Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1039921Great ideas. I have already done some of the latter but moving that to the beginning of the chapter is brilliant. It is one of those ideas that is obvious once one hears or reads it but neither my editor nor  I had thought of it.

One way to go about it is the old school method of encounters and reactions, such as using the Mentzer Monster Reaction Table (I will never stop plugging this) for more than just monsters, such as using it for things like negotiation, manipulation, diplomacy, or what have you. If you are using a more modern iteration of d20/D&D then I ported it over to a d20 system for your convenience.

Mind you, though I mentioned having some wordage about alternate problem solving methods, I don't think you necessarily need a new mechanic for this. Even just encouraging it through roleplay and maybe some skill rolls might be sufficient.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1039964So what are the rules for bluffing, per Hoyle?

You bet and see if some one raises, calls or folds.

The object of the game is to win the pot. A player can win the pot in one of two ways:
After all bets are in, all players who are still in show their hands. This is called a showdown. The player with the best hand wins.

If during betting, a player makes a bet that no other players are willing to meet, that player wins the pot without showing his/her cards.

In any case bluff, bluffing appears MANY times on the Hoyle website for poker rules. I counted seven.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1039966Or perhaps a reader might fairly assume that if something is given a lot of pages, it's important to the writer, since a writer spending a lot of pages on something irrelevant and few pages on something relevant is, well... a stupid person.

Writing a long combat chapter and then being surprised when players think the game is largely about combat is like building a website full of porn videos and then being surprised when people say it's porn.

Would this then imply OD&D is about exploration, not combat, since it only obliquely references how to fight anything and the "alternative combat system" is just a few paragraphs?

Quote from: Brad;1040038Would this then imply OD&D is about exploration, not combat, since it only obliquely references how to fight anything and the "alternative combat system" is just a few paragraphs?

...Yeah? Of course it is. D&D being "about combat" was a very alien notion when it stumbled awkwardly into the limelight around 3.0

Quote from: Opaopajr;1039838The author, like any artist, loses control of the interpretation of the text upon release to the audiences of the world. The author may try to clarify as best as they can, and schools of thought may attempt to put primacy upon certain contextual ways. But once the work leaves the maker its message is dependent upon who receives it.

And thus you now know how Tzeench causes chaos!

I agree. It made me think of a story my mom told, about a teacher in college who said a particular line of poetry mean something, and nothing else. One of the other students brought in a newspaper clipping. TS Eliot was asked in an interview what he meant when he wrote that particular line of poetry. He replied "I don't remember. It means whatever you want it to mean."

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1039920Mechanics for resolving negotiation, persuasion and such reduce the amount of  roleplaying required and the people who don't bother,  because "it's just color" make it less enjoyable for some others and possibly themselves.  That people ask for such rules in the name of roleplaying. Go figure.

I have included skills like that but admit up front that they are little used in our campaigns and heavily influenced by bonuses for what the character says when they are.

We roleplay the negotiation and persuasion. I give bonuses (or minuses) based on the contents of the roleplaying (not the skill of the roleplaying). But we use, and want, the rules for rolling to resolve what happens. It is fun when, as a joke, one character shouted "Yoohoo! Cave Catering! Someone called for food?" and was coincidentally right in front of the spy hole. And the roll went really heavily in favor of the characters.

But we're a pretty weird group in a lot of ways. We like the role playing and we like the roll playing too.

Quote from: Azraele;1040045...Yeah? Of course it is. D&D being "about combat" was a very alien notion when it stumbled awkwardly into the limelight around 3.0

I know, I was being somewhat sarcastic...it wasn't until I started playing 3rd that combat became a focus, to the point of characters being nothing more than a set of modifiers that helped with fighting. That isn't to say the old BECMI game I played from level 1-36 over the course of an entire summer wasn't filled with combat, but that was definitely for a purpose, not an end in itself.

Quote from: Tod13;1040047I agree. It made me think of a story my mom told, about a teacher in college who said a particular line of poetry mean something, and nothing else. One of the other students brought in a newspaper clipping. TS Eliot was asked in an interview what he meant when he wrote that particular line of poetry. He replied "I don't remember. It means whatever you want it to mean."

Sure. But if I say D&D is an instruction manual for shooting baby kittens into the sun with a huge cannon, I bet people will find my interpretation rather odd.
And an added wrinkle is that RPG are also games with rules, which does bring up the topic of RAW (Rules As Written) and RAI (Rules As Intended).

Quote from: Brad;1040052I know, I was being somewhat sarcastic...it wasn't until I started playing 3rd that combat became a focus, to the point of characters being nothing more than a set of modifiers that helped with fighting. That isn't to say the old BECMI game I played from level 1-36 over the course of an entire summer wasn't filled with combat, but that was definitely for a purpose, not an end in itself.

