Spike, swap enforce by facilitate there. How about that?

Quote from: SpikeFundamentally, however, that is all RPGs are: Action Resolution Rules. The Pundit, years ago, had a post about why social mechanics are a late, and ill conceived, addition to RPGs, since we can easily do 'social stuff' in person. The dice and rules are there to allow us to do things in game that we can't do sitting around a table, and often would be ill advised to try in real life anways (like... sword fights. You go through a lot of friends trying to sword fight in real life, and that's if you are good at hiding the bodies/swinging teh steel yourself!).

I don't subscribe to this line of thought. Runequest is one of the most interesting games for me not for it's resolution rules, but because it's resolution rules are part of a whole that shots at anthropological verossimilitude, an overarching theme that informs every molecule of the game. Same goes for Pendragon. And Apocalypse World. And Unknown Armies, etc. The better designed games, in my small opinion, are those with a strong central vision that informs every decision that goes into it. And "action-resolution" is just a small part of this. YMMV, of course.

Eg: Amber sets up it's direction of intra-party conflict through a very elegant char creation phase. That's an example of mechanic that's powerful, yet don't touch "action resolution". So, should we discard these kind of mechanics in RP games? Don't they have a place?

I have no problems with rules that, as you say, Facilitate play styles.
 
Maybe I'm a bit of a pedant, but I prefer a precision in language, so to me there is a very real difference between rules that enforce and rules that facilitate.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about Runequest. I've used the Runequest rules to run long campaigns in my own setting, and I like them because they are both mathematically simple enough and match up, at least in part, with how observable reality works... at least better than, say, D&D's demi-god levelling and infinite Hit Point Inflation.  I could care less about anthropological versimilitude, unless you're trying to mean 'it tries to create a realistic model of stabbing people in the face', which... it does.

In Amber the rules do not force intra-party conflict in any way. The character creation model may serve to facilitate (as you say) that sort of play, but if the players chose to work together the game doesn't fall apart or run into an intractable wall of 'needs player conflict to work'.... in fact it can work just fine. And that's my point: You don't lose potential players for Amber just because they don't want to fight their own party all the time.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;985037But then one of the players cracks a joke to dispel the tension.

This, exactly.

Quote from: Dumarest;985062Three demerits for failing to recommend Classic Traveller when presented with the opportunity.

Classic Traveller requires you to look into High Guard, external tanks, low berths, or some obscure White Dwarf articles to do it. Megatraveller would be slow with only low berths. TNE or T4 has got the equipment (including Bussard Ramjets and Daedelus) but requires a Fire, Fusion, and Steel approach. GURPS Traveller requires the use of GURPS Space or GURPS Vehicles for the required drives. Traveller 5 has NAFAL (Not As Fast As Light) drives. Traveller20 and Mongoose Traveller 1e can do it with just the Core Rulebook. Mongoose Traveller 2e is as fucked up as a soup sandwich.

"There are nine-and-twenty ways of making tribal lays, and every one of them is right!" - Rudyard Kipling

Quote from: Itachi;985066That's exactly the kind of premise I'm talking about. But how to create a game that natively goes for it by default? Aka each time the group sits down to play, the game rules/framework/instructions enforce exactly that?

I just told you how.

Quote from: jeff37923;985096Classic Traveller requires you to look into High Guard, external tanks, low berths, or some obscure White Dwarf articles to do it. Megatraveller would be slow with only low berths. TNE or T4 has got the equipment (including Bussard Ramjets and Daedelus) but requires a Fire, Fusion, and Steel approach. GURPS Traveller requires the use of GURPS Space or GURPS Vehicles for the required drives. Traveller 5 has NAFAL (Not As Fast As Light) drives. Traveller20 and Mongoose Traveller 1e can do it with just the Core Rulebook. Mongoose Traveller 2e is as fucked up as a soup sandwich.

"There are nine-and-twenty ways of making tribal lays, and every one of them is right!" - Rudyard Kipling

Bah, supplemental books are for the weak!

Quote from: Dumarest;985101Bah, supplemental books are for the weak!

Blasphemer!

Quote from: Spike;984854Actually I do find it fascinating how many Sci-Fi settings are built around the assumption that there is no frontier out there.   Find some new, unexplored planet in Traveller? Its got a sentient human population (or alien, but mostly human) that's been there for eons.  Fading Suns?  Good luck finding jumpkeys that lead outside of explored space. Star Wars? Man: The Republic/Empire IS the Galaxy.  Star Trek? See Traveller, except its Always Aliens... or really human aliens.


Man! Say it with me.

Space.
Is.
BIG.


And poltical instability, conflicts between states and all that jazz should be a regular feature of a good sci-fi setting, not the omnipresent 'Federation/Imperium/grand-poobahs' that we so constantly get.

I agree strongly with this. When I started my SF game (in sig) I tried to ensure there was a frontier, multiple factions, inter-state conflict etc. A lot of SF settings go out of their way to create situations lacking conflict, which seems unrealistic as well as bad for gaming.

Re exploration of deeper themes, I think this depends a lot on the GM. I'm not great at it in tabletop, though I touch on some deeper themes in some of my online games (text-chat or PBEM/PBP gives more time to think and lessens embarrassment factor), but I have played with at least one GM who could do it very well. IME players take their cue from the GM, they rarely try to undermine what the GM is going for. But IME in tabletop play myself and most GMs tend towards a lowest common denominator approach of light adventure.

