Well the older games were explicit about not allowing table collusion during and after initiative. So they cannot be faulted at all.

I don't have a copy of any WotC D&D so I have to go off of experience. But that is where I saw the most of that playstyle. If anyone can answer that with chapter and verse that is on them.

And I completely disagree about rerolls being narrativist and storygamey. It is still about task resolution.

QuoteAnd I completely disagree about rerolls being narrativist and storygamey.

And I didnt say the contrary, really.

QuoteWell the older games were explicit about not allowing table collusion during and after initiative. So they cannot be faulted at all.

I don't have a copy of any WotC D&D so I have to go off of experience. But that is where I saw the most of that playstyle. If anyone can answer that with chapter and verse that is on them.

Are you sure this isnt a feature exclusive of (very) old D&D editions? Like, pre-80s old ? (as I started gaming with late 80s games, that could explain it)

I know right off the top of my head that SJG In Nomine that several attunements and songs can only function with the same declared action assumption, and that was 1997.

And D&D 2e is 1989 and throughout the 1990s.

I'd have to scrounge my other books for WW, Pinnacle, AEG, but... the nineties are not the pre-eighties.


Post 2000 things were different in many ways.

Interesting. How many seconds those games suggest giving the acting player before him deciding on a action?

While I think this feature may not be desirable in more tactics heavy games (Shadowrun, D&D3/4), in others, more immersion/tension focused ones (CoC, AW) it could be really interesting.

Most was GM judgment, because describing an action can be quite variable in terms of seconds, but the books said to not let the process linger over a minute. 2e said skip someone delaying to come back to them, but if they cannot respond a second time they are frozen in hesitation that round. Another immediate example from IN SJG was how initiative order placed mental communication before mental casted powers before physical communication before movement before physical attacks, and how short certain song/attunement messages must be during a combat round.

Adding hard mechanics over declaration (outside the general colckwise v. counter-clockwise advice) would overly complicate things, and I don't have any of the grotesquely crunchy 80s rpgs to verify how they did it. The recommendation for extremely short action declaration was strong, and sequence of round resolution formalized, but I did not see much heavy mathematics on formalizing action declaration in my games. Does not mean they did not exist, and they definitely had ideas on how rapid action declaration should be. They got the who, what, when, where, why, and suggested how, but not always a formalized how.

Stories have to be meaningful.

Now, why the hell would I want to "play" the story of some incompetent hack when I can be reading Hesse, Wilde, Bioy Casares, Dostoyevski?

I play the game for the game, the "story" is what remains after the session.

If a question is important enough to answer, and we can't decide on an answer, then tossing a dice is a solution.

We can make it more complicated by coming up with arguments that get quantified: Joe is a famously agile football player, Sam needs to turn around, Abe is slowed by wounds, Ike has further to go ... down to as much minutia as we happen to find it entertaining to consider.

It's a matter of personal taste. I wouldn't go about polling strangers; the opinions that matter are those of my players!

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635625But I'm finding myself wondering how much detail for opposing situations I need

IE: as well as combat, do i need rules for social combat (might be fun), arm wrestling, tea drinking, beer drinking contests, chess, vehcile chases (yes, actually)? How much do I need? I don't know whether some or all of these things will turn up.

If you really don't anticipate a lot of need, then don't sweat it.

There are gazillions of RPG books and magazine articles covering all sorts of things, for the most part because they either

(a) happened to be big enough deals coming up in actual play in this or that campaign, or
(b) really fired some GM's imagination.

(Well, that's how it used to be before more 'pros' got into the racket and started writing stuff just to fill a specified number of pages.)

"Tea drinking?" I thought, but I should not be surprised since people have turned out everything from Dropped Oil Lamp Tables to Waist Size Generators.

The play is the thing, wherein you'll catch the nuances that really swing for *your* campaign.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;635597The system in question resolves initiative with the result of the die roll used for the action. Why would I need to roll to shut a window? All that's important is to know when i can shut the window: before or after the guy tries to jump through.

I agree completely, which is why all the resolution systems I'm currently testing are effectively initiative systems, which generate 'not now' instead of 'fail' results.