TheRPGSite

I asked Benoist this question in the Dungeon World discussion but didn't really get an answer, possibly because everyone was too over excited by the "fiction" debate in that context. So I'm going to put it here and open it out to everyone because the more I think about it the more I find this an interesting thought experiment:

Would you be interested in a game where 100% of the system stuff was handled by the GM, right down to your stats and character build (which the GM would presumably derive from a prose description and background you provide at character generation) and you could literally just shut your eyes and concentrate on immersing yourself in the game, exclusively speaking as your character or declaring your actions to the GM without reference to the rules?

All the dice rolling would be handled by the GM. Instead of being told you've "levelled up" you'd gradually come to realise your character had become more powerful when opponents which would previously have been troubling start dropping like flies. Instead of paying skill points to buy new skills or feats or whatever, you'd occasionally have downtime where you'd get opportunities to undertake training (or the GM would just assign stuff based on what you'd done in the session, kind of like how BRP handles skill checks). If you have a character sheet, it simply has your character's name and details of their background, personal knowledge, areas of expertise (as the character would understand them, rather than being expressed in skill terms) and equipment list, and maybe a character picture too if you're feeling fancy.

How would such a game appeal to you?

Sorry if my answer didn't satisfy you. We were talking about terms like "fiction" so that's what I addressed. I'm not really interested in theoretical scenarios like this, unless you really want to make it a reality, which certainly could be interesting. I just think role playing games work fine as they are, and enjoy the game aspect very much, including the immersion process of which it is a part.

It wouldn't be for me most of the time but I could see the appeal. I've seen it handled this way in pbp games. This is partially for immersion but also to speed up the game - the back and forth posts/emails for resolution of actions can take days.
 
Unless the game is pbp or has dirt simple rules, this would add quite a bit of burden to keep track of all player stuff as well as all npc stuff.
 
This concept might be fun for Paranoia or a game where characters are similarly delusional. Your character concept may not be reflected in the build. You might consider yourself a master of stealth but everyone sees you acting goofy jumping from shadow to shadow.  A gm would have to be a dick to have such mismatches in a serious game though.
 
The idea might also be good in pvp heavy games. If you don't know either your own or the other players' exact stats, there is more uncertainty on who would have the advantage in a given situation.

I can't think of a game that shifts 100% of that to the GM. AD&D came pretty close in the first edition with stuff like attack matrices being in the DMG. But the players still roll dice. I think that is actually important to most players to roll. I once tried running 2E Ravenloft where I tracked HP, where I did damage rolls (I may even have done attack rolls) so the players didn't think about the numbers. The idea was to focus on "the clawed creature slashes your chest and you feel feint from loss of blood" instead of "the werewolf slashes you for 4 points of damage, bringing you to one HP". For some people this worked, for others it was a problem. I think at the end of the day, more was lost than gained by shifting all of that to the GM. The act of rolling the dice is pretty important for tying players to the character's actions. You can probably get away with having them not track HP and stuff like that, but I do think the rolling is essential if the game involves dice.

That's exactly how I was introduced to D&D ca. 1976!

I think that for most people, at least initially, the main attraction is the experience of role-playing an adventurer and interacting with the imagined world. Not knowing the mechanical details actually adds to the excitement.

Something is lost in return for gaining familiarity with the quantified details; what once was a thrilling mystery and opportunity for discovery is reduced to ho-hum technicalities. This transformation is of course to some extent inevitable, and also necessary for one to become a competent game master.

In the early days, though, people placed a value on that experience available to the novice. Ideally, the GM was someone who had already enjoyed it, and beginners were provided opportunity to discover things for themselves. Either they were in games separate from the old hands, or the latter were mindful not to display their expertise in ways that might rob the newcomers of their chance.

That was not entirely feasible once the game started to spread by text faster than by word of mouth. Typically, whoever bought (or received as a gift) the handbook was on that account alone the first GM.

