EDIT::: This one and the one after it get to stay. At least that ways people can see what I was up against. Just for the record, I'm not trying to hide anything, I'm trying to preserve my physical body and the stuff around me. Deleting posts is pleasantly destructive without costing money, don't you think?

Savor the Melodrama!

Quote from: John Morrow*snip*


I could play again with the coin flip or the d20.  In part, I used multiple coin flips if I wanted more granular odds.The problem I have with those systems wasn't boredom.  It was maintaining consistency, determining how to address character actions not neatly represented by the mechanics, and some other reasons why I find more complex rules desirable.  

I guess the point I should make here is that gamers are like Goldilocks, with some systems being too complex, some systems being too simple, and some systems being just right.  It's useful to not only look at why systems can be too simple but also why they can be too complex, to understand why people find a system to be just right, and why different people have different measures of what just right is (e.g., Papa Bear's chair was too hard for Goldilocks but maybe just right for him).

Ultimately, I don't think the answer has to do with illusion.  I think it has to do with the need to figure out what happens in a way that's consistent and agreeable to everyone at the table, factoring in choices that the players make for their characters and the details of the situation.  The ideal system complexity is such that it doesn't leave the players or GM scrambling to figure out how to resolve something but not so complex that it introduces details that they don't want or need or results that conflict with what they want to do by fiat.

Thus my group has been playing D&D 3.5 and Hero but several of the players are asking to go back to the objective version of Fudge that we use, which is considerably lighter and more subjective.  Why?  Because most of them don't care enough about the benefits that the Hero System or D&D 3.5 provide with respect to character differentiation, situational modifiers, and so on to justify the substantial overhead in system complexity and time spent using the system.  That choice has nothing, as far as I can tell, to do with maintaining any sort of illusion about odds of success.

I have never claimed there was a single ultimate level of complexity where everyone would be happy.  Fudge is still far and away more complex than having a single fixed odd of success/failure for every task.

Let me sum up how I see a HUGE portion of our requoting here by means of metaphor:

Spike: Man, I was just down at the shop and they are building this sweet car down there. In-line twelve cylinder engine, twin screw supercharger, custom tuned air intake designed to support a full time trickle of NOS instead of bursts, twenty inch rims of space age polymers so it's got HALF the unsprung weight of the next lightest wheel out there. HALF man!  It'll do 0 to 60 in 1 second man! World speed record breaking, DUDE!!. The guys told me they were going to paint it Sea Green.

John: I've seen that Sea Green. Its not really Green at all, its more like Aquamarine... really sort of a blue.

Spike:  :banghead: :banghead::banghead:  :banghead: :banghead:

Quote from: John MorrowBut would it feel the same as running In Nominae or would it feel different?  You certainly can emulate the feel of one game in a different system, but it can require adjusting the system to work differently than it normally does.  Systems do have feels to them based on a bunch of factors, including the Pace of Decision that Brian Gleichman discussed in his old Elements of Gaming column on RPGnet.  Different games with different paces of decision can feel very different, as can games with or without death spirals and so on.  And at some point, when you change one system to behave like another, it stops feeling like it original did.

I never, not once, claimed that the imaginary shit wouldn't be changed. Never.  And I am reasonably certain that in the OP that I discussed that mechanics can have a feel of their own, seperate from the shit going on in the players heads.  I've already gone over this.  

Quote from: John MorrowActually, I would argue that mook rules are the result of game designers who gave up trying to square certain genres with verisimilitude and they simply gave up and embraced the differences without trying to justify them in the setting.  I don't think it was "blind chance" so much as an analysis of the problem and a solution that came from that analysis.  But with respect to maintaining an illusion, rules like mook rules and metagame-heavy genre emulation rules make a sort of pact with the Devil.  

Blind Chance may have been a bit strong but I'll get back to your mook issues later.  I want to suggest, strongly, that it is obvious that you have not watched much Hong Kong cinema, particularly the stuff with the guns. Genre Emulation and Versimilitude are two seperate design goals.

I like Versimilitude. I can also enjoy a game emulating a Genre I like, even if the versimilitude must be, as you said, thrown under a bus. Its not a deal with a devil if the game is designed to mimic a John Woo film if the hero regularly fires hundreds of bullets without reloading. If, in fact he DOESN'T fire hundreds of bullets without reloading, or if the option is not there, then the purpose of THAT GAME is lost... utterly. Just like if your super hero's can't fly, it is not much of a super hero game then, is it. Yet, oddly, in real life people don't fly, just like they don't mow down hundreds of nameless, faceless (because that way you can reuse your stuntment as many times as you need...) hordes of inconsequential bad guys.  

I can also point out that most gamers, especially now days, did not come at gaming from Wargame Simulation.  The origin of a thing is not the thing itself.

Quote from: John MorrowBack then, it started as a discussion about why people didn't like the story-oriented metagame focus of Theatrix and why they didn't like things like mook rules and guns that never run out of bullets.  That evolved into a dichotomy between making world-oriented decisions that make sense within the setting and to the characters in it and story-oriented play where story-oriented genre rules and cliches that aren't very realistic but that are common in stories are in full play.  Maybe you don't believe that play styles matter but that's exactly why they do.  

