Quote from: vytzka;606442I'll get back to you on that.

No worries; more idle curiosity on my part more than anything.

You know, I'm starting to believe the crazy is not an act.

Quote from: Benoist;606175Believe it or not, I was actually asking out of interest, to see whether it'd be worth my time to have a look at TBZ.

Well why didn't you say so in the first place? I could have told you this isn't the game for you and saved you the time

Quote from: Benoist;606232WTF? What?! Your character can't die unless you decide it as a player?

No. Your character can't die unless you decide to risk it explicitly. Huge difference there both in terms of meaning and psychology.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606362I contributed the initiative order to Doctor Who.

Really? I had no idea.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606362You might be able to dodge with story-points, but if you are out of them or fail your dodge, you're dead.

Fixed your spelling.

Also, you can try to dodge if you have them.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606362I would have no problem with a mechanical system that really WAS emulative

You mean like how in DWAiTaS I can just say: "nuh uh! I CHOOSE to go first by talking, and you have no choice but to hear me out"? No way the character knows that is the case. It's entirely a product of the player's POV.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606396In Doctor Who, people who do the talking go first. After they're done talking, if a Dalek shoots them, they die.

So what? I still got the Dalek to listen to me, and if the new Who is anything to go by I can use that to hold the Daleks at bay with a tart. The initiative system is a conceit that the characters are not and CANNOT be aware of, but which still serves to support emulation of the show.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606399But seriously, your argument is meaningless, because if we're emulating PROTAGONISTS OF A STORY, that's not a genre. That's just a literary technique.

This is too far into Crazytown for my Passport. You need to explain what emulating protagonists in a story IS.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606399By your logic, because Drrzt doesn't die in the Salvatore novels, no D&D character should ever die either; and because Captain Kirk doesn't die from a random klingon disruptor blast, no character should ever die that way in any sci-fi game.

Well actually, the RPGs for both lines do a horrific job of emulating their respective novels. I'd even go so far as to say that the novels here outright misrepresent the games they're based on or off.

So that logic is sound, if intended.

Quote from: Zachary The First;606435I've found that without the specter and potential for death, there's really no true heroism, because the ultimate risk is not on the table. I want every battle to have the potential to be lethal.

And yet all the evidence generated by innumerable psychological studies and every single game I have run have shown this to be entirely FALSE. In fact, people will take greater and more meaningful risks more often if they (feel they) have a CHOICE to. When faced with unknown risks with high stakes, people tend to do nothing.

And unless every situation is potentially lethal, the players are STILL making a CHOICE to risk death in a traditional RPG doing it inside the fiction rather than outside. So if a thief decides to try and disarm a trap, they are risking death. And usually the only CHOICE presented to the player is to either attempt to disarm the trap, or not, because everything else will be decided by a random roll.

But it's not like playing with the constant specter of death is the wrong way to play, so long as the players accept that and CHOOSE to play that way. And you can do exactly the same thing in TBZ by just CHOOSING to risk your live in every combat. And while it IS fun playing survivalist style, it's a different kinda high than playing heroic style.

But if every situation IS potentially lethal, and every action can result in death, then you're probably playing Paranoia, which is totally a Storygame despite its traditional roots

Quote from: Zachary The First;606435This is speaking just for myself, but I've always had a problem with games that allow the character the choice of not dying, or "character immunity". I've found that without the specter and potential for death, there's really no true heroism, because the ultimate risk is not on the table. I want every battle to have the potential to be lethal.

If I wade into battle and know that the worst that happens is that I'm knocked out, because this isn't a "meaningful" fight, that takes a lot of the drama away from me. It feels like killing time until I get to some greater goal. I want there to be a possibility of death any time I'm doing something dangerous, whether it's fighting a thug in a tavern or going up against the Despot of the Galaxy. I understand there's this idea of genre or literary emulation, but if that's the case, I suppose it's not something I'm particularly interested in emulating, however you define it.

In my games, heroes can die on the 4th level of a forgotten cavern in a puddle of slime, unmourned and undiscovered, or they claw, scrap, and barely survive their way to 20th level and glory. Or, they might get hit with a particularly lethal arrow trap their first morning out of the village and that's it. I want chance, I want folly, and I want the ever-present threat of death. Otherwise, what follows feels like a cosmic application of the NFL's red jersey for that character, until we get to something that is "really important".

That's ok, though; I'm not really the target audience for this game. The conversation, such as it is, just sort of steered towards this topic.

I respect that position and where you're coming from.  What I think is interesting is that TBZ making the decision to stake a PC's life on a conflict does not protect the characters from every negative decision -- you can still be taken out of action in a fight, still be beaten, still be captured, etc.  It just insures that the loss of a character is something that the player explicitly signs up for in that conflict, and it incentivizes it.

