Quote from: balzacqThat's what we should be discussing.

What ... again? :confused:

I'm not sure it applies to Call of Cthulhu. I mean, kinda.

You can have a Call of Cthulhu adventure in the mode of say.. exploring a haunted house or ice-locked cave where shoggoth dwell. Or soemthing like that. "Dungeon" mode.

You can have a CoC adventure that involves investigating a series of murders.. or a robbery. Going around collecting clues, interviewing NPCs, etc. "Mystery" mode.

You can have a Call of CThulhu story that involves travelling to exotic locations with persistent characters in order to get involved in notional "adventures", but also to pick up meta-clues to a greater conspiracy or threat (Nyarlathotep is a bit like this). This would be kind of like "Campaign mode".

You can visit the dreamlands.

You can do it as military-style missions (like Delta Green).

You could do it as straight historical roleplay (not that interesting to me, but I know of some people who do this, and mainly play CoC because they are fond of the era).

I'm sure there are other ways I'm not thinking of right now.

Now, the characters in Call of CThulhu are all occult investigators or people who somehow end up as occult investigators of some kind.. but you have a lot of leeway about what kind of story you want to tell.

Quote from: Abyssal MawI'm not sure it applies to Call of Cthulhu. I mean, kinda.

You can have a Call of Cthulhu adventure in the mode of say.. exploring a haunted house or ice-locked cave where shoggoth dwell. Or soemthing like that. "Dungeon" mode.

You can have a CoC adventure that involves investigating a series of murders.. or a robbery. Going around collecting clues, interviewing NPCs, etc. "Mystery" mode.

You can have a Call of CThulhu story that involves travelling to exotic locations with persistent characters in order to get involved in notional "adventures", but also to pick up meta-clues to a greater conspiracy or threat (Nyarlathotep is a bit like this). This would be kind of like "Campaign mode".

You can visit the dreamlands.

You can do it as military-style missions (like Delta Green).

You could do it as straight historical roleplay (not that interesting to me, but I know of some people who do this, and mainly play CoC because they are fond of the era).

Most of this is about setting not goals. Also fans of the game are always exploring the possibility of setting the game in another location/timeline etc but still retaining the goal of the game. I, myself thought about transferring Dogs to the 40K setting.

The one thing that remains in all your other settings examples for CoC is the goal of defeating C Meanies....

QuoteNow, the characters in Call of CThulhu are all occult investigators or people who somehow end up as occult investigators of some kind.. but you have a lot of leeway about what kind of story you want to tell.

Same with Dogs.

Another example is Midnight a d20 game. The goal is pretty limited just like in Dogs or CoC . You have to fight the minions of Izrador. Yet, I would not call Midnight a railroad...

Yes, the scope of the game is very focused, but using the term railroad is inappropriate.

Regards,
David R

I obviously disagree. You can change the setting all you want, (It's Jedi! It's Samurai! its whatever!) but it's still about a bunch of guys rolling into a notional town to impose their "morals" on the populace and experience conflicts and tackle issues and whatnot. Multiple settings are possible, but its a single mode of play.


In Call of Cthulhu, you can leave the setting completely the same and still get a different adventure mode. In one adventure the group gets together to explore a ruins. In another they investigate a mystery. In another they do some historical roleplaying as they interact with historical NPCs or whatever. In another adventure they just get together and roleplay a "1920s casino night" (something Ive actually played in Call of Cthulhu). Then in yet another session they get on a train and encounter some curious artifacts. Then later they end up tracking down cult figures.
 
But then, you can change the Call of cthulhu setting as well. multiple modes, multiple settings.

Quote from: TonyLBWhat ... again? :confused:

Well, I didn't say whether it had been done to death elsewhere.

Personally, here's my answers (to the extent of my experience):

(A) I do think that game-restricted situations or types of play represent disempowerment of the GM by the designer;

(B) I suspect that the goal of true player empowerment is either likely to end in tears when applied to almost all gamers, or in success only in groups that come to a consensus (spoken or unspoken) about what types of situations they can co-create without rancor, which is just arrival at limited situation by a different path;

(C) I don't see player empowerment as a useful success strategy in making games more fun (which is, after all, the whole point behind the Forge), in fact just the opposite; and

(D) there's nothing wrong with running a limited-situation game or an open-ended game, if that's what's fun for you and your players.


As for the OP's secondary point about whether indie game designers are auteurs, I'll fish the red herring for a minute and argue that in common English usage "auteur" typically connotes either:

(a) "Cinematic Genius with a Unique Artistic Vision and the Power To Make It Happen"; or

(b) "wanker".

Which meaning is operational depends on the director or producer, and the speaker's attitude toward them. The same is true of game designers, and I'm sure that my CGwaUAVatPTMIH is your wanker and vice versa. Thus the crimson fishiness of the discussion.

