Quote from: Saurondor;893864Xanther, totally agree, and you raise very clear examples as to why AlphaRole as a concept is a futile exercise. A human is needed no only to determine the holding off from firing, but also the justification behind it. The solution is to prevent whiny entitled players and dick GMs.

That being said let me focus on the two examples you mention. The narrative "Force" example and the more "simulationist" (old school) example. For this please allow yourself to think of the adventure as a storyline (be it of narrative of simulationist origin), and there are many (technically infinite) such storylines "occurring simultaneously".

Manzanaro mentioned



Is this true? Do "main protagonists don't get killed by mooks"? Or was it that George Lucas just filmed the one storyline in which this doesn't happen?

I chalk this example up to disconnect on game play/style.  The GM in this game says yes, the social status concept of "mook" doesn't impact game mechanics; which is closer to "reality."  I agree with the idea that this would be a surprise in Star Wars as "mooks" (those who the force is not strong in) just can't seem to hit someone the force is strong in.  Of course, maybe the GM thought your character was just a mook as well.

QuoteIn the movie the pod scene is shown as the beginning of a great saga. What if it's the end of a previous adventure riddled with poor decision choices on behalf of Leia's player? Why is the Star Destroyer catching up to the ship? How did they discover all this?

It is very reasonable to believe that after a series of such fumbles by the player the ship is taken over and "anything trying to leave" gets shot. The droids and the plans are either captured or destroyed. End of adventure.

I guess yes.  There is danger in trying to line up movies with games.  So if the pod was destroyed, so what?  It would just have been a different adventure.  The rebels would have had to find a different way to get the plans.  (I still can't believe there was not more than one copy).  Who's to say the protagonist was not Darth Vader?  How do we know Leia or R2-D2 or even Luke are the protagonists and not just some GM Mary Lou?  In any good movie, and in any good game, there are set backs, difficulties, to be overcome.  In a game, the very nature of the randomness and players lack of complete information means that such set backs will arise on there own, no need to program them as in a movie.

But you make good points about the Star Destroyer catching them.  Why didn't Leia use her luck to stop that?  Why not use it to get away herself?  And what about Han Solo?  His ship repeatedly failing to enter hyperspace.  If you ask me, Star Wars is better viewed as an RPG where Darth Vader is the main character.  The GM got really upset he took all those "drawbacks" life support suit, hated, mass murderer, and pumped up his psionic abilities to game breaking levels and to top it all off he chose and evil alignment to do whatever he wanted.  Then he maxed out life path creation to become the second hand to the emperor.  The player really argued he should be the emperor with his force powers but the GM by fiat said the emperor had even more power, then had to come up with a convoluted reason why an evil self absorbed emperor kept a threat to his power as second in command.

QuoteNow we play a Force point and allow the droids to escape. Yet Leia is a prisoner of the Empire and this leads to the destruction of Alderaan and the death of Obi Wan. Remember that the Death Star would not have been there when Solo flew the protagonists to Alderaan. Should I spend a Force point to prevent that too?

I'm thinking Leia is not a PC.  Or she just used her force point in that session too soon, poor Alderaan.  Or more likely Darth is our PC, and he used a force point, he got some after the GM droid trick, to make sure nothing interfered with destroying Alderan.  I think this really is more of a tail about the pitfalls of the advantage/disadvantage system.   Darth munchin'ed out the Force, then the GM let the droids go.  When the player whined the GM had to come up with another force user (Leia) and when she got captured another (Luke).  Then the player whines about all the disadvantages he had to take to get the Force.  How can Leia and Luke still be young, healthy and well liked and use the Force when poor Darth had to stack disadvantages.   Well now you see why Luke and Leia had to be Darth's children, they inherited it from him.

QuoteAre we here to tell a story or to ensure all the protagonists survive so the players have fun? What would GRR Martin say about this?

I think GRR would say, add some nudity.   Yet there is an assumption there, that all the protagonists must survive for a player to have fun.  I never needed that.  I just wanted options and to know I could explore the world and what I learned, or knew of this one if applicable, mattered to evaluating risks and that if I succeeded my actions matter (i.e. they wouldn't be nerffed because that messed with some pre-conceived story).  So I never wanted magical fairy protection for all I do, nor the opposite, a GM nerffing everything I do and imbueing NPCs with near mystical powers of predigitation, ala The Walking Dead.  As opposed to nerf herding which is an honorable, if odorous, profession.

QuoteManzanaro mentions

I guess by narrative principles he refers to preferring one storyline to others, particularly preferring those in which the protagonists survive, and also allow for the usage of "points" to jump from one storyline to another so to stay in the same general path. Yet this also destroys narrative potential as it narrows down the storylines to those the players find "safe" and "interesting" and any hope of "emergent dynamics" is removed. By emergent dynamics I mean a mechanism under which the story unfolds beyond the initial expectation of players and by doing so it surprises everyone.

Unless you are simply recreating the movie, and I don't know why you'd bother, the players would not know what the Star Wars story was.  I'd say to me that what the players find "safe" is not interesting.  Without surprises, it is really just a collective fiction writing exercise.  No different than when in creative writing class I write a paragraph, pass to the next person, they write a paragraph and so on.  That can certainly be fun, but in no way is it what I'd call a fun RPG.

