Quote from: CRKrueger;973124Directly affecting them, yes, including things over which they really should not have complete mechanical control over because the character does not, which is why PvP kind of falls flat in these systems.  The asymmetric nature of gameplay reinforces the notion of a 4th wall awareness that these are the protagonists, again which is exactly WHY you see this being used more and more in games with a more story/narrative element.

I love it how System Matters, except when someone doesn't like it, then they're fooling themselves and every other sort of wrong that can be dreamed up.

Hey, man, I think it's fine if you don't like it. Can't say I have the same "feel" about it, but I can see why others would, and can understand why you'd wanna play something else. I'm not sure whether Black Hack would enforce the storygaming aspect or not, since it doesn't have the same codified, narrative elements, but I suppose it could. I have no reason to assume how it plays. Yet.

Quote from: CRKrueger;973111Yeah but the Kobold never actually critically hits you.  You critically fail to dodge.  So it's not "Remember that time that crazy Kobold went Duelist on you?" it's "Remember when you let that Kobold almost take off your hand?

Now sure, you can narrate any dice result any way you want and as I've said multiple times, the math is the same.  However the strict separation of GM=Narrate, Player=Play the game feels effectively different, even though it isn't really.  I'm not even talking as a GM not being able to roll dice, I'm talking as a player rolling dice for everything.  It doesn't seem like for IC roleplaying I should be the one to always "roll to find out what happens".  Actions of others I do not want to be rolling for, even partially.

Right. So it's a preference thing, sure. I get that it feels counterintuitive because it's upside down. I can't vouch for how it is to flip it in the BH, because Attack/Defense is separate. It was easy in DW, because it was one dice roll, one result, one adjudication. This other thing may be different, but there ARE roll under systems, right? How are those narrated?(CoC?)

QuoteI never said Black Hack was a narrative system, I was saying that's where you commonly see the player-facing mechanic these days, so it's not like there wasn't a link back to the days of "brain damage".  That's what sets off Pundit's Swine Detector.

I understand you didn't mention BH. I was just trying to stay on subject, with regards to the effects of player facing and BH maybe not fitting the same mold you discussed.

As for Pundit, I may understand why his detector went off, but it's clear it needs an adjustment in this case (or maybe, in all cases, because that just seemed like paranoia.

QuoteTo me, Black Hack just seems like someone New Schooled the Fuck out of OD&D.  I don't have an opinion on the author's design ethos or ideology.

Well, roll under ability checks isn't new school. But I guess player facing qualifies. I guess the equipment usage mechanic might.  The rest looks pretty traditional, honestly (I don't like the fighter special ability, though). Anyway, I don't think his intention is anything other than speed and flexibility. If there's an ethos beyond that, I don't know what it is. And I can't say much else, because I haven't bothered to run it. Seeing as how I'm going to be living in the RPG desert soon (so it appears), I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that. Might suck, for all I know.

Quote from: cranebump;973147Well, roll under ability checks isn't new school. But I guess player facing qualifies. I guess the equipment usage mechanic might.  The rest looks pretty traditional, honestly (I don't like the fighter special ability, though). Anyway, I don't think his intention is anything other than speed and flexibility. If there's an ethos beyond that, I don't know what it is. And I can't say much else, because I haven't bothered to run it. Seeing as how I'm going to be living in the RPG desert soon (so it appears), I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that. Might suck, for all I know.

Holy crap, this thread exploded...

Several comments in no particular order:

1. "Player facing rolls" have always been in RPGs, going by different names: simple tasks, unopposed checks, or saving throws. I would bet my RPG collection that 90% of RPG systems have a "Player rolls Vs. Static number" someplace... So I don't get what's so "new" about them.

2. So, someone said... "hey, you know how easy and quick it is for me to adjudicate a TN and have the Player roll, why can't I do that with combat and opposed rolls... I mean, attack rolls in D&D are already player-facing"

3. I have never in my life narrated a missed roll as the PC being a mumbling imbecile; for me and my players, an outcome doesn't depend on who rolls the dice, but rather how it is described.

4. For me Black Hack solves one of my major quips with D100 engines... you have on your character sheet a perfectly simple percentage chance, and then the game fucks it up by using opposed rolls (which involves conditional probabilities, so a 50% fighter attacking a 50% kobold has a 25% chance -give or take depending on system nuances- of actually hitting... blegh).  

5. Yes, it makes the game more predictable; if you like surprises and unexpected outcomes, it's BORING, because the system is more stable.

6. Some people like everyone rolling dices (Cortex, GURPS) others like one side rolling more dice than the other (GUMSHOE) others like player making all the dice rolls (PBtA, Cypher) and some people don't like dices at all (Amber), it's awesome that we have games that appeal to the whole spectrum.

7. And I will say it again, technology is not ideological by itself, the use we give it and how we interpret it, is.

Quote from: CRKrueger;973122No, actually I'm telling you what it feels like to me having played games where the player rolls for everything.

