To John Morrow
dcrei...@ivory.trentu.ca
I read your major post on your views on IC POV play and rather than
reply and create a 300+ line message I opted to post a response.
Let me begin by saying I do not invalidate your experience or feelings
however let me say that in my 12+ years of RPGing I have never
met anyone who I think shared your method of play.
I think even you must admit your style may be a bit obscure.
Even in my days playing Live-action I've never had a chance
to play with anyone long term who goes as deeply IC as you seem to
wish to.
I know I don't care to. Of course I GM far more than I ever play.
The one question I wind up with is why do you use the frame
of a role-playing game? It seems to me your interests would
be best served by sitting/walking around pretending to be someone.
This could make a great group activity, and I'm not critizing the
idea or trying to label you as insane, but I really do wonder
if your interests are served within the frame you choose to explore them?
If you dislike the game aspects of the role-playing game, why cling
to their frame? It would seem for you it may be the same as
Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland "There is no /there/ there."
With respect
David Creighton
Mary K. Kuhner
>The one question I wind up with is why do you use the frame
>of a role-playing game? It seems to me your interests would
>be best served by sitting/walking around pretending to be someone.
>This could make a great group activity, and I'm not critizing the
>idea or trying to label you as insane, but I really do wonder
>if your interests are served within the frame you choose to explore them?
>If you dislike the game aspects of the role-playing game, why cling
>to their frame?
>David Creighton
While I certainly can't speak for John Morrow, I think we play in a
fairly similar style. I've experimented with dropping the game aspects
of RPG; it doesn't work for me. I enjoy gaming in large part for
exploration of character, but the challenges and crises of the game's
ongoing plotline provide the necessary background against which the
characters can develop. Without plot (broadly defined--the sequence of
events and challenges in the game), the characters become static and
uninteresting, so even though plot is not my main interest it's
essential to my enjoyment. All of my favorite gaming stories are about
striking character reactions to events happening in the game.
The other stuff--hanging out in character, using character as a lens to
examine one's own world--is an additional benefit of *having* a well
developed character POV, but one doesn't get to that point without a
good solid game. At least, I never have. (I'm not as good as John at
creating my own satisfactory subgame within a failing campaign.)
The example campaign from which most of my .advocacy posts draw was
Shadowrun, and it was quite action oriented through most of its lifespan
(about 3.5 years). The series of running fights, nasty games of hide
and seek through the city, espionage attempts, infiltrations, hijackings,
and so forth that took up most of our play time gave me a context in
which to develop characters who were interesting to roleplay. Character
can come out very clearly in crisis.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
--
I do not receive posts from the following systems because they tolerate
abuse of Usenet: interramp.com psi.com scruz.net
If you wish me to see your message anyway please use email.
John Morrow
>I read your major post on your views on IC POV play and rather than
>reply and create a 300+ line message I opted to post a response.
I suspect I've gotten few responses to that post because of the length --
or because everyone thinks I'm a loon now... :-)
>Let me begin by saying I do not invalidate your experience or feelings
>however let me say that in my 12+ years of RPGing I have never
>met anyone who I think shared your method of play.
>I think even you must admit your style may be a bit obscure.
>Even in my days playing Live-action I've never had a chance
>to play with anyone long term who goes as deeply IC as you seem to
>wish to.
My explanation was a bit idealized to avoid tangents. All that
verbage was simply to illustrate why someone might reject most or all
metagaming techniques as harmfull to the game as they want to play it.
As many other IC POV players have said, the really deep levels of IC
play aren't necessarily the norm but something that one winds up
dropping in and out of. I see it as a goal and the idea is to avoid
too many things that keep me away from that goal because I do enjoy
it. In my opinion, metagaming simply puts me farther from that goal,
no matter what the intent. And I tend to find the feel of the
metagaming, itself, distasteful.
Out of my gaming group of more than a dozen players, only about four
actually strive towards IC play. The others are a mix of Actors,
Strategists/Wargamers, Spectators, Puzzle-Solvers, and people who play
Avatars -- themselves in funny clothing. But strong IC play isn't
that obscure.
Several people on this group have discussed gaming similar to or the
same as what I am talking about. Their posts on what they enjoy in
games and why metagaming and diceless play don't work for them echoed
many of my own feelings on the subject. And I've heard a description
of one group's play where everything said once the game started was in
character. My friend described seeing camera angles they were so
deeply imersed.
>I know I don't care to. Of course I GM far more than I ever play.
No style is for everyone. I'm not trying to win converts. I'm just
holding my ground on the "one size fits all" idea that metagaming
techniques can help any game and any player do better than they do
without them.
>The one question I wind up with is why do you use the frame
>of a role-playing game? It seems to me your interests would
>be best served by sitting/walking around pretending to be someone.
>This could make a great group activity, and I'm not critizing the
>idea or trying to label you as insane, but I really do wonder
>if your interests are served within the frame you choose to explore them?
>If you dislike the game aspects of the role-playing game, why cling
>to their frame? It would seem for you it may be the same as
>Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland "There is no /there/ there."
The imersion I'm looking for is mental -- intellectual and emotional.
I'm not really looking to physically experience life as someone else.
I'm also interested in experiencing things I couldn't or wouldn't
normally do in really life -- to see aht they "feel" like while having
the option of dropping out if things get touchy.
People jump out of airplanes with parachutes in order to feel emotions
normally assciated with fear of falling or death. Few would jump out
of the plane without a parachute to see what it really feels like.
And not many more wouldn't jump if they felt there was a significant
chance of getting hurt.
I personally find the physical sensation of falling so unplesant that
roller-coasters and other such rides are more terrifying than fun for
me. I avoid them. But if I want to play a skydiver or pilot, I can
because my inner ear and internal organs will never feel the forces
that make my mind scream, "I'm gonna die!" too loudly for me to
ignore. If I need to understand what a thrill seeking skydiver is
feeling, I can still relate to the idea of a thrill in general.
I get quite a bit by using the structure of the game. It creates a
common language between all the players about how reality works. It
tells me if the persona I've assume can or can't do something without
relying on doing things myself physically or on human judgement --
exactly what I don't want because it feels artificial. It is an
effective shorthand for describing things in order to build a more
accurate mental image of them. It can give me surprises and turns of
events that I would never think of. And because the game system isn't
tied to reality, you can change it or tweak it to suit your tastes.
It is easy to play a bird in a game -- problematic to take that role
in real life. Since I'm only looking for the mental experience,
getting out and doing doesn't really add anything.
Curiously enough, many IC players in this group also seem to be strong
advocates of diced play and not using metagaming decisions for
resoltuion. There is probably some similarity in what the IC people
expect the system to do for them as they play. And since no IC
players seem to want to toss the idea of a system entirely (although
many seem to be minimalists), there must be some use for it.
John Morrow
A Lapalme
below just doesn't ring true with my experience.
Note that I missed his original post some I might be missing some vital point.
John Morrow (mor...@newton.texel.com) writes:
>
> Curiously enough, many IC players in this group also seem to be strong
> advocates of diced play and not using metagaming decisions for
> resoltuion. There is probably some similarity in what the IC people
> expect the system to do for them as they play. And since no IC
> players seem to want to toss the idea of a system entirely (although
> many seem to be minimalists), there must be some use for it.
>
I'll agree that metagame decisions and techniques can definitely get in
the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
must also pull out of character.
Currently, I'm in a CF game. For those who are not familiar with the
game, it uses playing cards as a partial randomizer. Well, to cut a long
story short, the cards simply are anathema to my holding IC. I simply
can't look at the cards and decide which one to play without having to
think of the charactrer in the audience or author stance. IC goes out the
window.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately and, right now, my feeling is
that, for me to attain and maintain IC the game structure must not require
that I pull out of IC to do anything (note I say require, doesn't mean it
can't be done, just that I don't have to do it). This means, no dice to
roll, no cards to play, no plot/fudge/luck points to spend. Now, this can be
achieved either by the GM going diceless or the GM rolling everything, or
playing the cards or activating my reserve of plot/luck/fudge points.
Alain
PS> I am overstating my case a bit. I think there are ways to to use
metagming techniques to enhance the IC play.
Leon von Stauber
mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>Several people on this group have discussed gaming similar to or the
>same as what I am talking about. Their posts on what they enjoy in
>games and why metagaming and diceless play don't work for them echoed
>many of my own feelings on the subject. And I've heard a description
>of one group's play where everything said once the game started was in
>character. My friend described seeing camera angles they were so
>deeply imersed.
But this last thing, though, is definitely not IC. Camera angles are in
the metagame. I'm not trying to get anywhere with that statement, but it
might point out that character identification is not the only way to be
deeply immersed in play.
>I get quite a bit by using the structure of the game. It creates a
>common language between all the players about how reality works. It
>tells me if the persona I've assume can or can't do something without
>relying on doing things myself physically or on human judgement --
>exactly what I don't want because it feels artificial.
Since "artificial" brings up the touchy issue of realism, I would rather
say that it seems forced, or deliberate, rather than naturally flowing
out of a pre-existing rules system.
>Curiously enough, many IC players in this group also seem to be strong
>advocates of diced play and not using metagaming decisions for
>resoltuion. There is probably some similarity in what the IC people
>expect the system to do for them as they play. And since no IC
>players seem to want to toss the idea of a system entirely (although
>many seem to be minimalists), there must be some use for it.
Hmm. A potentially very interesting observation.
__________________________________________________________________________
Leon von Stauber http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~leonvs/
University of Texas Computation Center <leo...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>
Zilker Internet Park <leo...@zilker.net>
"We have not come to save you, but you will not die in vain!"
Mary K. Kuhner
>I'll agree that metagame decisions and techniques can definitely get in
>the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
>dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
>must also pull out of character.
>Alain
I find dice mildly distracting, but within my range of tolerance (I
fully accept that other players may feel differently, this is just me).
They may force a pull out of IC, but they don't impose any flavor or POV
of their own--to me, they're pretty bland and neutral, which is what I
need. Similarly, I can deal with food on the table, people coming and
going, etc. because they are not asking for OOC *reactions*, just
mechanical responses. I have much more trouble if the metagame
mechanics are asking for OOC decisions or emotional reactions. Like
you, I can't cope with Falkenstein's cards, and for me Torg's drama deck
is even worse. I dislike plot points (my worst troubles with Shadowrun
came from the Karma points). All of these ask me to make actual decisions
and adopt strategies OOC, which is more distracting than simply
taking a mechanical action. I can ask myself which dice I have to roll
(by the rules) without disrupting my link with my character's POV. I
can't ask myself whether she should spend Karma for a reroll--that
requires me to analyze her situation from my POV, which breaks the link
to her POV. (I can't use her POV, since she doesn't know she has
Karma.)
In all of my diced games, we minimize dice during certain scenes where
they would be especially distracting; personally, I accept dice during
action scenes as a minimal intrusion of the metagame, since for me pure
GM adjucation of actions can itself become dangerously distracting.
It doesn't seem possible (short of virtual reality) to eliminate
distractions altogether. It could be interesting to investigate which
distractions are problematic for various players, and maybe try to form
some generalizations.
Lea Crowe
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA "A Lapalme" writes:
> I'll agree that metagame decisions and techniques can definitely get in
> the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
> dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
> must also pull out of character.
I am an extreme in-character player who favours diced play, though in a
practically systemless style. Alain suggests that these are hard to
reconcile: predictably enough, I firmly disagree.
This has a lot to do with David Berkman's remarks about "switching
viewpoints." David said that players were able to move seamlessly between
viewpoints, unconsciously and very quickly, and for once I agree with
him. The reason that throwing and reading dice doesn't interfere with
my extreme in-character stance is that I *don't notice it*.
If I'm deep into character, and the referee asks me to roll some dice,
I can throw them, read the result and switch back into character without
ever perceiving an interruption. Just to bring it home, I remember some of
my characters' more emotional experiences with a great deal of clarity--
except that I couldn't for the life of me tell you whether or not I had
to roll any dice during those scenes.
Of course, this becomes progressively more difficult as mechanics become
more complex and require more attention, which is why I advocate systemless
play. I will add, just to further confound Alain, that diceless (or cardless,
or whatever) play is *not* necessarily system-free and non-instrusive:
if you still have to look up stats and rules, then the intrusion is still
there. If you want to get rid of interruptions altogether, then systemless
has to be the way to-- aargh! Alain! Don't you wave that porker at *me*
in a threatening manner!
--
l...@hestia.demon.co.uk Systemless play also cures leprosy
and helps you lose weight. Scientific fact.
John Morrow
>John Morrow (mor...@newton.texel.com) writes:
>I'll agree that metagame decisions and techniques can definitely get in
>the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
>dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
>must also pull out of character.
Yes, they *are* a metagame construct. That is why I said "Curiously
enough...". I'm not really sure how intrusive the dice are for
everyone. Reading dice, like interpreting GM descriptions, can become
fairly second nature. However, as I've also pointed out, most In
Character (IC) Point of View (POV) players also seem to have their
best experiences during conversations where mechanics -- and dice --
are at a minimum.
>Currently, I'm in a CF game. For those who are not familiar with the
>game, it uses playing cards as a partial randomizer. Well, to cut a long
>story short, the cards simply are anathema to my holding IC. I simply
>can't look at the cards and decide which one to play without having to
>think of the charactrer in the audience or author stance. IC goes out the
>window.
Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
*decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in. For
the price of reading and interpreting some numbers, the player doesn't
have to worry that the decision isn't objective, correct, or part of
some GM plot ot railroad the game. :-)
>I've been thinking about this a lot lately and, right now, my feeling is
>that, for me to attain and maintain IC the game structure must not require
>that I pull out of IC to do anything (note I say require, doesn't mean it
>can't be done, just that I don't have to do it). This means, no dice to
>roll, no cards to play, no plot/fudge/luck points to spend. Now, this can be
>achieved either by the GM going diceless or the GM rolling everything, or
>playing the cards or activating my reserve of plot/luck/fudge points.
Good points. The reasons I don't think much of this is done is that
requiring the GM to roll everything (diced) or make all the decisions
(diceless) puts a huge burden on the GM and most GMs are not up to it.
In addition, I personally use the dice as another input into my IC
perception of the gameworld by converting the die rolls into more
detailed images of what is happening. I'm not sure that is for
everyone, though.
>PS> I am overstating my case a bit. I think there are ways to to use
>metagming techniques to enhance the IC play.
If I'm already in an IC POV, I'm not really sure I know what needs
enhancing by using something that might pull me out of IC POV. If,
however, you mean that metagaming techniques can help you achieve, and
maybe even hold, an IC POV, you are probably correct.
John Morrow
A Lapalme
> ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) writes:
>>John Morrow (mor...@newton.texel.com) writes:
>>I'll agree that metagame decisions and techniques can definitely get in
>>the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
>>dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
>>must also pull out of character.
>
> Yes, they *are* a metagame construct. That is why I said "Curiously
> enough...". I'm not really sure how intrusive the dice are for
> everyone.
The actual roll, I usually don't mind much. It's something that only
takes a few seconds. The interpretation of the roll is where I start
having problems. If the game is too mechanistic (ie too many + and -,
then I really have to start paying attention to the game aspect instead of
my character, and that is not a good thing).
>Reading dice, like interpreting GM descriptions, can become
> fairly second nature. However, as I've also pointed out, most In
> Character (IC) Point of View (POV) players also seem to have their
> best experiences during conversations where mechanics -- and dice --
> are at a minimum.
Yes, I did see that and forgot to aknowledge it. I was more curious on
how you dealt with the dice issue.
>
>>Currently, I'm in a CF game. For those who are not familiar with the
>>game, it uses playing cards as a partial randomizer. Well, to cut a long
>>story short, the cards simply are anathema to my holding IC. I simply
>>can't look at the cards and decide which one to play without having to
>>think of the charactrer in the audience or author stance. IC goes out the
>>window.
>
> Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
> diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
> *decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
> shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
> with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
> explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
> they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
> things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in. For
> the price of reading and interpreting some numbers, the player doesn't
> have to worry that the decision isn't objective, correct, or part of
> some GM plot ot railroad the game. :-)
Diceless techniques do not require meta-game decisions from the players.
If one adds things like fudge points, improvisation, etc, then, yes I
agree. However, these are not diceless techniques.
could you elaborate on the diceless aspect. I'm not looking for any
argument. I'm just curious because I run diceless and there might be
something I'm missing.
>
>>I've been thinking about this a lot lately and, right now, my feeling is
>>that, for me to attain and maintain IC the game structure must not require
>>that I pull out of IC to do anything (note I say require, doesn't mean it
>>can't be done, just that I don't have to do it). This means, no dice to
>>roll, no cards to play, no plot/fudge/luck points to spend. Now, this can be
>>achieved either by the GM going diceless or the GM rolling everything, or
>>playing the cards or activating my reserve of plot/luck/fudge points.
>
> Good points. The reasons I don't think much of this is done is that
> requiring the GM to roll everything (diced) or make all the decisions
> (diceless) puts a huge burden on the GM and most GMs are not up to it.
Or its just plain too much work :(
> In addition, I personally use the dice as another input into my IC
> perception of the gameworld by converting the die rolls into more
> detailed images of what is happening. I'm not sure that is for
> everyone, though.
I'm not sure what you mean. Could you give an example?
>
>>PS> I am overstating my case a bit. I think there are ways to to use
>>metagming techniques to enhance the IC play.
>
> If I'm already in an IC POV, I'm not really sure I know what needs
> enhancing by using something that might pull me out of IC POV. If,
> however, you mean that metagaming techniques can help you achieve, and
> maybe even hold, an IC POV, you are probably correct.
>
I meant techniques to achieve IC.
Alain
A Lapalme
> I am an extreme in-character player who favours diced play, though in a
> practically systemless style. Alain suggests that these are hard to
> reconcile: predictably enough, I firmly disagree.
How unfun of you!
>
> This has a lot to do with David Berkman's remarks about "switching
> viewpoints." David said that players were able to move seamlessly between
> viewpoints, unconsciously and very quickly, and for once I agree with
> him. The reason that throwing and reading dice doesn't interfere with
> my extreme in-character stance is that I *don't notice it*.
>
I've never been that deep IC so I wouldn't know. All I know is that when
I do achieve some level of IC, it doesn't take much to pull me out. A die
roll might not if all I have to do is roll and call out the number and let
the GM figure it out. If, OTOH, I have to roll, read the number, refer to
my character sheet, then add in situational modifiers, it's goodbye IC for me.
> If I'm deep into character, and the referee asks me to roll some dice,
> I can throw them, read the result and switch back into character without
> ever perceiving an interruption. Just to bring it home, I remember some of
> my characters' more emotional experiences with a great deal of clarity--
> except that I couldn't for the life of me tell you whether or not I had
> to roll any dice during those scenes.
>
> Of course, this becomes progressively more difficult as mechanics become
> more complex and require more attention, which is why I advocate systemless
> play. I will add, just to further confound Alain, that diceless (or cardless,
> or whatever) play is *not* necessarily system-free and non-instrusive:
> if you still have to look up stats and rules, then the intrusion is still
> there. If you want to get rid of interruptions altogether, then systemless
> has to be the way to-- aargh! Alain! Don't you wave that porker at *me*
> in a threatening manner!
>
Oink! oink! [patent pending]
Now, Lea, I thought by now that you knew I hate mechanics and that dice
are just innocent bystanders in my quest to be rid of all and any
mechanics!
You know what? I entirely agree with you. I guess I made the mistake of
not being clear when I was talking about diceless. In my case, diceless
means nearly the same thing as descriptive (I'll avoid systemless. I
remember the flames that produced last year).
In regards to cards and fugde points, I think a lot depends on how they
are used. Last winter, I played in a game where the GM allowed us to use
fudge points (mostly as per FUDGE, but slightly more powerful). The game
was only 5 sessions but, somehow I was able to achieve IC relatively
easily with my little thief character (and I had never played a thief
before, so go figure). In any case, in the last session, we'd managed to
enter the temple of cultists in our desperate attempts at saving one of
the PCs friends from becoming a human sacrifice. The situation was
desperate, at least in my character's view, and got worse when some
creature from the abyss showed up to claim the sacrfice (it would have
made a great CoC game). We all had fudge points and used them as required
(which was a lot). And, thinking back on it now, the use of the points
did not hinder my iC stance at all. Somehow, it actually enhanced it.
Trying to analyse why this is (because on the face of it, it doesn't make
sense to me) has led me to believe that meta-gaming techniques can help
with IC (David B.'s gonna love me). Here's how I see it.
We used the fudge points for simple things (like making sure a shot didn't
miss, or making sure I didn't look at the creature from the abyss while I
was running towards the altar to save the captive). It was just like
rolling a die and letting the Gm deal with. As my character was running
towards the altar, he knew that he shouldn't look at the creature (having
already seen the result in others). So, it was not very difficult for me
to simply state to the GM: "I don't look at it (Fudge point)". The trick,
I think, was that I wasn't trying to figure out if I had any points left.
I needed luck then and there.
One weakness in my argument is that my attainment of IC might not
compare to Lea's, John Morrows, Mary's or Jeff's. Unfortunately,
comparing IC attainment might be difficult (as the Mary vs David B. thread
is showing).
Alain
Kevin R. Hardwick
On 10 Dec 1995, John Morrow wrote:
> >I've been thinking about this a lot lately and, right now, my feeling is
> >that, for me to attain and maintain IC the game structure must not require
> >that I pull out of IC to do anything (note I say require, doesn't mean it
> >can't be done, just that I don't have to do it). This means, no dice to
> >roll, no cards to play, no plot/fudge/luck points to spend. Now, this can be
> >achieved either by the GM going diceless or the GM rolling everything, or
> >playing the cards or activating my reserve of plot/luck/fudge points.
>
> Good points. The reasons I don't think much of this is done is that
> requiring the GM to roll everything (diced) or make all the decisions
> (diceless) puts a huge burden on the GM and most GMs are not up to it.
This is where we have wound up. As GM, I am now rolling dice for action
adjudication, and I roll all of the dice for the group. However, I don't do
that at every decision point--in a combat, for example, I don't roll
dice after every round. Rather, I roll once for each character at the
start of each scene--a "luck" factor--which I then use as an input into
the other diceless factors. I weight the die roll enough so that it is
noticable to the players--and I let them know via description when they
catch a lucky or unlucky break.
Since there aren't all that many die rolls, it does not overburden me to
do all of the rolling for the group--so the mechanic does not intrude for
those players who find it distracting. (I actually pre-roll the dice at
the beginning of the evening, so that I don't have to take time to do
that during play--if I roll enough of them, I won't run out . . .)
Doing this has been sufficient to satisfy the hard-core diced advocates
in the group, for whom random factors are important, while keeping happy
the diceless players. Obviously this is a group-contract issue that each
group will have to negotiate on their own--but for us this has worked out
OK.
My point is, I guess, that there are intermediate positions in the great
diced-diceless divide--it is not a strict dichotomy. Most diced games up
to now have used dice rather a lot--but it doesn't have to be that way
to maintain the sense of abstract fairness and of arbitrary fate that
dice provide. You don't have to go completely diceless to get many of
the benefits of description based gaming.
All my best,
Kevin
Brian Henderson
>ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) writes:
>>John Morrow (mor...@newton.texel.com) writes:
>>I'll agree that metagame decisions and techniques can definitely get in
>>the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
>>dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
>>must also pull out of character.
>Yes, they *are* a metagame construct. That is why I said "Curiously
>enough...". I'm not really sure how intrusive the dice are for
>everyone. Reading dice, like interpreting GM descriptions, can become
>fairly second nature. However, as I've also pointed out, most In
>Character (IC) Point of View (POV) players also seem to have their
>best experiences during conversations where mechanics -- and dice --
>are at a minimum.
I agree. However, I don't think they are at all intrusive. Maybe
that's because I've been using them for more than two decades, but
let's face it, if you're in a game, no matter how IC you might be, and
your character pulls out a game, aims it, pulls the trigger and then
looks to see what s/he hit, *YOU* don't do that, it occurred in your
mind. What *YOU* did was to pull out dice, shake them, roll them on
the table and then look to see what your character hit. Same thing,
simply different mechanics.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==========================================
+ Brian Henderson == Internet: BHen...@kirk.microsys.net ==
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++== BHen...@microsys.net ==
+ Furry Fan, Babylon 5, == ==
+ MST3K, Atheist, Skeptic, ==========================================
+ Sliders, RPG Gamer, INWO, == I'm not saying what I'm thinking, so ==
+ Herpetophile, Gargoyles == I don't think anyone agrees with me! ==
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++==========================================
John Morrow
>John Morrow (mor...@newton.texel.com) writes:
>> Yes, they *are* a metagame construct. That is why I said "Curiously
>> enough...". I'm not really sure how intrusive the dice are for
>> everyone.
>The actual roll, I usually don't mind much. It's something that only
>takes a few seconds. The interpretation of the roll is where I start
>having problems. If the game is too mechanistic (ie too many + and -,
>then I really have to start paying attention to the game aspect instead of
>my character, and that is not a good thing).