That means that if I'm facing an army of mook ninjas and I want to show off how badass my Buddhist Palm kung fu is, I can wade in there and kick ass, and I know that I won't lose my character for just trying to be cool -- I may be captured, knocked out, and then imprisoned or what have you, but I'm not going to lose my character unless I explicitly make that decision to.

Which again mirrors the way people have been using "action dice" for a while.  They're insurance against chance.  Some people don't dig that and that's fine -- seriously, there are certain games where I don't want "chance insurance" either, like CoC -- but I find this to be an elegant evolution of the mechanic.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606471That means that if I'm facing an army of mook ninjas and I want to show off how badass my Buddhist Palm kung fu is, I can wade in there and kick ass, and I know that I won't lose my character for just trying to be cool

What's the point?

Rolling dice knowing all you're doing is showing off how your 'kewl powerz' work?

That's grinding with all the tedium that entails, with little of the consequence and from what i can tell, none of the pay-off.

I don't understand how that gives you the thrill of the break-kneck escape, the grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat that actual risk gives you.

Why on earth would i waste my time rolling dice fighting mooks with the risk taken out? It's like boxing where the fighters aren't allowed to punch each other.

Quote from: One Horse Town;606475What's the point?

Rolling dice knowing all you're doing is showing off how your 'kewl powerz' work?

That's grinding with all the tedium that entails, with little of the consequence and from what i can tell, none of the pay-off.

I don't understand how that gives you the thrill of the break-kneck escape, the grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat that actual risk gives you.

Why on earth would i waste my time rolling dice fighting mooks with the risk taken out? It's like boxing where the fighters aren't allowed to punch each other.

That you don't die doesn't mean that you cannot be defeated. If your vitality drops to zero you are K.O. Your enemies can now advance with their plot unopposed (the sword is stolen, the princess kidnapped) growing stronger for the final scene.

Quote from: One Horse Town;606475What's the point?

Rolling dice knowing all you're doing is showing off how your 'kewl powerz' work?

That's grinding with all the tedium that entails, with little of the consequence and from what i can tell, none of the pay-off.

I don't understand how that gives you the thrill of the break-kneck escape, the grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat that actual risk gives you.

Why on earth would i waste my time rolling dice fighting mooks with the risk taken out? It's like boxing where the fighters aren't allowed to punch each other.

Maybe you wouldn't.  For me, there are plenty of scenes in movies or books that I want to emulate in a game, setpieces where the character shows off how badass he is and risks negative outcomes without bringing the whole narrative to a halt (i.e., death.)  The opening scene to the movie Blade is a textbook example of this kind of scene -- Blade shows up and is a badass.  Blade may experience a negative outcome, he might get captured or get a silver stake in his shoulder, he might get chased by the cops, but we're in the opening scene of the movie, so the audience knows Blade isn't going to die.

In an RPG without "bad luck insurance," and I'm playing the dhampir vampire-slayer, I don't have that guarantee.  It's hard to replicate that self-assured ass-kicking without some kind of leeway in the rules, whether it be mook rules or bad luck insurance or what have you.  

As a matter of fact, each Blade film has such a setpiece scene, which is a common enough cliche in action movies, where Blade "powers up" via a draught of blood and then proceeds to wade through a horde of vampires to show off how badass he is.  So in the first film, when Karen feeds him her blood, Blade then cuts through the army of security guards and Quinn fairly handily, and this is narratively okay because we know the real fight is against Deacon Frost and La Magra.  In the second movie, Blade's body gets dumped in the blood bath and he rises up to blow the shit out of a dozen guards and fight Reinhardt, who he kills pretty handily.  Then he goes on to fight the real antagonist/anti-hero, Nomack.  Why is that okay?  Because a) it confirms how badass Blade is, and b) the dramatic tension is in the fight against Nomack.

TBZ models that kind of scene framework and those action cliches -- Blade's player did not stake his life by using up his mortal wound level on those earlier conflicts, so while he can be hurt, he can suffer a negative outcome, he can't die.  On the other hand, against Frost or Nomack, he's staking his life on the outcome, he's getting that dice bonus, because it's dramatically appropriate.

(A similar scene is Riggs escaping from Endo in the first Lethal Weapon movie.  Or Leon versus the cops at the conclusion of Leon: The Professional.  If those were RPG scenes, the players would be signalling that they want to fight Mr. Joshua on the lawn and not die in the shootout at the nightclub, that they want to have a face-off with Standsfield, and that they're willing to die then, but not during these earlier setpieces.)

It's the action genre.  TBZ replicates that aspect of it the same way that Spycraft 2.0 has some incredible rules for the face-off between gun-toting badasses.  You may not like a game that emulates that; you may not want to play or run a game like that; all of that's fine.  I disagree, but I think most of these issues are over preference anyway.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;606463And yet all the evidence generated by innumerable psychological studies and every single game I have run have shown this to be entirely FALSE. In fact, people will take greater and more meaningful risks more often if they (feel they) have a CHOICE to. When faced with unknown risks with high stakes, people tend to do nothing.