Unlike any of that, I am not concerning myself at all with playstyles or preferences or versimilitude or genre emulation or even fucking how heavy or fucking light the god damn games are. Those are all choices individual designers and gamers get to make. That's all paint jobs on the supposed car of the relationship between mechanics and non-mechanic stuff. :banghead:

Quote from: John MorrowIt's important to note that hit points, the lack of realism in hit points, and hit point inflation, are one of the most complained about elements of D&D (along with Armor Class).  And the mistake that 4e is making is that they want to keep every level interesting when a big part of the reason why D&D has a sweet spot has to do with hit point escalation, and the way to fix it is to fix hit points.

Yes. Again: I have already pointed out that I agree that D&D has major issues. I have, AGAIN, stated that I even quit playing it for a long fucking time because I was 'too good' to stoop to playing with such crap mechanics. I am not a D&D defender, you are preaching to the god damn choir here. My example was not what I would chose, but trying to work within the existing system. If people insist on keeping that sacred cow, it does me little fucking good to suggest an overhaul that involves a butcher's knife and steak for everyone.   Do you keep replying to/with D&Disms to bulk up the wall of text?

Quote from: John MorrowThey are both more elegant and less elegant.  The mook rule hits human beings on the head with a magic wand and says, "You're not really human.  You're just a monster for the hero to kill, even though the hero is human, too."  It goes even a step further than D&D, which provides sub-human evil monsters as killable bad guys and transforms a whole class of humans, like the gaming equivalent of a Dr. Moreau, into subhuman killable bad guys.



But mook rules don't really support an illusion, since they put a huge strain on suspension of disbelief.  They're a heavy-handed and clumbsy way way for a designer to say, "I don't want the hero to be in any real danger fighting these bad guys so rather than making the hero tougher, I'm going to make these bad guys pushovers.  I'm going to take out the Sharpie and write 'Mook 1', 'Mook 2', etc. on their forehead so the hero can gun them down without risk like silhouettes at a target range.



The reason I hate mook rules boil down to the fact that they don't make any sense in the setting or to the character.  I makes me feel like my character is the kid in the Last Action Hero, stuck in a bad action movie where none of the genre rules should make any sense to any of the characters.  

As for facing crowds of 1 hit-die monsters as a powerful character, I actually enjoy those encounters and enjoy Champions battles against normals with guns.  A lot of the post-10th level action in my D&D game was the PCs kicking butt and taking names of large numbers of guards and so on less powerful than they were.  What's the difference between an officially anointed mook and a 1st level commoner in a D&D game to a 10th level PC?  The commoner, in theory, could always gain levels and still seems like someone that's where the PC once was or maybe someone the PC grew up with and maybe knew as a kid.  The mook is simply a target to kill.  They are purposely designed to never be fully human like the PCs.

I get it, you don't like mook rules.  On the other hand, your four paragraph anti-mook rant does point out to me that you probably haven't played much with them, if at all.  To correct some of your misaprehensions:

Mooks can be a lethal threat to PC's.  In Feng Shui's main book there is an example bunch of Mooks that have a 'skill' rating of 13 as I recall. That makes them better at 'fucking up a fool' than many of the PC archetypes.  The only thing that seperates a mook from a PC aside from simplicity of stat blocks is that Mooks don't track damage.  They either survive a hit, or they don't. Ironically, high powered mooks, then, can be tougher than any character: no Ping Damage.

You would not need rules for them, nor roll dice for them, if they were not a threat. Except in your 'versimilitudinous' ideal where you'd have to roll to get out of bed in the morning, where you roll for everything.
Aside from the purely Genre Emulation aspects of Mooks in Feng Shui (our canon example for Mook Rules), mooks primarily serve as a BOOKKEEPING issue.  You mention D&D's hit points as the most common beef with the game.  I'll see you that and raise you the most common DM's complaint with 3E is stating out NPC's for players to interact with.  

But again: We are arguing about the color of a high performance speed machine. Preference for or against Mooks has nothing to do with how you look at a game design as a peice of engineering, its a preference for an aesthetic choice.  You'd rather they be '1st level commoners' with a full stat block, I'd rather, if they are that trivial, that they be boiled down to 'you hit, he dies'. In fact, even pre-mook, a peice of advice I saw for dealing with high level players wanting to 'waste time' punking out peasants and the like was to simply tell the player he won, rather than allowing him to waste everyone's time rolling dice for meaningless challenges.  Which, outside of certain genre rules, is exactly what mook rules really accomplish: They let you speed up play and prep.  I'm no spider man expert, but I'm reasonably certain he hasn't been meaningfully threatened by any mugger or purse snatcher he stopped on page 1 just in time to be introduced to the real threats.  

