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

Please do.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Zachary The First;606489If 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.

I demand more signature space, just for this.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;606463You 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.

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.

But here is a very important point that sets the difference, and explains why Dr. Who is an RPG, and TBZ (if the rules are set out the way its described in this thread) is apparently not.
If the Doctor Who game worked the way TBZ apparently does, you should always be able to stop/delay/confuse opponents through talking because the Doctor always does.  But that doesn't happen. All that happens is a reflection of what goes on in the show but not something related to the protagonism of the main characters of the show.
Hence, likewise, there is no rule that says PCs can't be fucking killed.

Whereas in TBZ, where by the way there is no genre except "anime" (which is about as huge a "genre" as saying "all literature"), the rule about not being killed is entirely an effort to reflect a literary conceit: "My character can't die because he's the hero of the story, he's Always Rick Hunter, and heroes don't die pointlessly".  
At that point, you're not running "Macross: the RPG", you aren't playing an RPG set in the world of Macross where you might be Rick Hunter or you might be Ben Dixon  or you might be Ted, the guy who pilots a destroid; instead you're running "Rick Hunter, Protagonist: the Storygame!"

Understand?

RPGPundit

Quote from: CRKrueger;606531I demand more signature space, just for this.

Rotation schedule, maybe?

BTW, I'm not against narrative mechanics per se, one of my favorite games, WFRP1 has narrative mechanics via Fate Points.  Get too many of them though, pull me out of decision-making as a character too often, and it ceases, not to be enjoyable, but to be enjoyable as a RPG for me.

That's why I'm always asking Skywalker about the narrative mechanics in all these cool games he finds, trying to see if it's something I might want to get into a long-term RPG campaign with, or maybe just have fun doing at a con.

Quote from: RPGPundit;606527Its 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).

Nonsense. I mean, this is a wholly made up, arbitrary, totally nonsensical line in the sand you're drawing.  This is the hobby that gave us Hit Points.  From day one RPGs have been emulating things like this.  

QuoteDamn 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.

Please, let's be honest here.  Your whole schtick is that there's a group of people who are swine, and you rail against them.  There's hardly any profit in it if you go, "Hey, those guys over there do something I don't like, but they're having a good time, good for them."  

I probably dislike the indie/storygaming stuff as much or more than you do.  I don't like it, I can't get into it, and while the indie scene has produced some pretty cool ideas, in general I'd rather not game at all than play their games.  But nobody playing Universalis or Dogs in the Vinyard has ever had any impact on my RPGs at all.  They're not stealing prospective players, they're not redefining what an RPG is and confusing shit -- for everybody on Earth who doesn't game, RPG still equals = D&D -- any more than boardgamers are.  It's like arguments against gay marriage stating that they somehow undermine ordinary marriage.  No they don't, it's nonsense.  Storygames being played somewhere else in no way affect my gaming.  

The real threat to the hobby is Call of Duty: Black Ops II, not the latest 45-page self-published ditty discussed on storygames.com.  Rail against that.

QuoteThe 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.

So you say, but I take "landmarks" about as seriously as a I do three-fold theory.  You've got a pet framework, it doesn't mean anyone or everyone else has adopted it.

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.

Except that it means that the gangstas who take you out, capture you, and beat the shit out of you can't put three fucking bullets in your skull unless you say "I consent".

QuoteThat 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 --

Then you're not cool.  
Li Mu Bai is cool because whenever he wades into an army of mook ninjas, in spite of his great power, he knows death might be there for him, but he does it anyways.
Because Li Mu Bai is not a character in a story, he's a virtual person in a virtual world.

If you're trying to emulate a virtual world with your game, then you're probably playing an RPG.  If you're trying to imitate the structure of a story; guess what? You're playing a Storygame.

QuoteWhich 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.

Its unrelated. Action Dice are meant to represent a person's fortune; this is just a rule that says YOU CAN NEVER DIE.
If you have a game where not even god can kill you unless you want to be killed, then you aren't actually playing in an emulated world at all. Therefore, not an RPG.

RPGPundit

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.