For me, as player or GM, those surprises, those emergent dynamics are the very reason I find RPGs fun.  It is the ones where the rules, and players, allow for emergent dynamics that fit with how I view the genre that love the most.  I judge a game by this and the ease with which it can be played yet till provide the depth of verisimilitude I'm looking for.

QuoteThat being said let me turn our attention to randomness. Randomness is generally believed to be behind the death of our protagonist after an unlucky shot to the head. Dice are the random elements in the game and player and GM decisions are not. What happens when we take a moment to consider everything to be random: dice, player choices, GM decisions. There's another usage of the term random or variable that is related to uncertainty. Uncertainty of that which is but you don't know yet. For example, I have two rooms, and without using dice in one I place a dragon and in another I place the dragon's gold. As a player you see two doors and, without using dice, you choose one. You don't know in what room I placed the dragon and I don't know which door you've chosen. That's a random event right there and it didn't involve dice. The outcome is unknown until it unfolds.

On the other hand if as a player you have some sort of ESP that allows you to see the future and you know what the roll of a die will come out as then it's not random.

Or they could look for other clues, smell, blood stains, frequency of use, sounds, etc.  I find this a key enjoyment of RPGs, and one aspect where CRPGs fail miserably, I imagine myself in such a local and think of all the ways I could gather information to make a more informed decision; and/or lessen the disaster if I choose wrong.

QuoteThe players are in a scene, something needs to be resolved that requires a die roll. You know, given your ESP, that an 8 will be rolled. You can make your decisions based on the known outcome of the roll. The roll, although it hasn't happened, is not uncertain to you. This might seem like a bit of an artificial construct, but it drives the point that when uncertainty is reduced so is randomness regardless of the usage of dice. This is the essence of min-maxing. Drive the stats to a point the randomness of the dice don't matter anymore. If in a d100 system you fail on a 3 or less it's pretty much a certain you'll hit and if the mechanics only resolve damage or no damage then you're quite certain you'll be doing damage round after round. You could pretty much skip the attack roll and proceed directly to the damage, you'd be right 97% of the time. On the other hand if you need a 98 or better to hit things can get quite boring. After all that adding bonuses and rolling you'll get mostly nothing out of that work.

Agreed.  As long as shifting the odds grossly in your favor is the result of "good" play (doesn't break verisimilitude) and planning I'm all in favor of it.  It's your reward after all.  That's the art of war. I'm all about risk-reward.  The very flexible and open nature that a human moderated RPG provides also precludes one from guaranteeing good adventures.  Ones that provide PCs opportunity to shift the odds through good play, balances the risks with rewards and has a continuity of outcomes, not just supreme victory or death.  Good adventure design can do this.

QuoteSee, the more certain the outcome the less important it is to resolve the mechanics that lead to it. That is unless the mechanics provide a bit more information we didn't know about. Getting down to numbers, lets say our protagonist is behind cover during a firefight on Endor. Using a d20 as en example the least I can make the die relevant is 5%, that's 5% chance of a hit and 95% chance of a miss. This may seem too high a risk, particularly if said 5% also coincides with a critical hit that kills the PC. So there's 95% chance of nothing happening and 5% chance of something happening, and this something may be the PCs death.  I could ask for a second roll, but this just keeps making mechanics more complicated and slower.

Agreed.  I'd call this a very all or nothing situation from the get go.  Now it may be realistic.  For example a 20mm cannon round anywhere to your body id going to kill you, so maybe a blaster bolt as well.  Then as in real life it all becomes about not getting hit.  So this would be a very hard core game and you shouldn't plan on lots of blaster combat being a part of it because a PC could die at any time.  Unless you are OK with that and just plan to roll up another and move on.  But if your whole game and adventure requires long lived PC continuity and has a lot of blaster combat, you either need to make available (even if through hard work) means to avoid insta-death or you'll just be beating your head against the wall.

QuoteWhat if there was a 0.5% of getting killed, a 1.5% of getting hit, a 5% chance of something else, a 15% chance of yet another outcome and a 75% chance of a miss. What would these two "something else" be? In this mechanism I've reduced the risk of instant death to 0.5% and the odds of nothing happening have dropped from 95 to 75%. The die roll has become more "relevant" while the odds of death less probable. Without using hit points or similar buffer mechanics, what would these two "something else" be?

I'd submit that hit points are the perfect mechanic for such things.  Others I've seen is where an ability gets degraded, which is pretty realistic but can lead to making it so you are guaranteed to die next attack (aka death spiral).  It really is a balance on "lethality" by which I mean not just death but any "failed" roll that prevents the adventure or game from proceeding as wanted.  Such as having an elaborate dungeon but the only way the PCs can get to the "story" you envision is to pick a lock or discover a clue, or worse yet read the GM's mind.  That's just bad design and lack of forethought.  I also think another bad design is to make everything mutable with a fate point. story point, what have you.   If you have to keep using these to advance the story you want to play, then there is something serious wrong with your adventure design, mechanics or both.   If you want your PCs not to get insta-killed in a fire fight well make them less deadly, lower the number and/or give the PCs some fate points.  However, if you still want some tension make the fate points limited so they don't get in all sorts of fights.  You could also make the rules asymmetric, the PCs have an easier time of it just because you say so, such as call the NPCs "mooks" and make them insta-die.

Quote from: Saurondor;894559Yes, but you also open up the system to incongruities.