Quote from: John MorrowI suppose I should point out that I like playing the competent hero and I don't mind the PCs being at the top of the food chain.  And I find it incredibly refreshing when a plan works out and the PCs trounce their opponents easily.  Again, this is a style issue that we can't really discuss unless you acknowledge style differences.

Sea Green. If you want to call it aquamarine, thats your business. It has nothing to do with what a car actually does.  Do I acknowledge style differences? I told James a dozen posts ago I didn't want to get ropped into the fucking playstyle debate, it Doesn't.Fucking.Matter.  

Quote from: John MorrowFor example, years ago, there was a thread on "GM Biases", which are things GMs do because they think it makes the game better, more interesting, or more fun but they actually ruin the game for many players.  Here is a condensed version of the things people threw out that I put together for a different conversation:

   In 1996, rec.games.frp.advocacy came up with a list of GM biases that might be useful to think about, with regard to Steven Marsh's article:

• "Fair Play" - If the PCs try hard, then things will work out.
• "Creativity Rewards" - More inventive solutions are more likely to succeed.
• "Favorite NPC's" - The GM protects favored NPCs from the players.
• "Interesting Times" - Things are never easy or go as planned for PCs.
• "No Free Lunch" - The PCs have to earn or pay for anything good.
• "Appropriate Challenge" - All opponents are challenging but defeatable.
• "Speed is Life" -  The PCs are not given time to plan.
• "Cruel to be Kind" - Struggling and abused PCs entertain players.
• "He Who Lives By The Sword..." - PCs are punished for using violence.
• "Nice Guys Finish Last" - No act of kindness goes unpunished.
• "Comedy Is King" - Comedy everywhere entertains the players.
• "Adversarial" - Every challenge should nearly or actually kill the PCs.

Every time I've posted that list since, someone has said, "Hey, some of those are actually good GMing techniques and I use them all the time!"  If people are bothering to read this, I suspect I'll see some of that here.  But these were posted by people who felt that they ruined games for them.  
.  They are attempts to borrow techniques using in fiction writing and overtly port them into a role-playing game, where they don't always work because, unlike a story where the author has control over how the characters react, the players can notice the man behind the curtain and have the game spoiled by it.  It breaks the Illusion, so to speak.

Sure, I'll say it: the beef about creativity awards is, on the face of it, whining. Now, if stolid, practical solutions DON"T work, but airy-fairy farts in the sky 'creative solutions' do? That's another matter.    Why shouldn't a GM reward a creative solution?  

But here is where we get to the heart of your list:

QuoteAnd almost all of them, like mook rules too, are about trying to force the game to work the way stories, movies, board games, or whatever work instead of putting the focus on making sense in the setting and in character

[/B]

Bull.Shit. Some? Maybe. In fact let me go back line by line.

Fair play: Aside from the fact that fair play, to me, means something entirely different that what it means to you: Very few stories I am familiar with, outside of childrens literature, work out just because the hero tried. Some crappily written shite might look a bit like that, but I strongly doubt it was the intent of those authors to actually MEAN for it to look that way. WHAT STORIES, prey tell is this one emulating?

Creativity Rewards: Sure, it happens all the time in stories. It also happens quite a bit in real life, or do you not enjoy the fruits of generations of inventive motherfuckers who gave us clothes to wear and central heating and air?

Favorite NPC's: Again, not so much emulating of stories. I'm sure we can all agree that its piss poor GMing. Most 'wizard' players like to be Gandalf, thus Gandalf is PC territory. Most fighter guys like to be Aragorn, thus Aragorn is PC territory. Stories, amazingly enough, and stop me if you've heard this before, don't have a divide between PC's and NPC's. Thus any 'favored' NPC in a book is more likely one of the Heroes, and thus... in game terms, a fucking PC!. Hey!

Interesting Times: Sure, happens in stories alla time. Why? Because sitting around drinking a beer with the buds is boring unless you actually have a beer and buds to share it with. Thus interesting things pretty much HAVE to happen. Plans never working right? I doubt most GM's sit down and go 'wow, my players are doing everything perfectly. Damn, this never happens in the movies, I better throw a monkey wrench into the works!' Its more likely 'Damn, the players are doing everything right. Fuck, the adventure will be over in less than an hour at this rate, I got nothing else planned... shit, what to do, what to do? I know! I'll throw a monkey wrench in!'  Now: Is it good or bad? I don't care, but I do know its not some ass attempt at destroying versimilitude in pursuit of story. I dunno about you, but if I sat down at a game table and nothing interesting was gonna happen, I'd find a new group.

No Free Lunch: That's odd, I could swear I've read books, seen movies and more where the heroes get shit 'for free' ALL.THE.TIME. What genre is this emulating?  Oh, its not, its just a crappy GM thing. Oh, you want examples: Hrm... well, Sarah Connor never paid for that fucking arsenal in T2.  Bilbo didn't fucking pay for that mithril shirt, or Sting for that matter. Hell, I just watched Beowulf a couple weeks ago and sure as shit, Beowulf gets handed a family sword by one 'NPC'. Hey! Lyra got the Alietheometer for free too! Yeah. Not.Story.Emulation.

