I played Paranoia once at GenCon where we did not have character sheets, just a paragraph on an index card. We would roll a D20 when the GM said so and stuff would happen. We had a lot of fun, but I do not know if every group could work like that and certainly maybe not for other RPG settings.

I know a great CoC GM who has character sheets, but they are for the players benefit only. AKA, he only cares about what we do and occasionally what the dice say, but we don't really have any rules events. Stuff in his game doesn't hurt us (aka -4 HP), instead you suffer conditions (you are confused, dizzy, fatigued, your leg is broken, etc) or you die.

I always recommend that people try doing this at least once. It's an interesting experience, in sort of a "deep immersion" sense. But I don't favor it as a default playstyle – it is a lot of work for the GM and a bit of work for the players since they need to keep more stuff pictured in their heads. It is better for one-shots.

It's called "Paranoia".  But you wouldn't know that, because you're not of sufficient clearance to read the rules.

Seriously, I think encouraging players keeping things at the level of "say what your guy does" is probably sufficient - I don't know that it's really necessary to keep them utterly in the dark as to the system details.

It would probably also depend on the rules - the more wargame-like a game was, the more I think you need to at least have some idea of the rules.

Quote from: Claudius;694668Frankly, I don't see the point of keeping players in the dark, it's very frustrating for players, and puts too much work on the shoulders of GMs.

You (like me, and the people I game with) skew more towards the gaming side of roleplaying gaming. Others skew more towards the roleplaying side. I know pepole who would love this sort of thing, and I believe have done it.

Personally, I think it'd be more efficient to just go for improvisational theater, and stop pretending it's an RPG.

Quote from: taustin;694681You (like me, and the people I game with) skew more towards the gaming side of roleplaying gaming. Others skew more towards the roleplaying side. I know pepole who would love this sort of thing, and I believe have done it.

Personally, I think it'd be more efficient to just go for improvisational theater, and stop pretending it's an RPG.

Improv theatre seems very different to me than roleplaying with the gm managing the game mechanics. I'll have to think about that.

Quote from: Warthur;694605I asked Benoist this question in the Dungeon World discussion but didn't really get an answer, possibly because everyone was too over excited by the "fiction" debate in that context. So I'm going to put it here and open it out to everyone because the more I think about it the more I find this an interesting thought experiment:

Would you be interested in a game where 100% of the system stuff was handled by the GM, right down to your stats and character build (which the GM would presumably derive from a prose description and background you provide at character generation) and you could literally just shut your eyes and concentrate on immersing yourself in the game, exclusively speaking as your character or declaring your actions to the GM without reference to the rules?

All the dice rolling would be handled by the GM. Instead of being told you've "levelled up" you'd gradually come to realise your character had become more powerful when opponents which would previously have been troubling start dropping like flies. Instead of paying skill points to buy new skills or feats or whatever, you'd occasionally have downtime where you'd get opportunities to undertake training (or the GM would just assign stuff based on what you'd done in the session, kind of like how BRP handles skill checks). If you have a character sheet, it simply has your character's name and details of their background, personal knowledge, areas of expertise (as the character would understand them, rather than being expressed in skill terms) and equipment list, and maybe a character picture too if you're feeling fancy.

How would such a game appeal to you?

Yep, would totally be into this.

Quote from: Bill;694695Improv theatre seems very different to me than roleplaying with the gm managing the game mechanics. I'll have to think about that.

It may seem different to the GM, depending on the GM. It's indisinguishable to the players (if it's done right). GM = director. Players = actors.

Quote from: estar;694657Where the abstraction fails is that people don't know everything about themselves to the level of detail found on a typical character sheet.

But for the areas they deal with daily most have a good judge of what they are capable of and would know they had say Blacksmith +3 as opposed to Blacksmith +1.

I think for the most part, you are right, but the bonuses or penalties are the influence of experience when the chips are down and there's a lot of risk, and not taking 10 or taking 20 or whatever, which is how most day-to-day skills get tested.

