. This usually involves a lot of mental juggling, deep thought,
and procrastination.
- John
Carl D. Cravens
On 6 May 1996 21:36:18 GMT, jh...@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
> As for books, I am usually swayed by the strength of the characters
>and the inventiveness of the ideas. For example, I enjoyed Vinge's
Hum. When I think about my favorite books... I recall that it's
characters that I fell in love with. (In a literary sense.) Setting
second. But I can't enjoy memorable characters in a bland story.
>_A Fire Upon the Deep_ even though I thought the plot was mediocre and
>boring. I enjoyed it for the alien culture it presented, which fired
I'm trying to recall what I thought of the plot... I *loved* the book,
but I think it's because I loved the blabber culture.
I'm not quite as story-oriented as I probably come off as... but I do
have a very heavy element of story present (and cooperative players)
because I'm slow at improvization. I have to think ahead about a lot of
things for them to go smoothly in the game... and I think about more
things than the players ever encounter, because I don't railroad them.
I just prepare for a lot of different threads and hope the players
choose one that I'm ready for. If not, I get more practice at improv.
But as a GM, I like to see an over-all view that extends beyond today's
horizon. Having a long-term plot helps me design for the next session.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER!...ittybittylivingspace...
Michele Ellington
Jerry Stratton (je...@acusd.edu) wrote:
> In article <4lije4$j...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
> ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
> Absolutely--this kind of thing should really be integrated more fully into
> the game. I think it was Mark Twain who said that, of course truth is
> stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.
> I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
> with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
Why? If a real live flesh and blood human can survive such a withering
assault, why couldn't a "larger than life" fictional character do so
as well? Life isn't predictable in the way the diceless GMs seem to
argue it should be. Just as there are stories of people falling from
a plane without a parachute and surviving, there are stories of people
being tapped on the head and dropping dead. Life is much more capricious
than any but a lunatic GM might conceive without the dice to offer the
element of surprise. I have enjoyed diceless games, have run them myself.
But in a scripted game where the GM has already decided the outcome
of the various "scenes" which compose the evening's play, I feel the
PCs are extraneous to the plot. Regardless of whether the heroes showed
up to fight them or not, the villains are predestined to escape with the
Scarab of Doom, forcing the heroes to track them across the Wastes of
Time and into the Undying Pyramid. The fine details of the fight might
change based on character actions, but the basic truth is that the
PCs presence or absence had no bearing at all on the resolution of
the scene. Whether the players are clever or half asleep, whether
the characters are skilled or combat brutes, failure was inevitable.
In the end, when the final fight to save the world is staged atop
the pinnacle of the Undying Pyramid, success is equally inevitable.
I have always felt that people who GM this way really want to write
a book, not role-play. Role-playing is about interaction, and my
experience has been that dice tend to keep things fresh and more
suspenseful than just waiting for the GM to reveal what they feel
is the most reasonable result of your actions.
> Dice don't know what's important. Players do.
What's important to the GM may not be important to the player. What's
important to the player may not be important to the GM. What's important
to one player may be trivial to another. Dice are the fairest arbiter
available. They should be used to resolve every question. But I have
never liked diceless combat systems, and dice are also useful to determine
random events such as the results of a cave in or where a missed shot
lands. When the GM rules that the hero's missed shot lands in the 8
year old kid, the player is very likely to feel mistreated by the GM.
When the GM says, "If I roll two 1s on these three dice, it hits the
kid", and then does, I think the player more likely to accept the
result and roleplay the character;s responsibility for the act.
--
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing."
Edmund Burke
Michele Ellington
AD...@rgfn.epcc.edu
Terry Austin
lsh...@empros.com (Lee Short) wrote:
>strike. Back in my college days, I fenced. When I had been fencing
>about six months, an acquantance (friend of a friend) was going to the
>US national fencing championships. One day, I happened to be the only
>lefty in the gym -- so I got to fence him, despite our *large*
>difference in ability. We fenced for about 20-30 minutes. He scored
>some ridiculous number of touches against me, probably 100-150. But I
>scored three touches against him.
I recall a quote from some really good fencer about "The person most
dangerous to the best fencer in the world is not the second best, but
the worst. The second best is more predictable."
Terry Austin
tau...@ni.net
Once you remove the absurdity from human
existence, there isn't much left.
----Alexis A. Gilliland
russell wallace
>Along those lines... if you had played out a long, story-based campaign
>and brought it to a close, with no plans to continue with those
>characters... would you, as GM, reveal the secret things behind the
>scenes that the players might be curious about? As a player, how would
>you feel?
For a story-based campaign, yes, definitely; I think this is quite
important if there are significant parts of the plot that didn't come
out during IC events. For a campaign leaning more towards the wargaming
end of the spectrum I'd still be inclined to do it, but I'd regard it as
less important, and I'd be considerably less inclined to use cut scenes
or suchlike *during* the campaign for the purpose.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwal...@tcd.ie
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
>On 1 May 1996 18:47:05 GMT, jh...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
>
>Sure. One handles "them" (the extremes of the dice) by ignoring the
>result when it seems appropriate.
>
>>It is precisely the unexpected nature of randomness which some people
>>like in their games. Certainly it is why I use them -- because I
>
>There's a difference between "unexpected nature" and coincidental die
>rolls that kill characters in the most absurd of situations. I don't
>enter a game to lose my character to chance... if I'm going to lose my
>character, it's going to be because of his actions and calculated
>risks. For instance, I don't expect that every battle will hold a
>chance of death... when a armored cyborg is attacked by a
>pistol-wielding punk in the alley, I don't expect to die. The scene is
>there for flavor. If the punk gets several lucky rolls in a row that
>allow him to kill me... there's something wrong. (Generally, it's a
>problem with the system, but no system can be fine-tuned well enough to
>avoid the silly things dice can do.)
>
>
ANY combat for granted. This was the main attraction for me for skills based as
opposed to class based systems. A High Level D&D character could fry Kobolds
against the plates of hhhis armour by force of sheer personality, it seemed,
whereas, a thief could stab a King in the back and kill him in C&S, and FH. That
was the attraction. Because sometimes, You are the punk with the cheap gun,
being chased by an armoured Cyborg, not always the otherway around. Sometimes
the punk gets the eye shot through skill or luck. I read a lot of history, and i
find the One in a Million shot, is pretty common, even in a low intesity civil
war, because more than a million raounds are expended, and in some cases there
are more than a million soldiers involved. But that is war. I agree that the
probability distributions on most games are poorly researched, and increadibly
skewed, but the "Golden BB" of aviation legend does exist, and for the game to
be something other than a typical evocation of genre fiction, these "random"
effects must be incorporated into the game for it to achieve the feeling of a
time and place. Death from small things must be possible, and unpredictable, but
not common. It should happen "on stage" at least once, for the players to take
the situation seriously. I have spoken at length about taking character death
too hard, and I won't go into it right now, but I think people are sometimes too
attached to the characters.
Scott
Scott Taylor
tau...@ni.net (Terry Austin) wrote:
>
>I recall a quote from some really good fencer about "The person most
>dangerous to the best fencer in the world is not the second best, but
>the worst. The second best is more predictable."
Actually, I think that's from a Joel Rosenberg novel; "The Sleeping
Dragon". The Protagonist (Carl Cullinane, a warrior) is a very good
swordsman, but not as good as the character who states it (they are in a
non-lethal arena in Pandathaway). So Carl Cullinane thinks this out, and
uses a typical boneheaded manuver (you know, the kind that "never"
work), and throws his sword at him...
It may have been stated before that, however; it was a truism when I was
an SCA fencer, but that wasn't till the book had been out for some time.
Scott Taylor
personally, I'll stick with being somewhere in the "xth" best, and
really sneaky...
Ennead
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net) wrote:
: It's interesting to note that David Berkman (in Theatrix) goes as far as
: to throw in 'cut scenes' where important parts of the plot are revealed
: to the *players* through scenes which the *characters* never see or even
: become aware of at the end.
I don't like cut scenes personally. I understand their purpose,
and I can see how they would work for others, but for me... Well, they
leave me cold. Fortunately, the people I play with have much the same
response to them, so we just don't do them. No biggie.
: Although I can't play Theatrix as-is, it did stir up a lot of
: interesting questions for me... and the biggest question was "player as
: audience, how important is that?"
The odd thing here is that, despite my dislike of cut scenes,
player-as-audience *is* very important to me (hence my annoyance with
simultaneous play). I like knowing what's going on as a player, even if
my character is utterly in the dark. I am, however, willing to forego
this knowledge for a pay-back in terms of suspense, surprise, or problem-
solving challenge; when the GM keeps information from me as player, I
place my trust in the idea that he's going to give me ample recompense for
the denial of my Audience. Kip, for example, likes springing surprises;
when he GMs, I don't mind so much not knowing what's going on, because I
know from experience that he's going to make it worth my while.