Appropriate Challenges: Finally! Finally we find ONE of your list that MIGHT be 'story emulation'. But lets break it into parts, shall we: all opponents are challenging... hrm.. you know, if my opponents aren't challenging, why the fuck are we wasting time rolling dice on them anyway? See my comments about interesting times.  ...but defeatable.  Sure. Story emulation. Why not. I mean I COULD argue that if the GM is regularly giving me NPCs that are unbeatable, I'd stop playing with him, I mean, I am getting my yearly quotia of frustration out of this thread after all, why do it in game, but I'm feeling generous. You have it, I conceed that THIS point is at least HALF story emulation. Psst:wargamers often go through amazing lengths to ensure their opponent's army is balanced to theirs...

Speed is Life: What story is this from? Speed? Every GM that is forcing his players not to plan is trying to channel Sandra Bullock? Don't buy it.  Do you want me to feed you a dozen counter examples where the stories let players plan? Because most of them do, you know. Some stories go out of their fucking way to let the heroes plan.   Nope: its just a GM technique, for good or ill.


Cruel is Kind: Courtesy of our very own Pundit we have a keen insight to why GM's pull this one. Let me give you a hint: its not story emulation. No, according to him, the entire point of being harsh on players is to make them earn their rewards so they'll enjoy 'em more. That's it. Just a technique to keep the entertainment portion of the game up.

He Who Lives by the Sword: Amazingly, most stories I am familiar with are incredibly violent affairs. Rare indeed is the bad guy defeated with diplomacy, and even when he is, undoubtedly prior to that some dastardly sabotuer had to be shot to enable the diplomacy to go forward.  So, I'd say this point is actually trying to increase real world versimilitude. That's minus one point in your favor.

Nice Guys Finish Last: Again, what story genre is this emulating?  Seriously, I don't know.

Comedy is King: Well, sure I know there are lots of comic stories out there, so at least this one I can relate to a type of story, unlike the last. But I, sadly, can not say that this supports your premise significantly. Much like the Cruel to be Kind point I rather suspect it is an attempt to keep the players, or the GM, entertained, rather than some nefarious plot to roleplay a Marx Bros. skit.

Adversarial: Hrm, I suspect I should give you at least half a point for this one too. Really, its just burn out, these wall to text posts of yours are exhausting and time consumbing to respond to in any depth.  Here is the thing: I don't think this one goes back to 'story' either. Games are meant for entertainment. Some GM's may think that easily beaten opponents are boring for their players, thus they ramp up the difficulty to avoid the doldrums trap. Excessive? Perhaps.  

Quote from: John MorrowI agree that's one purpose of dice.  But they work because they are an objective arbiter.  And many groups trust GMs to do a great many things dicelessly and by fiat so long as they believe that the GM is an objective arbiter.  And the rules serve as an objective arbiter as well.  But the dice also serve as a source of surprise for everyone at the table.  If I order lunch off of a menu, I'm not going to be surprised when it comes.  If I tell the waiter to surprise me, then I can be surprised when it comes.  Dice provide a non-decision source of surprise in the game and many people find surprise desirable.  In fact, that's one of the reasons why I fund the unpredictability of the heroes never dying that I not only don't like absolute script immunity in RPGs.  And, to be honest, I find it a liability in most fiction, which is why I have less and less of a use for fiction as time goes on.

You know, I could have sworn I said the dice were objective arbiters, only with smaller words.  The rest of this quote seems to illuminate the key difference in how we are approaching this: You see your preferences as a critial point. I am not sure why they should be primary, lord knows I am doing my best to not judge other peoples enjoyment, evenwhen pressed for my opinions. Its not relevant to tool at hand. Yes, I am/was attempting to construct a TOOL. Was.  I'll go ahead and respond to your other post too, but I'm fucking done. Its not worth the aggravation of spending two or three hours a post, two to four posts a day talking about the god damn color of the god damn car. That's what your preference (or mine, or anyones...) are: the color on the god damn car.  Preferences of complexity, preferences for versimilitude or emulation, preferences for shapes of fucking dice; all just fucking paint on the damn car of roleplaying.  Yes, the paint job is important, but NOT TO THE FUCKING GUY BUILDING THE ENGINE!  Thats what this is for, to work on the fucking engine.  Yes, the metaphor is getting fucking strained, but I've got blood on my forehead and a splitting headache and I'm gonna have to spend a few hours fixing the wall.

Quote from: John MorrowThe biggest role for the GM, in my opinion, is to play the NPCs.  And if that makes the GM a part of the mechanics, then the other players are part of the mechanics, too.  That's not necessarily a bad way of looking at the game, either.  My point was that with a sufficiently large pool of players and a sufficiently complex (computer managed) setting that operated like a real place, you wouldn't necessarily need a GM to do most of the things a GM does.

