Quote from: Bill White;731602I mean, it does seem likely that a class- and level-based system could do rock stars from outer space, with going on tour being the equivalent of a dungeon crawl ("I'm a 3rd level xenomorph back-up vocalist!"). But it seems like you'd have to do a lot of work to get there from OD&D. "Perfectly fitted" still sounds like hyperbole.

A "lot of work" is needed only in adding/modifying the Gygaxian building blocks you need for the setting. Palladium's SDC worlds have 90% of what you'd need for Teenagers from outer space on a rock rampage, including detailed tables and generation systems for Aliens, their way of getting to earth, their motivation, homeworlds and galactic entanglements as well as abilities and weaknesses. In BTS you have, btw, social/internal psyche rules for puberty (courtesy of E. Wujik), just as another case in point.

D&D as a structure is perfectly fitted, as I said.

Now, please do not take it as an insult, but: Your wording indicates severe lack of exposure with SDC Pally or any D&D that is not dungeon crawling.
The line "equivalent of a dungeon crawl" is what makes me very suspicious...

What I was alluding to is the episodic teenage superhero group angle. Note that that, for me, would include Barbie's saturday morning adventures. And that would be a perfect fit in the close sense. Note how premises like teenage alien rock stars in cartoons or comic books would usually involve the band being a backdrop for regular non-dungeon adventures such as crime, mystery or "contrarian adventure" (for lack of better word; e.g. "the 'evil' other band/pony/tank high school tries to cheat at a contest/battle of bands etc.)

If you really want to simulate a pop/rock star career, I'll yield and say the following: You MUST leave D&D derivatives and go  to hex and counter Wargame derivatives such as RQ/Traveller. In that vein, Cyberpunk obviously has adequate fame and music rules, especially with the Canadian guy's supplements, forgot the name, the purple ones.
T5, btw, has VERY elegant pop star-simulation rules.

Phillip, I'm not sure if that's an ideal way of looking at rules and setting. Basically it turns everything you can imagine or say about the setting into an unwritten rule. IMO one ought to guard against fallacies of equivocation by distinguishing formally expressed rules, informal rules, guidelines, conventions, precedents, setting facts, group understandings, etc., even if the distinction between them (apart from formal rules) can be somewhat fuzzy.

When you explicitly want to talk about all of that stuff together, then it's useful to have a catch-all term such as Gleichman's "layers" or other RPG-jargon "social contract" (however much I dislike the term), etc.

While reading the upwardly linked: http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=422002&postcount=210

It occured to me that there is some actual 'scientific'* reason for the thing Arminius describes there:

metric spatial cognition vs. qualitative spatial cognition
and
linear vs. instantaneous information channels

spoken and written language are linear, while first person experiences and maps are instantaneous.

So anything touching metric spatial cognitive manipulations that needs to be verbalized faces the double impossibility of instantaneously communicating myriads of configurations between objects and subject as well as being at the ratio scale.

Speaking to people in an rpg obviously is linear and qualitative as is languange, so they are a perfect fit.

Theoretically, it has been proven that it is NP-complete ("VERY difficult") to  check whether a spatial configuration communicated with linear sign systems (i.e. written or verbal) is an impossible configuration or not.

*actually, there is an epistemic reason and thus a philosophical one, but there are now 'proofs' for the obvious...

LESSON: I said this in 2007 already: the verbalization of RPGing spatial situations without maps always is in severe danger of the 'collapse of the wave function', if you will - one-dimensional, linear and qualitative is the realm where language tries to force you to go.

Quote from: Arminius;731629Phillip, I'm not sure if that's an ideal way of looking at rules and setting. Basically it turns everything you can imagine or say about the setting into an unwritten rule.

No, as a matter of fact it does not. I don't see how to make that any more self-evident than it is, that there's nothing here erasing anything; nor is there any mandate for the paradox of all mutually contradictory possible statements being simultaneously true; or whatever else you may be insinuating.

If we verbally agree that, yes, pieces of paper can be blown about in a breeze, and water normally flows downhill, and so on, how does that void the written rule that an 80mm mortar shell has such and such effects in game abstractions such as armor points and hit points?