I think most of the In Character (IC) Point of View (POV) people have
expressed a preference for fast, mechanics light systems (correct me
if I'm wrong, people :-). For me, ideally, the players and GM should
be able to memorize most if not all of the numbers needed to convert a
roll into a result and only a minimum of mental math should be
required. A design goal of my group's early homebrew system (now
fractured into several variations that borrow from one another) was
that the mechanics "shouldn't get in the way of the story" ("story" in
the "what is happening to the characters" sense -- not plot, per se)
and that they should be as quick and transparent as possible. We've
succeeded to varying degrees -- usually by ignoring the clunky rules
we come up with in practice. :-)
(As an aside, some of us are still waiting for Lea Crowe's difinitive
article on "human factors" in gaming discusses a while ago on .design :-)
>Yes, I did see that and forgot to aknowledge it. I was more curious on
>how you dealt with the dice issue.
As I said above, I tend to use dice minimally. Sometimes I (and other
people in my gaming group) wander into the "roll and interpret" method
without using any fixed mechanics. I tend to find that unsuitably
vague for longer games were GMs (in my group, anyway) have a tendency
to wander in their interpretations a bit too much.
>> Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
>> diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
>> *decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
>> shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
>> with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
>> explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
>> they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>> things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in. For
>> the price of reading and interpreting some numbers, the player doesn't
>> have to worry that the decision isn't objective, correct, or part of
>> some GM plot ot railroad the game. :-)
>Diceless techniques do not require meta-game decisions from the players.
>If one adds things like fudge points, improvisation, etc, then, yes I
>agree. However, these are not diceless techniques.
They are "diceless" in the respect that they are not subject to
approval by some random element. They happen because someone says
so.
>could you elaborate on the diceless aspect. I'm not looking for any
>argument. I'm just curious because I run diceless and there might be
>something I'm missing.
No problem. My point is that absent some objective form of
resolution, player or GM must actually *decide* if an action fails or
succeeds based on some criteria.
There are three problems I personally have with this:
1) Players cannot decide if their character's actions fail or succeed
from an IC POV because deciding the outcome of an action isn't
something that people do. People don't walk up to a chasm and then
decide if they will or won't make a leap across it,
2) Any decision made by a person without benefit of a randomizing
element has a _reason_ behind it. Dice don't have such a reason
behind them. If a reason exists, I'm drawn to look for the pattern
and to figure it out. Whether I do or don't figure it out, simply
being drawn to try by my curiosity damages my SoD and attention to
character. The game turns, for me, from experiencing an adventure
through my characters POV to a pattern of decisions I'm trying to
figure things out. I can enjoy this in a puzzle or tactical game but
it doesn't work for me if I'm trying to play in character.
3) I'm personally terrible at making snap judgements -- especially
when I have no preference for a particular outcome (yes, this can be a
big problem when I GM). The result of asking me if an action succeeds
or fails is likely to be a long pause followed by a reluctant answer.
It is much easier and faster for me to interpret even a high or low
roll than to decide between two items when I have no preference for
one over the other -- which is most of the time when I'm playing.
When I don't have a preference, I *really* don't have a preference and
thinking about it doesn't do much to change that.
>> Good points. The reasons I don't think much of this is done is that
>> requiring the GM to roll everything (diced) or make all the decisions
>> (diceless) puts a huge burden on the GM and most GMs are not up to it.
>Or its just plain too much work :(
That is what I meant by "most GMs are not up to it". Too much work.
One of the system designers in my group had a philosophy of pushing as
much of the resolution off on the players as possible to speed up the
game and free up the GM. Of course he was mostly GMing at the time...
:-) But there is some truth to the fact that this speeds a game up.
Players are often the most familiar with the numbers pertaining to
their own characters and are thus able to most quickly resolve issues
pertaining to their own characters.
>> In addition, I personally use the dice as another input into my IC
>> perception of the gameworld by converting the die rolls into more
>> detailed images of what is happening. I'm not sure that is for
>> everyone, though.
>I'm not sure what you mean. Could you give an example?
OK. Example:
In a succeed/fail system, my character needs an acrobatics roll to
swing from a rope across the gap between two ships. I'll tend to get
a different mental image if my character barely succeeds than if my
character succeeds easily or even rolls the maximum result. I'm
interpreting the added range of the dice into nuances that don't have
a particular effect on the result but which add some color to the
game. My character succeeds both ways but "differently" with respect
to my mental image of the events.
>> If I'm already in an IC POV, I'm not really sure I know what needs
>> enhancing by using something that might pull me out of IC POV. If,
>> however, you mean that metagaming techniques can help you achieve, and
>> maybe even hold, an IC POV, you are probably correct.
>I meant techniques to achieve IC.
This subject interests me a bit. Part of the problem I see is that if
the technique doesn't naturally drop away once I've gotten into IC
POV, then, as a metagaming technique, it risks pulling me back out
again. The effect is not unlike trying to start a car once the engine
is running. It is unnecessary, possibly damaging, and makes lots of
noise... :-)
John Morrow
Andrew Finch
: Ah, but that is where the card differ from dice and are similar to
: diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
: *decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
: shift to metagaming for the decision.
Adding modifiers, deciding skill levels and optimum use, calculating
totals, are all far more jarring to me. They require me to make decisions
which have nothing really to do with roleplaying my charcater.
I suspect that if you used cards enough, they would become second nature
as well, as diceless decision making, and Troupe style GMing have become
for me, after nearly 3 years. Then again, I found them less jarring
almost immediately, so I may be an usual case, but certainly not the
only one.
David
Leon von Stauber
>
>Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
>diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
>*decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
>with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
>explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
Perfectly stated.
This is *the* IC justification to use neutral randomizers like dice.
Leon von Stauber
Mary K. Kuhner
terribly self-concious when I play) is that, both as GM and as player, I
try never to start in the middle of the action when beginning play.
Instead, I'll summarize what happened last, maybe comment on it a bit,
back up slightly if necessary to insure that the players (and GM) have
time to pick up the thread of being in character.
Our sessions traditionally start with "When we last saw them, the
characters were ....". Sounds cheesy, but it really helps me out.
When I was playing PBeM, I'd always reread the previous several turns,
unless little or no time had elapsed since I received them (we sometimes
did near real-time PBeM with a fast email link). If I didn't, the
character's reactions would often be slightly but jarringly wrong (and
sometimes more than slightly).
Pushing the boring experience points, record keeping, etc. activities to
the beginning of the session (rather than the more usual end of the
session) can help focus the players before starting play, though it can
also have the opposite effect if it's too mechanical or tedious. In any
case, this kind of thing badly needs to be at beginning or end, not in
the middle, if at all possible.
I've also found it personally helpful to play out those dull "one
party member tells another what the player has already heard OOC"
scenes. It's easier to figure out what a character's reaction to news is
if you are taking the character's point of view when you hear it, and
sometimes I realize in doing this that the character is going to interpret
events very differently from the way I did. (I once had a PC suddenly
grasp the enemy plan when he heard their sales pitch, after six
ruddy hours of thinking about it in my own persona and not figuring it
out.) You can also get some insight into the relationship between the
characters. This doesn't have to be done every time, but it's good for
key news. When we made Linnick tell his tales IC, he always told his
cousin less than she needed to hear--and once or twice the difference
was significant.
If metagaming interruptions are a problem for the group, establishing an
accepted time and place *outside* the session to talk metagame can help.
I favor going out to eat after the game. My only problem with this is
that when I GM I'm generally exhausted after a session, and it's not the
best time to hear criticism--so we try to do that before the next
session instead, or between times. However, for just talking over the
game dinner is great.
Most of the rest of what I've observed (I'm probably driving the GM
crazy with this observation stuff) seems to relate to techniques for
doing multiple characters simultaneously; not very generally useful.
Lea Crowe
mor...@newton.texel.com "John Morrow" writes:
> I think most of the In Character (IC) Point of View (POV) people have
> expressed a preference for fast, mechanics light systems (correct me
> if I'm wrong, people :-).
Have you tried "Rolemaster"? I'm quickly coming round to the point of
view that this is *the* game for in-character play. I find the endless
and overcomplicated chart lookups particularly conducive to character
development.
"Systems," my foot.
> (As an aside, some of us are still waiting for Lea Crowe's difinitive
> article on "human factors" in gaming discusses a while ago on .design :-)
Er... yes... that "some of us" includes me. I started on it, then moved
south, lost the thread, and keep meaning to start again. *embarrassment*
I think you may have kicked me back into life.
> As I said above, I tend to use dice minimally. Sometimes I (and other
> people in my gaming group) wander into the "roll and interpret" method
> without using any fixed mechanics. I tend to find that unsuitably
> vague for longer games were GMs (in my group, anyway) have a tendency
> to wander in their interpretations a bit too much.
I will add (by way of trying to put a serious point in this posting) that,
obviously enough, your mileage may vary. I have comfortably used the
"roll and interpret" method in two campaigns lasting 3 years and 18 months
real time respectively, without any player problems; I've also lived under
such a regime as a player, admittedly in games lasting only 3-6 months,
and didn't have any vagueness traumas.
> Players are often the most familiar with the numbers pertaining to
> their own characters and are thus able to most quickly resolve issues
> pertaining to their own characters.
(Wandering slightly from the point) There's a (whisper it) human factors
problem here which I've noticed repeatedly when playing and running
Storyteller games (specifically "Werewolf"). Although players do indeed
know their characters' numbers much better than the GM, and although
the rules for turning those numbers into success criteria are well defined,
players tend not to know the rules very well (hurrah) and end up falling
back on the GM anyway. I've lost count of the number of times I've had
to tell my "Werewolf" group that the difficulty of damage dice is *ALWAYS*
six. Next Monday, someone rolling damage *will* ask me "What's the
difficulty?" Guaranteed.
So we have the dilemma that while the players *do* have the information
that is needed for a mechanical resolution, it is very difficult for them
to actually carry out that resolution.
The solution will appear in a human-factors article which I am going to get
started on right now. Or later tonight. Ish.
--
l...@hestia.demon.co.uk Ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea!
Lea Crowe
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA "A Lapalme" writes (quoted stuff is me):
> How unfun of you!
I'm a tedious old creature, aren't I?
> > The reason that throwing and reading dice doesn't interfere with
> > my extreme in-character stance is that I *don't notice it*.
>
> I've never been that deep IC so I wouldn't know. All I know is that when
> I do achieve some level of IC, it doesn't take much to pull me out.
Fair enough. Obviously, if small things do interfere with your in-character
point of view, they're going to aggravate you. I find people munching
away and crinkling crisp packets while I'm trying to play *desperately*
distracting. (Especially because they *always* do it during the
particularly suspenseful bits of description. "The moon casts a rich,
white light into the deep blue of the CRINKLE RATTLE CRUNCH. You
scent the delicate musk of flowers and the fresh smell of POP FIZZ OH
BUGGER HAS ANYONE GOT A CLOTH.")
> A die
> roll might not if all I have to do is roll and call out the number and let
> the GM figure it out. If, OTOH, I have to roll, read the number, refer to
> my character sheet, then add in situational modifiers, it's goodbye IC for me.
Here I'm very much in sympathy with you, actually: as you know, I *do*
find mechanics intrusive. It's just that I don't find dice to be
particularly offensive in the mechanics stakes.
> Now, Lea, I thought by now that you knew I hate mechanics and that dice
> are just innocent bystanders in my quest to be rid of all and any
> mechanics!
Oh, all right. I'll put the nuclear BaconMaker ack-ack gun back in
the cupboard then.
Yes, we are pretty much in agreement, I think: we just have different
methods of going after the same thing (though I do feel obliged to
provoke you by worrying that throwing out dice because you hate mechanics
may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater; but then again it may
not be, depending on your taste in bathwater).
> (I'll avoid systemless. I remember the flames that produced last year).
I was only poking the embers, officer, and it just flared up again, all
by itself! I didn't do nuffink!
> We used the fudge points for simple things (like making sure a shot didn't
> miss, or making sure I didn't look at the creature from the abyss while I
> was running towards the altar to save the captive). It was just like
> rolling a die and letting the Gm deal with. ... The trick,
> I think, was that I wasn't trying to figure out if I had any points left.
> I needed luck then and there.
Yes, this sounds like an example of a mechanic that is simple enough and
efficient enough to enhance play rather than distract from it. As you
imply, accountancy is *very* distracting, perhaps because of the number of
out-of-character operations involved (decide whether using the gizmo is
economical right now, announce the use of the gizmo, do bookkeeping) --
in the same way that I find the traditional skill model has many
out-of-character operations (determine skill, determine modifiers, do
arithmetic, roll dice). The system you describe involved a single
operation which was tied very closely to the in-character stuff ("I'm
not going to look [fudge point]!"); this is also why I find my tack on
skills and other resolution rolls effective ("I tell the bouncer I'm with
Frank [31].").
phil...@vxdesy.desy.de
>there. If you want to get rid of interruptions altogether, then systemless
>has to be the way to-- aargh! Alain! Don't you wave that porker at *me*
>in a threatening manner!
Obvious sexist slime innuendo....
Anyway, I think I'm beginning to agree with you. I have certainly used
systemless diced methods in the past, mostly for one-off games, and the dice
don't intrude. I think Amber works very well without dice but with a system.
The system is just there to codify which of the powers described in Zelazny's
books the character has some mastery of; the players know about these because
their character knows whether or not he has mastered them.
In one-offs, one frequently wants to have some way of deciding what happens,
but there's not enough time to bother with a system. The usual "system" we use
is to describe the character in the intial handout, and ask the player to write
down three skills. This can be as broad or as narrow as you like. For example,
in the game my wife ran at the weekend, one character had "spy-type things" as a
skill, another "computer ops" and a third had "making jams and preserves". The
GM just interprets the skill as written and as it fits in with everyone's
perceptions about the character, in particular, the perceptions generated by
the initial brief. So, the jam-making character was actually not that good at
jam-making, despite having taken the skill.
I increasingly find as a GM that the system intrudes in a way which I never
felt before. I have just started running what I estimate to be a year-long
campaign. The system I am using is heavily customised rolemaster. RoleMaster
always did feel a bit over the top, but the players seem to like the level of
detailed description it gives for the characters. I have computerised the
combat so that all record keeping and table lookup is automated, so it plays
just as fast as most games.
It's just that I feel like I'm swimming through treacle with it, especially
when we generating characters and explaining how it worked to the people who
hadn't played the system before. It also feels very painful when writing down
NPCs. I write down all the personality bits and know what sort of numbers
should fit them, but typing just the combat stats into the computer feels
highly onerous.
Have you had much experience of extended campaign use of systemless or system
lite (TM) roleplaying? I think I'd be happy with it, but the players genuinely
seem to prefer having a detailed character sheet with lots of numbers. When I
ran a 3 month Space 1889/ Castle Falkenstein game with a simplified version of
the Ars Magica system (Mad? me?) I like it, but they didn't like the lack of
fine detail in the stats and said they'd want something more for prolonged
play.
I think part of it is that they like to see their character grow and change,
and they like to have little hobby skills tucked away that only they and I know
about. It certainly has produced some of the most memorable sessions we've had
in years of gaming: in one session, they were effectively being tested by the
king and queen of the snowmen, an ancient elemental race who above all treasure
freshness, novelty, light hearts and joy. Every character managed to come up
with something genuinely new from themselves: one made a sculpture, one told a
tall tale, one invented a new reel to dance to, one sang a new song. All of
these skills were on the character sheets, and the players all said that they
LOVED being able to use this skill that they'd had their character practicing
in private, usually in "off-adventure" time, without any sort of fiat or
fudging. We actually roleplayed all these things, taking a good ten minutes per
player to come up with the new tune or whatever, the other players supplanting
the knowledge of the player in question "acting as the skill", if you like. By
the end of it, we actually had a naff but hummable tune, a story, a detailed
description of the sculpture, etc.
So, I'm feeling like the rules-heavy approach has been a mistake for my current
game, even though none of the players seems to think so. It took two full
sessions to do character generation, though in all fairness, onlyabout two out
of eight hours can have been taken up with numbers in total. The rest of the
first session was doing background, in particular, choosing which god or
goddess had marked the character as his or her own, and what form the mark
would take. The second session was spend entirely in making up spells using the
new spell systems I'd introduced, going through the apprenticeship of the
character as a sorceror if you like.
Can you suggest ways to reduce the systems elements of this? I'd certainly like
to. One thing I'll certianly do in future is to streamline it, remove the
number crunching aspects and get an easier way of ending up with rolemaster
liek numbers: this is essentially a trivial transformation given a little work.
But I'd lik to go further, and perhaps try to wean the players off the long
lists of numbers a little, encourage them to trust me that if they tell me
their character has a hobby like sculpting, and they practice it, I won't
forget it and no-one will call them cheats when it comes up in play!
Cheers, Hywel Phillips.
A Lapalme
>ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) writes:
>I think most of the In Character (IC) Point of View (POV) people have
>expressed a preference for fast, mechanics light systems (correct me
>if I'm wrong, people :-).
My memory agrees with you on this.
>As I said above, I tend to use dice minimally. Sometimes I (and
other
>people in my gaming group) wander into the "roll and interpret"
method
>without using any fixed mechanics. I tend to find that unsuitably
>vague for longer games were GMs (in my group, anyway) have a tendency
>to wander in their interpretations a bit too much.
When you say wander, you mean inconsistent, correct?
>>Diceless techniques do not require meta-game decisions from the
players.
>>If one adds things like fudge points, improvisation, etc, then, yes
I
>>agree. However, these are not diceless techniques.
>
>They are "diceless" in the respect that they are not subject to
>approval by some random element. They happen because someone says
>so.
OK.
>
>>could you elaborate on the diceless aspect. I'm not looking for any
>>argument. I'm just curious because I run diceless and there might
be
>>something I'm missing.
>
>No problem. My point is that absent some objective form of
>resolution, player or GM must actually *decide* if an action fails or
>succeeds based on some criteria.
>
>There are three problems I personally have with this:
>
>1) Players cannot decide if their character's actions fail or succeed
>from an IC POV because deciding the outcome of an action isn't
>something that people do. People don't walk up to a chasm and then
>decide if they will or won't make a leap across it,
>
OK. But, having players decide on the outcome of an action I don't
really consider a diceless issue. It would fall under the use of
meta-game tools such as fudge/karma/luck points or under
improvisation.
>2) Any decision made by a person without benefit of a randomizing
>element has a _reason_ behind it. Dice don't have such a reason
>behind them. If a reason exists, I'm drawn to look for the pattern
>and to figure it out. Whether I do or don't figure it out, simply
>being drawn to try by my curiosity damages my SoD and attention to
>character. The game turns, for me, from experiencing an adventure
>through my characters POV to a pattern of decisions I'm trying to
>figure things out. I can enjoy this in a puzzle or tactical game but
>it doesn't work for me if I'm trying to play in character.
If I understand you correctly, it is a distraction, one you can't
ignore as opposed to say, rolling a die.
>
>3) I'm personally terrible at making snap judgements -- especially
>when I have no preference for a particular outcome (yes, this can be
a
>big problem when I GM). The result of asking me if an action
succeeds
>or fails is likely to be a long pause followed by a reluctant answer.
>It is much easier and faster for me to interpret even a high or low
>roll than to decide between two items when I have no preference for
>one over the other -- which is most of the time when I'm playing.
>When I don't have a preference, I *really* don't have a preference
and
>thinking about it doesn't do much to change that.
>
That's true enough. However, this is from a GM POV and is not really
an IC issue.
>>> In addition, I personally use the dice as another input into my IC
>>> perception of the gameworld by converting the die rolls into more
>>> detailed images of what is happening. I'm not sure that is for
>>> everyone, though.
>
>>I'm not sure what you mean. Could you give an example?
>
>OK. Example:
>
>In a succeed/fail system, my character needs an acrobatics roll to
>swing from a rope across the gap between two ships. I'll tend to get
>a different mental image if my character barely succeeds than if my
>character succeeds easily or even rolls the maximum result. I'm
>interpreting the added range of the dice into nuances that don't have
>a particular effect on the result but which add some color to the
>game. My character succeeds both ways but "differently" with respect
>to my mental image of the events.
So, this would assume that the GM does _not_ give a description of the
result. Rather, the player makes the roll, reads the dice, interprets
the result and then goes back to IC "feel" the result. Am I right?
If so, this requires a player decision on how to intepret the result
(ie the player is making a decision) and that seems to go counter your
point above about diceless and player decisions.
Alain
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>
>>Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
>>diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
>>*decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
>>shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
>>with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
>>explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
>>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
>
>Perfectly stated.
>
>This is *the* IC justification to use neutral randomizers like dice.
>
ahem
Scott
Jeff Stehman
>> As I said above, I tend to use dice minimally. Sometimes I (and other
>> people in my gaming group) wander into the "roll and interpret" method
>> without using any fixed mechanics. I tend to find that unsuitably
>> vague for longer games were GMs (in my group, anyway) have a tendency
>> to wander in their interpretations a bit too much.
That's pretty much what I do as gm, although still within the framework
of a system. Hopefully the latter keeps me from wandering too far.
--
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/
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
|> I'm sorry if I'm briing the diceless thing up again but what John says
|> below just doesn't ring true with my experience.
|>
|> Note that I missed his original post some I might be missing some vital point.
|>
|> John Morrow (mor...@newton.texel.com) writes:
|> >
|> > advocates of diced play and not using metagaming decisions for
|> > resoltuion. There is probably some similarity in what the IC people
|> > expect the system to do for them as they play. And since no IC
|> > players seem to want to toss the idea of a system entirely (although
|> > many seem to be minimalists), there must be some use for it.
|> >
|> the way of IC. However, aren't dice a metagame construct? To throw the
|> dice your must pull out of character, to read and interpret the dice you
|> must also pull out of character.
IIRC, Sarah Kahn, the original simulationist/super-duper-IC player,
didn't believe at all in using a game system. (She and Lea Crowe
attempted to popularize the term systemless gaming, but they were
brutally defeated by those who found the phrase logically
lacking.)
Neel
John Morrow
>Have you tried "Rolemaster"? I'm quickly coming round to the point of
>view that this is *the* game for in-character play. I find the endless
>and overcomplicated chart lookups particularly conducive to character
>development.
Never played it. I do play Champions, though. Is that simple enough
for you? :-)
>"Systems," my foot.
Sorry, but I consider even "High is good, low is bad" a system of
sorts (or do you do it "backwards" as I seem to remember you do...
:-). If you interpret the dice systematically, you are using a
"system", though a very simple one -- perhaps the simplest.
[The "human factors" article...]
>Er... yes... that "some of us" includes me. I started on it, then moved
>south, lost the thread, and keep meaning to start again. *embarrassment*
>I think you may have kicked me back into life.
I figured as much. Out of sight, out of mind and all that... :-)
>I will add (by way of trying to put a serious point in this posting) that,
>obviously enough, your mileage may vary. I have comfortably used the
>"roll and interpret" method in two campaigns lasting 3 years and 18 months
>real time respectively, without any player problems; I've also lived under
>such a regime as a player, admittedly in games lasting only 3-6 months,
>and didn't have any vagueness traumas.
I think that a lot of the techniques that allow either GM or players a
large roll in determining the results of an action only work with a
"like minded" group. If player and GM have a different way of looking
at things, decisions free of any objective standard will seem
unpredictable and often unreasonable. What rules do for me is to
provide an objective set of, well, rules off of which players and GMs
can build a common set of assumptions. My group has a lot of varied
opinions about things so I'm not quite ready to toss the stabilizing
benefits of having a little more meat to a system than simple
interpreted rolls.
>(Wandering slightly from the point) There's a (whisper it) human factors
>problem here which I've noticed repeatedly when playing and running
>Storyteller games (specifically "Werewolf"). Although players do indeed
>know their characters' numbers much better than the GM, and although
>the rules for turning those numbers into success criteria are well defined,
>players tend not to know the rules very well (hurrah) and end up falling
>back on the GM anyway. I've lost count of the number of times I've had
>to tell my "Werewolf" group that the difficulty of damage dice is *ALWAYS*
>six. Next Monday, someone rolling damage *will* ask me "What's the
>difficulty?" Guaranteed.
Oh, I've seen that happen even with simpler rules. But they keep
asking because you keep answering.
Try rolling up a newspaper and hitting them over the nose. If that
doesn't work, make the difficulty obscenely high when they ask until
they either memorize it or look it up themselves (if they don't notice
anything wrong with the high number, too bad). Another alternative is
writing it in big red letters on their character sheet -- or maybe
their foreheads backwards so they see it every time the look in the
mirror. Maybe you should just take their character sheets and start
playing their characters for them, too. I think you need to seize
a little more control over your players... :-)
>So we have the dilemma that while the players *do* have the information
>that is needed for a mechanical resolution, it is very difficult for them
>to actually carry out that resolution.
Seriously, the only solution I can think of for lazy players is not to
stand for it and do something to encourage change or simply demand it.