Part of the attraction of new games was the fresh opportunity for old gamers to have again some of that experience of exploring and discovering.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;694610I can't think of a game that shifts 100% of that to the GM. AD&D came pretty close in the first edition with stuff like attack matrices being in the DMG. But the players still roll dice. I think that is actually important to most players to roll. I once tried running 2E Ravenloft where I tracked HP, where I did damage rolls (I may even have done attack rolls) so the players didn't think about the numbers. The idea was to focus on "the clawed creature slashes your chest and you feel feint from loss of blood" instead of "the werewolf slashes you for 4 points of damage, bringing you to one HP". For some people this worked, for others it was a problem. I think at the end of the day, more was lost than gained by shifting all of that to the GM. The act of rolling the dice is pretty important for tying players to the character's actions. You can probably get away with having them not track HP and stuff like that, but I do think the rolling is essential if the game involves dice.

Yup. This sort of thing works for first timers, but after a few sessions the novelty wears off and players want to actively participate in the game.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;694610The act of rolling the dice is pretty important for tying players to the character's actions.

That is generally true; dice don't care who rolls them, but people do. I think, though, that the mere act of tossing dice is properly distinguished from "directly interacting with the rules."

Quote from: Warthur;694605Would you be interested in a game where 100% of the system stuff was handled by the GM, right down to your stats and character build (which the GM would presumably derive from a prose description and background you provide at character generation) and you could literally just shut your eyes and concentrate on immersing yourself in the game, exclusively speaking as your character or declaring your actions to the GM without reference to the rules?

Yes.  That's why I bought one (http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/68986/de-profundis-2nd-edition).

I play a fair bit of freeform roleplay (with my daughter, who GMs), and I like that just fine.  This is roughly equivalent to the GM having all the quantitative mechanics from a player's perspective, it seems to me.

So, one way to look at the question is, how does adding this or that quantitative mechanic to the GM's side change play?

De Profundis is a very bad example for this discussion, seeing how it's based around creating a joint epistolary fiction, so it's pretty far from traditional RPGs, it's more of a freeform writing experience where you write only from one PoV rather than an RPG.

But any way - yes I do, Warthur, and I usually do implement at least a partial assumption - mostly combat rolls - that is, players roll for themselves and damage they deal, but they have to rely on narration for their own hit points and enemy's. In CoC there is also Sanity, which I like to keep hidden. And of course, there are Spot checks and the usual "senses" checks I like to do hidden as well. I wouldn't mind doing a game with me holding all character sheets from my side, but I think it'd be simply tiresome for me, as a GM.

I'd give a game like that a go, but I doubt it would replace my existing gaming style. It'd be an interesting experiment.

The closest I've gotten to that style of play is when I played Everway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everway) in the mid-90s.

This could work for a RPG.

The consquence however is that the burden is on the referee to effectively communicate what the character can do.

Generally people have detailed knowledge of what they can do in their profession or areas of interest. For example a quarterback throwing the football, a blacksmith working metal. The numbers and stats found found on a character sheet is an abstraction of that knowledge.

Where the abstraction fails is that people don't know everything about themselves to the level of detail found on a typical character sheet.

But for the areas they deal with daily most have a good judge of what they are capable of and would know they had say Blacksmith +3 as opposed to Blacksmith +1.

All of this is not easily represented in prose form. Yeah you could go with that you are a Great Blacksmith, a Mediocre Swordsman. But that what Fate and Fudge does and it just a shorthand for a system of levels for skills and other stats.

I have seen and participated in AD&D games run like this back in the day. And it fell by the wayside quickly because I could only think of one or two referees that could pull it off well. For the rest by and large their problem wasn't they were unfair or dicks but simply they didn't effectively tell what we could do. So the players were left fumbling in the dark.

It very similar to the situation tabletop novices faces. Except with novices you have the entire group to pull from to teach the new person whats what. With the proposed system the all on the referee.

I can see this being a specialized form of tabletop roleplaying. If you can pull it off more power to you and it will be a interesting experience.

Quote from: estar;694657But for the areas they deal with daily most have a good judge of what they are capable of and would know they had say Blacksmith +3 as opposed to Blacksmith +1.

To inject a bit of the realism thread in to this, one should keep in mind the Dunning-Kruger effect, which says, in essence, that peopl are often too inept to know how inept they are.

So, in the end, what you'd have for character generation, is the player describes what he wants to run, and the GM creates a character that is not, in any way, based on that describes, and doesn't tell the player that there are any differences, much less what they are.

If it's done right, the player may never figure it out.

As a GM, I would dislike such a game. As a player, I would hate it, and I would never play it.

Frankly, I don't see the point of keeping players in the dark, it's very frustrating for players, and puts too much work on the shoulders of GMs.