Let's be precise here. It opens up the system to more options. Period. Some of those options you may not like. Whether you call them "incongruities" or something else is immaterial. The question is "Why the hell are you opting for things you don't like?" It would seem to relegate your criticism to the realm of the irrelevant.

QuoteYour enemy is prone and hard to hit, you roll high and hit, yet somehow you roll a 1 for damage and it gets stopped by the armor. How's that? The only really exposed areas are the head and arm. Is there a helmet? Has it have the same stopping power as a vest?

I have no idea what you're getting at here.

QuoteOn the other hand your opponent is in front of you dead center, no armor. You shoot and deliver 10 points, but the character has 85. What happened to the stopping power of your weapon?

Why does the character have 85 health? I'm not saying this is impossible. If I'm running a fantasy game, I'm probably going to want to have monsters that really can shrug off a shot that would be lethal to a human. I can represent this by giving them health ratings higher than can typically be reached with a single hit. I'm not seeing why this is supposed to be a flaw. If you find it unrealistic, then stop using unrealistic characters! And if you're not going to use unrealistic characters, then it's not entirely honest to use them in your example here, is it?

QuoteThe problem with your hit point solution is that "hit" and "miss" are functionally the same unless you have a wound mechanism to hinder your opponents actions. If there is no wound mechanism your opponent is as combat effective after taking 9 hit points of damage as when being missed by the attack. It's as if nothing happened, and I know you're going to disagree with this as I understand the type of game you play.

I'm going to disagree with this, but instead I'm going to disagree on the grounds that you are simply wrong. You're wrong that "hit" and "miss" are functionally the same without a wound mechanism. You are wrong that the opponent is equally effective after taking 9 hit points of damage as when being missed. And you're wrong about the type of game I play.

If the guy in my example is hit for 9 points of damage, the composite probability distribution is going to change. Instead of your attacks against him being 50% miss, 25% "something else", 22.5% hit, and 2.5% kill, it becomes 50% miss, 25% "something else", and 25% kill. The only way in which this is different from him having a "wound penalty" on his defensive capacities is that I don't have to shift the entire probability distribution if I don't want to. I can just increase the kill percentage and leave it at that. If other effects are appropriate, they will be added as well. I just loathe to add them automatically. I need a specific reason. Specific is what makes for a good narrative. A wound penalty baked into the system is generic, and the generic makes for bad narrative.

QuoteYet for me, someone interested in modern combat games, this is unacceptable. I can't have a CQB encounter between SWAT and terrorists in a shotgun standoff shooting for what's 30 minutes of real player time to see who runs out of hit points and goes down first.

In the system I'm using, even with low-tech sword & sorcery combat, combats generally don't even last 30 seconds real time. I'm sure there are plenty of RPGs on the market that touched you in a bad place. I'm sure your criticism of them would be fair. They just aren't relevant here.

QuoteAs a video of a US soldier getting hit by a sniper rifle shows, even when the shot does no actual damage and the ceramic plate stops the shot the soldier drops to the floor and is momentarily incapacitated to take action. I can't accept a roll for initiative, I attack first, shoot the guy on the chest the armor stops the damage and then the guy attacks me immediately after.

And your point is...?

Good ol AD&D 1st Ed had a monk class who had the ability to stun opponents on a hit. My point being there is no reason in the world why you couldn't add a stun effect specific to the attack. Just because it's not automatically forced in place by the system doesn't mean you can't have it. It just means you don't have to have it. It just means the reason for it has to be specific. Not generic. Specific = good for narrative. Generic = bad for narrative.

In fact, the game system I actually play (the one in my example is just a stripped down version to illustrate the point) there actually is a "strong hit" rule, where even if all damage is blocked by armor, if the damage so absorbed is in excess of 10, the character still takes 1 point of shock harm. Of course, it's a fantasy game. So it has fantasy races. One of which, the Oaf, ignores shock harm of less than 3. So oafs, who are normally slow in combat, would have the advantage of being able to shrug off the effect.

QuoteHere's the deal, I'm a member of a SWAT team, we flash a room and enter. There's a terrorist in front of me, I open fire, I can add my skill to the roll to hit, I can add my dexterity, I can add whatever the rules say, but can I add my strength to the bullet? So I roll a 19, excellent shot and then 1 for damage. WTF!?!?!?!? I train day in and day out, and the day I storm in for real, in spite of the quality of my weapon, my skill, the favorable initiative conditions I can't take the guy down in one shot?

Wait. Why do you assume these favorable conditions won't modify the damage roll?

In the system I use, all (well, most) weapons do 1d20 damage representing the fact that they are all potentially lethal. They are differentiated in a number of ways. One of them is by a minimum damage number, which can be anywhere between 1 (for a dagger) and 11 (for a great sword). Me personally, I'm partial to the falchion, with its minimum harm of 7.

On top of that, skill can effect both hit probability and damage. How exactly that translates depends on the specific skill. Not the generic system. The system I use is multi-genre. It does have a shooting skill. Each 10 percentile points in Shooting adds 1 to the d20 roll for harm. If you have 50 skill and a weapon at least as good as a falchion (and, really, the more powerful guns in the system do a whole lot more damage), you're looking at 12 as your very minimum damage. Even if you roll a 1.