Not liking the players rolling for attacks against them is fine. It's not like I always them myself, but they can be handy from time to time. Just don't pretend you were merely expressing some personal preference when you are using arguments like this:

QuoteWell, to be fair, the games that produced all player-facing rolls didn't come out of a design philosophy dedicated to making GM's lives easier. That's why YOU like it. These games came out of the Forge/Indie philosophy, which as we talked about in another thread, was a backlash against the metaplot and GM Story Railroads of the 90s. The whole point was giving players more power through OOC mechanics, and in many cases actually limiting GM power.

You were making the argument that it doesn't matter that it works for people. It is ideologically tainted because your nebulous enemies have used it in the past. That's just sad.

Quote from: CRKrueger;973079Well, to be fair, the games that produced all player-facing rolls didn't come out of a design philosophy dedicated to making GM's lives easier.  That's why YOU like it.  These games came out of the Forge/Indie philosophy, which as we talked about in another thread, was a backlash against the metaplot and GM Story Railroads of the 90s.  The whole point was giving players more power through OOC mechanics, and in many cases actually limiting GM power.

QuoteGenerally, in published D&D, the rules mostly work the same for everyone.

You have to qualify this with "mostly" because the only time D&D had monsters and PCs work the same was in 3.5/Pathfinder, and that was fucking terrible. One of D&D's greatest strengths is that there are all kinds of PC-related mechanics that don't crossover to NPCs in order to make the game more manageable to run. Having players roll for defense is entirely in line with many decisions in D&D's basic design.

If I thought it was ideologically tainted, I would have said so instead of saying I dunno what the Black Hack guy's ideology is, but he's probably not concerned about that, and a lot of people use it specifically for speed so more power to them.  You're arguing against things I literally said the opposite of.  Crane and others were wondering what was setting Pundit's Swine-sense tingling, so I explained.  It's not a coincidence what kind of games deploy player-facing rolls, although in this case it may certainly be completely disconnected from any "story" concerns and simply be to cut and minimize as much as possible.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;973458But I'm not following the logic here. In fact, if we accept your initial assertion, it seems almost certain that the exact opposite is true here: If the mechanic is constantly making the player think in terms of their character's experience (so that they think of how they reacted to the orc's attack as opposed to visualizing themselves doing nothing while the orc attacked them), that would seem to encourage an IC POV, not an OOC one.

It's the asymmetry that kills it for me.  Every time I attack, I roll.  I could roll great, or I could suck, but the action comes from the attacker.  When it shifts only for players, then it's not based on the type of action, it's based on who does it.  You can narrate either way however you want, certainly (and I think that's kinda the point) but the monster never rolls that 20, there is no memorable monster action, ever, unless you specifically narrate to translate and repurpose character failure into monster success.

We're not focusing on me because I'm the attacker, we're focusing on me because I am playing a PC, not an NPC.
We're not focusing on me because I'm the defender, we're focusing on me because I am playing a PC, not an NPC.
At that point, the 4th wall awareness starts creeping in.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;973458Sure. But I'm not really clear why you feel that thrusting or swinging your sword at the orc is inherently something you do but attempting to parry or dodge the orc's blow is not.

Because in D&D at least, the "action needing a die roll" part is attacking and the "abstracted" part is defending.  Now some versions do have some defense options, but still the system is set up for the attacker to be the determinative actor in the process as far as die rolling goes, even though the process represents an abstracted combat round.  It could be the other way around, with rolling for defense, but again, it's the asymmetry that's the real issue.

Quote from: Ronin;972673If a GM rolls dice straight up no fudging. What the difference between the GM rolling it or the player? Isn't the same thing being accomplished?

Secondly if removing dice from the GM somehow removes their empowerment. What happens to a game that removes dice from both sides altogether?

You get a Storygame based system which works out to effectively be a cooperative Mother-May-I.  Like the fan favourite, Amber.

Quote from: cranebump;972701Until you actually run a system where you don't roll as a GM, I humbly suggest you STFU about whether it disempowers you or not. Seeing as how I have, and you haven't, your qualifications to make actual relevant comments on that subject are nil.

Yes, because having never had a colonoscopy, obviously you can't have any context to imagine if it will be an unpleasant experience or not.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;972741Apparently it was still a little too subtle for the guy who designs diceless game and then rants about how imaginary "swine" are trying to take his dice away with no sense of self-awareness whatsoever.

No, it's just a moronic argument.

Amber and its derivatives have no dice-rolling, but they give a much higher amount of power to the GM than D&D.

The motivation is completely different than the Storygames-derived initiative to remove the power of GMs to control their game and force them to follow the structure mandated by the game designer.  It's precisely the opposite, in fact.