+1 to that, I know that my gaming experience wouldn't be improved if I couldn't pass of some of the accounting to my players that's for sure.

I played Paranoia once at GenCon where we did not have character sheets, just a paragraph on an index card. We would roll a D20 when the GM said so and stuff would happen. We had a lot of fun, but I do not know if every group could work like that and certainly maybe not for other RPG settings.

I know a great CoC GM who has character sheets, but they are for the players benefit only. AKA, he only cares about what we do and occasionally what the dice say, but we don't really have any rules events. Stuff in his game doesn't hurt us (aka -4 HP), instead you suffer conditions (you are confused, dizzy, fatigued, your leg is broken, etc) or you die.

I always recommend that people try doing this at least once. It's an interesting experience, in sort of a "deep immersion" sense. But I don't favor it as a default playstyle – it is a lot of work for the GM and a bit of work for the players since they need to keep more stuff pictured in their heads. It is better for one-shots.

It's called "Paranoia".  But you wouldn't know that, because you're not of sufficient clearance to read the rules.

Seriously, I think encouraging players keeping things at the level of "say what your guy does" is probably sufficient - I don't know that it's really necessary to keep them utterly in the dark as to the system details.

It would probably also depend on the rules - the more wargame-like a game was, the more I think you need to at least have some idea of the rules.

Quote from: Claudius;694668Frankly, I don't see the point of keeping players in the dark, it's very frustrating for players, and puts too much work on the shoulders of GMs.

You (like me, and the people I game with) skew more towards the gaming side of roleplaying gaming. Others skew more towards the roleplaying side. I know pepole who would love this sort of thing, and I believe have done it.

Personally, I think it'd be more efficient to just go for improvisational theater, and stop pretending it's an RPG.

Quote from: taustin;694681You (like me, and the people I game with) skew more towards the gaming side of roleplaying gaming. Others skew more towards the roleplaying side. I know pepole who would love this sort of thing, and I believe have done it.

Personally, I think it'd be more efficient to just go for improvisational theater, and stop pretending it's an RPG.

Improv theatre seems very different to me than roleplaying with the gm managing the game mechanics. I'll have to think about that.

Quote from: Warthur;694605I asked Benoist this question in the Dungeon World discussion but didn't really get an answer, possibly because everyone was too over excited by the "fiction" debate in that context. So I'm going to put it here and open it out to everyone because the more I think about it the more I find this an interesting thought experiment:

Would you be interested in a game where 100% of the system stuff was handled by the GM, right down to your stats and character build (which the GM would presumably derive from a prose description and background you provide at character generation) and you could literally just shut your eyes and concentrate on immersing yourself in the game, exclusively speaking as your character or declaring your actions to the GM without reference to the rules?

All the dice rolling would be handled by the GM. Instead of being told you've "levelled up" you'd gradually come to realise your character had become more powerful when opponents which would previously have been troubling start dropping like flies. Instead of paying skill points to buy new skills or feats or whatever, you'd occasionally have downtime where you'd get opportunities to undertake training (or the GM would just assign stuff based on what you'd done in the session, kind of like how BRP handles skill checks). If you have a character sheet, it simply has your character's name and details of their background, personal knowledge, areas of expertise (as the character would understand them, rather than being expressed in skill terms) and equipment list, and maybe a character picture too if you're feeling fancy.

How would such a game appeal to you?

Yep, would totally be into this.

Quote from: Bill;694695Improv theatre seems very different to me than roleplaying with the gm managing the game mechanics. I'll have to think about that.

It may seem different to the GM, depending on the GM. It's indisinguishable to the players (if it's done right). GM = director. Players = actors.

Quote from: estar;694657Where the abstraction fails is that people don't know everything about themselves to the level of detail found on a typical character sheet.

But for the areas they deal with daily most have a good judge of what they are capable of and would know they had say Blacksmith +3 as opposed to Blacksmith +1.

I think for the most part, you are right, but the bonuses or penalties are the influence of experience when the chips are down and there's a lot of risk, and not taking 10 or taking 20 or whatever, which is how most day-to-day skills get tested.

The more skilled you are at something, the better judge your are likely to be about your own skills.

Quote from: taustin;694681You (like me, and the people I game with) skew more towards the gaming side of roleplaying gaming. Others skew more towards the roleplaying side. I know pepole who would love this sort of thing, and I believe have done it.