Oh I see. I shouldn't post drunk but... Yeah not gonna stop

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1039821RPGs are the only gaming hobby where you find folks who claim the people who think a game is about what its rules make it about to be stupid.

TT RPGS might be close to singular in that there really even needs to be any discussion about what the game is "about." Most other things that fall under the term 'game' are about winning them in some fashion or another and the most one needs to worry about are questions of victory condition (is it flat out win, beating a high score/opposition, or even 'winning, but not while using such and such cheap method,' recent example on Chirine's thread of wargamers 'beating' other side, but missing what actual victory condition was and thus losing).

On a meta level, all TTRPGs are 'about' having fun playing them. Beyond that, one can only really talk about what they urge, incentivize, or promote.  

QuoteBut it gets worse, as I've even seen people claim that combat rules are actually there to discourage players from engaging in combat. In other words, they're a penalty for engaging in a particular part of play.

I'm guessing that's a reference to osr D&D. And the thing is, the game is about combat and discourages combat. Is that having it both ways? Absolutely! Ever hear the idea that the goal of golf is to play as little golf as possible? Same with osr D&D -- the gp=xp with extremely risky combat absolutely incentivizes playing such as to minimize combat. The system is sublimely simple and it is amazing how that small amount of text can change the system so completely (and that's where the argument that the amount of text is not the deciding factor has the most merit).

Hoooowwwowwowwowwwwever, as has been think-pieced to death, pretty much the instant the game hit the market, people looked at it and said, roughly, 'why would I want to play a sword and sorcery game (and with all these lovely charts and rules regarding the determination of victory in combat) where I systematically fail both to sword, and to sorc? I'm instead going to...' and gone on to play the way they wanted to play in the first place, completely at peace with the people howling that they were somehow doing it wrong. And the battle for the control of the spirit of the game (and thus 'what it is about') has continued since.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1039838The author, like any artist, loses control of the interpretation of the text upon release to the audiences of the world. The author may try to clarify as best as they can, and schools of thought may attempt to put primacy upon certain contextual ways. But once the work leaves the maker its message is dependent upon who receives it.

And that's the other part. Neither the author, nor we, have any real say in what others do with the material. The future authors, at least, can learn from past failures to control said narrative and use that to shape their product to better incentivize people to want to use them the way said author prefers (if that's a goal).

Quote from: Brad;1040038Would this then imply OD&D is about exploration, not combat, since it only obliquely references how to fight anything and the "alternative combat system" is just a few paragraphs?

And let's not forget that CHARISMA gets a longer writeup than any stat, and if the rules on NPC reaction, negotiation, and hiring aren't longer than the combat rules, it's sure close.

And don't forget that treasure descriptions are a LOT more detailed and elaborate than anything about combat.

Quote from: Tod13;1040047I agree. It made me think of a story my mom told, about a teacher in college who said a particular line of poetry mean something, and nothing else. One of the other students brought in a newspaper clipping. TS Eliot was asked in an interview what he meant when he wrote that particular line of poetry. He replied "I don't remember. It means whatever you want it to mean."

It is one of the major issues of communication in general. How do we transmit intention, purpose, priority? And it extends to all facets of life. For a fun example see the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy."

Context is only everything. And human beings, with all their craziness and variance through time and space, are a universe of context unto themselves. And now you know you live in the Eye of Terror.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1040129 It is one of the major issues of communication in general. How do we transmit intention, purpose, priority? And it extends to all facets of life. For a fun example see the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy."

Context is only everything. And human beings, with all their craziness and variance through time and space, are a universe of context unto themselves. And now you know you live in the Eye of Terror.

I knew a guy whose job it was to proofread nuclear munitions manuals for problems like "remove the detonator." next page "But first disconnect explosive bolts A and B".

Quote from: Tod13;1040140I knew a guy whose job it was to proofread nuclear munitions manuals for problems like "remove the detonator." next page "But first disconnect explosive bolts A and B".

Subtract the 'nuclear' bit and that was a great episode of M*A*S*H -- bomb landed in the compound and the instruction manual for disarming it had that almost word-for-word (and thus they set off the bomb, but it was a propaganda leaflet-bomb).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1040190Subtract the 'nuclear' bit and that was a great episode of M*A*S*H -- bomb landed in the compound and the instruction manual for disarming it had that almost word-for-word (and thus they set off the bomb, but it was a propaganda leaflet-bomb).

LOL I remember that episode! From the conversation, something very close to what I wrote was something he actually found and corrected.