I have, as I've grown, begun to look at RPG's as 'sandboxes', areas to play in.  I prefer my play to be as unfettered as possible. That's not new, I loved GURPS inherently from the first moment I saw it, despite all the struggles I've had with it. I loved Champions for the same reason. Anything seems possible in such a system, any idea is valid, your only limit is the points you have to spend and your own imagination.

Other than that, however, I have played games such as Twilight 2000, MegaTraveller, and Mechwarrior 3, all of which used backgrounds to build your character and found them enjoyable and eminantly playable. I even enjoyed that aspect of character creation, that building yourself from a history.

I have played D&D across three and two half editions. I have played Cyberpunk 2020, so I know the spectrum of classes from Crucial (D&D) to vestigial (CP2020 roles)...  

And we all know the tables, the charts, the random rolls for background events or 'who you meet walking down the street' that have existed since the first DMG was printed, and have spread across the landscape of gaming to this very day.

Perhaps the ultimate expresson of this can be found in Magic.  You have vast... VAST... lists of spells, of items of power, of Charms or Kung Fu...

Everything is codified, everything is set.  

It is here that I find myself in a quandry. Time and again I lose interest in a game or an idea because my imagination is bound by a list.  This is ineloquent.  

Have you, as a GM, or perhaps as a player making a character involving rolling from a long list, rolled on a massive table time and time again, only to reject each roll as 'not really what you had in mind'?  Perhaps you look to that very list or table, isolate each line in turn, rejecting all perhaps, or selecting that one thing that appeals most to you out of the entire list?  I have, always.  Sure, if it's just for fun making a character for amusement rather than play I might just take the most powerful entry in the list... but more commonly I'd look for something that appealed to my tastes, or my concept more.  As a GM I'd look to such tables, eventually rejecting them as useless as written, more as a source of ideas than actual aids to play.  My imagination is boundless, the list is tragically not.

Again to magic: We come to the crux of the issue, for magic is supposedly boundless, it is wonderment and unexplainable. Yet in turn, each spell, each item represents all that is known.  It is hard to go 'off the map'. Each home brewed spell, each home brewed item is only applicable in the game it was made for, and even then is often subject to too much, or too little scrutiny. It limits not only the ability to take such a character to another game, but even to talk about them to other players, for the first time you mention how you did something 'impossible' with your kewl new spell, they tune you out... they have no reference at all.

And here we come to the crux, the horns of the delimma.

Lists and tables and spells are all serve a purpose. To a limited extent they are even necessary. They exist because we are not all game designers, they exist because we are not all, and certainly not always, perfectly creative, imaginative beings. Sometimes you just need to select a prefabricated event and go.

As I've commented elsewhere, the greatest design flaw in Exalted isn't the buckets o'dice, or the immense tactical play for what is essential a powermonger exercise... no, its the fixed lists of charms, the prevelance, the innate superiority of one 'build' over another, one charm over another. This 'build' mentality is the same thing that irritates me no end in D&D discussions. They work on the inherent flaws of fixed lists.

The solution is not the elimination of lists, of prefabbed abilities, of tables and all their ilk. It is not to abstract the rules out to meaningless. The solution is to make the lists, the charms, the tables all inherently open. To make, as a part of the core of the system, the ability to add new lines, not just for the GM, but for the players as well. New lines that are not 'home brewed' that  are not antithetical to outsiders to that one table, that are not subject, beyond the inherency of GM driven play, to approval, to judgement calls to make them 'work'.

I have in my mind a vision, crude and unfinished for how this can work, how to remove the boundaries of my sandbox, to expand it out.

Imagine then a world... lets say a kung-fu/FFVII:advent children sort of world, where people with awesome fighting abilities face eachother in city spanning battles, each fighter brings unique abilities to the table, each weapon deserves its own name, and has its own abilities as well, and mastery of such weapons is it's own kung fu, it's own style.  

We could do what Feng Shui and Exalted did, give lists of trees of abilities, page after page of technique, exhaustively detailing every idea that came to our minds.  Eventually players will find the best techniques, the best abilities that we list, and then we will have 'builds' and have accomplished nothing. We could argue then that we can expand our exhaustive list by adding supplements, but then you risk 'power creep' and 'splat banning', removing the universiality of our 'master list'.

What if, instead, the initial list were modest, listing a the core techniques that every fighter should know (dodge, punch, kick, block...) and how they advance, and then a few unique 'fu' techniques (Broken Sword Style, Falling Rain Style) detailing specific weapons, and others detailing specific weaponless styles (White Eyebrow, DemonClaw technique), but rather than exhaustively list out every style we include as the core rules the framework we used to create all those styles, a universal framework.  A framework where the player or the GM can design his style based on decisions about speed vs. power, offence vs defense, list higher level techniques and fancier moves, lets say a dozen or so variables in all, detailing every facet of combat. Perhaps we can include a list of minor 'tweaks' that go beyond the numbers, tweaks like :Broken Sword style is very powerful against White Eyebrow technique.  Or: DemonClaw users' hands are hard enough to parry weapons without injury

And we include a list of said minor techniques, a long list, and we make it interactive, where GM's and players can submit a the minor tweaks they use in their games, and download a free PDF, or simply peruse online the current 'master list' of player created styles and tweaks, thus tapping the entire player base and making everything 'canon'... all with a frame work.


I dunno, just noshing it around, I guess....

That's a noble and inspiring goal, my fine over-electrified Pika!

-clash

Quote from: SpikeWhat if, instead, the initial list were modest, listing a the core techniques that every fighter should know (dodge, punch, kick, block...) and how they advance, and then a few unique 'fu' techniques (Broken Sword Style, Falling Rain Style) detailing specific weapons, and others detailing specific weaponless styles (White Eyebrow, DemonClaw technique), but rather than exhaustively list out every style we include as the core rules the framework we used to create all those styles, a universal framework.