Personally, I think it'd be more efficient to just go for improvisational theater, and stop pretending it's an RPG.

I think I like both the gaming part and the roleplaying part. The gaming part without the roleplaying part feels hollow and boring, and the roleplaying part without the gaming part feels pointless and frustrating.

Quote from: Claudius;694700I think I like both the gaming part and the roleplaying part. The gaming part without the roleplaying part feels hollow and boring, and the roleplaying part without the gaming part feels pointless and frustrating.

I would agree. What this thread is about is an extreme towards roleplaying, and isn't a game any more. The opposite extreme is a board game, with no roleplaying. Most people are somewhere in between. Our group is generally on the gaming side of neutral, but not excessively so. Yours, perhaps, is closer to the middle, or perhaps a little to the other side (or perhaps not).

So long as everybody's happy with the balance you've got, or reasonable when somebody isn't, then you're Doing It Right, wherever you are.

But as I said, I know people who would love this idea, and if I'm not mistaken, have done it. Certainly, one GM (I should probably put that in quotes) who just won't deal with "game" systems that have dice. The general crowd he games with prefer storytelling games, like Dresden Files, where players can (within the rules) usurp the GM's story arc with ideas of their own. They like it. I don't participate. I loves me my dice.

Quote from: Warthur;694605Would you be interested in a game where 100% of the system stuff was handled by the GM, right down to your stats and character build (which the GM would presumably derive from a prose description and background you provide at character generation) and you could literally just shut your eyes and concentrate on immersing yourself in the game, exclusively speaking as your character or declaring your actions to the GM without reference to the rules?

That's basically what Hiljaisuuden Vangit ("The Prisoners of Silence"), a fairly obscure Finnish alt-history RPG from the Nineties, does. During chargen, the players fill in IC "surveillance reports" on their PCs, including results from medical examinations, academic accomplishments, known political affiliations, distinguishing features, and so on. The GM then converts that information into stats on the actual character sheets (which the others never see directly), and from there on acts as a filter between the system and the rest of the group.

Quote from: Benoist;694607Sorry if my answer didn't satisfy you. We were talking about terms like "fiction" so that's what I addressed.

No problem, as I said the discussion there was too tied up with fiction to expect any different.

QuoteI'm not really interested in theoretical scenarios like this, unless you really want to make it a reality, which certainly could be interesting.

Well, as the discussion so far has established there's at least one published game out there which advocates this, which I guess takes the scenario out of the theoretical category.

QuoteI just think role playing games work fine as they are, and enjoy the game aspect very much, including the immersion process of which it is a part.

This part is interesting to me - for me, I would say that immersion is more to do with the "roleplaying" side of the equation - how do gameplay aspects help you immerse when IC your characters aren't playing a game?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;694612Yup. This sort of thing works for first timers, but after a few sessions the novelty wears off and players want to actively participate in the game.

Query: why do you need to interact with the game mechanics and roll dice to participate in the game? Surely playing your character is participation?

Quote from: Phillip;694614That is generally true; dice don't care who rolls them, but people do. I think, though, that the mere act of tossing dice is properly distinguished from "directly interacting with the rules."

Let's say it isn't for the purpose of this thread; the GM handles all the rolls (or the system in question is diceless anyway, or there's a handy app which handles most of the rules and rolling burden for the GM).

Quote from: estar;694657The consquence however is that the burden is on the referee to effectively communicate what the character can do.

Generally people have detailed knowledge of what they can do in their profession or areas of interest. For example a quarterback throwing the football, a blacksmith working metal. The numbers and stats found found on a character sheet is an abstraction of that knowledge.

Where the abstraction fails is that people don't know everything about themselves to the level of detail found on a typical character sheet.

But for the areas they deal with daily most have a good judge of what they are capable of and would know they had say Blacksmith +3 as opposed to Blacksmith +1.

All of this is not easily represented in prose form. Yeah you could go with that you are a Great Blacksmith, a Mediocre Swordsman. But that what Fate and Fudge does and it just a shorthand for a system of levels for skills and other stats

I think you would need a system where each skill advancement was very meaningful (so more like the distinction between Smith-1 and Smith-2 in Traveller than between Smithing 59% and Smithing 60% in BRP), and where each character only gets a few skills describing broad competencies. Then you could give the players a few short, descriptive sentences for each of their skills. ("You're a competent enough blacksmith to make and repair basic metal items of serviceable quality.")