Quote from: Arminius;731587This last is true, and I feel it supports my general point. But having some kind of mechanical element, i.e. the board, is needed to give some "stickiness" to the negotiation. This is really typical of most multiplayer games, and I think it's quite important that Diplomacy allows direct competition (attacking other players)--which again is pretty typical of multiplayer conquest-type games, as opposed to Euros such as Princes of Florence. One thing that gives Diplomacy its particular texture and tension, though, is the fact that moves are written in secret and resolved simultaneously, along with the geometry of conflict which makes a solid alliance both very strong (because it can put all its resources on the periphery facing the enemy) and very brittle/unstable (because the strength you get from trusting each other comes at the cost of being highly vulnerable to a betrayal). Note one of the parts of the Dippy "geometry" is the slow movement rate of units, which makes it very hard to shift resources in response to a political realignment such as a backstab.

The larger point, which I think is being lost in recent posts, is that the quantity of rules on a certain element of a game doesn't necessary tell you how important that element will be in play. Diplomacy and poker (whose rules I imagine were transmitted verbally before ever being written down) may mix strategy and analysis into their manuals, but the actual play emerges from formal rules which don't directly encode behavior at the table. In fact the rules of Western Chess were pretty much standardized between the 15th and early 19th century, but new qualities of play continued to emerge into the 20th century and perhaps beyond.

I will agree, that quantity of rules on a certain subject isn't necessarily indicative of the importance of that subject, in some respects. But I will still stipulate that more important subjects will be informed by robust rules. That is, rules that are well-made. The Diplomacy example clearly states what you can do, how long you have for it, and how constrained you are to it. (that is, not at all) There is no ambiguity in the rules, even if the procedure is simply described.

Quote from: Settembrini;731627A "lot of work" is needed only in adding/modifying the Gygaxian building blocks you need for the setting. Palladium's SDC worlds have 90% of what you'd need for Teenagers from outer space on a rock rampage, including detailed tables and generation systems for Aliens, their way of getting to earth, their motivation, homeworlds and galactic entanglements as well as abilities and weaknesses. In BTS you have, btw, social/internal psyche rules for puberty (courtesy of E. Wujik), just as another case in point.

D&D as a structure is perfectly fitted, as I said.

Now, please do not take it as an insult, but: Your wording indicates severe lack of exposure with SDC Pally or any D&D that is not dungeon crawling.
The line "equivalent of a dungeon crawl" is what makes me very suspicious...

What I was alluding to is the episodic teenage superhero group angle. Note that that, for me, would include Barbie's saturday morning adventures. And that would be a perfect fit in the close sense. Note how premises like teenage alien rock stars in cartoons or comic books would usually involve the band being a backdrop for regular non-dungeon adventures such as crime, mystery or "contrarian adventure" (for lack of better word; e.g. "the 'evil' other band/pony/tank high school tries to cheat at a contest/battle of bands etc.)

If you really want to simulate a pop/rock star career, I'll yield and say the following: You MUST leave D&D derivatives and go  to hex and counter Wargame derivatives such as RQ/Traveller. In that vein, Cyberpunk obviously has adequate fame and music rules, especially with the Canadian guy's supplements, forgot the name, the purple ones.
T5, btw, has VERY elegant pop star-simulation rules.

A lot of classes in most palladium books I've read focus on how you go about killing things. Does TMNT have a pop star class? or the roles for a pop band? The Front, the Rythm, The Melody? etc. How much of the core rulebooks for the systems you mentioned are required to play an alien teenager seeking fame through performing as a pop star? 50%? 80%? 30%? 2%? How much of the playsheet is devoted to the experiences and themes in the Teenage Alien Popstars genre?

There's a big difference between these thing being mentioned (or mentioned in supplemental material) to them being the focus of play.

Really? Try again!

Quote from: Phillip;731640No, as a matter of fact it does not. I don't see how to make that any more self-evident than it is, that there's nothing here erasing anything; nor is there any mandate for the paradox of all mutually contradictory possible statements being simultaneously true; or whatever else you may be insinuating.

Let's try that again, because I think my wording was imprecise in a way that allowed a ridiculous literal interpretation.

What I wrote, "Basically it turns everything you can imagine or say about the setting into an unwritten rule."

I think you took "anything you can say or imagine" to be unrestricted. I.e. the next sentence after that might as well be "I can say the sky is blue, and I can also say the sky is red, and both are rules."

Is that what you thought I was saying? If so I agree, it's nonsense.

Let me rewrite that one sentence, and then let's see if the post makes better sense: "Basically, it turns every truthful statement about the setting into an unwritten rule." (To put a really fine point on it, by "truthful statement" I mean "any statement that has the force of authority behind it", since there are a lot of things about a setting that are undefined until someone writes them down or at least thinks of them.)

Interesting stuff, Sett. Especially the NP-complete issue. Wonder about that, since of course coordinate systems are very precise yet linear. Any paper titles or links on that?