And unless every situation is potentially lethal, the players are STILL making a CHOICE to risk death in a traditional RPG doing it inside the fiction rather than outside. So if a thief decides to try and disarm a trap, they are risking death. And usually the only CHOICE presented to the player is to either attempt to disarm the trap, or not, because everything else will be decided by a random roll.

But it's not like playing with the constant specter of death is the wrong way to play, so long as the players accept that and CHOOSE to play that way. And you can do exactly the same thing in TBZ by just CHOOSING to risk your live in every combat. And while it IS fun playing survivalist style, it's a different kinda high than playing heroic style.

But if every situation IS potentially lethal, and every action can result in death, then you're probably playing Paranoia, which is totally a Storygame despite its traditional roots

Well, again, I do think it's just a playstyle decision, albeit one I'm not particularly interested in. I like the unknown and the constant idea that any threat or encounter could be their last. I'm perfectly willing to accept that some people probably love it; I just don't believe I'm one of them.

As to the idea of there always being choice, I can't gainsay what your experiences have been at your gaming table, and I won't try. But I when I talk about every encounter being perilous, or at least have some small chance of being so, I’m not meaning every time they go to the bathroom or eat a leg of mutton. I mean every time they engage in a battle, or dungeon/cave/ruins exploration, there’s a hint that some inglorious needle trap/pit/random orc could do them in. I don’t want combat to lose that lethality; I want the suspension of that unexpected critical, as I roll to see if the conscript really just decapitated their haughty dwarven fighter. It’s how the game has led us in expected directions, making heroes out of widely unregarded PCs, and recurring villains out of what should have been minor encounters. For me, that’s an entirely heightened level of unpredictability and risk. If the worst that’s going to happen is that they’re red-faced or knocked out, it has all of the suspense of a 1960’s Batman episode.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606471I respect that position and where you're coming from.  What I think is interesting is that TBZ making the decision to stake a PC's life on a conflict does not protect the characters from every negative decision -- you can still be taken out of action in a fight, still be beaten, still be captured, etc.  It just insures that the loss of a character is something that the player explicitly signs up for in that conflict, and it incentivizes it.

That means that if I'm facing an army of mook ninjas and I want to show off how badass my Buddhist Palm kung fu is, I can wade in there and kick ass, and I know that I won't lose my character for just trying to be cool -- I may be captured, knocked out, and then imprisoned or what have you, but I'm not going to lose my character unless I explicitly make that decision to.

Which again mirrors the way people have been using "action dice" for a while.  They're insurance against chance.  Some people don't dig that and that's fine -- seriously, there are certain games where I don't want "chance insurance" either, like CoC -- but I find this to be an elegant evolution of the mechanic.

I definitely see where you’re coming from; at the same time, I’m pretty sure it’s just a playstyle choice I’d care for. I’ve played in games with similar direction, via handwavium or more explicit rules, and just didn’t care for it. I know some people want mitigated/lessened risk going into an encounter; that's ok, but it's deadly boring for me. I don’t want to derail anything further, so I’ll save the spinoff on this for perhaps another thread.

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts, and happy gaming!

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606486You may not like a game that emulates that; you may not want to play or run a game like that; all of that's fine.  I disagree, but I think most of these issues are over preference anyway.

Of course - it's all preference.

I don't want to be 'playing' in a film or a book when i'm playing an RPG. I want to play a game.

Quote from: One Horse Town;606490Of course - it's all preference.

I don't want to be 'playing' in a film or a book when i'm playing an RPG. I want to play a game.

Which is cool.  From day one, for me, back when I named my token Bilbo in a game of Dungeon! while my Dad's friends were playing OD&D, I wanted to play out a book or movie with me as the main character, or at least a major character.  The next night, when they let me make a character and play with them, I was intent on playing out a fantasy story using the game's rules to keep it from just being me telling a story to myself.  That was, like, 1979 or 1980.  Basically, I've always wanted a game where the end-result is a cool story.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606428I'm not trying to sneak storygaming through anything; unlike you, I don't have a horse in that fight, I don't care about storygaming, and as I've made clear throughout this thread, my definition of traditional RPG and its goals is far more expansive than yours.  You can keep drawing lines in the sand, but I suspect they're meaningless to most of the gamers out there, or at least most of the ones I've encountered.  I respect people like Benoist who say, "Hey, I see what GAME X is doing, and I don't like it."  But it doesn't mean that it makes GAME X or its ilk any less an RPG for my purposes.