Lastly, if your "initiative conditions" are so favorable, there are a number of applicable modifiers. The most extreme one would shift the composite probability distribution to something like 52.5% kill, 22.5% hit, 25% "something else." Although I'm not sure that's appropriate for the situation you describe. The modifier I'd call for would bring the probability distribution to something more like 25% kill, 40% hit, 25% something else, 10% miss. Neither of these distributions, by the way, account for the superior weapon or skill modifiers.

QuoteThat's why I changed it a bit, and while ammo does roll for damage this merely represents the variability between shots to a particular area. Actual hit location is determined by the to hit roll. If I roll the minimum required maybe I just hit an arm or leg (depending on exposed area), if I beat the required roll by say 5 I hit the torso, by 6 or 7 I hit the torso in a critical area, if I beat the required roll by 8 or 9 I hit the head. Arms and legs have a negative modifier per die roll so hitting the arm is ammo damage -2, torso is +0 or +1 for critical area, head is +1 or +2 for critical head shot. So a 7.62 from my FN SCAR does 3d8 points of damage, and say I roll 6, 4 and 1; for a total of 11 HP if it hit the torso. Such a shot to the arm would do 7 HP (6-2 = 4, 4-2=2 and 1 (1-2) as you can't go negative or zero). The same shot to torso in a critical location would do 14 HP (6+1+4+1+1+1), and a critical to the head would do 17 HP (6+2,4+2,1+2). Characters, all characters, have fixed hit points in the range between 12 and 18. You can clearly see, well maybe not you because it seems you have an issue understanding me, but I'm confident the rest of the audience can clearly see how skill better translates to damage when using this mechanism.

So......

Having a skill bonus that makes you 40-45% better on the hit roll, when the die on its own rolls a bare hit, translates to an additional 10 damage compared to what would have been in a system where the average human health is 15. Or approximately adding 65% of a man to the damage roll. Do I have that right?

The system I use has average human health at 20. So a +13 damage bonus would be 65% of that. A knight could get that kind of skill boost from, say, a Chivalry rating of 65%. This is actually pretty typical for a starting Knight character to have such a lethal skill bonus. The hit bonus from the Chivalry skill, however, is only 13%. If I wanted to look at the kind of harm bonus associated with a +40% boost in hit probability, it would be about triple that, or 200% of a man's worth of damage. Or +30 hit points under your system.

So yeah, It's not exactly clear how your system better translates skill into damage when the system I'm using translates, point-for-point, to three times as much damage.

QuoteYou're free to disregard the gradient of outcomes in favor of a binary skill check, but that's just a personal choice

But what sense does this make? I mean, if I didn't know better, if I had no sense at all, I might fall into one of your symmetry traps, where adding detail is no different from ignoring detail. But when I start to bring back into consideration practical matters--why do I want a ton of baggage that I'm generally not going to use? And am I to believe that the designer of such an RPG is of such divine intelligence to have foreseen every possible extra shred of detail that I could ever possibly want and baked it into the core mechanic that's just mine to ignore? Of course not. I'm going to be called upon to add the detail I need anyway. So again, why am I carrying the extra baggage?

Quoteand you've still haven't shown how you believe it provides more good narrative from rules of simulation.

See any of my above references to the specific vs generic for starts. Then you can go back and paste back in the 4th point of my post you chose to clip, where I talk about cause and effect. That's pretty big to answering this question.

QuoteI understand that in the trap example you have no need or even want "something else", but that's just you. It's quite valuable for me though.

This actually indicates that you do NOT understand the example at all.

QuoteDegrees of success can be translated to an earlier detection. This may lead my party to stop before the ambush zone.

Puke, puke, vomit.

Not because your tastes are terrible or differ from mine. But because now you're violating the premise of this thread. Which is that we have to get to good narrative through simulationist means.

When is this check made? At the last instant before tripping the trap? Then, what, we say "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Your skill roll was so fucking awesome we're going to rewind 10 seconds so you can choose to do something less stupid." Or are we making this check 10 seconds prior, before the players have even full committed to walking into the trapped area? So if they screw the pooch on the roll, you have to portray their ineptness by taking control of their characters and throwing them right into every trap in the path.

I'm not saying, nor have I ever said, that you can't come up with ham-fisted justifications for degrees of success for everything from your character winning a coin toss to blowing out candles on a birthday cake. In fact, you've pretty clearly done that. What I am saying is it keeps you working in the abstract, generic world and not a simulationist or specific one. It moves you away not just from one but from both mandates of this thread.

So, why do so many simulation oriented players have the instinctive shuddering rejection towards the very concept of 'narrative' in RPGs?

Because they assume (somewhat naturally) that the concept refers to story telling and in particular, that it means the GM will override the rules of simulation involved in the game in order to tell a particular story of the GM's devising. They assume that the GM will employ his narrative authority with no reference to the underlying model that is core to simulation and instead simply have shit happen that he thinks will make for a good story. And they think this sounds like a shit way to game, and I actually agree with them (generally speaking).

Let's take a look at the way 2 GMs at polar extremes of the narrative-simulation axis might prepare for a game or campaign.

The purely narrative focused guy may well have little to no concern for the underlying model- narrative authority does not require an underlying model, though it is often pretended that there is one which is being adhered to. We are asked to believe (for example) that the hero survives against the odds by reasons of merit, virtue, luck and etc. when the real reason is that the hero survived because he was narrated to survive. So anyway, all the narrative focused guy needs are some story ideas, or plot points, maybe some game stats for some key figures that he wants to employ, and he is ready to go.

