Yes, it's all a conspiracy...

Quote from: King of Old School;300637It's obvious to me that you're a cunt.  Again.

I have no patience with people who claim to know what they're talking about when they don't, are corrected, and then pretend that whatever's explained to them doesn't make sense.

You already did this in the "Evolution of Rules over GM" debate. You throw a basically flawed assumption, and then, when your assumption is discussed as being flawed, you ascribe twisted motives (rhetorical and otherwise) to the people disagreeing with you and keep evading the arguments until you finally claim the opinions are so divergent that all discussion is pointless.

Well, man up, my liege. Tell me when you're ready to make an actual argument, not an assumption, and stand by it without evading the actual discussion.

Quote from: flyingmice;300572In other words I agree. Roleplaying without rules is not a game.

Aren't safe words, rules ?

Regards,
David R

Quote from: One Horse Town;300439If you don't trust your GM's decisions, get a better one or play with people you trust!

For me, it's not about decisions, it's about that one decision. You know, that one. The one you're convinced is utterly, entirely wrong. For example, I shapeshifted into a bear in one game and the GM said I was slow. Bears aren't slow. They're just not.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;300665For me, it's not about decisions, it's about that one decision. You know, that one. The one you're convinced is utterly, entirely wrong. For example, I shapeshifted into a bear in one game and the GM said I was slow. Bears aren't slow. They're just not.

Seanchai

If that's just that "one" decision, then why not just move on and enjoy the rest of the game?

Quote from: David R;300655Aren't safe words, rules ?

Regards,
David R

Damn David, are you games that intense that the players needs a safe word?

Quote from: Drohem;300672Damn David, are you games that intense that the players needs a safe word?

I dunno. My players keep mumbling, "think of a happy place, think of a happy place".

I keep slapping them. There is no happy place. "Fuck immersion, man! Fuck emulation ! We are Gygax's unwanted children? So be it! First you have to give up, first you have to *know*... not fear... *know*... that someday your character is gonna die."

Regards,
David R

Let's set aside semantic arguments about what is a system and what is a game and all that shit. Semantics is what you do when you're trying to avoid discussing the actual point.

Quote from: Benoist;300483This. I agree with most of what Kyle was talking about but his conclusion. It totally is about trust between the participants at the game table, and their individual capacities to not be asses to each other.

The thing is that trust is not blind trust; I may trust my buddy, but that doesn't mean I believe or agree with everything they say, or think that their judgment is flawless.

So we have the common rules laid out for some consistency, and the GM bases their decisions on those on common law principles: "given the rest of the rules, what is consistent with them? And what about common sense?"

And as with a common law magistrate, the GM listens to arguments from those involved. The barristers in a court trust the magistrate, but that doesn't mean they agree with everything they decide, or that they don't try to influence them.

That's human nature.

Quote from: Old GeezerThere were no rules for this because we thought there couldn't be rules for everything.

Judging by the few thousand pages of rules in games like GURPS and D&D3.5/4e, geeks still don't realise this

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;300708The thing is that trust is not blind trust; I may trust my buddy, but that doesn't mean I believe or agree with everything they say, or think that their judgment is flawless.

So we have the common rules laid out for some consistency, and the GM bases their decisions on those on common law principles: "given the rest of the rules, what is consistent with them? And what about common sense?"

And as with a common law magistrate, the GM listens to arguments from those involved. The barristers in a court trust the magistrate, but that doesn't mean they agree with everything they decide, or that they don't try to influence them.

That's human nature.

*nod* I agree.

Quote from: David R;300704I dunno. My players keep mumbling, "think of a happy place, think of a happy place".

I keep slapping them. There is no happy place. "Fuck immersion, man! Fuck emulation ! We are Gygax's unwanted children? So be it! First you have to give up, first you have to *know*... not fear... *know*... that someday your character is gonna die."

Regards,
David R

hehehe.... someone more clever than I can make the appropriate Gygaxian-Bushido jokes here.

Quote from: Seanchai;300665For me, it's not about decisions, it's about that one decision. You know, that one. The one you're convinced is utterly, entirely wrong. For example, I shapeshifted into a bear in one game and the GM said I was slow. Bears aren't slow. They're just not.