Quote from: Settembrini;731636LESSON: I said this in 2007 already: the verbalization of RPGing spatial situations without maps always is in severe danger of the 'collapse of the wave function', if you will - one-dimensional, linear and qualitative is the realm where language tries to force you to go.

Language is a massive problem in other ways. You can see it clearly in cases where someone is asked to describe a game session and winds up giving a narrative of the imaginative content of the session. Instead of "Pete said he was attacking the bear, failed his attack roll, but spent a hero point for a successful reroll, followed by 12 points of damage," we get "Slanaxx swung his mighty axe and clove the beast's skull." Even worse (for RPG theory) we get recollected thematic analyses of game sessions in place of actual accounts.

Maps, though, also have problems. One might like them or not, but the anti-miniatures people at least can argue that the character-perspective in a fight is rarely top-down. To really get the character-view impression, you'd need something like a FPS. (Incidentally, for a refereed double-blind operational wargame you'd ideally let the players have maps but you'd force them to update them themselves, based on written reports.)

Quote from: Arminius;731654Let's try that again, because I think my wording was imprecise in a way that allowed a ridiculous literal interpretation.

What I wrote, "Basically it turns everything you can imagine or say about the setting into an unwritten rule."

I think you took "anything you can say or imagine" to be unrestricted. I.e. the next sentence after that might as well be "I can say the sky is blue, and I can also say the sky is red, and both are rules."

Is that what you thought I was saying? If so I agree, it's nonsense.

Let me rewrite that one sentence, and then let's see if the post makes better sense: "Basically, it turns every truthful statement about the setting into an unwritten rule." (To put a really fine point on it, by "truthful statement" I mean "any statement that has the force of authority behind it", since there are a lot of things about a setting that are undefined until someone writes them down or at least thinks of them.)

Are you saying "When the players agree on something being true or untrue about their imaginary world, and it is not contradicted by the explicit rules of the game, then it can be used to determine outcomes or possibilities of actions"?

That's totally reasonable.

Example: If a game doesn't have rules for airships, but the players all agree their game's setting has airships, they can also agree on how the airships are implemented in their game. I'm down with that.

Everyone has their own threshold for when it's "too much effort" to add and subtract rules from a game in order to get it to play the way they want, or to get it to do something it wasn't designed to.

D&D is a great game for making and playing characters who into dangerous places, kill the things they find there, and take their stuff. It's pretty good at playing other themes in the fantasy genre, focusing on magic, action, and combat. It doesn't really lend itself to alien teenage popstars who want to be famous.

There are other games that, with the right group could be anywhere from OK to good for running the pop idol game. FATE could do it with some tweaking. I'm not convinced TMNT could do it easily as the focus of the game, since TMNT is an action-combat genre, and lots of the rules are about that.

A game specifically designed to play Alien Teenage Popstars seeking Fame doesn't need all that tweaking. It's going to present you with challenges and conflicts relevant to that theme, and it's going to give you appropriate tools to resolve those conflicts. But it's going to be terrible for going into dangerous places, killing things, and taking their stuff.

Quote from: Settembrini;731627A "lot of work" is needed only in adding/modifying the Gygaxian building blocks you need for the setting. Palladium's SDC worlds have 90% of what you'd need for Teenagers from outer space on a rock rampage, including detailed tables and generation systems for Aliens, their way of getting to earth, their motivation, homeworlds and galactic entanglements as well as abilities and weaknesses. In BTS you have, btw, social/internal psyche rules for puberty (courtesy of E. Wujik), just as another case in point.

D&D as a structure is perfectly fitted, as I said.

Now, please do not take it as an insult, but: Your wording indicates severe lack of exposure with SDC Pally or any D&D that is not dungeon crawling.
The line "equivalent of a dungeon crawl" is what makes me very suspicious...

What I was alluding to is the episodic teenage superhero group angle. Note that that, for me, would include Barbie's saturday morning adventures. And that would be a perfect fit in the close sense. Note how premises like teenage alien rock stars in cartoons or comic books would usually involve the band being a backdrop for regular non-dungeon adventures such as crime, mystery or "contrarian adventure" (for lack of better word; e.g. "the 'evil' other band/pony/tank high school tries to cheat at a contest/battle of bands etc.)

If you really want to simulate a pop/rock star career, I'll yield and say the following: You MUST leave D&D derivatives and go  to hex and counter Wargame derivatives such as RQ/Traveller. In that vein, Cyberpunk obviously has adequate fame and music rules, especially with the Canadian guy's supplements, forgot the name, the purple ones.
T5, btw, has VERY elegant pop star-simulation rules.