The simulation guy needs to actually develop the underlying model. If there is no underlying model, than the game as a whole can't really be considered a simulation. What does the underlying model consist of? Maps, statistics for NPCs, concrete information about the game setting. A sandbox setting (along with the PCs) is the model. It is static. The simulation comes into play when we use the rules of the game to advance the model. Of course we don't generally advance the entirety of the model simultaneously though. What we tend to do rather is advance the model hypothetically observable by the PCs. And then we use abstractions to fill in the gaps in the model. So, for example, we don't model every single monster wandering around the Great Grimwood, but instead abstract this to a wandering monster check.

Anyway, I'm not going to go any further on that topic for now. Let me come back to the point I was getting at.

A lot of people are saying that a good narrative will emerge from a sandbox, and I certainly do think it is possible, but consider this hypothetical situation:

I have designed a typical fantasy setting sandbox, with carefully delineated "dungeons" which the PCs can go to to overcome the dangers and emerge with great rewards. I have focused the defined elements of my sandbox with the assumption of a particular style of play: dungeon crawling and variants of such; killing monsters and taking their stuff.

So, the first session of the game starts. The players make their characters. I show them the map of the known area that I have painstakingly modeled. I tell them the rumors they have heard that point them to various dungeons and etc. And I ask them what they want to do.

They confer for a bit and then they say, "We want to start a travelling circus and travel from town to town."

So what happens now? My defined model is not aimed at this sort of gameplay. But I certainly think it could make for a very interesting story... But how do i handle it? Do I just focus on the party dealing with wandering monsters in their travels? Is this likely to be satisfying to anyone? Do I go the authorial route and just start making up interesting stuff that happens? Do I say that that is not what my game is about and they need to make dungeon delvers? How do you handle this situation as a GM?

EDIT: By the way, as far as the debate you guys have had over the last couple pages? I will just note that a die roll in a game translates to an expression of undefined variables in the game world, and that I do find translating and explaining die rolls to be a fun part of GMing. You just need to be fair about it.

Quote from: Manzanaro;894683How do you handle this situation as a GM?

There are two reasonable choices.

1. Figure out how to play a game about a bunch of traveling circus performers.
Ask the players what they are thinking they are going to do? How far can they travel? What is their typical operating cost? How much can they charge for a show? How many people attend in a given areas and what can they do to boost attendance? What are some typical, but somewhat unusual events that one could reasonably toss in to simulate the adventures of a band of peripatetic entertainers?

• Local kid wants to join circus, but their family objects.
• Locals blame show folks for recent thefts, disappearances, or violence.
• Bad weather affects travel plans.
• Breakdown of wagons or loss of other gear.
• Rowdy locals object to rigged games of chance on the midway.
• Rivalries and jealousies among the performers.
• Death or other loss of a performer.
• Arrival of a new performer.
• Recruiting headliners from other shows.
• Preventing other shows from stealing your headliners.

I'm halfway to creating a random circus events table and that only took about five minutes to think of and write up. Which is way less time than it took to draw  (much less stock) one dungeon level.

2. Tell your players that they should create characters who are interested in dungeon crawling like they implicitly agreed to do when you pitched a campaign of sandboxy dungeon crawling.

3. Oh, you never bothered to pitch the game you planned on running? Well maybe now you learned why not even bothering to talk to the players before play is an asinine plan.

That's interesting. You feel that, "Here is this imaginary world, do whatever you want," is not a suitably focused premise? And that not having a relatively narrowly focused premise before the game even begins is flat out asinine?

Quote from: Manzanaro;894748That's interesting. You feel that, "Here is this imaginary world, do whatever you want," is not a suitably focused premise? And that not having a relatively narrowly focused premise before the game even begins is flat out asinine?

"Here is this imaginary world, do whatever you want," is explicitly not a focused premise. Which is fine if that's what you are prepared to GM. Since you phrased the change of focus as a problem, and since you had already said you had planned for a kill things and take their stuff mode of play, it seemed you were not actually prepared to run whatever the players wanted.

Here's what you said.

Quote from: Manzanaro;894683I have designed a typical fantasy setting sandbox, with carefully delineated "dungeons" which the PCs can go to to overcome the dangers and emerge with great rewards. I have focused the defined elements of my sandbox with the assumption of a particular style of play: dungeon crawling and variants of such; killing monsters and taking their stuff.
...
So what happens now? My defined model is not aimed at this sort of gameplay.

As we saw, you said you had focused the premise of your campaign on dungeon crawling and other forms of killing things and taking their stuff. If you do that and don't pitch that to the players ahead of time, and can't easily deal with them doing something else, then yes you are being asinine.

Quote from: Manzanaro;894683So, why do so many simulation oriented players have the instinctive shuddering rejection towards the very concept of 'narrative' in RPGs?

Because they assume (somewhat naturally) that the concept refers to story telling and in particular, that it means the GM will override the rules of simulation involved in the game in order to tell a particular story of the GM's devising. They assume that the GM will employ his narrative authority with no reference to the underlying model that is core to simulation and instead simply have shit happen that he thinks will make for a good story. And they think this sounds like a shit way to game, and I actually agree with them (generally speaking).