My group is, however, very dramatically divided on this issue,
unlike our general agreement on the cut-scene question. Barry, for
example, is so disinterested in player-as-audience that he simply doesn't
*notice* anything in the game that happens outside of his character's
perception. He just blocks it out completely; frankly, I'm not sure how
he manages it. It does make discussing the game afterwards interesting,
though, as his utter ignorance of what any outside observer would have
labelled the "main story" of the game is, well...fascinating. If a bit
disturbing.
Others in the group seem to me to fall somewhere between our two
extremes.
: The cut-scene approach is
: interesting, but it purposefully puts non-character knowledge in front
: of the players and challenges them to keep that knowledge from
: influencing thier characters' actions.
It does, but I consider this one of those skills which gamers
ought to master anyway, so you could always just think of it as good
practice.
Our games are run troupe-style, so although we don't do cut
scenes, we still have to deal with a lot of non-character knowledge.
It's one of the oddities of a co-created world.
: This gets off on a tangent, but if it works, it does give the GM a tool
: to help tell the "whole story" if needed.
That it does. Of course, if for whatever reason you don't like
the cut scenes, you can still tell the players the "whole story." Our
secrets often get shared as a sort of an adjunct to the game proper ("By
the way, you all should probably know that what's really happening here is
this..."), often as a part of that after-game wind-down/analysis/chat
phase. Works for us, although I imagine that it might well seem
to lack a certain integration into the game proper for some people. It's
a matter of taste.
: Along those lines... if you had played out a long, story-based campaign
: and brought it to a close, with no plans to continue with those
: characters... would you, as GM, reveal the secret things behind the
: scenes that the players might be curious about?
Absolutely. At that point, I can't think of any reason not to,
unless it might have an adverse impact on a game with different characters
you were planning to run in the same world in the future. My tastes
almost always run towards disclosure.
[Hee hee hee. Dis-closure. I made a post-modern funny. What a
pity that it doesn't support my argument. Ah well, that's post-modernism
for ya...]
: As a player, how would you feel?
I'd want to know. If I never found out what was going on behind
the scenes, I'd be disappointed and just a wee bit annoyed. I'd probably
forgive you for it, though, *unless* I suspected that these behind-the-
scenes goings-on were...(Oh, dear. How to say this politely...) Well,
were not really all *there,* shall we say, but were in fact just a vague
hazy excuse to do weird and nonsensical things with the plot. If such a
suspicion *did* cross my mind -- and I should mention that I am, on the
whole, an exceptionally trusting individual when it comes to RPGs
-- but if it *did* -- well, then, I'd probably hound you mercilessly to spit
out the whole story, nagging you persistantly until you either complied or
smacked me in the face to shut me up.
I trust, of course, that you have *no* idea what I'm talking
about. I wouldn't have even brought it up, except perhaps as a warning
that there are suspicious people in the world who might take any refusal
to disclose plot reasons after-the-fact as an excuse to impune your honor
as a GM. If you do play with people who you think might fit this
description, then I'd advise you to tell them the whole story and to make
sure it fits together well enough for their (probably fine-tooth-comb-ish)
perusal.
-- Sarah
Michele Ellington
Michele Ellington (ad...@rgfn.epcc.edu) wrote:
> Dice are the fairest arbiter
> available. They should be used to resolve every question.
Oops! Badly placed typo! I meant to say "They **shouldn't**
be used to resolve every question." Funny how a couple of
letters can change a whole sentence.
Mary K. Kuhner
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) writes:
>Along those lines... if you had played out a long, story-based campaign
>and brought it to a close, with no plans to continue with those
>characters... would you, as GM, reveal the secret things behind the
>scenes that the players might be curious about? As a player, how would
>you feel?
>Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
I'm in favor of the GM answering questions, but not sitting down and
telling the whole story (unless that's what the other players want).
There are often things I want to know, and things I don't particularly;
sometimes I have illusions I'd rather not see shattered.
I've played with a GM who would never tell his secrets; it was
frustrating, and (as Sarah says) can raise the ugly suspicion that they
really didn't make any sense.
One thing that's happened in all of my campaigns, but which seems not to
be common, is the "hypotheticals" game. We usually play over dinner
after the session. Someone says "What might the villain think of our
last raid? I bet he's jumped to the conclusion that we're part of the
Resistance!" Someone else elaborates on this, maybe speaking
in-character for the villain as he pursues this idea. It often turns
into mini-scenes where the NPCs argue and plan. Everyone understands
that this is guesswork, not reality; the GM can participate but she's
free to lie. She ought, however, to keep within the bounds of the
setting; this way the players get a little more information about the
setting. I like doing this: I enjoy hearing what people come up with,
and getting a possible glimpse of what the other side might be thinking.
(It's often extremely funny--PCs usually operate by indirection, and the
opposition is often *dead* wrong about what's going on.) And no real
secrets are revealed, so there's no in-character/out-of-character info
problem.
As GM, sometimes I agree with the hypothetical game's conclusions about
what the NPCs are thinking, often I don't, but it's almost always
useful.
I dislike cut scenes, though--not so much for the extraneous
information as because they feel somewhat artificial, and they lose the
interactive quality which I value in roleplaying. Things I'm not
allowed to react to, and which none of the other players can react to
either, don't enrich the play experience nearly as much.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Carl D. Cravens
On 7 May 1996 18:14:09 GMT, "Scott. A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>This is EXACTLY the way I want to game. I never want to have the players take
>ANY combat for granted. This was the main attraction for me for skills based as
>opposed to class based systems. A High Level D&D character could fry Kobolds
>against the plates of hhhis armour by force of sheer personality, it seemed,
>whereas, a thief could stab a King in the back and kill him in C&S, and FH. That
An example of broken D&D is too extreme.
I *want* the PC's to take certain abilities for granted. It's part of
being Heroic. I don't find it enjoyable to be embarrassed by my
character utterly failing a trivial task in something he's an expert at.
Failing at something difficult, sure... but not something so trivial my
character should be able to do it with is eyes closed, big toes tied
together, and left elbow touching right knee.
>was the attraction. Because sometimes, You are the punk with the cheap gun,
>being chased by an armoured Cyborg, not always the otherway around. Sometimes
>the punk gets the eye shot through skill or luck. I read a lot of history, and i
When the punk with the cheap gun is the PC, things change totally in my
game. My game's aren't fair... the PC's are the Heroes and they don't
fail due to random chance. Sure, they get bad breaks and things happen
to them which they Do Not Like. But they don't spend hours planning the
perfect rescue to have it fail entirely because of really, really bad
luck... it might have its glitches and it probably won't go off even 90%
as expected. But the Heroes don't lose to random die rolls.
>skewed, but the "Golden BB" of aviation legend does exist, and for the game to
>be something other than a typical evocation of genre fiction, these "random"
Ah, ah, ah... but my game IS an evocation of genre fiction. I'm not in
it for simulation. As one of my players once told me, "I don't want my
character to have financial problems, work problems, or love-life
problems... I've got enough of that in reality. I'm here to get away."
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* Everyone is gifted... Some open the package sooner.
Ennead
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: One thing that's happened in all of my campaigns, but which seems not to
: be common, is the "hypotheticals" game. We usually play over dinner
: after the session. Someone says "What might the villain think of our
: last raid? I bet he's jumped to the conclusion that we're part of the
: Resistance!" Someone else elaborates on this, maybe speaking
: in-character for the villain as he pursues this idea. It often turns
: into mini-scenes where the NPCs argue and plan.
We do this a lot. It's fun, and I think that it does help to keep
everyone aligned in their understanding of the game world (thus reducing
the dreaded assumption clash). We've never actually done this as an
"official" sort of activity; it's just one of those things that naturally
happens when you have a group of people who are really into the game and
see a lot of one another. Out-of-game discussions of the game do form a
good portion of the conversations in this house.
When we were in college, Kip ran a campaign that caught everyone's
imagination so well that these sorts of out-of-game conversations became
epidemic and, in fact, eventually resulted in a lot of re-working of Kip's
game world. In a lot of ways, I think that campaign was the seed of our
penchant for co-GMing.
: Everyone understands
: that this is guesswork, not reality; the GM can participate but she's
: free to lie. She ought, however, to keep within the bounds of the
: setting; this way the players get a little more information about the
: setting. I like doing this: I enjoy hearing what people come up with,
: and getting a possible glimpse of what the other side might be thinking.