This is not a big problem with most of the players in my group
although one of our GMs played with a novice group that found it
easier to ask what the results of a roll were than to figure it out,
much to his annoyance. So I understand what you are saying but it
isn't a problem I have to deal with. YMMV, etc.
>The solution will appear in a human-factors article which I am going to get
>started on right now. Or later tonight. Ish.
Newspaper. Go for the rolled up newspaper. It should keep them paying
attention to you, too. :-)
John Morrow
Scott A. H. Ruggels
reading Both Lea and Alain's postings, they seem to be coming into some
agreement., However, for me it is the system's speed, or lack there of,
that makes it hard to maintain Ic stance. I don't care about complexity,
but the amount of steps one takes to make a resolution does. I am in
favcor of fairly rigid systems as long as they are consistent and
speedy. The OCV+11-die roll= what you Hit method as a mod on the Hero
system enhanced a lot of combats because of the mechanics speed. It also
helps, in that you can judge your performance goes over time, but not
against othersw until you hit. it streamlined things. If I have to
perform a lot of look ups or steps it becomes harder to maintain I.C. I
can see exactly where CF failed, because one had to make decisions on
the use of combat plot resources, in a way, very abstract from the
thinking of the character in I.C. It is a simple system, but it is not a
"character-reactive" system. because it forces the attention of the
player. In a diced game the dice, like the words of the GM indicate the
effects on the environment, and as so are adapted into just another
input.
Scott
John Morrow
>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
[most IC POV people preferring fast, mechanics light systems]
>My memory agrees with you on this.
Good. Perhaps senility hasn't set in yet... :-)
[GM interpretations "wandering"]
>When you say wander, you mean inconsistent, correct?
Yes. Some of the GMs in my group tend to vary their style based on
the feedback they are getting from the players and the general mood of
the session. They do this largely to cater to the perceived desire of
the players but it can produce inconsistant results if you start
looking for patterns across several sessions.
[snip]
>>1) Players cannot decide if their character's actions fail or succeed
>>from an IC POV because deciding the outcome of an action isn't
>>something that people do. People don't walk up to a chasm and then
>>decide if they will or won't make a leap across it,
>OK. But, having players decide on the outcome of an action I don't
>really consider a diceless issue. It would fall under the use of
>meta-game tools such as fudge/karma/luck points or under
>improvisation.
I'm referring to it as "diceless" (where "dice" refers to "random
element") because metagaming techniques such as "points" or
"improvisation" are elements without random elements. Things happen
or don't happen because a player or GM decides they will -- not as the
result of a "die roll". It is a diceless issue in that dice (or
other random elements) are "out of the loop" and decision making
(either GM or player) is the key factor. Even if the points are
used to change random results, the feel they create is more that
of diceless decision making.
>>2) Any decision made by a person without benefit of a randomizing
>>element has a _reason_ behind it. Dice don't have such a reason
>>behind them. If a reason exists, I'm drawn to look for the pattern
>>and to figure it out. Whether I do or don't figure it out, simply
>>being drawn to try by my curiosity damages my SoD and attention to
>>character. The game turns, for me, from experiencing an adventure
>>through my characters POV to a pattern of decisions I'm trying to
>>figure things out. I can enjoy this in a puzzle or tactical game but
>>it doesn't work for me if I'm trying to play in character.
>If I understand you correctly, it is a distraction, one you can't
>ignore as opposed to say, rolling a die.
Yes, because it is an active distraction -- one I must think long
and hard about to make it go away. The dice are far more passive,
requiring only an application of rules to get a result.
>>3) I'm personally terrible at making snap judgements -- especially
>>when I have no preference for a particular outcome (yes, this can be
>>a big problem when I GM). The result of asking me if an action succeeds
>>or fails is likely to be a long pause followed by a reluctant answer.
>>It is much easier and faster for me to interpret even a high or low
>>roll than to decide between two items when I have no preference for
>>one over the other -- which is most of the time when I'm playing.
>>When I don't have a preference, I *really* don't have a preference and
>>thinking about it doesn't do much to change that.
>That's true enough. However, this is from a GM POV and is not really
>an IC issue.
The "when I GM" comment was an aside and not really relevant. I was
discussing IC POV and I'm sorry I tossed in that comment if it
confused the issue (my goal is clarification). The statements stand
as a problem with allowing players input into the sucess or failure of
their characters be it via improvisation, statement, or metagaming
mechanism such as fudge points. I'm likely to pause just as long
deciding if I should use a fudge point as I am to answer if my
character succeeds or fails.
>>OK. Example:
>>In a succeed/fail system, my character needs an acrobatics roll to
>>swing from a rope across the gap between two ships. I'll tend to get
>>a different mental image if my character barely succeeds than if my
>>character succeeds easily or even rolls the maximum result. I'm
>>interpreting the added range of the dice into nuances that don't have
>>a particular effect on the result but which add some color to the
>>game. My character succeeds both ways but "differently" with respect
>>to my mental image of the events.
>So, this would assume that the GM does _not_ give a description of the
>result. Rather, the player makes the roll, reads the dice, interprets
>the result and then goes back to IC "feel" the result. Am I right?
Not exactly. I make the roll and interpret it *from* IC. I don't
need to change my emotional state or attitude and I don't need to
spend much time thinking about it. I never really leave IC any more
than I do creating a mental image from the descriptions the GM
provides. Both processes are very similar -- take a bunch of sparse
indications of what is going on and put them together into a detailed
mental image that makes sense to the character. I don't need to
think outside of the character to do this. YMMV.
>If so, this requires a player decision on how to intepret the result
>(ie the player is making a decision) and that seems to go counter your
>point above about diceless and player decisions.
It isn't really a decision. It is more of an "explanation" or
"embellishment". BTW, I sometimes will keep rolling dice to
make decisions if more than one explanation comes up that I need
to decide between.
Perhaps the key to why certain types of decisions are so jarring to IC
is what I said before -- that there is no analog to the decision IC.
As I said, real people don't decide if they succeed or fail. There
is, however, some IC analog to interpretation of description and event
-- what would this character see that would make sense to produce the
indicated situation. That makes it much easier to stay IC instead of
popping in and out and that is a large part of what I desire.
John Morrow
Jeff Stehman
>I think that a lot of the techniques that allow either GM or players a
>large roll in determining the results of an action only work with a
>"like minded" group. If player and GM have a different way of looking
>at things, decisions free of any objective standard will seem
>unpredictable and often unreasonable.
Let me illustrate John's point with a simple example from a recent solo
game.
Gm: As you ride over a another rise you suddenly see a *huge*
pack of wolves lounging on a hillock off to your left."
With the way he said "huge" a vision of a pack of 50-60 wolves immediately
lept to mind and I started wondering what kind of magic was work. Then I
remember who I was dealing with.
Me: About how many wolves are there?
Gm: A dozen or so.
Me: I see. I stare them down as I ride past. My steed is a phantom
conjuration. I'm not too worried.
The gm in question is very good at running npcs; one of the best I've
ever gamed with. But his perceptions of the world are so skewed from
any norm when it comes to numbers or distances or the like that we would
*never* trust him in a non-rigid system. We get into enough trouble as
it is due to mental images not being in sync. (Oh the number of times
area affecting spells have been cast on 2-3 opponents when there were a
half-dozen of us, or the times we thought someone was bleeding to death
when they actually had a little scratch...)
A Lapalme
>
> Yes. Some of the GMs in my group tend to vary their style based on
> the feedback they are getting from the players and the general mood of
> the session. They do this largely to cater to the perceived desire of
> the players but it can produce inconsistant results if you start
> looking for patterns across several sessions.
Probably. HOwever, that can happen in diced or diceless games. But I will
grant that in a diceless game, if the GM is prone to wandering, it will be
wrose.
>
>>>1) Players cannot decide if their character's actions fail or succeed
>>>from an IC POV because deciding the outcome of an action isn't
>>>something that people do. People don't walk up to a chasm and then
>>>decide if they will or won't make a leap across it,
>
>>OK. But, having players decide on the outcome of an action I don't
>>really consider a diceless issue. It would fall under the use of
>>meta-game tools such as fudge/karma/luck points or under
>>improvisation.
>
> I'm referring to it as "diceless" (where "dice" refers to "random
> element") because metagaming techniques such as "points" or
> "improvisation" are elements without random elements. Things happen
> or don't happen because a player or GM decides they will -- not as the
> result of a "die roll". It is a diceless issue in that dice (or
> other random elements) are "out of the loop" and decision making
> (either GM or player) is the key factor. Even if the points are
> used to change random results, the feel they create is more that
> of diceless decision making.
Ok. But, if the GM is making the decision (ie the player is not making
the decision and there is nothing about diceless play which requires that
players make decisions) then this is not an issue (I'm assuming here that
fudge points and improvisation are _not_ a player option). Assuming that,
how does the diceless aspect prevent a player from achieving or
maintaining IC? (and excluding the following point).
Mmm... I don't know what your experience is with fudge points but, as long
as I didn't try to hard (ie i didn't min-max the use of the fudge point),
making the decision was easy (like, I need to succeed now! Fudge point!)
>>>In a succeed/fail system, my character needs an acrobatics roll to
>>>swing from a rope across the gap between two ships. I'll tend to get
>>>a different mental image if my character barely succeeds than if my
>>>character succeeds easily or even rolls the maximum result. I'm
>>>interpreting the added range of the dice into nuances that don't have
>>>a particular effect on the result but which add some color to the
>>>game. My character succeeds both ways but "differently" with respect
>>>to my mental image of the events.
>
>>So, this would assume that the GM does _not_ give a description of the
>>result. Rather, the player makes the roll, reads the dice, interprets
>>the result and then goes back to IC "feel" the result. Am I right?
>
> Not exactly. I make the roll and interpret it *from* IC. I don't
> need to change my emotional state or attitude and I don't need to
> spend much time thinking about it. I never really leave IC any more
> than I do creating a mental image from the descriptions the GM
> provides. Both processes are very similar -- take a bunch of sparse
> indications of what is going on and put them together into a detailed
> mental image that makes sense to the character. I don't need to
> think outside of the character to do this. YMMV.
YMMV for sure. I can't stay in character and interpret a die roll.
>
>>If so, this requires a player decision on how to intepret the result
>>(ie the player is making a decision) and that seems to go counter your
>>point above about diceless and player decisions.
>
> It isn't really a decision. It is more of an "explanation" or
> "embellishment". BTW, I sometimes will keep rolling dice to
> make decisions if more than one explanation comes up that I need
> to decide between.
Ugh! At that point, I'd look at the GM and say: "Do your job and tell me
what happened?" Making one die roll is OK, but making a series to get a
feeling of the outcome, is too much for me (ie IC out the window, again!).
>
> Perhaps the key to why certain types of decisions are so jarring to IC
> is what I said before -- that there is no analog to the decision IC.
> As I said, real people don't decide if they succeed or fail. There
> is, however, some IC analog to interpretation of description and event
> -- what would this character see that would make sense to produce the
> indicated situation. That makes it much easier to stay IC instead of
> popping in and out and that is a large part of what I desire.
>
I agree with that last paragraph. The difference seems to be on what jars
IC and that seems to vary a lot from person to person.
I'll go along with the "IC analogy to interpretation of description and
event" and if this is what you mean above. However, when I read that
phrase, what I see is that a description and result has been given; the
player is then asked to internalize that and somehow visualize it in IC
stance. Again, no problem with that. However, the moment the player adds
to it (ie goes beyond the result given by dice or GM), then the player is
improvising/deciding and I guess I don't see the difference between that
and the use of metagame tools such as improvisation.
Alain
A Lapalme
Lea Crowe (l...@hestia.demon.co.uk) writes:
>
>> (As an aside, some of us are still waiting for Lea Crowe's difinitive
>> article on "human factors" in gaming discusses a while ago on .design :-)
>
> south, lost the thread, and keep meaning to start again. *embarrassment*
> I think you may have kicked me back into life.
I'm not sure what this is about but it sounds good. Let's put pressure on
Lea (like maybe doing a few e-mail bombs ) (as if she needs pressure!)
>
> (Wandering slightly from the point) There's a (whisper it) human factors
> problem here which I've noticed repeatedly when playing and running
> Storyteller games (specifically "Werewolf"). Although players do indeed
> know their characters' numbers much better than the GM, and although
> the rules for turning those numbers into success criteria are well defined,
> players tend not to know the rules very well (hurrah) and end up falling
> back on the GM anyway. I've lost count of the number of times I've had
> to tell my "Werewolf" group that the difficulty of damage dice is *ALWAYS*
> six. Next Monday, someone rolling damage *will* ask me "What's the
> difficulty?" Guaranteed.
>
> So we have the dilemma that while the players *do* have the information
> that is needed for a mechanical resolution, it is very difficult for them
> to actually carry out that resolution.
>
Yet another reason to avoid systems.
My mileage is very close to Lea's on this one. I've never had a group of
playerswho I could count on to know the rules. They might know their
number (and sometimes they didn't) but it was guaranteed that one of them
wouldn't know something basic (like how to handle two weapon combat in RM
when the player made a 2 weapon specialist).
I personally hate doing the players' work.
Alain
A Lapalme
> In article <DJEKy...@freenet.carleton.ca>
> ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA "A Lapalme" writes (quoted stuff is me):
>
>> How unfun of you!
>
> I'm a tedious old creature, aren't I?
You said it, no me!
>
>> > The reason that throwing and reading dice doesn't interfere with
>> > my extreme in-character stance is that I *don't notice it*.
>>
>> I've never been that deep IC so I wouldn't know. All I know is that when
>> I do achieve some level of IC, it doesn't take much to pull me out.
>
> Fair enough. Obviously, if small things do interfere with your in-character
> point of view, they're going to aggravate you. I find people munching
> away and crinkling crisp packets while I'm trying to play *desperately*
> distracting. (Especially because they *always* do it during the
> particularly suspenseful bits of description. "The moon casts a rich,
> white light into the deep blue of the CRINKLE RATTLE CRUNCH. You
> scent the delicate musk of flowers and the fresh smell of POP FIZZ OH
> BUGGER HAS ANYONE GOT A CLOTH.")
Or people who keep cracking OOC jokes. They're anathema to IC for me.
>
>> Now, Lea, I thought by now that you knew I hate mechanics and that dice
>> are just innocent bystanders in my quest to be rid of all and any
>> mechanics!
>
> Oh, all right. I'll put the nuclear BaconMaker ack-ack gun back in
> the cupboard then.
That's good. Given my superior advantage you wouldn't have stood a chance.
>
> Yes, we are pretty much in agreement, I think: we just have different
> methods of going after the same thing (though I do feel obliged to
> provoke you by worrying that throwing out dice because you hate mechanics
> may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater; but then again it may
> not be, depending on your taste in bathwater).
I was always aware of that. It was just that I needed something drastic
to get rid of mechanics. When I tried Fudge I found myself devising more
complicated mechanics to make objective combat work. When I realized
that, I decided it was time to get rid of the dice, at least for a while.
(as a side note, I probably will be re-introducing dice in my game. I'll
then see how it works (high is good and good is bad, though)).
>
>> (I'll avoid systemless. I remember the flames that produced last year).
>
> I was only poking the embers, officer, and it just flared up again, all
> by itself! I didn't do nuffink!
>
Sure!
Alain
A Lapalme
> Odd.
> reading Both Lea and Alain's postings, they seem to be coming into some
> agreement.,
disagreeing on any really important issue (except dice, of course :))
>However, for me it is the system's speed, or lack there of,
> that makes it hard to maintain Ic stance. I don't care about complexity,
> but the amount of steps one takes to make a resolution does. I am in
> favcor of fairly rigid systems as long as they are consistent and
> speedy. The OCV+11-die roll= what you Hit method as a mod on the Hero
> system enhanced a lot of combats because of the mechanics speed. It also
> helps, in that you can judge your performance goes over time, but not
> against othersw until you hit. it streamlined things. If I have to
> perform a lot of look ups or steps it becomes harder to maintain I.C.
Actually, Scott, I even agree with what you say. If I have to use a
system, the type you prefer, would also be my preference.
>I
> can see exactly where CF failed, because one had to make decisions on
> the use of combat plot resources, in a way, very abstract from the
> thinking of the character in I.C. It is a simple system, but it is not a
> "character-reactive" system. because it forces the attention of the
> player. In a diced game the dice, like the words of the GM indicate the
> effects on the environment, and as so are adapted into just another
> input.
>
Even though I'm the one who has complained about it, I'm far from
convinced that the cards will _always_ get in the way of IC. My
experience is based on playing a character which was poorly conceived for
the plot the GM had in mind. A lot of my problem stemmed from that; the
cards just added to the problem.
Alain
A Lapalme
>
> IIRC, Sarah Kahn, the original simulationist/super-duper-IC player,
> didn't believe at all in using a game system. (She and Lea Crowe
> attempted to popularize the term systemless gaming, but they were
> brutally defeated by those who found the phrase logically
> lacking.)
>
uses dice - hell, even prophets are n't perfect).
Alain
Lea Crowe
> Lea Crowe <l...@hestia.demon.co.uk> writes:
> >Have you tried "Rolemaster"?
>
> Never played it. I do play Champions, though. Is that simple enough
> for you? :-)
Oh, come on, John. It's obvious that percentage dice are *far* more
conducive to characterisation than 3d6.
> Sorry, but I consider even "High is good, low is bad" a system of
> sorts ...
Well, we won't get into this again. To me, "system" implies something more
formal and less subject to interpretation. But I take your point and won't
argue the matter.
> I think that a lot of the techniques that allow either GM or players a
> large roll in determining the results of an action only work with a
> "like minded" group.
Certainly. I have been lucky enough to play with such groups, and have
therefore concluded that loose rules work. In other groups, they may
not. My condescending, arrogant general feeling is that groups which
do support loose rules tend to be a lot "healthier" than groups which
don't -- though I must admit that this contentment with loose rules is
a symptom of good health, rather than a cause. Nevertheless, because the use
of loose rules explicitly *requires* like-mindedness, I've found that
groups under such a scheme tend to rally round and start learning to be
like-minded.
> My group has a lot of varied
> opinions about things so I'm not quite ready to toss the stabilizing
> benefits of having a little more meat to a system than simple
> interpreted rolls.
Since I've already stated my case on this point, I'm not going to try to
change your mind again! Different strokes, etc.
> >I've lost count of the number of times I've had
> >to tell my "Werewolf" group that the difficulty of damage dice is *ALWAYS*
> >six. Next Monday, someone rolling damage *will* ask me "What's the
> >difficulty?" Guaranteed.
>
> Oh, I've seen that happen even with simpler rules. But they keep
> asking because you keep answering.
>
> Try rolling up a newspaper and hitting them over the nose.
Oh, you tempter.
> Another alternative is writing it in big red letters on their character
> sheet -- or maybe their foreheads backwards so they see it every time the
> look in the mirror. Maybe you should just take their character sheets and
> start playing their characters for them, too. I think you need to seize
> a little more control over your players... :-)
Heck, yes! And with a brilliant roleplayer like me in charge, this will
also provide us with a marked improvement in the quality of characterisation!
> Seriously, the only solution I can think of for lazy players is not to
> stand for it and do something to encourage change or simply demand it.
I don't think they're really lazy, it's just that "Werewolf" involves so many
variables, some of which are misleadingly communicated by what the players
have in front of them (the character sheets). I have enough trouble
with the rules myself. But I think you're right: I'll stop saying "six, same
as always" in a bad-tempered tone, and say, "six, same as always: why don't
you write it down?" instead.
> Newspaper. Go for the rolled up newspaper. It should keep them paying
> attention to you, too. :-)
Hmm: if you knew "Werewolf," you'd know that hitting werewolves on the nose
with rolled-up newspapers was a sure way to a one-way ticket to a live-action
game of "Wraith."
A Lapalme
> In article <DJLw6...@freenet.carleton.ca>
> ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA "A Lapalme" writes:
>
>> (high is good and good is bad, though).
>
> Innovative. Good is bad, eh? Don't you think your players may find that
> excessively negative?
>
Keeps them on their toes! They haven't caught on yet (except now they will
so since one of them, John, reads this board). If my game dies, Lea, I'll
know who to blame!!!
Alain
Lea Crowe
In article <1995Dec12...@vxdesy.desy.de> phil...@vxdesy.desy.de writes:
> Have you had much experience of extended campaign use of systemless or system
> lite (TM) roleplaying? I think I'd be happy with it, but the players genuinely
> seem to prefer having a detailed character sheet with lots of numbers.
I tend to think of such character sheets as "comfort blankets." When I ran
"Minions," some people--especially those whose main experience of roleplaying
was generic D&D etc.--were eager to take away a copy of the rules and stat
out their characters. Since there weren't any rules, I gave them a scheme
for codifying characters (stats in this range, skills in this range, etc.)
and let them do it. A couple of people did bother to write their characters
out, and held onto the sheets for a couple of sessions. It reassured them
that the ground wasn't about to shift underneath them, and since I always
took their word on things whether they were written down or not it didn't
make any odds to me.
"Brittany" began as a "RuneQuest" campaign, and the characters were generated
using that system--admittedly very loosely, as I allowed people to freely
choose their stats and skills rather than rolling or calculating them. At
first, and especially in critical situations such as combat, I adhered to
the rules and to the numbers on the sheets. As we all got to know each other
and the characters better, the details began to slip. Those characters who
joined in the last year of the game had descriptions without any numbers at
all on their character sheets. Because the game had had chance to develop
and become familiar, the "comfort blanket" was no longer needed.
> ... It took two full
> sessions to do character generation, though in all fairness, onlyabout two out
> of eight hours can have been taken up with numbers in total.
Heh heh. I've been known to spend most of an evening talking through a single
character, to get a feel for their background, personality and abilities (and
to encourage the player to develop that same feeling). An entire group
in eight hours? I'll have to learn how to do that--I no longer have as much
time as I used to!
> Can you suggest ways to reduce the systems elements of this?
Slip the system gradually. Begin by doing your lookups and counting off
hit points or whatever. Then, as the players become more comfortable with
their characters' abilities, be content to say things like "70? That's
pretty good--we'll call it a D critical." (Apologies for the use of combat
examples: I'm feeling lazy.) When they get used to this style, and come to
trust your judgment (or better still to contribute themselves: "Yes! 85!
That's got to be pretty nasty, Hywel!"), you can slip even further (in this
example, forget about "Yep, pretty nasty, let's call it an E crit," and just
settle for "pretty nasty"). This way you never leave the players stranded
without a reference point, but always relate your "systemless" decisions
back to familiar terms and methods.
> But I'd lik to go further, and perhaps try to wean the players off the long
> lists of numbers a little, encourage them to trust me that if they tell me
> their character has a hobby like sculpting, and they practice it, I won't
> forget it and no-one will call them cheats when it comes up in play!
I found that a keywords method was surprisingly effective at this. In "High
Society," characters' skills were absolute and freely chosen. So they could
have "Sword" or "Fighting"--they didn't have to have "Sword 60, Club 70,
Glaive-Glaive-Guisarme-Voulge 95..." They just chose terms which indicated
what their characters were good at and wrote them down. Skill lists tended
to begin with orthodox things like "Sword" and "Intrigue," and slowly sank
towards "Fall for Most Eligible Male Present" and "Cackle Evilly" before
bottoming out with "Faint Decorously." (I swear I'm not making this up.
People really did take these skills.) The "comfort blanket" effect was
there--people could point to their skills and say, "No, I really can do this,"
but because the lists just described their characters rather than delimiting
them, they felt comfortable putting things on there which weren't
game-critical. (Needless to say, there was no points cost or anything like
that for skills.) The lack of numbers meant that no-one felt they had to
look up rules whenever it came to task resolution: they just said "Ohhhh!
*gasp* I shall faint! Decorously!" and that was that. By removing the
formal affordance of the character sheet, it quickly became an informal
aide-memoire.
I had better explain the term "affordance." It essentially means the
impression a thing gives by the way it looks. For example, a door handle
has the affordance "pull"--so, even if it has a "push" sign by it, people
will tend to pull it! 3D push buttons on computer screens have the affordance
"push"--and, whaddaya know, push they do! Affordance is a key concept in
getting people to use something in the correct way. Now, in roleplaying,
there is of course no "correct" way, but there may be an "intended" way.
You, for instance, want to create an affordance of informality, while
retaining enough formality to reassure people that you're not about to pull
the rug out from under them. I think the "informal" character sheet can
be a very effective way to do this.
This is, I might add, based on a sample of one. You have been warned.
Lea Crowe
scott....@3do.com "Scott A. H. Ruggels" writes:
> Odd.
> reading Both Lea and Alain's postings, they seem to be coming into some
> agreement., However, for me it is the system's speed, or lack there of,
> that makes it hard to maintain Ic stance. I don't care about complexity,
> but the amount of steps one takes to make a resolution does. I am in
> favcor of fairly rigid systems as long as they are consistent and
> speedy. The OCV+11-die roll= what you Hit method as a mod on the Hero
> system enhanced a lot of combats because of the mechanics speed.
