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Color as Rules

Started by Spike, August 03, 2007, 03:13:05 PM

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Settembrini

@AM: Isn´t it sad how they rather argue for hours instead of doing the legwork and actually read and play traveller? That´s showing they don´t really want to understand.
Rolling up a star system takes what?
Five minutes?

But they cannot be bothered.
It would conflict with their "STORY" and "CONFLICT". Yuck at both uses of the word.

EDIT: I will not participate further in this. I explained my case, gave hints. Go, play.
If there can\'t be a TPK against the will of the players it\'s not an RPG.- Pierce Inverarity

K Berg

Quote from: SettembriniEDIT: I will not participate further in this. I explained my case, gave hints. Go, play

You promise!
Seriously, you promise to stay the fuck away so the rest of us can converse like normal beings. Great. You made my day.Thank you.

I've read traveller, I have traveller, never played it, but cut my teeth at 2300AD. Great fun. Now I get that from EVE. Because the tables give me headaches.

Its taste. And I do not presume that it is predominant. Nor do I assume your taste is. If anything all these debates are ruined by people assuming they are representative of the one true way. We are too much an eclectic group to make such statements.
 

LostSoul

Quote from: K BergPlain wrong sett.

I think Sett may be right; in the sandbox game (forgive me if I'm getting this wrong) everything is important.  Even, maybe, some random dude's eye colour.  However, maybe I don't understand the term "colour".

What I'm wondering about now is the role of the DM in such games.  Does the fact that the DM is the one who provides adversity cause a problem with his referee role?  

Maybe I've just had bad experiences trying to DM and play this type of game.
 

Temple

Quote from: Settembrini@AM: Isn´t it sad how they rather argue for hours instead of doing the legwork and actually read and play traveller? That´s showing they don´t really want to understand.
Rolling up a star system takes what?
Five minutes?

But they cannot be bothered.
It would conflict with their "STORY" and "CONFLICT". Yuck at both uses of the word.

EDIT: I will not participate further in this. I explained my case, gave hints. Go, play.

Sett, Im tired of your idiocy and your bullshit.
Read this carefully:

You are not a teacher.
You are not intellectually superior.
You are making a fool of yourself.

You dont understand what you are talking about, and yet you continue to talk crap. Your tone is so condescending that itsridiculous when viewed in context with the actual content of your posts, which rarely makes any sense.
Im beginning to suspect you are a disgruntled teenager or something.

Either make the effort to understand what is being duscussed, or get the hell out of the thread. As it is you are a useless part of this duscussion.
 

K Berg

I use color like this:

A detail that helps bring the world alive, yet carries no mechanical (as in rule) effect. Color is what makes things more visible to our minds eye.
 

Abyssal Maw

Quote from: K BergYes, being Lazy doesn't remove all prep work. Never said it does. What it does, is it makes me focus my limited pool of creative effort on what I need to play. In my book that doesn't involve stating out a star-system 6 months in advance.

But that is in my book.

For me unless it reflects directly on play (as in something that can influence a die-roll, coin flip or token bid and thus affect resolution) I don't need to know its stats to include it in my game-world.
Until it suddenly enters a conflict. And at this stage having rules that seemlessly turns color into mechanics is a forte. Because it keeps the game fairer.

BE and BWr rocks on this part. Because you can scale the detail you need out of the resolution mechanics and you can make the details matter when they do. Not six months in advance.

Which is how I play.

The idea that people are statting out star systems that "will never matter in play" is as baseless as the idea that people are statting out relationship maps that will never matter in play. Or lighting candles or "saluting in" or keys or flags or sprawling triangle diagrams and flowcharts or whatever the fuck else is on the laundry list of stuff you guys do.

It seems like we can acknowledge that you might need that stuff if your "game" is all about exploring morality and taclking issues. But if the game is about adventure-- which is to say-- going places and doing stuff, such things as how long it takes to get there and how much fuel will be required might be necessary to know.