Although I also strongly dislike the "follow the yellow brick road" style adventures, that's not how self-styled "narrativists" on message board forums claim to play. Their claim is that everyone takes equal part in just making shit up. The problem I have with that is how dis con nec ted it is when people make shit up with an eye towards narrative. Making shit up with an eye towards simulation, on the other hand, actually does exactly what this thread is aimed at--it connects story closely with how the game world actually works.

So here's an example I've used way back in the usenet days--yes, I've been examining this issue in excruciating detail long before "modern RPG theory" reared its ugly head. The system is old-school D&D. Pre-called shots, one-minute combat rounds. The player is playing a fighter who is battling against an ogre. The system is simple. We all know how it goes. But here are a few different ways we can play it.

Scenario 1 - Straight up.
Initiative is rolled. Fighter goes first. Player makes a hit roll, indicating a hit, then he goes on to roll his damage against the ogre. Now it's the ogre's turn.

Scenario 2 - Creative narrative (slightly) after-the-fact
Given the one-minute combat round, the player and/or GM decide to embellish a little. After the above results are determined, either player or GM narrates the following: The fighter stomps hard on the ogre's big toe, briefly stunning the beast as he wails out in pain. The fighter then, seeing a prime opportunity to strike, thrusts his sword at the ogre, wounding the creature.

Now I consider this disconnected because there is no one-to-one correspondence between action and game mechanic.

Scenario 3 - Creative narrative in real-time
Player announces "I stomp hard on the ogre's foot." The GM says, "Ok. Roll to hit." Player rolls, "Hit!" Then the GM announces, "Great! You stomp on the ogre's foot and he screams out in pain. You do only one damage, but he's stunned, giving you a free attack. Your free attack will automatically hit but because you must make haste to take advantage of the opportunity, it's going to do one fewer point of damage." Player shakes his damage dice, "Hey, if it's free it's for me!"

Notice, the end effects in game terms are exactly identical to the straight-up rules. We just shoe-horned a creative and interactive narrative into fitting the rules-as-written. This isn't as disconnected as scenario #2. It's definitely an improvement. However, not every real live example of this goes so smoothly. Sometimes the shoe-horning shows through and the narrative becomes strained. There are also problems on the simulationist end. One can just imagine the next player sitting at the table saying, "Hey, my character is right there fighting the ogre, too. Can I also get a -1 damage free attack?" If the GM responds "No." he's being true to the rules but not consistent in the simulation to allow a free attack for one character who's already taken an action but not the other. And if he says "Yes." he's allowing a new tactic to stand that is more potent than anything in the rules, for there is no disadvantage in doing this exact same thing over and over again in single combat, but there is a new emerging advantage to doing so in group combat.

Scenario 4 - Connected Narrative and Simulation
Player announces "I stomp hard on the ogre's foot." The GM says, "Ok. Roll to hit." Player rolls, "Hit!" Then the GM announces, "Great! You stomp on the ogre's foot and he screams out in pain. You do only one damage, but he's stunned and loses his next attack."

Notice here, the GM is not called upon to make up a lot of shit. He merely adjudicates an action a player has chosen that is not in the rules per se, but is a perfectly reasonable, logical, and realistic option that would be available to that character in a well-simulated world. Just like it's often jested that thumbs distinguish humans from primates, this sort of adjudication is what distinguishes RPGs from the rabble of ordinary table top games.

As to the game effects, in single combat, the player is at a disadvantage for attempting this. In the straight up example from scenario 1, he got a full-on sword strike in. In this example, he doesn't. Sure, the ogre loses his next turn. But who knows who's going to win initiative next round. Even if the player wins again, he's got to make his hit roll all over again in order to get his full-on sword strike in. On the other hand, however, if this were a group combat and all his fellow party members get to strike the stunned ogre with the +2 stunned bonus--with the thief instead getting his +4 backstab bonus and damage multiplier, this can be hugely advantageous.

What makes this "connected" is that the mechanical effect was specific to and flowed from the player's narrative. And the GM's narrative was specific to and flowed from the mechanical effect. And because whether the player's choice was an advantage or a disadvantage relative to the standard rules depends entirely on situation, in the future the player's narrative is encouraged to be specific to and flow from the GM's narrative of the situation. And because of this connectivity, we can play full on simulationist and full on narrativist at the same time.

QuoteThey confer for a bit and then they say, "We want to start a travelling circus and travel from town to town."

So what happens now?

Well, for me, I just pull up the manuscript for the book I was co-authoring with Gary Gygax at the time of his death, as it was specifically about a traveling circus. I did sign a non-disclosure when I got on the project, though, so I guess you're shit out of luck. It's pretty good stuff, too. I'd just happened to had read Harry Houdini's book where he reveals the secrets behind all the carnie tricks.

Honestly, though, I'm pretty jealous of your example. If you do come across these as real players rather than just hypotheticals from an example on a forum, please send them my way.

QuoteMy defined model is not aimed at this sort of gameplay. But I certainly think it could make for a very interesting story... But how do i handle it?

Make a different model.

No. Seriously.

First of all, my "model" for standard, D&D style, dungeoncrawl fantasy is that I view the PCs as a group of entrepreneurs. It's a pretty robust model. It doesn't require them to meld into the intricate fabric of my fictional society. And just about anything they can imagine, we can play.