The more skilled you are at something, the better judge your are likely to be about your own skills.

Quote from: taustin;694681You (like me, and the people I game with) skew more towards the gaming side of roleplaying gaming. Others skew more towards the roleplaying side. I know pepole who would love this sort of thing, and I believe have done it.

Personally, I think it'd be more efficient to just go for improvisational theater, and stop pretending it's an RPG.

I think I like both the gaming part and the roleplaying part. The gaming part without the roleplaying part feels hollow and boring, and the roleplaying part without the gaming part feels pointless and frustrating.

Quote from: Claudius;694700I think I like both the gaming part and the roleplaying part. The gaming part without the roleplaying part feels hollow and boring, and the roleplaying part without the gaming part feels pointless and frustrating.

I would agree. What this thread is about is an extreme towards roleplaying, and isn't a game any more. The opposite extreme is a board game, with no roleplaying. Most people are somewhere in between. Our group is generally on the gaming side of neutral, but not excessively so. Yours, perhaps, is closer to the middle, or perhaps a little to the other side (or perhaps not).

So long as everybody's happy with the balance you've got, or reasonable when somebody isn't, then you're Doing It Right, wherever you are.

But as I said, I know people who would love this idea, and if I'm not mistaken, have done it. Certainly, one GM (I should probably put that in quotes) who just won't deal with "game" systems that have dice. The general crowd he games with prefer storytelling games, like Dresden Files, where players can (within the rules) usurp the GM's story arc with ideas of their own. They like it. I don't participate. I loves me my dice.

Quote from: Warthur;694605Would you be interested in a game where 100% of the system stuff was handled by the GM, right down to your stats and character build (which the GM would presumably derive from a prose description and background you provide at character generation) and you could literally just shut your eyes and concentrate on immersing yourself in the game, exclusively speaking as your character or declaring your actions to the GM without reference to the rules?

That's basically what Hiljaisuuden Vangit ("The Prisoners of Silence"), a fairly obscure Finnish alt-history RPG from the Nineties, does. During chargen, the players fill in IC "surveillance reports" on their PCs, including results from medical examinations, academic accomplishments, known political affiliations, distinguishing features, and so on. The GM then converts that information into stats on the actual character sheets (which the others never see directly), and from there on acts as a filter between the system and the rest of the group.

Quote from: Benoist;694607Sorry if my answer didn't satisfy you. We were talking about terms like "fiction" so that's what I addressed.

No problem, as I said the discussion there was too tied up with fiction to expect any different.

QuoteI'm not really interested in theoretical scenarios like this, unless you really want to make it a reality, which certainly could be interesting.

Well, as the discussion so far has established there's at least one published game out there which advocates this, which I guess takes the scenario out of the theoretical category.

QuoteI just think role playing games work fine as they are, and enjoy the game aspect very much, including the immersion process of which it is a part.

This part is interesting to me - for me, I would say that immersion is more to do with the "roleplaying" side of the equation - how do gameplay aspects help you immerse when IC your characters aren't playing a game?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;694612Yup. This sort of thing works for first timers, but after a few sessions the novelty wears off and players want to actively participate in the game.

Query: why do you need to interact with the game mechanics and roll dice to participate in the game? Surely playing your character is participation?

Quote from: Phillip;694614That is generally true; dice don't care who rolls them, but people do. I think, though, that the mere act of tossing dice is properly distinguished from "directly interacting with the rules."

Let's say it isn't for the purpose of this thread; the GM handles all the rolls (or the system in question is diceless anyway, or there's a handy app which handles most of the rules and rolling burden for the GM).

Quote from: estar;694657The consquence however is that the burden is on the referee to effectively communicate what the character can do.

Generally people have detailed knowledge of what they can do in their profession or areas of interest. For example a quarterback throwing the football, a blacksmith working metal. The numbers and stats found found on a character sheet is an abstraction of that knowledge.

Where the abstraction fails is that people don't know everything about themselves to the level of detail found on a typical character sheet.