: (It's often extremely funny--PCs usually operate by indirection, and the
: opposition is often *dead* wrong about what's going on.)
I like doing this as well. I think that it helps to get the
participants really embroiled in the game and, as I've said, it goes a
long way towards reducing assumption clash. And it *can* be very funny at
times -- particularly when the players manage to intuit something that the
GM thought was a deep dark secret that *no* one would *ever* guess.
Well... I suppose that some GMs might be upset by this sort of
thing and not find it at all funny. I'm just not one of them.
: And no real
: secrets are revealed, so there's no in-character/out-of-character info
: problem.
So long as the GM keeps a good straight face, that is. Some
people have better poker faces than others.
When we do this, the GM will sometimes reveal secrets, but that's
an occupational hazard of troupe-style play. There are times when you
think that you've planned the opposition properly, but then in later
discussion it occurs that you might possibly have messed with one of the
other GM's assumptions or future plans -- and then you have to check with
them that you're not clashing with their understanding. But that's a
special case.
-- Sarah
John H Kim
OK -- a few words about campaign "postscripts" here...
Carl D. Cravens <rave...@southwind.net> wrote:
>Although I can't play Theatrix as-is, it did stir up a lot of
>interesting questions for me... and the biggest question was "player
>as audience, how important is that?"
[...]
>Along those lines... if you had played out a long, story-based campaign
>and brought it to a close, with no plans to continue with those
>characters... would you, as GM, reveal the secret things behind the
>scenes that the players might be curious about? As a player, how
>would you feel?
Hmmm. I would generally hope that in a story-based campaign
that the secret meaning would be revealed within the frame of the
story itself, although not everything may be revealed to the
*characters*, the *players* will get an idea.
That is, since the retrospective narrative itself is a primary
goal of the game in this case -- then you shouldn't have too many
loose ends lying about by the conclusion (although you will certainly
have some).
-*-*-*-
Actually, my most notable experience with this comes from a
simulationist game -- the "modern paranormals" campaign I've mentioned
before. The "Big Picture" of how powers worked and the nature of
Otherworld was all revealed in essentially a postscript explanation.
I think this was important -- because during the campaign, I
certainly did not want to break the simulation to give them cut scenes
or such of the larger scheme. However, I think it was fairly satisfying
to see those things in retrospective (aided by the strength of the
background, of course).
For a story-based game, I would try to weave in hints about
such through the course of the game -- making it a part of the
narrative rather than private background info.
Carl D. Cravens
On 8 May 1996 18:37:23 GMT, jh...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
> Hmmm. I would generally hope that in a story-based campaign
>that the secret meaning would be revealed within the frame of the
>story itself, although not everything may be revealed to the
>*characters*, the *players* will get an idea.
>
> That is, since the retrospective narrative itself is a primary
>goal of the game in this case -- then you shouldn't have too many
>loose ends lying about by the conclusion (although you will certainly
>have some).
Even in my story-based games, my players see no more than what their
characters see. (I have a couple players that insist on this... they
don't like ruined surprises.)
I don't consider the "retrospective narrative" to be a primary goal...
it is important, I think, but it's not primary. I think the story is
more important to the framework during play than after. It's good to
have it all hang together so the retrospective is interesting and I
prefer it that way... but I don't consider that to be the *goal*.
(For instance, if I'm driving to Omaha for a convention, the goal is to
go to the convention and have fun. I'd prefer that the drive itself be
memorable and interesting, but it isn't necessary to my enjoyment of the
convention itself. It's a slightly backward analogy, but I think it
gets my point across.)
By they end, the PC's will have figured most of it out... but perhaps
they never learned the motive of the mysterious Mr. X because they shot
him before thinking to ask. The only way for the players to learn his
motive is through post-game revelation.
Granted, I think we want most of those secrets revealed as part of the
game... but the PC's aren't always going to learn every detail in which
the players might be interested.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* I was internet when internet wasn't cool.
Jim Davies
j...@moose.powernet.co.uk (that's me) wrote:
>Time for a technical intrusion
>The variance of rolling n m-sided dice (ie ndm) is
>V = n x (m^2 - 1) / 12
>and the standard deviation is the square root of that.
snip
Time for a slightly less technical intrusion (I've had e-mail). Those
who know all this or don't care can skip the maths lesson.
We shall assume a normal distribution (that's a nice smooth
bell-curve). The standard distribution (greek letter sigma) is a
number showing how wide the curve is. It is defined as the square root
of the variance, which is itself given by
Variance = (mean of the squares) - (square of the mean)
eg rolling 1d4 gives 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Mean of squares = (1+4+9+16)/4 = 7.5
Square of mean = ( (1+2+3+4)/4)^2 = 6.25
V = 7.5 - 6.25 = 1.25
SD = sqrt(1.25) = 1.11 approx
Proof by induction shows that ndm gives V = n(m^2 - 1)/12
So what's it for?
The chance of rolling a number less than the mean is 50% (assuming a
huge pile of dice so that we can ignore the chance of rolling exactly
the mean). That's obvious.
The chance of rolling less than 0.5xSD above the mean is 69.1%
The chance of rolling less than 1xSD above the mean is 84.1%
The chance of rolling less than 1.5xSD above the mean is 93.3%
The chance of rolling less than 2xSD above the mean is 97.7%
The chance of rolling less than 2.5xSD above the mean is 99.4%
The chance of rolling less than 3xSD above the mean is 99.9%
etc
These numbers come from a horrible integration which I shan't quote,
so we normally read them off published tables.
Similarly, the chance of rolling a similar amount below the mean is
100% minus the above figures.
So let's take an example. 10d6 has a mean of 35 and SD of
sqrt(10x35/12) = 5.40. So the chance of rolling 41 or less is given by
(41-35)/5.4 = 1.11, and we look that up on the table to get 86.7%.
OK, you can wake up now.
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
>>This is EXACTLY the way I want to game. I never want to have the players take
>>ANY combat for granted. This was the main attraction for me for skills based as
>>opposed to class based systems. A High Level D&D character could fry Kobolds
>>against the plates of hhhis armour by force of sheer personality, it seemed,
>>whereas, a thief could stab a King in the back and kill him in C&S, and FH. That
>
>An example of broken D&D is too extreme.
I never said it was broken , but it did illustrate the diffenrence between P.C. and the lower level opposistion.
>
>I *want* the PC's to take certain abilities for granted. It's part of
>being Heroic. I don't find it enjoyable to be embarrassed by my
>character utterly failing a trivial task in something he's an expert at.
>Failing at something difficult, sure... but not something so trivial my
>character should be able to do it with is eyes closed, big toes tied
>together, and left elbow touching right knee.
I find this makes for a situation where the only challenges are the "Important ones". This is detrimental for me to take the game se=
riously.
>
>>was the attraction. Because sometimes, You are the punk with the cheap gun,
>>being chased by an armoured Cyborg, not always the otherway around. Sometimes
>>the punk gets the eye shot through skill or luck. I read a lot of history, and i
>
>When the punk with the cheap gun is the PC, things change totally in my
>game. My game's aren't fair... the PC's are the Heroes and they don't
>fail due to random chance. Sure, they get bad breaks and things happen
>to them which they Do Not Like. But they don't spend hours planning the
>perfect rescue to have it fail entirely because of really, really bad
>luck... it might have its glitches and it probably won't go off even 90%
>as expected. But the Heroes don't lose to random die rolls.
I dislike the "special staus" treatment, because with that, and a certian amount of Script immunity pumps up an increadible feelij=
ng of artificiality. I just cannot take a game like that seriously. We had a code for games like that around hee, and refered to the=
m as "Epic". It was not a positive, or negative adjective, but it did describe the game as being high level/high point, world shatte=
ring E.E> Doc Smith (no mundane life, and no secret ID) sorts of adventure. Some of our group liked those. I didn't.
>
>>skewed, but the "Golden BB" of aviation legend does exist, and for the game to
>>be something other than a typical evocation of genre fiction, these "random"
>
>Ah, ah, ah... but my game IS an evocation of genre fiction. I'm not in
>it for simulation. As one of my players once told me, "I don't want my
>character to have financial problems, work problems, or love-life
>problems... I've got enough of that in reality. I'm here to get away."
Ah well... To each, his own. But >definately< not my cup of tea.
>
>--
>Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
>* Everyone is gifted... Some open the package sooner.
Scott
Ennead
Kevin R. Hardwick (krhr...@wam.umd.edu) wrote:
: On 5 May 1996, Sarah (who has graciously returned to us!) wrote:
: > Personally, I do like to look back on the game and view it as
: > a narrative, but I don't think that this requires an intended "plotline"
: > to the game.