I like the phrase "Gygaxian building blocks"; what does it mean? Like, rules modules or something?

Okay, so I'm reading you as saying that, once you add the right rules (others might say maybe not even rules, just sort of structures of understanding at the meta-rule level), D&D and Palladium are basically the same thing, and because at heart they both share the episodic nature of Saturday morning cartoons, they'd be good for playing teenage rock stars from outer space.

I mean, you can neg me all you want about not playing Palladium games, which I will cop to, but isn't it possible that the episodic character of play is common to most role-playing games? And thus, the transformations necessary to turn D&D into TRSfOS-friendly Palladium games are enough to make it different enough from D&D that the claim, "I wouldn't want to use D&D to play teenage rock stars from outer space," is in fact a reasonable one, and not patently wrong on its face, as you insist?

Quote from: Arminius;731597In Harnmaster (or RQ 2 & 3), the payoff from the combat complexity vis a vis 1980's-era D&D isn't enjoyment of complexity and it's not entirely enjoyment of combat detail, but also the outputs of combat that lend texture and verisimilitude to the rest of the game. E.g., other payoffs include the dilemmas, narrative depth (if you will), and authenticity that come from having a PC who's got a crippled leg or an infection while the party is working to solve some other problem. You might achieve these with a simple system augmented by ad-hoc judgment but then you run into the problems that tend to arise when human judgment is substituted for physics rules or at least guidelines, namely situational bias and second-guessing.

I really like what you're pointing out here.  This is exactly what I love about running RQ2.  The stuff that would only ever emerge as a result of the system actually representing damage to specific locations to different degrees.  Or how disease can literally be caused or cured by spirits and dealing with the character's connections to various cults and guilds when one of their party gets infected by a disease spirit.  In D&D, they'd just have to hunt someone down who can cast "Cure disease" each and every day.  Thanks to the spirit combat system in RQ2, they need to find someone who is willing to risk contacting their own spirit with a foul disease spirit.

Yeah it was pretty depressing.

@Bill White:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=119636&postcount=84
http://jrients.blogspot.de/2010/09/gygaxian-building-blocks.html

@Cherusker:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370299000028

Irony is is that the linked paper was first judged by me to be ...let's say it politely...an exercise in proving-the-obvious-with-greek-letters wankery. But then, robots and tabletop RPGs seem to actually field situations were this crops up.

re maps: Sure they are problematic themselves as you rightly say, they shift perspective from immersion to survey knowledge. They are a crutch and surely one can play without them but be away of the qualitative nature and the impending "collapse of the spatial wave function". Nothing new ofc, but now I have fancier words to make the point.

Continuing a line of discussion from earlier with Adric...

Quote from: Adric;731140My preferences aside, what I'm saying is that  whatever experiences a game is designed to evoke, those experiences will  have the most robust rules.

Given the turn that the conversation  has taken, please elaborate on "robust".

QuoteDiplomacy sounds more like a board game where the players are  using their own wits to compete with each other, as opposed to playing  characters with their own personalities.

Diplomacy isn't an RPG, but each player takes the abstract, collective role of  the military-political leadership of their nation. A game that aimed at  greater simulation would break those roles out to represent distinct  areas of responsibility and interest groups. Something like that was  done with Republic of Rome, and also with Junta, but there you only have  a single country represented by the players. I'm not aware of any games  that try to do "the whole picture" of international politics combined  with domestic politics. Maybe the closest is Empires of the Middle Ages, where the players are cast somewhat more clearly as individual heads  of state who vie with each other, while also trying to manage mechanics  that represent domestic political concerns.

Still, as someone  mentioned, Diplomacy players slip into playing roles and personalities,  particularly when the game is played via correspondence.

QuoteHmm, I was more suggesting that both were viable approaches to  creating and relating to characters. I'd say I'm just an average person,  so how do I convincingly portray someone more intelligent or more  persuasive than I am if the system tells me to 'roleplay it  out'?

Mechanics can help here, of course. But there's a  cost if you're looking for a more immediate experience. I think Haffrung  said it upthread, and I'll say it in any case: while a lot of people  think of RPing as assuming a distinct person from yourself, there's also  the experience of "you are there". These can be competing values. On  the other hand, a social feedback loop sometimes works, where a player  is freed by the social construct of the game to act outside themselves,  and other players react to that in a way that reinforces the player's  self-perception. Your mileage definitely varies here, all I can say is  I've seen it. You don't necessarily get a smarter player, but you may  get a player who's more socially deft.