Drift. Serious drift.  When I postulate a system so stripped down that the only fucking rule is that you roll a single die and look for a fixed target number, I'm illustrating a point about mechanics, not arguing for or against, or what the fuck the role of the GM is for.    And let me point out that even MMORPG's have GM's... amazingly enough.  How large and how complex are you willing to go? Don't answer: you've already exhuasted my ability to care about this anymore, I'm just answering out of a misplaced sense of duty.

Quote from: John MorrowBut, see, I don't thing the trend it to gravitate toward more complex rule systems for long term use.  Barring, for the sake of argument, long term freeform play (which does happen), in my experience, it's a Goldilocks issue.  Each group (or even each person) has their "just right" and that's what they need for long term use.  And the further they get from that, to the light or heavy, the more the system will grate on them and that grating will get worse over time.

I ran a D&D 3.5 campaign over a year ago and would likely not do it again because it was too heavy.  I'm finding Hero too heavy, too.  And the players keep asking to go back to Fudge.  And we played a campaign just as long as those Hero and D&D campaigns using Fudge.  But the version of Fudge we use is more objective and crunchy than what some people use.  

For years, my group didn't really use published systems.  We used a series of homebrews, sometimes variants of the previous homebrew and sometimes we'd make substantial changes.  So I'm very familiar with what it was like trying to find the "just right" for my group, and that being too simple or too complex is a problem.  How do I know that D&D 3.5 and Hero are too complex for us beyond the length of time it takes to do certain things and the players asking to go back to Fudge?  I know because we ignore a lot of rules.  I almost never worried about flat-footed AC when I ran D&D.  I tried playing Hero a few years ago with someone who had played with experts in the system and I realized just how much we skip or do wrong.  Combat actually runs fast for us in D&D and Champions because there is a lot we don't do or ignore.  That's the sign of the flip-side of your argument -- a system being too heavy.  Similarly, tacking house rules on to a light system to codify certain things that come up again and again suggests that the system is too light.  But the bottom line here is that it's not necessarily a one way street toward heavy for long term games.  It's about finding that magical Goldilocks point where everything is "just right".

Again: Preference. I am not trying to establish a baseline 'just right' for anyone. Never was.  I am CERTAINLY NOT trying to establish it for John Morrow.  When I critcize a game system, such as Exalted or (apparently) higher level Scion, its not a condemnation of the level of complexity. Its the inelegance of the design process that provides a barrier to enjoyment for most players. People like exalted, I'll give you that. They like D&D, I can not refute that.  I hold that a lot of that enjoyment is despite the warts in 'warts and all', and a far far smaller group enjoys because of the warts.   What I am trying to do is establish a means for Exalted to be as crunchy and heavy as players like without being an actual barrier to play for them and others. Maybe not for Exalted, after all I don't own White Wolf, CCP does, but for others.  Its also a means for a GM to sit down and casually take what he likes about, say... Exalted and port it over to a system more freindly to him and his player's preferences, whatever those might be.  But I can't build up the parts that are useful for designers since I'm so caught up discussing your preferences.

Quote from: John MorrowDo you want me to answer that?

Probably not, but since you did.

*Snip list for brevity*

I am not getting paid by the word. I'm not getting paid by the hour. I don't have a career riding on exhaustively detailing every last portion of this thought of mine. I agree that all of those things you listed are valid reasons for more complex systems.  Okay, I started skimming after the first two or three, so I trust you didn't slip anything stupid into the list like 'complex systems serve to awaken our inner child' or some shit.

I did notice you didn't include, and really haven't refuted, the premise that such an incredibly simple system is, in fact, too simple to hold our attention long.  I submit to you that all those things you listed are in fact reasons why more complex systems hold our attention longer.

Quote from: John MorrowWell, I think you are now folding, bending, spindling, and mutilating plain English here and are drifting well into Forge "special English for story nuts" territory here.  *snip*  And even when he is captured, he tends to confidently escape, does he not?

And I think you are demonstrating your anti-mook bias.  Firstly: Bond vs Firefly is a really poor example for the sort of scaling I really was talking about, if I wanted to attribute malice to you I'd congratulate you on your fine trap.  Exalted, Scion, Superheroes are, unlike Bond, not operating anywhere near the scale of Firefly.  Bond has his genre tropes, Mal has his own, but both are 'assumed' to be mortal men with finite, mortal abilities, as do their opponents.

Hate mook rules all you like, the idea that a mortal man, no matter how awesome, being able to even attract the attention of a God, much less challenge him meaningfully, is laughable. You mention scale: why have your farm boy or smuggler from Tatooine even roll damage if they are punching a star destroyer?  If your fairy PC's are one inch tall, they will not, no matter what the dice say, win a boxing match with a 6 foot tall human.  They might 'win' against the human in other ways, but by punching him? Never.

Further: noting says a trap can not count as an opponent. Mechanically it is just that, an obstacle to be beaten. Sometimes the trap is laughably easy, sometimes it is a Bond 'level' threat.