QuoteI have seen and participated in AD&D games run like this back in the day. And it fell by the wayside quickly because I could only think of one or two referees that could pull it off well. For the rest by and large their problem wasn't they were unfair or dicks but simply they didn't effectively tell what we could do. So the players were left fumbling in the dark.

It very similar to the situation tabletop novices faces. Except with novices you have the entire group to pull from to teach the new person whats what. With the proposed system the all on the referee.

I can see this being a specialized form of tabletop roleplaying. If you can pull it off more power to you and it will be a interesting experience.

I think it's actually a mode which would work best with experienced players who are already comfortable with the idea that your actions aren't limited to stuff written on your character sheet, and I'd encourage them not to be shy about asking me "How likely do I think it is that I'll be able to do [whatever]?" so I can answer in IC terms if they need to know how competent they are at something.

System-wise, of course, it would need to be fairly light (or have good app support) to avoid the GM being overwhelmed.

Quote from: taustin;694708I would agree. What this thread is about is an extreme towards roleplaying, and isn't a game any more.

Why would that necessarily be the case, simply because you're no longer rolling dice and your character sheet is written in qualitative and not quantitative terms?

Quote from: Warthur;694605How would such a game appeal to you?

I have tried this, partially, a few times. When running WW games, I often had the supernatural aspects of the system as GM only. It worked well in Trinity and even more so in Orpheus (as it also added to the horror of going into the Underworld).

As a GM, it becomes a real pain quickly though. I wouldn't want to do it for all aspects of all the PCs. It would be an inefficient match of the realities of playing RPGs.

On saying that, it may be more manageable in a LARP, where mundane actions are dealt with by way of physical action.

The other major issue is that it is dependent on the GM accurately interpreting player decision as the sole interface with the mechanical underpinnings of the game. Even the best GM is not able to emulate a real world in its entirety, and this can lead to players actually playing "guess the GM" rather than playing "being in character". As such, it could actually be self defeating.

IMO having players cognisant of the mechanics on some level can actually translate the realities of RPGs into a more immersive "in character" experience.

Quote from: Warthur;694605How would such a game appeal to you?

It wouldn't.

Quote from: Claudius;694668Frankly, I don't see the point of keeping players in the dark, it's very frustrating for players, and puts too much work on the shoulders of GMs.

This.

Quote from: Skywalker;694990IMO having players cognisant of the mechanics on some level can actually translate the realities of RPGs into a more immersive "in character" experience.

Conversely, I think running a game where you kept players ignorant of the mechanics except for what their characters would know can help immersion greatly.

For instance, your wizard presumably knows how his own spells work and roughly how many spells he can do in a day before his reserves of mana get tapped, and wizards are likely to be philosophically inclined anyway, so I can see empirically-minded wizards getting most of the magic system worked out on an IC basis through experiment - though they may miss some nuances which become dangerous. Warriors, however? Well. unless someone is clearly weak or unhealthy in comparison to you, you're never really going to know if you're a better fighter than them unless you actually fight them - and if it turns out they're the better warrior, you might be in trouble. Sounds good for a game where wizards plough ahead hubristically in their magical research and occasionally discover wrinkles in the laws of magic through their overconfidence, whilst warriors don't get into fights lightly.

Not knowing the rules would annoy me as a player, and as a GM, players not knowing the rules annoys me as well; esp as it slows down the game.

Quote from: taustin;694708What this thread is about is an extreme towards roleplaying, and isn't a game any more.

That makes about as much sense to me as saying a computer game "isn't a game any more" because you can use a more intuitive interface than typing in obscure code.

The machinery continues to do the same job behind the scenes, only now you can focus on doing things from your role's perspective instead of on the details of the "machine language."

Quote from: PhillipI think, though, that the mere act of tossing dice is properly distinguished from "directly interacting with the rules."

Quote from: WarthurLet's say it isn't for the purpose of this thread; the GM handles all the rolls (or the system in question is diceless anyway, or there's a handy app which handles most of the rules and rolling burden for the GM).

That's fine for me personally, but I'll trust 30+ years of testimony from many sources as to the value of handling dice when it comes to engaging most players. That doesn't necessarily mean knowing the underlying algorithms, or even the resultant probability; "Higher is better" might be enough.