Quote from: CRKrueger;973079Well, to be fair, the games that produced all player-facing rolls didn't come out of a design philosophy dedicated to making GM's lives easier.  That's why YOU like it.  These games came out of the Forge/Indie philosophy, which as we talked about in another thread, was a backlash against the metaplot and GM Story Railroads of the 90s.  The whole point was giving players more power through OOC mechanics, and in many cases actually limiting GM power.

To people who never ran GM Story Railroads, and know how to GM, these mechanical corrections weren't and aren't needed as our players never lacked freedom to control their character AS their character.

At this point I see player-facing rolls as a fad.  Of course games that have narrative aspects to them are jumping on the bandwagon, and I'm sure a couple of them are doing it partly for ideology.  I kind of doubt most are though.

Most systems I play at this point are opposed rolls, so there's no point to player-facing.  Going back to D&D I doubt I'd adopt player-facing, for one thing, you always run into the PvP issue, which never feels quite right, although it would be easier in Black Hack than Xworld.

I would argue that with no GM rolls, the feel of the game is different.  When the GM rolls, the Orc misses.  Sure you can describe it as you dodged or parried, or the Orc slipped or whatever, but what happened was the Orc missed.  When you shift that to player-facing, everything is contingent upon the players rolls.  It plays not as much like a RPG, but more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where the entries were "The Orc attacks, roll to defend.  If you roll a X you succeed."   It puts the GM in the role of storyteller and the players in the role of determining everything that happens.

Mathematically, the Orc rolling a Critical Hit on a 20 and you rolling a Critical Failure on a 1 are the same, but the feel of the cause and effect is different.  There's no sense of anything being out of the player's control, as anything bad that happens to them is by their own roll.  Since that's not how the reality of our world or any simulated world works, then the very nature of it is dissonant.  It's technically not an OOC mechanic, but it kinda feels like it.

It totally speeds up some people's games to great effect though, so more power to them.

Precisely right.

Quote from: cranebump;973088That said, if the rolls are in the open, it doesn't matter who rolls the dice, which has been my point (and others') all along in this back and forth. Yeah, it. An "feel" like you're not affecting your group by not rolling. But, in determining the world details, plus how monsters attack, when, whom, and so on, you're still directing the flow of the game as you always do. It's just a question of whether you feel like you should be rolling, or, for some GM's (possibly) the sadistic delight of hacking up PCs "yourself."

Every sentence in this paragraph betrays a different facet of your massive fucking ignorance about the role of the GM in an RPG.

Quote from: RPGPundit;974063Every sentence in this paragraph betrays a different facet of your massive fucking ignorance about the role of the GM in an RPG.

And every post you make betrays your massive fucking ignorance of basic, human nature, you overbearing, hermetic, scared-shitless-of-real-people, piece of shit, right-wing, fascist, it's-not-Asperberger's-I'm-really-this-fucked-in-the-head, asshole. PROVE that one thing I wrote isn't part of what aGM does (in a real game with real people, not Pundit-land, where we eat tiny, wedge-shaped, shit sandwiches and dote on our own outsized ego over our rather minor accomplishments in frogland).

PROVE something. You chime in on CK's post as an exemplar of your argument. That post was about "feel." Didn't objectively prove anything, but at least it offered an actual rationale. But doesn't address anything other than player-facing "feels wrong." That's an acceptable rationale, albeit, still a subjective one. At least he offered an actual point.

As for you...

PROVE something, jackass. You want to discuss the subject, discuss it.  But, again, quit assuming you're the expert on anything. You're not. You're a self-anointed blowhard, expounding on a niche hobby, and doing so in consistently narrow terms. You bitch about the OSR Taliban? Look in the mirror, fuckwit. Just because you name yourself "Pundit" doesn't mean you are one (unless "Pundit" means "delusional jackass" in Uruguay).

Quote from: RPGPundit;974061No, it's just a moronic argument.

Amber and its derivatives have no dice-rolling, but they give a much higher amount of power to the GM than D&D.

The motivation is completely different than the Storygames-derived initiative to remove the power of GMs to control their game and force them to follow the structure mandated by the game designer.  It's precisely the opposite, in fact.

Oh, good god, dumbass--when you play your fucking DCC game, you're also following "the structure mandated by the game designer." It's merely a different structure. But, because it makes you feel better about yourself, you assume it's the "correct" structure. Your massive, fear-based need for control is showing again, jackass. Admit the subjectivity of your bullshit claims and move on. It's what real people do.

P.S. Black Hack isn't a story game, by the way. Remember that? The subject of the thread, that you conflated with the rest of your scary phantoms?

Quote from: RPGPundit;974059Yes, because having never had a colonoscopy, obviously you can't have any context to imagine if it will be an unpleasant experience or not.

Your imagination means less than flea shit, compared to the actual experience. But that's okay--tell us how your imagination on the beaches of Normandy is the same thing as dude who was there. I'll bet it's EXACTLY the same.:-/

P.S. You should get a colonoscopy, by the way. They could go through your mouth.