: I quite agree. I think the theoretical question hinges on the
: desirability of GM intervention in this "natural" narrative process.
: That is, if we take it as a given that the way that players will make
: since of *all* (or most, at any rate--IME, IMHO, YMMV, qualify qualify
: qualify, yada yada yada) rpg experiences is via the construction of
: narratives, then the issue of whether or not it is desirable for a GM to
: plot a game comes down to the question of whether or not the GM, by doing
: so, somehow enhances the quality of the narratives the players
: construct. Yowsa--that's a run on sentance. Sorry Lea!
Agreed. We're venturing back onto familiar ground here, of
course, but I don't know if Carl was around when we last discussed this
issue, so carry on, my dear Hardwick.
: > . . . When I look back on the game and view it as
: > narrative, I am doing so by judiciously selecting which parts of the game
: > I wish to focus on to form the narrative which seems to me the most
: > meaningful and powerful. If it's a really good game, then there are
: > usually many different narratives I enjoy forming from it.
: > Interestingly enough, I do this even when the game in question
: > *was* a plotted game. The story I make of the game, however, is not
: > necessarily either the story the GM intended or the story one of my
: > fellow players would make of it. It's one of the things about RPG as
: > a medium that I find fascinating, actually: this multiplicity of plot
: > and theme...
: I think this selective process is to a large degree
: inevitable--especially in an IC-intensive game, in which part of the
: point is to experience the events of the game from a particular
: perspective.
Agreed, although I would point out that what you or I might
consider an "IC-intensive game" might be considered an "IC-denying" game
by somebody else. Was it Erol Bayburt, for example, whose gaming
preference was for the encouragment of the IC stance uber alles, or
am I misremembering? At any rate, just a friendly reminder...
: Indeed, I would argue that it is this quality of rpg that
: separates it from experiencing other narrative forms, like, say, novels.
: This is why rpg narratives will tend to be much more fragmented than
: other literary narratives, I think.
Agreed. Nor do I believe that this is a problem. The artistic
criteria by which we judge a novel ought not, IMO, necessarily be the same
ones we use to evaluate an RPG. This was my beef with Mark Wallace, ages
ago, when he suggested that the structure of a *good* RPG will be seen to
resemble the structure of a good novel or film. I don't believe that the
media are sufficiently similar for this axiom to hold true in quite the
manner he intended.
: I've written elsewhere on the plotting techniques that our group has
: developed to address this issue. I'm not sure if you read them or not,
: Sarah (template plots and character sub-plots). Let me know . . .
No, I missed them. Please do send them to me if you've still got
them around, or re-post them, if you think this would be acceptable to the
others here. I'd very much like to see them.
: > I would say that the story very rarely ends up being precisely the
: > one the GM planned to tell. In my experience, the players always affect
: > the plot strongly enough to change it considerably from the GM's original
: > intent. Sometimes, in fact, they render it unrecognizable. That's part
: > of what makes the game so much fun, IMO.
: Again, substantial agreement here. I'm not at all sure that this
: vitiates GM instigated plotting, however.
No, I didn't mean to imply that it did. I wrote that in
response to something specific in Carl's phrasing. Unfortunately, now I
can't remember quite what it was, but it was something which seemed to
imply that he felt that it was the GM's responsibility to make up and
impose a plot which would "view well" once the game was over. Upon
reflection, it seems to me that Carl *surely* did not really mean to say
that his games always follow his planned and intended plots. Unless he
has exceptionally docile players, he must have meant something else; I'm
sure I simply misunderstood him.
: For me, much of the pleasure
: if rpg stems from the interactivity of the form--were the GM to *impose*
: a plot, then the form would lose that aspect. It might still be fun, but
: it would no longer be rpg, and would lose something, at least for me.
: That said, IME GM induced plots very often enhance a game. Indeed, at
: the grossest level I think they are unavoidable.
At the grossest level, indeed they are unavoidable, O Socrates.
The disagreement, as you very well know, usually comes in when we start
discussing at what level of inducement they enhance, and at what level
they begin to inhibit.
Don't try to get sneaky with me, Mr. Reductio-ad-absurdem. You
may be writing your thesis, but *I'm* a college drop-out. And wipe that
innocent look off your face this minute: you know perfectly well what I'm
talking about. ;)
: If we accept as a working definition that plot is the engagement of the
: stuff that matters to character with the stuff going on in the setting,
: then all GM by definition are engaged in plotting. That is because it is
: the GM's responsibility to produce the stuff going on in the setting--GMs,
: for example, choose the antagonists. Even in the most setting-based GM
: style, it is the GM that designs the *universe* of antagonists from
: within which the characters then selectively engage. If you accept this
: <smile> then what we are really talking about is the *degree* of GM
: plotting.
<smile> Agreed. With the reservation that we do not then use
this agreement to proceed to the idea that there is no fundamental
difference between those games which fall at one end of the spectrum and
those falling at the other end. A "difference of degree" may still be a
very important difference, and in this case, I believe that it is.
: For me, when I GM, plotting is very much a synergistic process. I place
: a premium on the interactivity of the narrative process in the game, and
: so I want to empower my players (to the extent that they desire to be
: empowered) to participate in the authorial part of the game. This means
: that my plots are closer in form to the world-based style, at least
: initially. But as players make choices within the universe of possible
: narratives available, I (we!) hone in on particular themes, and develop
: stories accordingly.
In which case, to my mind, it becomes less a "GM-induced plot"
than a group consensus as to emphasis and focus. This will create a very
different feel to the game than you'd get with what I consider to be the
standard GM-induced plot.
Please note, however, that I have enjoyed games with the standard
GM-induced plotting a great deal. I've just found them very different in
feel.
Ugh. My eyes are beginning to go into overload from staring into
the computer screen, and I fear that I'm becoming less than clear. I'll
come back later and try to explain exactly what I perceive as the
differences between games plotted at different levels of GM imposition.
In order to do this, I'll probably need to use specific examples from
games I have played in, so I'll apologize to Mark (on the off chance that
he's lurking) in advance. I remember his dislike for concrete examples.
: Welcome back!
Thanks. It's good to be arguing plot with you again.
-- Sarah
M.J. Lush
In article <o5nixQcr...@southwind.net>,
Bruce Alderman <b...@southwind.net> wrote:
>ml...@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Mr. M.J. Lush) wrote:
>> Jerry Stratton <je...@acusd.edu> wrote:
>
>> > I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing
>> > six times with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill
>> > the victim live, and in that case it is too important a decision to
>> > leave to the dice.
>
>> Unfortunatly now the players _know_ the victim is important has plot
>> immunity, and will use him/her for cover during firefights.
>
>If I was the GM, I'd let the victim die as soon as the players tried
>something like this. If a freak roll of the dice gives a result which
>would destroy the story, I have no problem with fudging the result. But
>if the plot is ruined because of the players' deliberate actions, then I
>see no reason to protect them from the consequences.
Sorry I should have stuck in a half smiley :-/ The point
I'm trying to make is that if an NPC survives that sort of punishment
without a clear reason, ie he was wearing a bullet proof
vest, he'd faked getting hit (with a blood bag + squib), he
got prompt _expert_ medical attention and is currently is in intensive
care. OR strange absence of reason, ie he just gets up burshes
him self off and refuses to comment how he did it (is he a alien/cyborg
or what???).
Then as a player I will sit back and think 'Oh great
we have a plot critical NPC' then start cracking jokes about using
indestructable NPC's to build ship hulls out of (laminated with
Pot noodle and War and Peace (nothing gets through thoes)).
IMHO in a diced game it is possible to get away with a 3rd
option, either with either a sutabally flukey dice roll, subtle
fudging to create said dice roll or just let the poor sod burn a
'fate point' to signal something really odd has happened and explain
that the bullets hit his keys and cigar case.
>Further, if the victim is an NPC, he/she would not put up with being
>used for cover during firefights. The NPC has no knowledge of the
>meta-world the players inhabit, so he/she has no reason to suspect
>his/her earlier survival was due to anything other than luck. Give
>NPC's some backbone and the PC's will respect them.
After six .45 shots in the chest the said NPC probably has not
much backbone left intact!
--
Michael
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NPC rights activist | Nameless Abominations are people too!
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
>On 7 May 1996 18:14:09 GMT, "Scott. A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>>This is EXACTLY the way I want to game. I never want to have the players take
>>ANY combat for granted. This was the main attraction for me for skills based as
>>opposed to class based systems. A High Level D&D character could fry Kobolds
>>against the plates of hhhis armour by force of sheer personality, it seemed,
>>whereas, a thief could stab a King in the back and kill him in C&S, and FH. That
>
>An example of broken D&D is too extreme.