Quote from: Warthur;695071Conversely, I think running a game where you kept players ignorant of the mechanics except for what their characters would know can help immersion greatly.

I would suggest that, perhaps, everybody is right. For themselves, at least. Some people enjoy gaming more if they know the crunchy bits, and other people are happier not knowing. Because, you know, there's no One True Way of Gaming.

I would, but then, as the realism thread demonstrates, somebody would start humping my pantleg and peeing all over the carpet for challenging their Grand Pronouncements from On High about the One True Way of Gaming, and therefore, I'm a poopy head. So I'll refrain.

Quote from: Phillip;695092That makes about as much sense to me as saying a computer game "isn't a game any more" because you can use a more intuitive interface than typing in obscure code.

The machinery continues to do the same job behind the scenes, only now you can focus on doing things from your role's perspective instead of on the details of the "machine language."

Your first paragraph disagrees with me. Your second paragraph agrees with me.

You make no sense. You are literally incoherent.

Quote from: Warthur;694605How would such a game appeal to you?

As a GM, I would not find this appealing because distributing the mechanical load across the table makes it considerably easier to manage. This not only means that I have more time to focus on all the other balls I'm juggling; it also makes it a lot easier to manage pacing at the table.

As a player, I would not find this appealing because the bandwidth of speech is very narrow and open to far more interpretation than actually experiencing the world is. When GMs unnecessarily obfuscate target numbers, for example, I find it generally increases the number of nonsensical disconnects between the version of the imaginary world I'm making choices in and the version of the imaginary world that the GM is resolving those choices in. What you're discussing here is not just obfuscating the target numbers, but a whole bunch of other stuff.

It might be interesting to run an experimental session like this. But extrapolating from my existing experiences, I'm guessing you won't see the increase in immersion you're anticipating: Instead, that immersion will be getting constantly disrupted by the mismatched expectations of the game world. It will also be degraded by a less efficient GM.

Quote from: taustin;695118Your first paragraph disagrees with me. Your second paragraph agrees with me.

You make no sense. You are literally incoherent.

My two sentences agree with each other, which I reckon is the coherence reasonably demanded.

Quote from: Warthur;695071Conversely, I think running a game where you kept players ignorant of the mechanics except for what their characters would know can help immersion greatly.

Sure, it can assist in some ways. But I don't think a blanket "players must not see the mechanics" approach is actually the overall best way to achieve that kind of immersion, given the realities of RPGing. If for no other reason that it relies on the GM making the best interpretation of the mechanics every single time and communicating over that divide clearer than anyone else. IME this is a very heavy burden on a GM and almost never true in actual play.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;695122It might be interesting to run an experimental session like this. But extrapolating from my existing experiences, I'm guessing you won't see the increase in immersion you're anticipating: Instead, that immersion will be getting constantly disrupted by the mismatched expectations of the game world. It will also be degraded by a less efficient GM.

Yeah, i pretty much agree with this. It'd probably turn into a guessing game for the player.

The "hidden mechanics" aspect of this does obviously detract from the "Game" aspect, but whether the mechanics are hidden or not has nothing to do with storytelling per se.  Now obviously it could, and people who want a collaborative storytelling experience could use hidden mechanics to great effect, but roleplayers could as well without viewing things from a narrative perspective.

My question would be, if the GM is so good that he could pull off a hidden-mechanics game, and all the players trust him, why do you need mechanics to begin with?

Personally, the closest I've gotten to this is running games in "teaching mode", where players roll their own dice and worry about their character, not why a 12hits and an 11 misses.  Some players I've run across simply prefer to roll what dice when and have the GM determine the task-resolution aspect.  I've usually seen this is crunchier games like Rolemaster and Harnmaster.

I've played D&D where the GM kept track of all player's HPs.  It sure eliminates some of the weird situations that crop up with HPs when players can't reliably factor current HP totals into choices.

Quote from: Phillip;695126My two sentences agree with each other

No. They don't. You can keep claiming otherwise, while stomping your feet, hands over ears, shouting "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" for as long as you want, but no, they don't.

Quote from: CRKrueger;695158My question would be, if the GM is so good that he could pull off a hidden-mechanics game, and all the players trust him, why do you need mechanics to begin with?