I agree about speed and number of steps: to me that is one of the major
factors in "complexity."
However, your example is one which I think illustrates a very anti-IC
design because of the large number of steps. Instead of "look up, roll,
compare," Hero uses "look up, add 11, roll, add up dice, subtract from
interim result, compare" (if I understand your explanation correctly:
forgive me if I haven't). This involves twice as many operations, including
two arithmetic operations (which are typically *very* slow).
> [Falkenstein] It is a simple system, but it is not a
> "character-reactive" system. because it forces the attention of the
> player.
Yes, excellent distinction. You've pinned down a problem that I have with
"CF"--and which, to be fair, some diceless types (but not you or I!) have
with diced games.
Lea Crowe
> (high is good and good is bad, though).
Innovative. Good is bad, eh? Don't you think your players may find that
excessively negative?
--
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) writes:
>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>Not exactly. I make the roll and interpret it *from* IC. I don't
>need to change my emotional state or attitude and I don't need to
>spend much time thinking about it. I never really leave IC any more
>than I do creating a mental image from the descriptions the GM
>provides. Both processes are very similar -- take a bunch of sparse
>indications of what is going on and put them together into a detailed
>mental image that makes sense to the character. I don't need to
>think outside of the character to do this. YMMV.
>
>
>Perhaps the key to why certain types of decisions are so jarring to IC
>is what I said before -- that there is no analog to the decision IC.
>As I said, real people don't decide if they succeed or fail. There
>is, however, some IC analog to interpretation of description and event
>-- what would this character see that would make sense to produce the
>indicated situation. That makes it much easier to stay IC instead of
>popping in and out and that is a large part of what I desire.
>
>John Morrow
>
Alain,
I would have to strongly agree with John statements. like a verbal description
of the situation--not being as accurate as a film, or being there--is still
enough for one to be able to achieve an immersive I.C. experience, the dots on
the dice are an indicator of the outcome of the character's action. This is
where the streamlined mechanics come in. Anything more that figuring out the
degree, of success/ failure at a glance, would demand too much mental
resources to maintain I.C. Making "concious decisions", by definition demasnds
more mental resources. deciding which card to play would be, in my opinion,
and unacceptable drain on metal resources away from maintaining and I.C.
stance. Description based, I believe, also would demand too much resources for
this to be viable while maintaining the I.C. stance. I can sort of see how it
could be done, if the description was specifically from the character's P.O.V.
and had little to no concern for "meta-gaming" concerns.
Scott
Christopher Hearns
>
> No problem. My point is that absent some objective form of
> resolution, player or GM must actually *decide* if an action fails or
> succeeds based on some criteria.
>
> There are three problems I personally have with this:
>
> 1) Players cannot decide if their character's actions fail or succeed
> from an IC POV because deciding the outcome of an action isn't
> something that people do. People don't walk up to a chasm and then
> decide if they will or won't make a leap across it,
I don't know about how you've played diceless, but this is
generally not how I play diceless. Same as in a diced game, the players
declare their actions. But, in a diced game the GM rolls the dice to
determine what happens, and then tells you whether you succeed or fail;
in a diceless game, the GM skips the rolling of the dice phase and just
tells you whether you succeed or fail (it's actually more exciting then
that, but my explanation should suffise for now). So the characters walk
up to the chasm, decide to leap across it, and the GM determines whether
or not they make it across (see I did not have to leave IC once :)
> 2) Any decision made by a person without benefit of a randomizing
> element has a _reason_ behind it. Dice don't have such a reason
> behind them. If a reason exists, I'm drawn to look for the pattern
> and to figure it out. Whether I do or don't figure it out, simply
> being drawn to try by my curiosity damages my SoD and attention to
> character. The game turns, for me, from experiencing an adventure
> through my characters POV to a pattern of decisions I'm trying to
> figure things out. I can enjoy this in a puzzle or tactical game but
> it doesn't work for me if I'm trying to play in character.
This can be nothing but a lack of trust in your GM that you are
willing to put in the dice. Let me explain, I have a character who is a
wizard, but recently all his spells have been fizzling. For days on end
his spells have not worked when they were needed. Playing IC, I would
have to assume that their were some external factors involved in my
spells not succeeding. Perhaps some more powerful wizard was countering
them as they were cast. Another explanation could be that some member of
the party was a carrier of some bizarre magic dampening field. Regardless
of the truth of the matter, my PC is starting to question why his magic
keeps failing. With dice or without dice, this is what my PC should be
thinking. With dice though, it may just have been the dice which caused
my spells to misfire (although a good GM would no doubt retrofit the poor
dice rolls in to the story). Without dice I would probably say that were
my spells to continually fail there was an ingame reason for them to do
so. Which is the proper way to roleplay the character though? What I hear
you saying above is that you will look for the reasons for failure (or
success), but don't we always do this? With dice, I see too much use of
OOC knowledge. IE: I failed because of the dice. Whereas the character
should be wondering to himself: Why did I fail? When that tenth spell
fails to go off because of poor dice rolls, my character is going to be
wondering what external factors have caused him to fail, and if the
answer turns out to be dice, he will be mighty pissed off.
> 3) I'm personally terrible at making snap judgements -- especially
> when I have no preference for a particular outcome (yes, this can be a
> big problem when I GM). The result of asking me if an action succeeds
> or fails is likely to be a long pause followed by a reluctant answer.
> It is much easier and faster for me to interpret even a high or low
> roll than to decide between two items when I have no preference for
> one over the other -- which is most of the time when I'm playing.
> When I don't have a preference, I *really* don't have a preference and
> thinking about it doesn't do much to change that.
I suppose the inability to make decisions quickly could get in
the way of running diceless. I don't understand how it can be difficult
to determine whether actions succeed or fail though. I do not treat
actions as my personal opinion. Whether they succeed or fail has very
little to do with my preference but with: a) the PCs skill level at what
is being attempted or b) the theme at hand. a counts more than b. I don't
see what preference has to do with these decisions. The decisions are
made based on the game world.
Christopher Hearns
John Aegard
A Lapalme said:
> Keeps them on their toes! They haven't caught on yet (except now they will
> so since one of them, John, reads this board). If my game dies, Lea, I'll
> know who to blame!!!
No need to adopt any weird die-rolling techniques to keep us on our toes,
Alain. Those rubbery plastic chairs that we use in your basement keep me
on mine! ;v>
Actually, now that I've begun GM'ing again, I've re-discovered one of the
little perks of the art -- being able to command the best chair at the
table. It's nice to be able to relax in my girlfriend's oak rocking chair
while everybody else is stuck with our conventional kitchen table chairs.
Lends gravity to the august role of GM; all I need now is a gavel. <grin>
Johnzo, who slouches a little too much.
A Lapalme
>
> I would have to strongly agree with John statements. like a verbal description
> of the situation--not being as accurate as a film, or being there--is still
> enough for one to be able to achieve an immersive I.C. experience, the dots on
> the dice are an indicator of the outcome of the character's action. This is
> where the streamlined mechanics come in. Anything more that figuring out the
> degree, of success/ failure at a glance, would demand too much mental
> resources to maintain I.C. Making "concious decisions", by definition demasnds
> more mental resources. deciding which card to play would be, in my opinion,
> and unacceptable drain on metal resources away from maintaining and I.C.
> stance. Description based, I believe, also would demand too much resources for
> this to be viable while maintaining the I.C. stance. I can sort of see how it
> could be done, if the description was specifically from the character's P.O.V.
> and had little to no concern for "meta-gaming" concerns.
>
> Scott
>
>
I have found that going descriptive has made it a lot easier to describe
from a character's POV. To me, that's the whole point of descriptive
based: no explanation are provided by game mechanics; everything comes
from the internal integrity of the setting.
**********
As I said in another post, ideally for me, I wouldd never have to roll a
die or make a deicsion when I'm playing. Except that I keep remember that
one experience last winter using Fudge pints where uthe use of the Fudge
point actually enhanced instead of pyulling me away from IC. The jry is
still out on that one for me. (but the CF cards to bug me)
Alain
Mary K. Kuhner
the only time I can recall my group really using player-determined event
resolution.
We'd been playing out the magical initiation of a player character using
a mix of GM fiat and diced resolution. At the end of it, the character,
Jayhawk, challenged her captor/initiator on his home ground. She chose
to cast it as a purely moral struggle, not a contest of power in any
form: "I have survived the tests that you also faced, and I am sane, I
hold to my moral principles, and I have the right to demand the same of
you."
At that point, by unspoken agreement between player and GM, the GM
stopped adjucating much of Jayhawk's relationship to her environment (a
magical construct belonging to her captor). I vividly remember saying
things like "I [Jayhawk] hold up my hand and a sapphire crystal, the color
of my eyes, appears in it. Its radiance illuminates a circle around me."
The GM essentially gave control of the environment temporarily over to
me. It was really magical, because it supported exactly what the
character was thinking, feeling and doing--*she* understood herself to
be in control that way. The outward power reflected her internal
situation perfectly.
This is where I'd use the technique: it made sense on a character level
as well as on a player level, and so supported IC rather than
distracting. One might try a similar thing in a character's moment of
triumph--when the general's battle plan is really going perfectly,
allow the player to describe that plan unfolding. In real life
sometimes it feels as though everything is magically happening as you
want it to--the metagame "let the player decide" tactic might actually
work in such circumstances.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
--
I do not receive posts from the following systems because they tolerate
abuse of Usenet: interramp.com psi.com scruz.net
If you wish me to see your message anyway please use email.
A Lapalme
> The following bit of a game keeps coming to mind as I read this. It's
> the only time I can recall my group really using player-determined event
> resolution.
>[snipped]
> me. It was really magical, because it supported exactly what the
> character was thinking, feeling and doing--*she* understood herself to
> be in control that way. The outward power reflected her internal
> situation perfectly.
>
> This is where I'd use the technique: it made sense on a character level
> as well as on a player level, and so supported IC rather than
> distracting. One might try a similar thing in a character's moment of
> triumph--when the general's battle plan is really going perfectly,
> allow the player to describe that plan unfolding. In real life
> sometimes it feels as though everything is magically happening as you
> want it to--the metagame "let the player decide" tactic might actually
> work in such circumstances.
>
Thank you for this example. At least that makes two of us who have had
the experience!
********
The trick, naturally, is for the GM to be able to sense when these moments
are at hand and pass over the flame to the player. Also, I would suspect
that if the player is not used to this sort of thing _or_ the player is
not that comfortable with the character, the player might have major
problems pulling it off. I've seen many players get a jar from having the
pwoer of decision passed on to them.
Alain
John Morrow
> I don't know about how you've played diceless, but this is
>generally not how I play diceless. Same as in a diced game, the players
>declare their actions. But, in a diced game the GM rolls the dice to
>determine what happens, and then tells you whether you succeed or fail;
>in a diceless game, the GM skips the rolling of the dice phase and just
>tells you whether you succeed or fail (it's actually more exciting then
>that, but my explanation should suffise for now). So the characters walk
>up to the chasm, decide to leap across it, and the GM determines whether
>or not they make it across (see I did not have to leave IC once :)
I don't think I've every seen diced play where the GM does all the
rolling. I know it can be done but I'm not sure how common it is.
From what I've seen, most players tend to roll their own dice. But
what I was addressing specifically was several mechanism discussed
here and used in several games where there player must make choices
about their character's success or failure. But you are right. If
the GM calls the shots, move on to the the new two points. This one
doesn't apply.
> This can be nothing but a lack of trust in your GM that you are
>willing to put in the dice. Let me explain, I have a character who is a
>wizard, but recently all his spells have been fizzling. For days on end
>his spells have not worked when they were needed. Playing IC, I would
>have to assume that their were some external factors involved in my
>spells not succeeding.
Not necessarily. Why isn't, "I keep screwwing up," or "I'm having a
run of bad luck," a valid assumption? Why do professional athletes
have streaks where they can do no wrong and then have another streak
of bad luck where they can't win even when no external forces are
invovled?
>Perhaps some more powerful wizard was countering
>them as they were cast. Another explanation could be that some member of
>the party was a carrier of some bizarre magic dampening field.
And maybe they just aren't being cast right.
>Regardless
>of the truth of the matter, my PC is starting to question why his magic
>keeps failing. With dice or without dice, this is what my PC should be
>thinking. With dice though, it may just have been the dice which caused
>my spells to misfire (although a good GM would no doubt retrofit the poor
>dice rolls in to the story).
Why? Why can't a character have a run of bad luck without some larger
metagaming reason for it, retrofitted or otherwise? That is almost
*exactly* my point. If there is a reason, fine. If there isn't,
fine. But I don't want to know that as soon as my characters have a
run of bad luck, it means that there must be external forces at work.
The effect is not unlike,
GM: "You see a rock laying on the dungeon floor."
Player: "Why is the GM describing this rock and not the few hundred we
probably already passed. It much be important."
At that point, I feel the GM might just as well say, "There is an
important rock over there that is the key to the adventure so make
sure you pay attention to it."
>Without dice I would probably say that were
>my spells to continually fail there was an ingame reason for them to do
>so. Which is the proper way to roleplay the character though?
Assuming that a larger plot is afoot is no more "proper" than assuming
that the character is having a streak of bad luck. Without some feel
for what actually went wrong, there isn't a right answer.
My personal feeling is that by letting the player see how well they
roll the dice, they have some idea of how well they did. If they fail
despite good rolls, they have a good reason to suspect something
external is happening. If the rolls are bad, it simply means the
character is screwwing up. This is how real people sort out external
forces from bad luck. In the middle range of rolls, the player might
never really know. This is a valid effect, too.
>What I hear
>you saying above is that you will look for the reasons for failure (or
>success), but don't we always do this? With dice, I see too much use of
>OOC knowledge. IE: I failed because of the dice.
The character didn't fail because of the dice. The character failed
because they performed the task poorly as indicated by the dice.
Nothing OOC about that.
>Whereas the character
>should be wondering to himself: Why did I fail? When that tenth spell
>fails to go off because of poor dice rolls, my character is going to be
>wondering what external factors have caused him to fail, and if the
>answer turns out to be dice, he will be mighty pissed off.
The dice represent all the factors that go into performing the task
that might cause you to fail. The answer isn't "the dice" -- it is
that the character just kept screwwing up and doing something wrong.
It happens in real life. It doesn't seem to happen very often in a
diceless game. I, personally, don't want every failure to be
significant. See the "significant rock" comment, above.
> I suppose the inability to make decisions quickly could get in
>the way of running diceless. I don't understand how it can be difficult
>to determine whether actions succeed or fail though. I do not treat
>actions as my personal opinion. Whether they succeed or fail has very
>little to do with my preference but with: a) the PCs skill level at what
>is being attempted or b) the theme at hand. a counts more than b. I don't
>see what preference has to do with these decisions. The decisions are
>made based on the game world.
Life doesn't have a theme. I don't really look to impose a hard theme
on my games although one is free to develop. And theme is, in part,
what I mean by a "reason". If things happen because of a theme, they
are happening for reasons I cannot square with an IC perspective.
What do I mean by preference and having trouble finding one, though?
Example:
I'm playing a paladin type character who is holding a holy sword. He
has just opened a door that was imprisoning a powerful demon and the
demon has stepped out. Does the character defeat the demon?
"No" isn't an adequate answer because a lucky shot chould reasonably
allow the character to kill the demon. "Yes" also isn't an adequate
answer because the character is unlikely to kill the demon and the
kill would be surprising. Do I have a preference either way? No,
because I find either result satisfactory, even thematically (there is
no more heroic death that to die fighting evil yet any defeat is
bitter.). So which do I pick as either GM or player and why?
John Morrow
John Morrow
Lea Crowe <l...@hestia.demon.co.uk> writes:
>Heh heh. I've been known to spend most of an evening talking through a single
>character, to get a feel for their background, personality and abilities (and
>to encourage the player to develop that same feeling). An entire group
>in eight hours? I'll have to learn how to do that--I no longer have as much
>time as I used to!
Well my group sometimes plays one or two session "pick-up" games where
everyone has characters within an hour or less. If we took eight, the
game wouldn't happen (and some haven't happened because we missed the
"window"). And some of those pick-up games, often played with totally
random characters, are quite enjoyable and memorable for everyone.
And there is where I see rules and character sheets as important tools.
By formalizing character creation, you create a level of understanding
between player and GM without having to spend hours talking things over.
Systems, can save you time. If you want to save time, embrace the
system. The system is your friend. Trust the system... :-)
>Slip the system gradually. [snip]
And how long does this take, oh ye of too little time? :-)
My group frequently ignores our own system and we wind up with
essentially a "roll high/low" approach (our combat system attempts are
notorious for degenerating into that). Heck, I've been doing that
with the Hero rules in the game I'm currently running (Don't even ask
why I'm using the Hero system. What was I thinking?). But by keeping
the system there, I have it if I need it. Just because the system is
there, you don't always have to use it. Just because you largely
ignore it, you don't have to get rid of it.
>The lack of numbers meant that no-one felt they had to
>look up rules whenever it came to task resolution: they just said "Ohhhh!
>*gasp* I shall faint! Decorously!" and that was that. By removing the
>formal affordance of the character sheet, it quickly became an informal
>aide-memoire.
I don't know. That sounds alot like diceless, drama based gaming to me.
;-)
Maybe a "profit and loss" analysis of what the benefits and problems
are of various paradigms could be interesting. For example, by
dropping the system to bare basics, you gain a lot of flexibility and,
perhaps, faster resolution. But you also lose some tools that can
save player and GM a lot of time by easing communication via a more
objective codified language. It would help people pick the trade-offs
that are right for them and their group.
John Morrow
A Lapalme
To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
justified.
Alain
--
netscape-newsrc-map-file
newsrc-nnrp.ott.hookup.net C:\NETSCAPE\INSTALL\NEWS\NEWSRC FALSE
newsrc-news C:\NETSCAPE\INSTALL\NEWS\NEWSRC FALSE
newsrc-gw1 C:\NETSCAPE\INSTALL\NEWS\NEWSRC FALSE
newsrc-nnrp.ott.hookup.net C:\netscape\install\news\X0OBPRKJ.rcg
TRUE
Lea Crowe
> Well my group sometimes plays one or two session "pick-up" games where
> everyone has characters within an hour or less. If we took eight, the
> game wouldn't happen (and some haven't happened because we missed the
> "window"). And some of those pick-up games, often played with totally
> random characters, are quite enjoyable and memorable for everyone.
Quite. I should make it clearer in my writing that I come very much from
a "campaign" style perspective. The methods I use for long-term games
are obviously not appropriate for short-term ones. (I find it very
difficult to run short-term games, and I generally prefer to play in
long-term ones as well. Nothing personal, you understand.)
> But by keeping
> the system there, I have it if I need it. Just because the system is
> there, you don't always have to use it. Just because you largely
> ignore it, you don't have to get rid of it.
Actually, this is a much more concise statement of what I was trying to
suggest to Hywel. By slipping the system gradually, it is easy to shed
the group's reliance on it (which can make it a straitjacket), turning
the system more into a safety-net that can be invoked when necessary.
Personally, my take is a little stronger than this: my experience is that
the safety net will be needed less and less frequently as the game develops,
until it reaches a largely vestigial status.
> >The lack of numbers meant that no-one felt they had to
> >look up rules whenever it came to task resolution: they just said "Ohhhh!
> >*gasp* I shall faint! Decorously!" and that was that. By removing the
> >formal affordance of the character sheet, it quickly became an informal
> >aide-memoire.
>
> I don't know. That sounds alot like diceless, drama based gaming to me.
> ;-)
You're right: it was a lot like diceless gaming, except that we used dice.
> Maybe a "profit and loss" analysis of what the benefits and problems
> are of various paradigms could be interesting.
Mmm, yes! I think this is an excellent idea! Not only would it help
people to find modes that they were comfortable with, it might spark
people into trying out new styles that would never otherwise have
occurred to them; it might also underline some unstated assumptions in our
current RPG techniques that would benefit from being, well, stated (and
thereby disagreed with by David Berkman).
Karen J. Cravens
A Lapalme <ai...@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>"Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>>Leon von Stauber <leo...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
>>>>diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
>>>>*decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
>>>>shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
>>>>with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
>>>>explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
>>>>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>>>>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
>>>
>>>Perfectly stated.
>>>
>>>This is *the* IC justification to use neutral randomizers like dice.
>>>
>>YES!!! EXACTLY!!! SOMEONE GETS IT!! YESS!! GIVE THE MAN A CEE-GAR!!
>>
>>ahem
>>
>uh... what's wrong with the GM deciding instead (from an IC POV that is)?
>
>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>justified.
Oh, so you're saying GM's don't get the privilege of using an IC
POV? Huh? Are you? :}
Maybe I'm unique (well, actually I like to think I am, but never
mind), but I like dice *as GM* for pretty much the above reason. I
don't like, as GM, to be *too* wrapped up in the metagame, and dice
help me get away from that.
And I prefer dice as player for somewhat of the same reason...
because if the GM decides, it's harder for me to dismiss it as a
"random occurrence," and that still involves getting more OOC. It's
not enough to make me dislike diceless as player, but given the
choice I'd prefer the GM used dice, or at least pretended to.
Silver
--........................................................................
Sic semper telecommunicatis.
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>"Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>>Leon von Stauber <leo...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Ah, but thatis where the card differ from dice and are similar to
>>>>diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
>>>>*decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
>>>>shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
>>>>with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
>>>>explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
>>>>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>>>>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
>>>
>>>Perfectly stated.
>>>
>>>This is *the* IC justification to use neutral randomizers like dice.
>>>
>>YES!!! EXACTLY!!! SOMEONE GETS IT!! YESS!! GIVE THE MAN A CEE-GAR!!
>>
>>ahem
>>
>uh... what's wrong with the GM deciding instead (from an IC POV that is)?
>
>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>justified.
>
The GM having to "decide" them becomes, not an effect of the environment, but
an arbitrary action inimicable to pure IC.
Scott
ekb
[description of player controlling the enviroment working because the
character could control the enviroment]
> This is where I'd use the technique: it made sense on a character level
> as well as on a player level, and so supported IC rather than
> distracting. One might try a similar thing in a character's moment of
> triumph--when the general's battle plan is really going perfectly,
> allow the player to describe that plan unfolding. In real life
> sometimes it feels as though everything is magically happening as you
> want it to--the metagame "let the player decide" tactic might actually
> work in such circumstances.
I find that the "let the player decide" tactic works well to determine
the survival of badly wounded (but not totally obliterated) characters.
The decision as to whether a character lives or dies has unusually large
metagaming effects, so OOC "fudging" is better tolerated. More
importantly, whether a character lives or dies (& how long the character
lingers after receiving mortal wounds) is arguably as much a matter of
the character's "will to live" as of the physical effects of the wound.
And IMHO the strength of a character's "will to live" is just as well (if
not better) determined by (IC) player decision than by a die roll.
Admittedly, this is a case of the player determining what the character
does, rather than determining what the enviroment outside the character
does. But it's also something that "traditionally" is determined by cut &
dried game mechanics and die rolls.
Erol K. Bayburt
Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>In article <4anprn$5...@badger.3do.com>
> scott....@3do.com "Scott A. H. Ruggels" writes:
>
>> Odd.
>> reading Both Lea and Alain's postings, they seem to be coming into some
>> agreement., However, for me it is the system's speed, or lack there of,
>> that makes it hard to maintain Ic stance. I don't care about complexity,
>> but the amount of steps one takes to make a resolution does. I am in
>> favcor of fairly rigid systems as long as they are consistent and
>> speedy. The OCV+11-die roll= what you Hit method as a mod on the Hero
>> system enhanced a lot of combats because of the mechanics speed.
>
>I agree about speed and number of steps: to me that is one of the major
>factors in "complexity."
>
>However, your example is one which I think illustrates a very anti-IC
>design because of the large number of steps. Instead of "look up, roll,
>compare," Hero uses "look up, add 11, roll, add up dice, subtract from
>interim result, compare" (if I understand your explanation correctly:
>forgive me if I haven't). This involves twice as many operations, including
>two arithmetic operations (which are typically *very* slow).
No, you just write down what 11+OCV is at the top of your sheet, and subtract
the die roll, few steps. Well I might have a an extra step or two involving
levels and particular weapons, but at that point I have "habituated" the
character.
>
>> [Falkenstein] It is a simple system, but it is not a
>> "character-reactive" system. because it forces the attention of the
>> player.
>
>Yes, excellent distinction. You've pinned down a problem that I have with
>"CF"--and which, to be fair, some diceless types (but not you or I!) have
>with diced games.
Interesting... So then the two schools of play tend to be "knocked out of their
trance by completely different aspects of the same problem, OOC concerns. On the
one hand it may be the mechanics, and in others it may be the dramatics. Well I
alway thought that was where the dividing line was.