I never said it was broken , but it did illustrate the diffenrence between P.C.
and the lower level opposistion.
>
>I *want* the PC's to take certain abilities for granted. It's part of
>being Heroic. I don't find it enjoyable to be embarrassed by my
>character utterly failing a trivial task in something he's an expert at.
>Failing at something difficult, sure... but not something so trivial my
>character should be able to do it with is eyes closed, big toes tied
>together, and left elbow touching right knee.
I find this makes for a situation where the only challenges are the "Important
ones". This is detrimental for me to take the game seriously.
>
>>was the attraction. Because sometimes, You are the punk with the cheap gun,
>>being chased by an armoured Cyborg, not always the otherway around. Sometimes
>>the punk gets the eye shot through skill or luck. I read a lot of history, and i
>
>When the punk with the cheap gun is the PC, things change totally in my
>game. My game's aren't fair... the PC's are the Heroes and they don't
>fail due to random chance. Sure, they get bad breaks and things happen
>to them which they Do Not Like. But they don't spend hours planning the
>perfect rescue to have it fail entirely because of really, really bad
>luck... it might have its glitches and it probably won't go off even 90%
>as expected. But the Heroes don't lose to random die rolls.
I dislike the "special staus" treatment, because with that, and a certian amount
of Script immunity pumps up an increadible feeling of artificiality. I just
cannot take a game like that seriously. We had a code for games like that around
hee, and refered to them as "Epic". It was not a positive, or negative adjective,
but it did describe the game as being high level/high point, world shattering
Frank Pitt
In article <lDrjxwIe...@southwind.net> rave...@southwind.net writes:
>
>On 6 May 1996 21:36:18 GMT, jh...@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) wrote:
>> As for books, I am usually swayed by the strength of the characters
>>and the inventiveness of the ideas. For example, I enjoyed Vinge's
>
>Hum. When I think about my favorite books... I recall that it's
>characters that I fell in love with. (In a literary sense.) Setting
>second. But I can't enjoy memorable characters in a bland story.
Just to be completely different (#1; The Larch), I don't remeber
books for character's _or_ story. I remember them for ideas and
concepts.
Examples :
I love God Emperor of Dune. Almost no story, predictable characters.
But wonderful ideas (Fishspeakers, limitation of mobility as method to
enforce "feudalism", the destructin of the Fremen, God as neccessary
Enemy)
I love Christopher Rowley's "StarHammer", completely forgetable characters,
I have no idea what the story was about, but it had the introduction of
the "Vang", it had the "StarHammer" itself ( a warmachine, circling a
planet on the floor of an ocean that had dried up since ), it
had Rhapsodical StarDimple, etc.
I love Larry Niven's work. Once again largely forgettable characters,
(other than Luis Wu) but the plots exist purely to express the ideas.
(Ringworld, Protector, Integral Trees, Inconstant Moon,...)
I remember the Covenant series, mainly for the idea of a blind tactical
genius, and the magical concepts introduced ("Wedges" of ur-viles,
strengthening a castle by "talking" to the stone, etc ) and the
main concept of a leper hero, unable to believe. The "character" of
Thomas Covenant was largely unimportant to the exploration of the idea.
Etc.
Frankie
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Mon, 6 May 1996, Michele Ellington wrote:
> Why? If a real live flesh and blood human can survive such a withering
> assault, why couldn't a "larger than life" fictional character do so
> as well? Life isn't predictable in the way the diceless GMs seem to
> argue it should be.
Can you point to even a single instance on this forum in which a diceless
GM has argued that events in an rpg should be "predictable," in the
pejorative sense you ascribe above? (Most GMs, diceless or not, will
argue that events in the game world have to occur in such a fashion as to
sustain the player's ability to believe in the setting--which entails a
kind of predictability. But that is not the kind of predictability to
are criticizing above.)
I think you are rather egregiously mischaracterizing the arguments of the
diceless advocates. It is *your* beliefs that are reflected in your
statement above--not those of some putative but unidentified majority of
diceless GMs.
I have seen a number of good reasons not to play diceless--but
predictability or lack thereof is not one of them.
My best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Mon, 6 May 1996, Michele Ellington wrote:
> But in a scripted game where the GM has already decided the outcome
> of the various "scenes" which compose the evening's play, I feel the
> PCs are extraneous to the plot. Regardless of whether the heroes showed
> up to fight them or not, the villains are predestined to escape with the
> Scarab of Doom, forcing the heroes to track them across the Wastes of
> Time and into the Undying Pyramid. The fine details of the fight might
> change based on character actions, but the basic truth is that the
> PCs presence or absence had no bearing at all on the resolution of
> the scene.
None of the diceless advocates here on rgfa, to my knowledge, are
advocating scripted play--indeed, many have gone to some efforts to
distance themselves from the equations
diceless = scripted
scripted = plotted
diceless = plotted
All three of these equations are false.
And most people here, AFAIK, would argue that scripted games are not
really role playing per se. I haven't seen *anyone* here argue for the
kind of game you describe above. You are erecting strawmen, tilting at
windmills.
All my best,
Kevin
Carl D. Cravens
On 10 May 1996 19:50:30 GMT, "Scott. A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>>An example of broken D&D is too extreme.
>
>I never said it was broken , but it did illustrate the diffenrence between P.C.
> and the lower level opposistion.
I'm the one that said it was broken. I do want a certain amount of that
quality, though... the PC's are the main characters and they're special,
just like the main characters of a novel or movie are special.
>I find this makes for a situation where the only challenges are the "Important
> ones". This is detrimental for me to take the game seriously.
To each his own.
>>Ah, ah, ah... but my game IS an evocation of genre fiction. I'm not in
>>it for simulation. As one of my players once told me, "I don't want my
>>character to have financial problems, work problems, or love-life
>>problems... I've got enough of that in reality. I'm here to get away."
>
>Ah well... To each, his own. But >definately< not my cup of tea.
Well, the latter isn't exactly my cup of tea, either... but it's an
example of some of my players and similar to the way I feel. I *want*
those interesting things to happen to my character, but like this
player, I want to "get away" and having improbable-but-possible
detrimental things happen to my character can spoil the game for me.
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* Madness takes it's toll...please have exact change.
Frank Pitt
>I *want* the PC's to take certain abilities for granted. It's part of
>being Heroic. I don't find it enjoyable to be embarrassed by my
>character utterly failing a trivial task in something he's an expert at.
But how do you know that the task is trivial ?
As an example, combat is _never_ a trivial task, and neither is surgery,
air traffic control, piloting, driving, etc.
Experts regularly fail at trivial tasks in these fields.
And please remember the definition of "expert".
>Failing at something difficult, sure... but not something so trivial my
>character should be able to do it with is eyes closed, big toes tied
>together, and left elbow touching right knee.
It would be nice if life were like that wouldn't it ?
Fine, if you're playing a fantasy world where life _is_ like
that, but just never pretend you're not playing a fantasy game.
>>was the attraction. Because sometimes, You are the punk with the cheap gun,
>>being chased by an armoured Cyborg, not always the otherway around. Sometimes
>>the punk gets the eye shot through skill or luck. I read a lot of history, and> i
>
>When the punk with the cheap gun is the PC, things change totally in my
>game. My game's aren't fair... the PC's are the Heroes and they don't
>fail due to random chance. Sure, they get bad breaks and things happen
>to them which they Do Not Like.
Your last two sentences are contradictory.
Heroes don't "fail due to random chance", but they get "bad breaks " ?
What's the difference ?
In my book, a bad break _is_ a failure ( or other negative occurrence )
due to rendom chance.
>But they don't spend hours planning the
>perfect rescue to have it fail entirely because of really, really bad
>luck... it might have its glitches and it probably won't go off even 90%
>as expected. But the Heroes don't lose to random die rolls.
Some of the best times I have in RPG's when a perfect plan falls apart due
to bad luck. Heck, if it weren't for bad luck there'd be no challenge
in many RPG's, it's just so easy to put together a perfect plan.
>Ah, ah, ah... but my game IS an evocation of genre fiction.
But in what genre has it ever been the norm that heroes don't fail at
trivial tasks ?
I can't think of one offhand. Even Conan and Superman fail at trivial
(for them) tasks when the story requires them to.
>I'm not in
>it for simulation. As one of my players once told me, "I don't want my
>character to have financial problems, work problems, or love-life
>problems... I've got enough of that in reality. I'm here to get away."
Then why bother playing at all ?
You could make up your own fantasies in your head, even share them with your
friends, but why bother actually playing RPG's if you're in it just "to get
away" ?