That's my thought, though obviously, others disagree. To me, if the player can't tell the difference between hidden rules and GM fiat, there is no difference to the players. Or to the GM, really, since "I'm going to use these mechanics" when the players have no input is just another form of GM fiat.

Quote from: CRKrueger;695158I've played D&D where the GM kept track of all player's HPs.  It sure eliminates some of the weird situations that crop up with HPs when players can't reliably factor current HP totals into choices.

It does. But its also reliant on the GM accurately describing the PCs injury level to each player at all times. This is a good example of how I found this kind of play can actually not be the most effective way to immerse the players into their PCs, as the game can become an exercise of "guess the GM".

Amber runs a little like this. Especially if you do the auction blind so no one knows where they rank until they compete over something.

What I mean but this is that

i) There are 4 stats which in the base game cover how good you are at skills as well as the 4 stats themselves.
ii) those stats are kind of fuzzy
iii) the Powers in the base game come in big chunks and the description of thsoe powers is much more about decribing how they work in the fiction rather than it is about providing mechanics as to how they work
iv) Your stats exist on an open ended scale and if you bid blind unless you buy down a stat you really have no idea where you sis on that scale becuase its determined by the ranks not he points spent
v) When you do combat or use powers you decribe what you want to do and the GM adjudicates if it work
vi) damage is decribed there are no HP or heal rates etc recorded

The only exceptions might be sorcery and items.
Sorcery has quite complex mechanical rules in the game although they are trying to mimic the actual mechanics of sorcery in the fiction as opposed to creating a set of meta mechanics about range and effect and damage that exist in game but would make no sense if two sorcerers discussed them in such terms in character.
Item generation is very old school point buy but there is no reason why the GM couldn't just ask PCs the rough power of an item then spend that many points in the background on it. In any case whilst the point buy mechanism is mechnaically precise the actual effect of the items in play is less so becuase the rules for damage and effects are more descriptive. So the mechanically defined item is interacting with a universe where everything esle is described by narative.

So on the basis that Amber is a lot liek this yeah I have played games like this loads of times :)

(I actually added a lot more structure to my falour of Amber so my Amber is much less like this and the players have more mechanics to understand and interact with)

Ok,

Here is the difference between a totally freeform rpg with no rules and a gm,

and an rpg with a gm who is using the rules but the players just have a descriptive character sheet (no rules or explicit stats)



The gm is using rules. Thats the difference. Very different for the gm.

In my experience, a gm will run a more internally consistant game when using rules.
 


Now, the players may not see a difference unless the gm strugglers with not having any underlying rules.

But the players in my not so humble opinion, should hopefully be roleplaying and not metagame thinking if the character sheet has no explicit mechanical info on it.


If a player has a character sheet that says he is strong, agile, and athletic, he can make a judjement call if leaping a 10' chasm is do able.

The player does not need to know he has 50 percent chance to clear the chasm and a 50 percent chance to fall a bit short and catch the edge.

If the player says 'I leap over a 30 foot chasm' or the player says 'I leap straight up 20 feet' The gm can always warn that it is unlikely or impossible.

Just like a gm can say 'no roll to leap a 5 foot chasm'

I want the rules to be enforceable upon the GM. Otherwise, the ability to enforce an objective, simulationist setting is lost.

"Mother may I" destroys my immersion. I want the stuff on my character sheet to work the same way, every time, immune to GM illusionism and narrativism. Otherwise, we're not gaming, it's just some dude making stuff up. That's important, but the making stuff up is the meat and good, simple elegant rules are the bones.

Good rulings need good, transparent rules sets. I don't want a "GM as storyteller"experience. I want a setting represented by rules and I want the rules, not GM fiat, as my tools to interact with that setting.

This is for sandbox RPGs. Storygame RPGs are a different beast.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;695444I want the rules to be enforceable upon the GM. Otherwise, the ability to enforce an objective, simulationist setting is lost.

"Mother may I" destroys my immersion. I want the stuff on my character sheet to work the same way, every time, immune to GM illusionism and narrativism. Otherwise, we're not gaming, it's just some dude making stuff up. That's important, but the making stuff up is the meat and good, simple elegant rules are the bones.

Good rulings need good, transparent rules sets. I don't want a "GM as storyteller"experience. I want a setting represented by rules and I want the rules, not GM fiat, as my tools to interact with that setting.