Scott
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Okay, that might be a little flip. I believe it is a control issue. I DO NOZT mean a trust issue, but a control issue. The dots on t=
he dice are another input as is the GM's description. But the randomness of the dice "simulate" the chance events in real life. It i=
s that little bits of chaos that add to the verisimilitude. You are also right about the players not making OOC decisions, but the r=
andomizer is not a surrogate of decisionmaking, but a performance indicator (or should be). It CAN be, but mostly for GM's making si=
tuational decisions for groups of NPC's. However this is no excuse for poor system design or implementations. The dice then become =
the dagger in the heart of plotting, because to me and most of the I.C. players I know, the plotting is far more jarring and "Artifi=
cial" than the dice.
Scott
Leon von Stauber
>>Leon von Stauber <leo...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>>>>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
>>>
>>
>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>justified.
You're right. This in itself supports either GM fiat or randomizers. The
decision between these two is made based on factors other than preference
for IC play. (Those factors were explored in the diced/diceless threads
still smoldering in memory; I don't want to be the one to reopen that
box!)
__________________________________________________________________________
Leon von Stauber http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~leonvs/
University of Texas Computation Center <leo...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>
Zilker Internet Park <leo...@zilker.net>
"We have not come to save you, but you will not die in vain!"
Leon von Stauber
>>>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>>>>>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
>>>>
>decision between these two is made based on factors other than preference
>for IC play. (Those factors were explored in the diced/diceless threads
Actually, this decision can also be influenced by preference for IC play.
As discussed in the aforementioned threads and in recent postings, IC
players may not want to know that the GM isn't using dice, baecause it
might force consideration of the metagame on them.
BACHMAN DONALD A
Jeff Stehman <ste...@southwind.net> wrote:
>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) writes:
>
>>I think that a lot of the techniques that allow either GM or players a
>>large roll in determining the results of an action only work with a
>>at things, decisions free of any objective standard will seem
>>unpredictable and often unreasonable.
>
>Let me illustrate John's point with a simple example from a recent solo
>game.
>
> Gm: As you ride over a another rise you suddenly see a *huge*
> pack of wolves lounging on a hillock off to your left."
>
>With the way he said "huge" a vision of a pack of 50-60 wolves immediately
>lept to mind and I started wondering what kind of magic was work. Then I
>remember who I was dealing with.
>
> Me: About how many wolves are there?
>
> Gm: A dozen or so.
>
> Me: I see. I stare them down as I ride past. My steed is a phantom
> conjuration. I'm not too worried.
This reminds me of the time a character of mine came around a corner and
saw a number of security guards:
Me: How many do I see?
Tim: You see a couple, who are warning you to back up.
Me (feeling confident): I ignore them an continue on.
Tim: Okay, you get shot 30 times.
Me: 30 times?!?!? How?
Tim: Well there are 30 guards, and . . . .
Me: 30?!? You said I saw a few. How can there be 30?
Tim: Well, you didn't have line of sight on all of
them because some are standing in front of others.
Me: Yeah, there were all standing perfectly in line.
>
>The gm in question is very good at running npcs; one of the best I've
>ever gamed with. But his perceptions of the world are so skewed from
>any norm when it comes to numbers or distances or the like that we would
>*never* trust him in a non-rigid system. We get into enough trouble as
>it is due to mental images not being in sync. (Oh the number of times
>area affecting spells have been cast on 2-3 opponents when there were a
>half-dozen of us, or the times we thought someone was bleeding to death
>when they actually had a little scratch...)
A GMs preoccupation with the world may keep him from realizing that the
players only see the world through what he says.
>
>--
>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/
--
Donald A. Bachman | Support English as the 'Lingua Franca' of the modern world.
John Morrow
>I find that the "let the player decide" tactic works well to determine
>the survival of badly wounded (but not totally obliterated) characters.
Such characters are often unconscious so there is no effective In
Character (IC) Point Of View (POV) ("Look! Stars!"). At that point,
the player will probably have dropped into audience mode, anyway, so
metagaming decisions aren't that big of a factor since there is no IC
POV to distrupt.
Oh, :-)
John Morrow
A Lapalme
> A Lapalme <ai...@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>>>Leon von Stauber <leo...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>they are so useful to us IC POV people. They decide things for us --
>>>>>things our characters (and thus the IC POV) would have no say in.
>>>>
>>>
>>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>>justified.
>
> decision between these two is made based on factors other than preference
> for IC play. (Those factors were explored in the diced/diceless threads
> box!)
>
want to know if I'm missing something vital. Many of the IC players have
said that they need randomizers. I'm trying to find out why.
********
As an aside, I do find it annoying that we have to avoid certain topics on
this board (the dice-diceless one being the one which comes to mind;
plot-non-plotted being another as system/systemless). Are we letting the
flame throwers control our freedom of speech?
Alain
A Lapalme
> In article <4b9g1t$e...@nic.ott.hookup.net>,
> A Lapalme <ai...@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>uh... what's wrong with the GM deciding instead (from an IC POV that is)?
>>
>>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>>justified.
>
> Oh, so you're saying GM's don't get the privilege of using an IC
> POV? Huh? Are you? :}
(I realise you put a smiley there, but I'll answer anyways since it brings
up a good point).
No, I'm not. I'm the one who was saying a few weeks ago
that IC stance
for a GM is a good thing and, interestingly enough, some of the strong IC
people here disagreed.
As an aside, I think a large effect here, which has gone unmentionned, is
that we expect different things from the GM. Some think that one of the
major GM function is to adjucate while others, like me, think that the
major GM function is to create a sustainable artificial reality.
>
> Maybe I'm unique (well, actually I like to think I am, but never
> mind), but I like dice *as GM* for pretty much the above reason. I
> don't like, as GM, to be *too* wrapped up in the metagame, and dice
> help me get away from that.
I think I've said it before but I'll repeat. Dice, alone I don't mind.
Dice attached to mechanics take my energy and attention away from the game
I'm Gming.
>
> And I prefer dice as player for somewhat of the same reason...
> because if the GM decides, it's harder for me to dismiss it as a
> "random occurrence," and that still involves getting more OOC. It's
> not enough to make me dislike diceless as player, but given the
> choice I'd prefer the GM used dice, or at least pretended to.
>
Ideally, I don't deal with as little OOC/metagame things as I can when I
play. If the GM wants the players to use dice but doesn't expect us to know
the rules, I'm happy. Or, if the GM wants to roll everything behind a
screen, I'm also happy. What I really want is the GM to give me, the
player, the information I need to share the "reality" and I've yet to see
a GM who succeeds at this while manipulating a diced system.
Alain
A Lapalme
>>
>>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>>justified.
>>
>
> The GM having to "decide" them becomes, not an effect of the environment, but
> an arbitrary action inimicable to pure IC.
>
Why is it inimicable to pure IC? GM decisions are just another form of
OOC just like randomizers are another form of OOC.
Alain
A Lapalme
>>>
>>>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>>>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>>>justified.
>>>
>>>Alain
>>
>>The GM having to "decide" them becomes, not an effect of the environment, but
>>an arbitrary action inimicable to pure IC.
>>
>
> Okay, that might be a little flip. I believe it is a control issue. I DO NOZT mean a trust issue, but a control issue. The dots on t=
> he dice are another input as is the GM's description. But the randomness of the dice "simulate" the chance events in real life. It i=
> s that little bits of chaos that add to the verisimilitude. You are also right about the players not making OOC decisions, but the r=
> andomizer is not a surrogate of decisionmaking, but a performance indicator (or should be). It CAN be, but mostly for GM's making si=
> tuational decisions for groups of NPC's. However this is no excuse for poor system design or implementations. The dice then become =
> the dagger in the heart of plotting, because to me and most of the I.C. players I know, the plotting is far more jarring and "Artifi=
> cial" than the dice.
>
simply because we have never approached this discussion from the IC stance.
What you are saying is very close to what John Morrow said a week ago (I
think, anyways). However, again, as in John's case, you seem to be
equating a lack of randomness with plotted games. This is not necessarily
the case. Just because our most ardent diceless on this board is also a
plotting advocate doesn't mean that diceless = plotted. If I'm reading
Christopher Hearns(or is it Kearns)(sorry about this Christopher, memory
failure at this end) post correctly, he is a diceless GM but doesn't seem
to need or use a plotted approach.
In any case, let's assume for a minute that a diceless game can be
"non-plotted". Then, how does the lack of randomizers affect the IC
stance?
To speed this up a bit, I grant that the lack of randomizers might make it
more difficult to get there but, once you are there, does it still matter?
Alain
A Lapalme
> character's explanations for that event, as much as possible.
Me too.
>
> It is relatively easy for me to train myself to reject thoughts about
> "why did that happen?" that are not IC, if the metagame reason that it
> happened is "the dice said so." Asking myself "why did the dice say
> so?" OOC is useless, and I know it's useless, so it's fairly easy not
> to do it.
>
I'll buy that. It's hard to argue with dice. They have no reason.
> If the metagame reason is "the GM said so" then thoughts about "why did
> he say so?" might produce something meaningful. He said so because he
> wants me to do such-and-such. He said so because he is angling for
> such-and-such effect. These thoughts are relatively hard for me to
> dismiss, because they might actually tell me something informative and
> meaningful--it's bad information, it detracts from my enjoyment, but
> it's real and predictive. I instinctively want to predict what's going
> to happen (after all, my character wants to do that too, in most
> cases). My instincts are working against my enjoyment here.
>
This happens to me too but only when the game is slow or I'm bored.
Mostly, these questions occur between sessions. Probably why it isn't a
factor for me.
> Ideally I could avoid asking such questions about GM mediated decisions,
> but I find it hard, especially in very high-tension situations such as
> combat. It is easier for me when conversation is involved, because I
> trust the GM to be himself close enough to IC that his decisions are
> driven wholly by the logic of the character. Character logic is not
> enough in combat.
>
Interesting. In combat, it usually doesn't matter to me at all.
Alain
Paul Andrew King
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
The reason I keep digging on this is that I
>want to know if I'm missing something vital. Many of the IC players have
>said that they need randomizers. I'm trying to find out why.
>
Do you mean that some of us have said we prefer randomisers or that some
have said that methods requiring *player* decisions are a problem ?
I'm not sure that the first point is directly relevant to this issue - it
might be indirectly, in that IC play is easier if the players are
comfortable with whatever mechanics are used.
The second is more relevant. I find Star Wars' Force Points acceptable -
their use is close enough to the IC viewpoint to not interfere. I suspect
I would find Castle Falkenstein's card system more intrusive as it requires
more thought and because it involves the player viewpoint, but not really
the character's.
Generally for IC play I would want a system which does not require much
attention to be spent on perspectives other than in character.
Paul K.
David Veal
A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>OK. You and I agree on this. The reason I keep digging on this is that I
>want to know if I'm missing something vital. Many of the IC players have
>said that they need randomizers. I'm trying to find out why.
Randomizers introduce a genuine uncertainty into events, much
like "real life." No matter how good your character is at something
you can always screw up, or something happen to throw you off. A GM
is, however, reasonable, considerably more biased in his (or her) decisions.
For a lot of people it gives a better feel of "realism" because
dice (or any randomizer) introduces an element out of everyone's control.
Whether that's desireable is a matter of opinion, and probably
game dependent.
--
David Veal ve...@utk.edu / ve...@web.ce.utk.edu
"Of course the government and the newspapers lie. But in a
democracy they're not the *same* lies!" - GURPS Illuminati
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>
>
>>
>> No problem. My point is that absent some objective form of
>> resolution, player or GM must actually *decide* if an action fails or
>> succeeds based on some criteria.
>>
>> There are three problems I personally have with this:
>>
>> 1) Players cannot decide if their character's actions fail or succeed
>> from an IC POV because deciding the outcome of an action isn't
>> something that people do. People don't walk up to a chasm and then
>> decide if they will or won't make a leap across it,
>
> I don't know about how you've played diceless, but this is
>generally not how I play diceless. Same as in a diced game, the players
>declare their actions. But, in a diced game the GM rolls the dice to
>determine what happens, and then tells you whether you succeed or fail;
>in a diceless game, the GM skips the rolling of the dice phase and just
>tells you whether you succeed or fail (it's actually more exciting then
>that, but my explanation should suffise for now). So the characters walk
>up to the chasm, decide to leap across it, and the GM determines whether
>or not they make it across (see I did not have to leave IC once :)
I have never seen the GM roll for the players. This is not done around here.
The dice are an analogue for an action. The person performing the action rolls
the dice, and suffers the consequences or benifits of their action. So I
wopuld consider it inappropriate for the GM to perform the action rolls using
a hidden (behind the screen) roll. I would have less objections to an "open
roll" but still, if the caracter performs the action the player rolls the
dice.
>
>> 2) Any decision made by a person without benefit of a randomizing
>> element has a _reason_ behind it. Dice don't have such a reason
>> behind them. If a reason exists, I'm drawn to look for the pattern
>> and to figure it out. Whether I do or don't figure it out, simply
>> being drawn to try by my curiosity damages my SoD and attention to
>> character. The game turns, for me, from experiencing an adventure
>> through my characters POV to a pattern of decisions I'm trying to
>> figure things out. I can enjoy this in a puzzle or tactical game but
>> it doesn't work for me if I'm trying to play in character.
>
> This can be nothing but a lack of trust in your GM that you are
>willing to put in the dice.
No no no! This is incorrect. the decision to act is made before the dice leave
the hand! the dice only indicate the degree of success/failure of that action!
As i said before the die roll is an analogue of the action itself, not the
decision to implement it! The trust issue is not it either. If a GM wants to
screw over your characters he can do it with dice, regardless. But it is a
controll/empowerment issue. And arbitrary declaration of success failure is
damaging to SOD and IC simply because of its arbitrariness. And is exceedingly
unsatisfying.
>Let me explain, I have a character who is a
>wizard, but recently all his spells have been fizzling. For days on end
>his spells have not worked when they were needed. Playing IC, I would
>have to assume that their were some external factors involved in my
>spells not succeeding.
Yes, With you so far. Looks good.
Perhaps some more powerful wizard was countering
>them as they were cast. Another explanation could be that some member of
>the party was a carrier of some bizarre magic dampening field.
This could also bring about this sort of paranoid behavior from a string of
bad die rolls. A perceptive GM may pick up on this and possibly introduce a
reason.
>Regardless
>of the truth of the matter, my PC is starting to question why his magic
>keeps failing. With dice or without dice, this is what my PC should be
>thinking.
Without dice, the *reason* of the success or failure becomes an immediate plot
element, instead of a slow siuspicion. So it becomes more like a drama, than a
sim. and drama, tends to knock me out of I.C.
>With dice though, it may just have been the dice which caused
>my spells to misfire (although a good GM would no doubt retrofit the poor
>dice rolls in to the story).
Like I said above.
>Without dice I would probably say that were
>my spells to continually fail there was an ingame reason for them to do
>so.
But you achieve the same failure of the spells and delivering that information
in that same unsubtle way by declaring that the mages spells are operating
under a -x penalty on your rolls, where x insures a reasonable chance of
failure of the important spells.
>Which is the proper way to roleplay the character though?
How many times have you had a mysterious pain in your stomach or chest, and at
first dismissed it as nothing? Denial is a common reaction to a lot of stuff.
So you may just take some aspirin or antacids, and try to sleep on it. It may
be gone in the morning. But if eventually if the pain persists you go to the
doctor or the ER and find out what is really wrong. The "realistic approach
would be to dismiss it as "bad luck" or "off the feed", but if a pattern
emerges, then try to figure out why. The dice excuse maps well to this.
>IE: I failed because of the dice.
^^^^^^
Read that as Bad luck or "slipping"
>Whereas the character
>should be wondering to himself: Why did I fail? When that tenth spell
>fails to go off because of poor dice rolls, my character is going to be
>wondering what external factors have caused him to fail, and if the
>answer turns out to be dice, he will be mighty pissed off.
Maybe you, but not me. The dice are like the GM's description, an analogue to
a real event and location.
>
>
>> 3) I'm personally terrible at making snap judgements -- especially
>> when I have no preference for a particular outcome (yes, this can be a
>> big problem when I GM). The result of asking me if an action succeeds
>> or fails is likely to be a long pause followed by a reluctant answer.
>> It is much easier and faster for me to interpret even a high or low
>> roll than to decide between two items when I have no preference for
>> one over the other -- which is most of the time when I'm playing.
>> When I don't have a preference, I *really* don't have a preference and
>> thinking about it doesn't do much to change that.
>
> I suppose the inability to make decisions quickly could get in
>the way of running diceless. I don't understand how it can be difficult
>to determine whether actions succeed or fail though.
Because in making that decision, you have to pause, and weigh all of the
factors such as most of the possible future consequences, the relative skills
and all of the participants, the proper "dramatic" outcome, and the
meta-games concerns involving personal relationships, and courtesies. As a
player this would blow any chance of maintaining immersive IC. As a GM I have
enough to think of, without having to deal with these issues. Besides dice are
easy to blame. But in character, replace dice with luck, and it works.
>I do not treat
>actions as my personal opinion. Whether they succeed or fail has very
>little to do with my preference but with: a) the PCs skill level at what
>is being attempted or b) the theme at hand. a counts more than b. I don't
>see what preference has to do with these decisions. The decisions are
>made based on the game world.
But how does one adjudicate between fighters of similar sjkill, but radically
different fighting styles? The system codifies and quantifies the
characters, and the outcome of the dice measure the degree of success or
failure.
>
>Christopher Hearns
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Scott A. H. Ruggels
Scott A. H. Ruggels
>"Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>>A Lapalme <ai...@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>>>"Scott A. H. Ruggels" <scott....@3do.com> wrote:
>>>>>mor...@newton.texel.com (John Morrow) wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>diceless role-play and metagaming techniques. They require you to
>>>>>>*decide* something which means you need your whole mental state to
>>>>>>shift to metagaming for the decision. Dice are fairly passive, even
>>>>>>with respect to simply letting the player decide or having the player
>>>>>>explain the details of their actions to the GM. That is why I think
>>>>>
>>>>>Perfectly stated.
>>>>>
>>>>>This is *the* IC justification to use neutral randomizers like dice.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>ahem
>>>>
>>>
>>>To me, the above is a justification for not letting the players make OOC
>>>decisions. Fine. However, it doesn't follow that randomizers is
>>>justified.
>>>
>>>Alain
>>
>>The GM having to "decide" them becomes, not an effect of the environment, but
>>an arbitrary action inimicable to pure IC.
>>
>>Scott
>
>he dice are another input as is the GM's description. But the randomness of
the dice "simulate" the chance events in real life. It i=
>s that little bits of chaos that add to the verisimilitude. You are also
right about the players not making OOC decisions, but the r=
>andomizer is not a surrogate of decisionmaking, but a performance indicator
(or should be). It CAN be, but mostly for GM's making si=
>tuational decisions for groups of NPC's. However this is no excuse for poor
system design or implementations. The dice then become =
>the dagger in the heart of plotting, because to me and most of the I.C.
players I know, the plotting is far more jarring and "Artifi=
>cial" than the dice.
>
>
Mary K. Kuhner
character's explanations for that event, as much as possible.
It is relatively easy for me to train myself to reject thoughts about
"why did that happen?" that are not IC, if the metagame reason that it
happened is "the dice said so." Asking myself "why did the dice say
so?" OOC is useless, and I know it's useless, so it's fairly easy not
to do it.
If the metagame reason is "the GM said so" then thoughts about "why did
he say so?" might produce something meaningful. He said so because he
wants me to do such-and-such. He said so because he is angling for
such-and-such effect. These thoughts are relatively hard for me to
dismiss, because they might actually tell me something informative and
meaningful--it's bad information, it detracts from my enjoyment, but
it's real and predictive. I instinctively want to predict what's going
to happen (after all, my character wants to do that too, in most
cases). My instincts are working against my enjoyment here.
Ideally I could avoid asking such questions about GM mediated decisions,
but I find it hard, especially in very high-tension situations such as
combat. It is easier for me when conversation is involved, because I
trust the GM to be himself close enough to IC that his decisions are
driven wholly by the logic of the character. Character logic is not
enough in combat.
Clearly this is a point on which players differ greatly. I could
probably play IC successfully with no dice, but it would be a
real strain on the GM to avoid nudging me into consideration of his
motives. When I'm GMing myself I would not be happy to be held to such
a standard.
Karen J. Cravens
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>"Scott A. H. Ruggels" (scott....@3do.com) writes:
>>
>> This could also bring about this sort of paranoid behavior from a string of
>> bad die rolls. A perceptive GM may pick up on this and possibly introduce a
>> reason.
>>
>>
>> element, instead of a slow siuspicion. So it becomes more like a drama, than a
>> sim. and drama, tends to knock me out of I.C.
>>
>>
>> in that same unsubtle way by declaring that the mages spells are operating
>> under a -x penalty on your rolls, where x insures a reasonable chance of
>> failure of the important spells.
>
>
>roll in IC stance. Also, in theory, it sounds good that a player will
>internalize a failure, as abdjucated by the GM. In practice, it's another
>story.
>
>My experience (which I will admit includes very few IC players) says that
>players who roll bad on a roll or a series of bad rolls do not internalize
>that in IC stance. Simply, the failure is explained as a bad die rolls.
>Personally, I know that if I rolled five 1s in a row, I'd be upset at the
>dice, and would be totally unable to internalize this in IC stance.
My experience (which includes me, an admittedly not-exactly-IC
player) says the opposite... a failure is explained as A Gamemaster
Plot. I can only internalize that if my character firmly believes
that the least detail of his fate is controlled by a deity. Go figure.
Silver
--........................................................................
A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Karen J. Cravens
ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme) wrote:
>> Oh, so you're saying GM's don't get the privilege of using an IC
>> POV? Huh? Are you? :}
>
>(I realise you put a smiley there, but I'll answer anyways since it brings
>up a good point).
My best points include smileys, if not a full and proper suitable-
for-a-request-for-writer's-guidelines linguistic indication of
humorous content.
> No, I'm not. I'm the one who was saying a few weeks ago
>that IC stance
>for a GM is a good thing and, interestingly enough, some of the strong IC
>people here disagreed.
I get more IC as gamemaster than I do as player. Of course, I think
I'm not a very good player.
>As an aside, I think a large effect here, which has gone unmentionned, is
>that we expect different things from the GM. Some think that one of the
>major GM function is to adjucate while others, like me, think that the
>major GM function is to create a sustainable artificial reality.
I'd be hard pressed to pick one over the other.
>> Maybe I'm unique (well, actually I like to think I am, but never
>> mind), but I like dice *as GM* for pretty much the above reason. I
>> don't like, as GM, to be *too* wrapped up in the metagame, and dice
>> help me get away from that.
>
>I think I've said it before but I'll repeat. Dice, alone I don't mind.
>Dice attached to mechanics take my energy and attention away from the game
>I'm Gming.
I think we've figured out that we agree on this... I like dice, but
can do without mechanics altogether.
>> And I prefer dice as player for somewhat of the same reason...
>> because if the GM decides, it's harder for me to dismiss it as a
>> "random occurrence," and that still involves getting more OOC. It's
>> not enough to make me dislike diceless as player, but given the
>> choice I'd prefer the GM used dice, or at least pretended to.
>>
>Ideally, I don't deal with as little OOC/metagame things as I can when I
>play. If the GM wants the players to use dice but doesn't expect us to know
>the rules, I'm happy. Or, if the GM wants to roll everything behind a
>screen, I'm also happy. What I really want is the GM to give me, the
>player, the information I need to share the "reality" and I've yet to see
>a GM who succeeds at this while manipulating a diced system.
I've yet to see one the other way around, but my experience is
limited... for the most part, I've played under Carl and that's
about it; we've tried diced and diceless, system-heavy and
system-light. I like system-light diced best (except when I'm in
the mood for a good Champs tactical combat, get out the hex mat and
a LOT of dice), and I definitely feel I'm GMing best when that's
what I'm using.
It's kind of odd, as I think about it; I say that I like dice
because they insulate me from assuming everything is a GM subplot,
but Carl isn't much for GM subplots at all. I don't know where I
get that tendency. Maybe because my GMing tends to be a tangled
mass of subplots... I dunno.
Silver
--........................................................................
A little common sense, goodwill, and a tiny dose of unselfishness
could make this goodly earth into an earthly paradise. -- Richard
Aldington
A Lapalme
David Veal (ve...@web.ce.utk.edu) writes:
> In article <DJyrI...@freenet.carleton.ca>,
> A Lapalme <ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>>OK. You and I agree on this. The reason I keep digging on this is that I
>>want to know if I'm missing something vital. Many of the IC players have
>>said that they need randomizers. I'm trying to find out why.
>
> Randomizers introduce a genuine uncertainty into events, much
> like "real life." No matter how good your character is at something
> you can always screw up, or something happen to throw you off. A GM
> is, however, reasonable, considerably more biased in his (or her) decisions.
>
> For a lot of people it gives a better feel of "realism" because
> dice (or any randomizer) introduces an element out of everyone's control.
>
> Whether that's desireable is a matter of opinion, and probably
> game dependent.