Yeah really. What's the fucking point? Why bother rolling at all at that point? Why not just say "I beat the shit out of the mooks, because I'm the protagonist" and the GM says "yeah, sure that happens, because we're telling a story here about how great you are".

RPGPundit

What I find interesting in the conversation is the way the concept of genre or world emulation has been coopted to mean emulation of another medium that is not RPG, that is, emulating not the world depicted by the source material, but the source material and its narrative structures, the way it goes about telling stories, instead. It's really about emulating the type of storytelling used by some other medium, instead of emulating the world depicted within those stories to translate them into a truly emulating level in an actual role playing game.

That's what I meant when I concluded TBZ is an anime emulator (or anime building game, like Marvel Heroic Role Playing is really a Comics building game, which would be another word for a story building game). It actually emulates anime as a storytelling medium, a narrative structure, instead of emulating a world you can immerse yourself in as though it were real in the "now" of play.

Quote from: vytzka;606525This 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.

It appears to be a natural rule; not just for the Doctor but for everyone. In doctor who, anyone who pauses to make a speech has everyone wait until he's done, with hardly any exceptions.

That makes it a rule of Genre Physics, and not just an element of literary structure for protagonists.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;606546Except that it means that the gangstas who take you out, capture you, and beat the shit out of you can't put three fucking bullets in your skull unless you say "I consent".

They weren't going to do that anyway, because it's boring as fuck.  If a GM put three bullets into a captured guy's head rather than something interesting, we'd throw him the hell out unless we're playing something grim & gritty.

QuoteThen you're not cool.  
Li Mu Bai is cool because whenever he wades into an army of mook ninjas, in spite of his great power, he knows death might be there for him, but he does it anyways.
Because Li Mu Bai is not a character in a story, he's a virtual person in a virtual world.

Huh?  He's emphatically a character in a story.  He wades into an army of mook ninjas because he's a badass and that's what happens in kung-fu novels or movies.  And if I'm playing a character based on Li Mu Bai in an RPG, then I fight ninjas because it's narratively appropriate and because, again, that's what happens in kung fu games. I mean, it's a kung fu game, it's what I signed up for.  

He's an avatar.  I might like my avatar, I might not want him to die unless it's cool (or even not then) but he has no independent knowledge of life or death beyond what I give him.  I may say, "I fear death because if these ninja mooks kill me, I will never be able to confess my love for Michelle Yeoh," but that's me making shit up, acting out a character and his story arc.

QuoteIf you're trying to emulate a virtual world with your game, then you're probably playing an RPG.  If you're trying to imitate the structure of a story; guess what? You're playing a Storygame.

No, because as I've said, people have been trying to emulate stories in their games since day one.  You don't get to revise away decades of stuff that happened to support your jihad against a clique you don't like and which appeared, like, two years ago.

QuoteIts unrelated. Action Dice are meant to represent a person's fortune; this is just a rule that says YOU CAN NEVER DIE.
If you have a game where not even god can kill you unless you want to be killed, then you aren't actually playing in an emulated world at all. Therefore, not an RPG.

It's just an RPG you don't like, not a non-RPG.  I'm sorry, but you're reaching here.

Quote from: Benoist;606551What I find interesting in the conversation is the way the concept of genre or world emulation has been coopted to mean emulation of another medium that is not RPG, that is, emulating not the world depicted by the source material, but the source material and its narrative structures, the way it goes about telling stories, instead. It's really about emulating the type of storytelling used by some other medium, instead of emulating the world depicted within those stories to translate them into a truly emulating level in an actual role playing game.

That's what I meant when I concluded TBZ is an anime emulator (or anime building game, like Marvel Heroic Role Playing is really a Comics building game, which would be another word for a story building game). It actually emulates anime as a storytelling medium, a narrative structure, instead of emulating a world you can immerse yourself in as though it were real in the "now" of play.

That's a pretty solid insight.  At the same time, I don't think it makes something "not an RPG," because there was a wave of early to mid '90s games that tried to do the same thing with Hong Kong action or action movies (HKAT!, Feng Shui!, Maximum Damage or something).