But for the areas they deal with daily most have a good judge of what they are capable of and would know they had say Blacksmith +3 as opposed to Blacksmith +1.

All of this is not easily represented in prose form. Yeah you could go with that you are a Great Blacksmith, a Mediocre Swordsman. But that what Fate and Fudge does and it just a shorthand for a system of levels for skills and other stats

I think you would need a system where each skill advancement was very meaningful (so more like the distinction between Smith-1 and Smith-2 in Traveller than between Smithing 59% and Smithing 60% in BRP), and where each character only gets a few skills describing broad competencies. Then you could give the players a few short, descriptive sentences for each of their skills. ("You're a competent enough blacksmith to make and repair basic metal items of serviceable quality.")

QuoteI have seen and participated in AD&D games run like this back in the day. And it fell by the wayside quickly because I could only think of one or two referees that could pull it off well. For the rest by and large their problem wasn't they were unfair or dicks but simply they didn't effectively tell what we could do. So the players were left fumbling in the dark.

It very similar to the situation tabletop novices faces. Except with novices you have the entire group to pull from to teach the new person whats what. With the proposed system the all on the referee.

I can see this being a specialized form of tabletop roleplaying. If you can pull it off more power to you and it will be a interesting experience.

I think it's actually a mode which would work best with experienced players who are already comfortable with the idea that your actions aren't limited to stuff written on your character sheet, and I'd encourage them not to be shy about asking me "How likely do I think it is that I'll be able to do [whatever]?" so I can answer in IC terms if they need to know how competent they are at something.

System-wise, of course, it would need to be fairly light (or have good app support) to avoid the GM being overwhelmed.

Quote from: taustin;694708I would agree. What this thread is about is an extreme towards roleplaying, and isn't a game any more.

Why would that necessarily be the case, simply because you're no longer rolling dice and your character sheet is written in qualitative and not quantitative terms?

Quote from: Warthur;694605How would such a game appeal to you?

I have tried this, partially, a few times. When running WW games, I often had the supernatural aspects of the system as GM only. It worked well in Trinity and even more so in Orpheus (as it also added to the horror of going into the Underworld).

As a GM, it becomes a real pain quickly though. I wouldn't want to do it for all aspects of all the PCs. It would be an inefficient match of the realities of playing RPGs.

On saying that, it may be more manageable in a LARP, where mundane actions are dealt with by way of physical action.

The other major issue is that it is dependent on the GM accurately interpreting player decision as the sole interface with the mechanical underpinnings of the game. Even the best GM is not able to emulate a real world in its entirety, and this can lead to players actually playing "guess the GM" rather than playing "being in character". As such, it could actually be self defeating.

IMO having players cognisant of the mechanics on some level can actually translate the realities of RPGs into a more immersive "in character" experience.

Quote from: Warthur;694605How would such a game appeal to you?

It wouldn't.

Quote from: Claudius;694668Frankly, I don't see the point of keeping players in the dark, it's very frustrating for players, and puts too much work on the shoulders of GMs.

This.

Quote from: Skywalker;694990IMO having players cognisant of the mechanics on some level can actually translate the realities of RPGs into a more immersive "in character" experience.

Conversely, I think running a game where you kept players ignorant of the mechanics except for what their characters would know can help immersion greatly.

For instance, your wizard presumably knows how his own spells work and roughly how many spells he can do in a day before his reserves of mana get tapped, and wizards are likely to be philosophically inclined anyway, so I can see empirically-minded wizards getting most of the magic system worked out on an IC basis through experiment - though they may miss some nuances which become dangerous. Warriors, however? Well. unless someone is clearly weak or unhealthy in comparison to you, you're never really going to know if you're a better fighter than them unless you actually fight them - and if it turns out they're the better warrior, you might be in trouble. Sounds good for a game where wizards plough ahead hubristically in their magical research and occasionally discover wrinkles in the laws of magic through their overconfidence, whilst warriors don't get into fights lightly.