Hmm. Something like the noun+verb system of Ars Magica, only for combat instead of magic? So that you might design a "Flaming Devil Technique", in which "Flaming" and "Devil" and "Technique" are elements with specific effects?

Swing, parry, thrust...

Starting to sound like Saturday night...

I love the idea.  You're making me rethink (yet again) my computer as ttRPG facilitator approach...

As I write, I'm just wondering if it's a matter of abstraction, however.  I mean, I don't know when I should swing high to set up a parry blah blah blah ina sword fight...so the way combat is written is meant to abstractt hose details away.

Magic is different - all non-standard things: Psionics, Ultra Tech, etc. are - because there's nothing to base it on...no real spells, etc. So you don't have to abstract away the detail to suspend disbelief.

Does thay make any sense?

Quote from: SpikeAgain to magic: We come to the crux of the issue, for magic is supposedly boundless, it is wonderment and unexplainable. Yet in turn, each spell, each item represents all that is known.

"Magic is unbounded" and "magic can achieve this list of effects" are contradictory axioms. If you take as an axiom of your setting that magic isn't unbounded, then there's no quandary. But then any magic item that can't be created using the available enchantment rules or one-off super-effect will be a setting-breaker.

Quote from: SpikeThe solution is not the elimination of lists, of prefabbed abilities, of tables and all their ilk. It is not to abstract the rules out to meaningless. The solution is to make the lists, the charms, the tables all inherently open. To make, as a part of the core of the system, the ability to add new lines, not just for the GM, but for the players as well.

And thus we have all those "Magic as Advantages" and "Magic using GURPS Powers" threads on the SJGames forum. If you want to design a setting or a game that has unbounded magic, throw out the spell list and use a magic power design system (and hope it's been playtested enough to give balanced results).

Quote from: GrimGentHmm. Something like the noun+verb system of Ars Magica, only for combat instead of magic? So that you might design a "Flaming Devil Technique", in which "Flaming" and "Devil" and "Technique" are elements with specific effects?

That would certainly apply once you move from the realm of fighting into more pure magics, certainly.  I've never heard anyone say that Ars Magica had a BAD magic system either, so I'm reasonably certain I can look there for inspiration.

On the other hand, the name of the technique is more open to player usage. The mechanics might have nothing to do with it.

So you could have a 'Flaming Devil Techique' which happens to have (assigned by the player) 3 points of elemental fire damage, 2 points of durability (defensive by means of taking the hit and shrugging it off) and a point of speed... all at 'first level' of technique.  A higher level technique would add more 'points' to various places, even open up, say 'Speed' to represnet the speed of the Flaming Devil style at high levels of mastery.

Quote from: balzacq"Magic is unbounded" and "magic can achieve this list of effects" are contradictory axioms. If you take as an axiom of your setting that magic isn't unbounded, then there's no quandary. But then any magic item that can't be created using the available enchantment rules or one-off super-effect will be a setting-breaker.


And thus we have all those "Magic as Advantages" and "Magic using GURPS Powers" threads on the SJGames forum. If you want to design a setting or a game that has unbounded magic, throw out the spell list and use a magic power design system (and hope it's been playtested enough to give balanced results).

Very much what I have in mind, actually, only I also want to capture the essence of being able to shout out 'I use my Sevenfold Blades of Light' to blast the demons from the sky!' and have it mean something to the player and the other players.  All to often, wth GURPS or Champions, you use your 'blast for 3d6 with holy special effect' or what have you.  Or in D&D like systems a given spell, of fixed ability, which leads to 'builds'....

Quote from: SpikeThat would certainly apply once you move from the realm of fighting into more pure magics, certainly.  I've never heard anyone say that Ars Magica had a BAD magic system either, so I'm reasonably certain I can look there for inspiration.

On the other hand, the name of the technique is more open to player usage. The mechanics might have nothing to do with it.

So you could have a 'Flaming Devil Techique' which happens to have (assigned by the player) 3 points of elemental fire damage, 2 points of durability (defensive by means of taking the hit and shrugging it off) and a point of speed... all at 'first level' of technique.  A higher level technique would add more 'points' to various places, even open up, say 'Speed' to represnet the speed of the Flaming Devil style at high levels of mastery.

Something like this?

http://jalan.flyingmice.com/Jalan-Sample.pdf

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceSomething like this?

http://jalan.flyingmice.com/Jalan-Sample.pdf

-clash

You might want to look at that link again, Clash. My firewall reports it as 'pornography' for some reason.

Quote from: SpikeYou might want to look at that link again, Clash. My firewall reports it as 'pornography' for some reason.

Mwa? It's a four page pdf on magic, a sample for Book of Jalan. Nothing remotely pornographic about it. I just checked it out...

Wierd!

-clash

I'll try again from home. I sometimes get the weirdest 'blocks'.  From Afghanistan I couldn't make reservations for a resteraunt in London but I could, er... accidentally... find all sorts of pretty pictures.

Did you get a chance to look at it? Was it any help?

-clash

I forgot all about the link when I got home. Curled up, watched three episodes of Farscape and did some work related homework and went to bed.

Gah, I'm getting senile or something.

Quote from: SpikeI forgot all about the link when I got home. Curled up, watched three episodes of Farscape and did some work related homework and went to bed.

Gah, I'm getting senile or something.

You can't be senile! I'm senile, and I know the signs. Maybe too many amps flowing across the old fuse.

-clash

I'm hoping to use any insights I develop or discover along with my 'dynamic combat' thread which is linked to this one, to hopefully for a core system for a game later on.

Optionally (and better, since I'm already horribly behind schedule in doing anything!) someone will take my ideas and run with them and make a game FOR me...