This seems simple to me.
Download Secret Santicore! (10MB). I painted the cover :)

Gunslinger

Quote from: Settembrini@AM: Isn´t it sad how they rather argue for hours instead of doing the legwork and actually read and play traveller? That´s showing they don´t really want to understand.
Rolling up a star system takes what?
Five minutes?

But they cannot be bothered.
It would conflict with their "STORY" and "CONFLICT". Yuck at both uses of the word.

EDIT: I will not participate further in this. I explained my case, gave hints. Go, play.
Actually, what's sad is you won't acknowlege that probably over 75% of roleplayers have played this way, probably a much larger percentage of the people you're talking to on a roleplaying forum.  Burning Empires and Burning Wheel sit next to Star Frontiers and D&D boxed sets on my shelf.  My Rules Cyclopedia is nestled with The Mountain Witch, Primetime Adventures, and Mortal Coil in my briefcase.  Your failure to comprehend one playstyle does not directly correlate to others not understanding yours.  Your cop out not to learn theirs doesn't mean that they haven't learned yours.  It's convenient for you to think so in order to be right.  You're correct.  You're the blind man, which is why you'll never see the "color" of the radio.  You didn't win.  You failed to see.  What's worse is that you pretend to be deaf, so you don't have to listen.  That still doesn't mean you've experienced being deaf.
 

K Berg

QuoteIt seems like we can acknowledge that you might need that stuff if your "game" is all about exploring morality and taclking issues. But if the game is about adventure-- which is to say-- going places and doing stuff, such things as how long it takes to get there and how much fuel will be required might be necessary to know.

Never said that wasn't valid. You need to become more sure about your own playstyle and stop defnding it like a rabid dog. We are not attacking it, we are not putting it down. There is no need to be so sensitive and defensive. Your insecure behaviour is counter productive.

Personally I can not see the point in tracking how much fuel if the point of the games is "going places and doing stuff" since the point of going places is actually going. It seems unessecary too me.
That being said I understand that some people thrive on this and this makes the unvicerse go round for them. Power to them for knowing what they like.
It most likely means they are having fun doing it, and for me having fun is 90% the point of role-playing.
Yay, you are having fun. I admitted it. Feel better now?

Can we begin to talk.

Belive it or not, but when I play most of the time it is about going places and doing stuff. A major point in difference lies here:
For me a piece of equipment that doesn't get used in a game-mechanical way doesn't needs stats. It is color and thus as mechanically significant as randomdudes eyecolor. It is vitally important for the versimillitude of our imagined gameworld. Because of this it carries as much imaginary weight as a fully statted space-ship.

We played Shadow of Yesterday in a spacesetting, where the characters were all the crew of a spacs-ship called the Gnostic Avenger. A ship so old that what original design it once had been was lost beneath countless modifications. During the course of this short campaign we even played an entire session aboard this ship, with blaster bolts and what have you flying between down the corridors. But we never gave her any stats. Didn't make her less real in our imagination. Even when they used her escape pod to jettison a nuke into the hold of an enemy ship did the stats become important. That she had an escape pod did. But it had been established previously in play. So it was there.

When we back in the day (pre D20) played Star Wars, we most often used the space-ships this way. But in that Universe space dog fights are a part of the game. Off course we used stats for these. How else would we agree that the Millenium Falcon could escape Hoth and not go all freeformy?

Color to Mechanics is a way of combining these two worlds. If the Gnostic Avenger suddenly found herself in a firefight where her sensors would become important, and I as a player would say "Dude we have the Hyperdyne Superwhifffers, so we should find them easy." The GM would say stat it up and roll. Depending on the roll then maybe we didn't have the superwhiffers, but just the puffers, who knows. Doesn't make it less real to me.