Quote from: John MorrowIn many cases, I think thats true.  Again, that reached its apex during the later Roger Moore years, though there was plenty of it with Brosnan, too.  The other Bonds were a bit more plausible.  But that's fine.  I'm a fan of adventures that end with a "boss" that's a real challenge for the PCs and I'm fine if they do lose during that last encounter, because the game is going to end, anyway.  There is a reason why video games are often structured like that, too.  My problem is with the idea that every encounter should be a boss-level encounters.  It's like making a James Bond movie where he runs into one Man with the Golden Gun after another every 15 minutes or so.  There is a reason why they don't make the movies like that.



And I think that's wrong.  The battle with the Man with the Golden Gun is a climax scene and that translates well into a role-playing scene were the PCs can actually die.  Mal fighting a thug in a bar is not a climax.  In fact, in one case, it was a throwaway joke that opened an episode.  I don't think those two things should have the same chances of success or be on part because that would mean that the throwaway fight with some pro-Alliance thugs in a bar carries the same dramatic weight as a climactic battle against The Man with the Golden Gun.

For someone who was, in this same post, bitterly complaining about 'story' destroying versimilitude, your counter arguements are relying heavily on story tropes.  Make up your damn mind.

Quote from: John MorrowWell, it's not my job to sum up for you.

And this is part of the reason we will be done after I get to the rest.  I have jumped through all of your fucking hoops, argued just about every diversionary topic and done every fucking thing I could to try to bring this back to what I believe are the core points. I have stated them, and then I went out of my way to restate them AT YOUR FUCKING REQUEST. If that has failed then to convey my ideas to you then it falls on you to actually correct me and tell me what you think I am saying. Since you don't want to do that, we can not continue this conversation in any meaningful way. Particularly since I ask so little compared to what you demanded.  

I will turn my attention to the second mega-post once I have gone to lunch and maybe attempted to do something.... you know... fucking productive with my time.  Then I will put a fucking gun to the head of this cancer ridden dog of a thread and put it out of my fucking misery.  Rare indeed is it I feel like I wasted time posting an idea on a forum, so congrats, you may chalk up a kill on your pistol grip if you are so inclined.

Spike,

Just going to cut in to say that, really, I think you're doing a bit of a disservice.  I mean, I agree that the mega posts were a bit much, but...

In particular, I think you are missing your own biases when you construct what you see as objective points.  For example, mooks. I know you like them, I get that you think they are an elegant solution to a problem. I know you think that it seems silly to have to fight a bunch of 0 level commoners.

Know what? That's all preference. None of that is objectively true.

I think you're too ready to write off attempts at verisimilitude as some kind of idealistic goal as opposed to simply a different preference.

Now it seems to me that there's an interesting idea here on the very edge of being expressed, but something is not quite making the connection - and I don't think it's all John's fault...(though this is getting to be Kylesque!)

Now back to your head banging...

Jim

Quote from: John MorrowThe thing you seem to be skipping is that the input from the mechanics affect the imaginary portions of the game, thus as the input differs, so does what happens in the imaginary portion of the game and how that feels.{/QUOTE]

Damn my too fast thread-killing.  At what point did I skip that?  I know, I know, you can't go back and search for quotes to prove I skipped it. Well, you couldn't anyway as that's negative proof unless you stumble across a drunken youtube video of me loudly declaring the two were seperated by a Wall of Force and unable to touch as I hiccupped into my beer.

This sort of thing is why I surrender the burning wreckage of the thread to you, the sense that I spent hours rebutting long detailed responses that don't actually discuss what I said, but what YOU wanted to talk about. I say this because at every.single.step.of.this.thread I have reiterated that mechanics shape... you know, fuck it, since you won anyway I may as well use my shorthand... ILLUSION.  Shape, you know, something that requires affect to occur. You can not shape something without affecting it. Is that precise enough for you? I didn't think I'd have to talk down to you.

Quote from: John MorrowThat doesn't really fix the problem, especially in a long term game, any more than changing the name of "vagrants" and "bums" to "homeless people" made people want to sit next to one on the subway.  And a player can imagine that there is a difference between an axe and a longsword all they want but time and experience will demonstrate that there is no difference.  

Strawman.  I cannot change the nature of something that is real by labeling. I never claimed I could.  The vagrant/bum/homeless people are still whatever they were before I labeled them.  On the other hand if I change an imaginary thing, I can, in fact, alter the thing. A 'Longsword' can be called a 'Lightsaber' and presto! You are no longer playing fantasy, you are playing space opera.  Likewise, if we discuss a 'notional' person, a hypothetical individual... lets say while discussing the local sewage system, the impression your mind creates will be noticibly different if I call them a 'Bum' instead of 'some dude'.  As in 'While I was in the sewers looking for loose change some dude walked past.'  Vs 'While I was in the sewers looking for loose change a bum shuffled past.'  In both sentences a person ambulated past me, but the imagination of the viewer can conjure up wildly different ideas of what I saw.  So while the physical person and the physical act remains unchanged (that being, say, the mechanics of rolling d8 damage on a hit), the words I use to describe it can, and DO, change what you imagine.  In fact, maybe the 'bum' I saw was actually a sewage worker and I only thought he was a bum.  

