Quote from: two_fishes;360584I'm not sidestepping the point, I merely pointing out that there lots of movies --lots-- where the death of the main character simply isn't actually at stake. RPGs often try to replicate the tension of those movies by actually putting the characters' lives at stake, but it's clearly a kind of short-cut to the way many movies actually build tension.

Yes you are sidestepping the point. The death of the main character(s) was vital to the telling of the story, but instead you tried to make it seem irrelevant.

Quote from: two_fishes;360584Yes there are movies where the hero dies, but I would like to point out that in each of the movies you listed (with the possible exception of das boot), the hero does not die without first acheiving his goal. So the real truth is that they do have plot immunity for as long as the plot is unfinished.

See? You are dissembling again in an attempt to show that character death is irrelevant in the movies listed.

Sorry, but that dog just won't hunt.

Quote from: Seanchai;360587two_fishes didn't say anything about "in the end." He said, "I would argue that there is never any real threat that Bruce Willis is going to be seriously incapacitated in Die Hard..." In other words, we know that, yes, he might die in the end, but we also know that he, along with other action movie heroes, sure as hell won't die in the middle.

Seanchai

Yeah, like Sean Connery's character in The Untouchables.

:rolleyes:

Yeah I know it's a more complex issue than I laid out in that post, but in my defense I was responding to J Arcane.

Movies aren't games.

I realise that may be a difficult thing for some of you to grasp, so I'll explain.

Movies aren't games.

You want more detail? Well, the key difference is the audience. In movies, the audience is just an audience. In a game, the audience is a participant. Being a participant makes all the difference.

The whole point of a movie is that it has a distinct beginning, middle and end. The whole point of a game is that the outcome is uncertain. It's not a game if you know what's going to happen in the end. That's why during a soccer game if one team is up 8-0 by half-time most of the audience leaves.

Participation in a game is only meaningful if the outcome is uncertain. This is entirely different to a movie, where we do not participate, and cannot affect the outcome.

Movies aren't games.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360610Movies aren't games.

I realise that may be a difficult thing for some of you to grasp, so I'll explain.

Movies aren't games.

You want more detail? Well, the key difference is the audience. In movies, the audience is just an audience. In a game, the audience is a participant. Being a participant makes all the difference.

The whole point of a movie is that it has a distinct beginning, middle and end. The whole point of a game is that the outcome is uncertain. It's not a game if you know what's going to happen in the end. That's why during a soccer game if one team is up 8-0 by half-time most of the audience leaves.

Participation in a game is only meaningful if the outcome is uncertain. This is entirely different to a movie, where we do not participate, and cannot affect the outcome.

Movies aren't games.

This is a good point, and deserves to be made again (hence my quote of the entire thing).

That said, I think the idea that everyone knows what's going to happen in movies is over-stated here. Yes, a movie's outcome is pre-determined, but that doesn't mean it's known. Some movies are harder to figure out than others, of course, but that doesn't mean that in both movies and games a lot of the enjoyment can stem from being anxious and uncertain about how things will turn out.

In general, I think it's best to avoid analogies to movies when talking about RPG's -- it tends to derail the dialog.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360610Movies aren't games.

Shall we throw out the whole WWHSD* defense to the grenade issue and look at the rules of the game then?

Seanchai

* What Would Han Solo Do

Quote from: Seanchai;360453Fine. But we're also importing the real world capabilities of real world grenades. You're telling that the Star Wars grenades as a deadly as real world grenades, but Star Wars grenades are taken from a movie.

Moreover, we have the exact capacity of the grenades and they're just not that deadly. For example, we know how much damage a character standing directly over it would take and a 1st level average non-combatant has a good chance of being conscious after the blast.

Seanchai

This is all a bunch of nonsense, by the way. If you go back to my argument, the only thing from real world grenades that I imported was the thing that the player brought in: that they're physical attacks which can be blocked. From that, you only have to apply the cover rules to reach the conclusion that multiple damage rolls should apply, and go directly to wounds.

I'm not increasing the damage of SWD20 grenades in this case to match reality any more than I'd be importing the "real" effect of a blaster by saying that if you get hit three times, you'll take three times as much damage--which just might kill you.

Reading this thread = throwing oneself on a grenade.

Quote from: Seanchai;360618* What Would Han Solo Do

Apparently, not shoot first :mad:

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Seanchai;360618Shall we throw out the whole WWHSD* defense to the grenade issue and look at the rules of the game then?

Seanchai

* What Would Han Solo Do

Han Solo in the movies would not throw himself on a grenade because

(a) Han Solo is a rogue, not a paladin, and

(2) there are no hand greandes in the movies with Han Solo, just blasters and light sabers. There's a "thermite" grenade at some point, but it never gets set off. It's like the second Death Star's planet-destroying beam, it exists as a threat but is never used.