I play RPG's for the challenge of portraying another character, and
for the challenge involved in solving problems I'm not likely to face in
real life (and at a more esoteric level, to practice what I might do if
I _did_ have to face those problems in real life )
Since giving up D&D, which was never an RPG to me, just an excercise in
tactics, I have not played characters that I could not believe in.
A character who could not fail at a simple, trivial, task is just
unbelievable to me, unless that was the _point_ of a character,
he had some weird power that stopped him from _ever_ failing at
trivial tasks, even if he wanted to.
That there could be a whole world of them would make me scared enough
to want their sun to go nova. Interesting concept for a supers adventure
but not something I'd like in a normal game.
Frankie
Bruce Baugh
>> I'd say that the same applies to role-playing. Of course, firing six times
>> with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
>
>Why? If a real live flesh and blood human can survive such a withering
>assault, why couldn't a "larger than life" fictional character do so
>as well?
To me, this is a genre question. If the genre is Scott Turow/Thomas
Harris legal and technical drama, then six shots at point blank should
put a person down unless there's a darned important reason why not. In
cyberpunk, six shots from My Big Gun, Model 3.1415, should put a person
down, as messily and chaotically as possible. :-) In FENG SHUI, six
shots at point blank might be the prelude to a tender death scene, or
might be a minor inconvenience.
>being tapped on the head and dropping dead. Life is much more capricious
>than any but a lunatic GM might conceive without the dice to offer the
>element of surprise.
That's the major reason I use dice. The world doesn't make as much sense
as I often want it to. The dice compensate for my inappropriate
imposition of order.
>I have always felt that people who GM this way really want to write
>a book, not role-play.
While in a snit a couple of years ago, I referred to this as
"masturbatory GMing". More generally, yeah - if player interaction
doesn't matter at some really fundamental level, the GM should be
writing a book (or screenplay or whatever). When I game, I want my input
to count.
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
Michele Ellington
Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) wrote:
> Agreed. Nor do I believe that this is a problem. The artistic
> criteria by which we judge a novel ought not, IMO, necessarily be the same
> ones we use to evaluate an RPG. This was my beef with Mark Wallace, ages
> ago, when he suggested that the structure of a *good* RPG will be seen to
> resemble the structure of a good novel or film. I don't believe that the
> media are sufficiently similar for this axiom to hold true in quite the
> manner he intended.
I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes". This method
destroys my SOD, with constant emphasis on the idea that this
is a fiction we are creating, without even internal reality.
A Lapalme
Michele Ellington (ad...@rgfn.epcc.edu) writes:
> Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) wrote:
>> Agreed. Nor do I believe that this is a problem. The artistic
>> criteria by which we judge a novel ought not, IMO, necessarily be the same
>> ones we use to evaluate an RPG. This was my beef with Mark Wallace, ages
>> ago, when he suggested that the structure of a *good* RPG will be seen to
>> resemble the structure of a good novel or film. I don't believe that the
>> media are sufficiently similar for this axiom to hold true in quite the
>> manner he intended.
>
> I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
> RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
> the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
> events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes".
Hmm... didn't realize there was a movement (re RPGs in the movie context).
That is much to limiting. RPGs can be viewed partially as oral
storytelling, movies, written fiction, radio plays, theater, improv
theatre, interactive fiction, etc... Sticking to one paradigm is bound to
be limiting.
>This method
> destroys my SOD, with constant emphasis on the idea that this
> is a fiction we are creating, without even internal reality.
>
Uh, like it or not, if it's not reality you're playing, then it must be
fiction. And, fiction can have an internal reality.
I consider RPGs a type of fiction but, as stated by others, I think it is
a form onto itself. You can borrow concepts and approaches from other
fields but they need to be adapted to RPGs, not have the RPGs adapted to them.
Alain
Simon Smith
In message <4mk0kl$i...@nntp4.u.washington.edu> Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) writes:
>
> >When you talk about past gaming experiences, what
> >do you tell others? What I mean, is what part of the game do you like to
> >reminisce about (not by yourself but when discussing it with others)?
>
> >Alain
>
> If I'm trying to entertain, I tell the funny parts--which are frequently
> very unrelated to the plot. The story of how Joe Fighter set the
> campaign record for damage to a monster--and discovered that it had Fire
> Shield up, so it got to set the campaign record for damage to a PC....
> This was a rather stupid, irrelevant fight, but the players were
> retelling it for years.
>
> If I'm trying for something else--to capture the experience, say--
> I tell the bits that illuminate character, or setting, or theme.
> I hardly ever recount plot, though, because frankly plot summaries are
> usually boring. Sometimes the illuminating bits are part of the
> mainline plot, and sometimes they aren't.
>
> The only time I've really worried about narrative line is when I'm
> actually storytelling, writing game-based fiction. There I find that
> any good campaign can be stripped down to some kind of storyline,
> with sufficient cutting--it need not have been plotted. _Paradisio_
> makes a plausible linear novel, dropping seven of the fourteen
> characters altogether and six more except for brief glimpses, and
> deleting something over four-fifths of what happened in the game.
> But except for a little bit of manipulation at the very end, for
> closure of one thread, this game was emphatically not plotted (as you'd
> see, painfully, if you tried to make the whole thing into a novel).
>
> Story can be made in retrospect by the player; it need not be made in
> prospect by the GM in order to exist. As others have said, this allows
> more leeway for different players to make different stories.
>
> Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Ah hmm. Mary's experience seems pretty similar to mine:
I suppose I run a simulationist style of game. NPCs act; PCs react, and
vice versa. Once a scenario has been finished, the next one follows on as
the PCs follow-up loose threads, decide that xyz NPC ought to be informed
and so on. I wouldn't call the storylines of my games 'plotted'. They're
actually very much like Usenet threads - occasionally they go off at a
complete tangent, other times they persist on one track for ages. Would you
all agree that this is probably representative of the vast majority of
simulationist games? Comments!
This approach means that characters have a coherent history, and at every
stage they have good reasons for what they did with what they knew at the
time. I suppose this is quite close in spirit to real life - well I'm sure
my life has no real long-term plot to it!
Because I've been running some of my games for a long while now, I've had a
chance to see how a mature campaign develops. And it seems that the things
my players remember - they things *they* refer back to are the memorable
scenes from their old adventures, for example the notorious 'spider in the
bathroom incident' (which explains why one character now always takes a
blaster into the shower with her >:-> ), or when a different group of PCs
were caught between a bounty hunter and the droid he was chasing at the
time. Whenever the players refer to these incidents, they'll happily tell
the whole story of why they were there and what happened, to any new player
who asks. My players seem to have a communal 'oral history' of their past
exploits. Occasionally, they or I look through whatever written notes are
to hand, and this often leads to old loose ends being followed up.
Similarly, they always seem to know exactly what they want to do next. To
the extent that I have more scenario hooks active than I can ever hope to
handle.
If this experience is representative - Well is it? - Please follow up! -
that means that the gap between plotted and unplotted games is probably
moot. My games, which are basically unplotted, still have a long-term
storyline consisting of a variety of finished and unfinished threads, with
new ones constantly being added as old ones die off. But by concentrating
on one particular thread, I think you could probably still extract a
consistent storyline. A given thread might never get *finished*, but that's
a different matter...
So. Do people think that comparing RPG campaigns with usenet threads is a
useful comparison to make? What about the idea of a common 'oral history'?
Actually, one player did comment that the oral history maybe wasn't 100% a
Good Thing. Because during the campaign, several new player-characters were
added. They, at least to start with, had no background histories to them,
and compared to the established characters they probably felt, well, shadowy
and insubstantial. At the risk of starting another new thread, what are
your opinions on introducing new characters into a party of experienced PCs?
Would you rather have all the PCs start together and develop together? Or
is it better to have, say, a couple of 'old hands' forming the nucleus of
the group, with the newbies sort of 'accreting' around them. As far as I
could tell, the latter method seemed to be a bit intimidating for the new
players, one of whom was completely new to roleplaying. Then again, it is
closer to real life I suppose. Why *should* everybody start out together at
first level?
--
Simon Smith
"Take *two* blasters into the shower? Not me! I use the new
Blastech DL-47 - not only is it fully waterproof, it packs enough punch to
repel even the largest arachnids..."
Andrew Finch
Michele Ellington (ad...@rgfn.epcc.edu) wrote:
: I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
: RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
: the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
: events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes".
A movement?
Yes!!!
David
Ennead
A Lapalme (ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
: "Scott. A. H. Ruggels" (scott....@3do.com) writes:
: >
: > As a player I am just concerned about the character, his motivations, and the
: > interaction with others and trhe environment. I don't see story anywhere here!
: > The character has goals and objectives and I will enjoy the characters
: > struggles in trying to attain them.