A while back, there was a thread, which I started, called "Dice denying
character". The main premise was that many people considered that a die
roll (or a series of rolls) could deny a character concept. Many of the
people who said that were actually dice users and strong IC players.
The reason I'm bringing this up is that it supports the theory that dice
do not necessarily add realism to a game. They can actually get in the
way of the character concept and eventually jar the player out of IC
stance.
In my experience, dice and the associated mechanics.
realism to a game. To be able to do that, they would have to be strongly
mapped to very realistic mechanics which is usually not the case. Many,
if not all, of the IC people here seem to favour a dice light/mechanics
light approach. So, I can't see how a dice system will produce
"realistic" results without heavy GM interpretation (said interpretation
being, naturally, a diceless action).
What dice do, as you do point out, is add the possibility of results which
are unexpected by all concerned. I know that this is very important to
many people. I can even understand why (I sometimes miss this aspect when
playing diceless) but what I'm unclear about is how it relates to the IC
stance.
(Note that Mary Kuhner and John Morrow have explained why they consider
the use of dice/randomizers important in their ability to maintain IC. I
don't dispute their claims. I'm just asking others the same question.)
Alain
A Lapalme
> bad die rolls. A perceptive GM may pick up on this and possibly introduce a
> reason.
>
>
> element, instead of a slow siuspicion. So it becomes more like a drama, than a
> sim. and drama, tends to knock me out of I.C.
>
>
> in that same unsubtle way by declaring that the mages spells are operating
> under a -x penalty on your rolls, where x insures a reasonable chance of
> failure of the important spells.
You know, in theory, it sounds good that a player will internalize a bad
roll in IC stance. Also, in theory, it sounds good that a player will
internalize a failure, as abdjucated by the GM. In practice, it's another
story.
My experience (which I will admit includes very few IC players) says that
players who roll bad on a roll or a series of bad rolls do not internalize
that in IC stance. Simply, the failure is explained as a bad die rolls.
Personally, I know that if I rolled five 1s in a row, I'd be upset at the
dice, and would be totally unable to internalize this in IC stance.
Alain
A Lapalme
>
> The reason I keep digging on this is that I
>>want to know if I'm missing something vital. Many of the IC players have
>>said that they need randomizers. I'm trying to find out why.
>>
> have said that methods requiring *player* decisions are a problem ?
>
> I'm not sure that the first point is directly relevant to this issue - it
> might be indirectly, in that IC play is easier if the players are
> comfortable with whatever mechanics are used.
Well, some people have stated that the use of a randomizer helps them
achieve IC or, perhaps more accurately, the lack of a randomizer makes it
more difficult to achieve IC. This is what I'm trying to understand.
>
> The second is more relevant. I find Star Wars' Force Points acceptable -
> their use is close enough to the IC viewpoint to not interfere. I suspect
> I would find Castle Falkenstein's card system more intrusive as it requires
> more thought and because it involves the player viewpoint, but not really
> the character's.
I agree. Actually, the CF card system makes it more a game than an RPG,
at least for me. Give my playing cards and I'll automatically start
min-maxing. When I play cards, I play to win, I start assessing
probabilities, etc. That's not very good for IC.
>
> Generally for IC play I would want a system which does not require much
> attention to be spent on perspectives other than in character.
>
I agree there too.
Alain
Scott Olson
Yep, this is one of those areas where player preference rules all.
I've gotten so that MOST of the time, I don't question the results in a
diceless game (I've been playing mostly Amber for the last couple years),
and when I do it's more a matter of an SOD breakdown than anything else
(the GM in one game decided to change how a particular (known) character
worked, my PC wasn't in a position to know this ahead of time, and when
they encountered each other my SOD shattered).
I think it may depend a lot on what the characters are doing: most of
my Amber game-time has been spent doing things that the GM in most diced
games wouldn't be rolling dice for anyway, so there hasn't been a chance
for this conflict to come up. In one case, I did thus, thus, and so, and
it all worked the way I'd expected it to, but the opposition (I still
don't know who that was, but I will) did this, this, and that, so I was
still behind the eight-ball. Again, this was a situation where
diced/diceless, it really wouldn't have mattered if both principals were
competent (they were not DIRECTLY engaging each other, it was seemingly
more action/reaction, though I don't know for certain if all the reactions
from the other side were done by the same or different NPCs).
Combat, it depends. Most of the times I've been engaged in diceless
combat, I had no problems with the results, but that might be because I'm
not used to knowing what the opponents chance of hitting is (in every game
that I've been in, that was GM-only knowledge). The one time I did have a
problem was that SOD situation I mentioned above: I was playing someone
who was VERY good at combat, up against someone who in the Amber books
isn't shown to be very good. In this game, though, the GM had changed
that to make the NPC even better than I was, but my character (and I) had
not been in a position to know that, so my SOD came apart. It wasn't so
much a feeling of trying to predict why the GM was doing this (though that
was there), it was a feeling of `I don't believe this'.
Scott
Scott Olson
> > bad die rolls. A perceptive GM may pick up on this and possibly introduce a
> > reason.
> >
> >
> > element, instead of a slow siuspicion. So it becomes more like a drama, than a
> > sim. and drama, tends to knock me out of I.C.
> >
> >
> > in that same unsubtle way by declaring that the mages spells are operating
> > under a -x penalty on your rolls, where x insures a reasonable chance of
> > failure of the important spells.
>
>
> roll in IC stance. Also, in theory, it sounds good that a player will
> internalize a failure, as abdjucated by the GM. In practice, it's another
> story.
>
> My experience (which I will admit includes very few IC players) says that
> players who roll bad on a roll or a series of bad rolls do not internalize
> that in IC stance. Simply, the failure is explained as a bad die rolls.
> Personally, I know that if I rolled five 1s in a row, I'd be upset at the
> dice, and would be totally unable to internalize this in IC stance.
Quite. The other thing is that I, as a ref, would have a hard time
'introducing a reason' for something like this, because if there was a
reason, it would already have been in place. Introducing a reason is
back-fitting the situation, and I don't feel that's fair to the players.
If someone's interfering with your PC's magic, it should be something that
would be spotted sooner or later, not just by a string of `bad luck', when
your luck was SO bad that the spells wouldn't have worked anyway.
Most players I've seen would write off the bad rolls as just bad
luck, because that's what they were. If they failed on a roll that by
their understanding they SHOULD have succeeded, then they'll start looking
around for the whys, but not until then, because the answer is `the dice
did it', and that's all that's there. The GM/world didn't do it, the dice
did. It's when `I should have made this, but I didn't' that there's a
reason to look around.
Scott
John Morrow
>Well, some people have stated that the use of a randomizer helps them
>achieve IC or, perhaps more accurately, the lack of a randomizer makes it
>more difficult to achieve IC. This is what I'm trying to understand.
OK. I think you just provided a good comparison point below...
>I agree. Actually, the CF card system makes it more a game than an RPG,
>at least for me. Give my playing cards and I'll automatically start
>min-maxing. When I play cards, I play to win, I start assessing
>probabilities, etc. That's not very good for IC.
When you play cards, you assess probabilities which is not IC. When I
see a person making success and failure decisions, I start assessing
the *reasons* which also isn't IC. Much as one might be tempted to
play the cards to test out strategies, I get tempted to make decisions
to test the reasons. So once I'm trying to peer into the mind of the
GM, I'm not really in character any more. In short, the same way
cards tempt you to start min-maxing, GM decisions tempt me to start
analyzing the metagame.
John Morrow
Christopher Hearns
> Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
> > When an event happens in the game, I would like to consider only the
> > character's explanations for that event, as much as possible.
As would I, but we seem to have different methods of doing this.
> > If the metagame reason is "the GM said so" then thoughts about "why did
> > he say so?" might produce something meaningful. He said so because he
> > wants me to do such-and-such. He said so because he is angling for
> > such-and-such effect. These thoughts are relatively hard for me to
> > dismiss, because they might actually tell me something informative and
> > meaningful--it's bad information, it detracts from my enjoyment, but
> > it's real and predictive. I instinctively want to predict what's going
> > to happen (after all, my character wants to do that too, in most
> > cases). My instincts are working against my enjoyment here.
Let me get this strait. You are willing to ruin your enjoyment of
the game be cause you can? It is possible to look at the GMs notes, but I
never do that. If you are IC then then concentrate on IC. Do you never
roll the dice unaware of the modifiers or target number? If so then you
must be wondering why you fail on a good roll (you OOC will start
wondering why certain hidden modifiers were there). If you are aware of
the modifiers or the target number then you must always be wondering why
the target number is what it is or why modifiers were added to your roll.
Example: Normally my skill roll is a percentile and anything over 70 is
failure. The GM tells me that anything over 50 is a failure this time, so
I the player start to wonder why my skill has decreased. Or If he doesn't
tell me, I roll a 65 and the GM tells me I failed. I say "But my skill
level is 70, I succeeded on my roll" GM "No you failed" Now the player
has to wonder why he failed. Both of these examples illustrte my point.
Keeping OOC out of the IC must be a problem for you regardless of dice or
no dice. There is always metagame information which can be analysed. The
trick is to just ignore the metagame. Be the character.
Christopher Hearns
Christopher Hearns
> A Lapalme (ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
> >
> >
> > My experience (which I will admit includes very few IC players) says that
> > players who roll bad on a roll or a series of bad rolls do not internalize
> > that in IC stance. Simply, the failure is explained as a bad die rolls.
> > Personally, I know that if I rolled five 1s in a row, I'd be upset at the
> > dice, and would be totally unable to internalize this in IC stance.
I agree that a non-IC player will not internalize failure, but an
IC player must, how else is he explaining this string of misfortune? In
RL when you fail at something many times don't you begin to wonder why.
So when a character fails at something many times in a row, should not he
wonder why as well? In RL when I'm at the shooting range and I miss the
target many times in a row, I start to wonder whats wrong with the rifle.
My aim is pretty good, and I should be able to hit the target more than I
am. So I start to wonder: Has someone screwed around with my scope? Is
the barrel dirty? I ask questions concerning my failure. Many players
though when they fail at something because of dice, feel that IC the
failure does not need to be explained. That is poor roleplaying. That
character has no idea why he failed and he wants to know.
> Quite. The other thing is that I, as a ref, would have a hard time
> 'introducing a reason' for something like this, because if there was a
> reason, it would already have been in place. Introducing a reason is
> back-fitting the situation, and I don't feel that's fair to the players.
> If someone's interfering with your PC's magic, it should be something that
> would be spotted sooner or later, not just by a string of `bad luck', when
> your luck was SO bad that the spells wouldn't have worked anyway.
So success or failure is determined by luck? Not in my
experience. Things happen for reasons. The last time I encountered luck
in RL was at the casino, and in a game, I would have the casino dependant
on luck. But that's the limit. Other things are not based on luck. When I
avoid getting hit by a car, it's not because someone rolled dice for my
saving throw, it's because I saw the car coming in time and was fast
enough to get out of the way, no luck involved.
> Most players I've seen would write off the bad rolls as just bad
> luck, because that's what they were. If they failed on a roll that by
> their understanding they SHOULD have succeeded, then they'll start looking
> around for the whys, but not until then, because the answer is `the dice
> did it', and that's all that's there. The GM/world didn't do it, the dice
> did. It's when `I should have made this, but I didn't' that there's a
> reason to look around.
Those aren't IC players are they? Those are OOC players. Using
OOC knowledge to influence your IC game makes you an OOC player. If you
are influenced by where the failure comes from (dice or GM) you are an
OOC player. That is OOC information. Dice or diceless is never IC
information. When IC the only thing you know is you failed. When I fail I
want to know why. Bad luck is not an answer (unless luck would be a
factor). When I fail a test, or miss during target practice, it has
nothing to do with luck. Those dice may have created the failure, but now
I want a game world explanation for my failure.
Christopher Hearns hea...@ChamplainCollege.QC.CA
1360 Pl. Port Royal Brossard Quebec Canada J4W 2L8 (514) 465-7649
the truth is out there apology is policy
A Lapalme
by defining the environment which will impact on the die roll doesn't
tempt your to start analyze the GM decisions?
I think I just answered the question: the environment can be
internalized, right?
If this is right, what about a diceless GM making all decisions based on
the environment (which is pretty much how I do it - plot has little to
nothing to do with it)?
Alain
A Lapalme
>>
>> A Lapalme (ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > My experience (which I will admit includes very few IC players) says that
>> > players who roll bad on a roll or a series of bad rolls do not internalize
>> > that in IC stance. Simply, the failure is explained as a bad die rolls.
>> > Personally, I know that if I rolled five 1s in a row, I'd be upset at the
>> > dice, and would be totally unable to internalize this in IC stance.
>
> I agree that a non-IC player will not internalize failure, but an
> IC player must, how else is he explaining this string of misfortune? In
> RL when you fail at something many times don't you begin to wonder why.
> So when a character fails at something many times in a row, should not he
> wonder why as well? In RL when I'm at the shooting range and I miss the
> target many times in a row, I start to wonder whats wrong with the rifle.
> My aim is pretty good, and I should be able to hit the target more than I
> am. So I start to wonder: Has someone screwed around with my scope? Is
> the barrel dirty? I ask questions concerning my failure. Many players
> though when they fail at something because of dice, feel that IC the
> failure does not need to be explained. That is poor roleplaying. That
> character has no idea why he failed and he wants to know.
You're missing my point. My point is that maintaining IC, whether one
must or not, is not simply a question of deciding: "I rolled bad but I'll
ignore that since I'm supposed to maintain IC." To me that's self
delusion (not that IC isn't self delusion either but that's another
discussion) and I'm not very good at creating self-delusions for myself,
at least not consciously (I may have several self-delusions but none of them I
created on purpose).
Accusing someone of poor/bad roleplaying just becuase they can't ignore a
metagame issue is not constructive. Some people can ignore certain things
while others can't. And, also, IC is not the end all and be all of
roleplaying. That's what I try to achieve but not everyone does.
Alain
John Morrow
>What you are saying is very close to what John Morrow said a week ago (I
>think, anyways). However, again, as in John's case, you seem to be
>equating a lack of randomness with plotted games. This is not necessarily
>the case. Just because our most ardent diceless on this board is also a
>plotting advocate doesn't mean that diceless = plotted. If I'm reading
>Christopher Hearns(or is it Kearns)(sorry about this Christopher, memory
>failure at this end) post correctly, he is a diceless GM but doesn't seem
>to need or use a plotted approach.
I'm not equating diceless with plotting, per se. Let me try this
with two examples:
(1)
My character is running through the woods a comes to a ravine that he
might or might not be able to jump based on his stats or description.
I decide to make the jump and the GM tells me I make it.
Next game, I'm running through a tunnel and come to a gap in the floor
about as wide a the ravine the previous game. I decide to jump again
and the GM tells me that I make it.
The next game, I'm running towards a fortress and I need to jump the
small moat which is about as wide as the ravine or gap. I decide to
make the jump and the GM tells me that I fall into the moat.
Why did I fail that last time and not the previous two times?
(2)
My character has stumbled into an ancient tomb and a demon rises
before me (assume I've been adequately warned and I decided to take
the risk). I decide to stand and fight the demon which is something
likely to get me killed. I decide to do it on the off chance I might
succeed which would be a good thing and if I die, at least my
character died trying. But unless I get lucky beyond my ability
(vaguely possible) or the demon messes up (also vaguely possible),
I'm toast.
The GM decides I defeat the demon. Why?
The GM decides I die fighting. Why?
Assume for the sake of argument that when I take a risk, I'm willing
to accept failure (the ideal in theory but not always true in
practice), assume that the above scenes are not in the context of any
particular plot (it doesn't affect the metagame if I succeed or fail),
and assume that the player doesn't have a lot if fine options to play
with (time is of the essence with these scenes).
>In any case, let's assume for a minute that a diceless game can be
>"non-plotted". Then, how does the lack of randomizers affect the IC
>stance?
I inevitably ask myself, "Why did I fail this time?" or "Why did I
succeed this time?" The dice can't answer that question so I'm not
tempted to ask.
>To speed this up a bit, I grant that the lack of randomizers might make it
>more difficult to get there but, once you are there, does it still matter?
Yes. But I can see where it might not for other people who aren't
tempted, by an overactive sense of analysis and curiosity, why
things are happening. :-)
John Morrow
John Morrow
>Actually, this is a much more concise statement of what I was trying to
>suggest to Hywel. By slipping the system gradually, it is easy to shed
>the group's reliance on it (which can make it a straitjacket), turning
>the system more into a safety-net that can be invoked when necessary.
In that case, though, I'd suggest adopting a fast and easy to use
system and ignore it when you don't need it. I wouldn't suggest that
players play "without a net" because if they need it, it wouldn't be
there. In other words, I think the assumptions should be that some
system will be there but to stress that it can be ignored when
appropriate.
>Personally, my take is a little stronger than this: my experience is that
>the safety net will be needed less and less frequently as the game develops,
>until it reaches a largely vestigial status.
But if you say, "Take it out. No one has fallen for months," and
someone falls you are in trouble. In addition, I think that the
advocacy of "minimalist" resolution by experiences players to less
experienced players and GMs is often akin to suggesting that beginners
practice trapeze without a net because that is where you ultimately
want to be, anyway, although your phased adoption suggestion is
certainly responsible.
The next few paragraphs toss out some theories I've been thinking
about. Feel free to critisize...
I think that a lot of the more specialized systems and approaches come
from experience in gaming and people will aften fall into them
naturally. What people writing and specialized systems need to
realize is that not everyone has the tools or experience to make these
approaches work.
Character classes and alignment might certainly restrict experienced
players that want to try new things. But I've also seen new players
totally lost about how to create a character with just points and
skills because they aren't familiar enough with the concepts to know
where to start. Even experienced players can have trouble figuring
out what skills certain types of characters should have. Maybe
character classes (or something like that) are a net that they need.
It is my opinion that, in many ways, the new niche systems aren't
expanding the base of role-players but are instead cannibalizing and
dividing the existing post-*D&D player base that is looking for
somethign beyond *D&D. Instead of reaching out to the pre-*D&D market
that needs nets, everyone is focussing on the post-*D&D market of fussy
players who want all the nets yanked down (and maybe new ones put up).
There are two traditional entry vectors (or bottlenecks) into the
role-playing hobby -- *D&D and being recruited by existing players.
*D&D is still there as an entry game although few people seem to be
interested in why it appeals to beginners (I suspect it is because
they don't like the answers they get). But recruitment is becomming
harder because players are playing more and more niche games (which
cater to a specific play style) without any of the traditional nets
that make them approachable by new players (and they seem less willing
to tolerate nets to help new players). In addition, the niche games
are fracturing the traditional player based that might keep people
gaming later in life. Instead of tolerating people with different
styles, people tend to leave them and move on.
In the "old days", games were pretty silent on how to play the
characters. True, they didn't help you much but they also didn't
fight you when you decided what you wanted to do. With a specialized
system, however, if you find yourself with a clashing style, the game
fights you and this can turn people off. And this makes it difficult
for players with different styles to play in the same game because the
system will be fighting some of them. I'm beginning to think that the
industry might be better off moving away from games that promote a
specific style and are more "universal" in nature.
[profit and loss analysis of specific styles]
>Mmm, yes! I think this is an excellent idea! Not only would it help
>people to find modes that they were comfortable with, it might spark
>people into trying out new styles that would never otherwise have
>occurred to them; it might also underline some unstated assumptions in our
>current RPG techniques that would benefit from being, well, stated (and
>thereby disagreed with by David Berkman).
Yes. And it might also help people figure out what is going wrong
with the hobby instead of blaming CCGs. A lot of people seem to feel
*something* is wrong. What is it and why is it?
John Morrow
Mary K. Kuhner
>Mary wrote:
>> > These thoughts are relatively hard for me to
>> > dismiss, because they might actually tell me something informative and
>> > meaningful--it's bad information, it detracts from my enjoyment, but
>> > it's real and predictive. I instinctively want to predict what's going
>> > to happen (after all, my character wants to do that too, in most
>> > cases). My instincts are working against my enjoyment here.
> Let me get this strait. You are willing to ruin your enjoyment of
>the game be cause you can? It is possible to look at the GMs notes, but I
>never do that.
If the GM leaves his notes open in front of me I *will* read them, bits
anyway, before I catch myself--I read instinctively whenever I encounter
something printed. It's not a deliberate decision. Similarly with my
tendency to wonder about the metagame.
>If you are IC then then concentrate on IC. Do you never
>roll the dice unaware of the modifiers or target number? If so then you
>must be wondering why you fail on a good roll (you OOC will start
>wondering why certain hidden modifiers were there).
For whatever reason, I find ignoring GM imposed die roll modifiers
relatively easy. It does help that we use a target-number system in
which very few tasks have fixed target numbers: the GM must always
supply a target number, and while I may notice whether it is high or
low, I do not have a strong expectation of exactly what it will be.
>Keeping OOC out of the IC must be a problem for you regardless of dice or
>no dice. There is always metagame information which can be analysed. The
>trick is to just ignore the metagame. Be the character.
>Christopher Hearns
For whatever reasons, I have a much easier time with GM-imposed dice
modifiers than I do with GM-fiat decisions. They simply do not cause me
to wonder as strongly. This may be in part because I have never
met a GM who used modifiers to advance a plot: they were always linked
pretty tightly to aspects of the situation. However, I *have* played
under a number of GMs who used fiat decision to advance the plot, and
therefore I tend to look at fiat decisions differently.
In the best of all possible worlds I could totally ignore this type of
metagame issue; but I can't, and telling me that I should is fairly
unhelpful. It's much like some peoples' dislike of movie spoilers. You
can tell them "Just ignore the fact that you know the ending!" till
you're blue in the face, but it does no good whatsoever.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
--
I do not receive posts from the following systems because they tolerate
abuse of Usenet: interramp.com scruz.net
Systems which have cleaned up their act: prodigy.com psi.net
Christopher Hearns
> > This can be nothing but a lack of trust in your GM that you are
> >his spells have not worked when they were needed. Playing IC, I would
> >have to assume that their were some external factors involved in my
> >spells not succeeding.
>
> run of bad luck," a valid assumption?
So life is random? Things happen for no reason? What era are you
from? :) I've read up on Chaos theory. The basic premise of chaos theory
is that all material happenings are related. No such thing as luck.
But the first point has merit. Why does failure occur? Two
possibilities: 1) The character is incapable of performing the task. 2)
Events conspire against the character attempting to perform the task.
ICly I will assume that the reason for my failure is possibilty
one or two. But the important thing is that ICly I will wonder. I will
not use my player knowledge of dice to spoil my IC stance. People wonder
why they fail, and they fail for reasons. Too many players never explore
this aspect of the roleplay experience. They operate under the same
assumption that you do. Because my character failed because of poor dice
rolls (something he could never know), my character will not question why
he failed.
>
> Why? Why can't a character have a run of bad luck without some larger
> metagaming reason for it, retrofitted or otherwise? That is almost
> *exactly* my point. If there is a reason, fine. If there isn't,
> fine. But I don't want to know that as soon as my characters have a
> run of bad luck, it means that there must be external forces at work.
Never said that there was definately external factors. Could be
internal factors as well. But what were they? Have you IC ever asked
yourself why you failed at a task?
> The effect is not unlike,
>
> GM: "You see a rock laying on the dungeon floor."
>
> Player: "Why is the GM describing this rock and not the few hundred we
> probably already passed. It much be important."
>
> At that point, I feel the GM might just as well say, "There is an
> important rock over there that is the key to the adventure so make
> sure you pay attention to it."
Cute example of a bad GM, some day you'll have to explain to me
how that relates to what I'm saying.
> >Without dice I would probably say that were
> >my spells to continually fail there was an ingame reason for them to do
> >so. Which is the proper way to roleplay the character though?
>
> Assuming that a larger plot is afoot is no more "proper" than assuming
> that the character is having a streak of bad luck. Without some feel
> for what actually went wrong, there isn't a right answer.
There has to be a reason for failure. In RL people fail for
reasons. In my campaigns I expect people will fail for reasons as well.
> My personal feeling is that by letting the player see how well they
> roll the dice, they have some idea of how well they did. If they fail
> despite good rolls, they have a good reason to suspect something
> external is happening. If the rolls are bad, it simply means the
> character is screwwing up. This is how real people sort out external
> forces from bad luck. In the middle range of rolls, the player might
> never really know. This is a valid effect, too.
All of this is OOC knowledge. Using OOC knowledge for IC play is
silly. (Sorry I could not come up with a better term) It is clear to me
that IC play involves not using OOC knowledge. Good rolls, but failure
indicates to the player that something is up, not to the character. What
you are forgetting here is that the character has no idea that dice are
being rolled.
> >What I hear
> >you saying above is that you will look for the reasons for failure (or
> >success), but don't we always do this? With dice, I see too much use of
> >OOC knowledge. IE: I failed because of the dice.
>
> The character didn't fail because of the dice. The character failed
> because they performed the task poorly as indicated by the dice.
> Nothing OOC about that.
