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.

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 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.