: >
: Well, you know what? I agree.
: As a player I don't care about the story, much. Just about the character.
: I think the differnce is that I don't mind it if the GM is also out to
: tell a story. As long as I can play my character the way I think I should
: play the character, then, whether or not the GM has a story in mind is
: inconsequential.
I agree. The GM's "story" only significantly interferes with my
enjoyment when it results in an insistance that the things that matter to
my character are *always* glossed over, while matters of no IC interest at
all always have to be played out "because that's what the story is about."
Bah. If what the story is "about" has already been determined and is not
very open to change, then TELL me, and I'll try to create a character for
whom the "story" has some interest or meaning. But don't just slam an
iron box over my head like that. That's worse than disempowering; it's
*boring.* In its most extreme version, of course, you end up with the
game in which the characters simply refuse the hook, or in which half of
the players are forced to spend all their time trying to justify their
characters continuing to have anything to *do* with the rest of the group.
Ugh. Snap go the suspenders, interest wanes, and the players get
the nasty feeling that they might as well have stayed home, since the GM
isn't paying any attention to their interests anyway.
As has so often been pointed out on this board, though, this
is a description of only a small subset of story games. Games in which
the GM has some notion of how to link his story to the characters do not
have this problem. In good story games (which I define, in part, as games
in which the abovementioned phenomenon does not occur), I agree with Alain
that whether or not the GM is out to tell a story is fairly irrelevant to
me. It the GM's story is a good one, then it can be enjoyable to go into
double-think and appreciate the story as a player, even while my character
remains oblivious. If the GM's story is a lame one, then I just dive into
the character and view the game more purely from the IC perspective, from
which the story is invisible and thus not troublesome. No biggie.
: The trap many players fall into, when playing in an
: admitted plotting game, is to try to look for the plot, thinking they have
: found it, and then either trying to derail it (a childish response) or to
: go along with it.
I agree that the urge to derail the train is pretty childish.
Usually, though, it is an expression of the resentment caused by a GM who
constantly ignores the players' wishes and desires.
"You don't care about my character's interests, eh? Ignoring
my input and all the work I've put into the game, are you? Well, FINE.
I'll just mess up the things that matter to YOU, then, and you can see how
YOU like it. Turnabout's fair play, so THERE!"
Childish and vindictive? Yeah, I guess so, but unless you play
with saints, it's not all that hard to see how it happens.
: The trick, in a plotted game, is to ignore the plot.
The trick is not to mind it?
I dunno. When the plot's good, I enjoy paying attention to it
(the afore-mentioned "double-think" phenomenon). When the plot's lousy,
though, I agree that the trick is just to pretend it isn't there.
: Play the character an the plot is just an artifact of the meta-game.
That it is. Unless, of course, the manipulations of the plot
affect the internal reality of the game world in a manner that are
noticeable to the character. But that's an SOD issue, and it's one that
can pop up in any sort of game (as all of the bickering over the fate of
the guy who survives getting shot six times in the chest amply
demonstrates).
: > I not only cannot see the attraction of plotting, it seems I cannot see the use
: > of it. Often I cannot see it, unless it gets predicatable, and then I can spot
: > it from a distance of 500 yards on a cloudy day. Because I can see the glint
: > off the railroad tracks. I see no value of story. I see the value of an active
: > versus passive game. I see the value of mental engagement, but I get Into
: > character, and anything outside of my character's "perceptions" I strenously
: > try to ignore.
But if you ignore anything outside of your character's
perceptions, then how can the glint of the railroad tracks affect you one
way or the other? Your *character* can't see the tracks, after all.
(I'm only half teasing here. I do understand why that view of the
tracks glinting in the sun is distracting and annoying, but I question the
validity of the claim that the meta-game is unimportant to you. The plot
is a meta-game concern. If that glimpse of railroad bothers you so much,
then I would suggest that your self-portrayal here as a player who is
utterly unconcerned with the meta-game is neither entirely accurate nor
terribly convincing.)
-- Sarah
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Sun, 12 May 1996, Michele Ellington wrote:
> I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
> RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
> the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
> events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes". This method
> destroys my SOD, with constant emphasis on the idea that this
> is a fiction we are creating, without even internal reality.
Hmm. I moved to this kind of structure in order to *enhance* the
internal reality of the game. I wonder, however, if you have a rather
different sense of how this works than do I? As I go about preparing
plots in this fashion, I most certainly do not set up rigid scripts that
the players must follow, willy-nilly, or get whacked up side the head :)
IME, moving to this kind of a game structure mitigated some of the
excesses we had encountered with less structured styles of play--in
particular, the sense that the world reacts to what the players do.
Moving to a self-consciously plotted game style permitted me to construct
settings in which the players felt themselves emersed in a larger world,
which extended beyond them, without seriously damaging the player's sense
that their actions and decisions mattered.
Moreover, thinking in this way permitted me to analyze the various ways
in which the players could experience the game--the narrative
stances--and to experiment with various techniques to emphasize or
enhance particular ones. While you can do this without plotting, the
original insights depended on the very metaphor that you are criticizing
above--and more important, my self-consciousness about narrative
structure as I prepared for a game let me deploy these techniques with a
great deal of precision. I've been very happy with the results--and I
could not have achieved them without a plot.
I think the critical insight (for me) is that plots depend much more on
character motivations than they do on scripted events. The events are
not what is most important in a plot, by any means--what matters is the
stuff that matters to the character. Out of that I can create
open-ended, flexible plots that still have sufficient narrative structure
to guide both my own game prep and also the actions of the players. And
since the players are *role-playing*, that is, they are adopting
different personae with different motivations and different ways of
looking at the world, the players buy into the plot and actively seek to
advance it. The plot is not something that I impose on the game--it is
something that the players--simply by taking the role-playing
seriously--create with me.
All my best,
Kevin
John Novak
In <4n7mvv$g...@crl.crl.com> bcks...@crl.com (Andrew Finch) writes:
>: I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
>: RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
>: the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
>: events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes".
>A movement?
...I'll pass up the obvious one.
>Yes!!!
I humbly suggest (read the .sig) that the movement is confined more or
less to this newsgroup and one or two games like Theatrix. God, I
hate to point to the local game club around here, but looking to them
I see no indication of any such 'movement' having reached this
hellhole, er, this place.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html
The Humblest Man on the Net
Kevin R. Hardwick
On Sun, 12 May 1996, Bruce Baugh wrote:
> In article <1996May6.2...@rgfn.epcc.edu>, ad...@rgfn.epcc.edu (Michele Ellington) wrote:
> >I have always felt that people who GM this way really want to write
> >a book, not role-play.
>
> While in a snit a couple of years ago, I referred to this as
> "masturbatory GMing". More generally, yeah - if player interaction
> doesn't matter at some really fundamental level, the GM should be
> writing a book (or screenplay or whatever). When I game, I want my input
> to count.
I don't think this point is in contention in the great and ongoing
diced/diceless debate. The main diceless advocates--Reimer, Berkman,
Scott, Mark, and so on--all have argued forcefully that player input, and
meaningful player interaction with the game setting, are critical,
indispensable aspects of rpg. So while your point is valid, I don't see
how it impinges significantly on the diced/diceless question.
All my best,
Kevin
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
>I have seen a number of good reasons not to play diceless--but
>predictability or lack thereof is not one of them.
>
>My best,
>Kevin
Er. Kevin?
I think this was one of the first complaints about diceless, is that it
lacks the random elelment, and in my experience encouraged railroading which
is sort of predicatable, isn't it? Now several months later I agree, that
Diceless does not equal plotted, but I still am a little leery of diceless.
Scott
Scott. A. H. Ruggels
br...@aracnet.com (Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>In article <1996May6.2...@rgfn.epcc.edu>, ad...@rgfn.epcc.edu (Michele Ellington) wrote:
>
>>> with a .45 at point blank into the chest is going to kill the victim.
>>
>>Why? If a real live flesh and blood human can survive such a withering
>>assault, why couldn't a "larger than life" fictional character do so
>>as well?
>
>To me, this is a genre question. If the genre is Scott Turow/Thomas
>Harris legal and technical drama, then six shots at point blank should
>put a person down unless there's a darned important reason why not. In
>cyberpunk, six shots from My Big Gun, Model 3.1415, should put a person
>down, as messily and chaotically as possible. :-) In FENG SHUI, six
>shots at point blank might be the prelude to a tender death scene, or
>might be a minor inconvenience.
But there are those of us that do not want "genre" to skew the probabilities, or be much of anything other than a cultural gloss ove=
r the proceedings. Somepeople Don't like heavy reality modification, especailly for S.O.D> concerns.