To me, an RPG is a game where I play one (or more, in the Ars Magica exception) characters, whose parts I play out as an adventure goes on.  There needs to be some system for resolving conflict.  And then we have both our "roleplaying" and our "game."  That's a fairly expansive definition, but it's a big hobby.  In both TBZ and MHRP I'm playing my character during an adventure.  The adventure's beats may conform to comics or it may steal certain elements from the anime milieu, but at the end of the day, it's an RPG.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606543Nonsense. I mean, this is a wholly made up, arbitrary, totally nonsensical line in the sand you're drawing.  This is the hobby that gave us Hit Points.  From day one RPGs have been emulating things like this.  

Hit points can reach 0 without player permission. There's nothing of Attempted Literature or Always Rick Hunter about that.

QuotePlease, let's be honest here.  Your whole schtick is that there's a group of people who are swine, and you rail against them.  There's hardly any profit in it if you go, "Hey, those guys over there do something I don't like, but they're having a good time, good for them."  

If it were those guys, OVER THERE, having a good time, I'd have no problem with them.  But they're not over there; they're here, pissing in my garden.  They're trying to steal the name "roleplaying game" and re-appropriate it for a hobby that looks nothing like the games I play. They're consistently lying, cheating, and manipulating language to try to achieve that end.  This thread is only indicative of that; where you have some of the biggest Swine on the site coming on and claiming loudly and to the rafters that this game is a "totally traditional RPG" and that at the same time it proves how great the innovative mechanics of storygaming are, and that even the japanese can understand that so why can't we?

They are sniveling lying little twerps with a constant double-discourse who can't just man up and admit that they want the hobby to be different from what it actually is; who can't, in other words, fight an honest fight face to face and let the best man win, if getting to be called the RPG hobby instead of going off and starting their own storygaming hobby is so important to them.

So there is no equivalency here. They shot first, and from behind, and even now continue to try to sneakily subvert the hobby at every turn. It matters because they can convince and manipulate the design-level of the hobby; they did so enough that D&D 4e was made to conform to GNS theory, and that may well have destroyed motherfucking D&D's viability as a product!  So yes, it does matter. I'm not out to destroy storygaming, storygaming is out to destroy RPGs; I'd be fine with letting them be the Storygaming Hobby somewhere else, but for Storygaming to actually be the RPG hobby it has to by definition convert or destroy the existing RPG hobby first.

What I'm doing hasn't made me a lot of profit  as you seem to think (though I guess more than I ever expected when all this started); its not an act or a schtick; its one person trying to make sure that his hobby gets to keep being his hobby.

I didn't draw the line in the sand; its always been there. I'm just pointing at it and saying None Shall Pass.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Benoist;606551What I find interesting in the conversation is the way the concept of genre or world emulation has been coopted to mean emulation of another medium that is not RPG, that is, emulating not the world depicted by the source material, but the source material and its narrative structures, the way it goes about telling stories, instead.

This is a classic example of how the Swine like to manipulate, twist and control language to suit their purposes.  

RPGPundit

Quote from: Future Villain Band;606555That's a pretty solid insight.  At the same time, I don't think it makes something "not an RPG," because there was a wave of early to mid '90s games that tried to do the same thing with Hong Kong action or action movies (HKAT!, Feng Shui!, Maximum Damage or something).

To me, an RPG is a game where I play one (or more, in the Ars Magica exception) characters, whose parts I play out as an adventure goes on.  There needs to be some system for resolving conflict.  And then we have both our "roleplaying" and our "game."  That's a fairly expansive definition, but it's a big hobby.  In both TBZ and MHRP I'm playing my character during an adventure.  The adventure's beats may conform to comics or it may steal certain elements from the anime milieu, but at the end of the day, it's an RPG.

I get that's where you're coming from.

For me, that's a different matter. When I am invited to play a role playing game and find myself playing in the position of the co-author of a story, I feel like I am playing a radically different game than what I was expecting, which was to play AS my character in an emulated world role-played by the GM. I find the differenciation of story games and role playing games useful, at the same level that the differenciation between wargames and role playing games is useful to determine what type of game I'm going to play tonight.