Quote from: John MorrowLet me explain in more detail, and why this is particularly a problem for players who pay from an in character perspective.

A player's sense of how the game world works is not simply based on their imagination but also on their experiences interacting with that world.  Players experience the setting and interact with it.  They don't simply observe it or imagine it.  Thus a player could test, formally or accidentally, the effectiveness of an axe compared to a longsword simply by looking at how each perform in a long string of combats.  If the setting guide and the player's imagination say they are different but the rules say they are the same, and the incidents that are produced by those rules say that they are the same, that will create a cognitive dissonance between the belief that they are different and the reality, as experience by the player and their character during the game, that they are not.  Who are you going to believe?  The GM and the setting write-up or your own lying eyes and experiences?

Willing suspension of disbelief is the willingness to ignore minor glitches and pretend that he imaginary environment is real.  The more the imaginary environment behaves unbelievably or inconsistently, the harder it becomes for many people to maintain suspension of disbelief.  

Watch the movies Last Action Hero and The Truman Show for really good illustrations for what it feels like to have your experiences conflict with your beliefs in character.  And go back to that GM Biases list and you'll spot a lot of this there, too.

I've addressed your list of biases. In detail.  For some reason you seem to be laboring under an idea that whatever happens in game is somehow real and thus immutable, and trying to pretend otherwise is folly.   You surround it with, mostly, things that are fairly indisputable fact (see your own comments above about suspension of disbelief), but where you are coming from, which you declined to lay out explicitly earlier, is fundamentally at odds with where I am coming from on this.  Your obdurate behavior has won you the thread.

Quote from: John MorrowI don't think that's true at all, unless "some work" includes some fairly substantial changes to the systems in question.

What part? That imaginary worlds don't require mechanics to make them work? Or that since they don't, what mechanics you use to provide structure are ultimately interchangeable.   How much work is too much?  the nWoD manages to use the same system for no less than 5 different flavors of supernatural critters. However, it could easily be used, without 'subtantial changes' to run a completely mundane modern campaign. Ditto with running a mundane mideval campaign. Change 'Firearms' to 'Archery' and off you go, young sir... the moors are coming, to arms and all that.  The creators have jumped through hoops to make functional high powered games out of it, but I suggest they actually over-worked it, the actual level of modification is much more trivial.  Point in fact: non-universal rule sets have been increasingly used in a universal fashion with mixed results.  D&D to D20 modern is a very substantative change in imaginary worlds, and again, much of the work involved was, ultimately, unnecessary. The real advantage to the Gamer is having a book that supports that particular illusion, a talisman if you will.

Quote from: John MorrowI'm not really sure what you are getting at here.  Like I said, I played a very large percentage (probably greater than 50%) of my games over the years with homebrew rules, so this isn't an experience i"m familiar with.

I've gone over what you quoted and your response and I fail to see how the one followed the other. So that makes two of us.

Quote from: John MorrowWell, I think there are other motives for that.

So, you are assigning movites to the White Wolf crew in making horrible, glitchy messes of their high powered games?  RPGs are not OS's, where you can release a beta version (much less 2.0 beta version) and the consumer gets automatic updates every so often from the internet, hopefully before they notice how crappy the software actually works, so there goes the theory that they are releasing glitchy games to make money...

Quote from: John MorrowYet what happens if you want to play a mortal game in that setting or want to cross over with another WW game or setting?

Um... you use the pre-alteration default?  This is one of those: my computer won't turn on, what do I do? Questions. The answer is push the fucking power button.  :banghead:

Quote from: John MorrowI'm not sure that players expect their characters to be ordinary mortal beings at higher levels and, frankly, that's a poor assumption to make given the system.  And if a single arrow can kill a hero with one shot, doesn't that break your low lethality concern?

Bear in mind that in the design notes for Man-to-Man (which became the combat system for GURPS), the designers states that they purposely reduced the lethality from realistic levels to make the game fun.  I would argue that the players who want to be able to fell a 15th level hero with a single arrow do not really want heroic demigods of the sort that D&D offers and that they players who do want that sort of nigh-invincible character are not really interested in having their 15th level hero grab his chest and yell, "I've been hit!" and die.  But then we're back to style differences, aren't we?

Again, make up your fucking mind. You hate mook rules because they turn the heroes into more than mortal, than you bitch because when I suggest scaling the higher level power system to retain that mortality you bitch because some people don't want to play as mortal heroes?  :banghead:

Quote from: John MorrowFor a sufficiently magiced and feated up character in D&D 3.5, a single arrow still can change the fight, especially if the GM doesn't make every battle a battle against a single large opponent.  But if you change the pace of decision in D&D substantially, you've changed the feel of the game substantially.  It has a fairly low pace of decision on purpose, even if some people don't like it.

Is this where I congratulate you on a successful tar baby?  I mean you fucking demanded I put more examples in so you could understand me, then when I do that, you proceed instead to savage the examples like they were somehow central to the entire fucking topic?  Ye, fucking, haw.  May I remind you that YOU are the one that complained bitterly about D&D's inflating hit point pool?  Don't critsize an off the cuff solution to the inflating hit points by saying 'well, some people like what inflating hit points do!'.