Quote from: Abyssal MawI obviously disagree. You can change the setting all you want, (It's Jedi! It's Samurai! its whatever!) but it's still about a bunch of guys rolling into a notional town to impose their "morals" on the populace and experience conflicts and tackle issues and whatnot. Multiple settings are possible, but its a single mode of play.

And CoC (whatever the setting) is still about confronting...you know.

QuoteIn Call of Cthulhu, you can leave the setting completely the same and still get a different adventure mode. In one adventure the group gets together to explore a ruins. In another they investigate a mystery. In another they do some historical roleplaying as they interact with historical NPCs or whatever. In another adventure they just get together and roleplay a "1920s casino night" (something Ive actually played in Call of Cthulhu). Then in yet another session they get on a train and encounter some curious artifacts. Then later they end up tracking down cult figures.

And you can't do this with Dogs? In one adventure, the Dog's are trapped because of a storm in a strange manor and have to deal with it's even stranger occupants. In another, they investigate the murder of another Dog in a seemingly idyllic town. In another adventure they come across an important historical figure - a sinfull (to their mind) figure.

QuoteBut then, you can change the Call of cthulhu setting as well. multiple modes, multiple settings.

I don't think this conversation is going anywhere productive. My fault, I think. I do think that you are conflating goals and settings but I doubt any further discussion on this issue is going to be productive for either of us.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RAnd CoC (whatever the setting) is still about confronting...you know.

Doesn't have to be. Or it doesn't have to be.. all the time. Plus the "you know" part, takes many different forms. It's true that the PCs are always investigators. Sometimes, the thing they investigate is outright monsters. Sometimes it's cultists. Sometimes it's magical relics. Sometimes it's normal mundane crime. Sometimes it's none of the above.. and thats all ok.
 

QuoteAnd you can't do this with Dogs? In one adventure, the Dog's are trapped because of a storm in a strange manor and have to deal with it's even stranger occupants. In another, they investigate the murder of another Dog in a seemingly idyllic town. In another adventure they come across an important historical figure - a sinfull (to their mind) figure.

Nope. You can't do that. Dogs is (and only is) about moral conflicts. Your bottom two examples can be recast into that, but the first one can't without a little work. There's nothing particularly immoral about a strange occupant. I suppose he could be recast as a .. I dunno... pervert or something so that the dogs could then hand wring a bit before shooting him, but the story will be the same regardless.

QuoteI don't think this conversation is going anywhere productive. My fault, I think. I do think that you are conflating goals and settings but I doubt any further discussion on this issue is going to be productive for either of us.

Fair enough, but I know perfectly well the difference beween a setting and a goal. And I'm saying the real thing here is a mode.

Quote from: Abyssal MawDoesn't have to be. Or it doesn't have to be.. all the time. Plus the "you know" part, takes many different forms. It's true that the PCs are always investigators. Sometimes, the thing they investigate is outright monsters. Sometimes it's cultists. Sometimes it's magical relics. Sometimes it's normal mundane crime. Sometimes it's none of the above.. and thats all ok.

Yes and these so-called different modes is about confronting Chuthlu (sp) - the goal of the game.
 

QuoteNope. You can't do that. Dogs is (and only is) about moral conflicts. Your bottom two examples can be recast into that, but the first one can't without a little work. There's nothing particularly immoral about a strange occupant.

There can be, that's the whole mystery mode of my example.

QuoteFair enough, but I know perfectly well the difference beween a setting and a goal. And I'm saying the real thing here is a mode.

This conversation started because Mcrow stated that the goal of Dogs was a railroad. Some games have very tighly focused goals. CoC, Midnight are two that come to mind at the moment. You have not really demonstrated with your modes of play argument how Dogs is a railroad.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RYes and these so-called different modes is about confronting Chuthlu (sp) - the goal of the game.

I bet I can link you 20 CoC adventures in a single post that don't have anything to do with Cthulhu. Theyre about stuff like haunted houses, cults, ghosts, and just weird crap. (Ok, theyre all listed off of the Chaosium website. I was looking at them today).

This ability to have a variable mode -- is also why you can have such a thing as a Call of Cthulhu campaign. You can't simply play the same story over and over with swapped out names and expect to keep people coming back. But if you vary the mode, you can have the exact same character and have.. adventures. Adventures that vary, with different stories and plotlines.

For example:

Beyond the Mountains of Madness

That's 440 pages of adventures. Different kinds of adventures. Detailed adventures. Adventures that involve going places and doing different things. There's investigation, there's interviews, there's puzzles, there's battle. There's a whole bunch of crap in there.

You simply can't do that with with the mormon "escalating conflict" psychodrama.

QuoteThis conversation started because Mcrow stated that the goal of Dogs was a railroad. Some games have very tighly focused goals. CoC, Midnight are two that come to mind at the moment. You have not really demonstrated with your modes of play argument how Dogs is a railroad.