And honestly, I find it hard to argue with you about this, because your whole claim to relevancy in the field of Internet punditry is predicated on there being some war between storygamers and trad gamers, and before that indie gamers and trad gamers, and before that WW fans and everybody else.  Because of that remarkable self-interest, anybody interested in getting to the heart of this matter is well off by not letting someone like you, interested in arbitrary distinctions for personal self-interest, to do things like set out landmarks or decide where the boundaries of the playing field are.  I'm sorry, but there it is: any definitions you lay out are as suspect as a storygame designer who wants to co-opt every meaningful evolution in mechanics over the last decade.  Both of you have very real reasons to move goalposts and self-servingly define key definitions.

Perfect.

Mind if I get this for my signature ?

Quote from: Zachary The First;606489I definitely see where you're coming from; at the same time, I'm pretty sure it's just a playstyle choice I'd care for. I've played in games with similar direction, via handwavium or more explicit rules, and just didn't care for it. I know some people want mitigated/lessened risk going into an encounter; that's ok, but it's deadly boring for me. I don't want to derail anything further, so I'll save the spinoff on this for perhaps another thread.

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts, and happy gaming!

Thanks.  Just to note something interesting your post made me realize, which I hadn't until now -- I actually would hate this "can't die unless you stake your life on it" rule if it wasn't formalized.  If it were just some handwavium around the table, I'd resent the hell out of it.  Which is odd, because if it's a formal rule, I think it's neat.

I played in a Werewolf campaign where the conclusion was a klaive duel with my long-time foe, and the GM said before we started, "Do you want to live, or are you willing to let the dice fall where they may?"  And I resented the shit out of that question.  Of course I wanted the dice to fall where they may.  I'm not just going to let you narrate out my fight.

Interesting.  One day I'll have to examine why I make that demarcation between table-handwavium/GM fiat and explicit rules.

Quote from: Skywalker;606404You are putting an emphasis on the concept of death being the defining characteristic here, but I am not seeing why the subject of the mechanics matters. It's the nature and goal of the mechanics that count. In this the Death Box and the Action Order are nt significantly different.

You do seem to agree that the Action Order mechanic in Dr Who is based on how the genre conceits play out in the Dr Who stories. But you don't suggest that the characters in Dr Who actually move faster when talking. As such, it's driven by genre and not physics of the world in which Dr Who stories take place. The Death Box is identical to that.

Yes, it is absolutely a genre conceit that reflects the "physics" of the world. In the Doctor Who universe, people don't move faster when talking, but when someone talks it seems a universal rule that everyone waits to see what they say.

Whereas you admit readily that what's going on in TBZ is not reflective of the universe but an attempt to establish Literary Protagonism.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Skywalker;606405Wait, what? So, having any mechanics that are reserved for the PCs only or PCs and major NPCs now makes an RPG a storygame? That seems to open a whole new can of worms.

If said mechanic is "The GM can't kill you if you don't consent".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;606516Yes, it is absolutely a genre conceit that reflects the "physics" of the world. In the Doctor Who universe, people don't move faster when talking, but when someone talks it seems a universal rule that everyone waits to see what they say.

This is deeply stupid. There is no law of physics preventing someone from pulling a trigger before someone else finishes talking. It would just make for shitty story if they did. You're working awfully hard to get your double standard on.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606428Roy Fokker and Ben are clearly not the main characters.  Macross is an action show centering on a love triangle (that's out of the creator's mouth) -- the main character is Rick/Hikaru, or if we're being very generous, they're Rick/Lisa/Minmei.  It's not Roy.  It's not Ben.  It's arguably not even an expansive enough category to hold Max.  

Again, these literary techniques you rail against are all elements of genre.  

Its bullshit. You can't have an RPG where the PC cannot be forced to die without permission, and then claim it is emulative of a real world (rather than Attempted Literature, which is NOT what RPGs do).

QuoteAnd honestly, I find it hard to argue with you about this, because your whole claim to relevancy in the field of Internet punditry is predicated on there being some war between storygamers and trad gamers, and before that indie gamers and trad gamers, and before that WW fans and everybody else.  Because of that remarkable self-interest, anybody interested in getting to the heart of this matter is well off by not letting someone like you, interested in arbitrary distinctions for personal self-interest, to do things like set out landmarks or decide where the boundaries of the playing field are.  I'm sorry, but there it is: any definitions you lay out are as suspect as a storygame designer who wants to co-opt every meaningful evolution in mechanics over the last decade.  Both of you have very real reasons to move goalposts and self-servingly define key definitions.

Damn right I have a self-interest in this. But its not the selfish one you seem to ascribe.  Its from a love of the RPG hobby and a desire to protect it from people who would undermine it and replace it with something else operating under the same name.

The Landmarks aren't something arbitrarily set up or decided by me. They're self-evident. They're very clearly those things that if you take them out of the equation, leave you with a game that is no longer definable as an RPG.

RPGPundit