This is for sandbox RPGs. Storygame RPGs are a different beast.

What if your character wants to attempt something that is not explicitly allowed by the rules?

I have yet to see an rpg ruleset that covered everything.

Gm's make judgment calls and make stuff up all the time.

I can't imagine not doing that.

The rules don't tell a gm what the evil lich king is going to do to ravage your homeland.  

If you are saying its fine for a gm to make stuff up, but when your pc gets hit with magic missile you want the missiles to always do 2-5 damage, I tend to agree.

Quote from: taustin;695201No. They don't. You can keep claiming otherwise, while stomping your feet, hands over ears, shouting "I CAN'T HEAR YOU" for as long as you want, but no, they don't.

You are wrong, and you can yadda yadda etc. and you'll still be wrong -- just a bit more extravagantly asinine than you already are.

Quote from: CRKrueger;695158My question would be, if the GM is so good that he could pull off a hidden-mechanics game, and all the players trust him, why do you need mechanics to begin with?

How good the GM is, is beside the point. The question, why do you need mechanics, is independent. Hobby gaming didn't start compiling algorithms to "make up for crap GMs"; it started compiling algorithms to save labor.

Doing without such formalisms started in professional kriegspiel as a reaction against crap abstractions. RPG history starts with the benefit of combining good tools with GM judgment a recognized wisdom.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;695444I want the rules to be enforceable upon the GM. Otherwise, the ability to enforce an objective, simulationist setting is lost.

Not at all in the long accepted meaning of simulation. Why the fuck should the GM screw with that, whereas the players supposedly won't? Giving players complete and perfect knowledge of the universe a priori, rather than needing to discover the laws, is just the opposite of simulating their roles -- the central concern of a role playing game (as opposed to a mathematical model in which the player has no role).

Giving the players the power to dictate the laws of the universe goes even further afield, and that's what you get when they are permitted to "enforce" an abstraction that in fact is not simulative (or is poorly so) in a particular case, over riding the GM adjudication that is the main point of having a GM in the first place! Why not go play a computer game, if a damned robot is what you want?

QuoteI want the stuff on my character sheet to work the same way, every time, immune to GM illusionism and narrativism.

Illusionism and narrativism are not retarded by players having not only lots of numbers written on sheets of paper but also a fat stack of "rules" books (which, if they're from White Wolf, plainly inform them to expect illusionism and narrativism).

QuoteOtherwise, we're not gaming, it's just some dude making stuff up.

You are falsely conflating games in which you are not privy to all the machinery with games in which the machinery does not function predictably. It simply is not a true equation.

The sloppy thinking in this thread blows my mind. Personal preference is one thing, but I conclude that, in its insularity from its roots the RPG hobby has over the past 40 years accumulated a staggering ignorance.

I agree that Amber (or Lords of Olympus, or from what I've read of it LoGaS too) can be played this way.  It doesn't always start out that way, but in my experience within about one session or so, the players are never thinking in terms of the game mechanics any more, just in terms of what their characters can do.

RPGPundit

It does seem like one of the major objections is missing out on rolling the dice (or shifting the burden of dice rolls to the GM), so I agree that a diceless system which is simple for the GM to administer would work best in this sort of mode - partly because it'd take a lot of the load off of the GM, partly because if the players already buy into the idea of a diceless game they've implicitly bought into the idea of not rolling the dice themselves and are probably open to considering having less direct manipulation of the mechanics too.

Quote from: RPGPundit;695944I agree that Amber (or Lords of Olympus, or from what I've read of it LoGaS too) can be played this way.  It doesn't always start out that way, but in my experience within about one session or so, the players are never thinking in terms of the game mechanics any more, just in terms of what their characters can do.

RPGPundit

Thats a beautiful thing, and really nails down why I feel excessive mechanics ruin immerssion for me.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;695444I want the rules to be enforceable upon the GM.

:rotfl:

Y'know why this is so funny? Because you whine and complain about other referees while you yourself appear to be a fucking (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=616037#post616037) trainwreck (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=694021#post694021) when it comes to the rules.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;695989:rotfl:

Y'know why this is so funny? Because you whine and complain about other referees while you yourself appear to be a fucking (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=616037#post616037) trainwreck (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=694021#post694021) when it comes to the rules.

Touche!