Secondly, I'm not one to just sit around for four months building my sandbox. I take stock of everything I have to do, design the entire world in broad strokes on week #1, detail enough about the starting location on week #2, and then on week #3 we have our character generation session. I'm still spending 4 months designing the thing, not just making shit up at the table, but I continually prioritize according to what the players are doing so the parts I need done are done when I need them.

Thirdly, I also learned something interesting from reading the journals of Lewis & Clark. They didn't set out on their expedition first thing in the morning. They set out later in the day. The reason is, if they'd forgotten anything, they would find out the first night they set up camp. And they would be less than a day's travel back home to go get whatever it is they forgot. The same principle is applicable to building a sandbox campaign. It's absurd to assume there will never be any hiccups. And it's completely possible to plan in a way that allows you to easily handle them.

QuoteDo I just focus on the party dealing with wandering monsters in their travels? Is this likely to be satisfying to anyone? Do I go the authorial route and just start making up interesting stuff that happens? Do I say that that is not what my game is about and they need to make dungeon delvers? How do you handle this situation as a GM?

I do not know how closely you've looked at the wandering monster tables, at least the old school ones, particularly in civilized lands (it's hard to imagine a traveling circus, for whom finding an audience is a matter of life and death, traveling to places devoid of human civilization), but these tables are heavily weighted towards encounters with humans, demi-humans, and humanoids. I actually see that working out really well.

Well... That's the focus of almost every sandbox setting I have ever seen, so apparently there are a lot of asinine sandbox developers out there!

But yes, it is exceedingly difficult to design a sandbox (underlying model) that operates outside of a narrow focus of activity. Outside of that focus, even the diehard simulationist is going to find himself authoring on the fly, just like the narrative guy.

I am reminded of video game sandboxes like the GTA series. Far greater in scope and complexity than a typical TTRPG sandbox city would be. But even there? You can't go inside of the vast majority of the houses! But what do we do as GMs when a player wants his character to rob some random undefined house?

This is a rhetorical question. Chances are we can all come up with a similar set of answers.

That last message was to Bren.

Lunamancer, I feel like you understand me better now. Pretty good stuff in that last post.

Quote from: Bren;894751As we saw, you said you had focused the premise of your campaign on dungeon crawling and other forms of killing things and taking their stuff. If you do that and don't pitch that to the players ahead of time, and can't easily deal with them doing something else, then yes you are being asinine.

I have to say, I think there is something to the pitch.

Of course, doing the pitch right is another matter entirely. I work in sales and marketing. You'd be astonished how rare it is to find anyone who really understands how to pitch.

While typing up my previous post, the thought had occurred to me that maybe a ride on the G&M railroad wouldn't be so bad if the GM was effectively selling it every step of the way. As I said, it's hard enough to find someone who knows how to do that when it's their job. I'm not holding my breath waiting for GM who can.

Quote from: Lunamancer;894671Let's be precise here. It opens up the system to more options. Period. Some of those options you may not like. Whether you call them "incongruities" or something else is immaterial. The question is "Why the hell are you opting for things you don't like?" It would seem to relegate your criticism to the realm of the irrelevant.

It might be immaterial to you, but not to me. I'm not opting for things that I don't like, that's why I did my own research and developed my own game mechanics, which is a whole lot more that what it appears you've done.

Quote from: Lunamancer;894671I'm going to disagree with this, but instead I'm going to disagree on the grounds that you are simply wrong.

So you'd disagree with me even if I was right?:confused:

Quote from: Lunamancer;894671You're wrong that "hit" and "miss" are functionally the same without a wound mechanism. You are wrong that the opponent is equally effective after taking 9 hit points of damage as when being missed. And you're wrong about the type of game I play.

If the guy in my example is hit for 9 points of damage, the composite probability distribution is going to change. Instead of your attacks against him being 50% miss, 25% "something else", 22.5% hit, and 2.5% kill, it becomes 50% miss, 25% "something else", and 25% kill. The only way in which this is different from him having a "wound penalty" on his defensive capacities is that I don't have to shift the entire probability distribution if I don't want to. I can just increase the kill percentage and leave it at that. If other effects are appropriate, they will be added as well. I just loathe to add them automatically. I need a specific reason. Specific is what makes for a good narrative. A wound penalty baked into the system is generic, and the generic makes for bad narrative.

Yes, my attacks on him after being attacked by him with full damaging potential. I win the initiative, I make a good attack roll, I deliver a good amount of damage, and still I run the risk of death or serious injury exactly as if I had NOT hit him. Sure, if I survive his immediate counterattack I have 10 times higher a chance of killing him in the next round, but he still depleted my hit points as if I had NOT hit him, he can probably win initiative next round as if I had NOT hit him, if he does win initiative he can attack me again at full damaging potential as if I had NOT hit him, and then maybe I'll have a 25% chance of killing him.

Quote from: Lunamancer;894671In the system I'm using, even with low-tech sword & sorcery combat, combats generally don't even last 30 seconds real time. I'm sure there are plenty of RPGs on the market that touched you in a bad place. I'm sure your criticism of them would be fair. They just aren't relevant here.