Somehow, I sense that my idea tripped some fucking painful internet warrior expirence you had and you come here all armored up to destroy me for reminding you of when someone stepped on your fucking epeen when all I wanted to do was discuss this idea I had.  That can be the only fucking explanation for why you have constantly and routinely ignored every attempt I've made to clarify my point and at the same time worked so fucking hard to actually cloud the issue more with stupid trivialities like wether or not my off the cuff example for D&D is or is not going to piss off little Timmy who wants to slow down his decision making.  I am well aware of why RPG combat works at the speed it does.  

Quote from: John MorrowNo, but it does toss verisimilitude out the window and that's a mighty big baby to be throwing out with the bath water.  Elegant is not the word I'd use to describe it.  Blunt would be more appropriate, I think, like driving a screw into a piece of wood with a hammer.  Yeah, it's in there but you've made a mess of some other things in the process.

You have made your bias against mooks eminently clear.  Again: if emulation is the goal not versimilitude, leaving mook rules out of this specific game would have mnade a travesty of what it proclaimed to be.

Quote from: John MorrowBut once you remove the mook rules, you can't really support the action hero tone any more, can you.  You either need to put the mook rules back or you need to do what other systems do to get it back.  I mean, at some point, if you strip all of the paint off of the Mona Lisa, you aren't dealing with the Mona Lisa anymore.  You are dealing with a blank canvas and painting something else on it.

Hey, wow, look at that, exactly what I just said above it. Yet, here you are claiming that the mook rules didn't do what they were supposed to do just a minute ago.    Since other systems did not really handle 'action hero' stuff all that well, why would a game designer look back and keep doing the same old kludge?   Could something else have been done, some third path yet untaken? Maybe.  If I'm ever faced with 'design an Action Hero style game without using mook rules or I put a bullet in your head' I'll let you know what I think if. I'll probably just take the bullet, but that could be the frustration talking.

Quote from: John MorrowSo the whole point of your argument is that it's better to adjust a system so that the power level, no matter how heroic, is the norm rather than to increase the characters power level relative to an objective base?  OK.  So what happens if I want to mix or match or run a game with a Jimmy Olsen and Superman?  By turning normal people into ants, are they even playable as a PC?

Finally. Yeah, that's one arguement you finally got. Only took four.fucking.days. With a certain level of disparity, yeah, Jimmy Olsen IS gonna be left out to dry.  Of course, forcing Superman to hang out with Jimmy Olsen every time he faces down Doomsday is sort of obnoxious too, don't you think?   Of course, if I wanted to keep this alive (where, oh where can I find an 'ignore thread' function?), then I could always start talking about putting in multiple scales if that's necessary. Superman doesn't have to operate on a 'super' scale in intellectual challenges, or social situations, but its stupid to even contemplate bother putting in Olsen and Superman into the same 'combat' rules. Things that can hurt superman would leave poor old Olsen smeared across half of the continent.  Things that Jimmy Olsen can shrug off or even just survive would not even get Supe's attention. So, yeah. It sucks to be an Olsen in a Superman world.  Oddly enough, most stories and yes, wargames and most RPG's all try to keep people on the same level... I wonder why that could be??? Could it be that trying to play an Olsen in Superman's world is... obnoxious player behavior?  Maybe?

Quote from: John MorrowThe changes to Chaosium's BRP was pretty substantial in some cases.  And I think it's interesting that other companies rejected the basic system retooled for different settings in favor of generic systems with an objective baseline in common with all settings.  And at least part of the reason for that is that GMs and players do like playing crossovers.  When one setting or version of a system isn't compatible, it makes using material from one setting in another or actually moving characters between them difficult.

Early on, when White Wolf was releasing their various games, the rules weren't quite compatible and they tried to maintain the official line that the games weren't compatible with each other, even though lots of groups tried it.  Why?  Because it made sense to be able to move things between the various World of Darkness games.  And that's why the default setting of GURPS is multidimensional.

First: Changes to the mechanics between chaosium lines was negligable. Changes to skills lists, adding in or subtracting a few minor sub systems... many changes were not even important to the differences between the illusions they presented, but were more akin to differences between editions of the same game.   As for White Wolf: SInce they have been held up repeatedly in this thread as paragons of poor design decisions, I fail to see the relevance other than boosting your word count.  

Quote from: John MorrowDon't do it.  Insisting on having your argument hinge on once confusing jargon term is a surefire way to make sure people endlessly don't understand the points you are trying to make.  Easy to type?  Sure.  Useful for conveying your meaning?  No.

No longer matters. The thread is now yours, the last word is yours. You win, I am done with this topic, with this line of thought.  Any potential good I thought I could gain from discussion was lost in side threads, bias and apparently malicious focus on non-points.  I learned nothing worthwhile and I probably didn't help anyone learn anything either.  What a waste of time.