QuoteThe second sentence was more commentary that many characters in  games will do some pretty horrific things within the game. I hope that  the players of those sorts of sociopathic characters don't describe  their character as "Pretty much they're me but super strong / a wizard"  I'm being pretty facetious when I say that.

A character isn't  sociopathic just because it kills a monster or NPC. Still I agree that  there are people who aren't sociopaths in real life, who play their characters as sociopaths. In some games you might  be deliberately playing psychos, but your original comment was about "D&D  players out there who would be murderous sociopaths if they were  given enough power and freedom from negative consequence." I think you  can break this down into three causes. One is, as you say, freedom from  negative consequence. Another is a lack of empathy which is due to  seeing the game world as "just a game" or a "joke". The third is,  possibly, lack of consideration for the rest of the game group. All  three can potentially be addressed by means other than mechanics. For  example: in-game consequences (expectation of being pursued by the law,  losing social status, being shunned), then the virtuous cycle of  engagement with a world that seems "real", and finally not playing with  jerks.

QuoteI thin I see the point you're making about how talking about  taking a physical action, and talking about talking are different. And  so long as a player's capabilities lie alongside their character's in a  somewhat analogous fashion, it is easier to talk as your character and  roleplay it out.  

If your character is less competent than you, you could 'dumb down' your  roleplay to match their capabilities. When the character is more  competent, though, then mechanics can be used to bridge the gap,  whatever the disparity is. Whether it's an intellectual check, or some  social mechanism.

within all this, of course is players' preference for what level of  abstraction they enjoy. I'm definitely not stating that things 'must' be  done a certain way, just pointing out alternative methods that are also  viable.

"Must" martial conflict and social conflict be resolved using vastly  different rules and levels of complexity within one system?

No. There are benefits and costs (which vary across players and groups) to different approaches.

Quote from: Arminius;731718Continuing a line of discussion from earlier with Adric...

Given the turn that the conversation  has taken, please elaborate on "robust".

Diplomacy isn't an RPG, but each player takes the abstract, collective role of  the military-political leadership of their nation. A game that aimed at  greater simulation would break those roles out to represent distinct  areas of responsibility and interest groups. Something like that was  done with Republic of Rome, and also with Junta, but there you only have  a single country represented by the players. I'm not aware of any games  that try to do "the whole picture" of international politics combined  with domestic politics. Maybe the closest is Empires of the Middle Ages, where the players are cast somewhat more clearly as individual heads  of state who vie with each other, while also trying to manage mechanics  that represent domestic political concerns.

Still, as someone  mentioned, Diplomacy players slip into playing roles and personalities,  particularly when the game is played via correspondence.

I'll certainly try to give a clear definition of what I mean by robust. I certainly don't mean extensive or complex, though those terms don't have to be excluded.

ro·bust  [roh-buhst, roh-buhst]  Show IPA
adjective
1. strong and healthy; hardy; vigorous: a robust young man; a robust faith; a robust mind.
2. strongly or stoutly built: his robust frame.
3. suited to or requiring bodily strength or endurance: robust exercise.
4. rough, rude, or boisterous: robust drinkers and dancers.
5. rich and full-bodied: the robust flavor of freshly brewed coffee.

1 and 2 fit the definition I'm looking for most aptly. Robust rules that stand up well to the test of play, don't contradict the types of experiences they're meant to evoke, are easily understood and used to achieve the experience that is sought. Instead of just not getting in the way of play, the rules step in and help, guide, or direct play towards certain experiences.

3 and 4 don't really apply unless you start getting metaphorical with the interpretation. A big tough loud rpg that comes into your house, sings annoying songs, knocks over your furniture, and barfs in your kitchen sink?

5 sort of applies? It's the idea that the rules not only evoke an experience, but are mechanically satisfying to engage with.

A more generic system may not need these focused style of rules as much, since it's leaving it up to the players to define their experience more, adding or subtracting rules to get where they want. FATE and GURPS are two examples that spring to mind where you bolt extra systems or definitions onto the core to modify your experience. They have more generic themes, and thus more generic rules. (I'm not implying generic is bad here, just another design choice)

I don't really disagree with the rest of your post, or have anything insightful to say about it. The Roleplaying aspect that you described emerging from diplomacy play almost feels like a second game played on top of diplomacy, a set of implied personal or house rules as it were. It's quite a charming notion to think of players assuming the identity of a nation's leader, corresponding via letters with other world leaders about the war and their intentions.