Was there a rule for that? If not, then no matter how idiotic the GM's ruling, he wasn't breaking the rules.

The people who complain about "GM Fiat" often elide the distinction.

Make up your mind: is the problem that the GM breaks the rules, such as they are? Or is it that there's too much stuff which isn't covered by the rules, and the GM has final say over that stuff?

For the technically-minded, this post of mine from an earlier thread is relevant. But the sum of it is: all RPGs have stuff that isn't covered by the rules, which means that somebody has to decide by "Fiat". Maybe it's not the GM who decides--but whoever it is, there's no mechanical guarantee they'll decide in a way you find acceptable.

Quote from: King of Old School;300620No, I assure you that you can play GURPS straight out of the book without having to add anything beyond what's required to play any RPG (e.g. the immediate situation in which the PCs find themselves).  In fact, it strives to be complete to a degree that many find distasteful (visit any GURPS thread on RPG.net for examples).

But then, I expect that you know this to be true and are being disingenuous.  Such is life.

KoOS

Looks like my third edition Basic Set book is defective, then, because I am missing the chapter with dwarves and other races.  I can't seem to find the chapter on monsters and encounters, either, and there are only ten pages of spells.  I guess it isn't really geared towards fantasy.  There should be quite a bit on vehicles, then.

Hmmm...  Odd.  A bunch of pages in the middle on combat, but then four pages on vehicles, followed by a single page chapter on flight.  That seems awfully...  I dunno...  incomplete?  It's almost like the GM would have to fill in a bunch of stuff with their own rules or something.

So, in order to play in a fantasy campaign, the GM would have to write up the rules for all the races, write up the rules for all the monsters, write up a bunch of spells... Oh, almost forgot, go through the skills list and make note of what is appropriate.  I guess you can just crack the book and start playing, but it looks like the GM will be doing a lot of rulings during play.

Now I found them.  It says under the Magic Entities section that I can find thorough listings in GURPS Fantasy Bestiary and GURPS Magic, which, along with GURPS Grimoire, is apparently where I can find additional spells beyond the 97 they list.  The Basic book only lists two magical entities, and that seems kinda boring after a while. And I lucked onto the section where it says many other races are detailed in the Fantasy Folk source book.  Or, of course, they will be detailed in whatever GURPS campaign supplement I am using.

It seems like I would need those last two magic books in order to have an interesting and integrated set of mechanics for magic, and that first book to have a fair number of monsters for players to fight.  Of course, the Fantasy Folk is needed to have an assortment of races.  Four books, then, plus a campaign book if one catches my eye, and the Basic book.  Six books, then, and I am ready to play.

Too bad OD&D couldn't have gotten a bit of what those six books offer into their set of three digest sized booklets.  It would have been more of a game, rather than just a 'beta test' of a game.

Quote from: Seanchai;300665For me, it's not about decisions, it's about that one decision. You know, that one. The one you're convinced is utterly, entirely wrong. For example, I shapeshifted into a bear in one game and the GM said I was slow. Bears aren't slow. They're just not.

Your game interface was a person. In this case, the person made a bad judgement.

Some of us would rather expose ourselves to bad judgement calls than subject every game situation to the authority of a rule book. Some of us find rule-flipping and rule-memorization and rule-interpretation to be tedious and unfun.

Better to have a quick decision by a flawed person who understands the context of the situation, than a reference to an airtight system that cannot possibly take the unique game context into account.

Quote from: Benoist;300667If that's just that "one" decision, then why not just move on and enjoy the rest of the game?

Because, being human, people expect that it'll happen again. And, really, given enough time, it will.

Seanchai

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;300718Was there a rule for that? If not, then no matter how idiotic the GM's ruling, he wasn't breaking the rules.

Are we talking about GMs breaking rules or why, in general, people seem to prefer rules to GM fiat?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;300718Make up your mind: is the problem that the GM breaks the rules, such as they are?

No, I didn't mention rules at all. I mentioned a specific example in which the GMs

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;300718Or is it that there's too much stuff which isn't covered by the rules, and the GM has final say over that stuff?

No. Again, it's not that the GM decides things that aren't covered by rules, but the GM gets things wrong.

Seanchai