Quote from: David Johansen;984984Of course, one might make the alternative argument that the presence of a sanity or humanity or morality mechanism actually prevents the discussion of the social impact of technology on humanity by defining it rigidly and making a proclamation rather than allowing the players to interact with the technology and come to their own conclusions.

Yes, that's my feeling. Game mechanics tend to actively get in the way of deeper themes and create a sort of cargo-cult emulation of the fiction they're intended to replicate.

If I want a literary-type examination of deeper themes, a text-based medium and ultra-light system are generally best IME. Although my Midnight GM did a pretty good job with d20 - better than when she got hooked by The Forge and went all Narrativist.

Quote from: Itachi;984879By this logic we could discard role-playing games altogether. In other words you agree with my original supposition that RPGs are only useful to facilitate stories involving action/adventure and nothing else. If that's the case, fine.

Is that really the case, though?

No, I do not agree that RPGs are only useful to facilitate stories involving action/adventure and nothing else. Quite the contrary.

Most RPG mechanics focus on action because that is the part of the game that most requires game mechanics to resolve. I can, and have, run four hour plus game sessions in which not a single die was rolled. No dice were required because the players were role playing, talking to each other in character, talking to NPCs, etc. I don't need mechanics for social interaction. I have live humans sitting at my table for that.

You also seem to miss that movies, novels, and RPGs are different media and work in different ways. Take the "Council of Elrond" scene in Lord of the Rings. As written it is a long piece of exposition delivered mostly by a single character in an extended monologue. In his movie Peter Jackson instead chose to show us the events being described by Elrond. He also chose to put many of them in a prologue scene at the begining of the movie. In an RPG the scene would be a GM reading a wall of text to his players until their eyes glazed over.  Further RPGs do not have plots that must be followed by the characters. In RPGs all outcomes are uncertain until the GM decides or the dice are rolled.

Certain types of "stories" are better told in media other than RPGs. In fact RPGs are not a great medium for telling stories. They better at creating interactive, shared, freeform experiences. The stories are what happens after when the group talks about what happened.

Quote from: jeff37923;985096Classic Traveller requires you to look into High Guard, external tanks, low berths, or some obscure White Dwarf articles to do it. Megatraveller would be slow with only low berths. TNE or T4 has got the equipment (including Bussard Ramjets and Daedelus) but requires a Fire, Fusion, and Steel approach. GURPS Traveller requires the use of GURPS Space or GURPS Vehicles for the required drives. Traveller 5 has NAFAL (Not As Fast As Light) drives. Traveller20 and Mongoose Traveller 1e can do it with just the Core Rulebook. Mongoose Traveller 2e is as fucked up as a soup sandwich.

"There are nine-and-twenty ways of making tribal lays, and every one of them is right!" - Rudyard Kipling

Reality pretty much requires you to look into extrenal tanks, low berths, etc. Classic Traveller Book 2 Starships lets you do it. STL intersteller travel is not really a likely thing. Space is just too bi and human lives are too short.

Im sorry OP. It is not the SF RPGs that suck. It is you.

Quote from: DavetheLost;985181You also seem to miss that movies, novels, and RPGs are different media and work in different ways...

Certain types of "stories" are better told in media other than RPGs. In fact RPGs are not a great medium for telling stories. They better at creating interactive, shared, freeform experiences. The stories are what happens after when the group talks about what happened.

I'm not ignoring this fact, this was my question in the very first post:

Quote from: ItachiAre there genres the tabletop medium can't really do? If so, should we accept this fact and move on, or is worth trying to find a way to do it?

See?

Quote from: Spike;984854Everyone here is a booger eating moron.





Actually I do find it fascinating how many Sci-Fi settings are built around the assumption that there is no frontier out there.   Find some new, unexplored planet in Traveller? Its got a sentient human population (or alien, but mostly human) that's been there for eons.  Fading Suns?  Good luck finding jumpkeys that lead outside of explored space. Star Wars? Man: The Republic/Empire IS the Galaxy.  Star Trek? See Traveller, except its Always Aliens... or really human aliens.


Man! Say it with me.

Space.
Is.
BIG.


And poltical instability, conflicts between states and all that jazz should be a regular feature of a good sci-fi setting, not the omnipresent 'Federation/Imperium/grand-poobahs' that we so constantly get.

I'm sorry your Traveller ref lacks the imagination to do more than what you've described. Is this his original setting or is he using a published setting? Sounds like you aren't enjoying it either way.

Quote from: Dumarest;985252I'm sorry your Traveller ref lacks the imagination to do more than what you've described. Is this his original setting or is he using a published setting? Sounds like you aren't enjoying it either way.

To be fair, many people conflate the Traveller rules with GDW's official setting.

There's good reason people do this, of course. But people like Dumarest and myself see the value in the basic rules and leaving the setting material sitting by the doorstop.

I'll add that the implied setting details found in the 1977 edition of Traveller Books 1, 2, and 3 create a very rough and tumble setting full of instability. You really can't make The Third Imperium from the original Traveller rules.