Scott
Cheri Daniels
Simon Smith wrote:
> > If I'm trying to entertain, I tell the funny parts--which are frequently
> > very unrelated to the plot.
True for me and my group too. The stories that get told over and over
again that are actually *enjoyable* for people who weren't there, are
the funny ones and almost never have they been related to the plot.
The only PC death on my Amber game is a story that is still being told,
even by people who weren't in the game! (The PC was stupid and had had
it coming to him for a very long time). To this day, the line "He
violated the sanctity of my bed chamber!" will bring about bouts of
laughter.
And then there was the Camarilla meeting called and a Blood Hunt almost
brought down on someone's head, just for the purpose of playing a
practical joke...People still want to know what's the signifigance of
"plastic fish."
But neither of these cases had any connection to the main plot of their
respective games.
> > I hardly ever recount plot, though, because frankly plot summaries
> > are
> > usually boring. Sometimes the illuminating bits are part of the
> > mainline plot, and sometimes they aren't.
Yup. True for me too. Even as a die-hard gamer, I don't want to hear
about someone else's game unless the person telling it is a good
storyteller or it's funny.
> > Story can be made in retrospect by the player; it need not be made
> > in
> > prospect by the GM in order to exist. As others have said, this
> > allows
> > more leeway for different players to make different stories.
> >
> > Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
>
> Ah hmm. Mary's experience seems pretty similar to mine:
This is my experience too. In my experience, players will all develop
their own stories any way.
> and so on. I wouldn't call the storylines of my games 'plotted'. They're
> actually very much like Usenet threads - occasionally they go off at a
> complete tangent, other times they persist on one track for ages. Would you
> all agree that this is probably representative of the vast majority of
> simulationist games? Comments!
Yup. I would agree with this. Very few of my games have actual *plots*
per se. More often, I give the characters concrete goals, usually based
on their history, and then let them figure out how to get there
themselves. Often the goals are caused by loose thread from other
"stories."
> my players remember - they things *they* refer back to are the memorable
> scenes from their old adventures, for example the notorious 'spider in the
> bathroom incident' (which explains why one character now always takes a
> blaster into the shower with her >:-> ), or when a different group of PCs
> were caught between a bounty hunter and the droid he was chasing at the
> time. Whenever the players refer to these incidents, they'll happily tell
> the whole story of why they were there and what happened, to any new player
> who asks. My players seem to have a communal 'oral history' of their past
> exploits. Occasionally, they or I look through whatever written notes are
> to hand, and this often leads to old loose ends being followed up.
> Similarly, they always seem to know exactly what they want to do next. To
> the extent that I have more scenario hooks active than I can ever hope to
> handle.
>
> If this experience is representative - Well is it? - Please follow up!
This is representative of my games. Consequently, I view my role as the
GM as less story creater than information traffic cop.
> that means that the gap between plotted and unplotted games is probably
> moot. My games, which are basically unplotted, still have a long-term
> storyline consisting of a variety of finished and unfinished threads, with
> new ones constantly being added as old ones die off. But by concentrating
> on one particular thread, I think you could probably still extract a
> consistent storyline. A given thread might never get *finished*, but that's
> a different matter...
Yup. This is my experience as well.
> So. Do people think that comparing RPG campaigns with usenet threads is a
> useful comparison to make? What about the idea of a common 'oral history'?
> Actually, one player did comment that the oral history maybe wasn't 100% a
> Good Thing. Because during the campaign, several new player-characters were
> added. They, at least to start with, had no background histories to them,
> and compared to the established characters they probably felt, well, shadowy
> and insubstantial. At the risk of starting another new thread, what are
> your opinions on introducing new characters into a party of experienced PCs?
> Would you rather have all the PCs start together and develop together? Or
> is it better to have, say, a couple of 'old hands' forming the nucleus of
> the group, with the newbies sort of 'accreting' around them. As far as I
> could tell, the latter method seemed to be a bit intimidating for the new
> players, one of whom was completely new to roleplaying.
I've had this problem in my games too and have solved it different ways,
depending on the situation. Sometimes I give the new players new
characters who don't really know anything about what's happened beyond a
"briefing" from the GM. They may be powerful characters in their own
right, just from out of town.
Another solution I've had (which is a lot more work for the GM) is to
run the new players separately for awhile, just to get them "up to
speed", then had them join the regular group. By that point, they
usually had a good start of their own history.
The third way I've used it to write down the essence of the history and
hand it out to the new players.
They all have their pluses and minuses, but I'm of the school that all
the characters don't have to be of the same "level."
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <Pine.ULT.3.91.96051...@rac9.wam.umd.edu> "Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> writes:
>On Sun, 12 May 1996, Michele Ellington wrote:
>> I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
>> RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
>> the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
>> events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes". This method
>> destroys my SOD, with constant emphasis on the idea that this
>> is a fiction we are creating, without even internal reality.
>Hmm. I moved to this kind of structure in order to *enhance* the
>internal reality of the game. I wonder, however, if you have a rather
>different sense of how this works than do I? As I go about preparing
>plots in this fashion, I most certainly do not set up rigid scripts that
>the players must follow, willy-nilly, or get whacked up side the head :)
>Kevin
Michelle may be reacting more to the *use* of such nomenclature,
especially in play, than to the concept itself. I know that having the
GM refer to himself as Director or to me as Actor would be incredibly
annoying and distancing. I am also uncomfortable with the word "scene",
though we do use it; it tends to carry with it an implication that (a)
what is happening is working towards a particular dramatic point, and
(b) things that happen "between scenes" just aren't as real.
It's analogous to the difference between a novel which uses a classical
dramatic structure, but never calls attention to the fact, and one which
self-referentially points out its own structure. (The main character of
_Snow Crash_ is named Hiro Protagonist, a detail I found irksome.)
I have found in my own game that there is a downside to thinking too
much in terms of "scenes". Sometimes the stuff that I think is
important is not what is really important to the player's character
development, but he's generally not able to *tell* me this; it has to
come out in actual play, which means that a certain amount of "down
time" has to be played out. Conversations that seem unlikely to go
anywhere, events which come to nothing, actions which turn out to be
routine. I wouldn't put these things in a movie, but they need to be in
the game; for me the best way to insure that they are is to allow events
to progress without worrying, except at a few key junctures, whether
they make a "good scene" with dramatic potential or not.
We play in a very leisurely style, though; a group that wants more
excitement would probably do better with the more carefully designed
approach.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
John H Kim
A few words here about the "movement" to view RPG's in a movie
context, as referred to by Michele.
I would point out that the "movement" is hardly restricted to
or originating with .advocacy discussion or _Theatrix_. As some
examples:
-> In _Vampire_, certain powers will last for a duration of "one scene".
-> In _Masterbook_, many adventures are broken down into "Acts" and
"Scenes" which follow in a chain. This has a long tradition which
I have also noted in _Ravenloft_ adventures, _Champions_ adventures,
and others.
etc.
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>"Kevin R. Hardwick" <krhr...@wam.umd.edu> writes:
>:On Sun, 12 May 1996, Michele Ellington wrote:
>:> I agree as well. I am not comfortable with the movement to view
>:> RPGs in a movie context, referring to the players as "Actors",
>:> the GM as "Director", and doing the various sequences of story
>:> events as if they were distinct movie "Scenes". This method
>:> destroys my SOD, with constant emphasis on the idea that this
>:> is a fiction we are creating, without even internal reality.
>
>: Hmm. I moved to this kind of structure in order to *enhance* the
>: internal reality of the game. I wonder, however, if you have a rather
>: different sense of how this works than do I?
Well, I sure know that my Suspension-of-Disbelief (SOD) was
blown in _Vampire_ when I asked the Storyteller how long my Invisibility
usually lasts, and he answered "until the end of the Scene".
>:
>: As I go about preparing plots in this fashion, I most certainly do not
>: set up rigid scripts that the players must follow, willy-nilly, or get
>: whacked up side the head :)
>
>Michelle may be reacting more to the *use* of such nomenclature,
>especially in play, than to the concept itself. I know that having the
>GM refer to himself as Director or to me as Actor would be incredibly
>annoying and distancing.
Just to add to what Mary said here... Not that Michele did not
object to plotting in general, note -- she objected to doing sequences
of story events as if they were movie scenes. This implies finding a
place at which you determine to "cut away" from the scene, say.
Bruce Baugh
>But there are those of us that do not want "genre" to skew the probabilities,
> or be much of anything other than a cultural gloss ove=
>r the proceedings. Somepeople Don't like heavy reality modification, especailly
> for S.O.D> concerns.
Well, that's one of those taste things. _I_ like genre to matter from
the physics up. It's one of the cool things about TORG, I always
thought.