Now if you need the length of a planetary bodies distance from the sun, and then what kind of atmoshpere it has to get the same feel there is nothing inferior or wrong with this. Travelleres planetary system generation is great for this kind of thing. Heck, it is brilliant little spark the imagination system. Particulary with regards to the hard-science paradigm of the traveller universe.

Is it nessecary for a sandbox campaign.

I dont think so.

Is it a way to create and play a sandbox campaign.

Most def.

Can it be done with color to mechanics.

Most def.
 

droog

Quote from: Kyle AaronI think that if we go with something simple, the common everyday understanding of what a "game" is, we do alright.
I think that the lesson of Wittgenstein is, rather, that there is no final definition of what constitutes a game, nor are there commonalities between all things marked as 'game'.
The past lives on in your front room
The poor still weak the rich still rule
History lives in the books at home
The books at home

Gang of Four
[/size]

droog

Quote from: James J SkachSo I'm trying to understand how you see it so I don't make assumption. Is there a problem with that?  
No problem, but I explained my thinking with examples of games I've used. I don't know if I can make it any clearer.
The past lives on in your front room
The poor still weak the rich still rule
History lives in the books at home
The books at home

Gang of Four
[/size]

James J Skach

I have to ge going to work and all, so I'll read the remainder of the thread later.  But this, right here, is just pricelss..
Quote from: K BergWho gives a fuck. You are asking us to read a condecending spam-machine with empathy.
Do you know how many times I've been implored to do the same thing over the last litle while since I came to the intraweb looking for some information on game design, and found a bunch of people saying I was, essentially, gaming wrong?

This is one of most common responses - you're not reading it right; you're taking it in the worst possible light; nobody is telling you your game is bad, they're just being positive about their own game; etc.

Now, when someone get called for literally misreading a post...just fucking priceless...
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer

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Paka

I'd think that the place for this thread to go would be to head over to the Craft of Gameplay sub-forum here and put the rubber to the road, maybe start a thread to talk about how people have linked color elements to the mechanics in their game with specific directly-from-play examples.

Or we could pick at scabs and snipe at one another.

James J Skach

Wow.  Where to begin. Well, first, I have to recognize yet another classic of irony – Paka calls it picking at scabs; I disagree as that assumes there is a wound and that it has one. But I digress, on with the show...

Quote from: K BergIts taste. And I do not presume that it is predominant. Nor do I assume your taste is. If anything all these debates are ruined by people assuming they are representative of the one true way.
But not to be outdone, we get Gunslinger (to K Berg's credit, not him) asserting this very thing: that the way described that is not-Sett's-way is predominant.
Quote from: GunslingerActually, what's sad is you won't acknowlege that probably over 75% of roleplayers have played this way, probably a much larger percentage of the people you're talking to on a roleplaying forum.
Really; 75% have played this way?  Any proof, statistics, anything?  Really – I'd love to see them.  I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you don't have any.  That's not meant to be snarky – it's the sad truth of all of the discussions; nobody seems to have any number on anything.
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer

The RPG Haven - Talking About RPGs

James J Skach

I am a bit troubled by this tactic:
Quote from: K BergYou promise!
Seriously, you promise to stay the fuck away so the rest of us can converse like normal beings. Great. You made my day.Thank you.
Quote from: TempleEither make the effort to understand what is being duscussed, or get the hell out of the thread. As it is you are a useless part of this duscussion.
Guys – if you don't like what Sett is saying, try the IL.  It works really well, actually. The idea that someone has to stay away from a thread because you don't like what they are saying is anathema to this place, in general. Just a bit of advice you can, of course, take or leave...
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer

The RPG Haven - Talking About RPGs

James J Skach

Quote from: Abyssal MawThe idea that people are statting out star systems that "will never matter in play" is as baseless as the idea that people are statting out relationship maps that will never matter in play.
QFT.

Damn, AM - if only you hadn't written the rest of that post..it gets too close to condescending and, therefore, too close to swinery for my tastes.  But this?  This is spot on, man.
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer

The RPG Haven - Talking About RPGs