I'm not trying to demonstrate that its a railroad. I'm demonstrating that its the exact same story each and every time.

Now, I do beleive that in the exact same way that a GM can railroad players to force them onto the one-and-only path he wants the players to experience-- a game designer can set things up so that no other path is possible.

How about this: what we're really talking about is degrees of optimization.

Some games are highly optimized toward their designers' expected mode of play, and some are not.

DitV is highly optimized toward religious enforcers making moral choices while they clean up pseudoMormon towns in a pseudoUtah. So highly optimized that it's very difficult to twist play into other paths.

CoC is optimized toward 1920's investigators confronting Lovecraftian beasties, but you could probably without too much trouble play other games with it -- 21st-century moderns vs. LBs, 30's gangsters with no LBs, Old West gunslingers, etc.

Traveller is optimized toward the very broad concept of space-opera SF, but tends in play toward "ex-military vagabonds do crime". However, if you ignored the official universe you could play a very large range of SF settings with it, although you'd have trouble with a TransHuman Space type setting, and you really definitely can't do classic fantasy with it (I know this because I tried it once).

GURPS and other "generic" systems are theoretically deliberately not optimized toward any setting, but GURPS at least tends toward what I believe the Forge calls "simulationist" gaming (whatever that means this week). However, you could easily argue that the lack of optimization means that they do nothing well; I concede this point, although I think that having to master only one system to do any sort of gaming outweighs this consideration.

AD&D 1 & 2 were optimized toward "classic D&D fantasy" (they should be -- they defined what that genre was), but could do other sorts of fantasy well (neolithic hunters, Renaissance swashbucklers, etc.). They really couldn't do modern or SF, though. (And as far as I can tell from reading descriptions and actual play examples, D&D3.5 is optimized toward recreating a CRPG with pen and paper. Ick.)

Make sense?

Quote from: Abyssal MawI bet I can link you 20 CoC adventures in a single post that don't have anything to do with Cthulhu. Theyre about stuff like haunted houses, cults, ghosts, and just weird crap. (Ok, theyre all listed off of the Chaosium website. I was looking at them today).

So, these adventures are not really about Cthulhu then. It's just horror adventures using the CoC system, is this what you are sayin'?

QuoteThis ability to have a variable mode -- is also why you can have such a thing as a Call of Cthulhu campaign. You can't simply play the same story over and over with swapped out names and expect to keep people coming back. But if you vary the mode, you can have the exact same character and have.. adventures. Adventures that vary, with different stories and plotlines.

Who said DiTV players tell the same story. Sure the game is very tightly focused (as are many other games), anyone who reads it will tell you that, but telling the same stories over and over again , IME absolutely not.

The part I bolded in your post, is applicable to DitV too.

QuoteFor example:

Beyond the Mountains of Madness

That's 440 pages of adventures. Different kinds of adventures. Detailed adventures. Adventures that involve going places and doing different things. There's investigation, there's interviews, there's puzzles, there's battle. There's a whole bunch of crap in there.

Very interesting. Thanks for the link.

QuoteYou simply can't do that with with the mormon "escalating conflict" psychodrama.

Yes you can. The examples I've given demonstrate that you can have multiple modes of play in tighly focused games/settings.

QuoteI'm not trying to demonstrate that its a railroad. I'm demonstrating that its the exact same story each and every time.

And I'm tryin' to show otherwise.

QuoteNow, I do beleive that in the exact same way that a GM can railroad players to force them onto the one-and-only path he wants the players to experience-- a game designer can set things up so that no other path is possible.

Maybe, but as far as Dogs is concerned, I don't think this is the case.

Regards,
David R

AM, reading my replies, I come across, as a bit of a wanker. I get what you are sayin'. I guess my experience with the game is clouding my ability to articulate my points clearly. DitV is a more focused game than CoC.

I think the difference between CoC and Dogs, is that the former's goal is not so overt and the game lends itself more readly to different modes of play. Would this be a fair statement to make?

Regards,
David R

Certainly.. and of course your'e a wanker!







... but aren't we all

Quote from: David RAM, reading my replies, I come across, as a bit of a wanker.

Only because of the commas

I dunno if Dogs in the Vineyard was a railroady game or not, but it was sure as shit a depressing one.

Quote from: David RMost of this is about setting not goals. Also fans of the game are always exploring the possibility of setting the game in another location/timeline etc but still retaining the goal of the game. I, myself thought about transferring Dogs to the 40K setting.

The one thing that remains in all your other settings examples for CoC is the goal of defeating C Meanies....

Whereas in DitV, the method as well as the goals tends to be the same. You're always going to be in the "travelling law enforcer" mode unless you significantly retool the game, at which point... we're talking about a houseruled thing, not the game as written.