We'll get past what Han Solo would do the moment you shut the fuck up about the fucking grenade.

However, as I said, what Han Solo would do in the movies is irrelevant, because games aren't movies. Arguing about a Star Wars rpg session on the basis of what happened in the movies is like what Orlando Bloom did in Kingdom on the basis of the game of chess we just.

Games aren't movies. This is a simple point which eludes the simple.

However, that games aren't movies doesn't mean the rules are the most important thing. Rules are the most important thing to the success of a game session in competitive games, like chess or football.

Roleplaying games aren't competitive, they're purely for entertainment, so for the success of a game session, rules drop back to fourth place behind people, snacks, and setting.

Rules are over-ridden in the interests of the people, the snacks and the setting. The rules come dead last, because roleplaying games are not competitive in their focus.

The people, snacks, setting and system are all there to make easier the game where the outcome is uncertain but can be affected by player ideas becoming character actions. That is, to help us have fun. When the system gets in the way of roleplaying, when the player is looking at dice and numbers and calculating odds, we are no longer roleplaying, but wargaming. Which is a fun hobby, but not what we sat down to do.

Jump on a grenade in my game sessions, and you will probably die. The only difference between me and Jeff is that I'd have you roll the damage first. Hey, maybe you get all 1s, good for you. But it's not likely.

Should you be this player, feel free to bitch about it on message boards afterwards - but at the time you get to shut the fuck up and roll the dice, because the game must go on. It's all about pacing, if we sit and argue about the damage and all that shit, by the time we find out if our characters lived or died nobody cares anymore.

Shut the fuck up and roll the dice, Seanchai. And stop hogging the cheetos, pass them over here.

That reminds me, have these appeared in your neck of the woods yet, Kyle? I can't recommend them highly enough.

You know, most of the time I'm like "fuck game-theory", but at times like these I can't help but wonder if pieces of it were somehow right.  The butting of heads here is an almost perfect example of...well...aw fuck it, I'm not going to bother, especially not here.  I need to finish some coursework, anyway.

No sign of 'em yet, Elliot.

Thanks for your comment that you wouldn't be commenting, Peregrin. Non-contributions are always helpful!

Kyle, I think you are right in theory, but I think a lot of us feel competitive when we play an RPG. Player vs. Player and Player vs. GM is fun, at least to me.

It isn't competitive all the time, but it crops up. Rolling dice for four hours and patting each other on the back gets old. I like it when there are occasionally winners and losers.

Anyway, when you make it competitive, the rules become a lot more important. It is hard to be mature and have the wisdom to know how to suddenly make the rules important so that you can be competitive, and then let them fall behind when it is over.

As a GM, one of the things I do to make my games fun is I lie a lot. I don't usually feel competitive when I run a game, but I make my players think I am. I'll let them rules lawyer a little and in general, I'll play dumb and let them win if they come up with something good and roll well.

I've never gotten players as excited about combat as I have by acting like an enemy. When the players think it is all pats on the back and GM fiat, it never sinks in the same way.

Not all together on topic, whatever.

It seems to me that this is an argument over personal preferences, and like many RPG arguments, it's been caught up in saying that one way or the other is the one true way.  

We can argue over questions like (1) how lethal games should be to PCs, and (2) how closely to follow the rules.  However, these are really issues of preference.  There is no single right answer to them.  


IMO, Kyle is wrong when he says that rules come dead last behind people, snacks, and setting - because people coming first defines the other order is.  There are people who care about rules more than they do about setting, and enjoy playing by the rules.  You might not like to play with those people, but it doesn't meant that they're wrong for them.  For such people in such games, the rules are part of the fun.  It is pointless to say that the rules need to be set aside in favor of fun, because for some people, following the rules is fun.  For that matter, there are people who don't like Cheetos - or even those who don't like snacking between meals at all.  


It's possible to run a campaign that kills off PCs and is fun.  It's also possible to run a campaign that has explicit script immunity and is fun.  There are varying degrees between these (i.e. varying degrees of PC lethality - going down to so non-lethal that it blends into true script immunity).  The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG has explicit script immunity - a PC can do anything and as long as they had a single Drama Point left, they won't be permanently killed.  I ran a campaign for three years following that rule, and it worked great.  I've also had fun playing Dead of Night, where the PCs all were killed off.  They're both fun.  

Similarly, I've played in campaigns that went fast-and-loose with the rules, and I've played in campaigns that went by-the-book.  I don't think there's a singular answer to this question, and I think it's silly to argue over what the right answer is to either of these, because it depends on the group and the game.