On the contrary, many games motivated me to this point and they're quite relevant. It's not criticism, it's building upon them. Twilight 2000 gives me something, GURPS gives me something else, FATE gives me yet something else, but I want this, this and that that neither give me. How do I work from this to arrive at something functional? One of the greatest influences I had was an old game from 1966 or so, it game me a new perspective on some issues I was stuck with. It helped me think out of the box when I was stuck with some design issue. You might call that criticism, and I'll respect your opinion, but I call it thinking outside the box.

Quote from: Lunamancer;894671In the system I use, all (well, most) weapons do 1d20 damage representing the fact that they are all potentially lethal. They are differentiated in a number of ways. One of them is by a minimum damage number, which can be anywhere between 1 (for a dagger) and 11 (for a great sword). Me personally, I'm partial to the falchion, with its minimum harm of 7.

On top of that, skill can effect both hit probability and damage. How exactly that translates depends on the specific skill. Not the generic system. The system I use is multi-genre. It does have a shooting skill. Each 10 percentile points in Shooting adds 1 to the d20 roll for harm. If you have 50 skill and a weapon at least as good as a falchion (and, really, the more powerful guns in the system do a whole lot more damage), you're looking at 12 as your very minimum damage. Even if you roll a 1.

...

Having a skill bonus that makes you 40-45% better on the hit roll, when the die on its own rolls a bare hit, translates to an additional 10 damage compared to what would have been in a system where the average human health is 15. Or approximately adding 65% of a man to the damage roll. Do I have that right?

The system I use has average human health at 20. So a +13 damage bonus would be 65% of that. A knight could get that kind of skill boost from, say, a Chivalry rating of 65%. This is actually pretty typical for a starting Knight character to have such a lethal skill bonus. The hit bonus from the Chivalry skill, however, is only 13%. If I wanted to look at the kind of harm bonus associated with a +40% boost in hit probability, it would be about triple that, or 200% of a man's worth of damage. Or +30 hit points under your system.

So yeah, It's not exactly clear how your system better translates skill into damage when the system I'm using translates, point-for-point, to three times as much damage.

Because it's not only about translating into more damage. Translating skill into damage also involves less damage if the task is to hard for the skill at hand. When you say : you're looking at 12 as your very minimum damage you're talking about the sum of the weapon damage plus the bonus from skill (If you have 50 skill ). Now I can go against an easy opponent against which I have 70% chance of a hit, a "normal" opponent with 50% chance of hitting, a hard opponent with 25% chance of hitting and an epic opponent against which I have only a 5% of hitting, yet if I hit the minimum I can deliver is 12 points. It makes more sense to me that if the opponent is harder to hit then the damage could and should be less. For example if I'm a sniper and I'm taking a really long shot that has a 5% chance of hitting I either do 0 points (miss) or do at least 12 points or better. So I either totally miss or hit the torso or head for a lethal or near lethal hit. I can't hit the leg or shoulder or just create a flesh would.

Skill to damage is not only about translating more skill into more damage and forgetting about the rest, it's about skill vs task at hand translated to more or less damage.

Quote from: Manzanaro;894683How do you handle this situation as a GM?

Well I believe it's important that the game allows the character to leverage "secondary" skills as well. Can we roleplay and simulate a circus performance? Can this be done with the same "combat" rules or stock rules that come in the game or are we going to end up with a nightmare similar to grappling rules? Can circus skills be used in a dungeon crawl? Can the clown and trickster entertain the goblins while the rest of the party rescues the prisoner or takes the treasure? All adventurers have a profession, and it's fitting that many in the circus have corresponding party roles: strong man - fighter, acrobat - thief, trickster - magic user, and the circus healer is a cleric who provides moral support and also plays the clown.

Is the game's skill or task resolution mechanism broad enough to cover different "challenges"? This is different from a generic system which might address combat specifically, but across various settings like fantasy, modern, sci-fi, and horror.

Quote from: Manzanaro;894758But yes, it is exceedingly difficult to design a sandbox (underlying model) that operates outside of a narrow focus of activity.

:rolleyes: It's not difficult. It does take a moderate amount of effort, creativity, and intelligence. It's not like moderate is a really high bar though. You don't need rules for running a circus if your players don't actually join the circus. Similarly you don't need rules for aerial combat, naval combat, building a fortress, or forming a joint stock company if the players aren't doing those things. You focus on the things on which you and your players are interested. That requires at most a moderate, and typically incremental, effort.  If you aren't willing or able to meet moderate requirements, you shouldn't be the GM of a sandbox.

Quote from: Lunamancer;894761You'd be astonished how rare it is to find anyone who really understands how to pitch.

Not really.

QuoteWhile typing up my previous post, the thought had occurred to me that maybe a ride on the G&M railroad wouldn't be so bad if the GM was effectively selling it every step of the way.

Some players enjoy enjoy a nice, scenic railroad at least some of the time. Some don't.

Bren, I shouldn't be surprised you miss my point. It isn't that it is really hard to create rules for a game about running a circus, or flying planes. It's that if you didn't KNOW that these things were going to end up as the central gaming focus, your sandbox is not going to be geared towards making these things interesting, and you are going to end up either making up stuff on the fly, or shoehorning your circus performers and pilots into dungeon crawls (assuming that was the focus of your prepared sandbox).

Hey... What happened to that "don't teach a pig to sing" thing? It was both an excellent parting shot, and something that made me say, "about fucking time!"

But you couldn't stay away?