The OOC part comes into play as soon as the character decides not
to pursue the reasons for his failure because the player knows that poor
dice rolls are to blame. Only the player knows why the character failed
at this point, but the character uses the players knowledge.
>
> Life doesn't have a theme. I don't really look to impose a hard theme
> on my games although one is free to develop. And theme is, in part,
> what I mean by a "reason". If things happen because of a theme, they
> are happening for reasons I cannot square with an IC perspective.
You are absolutely right. Life has no theme. I throw in theme
because as a GM I avoid going IC like a player (I have too many things to
keep track of). So theme is my attempt to have fun while GMing. The ST
games are heavily diced and use theme though so...
> What do I mean by preference and having trouble finding one, though?
> Example:
>
> I'm playing a paladin type character who is holding a holy sword. He
> has just opened a door that was imprisoning a powerful demon and the
> demon has stepped out. Does the character defeat the demon?
>
> "No" isn't an adequate answer because a lucky shot chould reasonably
> allow the character to kill the demon. "Yes" also isn't an adequate
> answer because the character is unlikely to kill the demon and the
> kill would be surprising. Do I have a preference either way? No,
> because I find either result satisfactory, even thematically (there is
> no more heroic death that to die fighting evil yet any defeat is
> bitter.). So which do I pick as either GM or player and why?
Like I said earlier, the way I play the GM picks the outcome.
How good is the paladin at combat? How good is the demon at
combat? Does the sword influence the combat through magical powers? Are
either of the combatants injured? Are either of the combatants tired? Are
there any other factors which influence who will win? Analyze all the
factors and from there determine who wins.
By "lucky shot" do you mean that the paladin closes his eyes and
swings wildly? Otherwise luck doesn't enter combat. It's all a question
of tactics. Except for one way that luck can help combat. If the demon
has a weakness and the paladin stumbles upon it during the fight. With
description based combat that could be possible.
Andrew Finch
: Of course it does. Some degree of randomness affects us every day.
: If you want to call that luck, so be it. If you fail a test because
: the teacher throws you questions you didn't study for, or if you miss
: during target practice due to factors beyond your control, these
: certainly are random occurrences and should have a very concrete
: effect on your ability to perform a task.
Are they random? What does that word really mean? Unpredictable? From
whose point of view? I think there are very few truely random occurences
in life.
David
Andrew Finch
The examples below are heavily snipped.
: I decide to make the jump and the GM tells me I make it.
: about as wide a the ravine the previous game. I decide to jump again
: and the GM tells me that I make it.
: small moat which is about as wide as the ravine or gap. I decide to
: make the jump and the GM tells me that I fall into the moat.
: Why did I fail that last time and not the previous two times?
Why is not the question. I could give a lot of answers easily, but I don'
think that's what you're looking for. You're looking for fairness. You
can't get it with the above because they're non-examples.
Fairness is judges on a case by case basis. The above are not cases but a
simple set of binary decisions. You would find the answer to your own
question of you made them into actual examples, ie. pieces of play,
including description, factors, decisions, and described results. If you
did that, I doubt the question would ever come up at all.
For instance, were the first to gaps crossed easily, or with great
difficulty, or somewhere in between? If crossed easily, one might wonder
about the third jump, unless the external factors for the third jump were
different, as in if something intervened. If the first two jumps were
made only with great difficulty, then failure on the third is a natural
result, and may require no more explanation than lack of ability on the
part of the jumper, etc.
Second example mostly snipped for brevity again.
: character died trying. But unless I get lucky beyond my ability
: (vaguely possible) or the demon messes up (also vaguely possible),
: I'm toast.
: The GM decides I defeat the demon. Why?
The description of your characters actions, combined with those skills
supposedly posessed by the role, are sufficiently ingenious and well
played to deserve a victory.
: The GM decides I die fighting. Why?
The opposite of the above response is true.
To me, that's a lot better than rolling a die. If I get lucky roles,
that's cool, but not what I play a roleplaying game for. That's what I
shoot craps for.
I know others have different views, but there's certainly nothing
inherently wrong with playing these situations out dicelessly. Nothing
inherently unfair, no reason why the outcome can't be surprising, fun,
extemporaneous, etc.
: Assume for the sake of argument that when I take a risk, I'm willing
: to accept failure (the ideal in theory but not always true in
: practice),
Well, true or not, you may be in the position of accepting failure. Lets
just agree that failure goes hand in hand with risk, that it has
something to do with the definition of the word.
: assume that the above scenes are not in the context of any
: particular plot (it doesn't affect the metagame if I succeed or fail),
Well, plot is both game and meta-game. Personally, if the outcome of that
fight has *no* meaning for anthing going on in the game, or external to
it, then I have to wonder why we're bothering with this. You tell me if
you win or lose, and why. At least that will give me some new insight
into your concept of the character. And that's worthwhile.
: and assume that the player doesn't have a lot if fine options to play
: with (time is of the essence with these scenes).
O.K.
: I inevitably ask myself, "Why did I fail this time?" or "Why did I
: succeed this time?" The dice can't answer that question so I'm not
: tempted to ask.
It is precisly because the dice can't answer that question that I dislike
them so. I ask that question *all* the time. In every game. But the dice
can't answer. The only answer they have for me is 'I rolled high', or 'I
rolled low', and I can see how I rolled, which says nothing about the
game, the relationships within it, my character, my character concept,
the roleplay, or anything I care about.
In a diceless game, you actually won't be asking those questions that
often, because you'll already know. Diceless play subsists off of an
interchange of description. You'll know, as far as the character you're
playing is able, what factors contributed to that success or failure.
That's part of describing results. Something that gets dropped often
enough in diced games.
: Yes. But I can see where it might not for other people who aren't
: tempted, by an overactive sense of analysis and curiosity, why
: things are happening. :-)
It seems those with an active sense would want the kind of description
that diceless games generate. Those who are able to simply accept a role
of the dice at face value, as an accomplished fate out of nowhere, may be
more comfortable with the dice.
David
Brian Henderson
<big snip>
> So success or failure is determined by luck? Not in my
>experience. Things happen for reasons. The last time I encountered luck
>in RL was at the casino, and in a game, I would have the casino dependant
>on luck. But that's the limit. Other things are not based on luck. When I
>avoid getting hit by a car, it's not because someone rolled dice for my
>saving throw, it's because I saw the car coming in time and was fast
>enough to get out of the way, no luck involved.
But how do you determine in a game setting whether or not you saw the
car in enough time? That is a matter of some randomness, exactly what
the dice or other randomizing agent adds to the game.
> Those aren't IC players are they? Those are OOC players. Using
>OOC knowledge to influence your IC game makes you an OOC player. If you
>are influenced by where the failure comes from (dice or GM) you are an
>OOC player. That is OOC information. Dice or diceless is never IC
>information. When IC the only thing you know is you failed. When I fail I
>want to know why. Bad luck is not an answer (unless luck would be a
>factor). When I fail a test, or miss during target practice, it has
>nothing to do with luck. Those dice may have created the failure, but now
>I want a game world explanation for my failure.
Of course it does. Some degree of randomness affects us every day.
If you want to call that luck, so be it. If you fail a test because
the teacher throws you questions you didn't study for, or if you miss
during target practice due to factors beyond your control, these
certainly are random occurrences and should have a very concrete
effect on your ability to perform a task.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% FFFFFF N N OOO RRRR DDDD
% Brian Henderson %% % F NN N O O R R D D
% Internet: BHen...@kirk.microsys.net % FFF N N N O O RRRR D D
% BHen...@microsys.net % F N NN O O R R D D
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% F N N OOO R R DDDD
Stay Alert - Trust No One - Keep Your Laser Handy!
"Order the fries, Earthling!"
Andrew Finch
: *D&D is still there as an entry game although few people seem to be
: interested in why it appeals to beginners (I suspect it is because
: they don't like the answers they get).
No. I'm just not interested in designing for that market segment. In
fact, I think a huge amount of attention has been given to it already.
TSR has simply done the best job of this. McDonalds sells a huge number
of hamburgers, but that doesn't mean they've found the recipe for the
perfect burger, or that the populace considers them the best made. It
just means they're successful at doing those things necessary to capture
that market position. I still prefer Hot n' Hunky.
: But recruitment is becomming
: harder because players are playing more and more niche games
I hope so.
: (which
: cater to a specific play style) without any of the traditional nets
: that make them approachable by new players (and they seem less willing
: to tolerate nets to help new players).
The largest numbers of new players I've seen have come through Vampire
LARPS, where they can get into roleplaying without the dice, and numbers,
intricate rules, and combat focus, which make D&D a very successful game
among a younger, male, somewhat ostracized audience. That audience often
goes into other things as they grow up. I'm interested in games for grown
ups (not that I think Vampire has this nailed down, but I do think they
tapped into a slightly braoder market).
: In addition, the niche games
: are fracturing the traditional player based that might keep people
: gaming later in life.
I disagree. If it weren't for the niche game market, I would have stopped
gaming years ago. I have not touched D&D in years, and have no interest
in doing so. Other games win market share because games like D&D *fail*
to provide what that audience is interested in.
: In the "old days", games were pretty silent on how to play the
: characters. True, they didn't help you much but they also didn't
: fight you when you decided what you wanted to do.
No, they fought you constantly. That's why I moved on.
: Yes. And it might also help people figure out what is going wrong
: with the hobby instead of blaming CCGs. A lot of people seem to feel
: *something* is wrong. What is it and why is it?
I do think the problem is not CCGs. The problem is that the industry has
failed to move into the main stream at an appreciable rate, and therefore
failed to provide a great enough market to sustain the creative forces of
new companies. There are 4 game companies out there making any real
money. This is a cottage industry. A hobby. And the hobby won't grow
unless it can sell itself to *new* markets, which means new kinds of games.
David
Scott Olson
> Brian Henderson (BHen...@kirk.microsys.net) wrote:
>
> : Of course it does. Some degree of randomness affects us every day.
> : If you want to call that luck, so be it. If you fail a test because
> : the teacher throws you questions you didn't study for, or if you miss
> : during target practice due to factors beyond your control, these
> : certainly are random occurrences and should have a very concrete
> : effect on your ability to perform a task.
>
> whose point of view? I think there are very few truely random occurences
> in life.
From the shooter's point of view, there are certain things that are
random/unpredictable (the difference is basically that random events CAN'T
be predicted, while unpredictable ones can't be predicted because of lack
of information): a primer failure, a sudden gust of wind, the reticle in
the scope becoming detached, etc. These are things that the shooter can't
predict, because they lack the ability: to see into the primer to see it
has a manufacturing defect; to detect the approaching wind gust in time to
compensate for it; or to see inside the scope tube to see that the reticle
has broken. You can take precautions to reduce the likelihood of these
things (store your ammunition properly, put up wind flags, buy reputable
scopes), but they can't be completely eliminated from all consideration.
If you've got a god's-eye view of things, maybe things are
predictable. BUT, in the real world, sometimes things happen that you
can't predict ahead of time, because there are more variables in play than
can be kept track of, and things are hidden from your view.
Scott
Chris Gandy
Morrow)>, 'ai...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (A Lapalme)' wrote:
>You're missing my point. My point is that maintaining IC, whether one
>must or not, is not simply a question of deciding: "I rolled bad but I'll
>ignore that since I'm supposed to maintain IC." To me that's self
>delusion (not that IC isn't self delusion either but that's another
>discussion) and I'm not very good at creating self-delusions for myself,
>at least not consciously (I may have several self-delusions but none of
them I
>created on purpose).
>
not so sure that IC being self-delusion is "another discussion". ALMOST
all of being IC is self-delusion, and the ability to *assimilate* those
things not happening to a PC (dice rolls, GM fiat, the player's need to
take a break to find the rest room, whatever...) into what the PC would
actually see/feel/think is EXACTLY what being IC is all about as *I* see
it. (But then, maybe I have not *really* been IC as some here define it.
Who knows?)
>Accusing someone of poor/bad roleplaying just becuase they can't ignore a
>metagame issue is not constructive. Some people can ignore certain things
>while others can't. And, also, IC is not the end all and be all of
>roleplaying. That's what I try to achieve but not everyone does.
>
I agree that "accusations" don't bring anything worthwhile to the
discussion. The key to this IC/Metagame discussion, however, seems to be:
"What things cause which people to be unable to ignore/assimilate metagame
issues INTO IC?" And *I*, for one, am enjoying finding out what those
things are to improve my GMing in the future. For that, I thank you and
all the others for keeping the discussion rolling.
Chris (assimilate THIS) Gandy
John Morrow
>I (John Morrow) wrote:
>> Not necessarily. Why isn't, "I keep screwwing up," or "I'm having a
>> run of bad luck," a valid assumption?
> So life is random? Things happen for no reason? What era are you
>from? :) I've read up on Chaos theory. The basic premise of chaos theory
>is that all material happenings are related. No such thing as luck.
With respect to "The Grand Scheme Of Things", I believe that all
things are quite probably predetermined. But with respect to
practice, things cannot always be *predicted* because in order to
*predict* you need to have sufficient information about what is going
on and "sufficient" might very well involve particle positions and
energy states which is information not available to most mortal men.
Similarly, all events have explanations but that does not mean that
those explanations can be detected or even understood.
> But the first point has merit. Why does failure occur? Two
>possibilities: 1) The character is incapable of performing the task. 2)
>Events conspire against the character attempting to perform the task.
Actually, the only reason is that the movement of particles through
the universe create the event we interpret as the success or failure
of a task. But most people don't resolve to that level. And most
people don't even resolve to the level you are talking about, either,
in my experience.
> ICly I will assume that the reason for my failure is possibilty
>one or two. But the important thing is that ICly I will wonder. I will
>not use my player knowledge of dice to spoil my IC stance. People wonder
>why they fail, and they fail for reasons. Too many players never explore
>this aspect of the roleplay experience. They operate under the same
>assumption that you do. Because my character failed because of poor dice
>rolls (something he could never know), my character will not question why
>he failed.
You are now making assumptions about my assumptions. :-)
If I slip on the ice (as I did this morning), I don't hunt for a
complex reason for it. The ice was there. My foot was there. I
didn't manage to keep my balance under those conditions so I slipped.
I get up and move on. End of story. I don't do a friction analysis
of the ice get an MRI scan to see if something is wrong with my body.
I don't run computer simulations of clouds of particles to explain it.
And I might never really know why I slipped on one spot of ice and not
another, nor will that particularly bother me. Life goes on.
If I slip often, yes I might wonder why. But my likely answer will be
that I should stop walking on ice or, if I do, I should be willing to
accept falling. I don't look around for some old woman casting curses
on me, wonder if God is trying to punish me for something I've done,
if I have a severe mental or neurological disorder, or spend much time
giving it any thought.
What the dice represent is "Person -- Ice -- Does person slip?". If
the answer indicated by the dice is yes or no, *of course* there is
some game world explanation for it. But my character doesn't need to
know it any more than I do. It isn't relevant to the resolution of
events that my character operates on. And if the reason is really
important for IC, I, or the GM can fill one in.
And what if I'm particularly good yet fail while people who aren't as
good keep succeeding? Good people have slumps and times when events
conspire against them. They might know exactly why they failed each
time but if they can't do anything about it, they tend to move on.
Overwealming obsession over details outside of a person's control
tends to lead to paranoia and some other really strange neuroses.
> Never said that there was definately external factors. Could be
>internal factors as well. But what were they? Have you IC ever asked
>yourself why you failed at a task?
Sure. But I can also envision other responses.
>> At that point, I feel the GM might just as well say, "There is an
>> important rock over there that is the key to the adventure so make
>> sure you pay attention to it."
> Cute example of a bad GM, some day you'll have to explain to me
>how that relates to what I'm saying.
If you only fail or succeed when you otherwise wouldn't because it
serves some specific metagame purpose, the effect, for me, is not
unlike only highlighting special details of a room. The special
results put a spotlight on themselves which say "This is important!
Pay attention!" When I slip on the ice in real life, even several
times in a row, about the only message I get is, "Maybe you should
stop walking on the ice, stupid!" It otherwise has no impact on my
work or my life.
>> Assuming that a larger plot is afoot is no more "proper" than assuming
>> that the character is having a streak of bad luck. Without some feel
>> for what actually went wrong, there isn't a right answer.
> There has to be a reason for failure. In RL people fail for
>reasons. In my campaigns I expect people will fail for reasons as well.
And in real life people often don't know exactly why they failed nor
are the reasons for failure generally very relevant or exciting. They
often involve factors the person simply forgot to account for or
didn't notice. In games as a player, I similarly expect to not always
know why I succeeded or failed nor will I care most of the time --
just like real life -- unless they are particularly relevant or
unusual. And the dice can indicate that for me.
[using die rolls to get a feel for the situation]
> All of this is OOC knowledge. Using OOC knowledge for IC play is
>silly. (Sorry I could not come up with a better term) It is clear to me
>that IC play involves not using OOC knowledge. Good rolls, but failure
>indicates to the player that something is up, not to the character. What
>you are forgetting here is that the character has no idea that dice are
>being rolled.
But you are *always* using OOC knowledge for IC play. The game
master's descriptions are OOC knowledge. The history of your
character or the numbers on a character sheet are OOC knowledge. As
I've said in the past, properly handled die rolls can work very much
like well handled GM descriptions -- they are short blurbs of data
that the player converts into a mental image for their character.
A "good roll but failure" gets converted for the IC viewpoint into "I
did really well but I still failed" while "bad roll and failure" gets
converted into "I did really badly so I failed". I don't see where
this is that much different than converting the verbal analysis of the
GM into the same perception. Yes, I recognize that some people have
more trouble than others making the jump from number to meaning. But
not all do. I don't.
A good middle-ground is the FUDGE-like system of converting results
into words with some meaning about how well a character did the task,
although that has other IC costs. I don't see that big of a
difference between, "I rolled a Great yet failed" and "You did a great
job climbing up there but you still failed," from the GM.
>> The character didn't fail because of the dice. The character failed
>> because they performed the task poorly as indicated by the dice.
>> Nothing OOC about that.
> The OOC part comes into play as soon as the character decides not
>to pursue the reasons for his failure because the player knows that poor
>dice rolls are to blame. Only the player knows why the character failed
>at this point, but the character uses the players knowledge.
*I* never said that the character doesn't pursue the reason *because*
the player knows that it was a poor die roll. That is your take on
it. My take on the situation, IC, is that I didn't do as good of a
job as I could have (as indicated by the bad roll) so I failed. I
don't find the exact reason particularly important, any more than I
care to analyze the ice I slipped on down to the particle level. It
isn't important. If it is, I persue it.
>> Life doesn't have a theme. I don't really look to impose a hard theme
>> on my games although one is free to develop. And theme is, in part,
>> what I mean by a "reason". If things happen because of a theme, they
>> are happening for reasons I cannot square with an IC perspective.
> You are absolutely right. Life has no theme. I throw in theme
>because as a GM I avoid going IC like a player (I have too many things to
>keep track of). So theme is my attempt to have fun while GMing. The ST
>games are heavily diced and use theme though so...
Fair enough, as long as your theme doesn't step all over the players'
IC (unless they don't mind). The bottom line is to have fun.
[Paladin in front of Demon example]
> Like I said earlier, the way I play the GM picks the outcome.
OK. That is what I'm trying to understand/clarify here.
> How good is the paladin at combat? How good is the demon at
>combat? Does the sword influence the combat through magical powers? Are
>either of the combatants injured? Are either of the combatants tired? Are
>there any other factors which influence who will win? Analyze all the
>factors and from there determine who wins.
Assume that the demon is more powerful than the paladin but the paladin
is good enough that a lucky shot might just beat the demon. Given all
other factors, that is all that really matters. Given a quick analysis,
the demon will always win because it is in a much better position to do
so. But is that realistic? Shouldn't the paladin have the possiblity
of winning at least 1 in 100 times? If so, how do you factor that in?
> By "lucky shot" do you mean that the paladin closes his eyes and
>swings wildly? Otherwise luck doesn't enter combat. It's all a question
>of tactics. Except for one way that luck can help combat. If the demon
>has a weakness and the paladin stumbles upon it during the fight. With
>description based combat that could be possible.
By "lucky shot", I mean that the paladin performs better than he
usually does or the demon performs worse than expected. At the end of
a basketball game, the player with the ball will often toss it into
the air towards the basket, even if their is almost no chance of
making the shot. Every once in a while, the ball goes through the
hoop. I believe games have even been won that way. Rational diceless
analysis says that the ball misses since only maybe 1 in 100 or more
actually goes in. How do you handle that via diceless play? (And no,
I don't find, "This game was important to win for that character's
development," an enjoyable approach).
As for handling it via description, there comes a point where the
paladin swings his sword at the demon and the demon tries to block it.
That is the point I'm interested in.
John Morrow
Andrew Finch
: From the shooter's point of view, there are certain things that are
: random/unpredictable (the difference is basically that random events CAN'T
: be predicted, while unpredictable ones can't be predicted because of lack
: of information): a primer failure, a sudden gust of wind, the reticle in
: the scope becoming detached, etc.
I agree with your definition of random, which really means unpredictable.
However, unpredictable, as you've pointed out, means partially
predictable. In a diceless game, the GMs decisions are unpredictable, and
yet fall within a range of predictability, ie. there's descriptive
information returned about some of the causes of success/failure, but
possibly not all. One action leads to another in a chain of cause and
efect, only part of which the character has access to. Like life.
I find that with dice, the reasons are hidden from both the player and
GM. To give the kind of description that makes the game real for me, the
GM is constantly trying to follow the dice and decide what happened, even
though the dice rolls will make more or less sense, depending on the
situation and roll, without reference to what's actually going on in the
game. I hate having to do this as GM. I find that I can do a better job
on my own, more directly, without interference from the dice, in almost
all situations. I find that the more dice dependent a game is, the more
description is simply dropped in preference for 'whatever the dice
rolled'. That's not good enough for me.
: If you've got a god's-eye view of things, maybe things are
: predictable. BUT, in the real world, sometimes things happen that you
: can't predict ahead of time, because there are more variables in play than
: can be kept track of, and things are hidden from your view.
My point being that the GM does have a god's-eye view. That's the whole
point of having a GM. It's the players and characters who may be missing
information, which is perfectly natural.
David
John Morrow
>Other things are not based on luck. When I
>avoid getting hit by a car, it's not because someone rolled dice for my
>saving throw, it's because I saw the car coming in time and was fast
>enough to get out of the way, no luck involved.
There are a lot of things involved in avoiding getting hit. You need
to factor in the speed of the car, your speed, your reflexes, when you
noticed the car and when you realized it was going to hit you, the
ground surface friction, how good the car's driver is at trying to
hit/avoid hitting you, whether there is any moonlight distracting you,
whatever. No GM that I know of describes all those things and I, when
I GM, certainly don't want to have to decide all those things. So
what you do is abstract all those factors that made getting out of the
car's way questinable into a die roll. If the die roll says you fail,
one of those factors worked against you sufficiently so that you
didn't get out of the way. If you do succeed, everything went
sufficiently well to get out of the way. If you fail and want to know
why, it is fairly easy for the GM to pick *one* of those factors as
the reason for the failure.
> Those aren't IC players are they? Those are OOC players. Using
>OOC knowledge to influence your IC game makes you an OOC player. If you
>are influenced by where the failure comes from (dice or GM) you are an
>OOC player. That is OOC information. Dice or diceless is never IC
>information. When IC the only thing you know is you failed. When I fail I
>want to know why. Bad luck is not an answer (unless luck would be a
>factor). When I fail a test, or miss during target practice, it has
>nothing to do with luck. Those dice may have created the failure, but now
>I want a game world explanation for my failure.
I think the problem is that you are expecting the wrong thing from a
die roll. A die roll is an abstraction, not a detailed simulation.
If you really want a game world explanation, a GM should be able to
give you one, just as a diceless GM would be able to provide a reason
for failure. That is often what I've seen done in practice (e.g. "You
slip.", "You get distracted", etc.). Otherwise, I personally have no
problem inserting a suitable explanation if I even need one. Then
again, I've said that I'm better at explaining and interpreting a
result than simply creating one. I might be quite unusual in that
respect.
John Morrow
John Morrow
>Why is not the question. I could give a lot of answers easily, but I don'
>think that's what you're looking for. You're looking for fairness. You
>can't get it with the above because they're non-examples.
I'm not looking for fairness in terms of satisfaction. I'm looking
for fairness in terms of objectivity ("Fair" is a bad word -- it means
several different things). I'm looking for simulation. The examples
are sufficient for simulation and I'm curious how you might achieve
that dicelessly.
>Fairness is judges on a case by case basis. The above are not cases but a
>simple set of binary decisions. You would find the answer to your own
>question of you made them into actual examples, ie. pieces of play,
>including description, factors, decisions, and described results. If you
>did that, I doubt the question would ever come up at all.
I'm attempting to simplify out what is, to me, one of the key sticking
points for diceless. Why does my character succeed one time and fail
another at an effectively identical task?
>For instance, were the first to gaps crossed easily, or with great
>difficulty, or somewhere in between? If crossed easily, one might wonder
>about the third jump, unless the external factors for the third jump were
>different, as in if something intervened.
Why? If failure is possible, why shouldn't I just be happen to fail
every now and then, even if the jump is fairly easy?
>If the first two jumps were
>made only with great difficulty, then failure on the third is a natural
>result, and may require no more explanation than lack of ability on the
>part of the jumper, etc.
If the jumper lacks ability, why did they succeed on the first two leaps?
What I'm looking for in this example is how one gets variation in
results when the situation is similar yet variation is clearly
possible. Both success and failure are possible in the leaps. Given
a series of leaps, how do you decide which are failures and which are
successes?
>Second example mostly snipped for brevity again.
>: character died trying. But unless I get lucky beyond my ability
>: (vaguely possible) or the demon messes up (also vaguely possible),
>: I'm toast.
>: The GM decides I defeat the demon. Why?
>The description of your characters actions, combined with those skills
>supposedly posessed by the role, are sufficiently ingenious and well
>played to deserve a victory.
The skills possessed by the character are insufficient to normally
defeat the demon and a large part of the failure or success will
depend on how well the NPC demon defends itself and attacks.
>: The GM decides I die fighting. Why?
>The opposite of the above response is true.
>To me, that's a lot better than rolling a die. If I get lucky roles,
>that's cool, but not what I play a roleplaying game for. That's what I
>shoot craps for.
It isn't a lucky roll, per se, that I'm looking for. It is what that
lucky roll represents. If I decide to stand in front of the demon
with only the most minimal chance of defeating it, I want that chance
to be determined objectively. Being "given" a success is as
disappointing for me as being swatted down off hand.
>I know others have different views, but there's certainly nothing
>inherently wrong with playing these situations out dicelessly. Nothing
>inherently unfair, no reason why the outcome can't be surprising, fun,
>extemporaneous, etc.
No. But I'm trying to understand how diceless works in certain
situations and explain where I have problems.
>Well, true or not, you may be in the position of accepting failure. Lets
>just agree that failure goes hand in hand with risk, that it has
>something to do with the definition of the word.
Yes. And to be honest, I've had a character in the "demon situation"
in a diced game. My character walked away after failing his attack in
what I've always felt was a GM freebie win. I would have rathered my
character, upon failing his attack, to have been splattered.
>: assume that the above scenes are not in the context of any
>: particular plot (it doesn't affect the metagame if I succeed or fail),
>Well, plot is both game and meta-game. Personally, if the outcome of that
>fight has *no* meaning for anthing going on in the game, or external to
>it, then I have to wonder why we're bothering with this. You tell me if
>you win or lose, and why. At least that will give me some new insight
>into your concept of the character. And that's worthwhile.
Well, it clearly has meaning but let's simply say that the game won't
collapse if the character fails or succeeds. The game goes on.
What I guess I'm trying to say is that I could be satisfied *either*
the character fails or succeeds provided the results reflect the
situation.
>: and assume that the player doesn't have a lot if fine options to play
>: with (time is of the essence with these scenes).
>O.K.
>: I inevitably ask myself, "Why did I fail this time?" or "Why did I
>: succeed this time?" The dice can't answer that question so I'm not
>: tempted to ask.
>It is precisly because the dice can't answer that question that I dislike
>them so. I ask that question *all* the time. In every game. But the dice
>can't answer. The only answer they have for me is 'I rolled high', or 'I
>rolled low', and I can see how I rolled, which says nothing about the
>game, the relationships within it, my character, my character concept,
>the roleplay, or anything I care about.
Does it help to think in terms of "I did well" or "I did badly"? Is
it that you need a meaning behind how well you performed the skill?
>In a diceless game, you actually won't be asking those questions that
>often, because you'll already know. Diceless play subsists off of an
>interchange of description. You'll know, as far as the character you're
>playing is able, what factors contributed to that success or failure.
>That's part of describing results. Something that gets dropped often
>enough in diced games.
And I might also know what metagaming decisions tilted the scales. I
don't *want* to know that! :-)
You are correct at pointing out that descriptions of failure can get
dropped in dice gamed. But that doesn't have to be the case and I
find it possible as a player to fill in within the bounds of the die
result why I failed IC when needed. BTW, it is common in my group for
the GM to fill in quick reasons for unusual results.
>: Yes. But I can see where it might not for other people who aren't
>: tempted, by an overactive sense of analysis and curiosity, why
>: things are happening. :-)
>It seems those with an active sense would want the kind of description
>that diceless games generate. Those who are able to simply accept a role
>of the dice at face value, as an accomplished fate out of nowhere, may be
>more comfortable with the dice.
It has nothing to do with accepting the dice as the reason. It has to
do with accepting what the dice represent. They don't represent
accomplished fate out of nowhere. They represent an objective
selection between possible outcomes based on an abstract random roll.
The abstraction is meant to factor in all the possible reason for
success and failure, determining which wins out.
John Morrow
John Morrow
>No. I'm just not interested in designing for that market segment. In
>fact, I think a huge amount of attention has been given to it already.
>TSR has simply done the best job of this. McDonalds sells a huge number
>of hamburgers, but that doesn't mean they've found the recipe for the
>perfect burger, or that the populace considers them the best made. It
>just means they're successful at doing those things necessary to capture
>that market position. I still prefer Hot n' Hunky.
But the difference is that D&D is an entry point bottleneck. It is as
if all the other fast food chains were fighting over people
disenchanted with McDonalds. Not only would they be working with a
limited audience that is recruited by another franchise but they would
also be dealing with customers who's tastes have been influenced by
another product.
If companies were to pull more people into role-playing via games with
different approaches, you might get a larger and broader selection of
gamers. Instead, people seem to be waiting for pre-D&Dized players.
>: But recruitment is becomming
>: harder because players are playing more and more niche games
>I hope so.
The problem is that I'm not sure that the total market size is
growing. It might just be getting cut up into smaller bits. If
the market is growing, overall, it is OK. If it is just getting
cut into smaller bits that isn't OK.
I'm also concerned about the effect of niche gaming on mixed groups.
If a group has mixed dramatic and simulationist players, a move
towards a game specifically catering to one or the other is bound to
split the group. When groups break up and games stop, people stop
gaming.
>The largest numbers of new players I've seen have come through Vampire
>LARPS, where they can get into roleplaying without the dice, and numbers,
>intricate rules, and combat focus, which make D&D a very successful game
>among a younger, male, somewhat ostracized audience. That audience often
>goes into other things as they grow up. I'm interested in games for grown
>ups (not that I think Vampire has this nailed down, but I do think they
>tapped into a slightly braoder market).
That is great. The question, then, is how Vampire tapped into a new
market. By having a "safety net" and by analyzing D&D, I'm not
suggesting you have to emulate it. I'm simply saying that many of the
games targetted at experienced players are unapproachable by new
players. I think it is helpful to encorporate some of the things that
make D&D (and Vampire, as you point out) approachable to new players.
For example, how does Vampire work for new players? How might you
target Theatrix to get the attention of new gamers?
>I disagree. If it weren't for the niche game market, I would have stopped
>gaming years ago. I have not touched D&D in years, and have no interest
>in doing so. Other games win market share because games like D&D *fail*
>to provide what that audience is interested in.
Fair point. And I'm not really saying that D&D is ideal. But it does
some thigns very well. For example, character classes (while
limiting) are very easy for a new player to understand while a point
generated character is a daunting task for a player inexperienced in
most of the concepts involved. And the "let an experience player
create your character" is problematic for a variety of reasons. It
might also be helpful if all these advocacy discussions did come up
with some sort of way to differentiate play styles such that the
industry could guide potential players to the right game where they
might grow instead of forcing them through the wrong game that makes
them never want to play again.
>: In the "old days", games were pretty silent on how to play the
>: characters. True, they didn't help you much but they also didn't
>: fight you when you decided what you wanted to do.
>No, they fought you constantly. That's why I moved on.
Just in curiosity, how did they fight you? For all those people
who weren't around a year ago... :-)
>I do think the problem is not CCGs. The problem is that the industry has
>failed to move into the main stream at an appreciable rate, and therefore
>failed to provide a great enough market to sustain the creative forces of
>new companies. There are 4 game companies out there making any real
>money. This is a cottage industry. A hobby. And the hobby won't grow
>unless it can sell itself to *new* markets, which means new kinds of games.
I think it can also mean new approaches. As you stated above, Vampire
pulled in new players with a new apporach. Could Theatrix appeal to
new non-traditional markets (e.g. marketed to improv theater groups or
writers as a tool). Part of the problem is that RPGs are cannibalizing
yet another market for their players -- "genre fans". Maybe to grow,
RPGs need to move beyond the traditional genres. Other genres are
certainly suitable for role-playing -- Romance, Soap Opera, more
traditional Action/Adventure, Historical, Military, etc.
John Morrow
PS - BTW, have you ever thought about selling Theatrix through, say,
_Writer's Digest_ as a tool for authors to play out plots with their
friends? I could see it being a useful tool -- as good as any other
hawked in the magazine :-). Just an idea.
Andrew Finch
: >Other things are not based on luck. When I
: >avoid getting hit by a car, it's not because someone rolled dice for my
: >saving throw, it's because I saw the car coming in time and was fast
: >enough to get out of the way, no luck involved.
: There are a lot of things involved in avoiding getting hit. You need
: to factor in the speed of the car, your speed, your reflexes, when you
: noticed the car and when you realized it was going to hit you, the
: ground surface friction, how good the car's driver is at trying to
: hit/avoid hitting you, whether there is any moonlight distracting you,
: whatever.
Yes.
: No GM that I know of describes all those things and I, when
: I GM, certainly don't want to have to decide all those things.
Neitehr would I. And you don't need to. You only need to decide and
describe what's *relevant*. And the first part of that, the deciding what
factors are relevant, you have to do with or without. How do you decide
diced modifiers appropriately without deciding which factors are
relevant, and weighting their effect upon the outcome. That's reflexes,
speed, road conditions, weight of the car, friction, and... geesh, that's
a lot. And yet, you gather all that up and say '-3 to your dodge roll'.
How do you do that?
You do it because you really only have to look at a small subset of all
those factors in making that decision. You instantly prune what's not
relevant, and make a gestalt decision on the rest. Why does that work?
Because you only have to be good enough, not perfect. Just good enough to
give the impression of realism. Simulation in its true sense is
impossible. You're just dealing in dramatic factors, with ot without the
dice.
So I do much the same thing without the dice, but the way I make those
decisions is geared towards providing continuity and description, as
opposed to being geared towards providing numerical data for some dice
charts. I appreciate the difference that makes.
: sufficiently well to get out of the way. If you fail and want to know
: why, it is fairly easy for the GM to pick *one* of those factors as
: the reason for the failure.
Yes. But that constantly follows the dice, and often times that doesn't
work so well. It's harp to pick out that factor, because you're most
often not thinking in factors. Maybe you're thinking in difficulty
numbers, but even that's a long way from description. Description becomes
an add on, and an unecessary one, and one that doesn't jive very weel
with what's going on with those dice. Without the dice, you think
descriptively, describe the factors, and make your next decision based
partly upon them, in a continuous and natural flow; decsription,
reaction, description, reaction, etc.
: slip.", "You get distracted", etc.). Otherwise, I personally have no
: problem inserting a suitable explanation if I even need one. Then
: again, I've said that I'm better at explaining and interpreting a
: result than simply creating one. I might be quite unusual in that
: respect.
I don't know. You may indeed provide the kind of description I like, from
the die roll. That's admirable. More people should, and I think they can.
For dramatic resolution though, I prefer the diceless thought process.
David
Andrew Finch
: On the other hand, suppose the same pilot is trying to land the same
: plane in the same airfield with no fuel, at night, in the middle of a
: thunderstorm. Would I *now* require a dice roll?
I agree with you if what you're saying is that the first case is an
automatic success, and the second contains a definite element of risk. It
does. But I wouldn't use dice as a method of adjudicating the outcome of
that risk.
: Of course! Under such terrible conditions, no matter what the pilot's
: skill, with the best will in the world, there is no way the pilot can
: guarantee a safe landing. It's going to come down to luck.
It is not going to come down to luck. There may be many factors outside
the pilot's control, but think about it. If that plane makes it safely to
the ground, would you run up and say 'Wow, that was a lucky landing!', or
'Wow, that was a great landing!'
: And luck is
: exactly what the dice are used to simulate.
You don't ned dice to simulate luck. Luck is a non-thing. It's a way of
saying that from a certain perspective, all the relevant factors could
not be known. And that's true from the character's POV, but not the GMs.
I am perfectly O.K. with making such a decision without dice, and there
are many benefits to doing so. SO many benefits for the style of game I
wish to play, that I could not really imagine using the dice.
David
russell wallace
probably better than I would have said it :) However, there is a point
that I think is important, and that I haven't seen raised, vis a vis the
difference between using dice in a game run by commerial mechanics and
using them in a minimal or no mechanic game. I will give a couple of
examples:
Say I'm GMing and a player, who's running a character trying to land a
plane at an airfield under normal conditions, says, 'I land the plane.'
Would I require a dice roll for that? Of course not. By any reasonable
judgement, there's no reason the character should fail to land the plane
properly, so I rule that he does it. No problem.
Now, this is the main point on which I think almost all commercial rule
systems fail very badly. Almost all that I know of would require a dice
roll here and would have on the order of 10% chance that the pilot would
crash the plane. IMO, this is, to put it bluntly, stupidly,
ridiculously bad GMing. The real odds of a skilled pilot crashing a
plane under normal conditions are something like 0.00001%, a probability
level certainly not worth rolling dice for.
So I completely agree with the people who've said that they don't like
the use of normal mechanics in this sort of situation, and that usually
mechanics are entirely unncessary and in fact damaging to IC play and
suspension of disbelief. Most of the time I find I don't need dice.
On the other hand, suppose the same pilot is trying to land the same
plane in the same airfield with no fuel, at night, in the middle of a
thunderstorm. Would I *now* require a dice roll?
Of course! Under such terrible conditions, no matter what the pilot's
skill, with the best will in the world, there is no way the pilot can
guarantee a safe landing. It's going to come down to luck. And luck is
exactly what the dice are used to simulate. Whether the pilot succeeds
or fails, he would not be able to give a better explanation later than
'I could have succeeded/failed, but under those conditions, it could
have gone either way'.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwal...@vax1.tcd.ie
Andrew Finch
: I'm not looking for fairness in terms of satisfaction. I'm looking
: for fairness in terms of objectivity ("Fair" is a bad word -- it means
: several different things). I'm looking for simulation. The examples
: are sufficient for simulation and I'm curious how you might achieve
: that dicelessly.
The examples are not good enough for diceless simulation. I could make them
good enough by setting them in a real environment and then moving them
forward. Then I could achieve diceless simulation. The examples may be
good enough for diced simulation, which isn't simulation at all, but
simplification. By simplifying everything in a real situation into
generic factors, the situation becomes simple enough to hand off to dice
and formula to make basic decsions on. That does not impress me. Diceless
gaming works not on simplification, but an expansion of the situation. A
constant expansion of which one particular path is chosen, into the next
bloom of factors, logic, genre, character, and action.
: I'm attempting to simplify out what is, to me, one of the key sticking
: points for diceless. Why does my character succeed one time and fail
: another at an effectively identical task?
Because the tasks are never effectively identical. Why does the character
succeed at one time and fail at another in a diced game? Explain this to
me without reference to the die rools themselves, but only with reference
to what the character in the situation can know and percieve. When you do
that, you will have answered your own question. You make diceless
decisions the same way.
: Why? If failure is possible, why shouldn't I just be happen to fail
: every now and then, even if the jump is fairly easy?
No reason. You should fail now and then, and will in a diceless game as
well, maybe. Will you always make it in a diced game? No. When will you
not make it? You can't tell me, because you can't know until the
situation arrises. Same in a diceless game. Sometime you might not make
it. When? I can't tell you because it's not predictable to any certainty.
What will be the cause of success or failure at that time? Give me the
exact situation, and I'll give you an exact answer. Every decision really
resolves at the moment, according to its factors and necessities, which
is exactly why diceless decisions work just fine.
If you want to know the odds, I can give each character that information,
as that charcater would percieve it, which is all that's necessary, and
far more useful than 'Difficulty 12', or '34% Likely', neither of which
relate well to the real world, and are very artifical, and
oversimplifications.
: If the jumper lacks ability, why did they succeed on the first two leaps?
Give me the exact situations, and I'll be glad to give you exact answers.
: What I'm looking for in this example is how one gets variation in
: results when the situation is similar yet variation is clearly
: possible.
Why is variation 'clearly possible'? Given that you can tell me why
variation is clearly possible, specifically, you will once again have
answered your own question. Those factors are used to provide that
variation. The decision criterion may be what you're really looking for,
and for that we must leap to the meta-game, just as every diced system
does, as every die roll is a meta-game effect, ie. a force outside of
game parameters which simulates the selection of a single possibility
from the decision space of all possibilities.
And there in lies one of my major gripes with dice. The simplification
process by which factors are generically spoon fed to diced mechanics
means that the decision space is highly truncated. To think in terms of
dice rules is already limiting for me.
: Both success and failure are possible in the leaps. Given
: a series of leaps, how do you decide which are failures and which are
: successes?
On the specifics of the situation.
: The skills possessed by the character are insufficient to normally
: defeat the demon and a large part of the failure or success will
: depend on how well the NPC demon defends itself and attacks.
Agreed. But given that the Demon attacks in a certain way, the decision
is really based on how well the character defends and attacks. And that's
where I like the emphasis, on the player's decisions in character. I
decide on how to react as the Demon partly based off of what the
character does, and my judgement of the Demon's character and
motivations. Interplay and interchange.
: It isn't a lucky roll, per se, that I'm looking for. It is what that
: lucky roll represents. If I decide to stand in front of the demon
: with only the most minimal chance of defeating it, I want that chance
: to be determined objectively. Being "given" a success is as
: disappointing for me as being swatted down off hand.
Yes. I agree. But good diceless GMs neither 'give away' success, nor do
they 'swat players down' in failure. People don't play these games for
that. Does a good diced GM always go with exactly what the dice say in
all situations, never allowing modifiers of any kind, for total and
absolute objectivity? Of course not. That's not what most people play
for. Lets stay away from assumptions which lead the argument into nowhere
but straw man territory. I think we'll simple agree to disagree, but we
can learn something in the process.
: No. But I'm trying to understand how diceless works in certain
: situations and explain where I have problems.
What I'm saying is that yu can't stay in hypothetical generics and get
what diceless decisions are about, because they don't live there. They
work because roleplay doesn't really exist there either. We're going to
need a character, with some skills, in a situation with some bearing and
meaning.
: what I've always felt was a GM freebie win. I would have rathered my
: character, upon failing his attack, to have been splattered.
I agree, diced or diceless.
: Well, it clearly has meaning but let's simply say that the game won't
: collapse if the character fails or succeeds. The game goes on.
: What I guess I'm trying to say is that I could be satisfied *either*
: the character fails or succeeds provided the results reflect the
: situation.
Agreed. And if a diceless decision reflects the situation, then it works
to that extent at least. And it's much easier to get diceless decisions,
as dependent as they are on what is described, to reflect the situation.
: Does it help to think in terms of "I did well" or "I did badly"? Is
: it that you need a meaning behind how well you performed the skill?
Not quite. Describing what my character does is basically what roleplay
is made of. Sometimes that description is in speaking, or acting, and
sometimes in description of what the character does, because I can't
easily speak it or do it. I hate losing any of this. I want to describe
what I do, and have that precise description have precise game effects,
leading to descriptions of exact actions. I find that difficult to get
with dice. At least I find the dice unnecessary and distracting to the
process.
: And I might also know what metagaming decisions tilted the scales. I
: don't *want* to know that! :-)
Then don't use the meta-game in that way. You don't have to. I like to.
Think of this. Every dice roll is meta-game, and they are constanly
tipping the scales. The only difference is that they are devoid of human
judgement. That human judgement comes in in the adjudication of factors,
in a multitude of important game decisions, and in the interpretation of
results. In otehr words, it's so important and complete that I think it's
a bit of an illusion to pretend that dice rolls are objective. I know
that illusion is very important to some people, and it may never be what
you'll get from a diceless game. Maybe I just trust my GMs to be
'objective' in that way, ie. fair towards the game integrity. Maybe such
absolute fairness isn't necessary for me, or even desirable. Maybe what I
gain from not using dice is far more to me than I lose. Probably a
combination of these.
: You are correct at pointing out that descriptions of failure can get
: dropped in dice gamed. But that doesn't have to be the case and I
: find it possible as a player to fill in within the bounds of the die
: result why I failed IC when needed. BTW, it is common in my group for
: the GM to fill in quick reasons for unusual results.
You can, yes. And that's good. But always trying to follow the dice is
not where I want to be. I trust my sense of whjat's fair, right, and
appropriate, more than I trust any dice roll or diced system.
: It has nothing to do with accepting the dice as the reason. It has to
: do with accepting what the dice represent. They don't represent
: accomplished fate out of nowhere. They represent an objective
: selection between possible outcomes based on an abstract random roll.
They represent such a decision based upon the factors which they accept,
which is very few, very slim, and highly truncated from the actual
possibilities. As random seed, I have a much easier time accepting them.
I don't need that, but we do use it in the Ironwood rules even. As
simulators, I think they are horribly restrictive, and most diced rules
actually attempt to simulate using them.
David
Andrew Finch
: If companies were to pull more people into role-playing via games with
: different approaches, you might get a larger and broader selection of
: gamers. Instead, people seem to be waiting for pre-D&Dized players.
To some extent you may be right. I can only speak for Backstage Press. We
aren't looking for pre D&Dized people. They don't make a good customer
base for us.
: The problem is that I'm not sure that the total market size is
: growing. It might just be getting cut up into smaller bits. If
: the market is growing, overall, it is OK. If it is just getting
: cut into smaller bits that isn't OK.
I think it is growing. Look at the growth in fantasy literature, filsm,
TV, etc. I wish there were more hard numbers. I would love some demographics.
: I'm also concerned about the effect of niche gaming on mixed groups.
: If a group has mixed dramatic and simulationist players, a move
: towards a game specifically catering to one or the other is bound to
: split the group. When groups break up and games stop, people stop
: gaming.
I think that groups which play together often get fairly good at
selecting games which will work for them.
: That is great. The question, then, is how Vampire tapped into a new
: market. By having a "safety net" and by analyzing D&D, I'm not
: suggesting you have to emulate it. I'm simply saying that many of the
: games targetted at experienced players are unapproachable by new
: players. I think it is helpful to encorporate some of the things that
: make D&D (and Vampire, as you point out) approachable to new players.
: For example, how does Vampire work for new players? How might you
: target Theatrix to get the attention of new gamers?
Good questions. I don't know if we can. I would love to. D&D is actually
damn hard to learn. It's got lots of little rules. I think their strength
is not in system, but in marketing to their customer base. And I think
marjketing is a major problem for the industry. Game comanies are pretty
bad at it, and we're no exceprions (but trying to get better).
: create your character" is problematic for a variety of reasons. It
: might also be helpful if all these advocacy discussions did come up
: with some sort of way to differentiate play styles such that the
: industry could guide potential players to the right game where they
: might grow instead of forcing them through the wrong game that makes
: them never want to play again.
That's a good idea. Maybe a new gamer FAQ? Or better yet, an industry
produced booklet. That's the kind of thing GAMMA should be doing.
: Just in curiosity, how did they fight you? For all those people
: who weren't around a year ago... :-)
Each character I make is unique. I like it represented as unique within
the rules, which guide action and result within the game world. Character
generation is about dealing with commonalities and generics. You're
objection to point based systems, which are attempting to deal with teh
unique parts of each character, is a fair one. They're complex and
daunting. That still leaves me unhappy with class based systems though.
Unhappy with most point based ones as well, because I like the meta-game
aspects of my characters represented as well, which are what Theatrix
Descriptors are really about. That's why we put them in.
: I think it can also mean new approaches. As you stated above, Vampire
: pulled in new players with a new apporach. Could Theatrix appeal to
: new non-traditional markets (e.g. marketed to improv theater groups or
: writers as a tool).
I wish, but I don't think so. We're definitely in the RPG market.
: Part of the problem is that RPGs are cannibalizing
: yet another market for their players -- "genre fans". Maybe to grow,
: RPGs need to move beyond the traditional genres. Other genres are
: certainly suitable for role-playing -- Romance, Soap Opera, more
: traditional Action/Adventure, Historical, Military, etc.
Full agreement there.
: PS - BTW, have you ever thought about selling Theatrix through, say,
: _Writer's Digest_ as a tool for authors to play out plots with their
: friends? I could see it being a useful tool -- as good as any other
: hawked in the magazine :-). Just an idea.
It's too RPG centered. Table top RPG is definitely what it was made for.
ALthough we may come out with another product more in that vein.
David