Quote from: Jackalope;258128No, actually, that's the point.  Fortune does not actually favor the bold, unless you use Action Points.

Then the GM is a fuckstick.

The GM controls the reactions of the NPCs and the game world generally. A reasonable GM will realise the difference between "bold" and "foolhardy", and respond appropriately to each. When someone's bold, it often takes foes by surprise.

In addition, bold with an alright plan is very often successful. Tactics, strategy, planning, equipment - all these things can more than make up for a lack of high skills. If a crack shot carrying a machinegun meets three guys with baseball bats in the open, obviously the three guys are dead. But if the guys scout out the place beforehand and set up an ambush, then the machinegun guy is dead.

Player smarts are more important than character skill, in a well-GMed game.

If of course the GM sets it all up so that no amount of planning will let your characters ambush foes, sneak into places avoiding fights, and so on and so forth, then naturally the reverse is true. But that would be a crap game.

It'd be a crap game because it's a social creative hobby, and there are two things nobody wants to hear the GM say:- "Nothing happens" and "your character wouldn't think of doing that." Both of those phrases crush player creativity. We may as well be playing a computer game.

Quote from: JackalopeIf you go charging into, swinging from the chandeliers and flashing your blade around like a proper hero

That's not bold, that's foolhardy. They're different things. Only Achilles gets to be foolhardy, everyone else has to settle for bold.

Quote from: JackalopeBecause who decides if the player's plan is smart?  The DM.  Who decides if it works?  The DM.  So really, player smarts really ends up being "player ability to play to DM prejudices and avoid the game mechanics by working the ref."

Again, that's a crap GM, or else just Jackalope's depressing cynicism as usual. A reasonable GM sets up situations and NPCs and when players come up with plans, decides if the NPCs can know of them and react to them. The plan is "smart" only in that it's something which has a chance of success. You only have to worry about GM prejudices if you've got a crap GM who moves the goalposts.

The GM doesn't get to say, "oh, but the foe would have thought about that, so here's this automated machinegun which just suddenly appears beside you," anymore than the player gets to say, "what? Of course I wear my armour in the bath!"

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;258133The GM controls the reactions of the NPCs and the game world generally. A reasonable GM will realise the difference between "bold" and "foolhardy", and respond appropriately to each. When someone's bold, it often takes foes by surprise.

[/QUOTE]

And this is where you are kind of bullshitting yourself, Kyle.  What's a reasonable GM?  How exactly are those distinction between what is bold and what is foolhardy made?  Aren't they ultimately just judgment calls made by the DM?  Aren't they then subject to the DM's prejudices and biases?  Aren't they limited by the GM's understanding of the world?

QuoteIn addition, bold with an alright plan is very often successful. Tactics, strategy, planning, equipment - all these things can more than make up for a lack of high skills. If a crack shot carrying a machinegun meets three guys with baseball bats in the open, obviously the three guys are dead. But if the guys scout out the place beforehand and set up an ambush, then the machinegun guy is dead.

See, this is where you completely lose me.  You and I have VERY different ideas of what defines "bold."  I call ambushing people craven and cowardly.  It might be the most effective tactic, but it's hardly heroic.

In fact, it's the thing I loathe most about old-school style of play.  The way it turns players into craven, weaselly bastards who won't even think of confronting a challenge head-on.  They become the exact opposite of what I consider bold, and are not what I consider heroic.

QuotePlayer smarts are more important than character skill, in a well-GMed game.

If of course the GM sets it all up so that no amount of planning will let your characters ambush foes, sneak into places avoiding fights, and so on and so forth, then naturally the reverse is true. But that would be a crap game.

It'd be a crap game because it's a social creative hobby, and there are two things nobody wants to hear the GM say:- "Nothing happens" and "your character wouldn't think of doing that." Both of those phrases crush player creativity. We may as well be playing a computer game.

Okay, but Kyle, what you are describing is exactly the sort of game I hate.  The sort of game where you get punished for heroism, and have to act like a rat bastard to get ahead.  Where being bold is always viewed as being foolhardy, and any attempt to act like a hero in a movie is punished because it's not compeltley sneaky and underhanded.

That is, in my experience, every bit as stifling and crushing of player creativity as anything else.

QuoteThat's not bold, that's foolhardy. They're different things. Only Achilles gets to be foolhardy, everyone else has to settle for bold.

See, from my perspective, you're advocating crap DMing.  You're displaying your own prejudices, and if I was a player in your campaign I would feel completely stifled and unable to be creative.  I would feel I had to fit my actions into Kyle's narrow little definition of what is bold and heroic, which happens to be completely at odds with my definition.

QuoteAgain, that's a crap GM, or else just Jackalope's depressing cynicism as usual. A reasonable GM sets up situations and NPCs and when players come up with plans, decides if the NPCs can know of them and react to them. The plan is "smart" only in that it's something which has a chance of success. You only have to worry about GM prejudices if you've got a crap GM who moves the goalposts.

Except that's not true, as you've demonstrated in this very post exactly what I'm talking about.  Either that, or you are a crap GM by your own definition.  I mean you are the guy I'm talking about.  You are exactly the kind of DM who killed all my poor fighters, and if I played with you I would totally have to be mindful of your prejudices to survive and thrive.

QuoteThe GM doesn't get to say, "oh, but the foe would have thought about that, so here's this automated machinegun which just suddenly appears beside you," anymore than the player gets to say, "what? Of course I wear my armour in the bath!"

I don't even know what you're trying to say here.

Quote from: JackalopeSo we necessarily make PCs better than normal folks, and start them off against challenges they can face, until they become badass enough to face challenges that are overwhelming...to normal folk.

So... hero is defined by facing chalanges that are overwhelming to "normal folks" Ahem no, hero is someone, who is facing chalenges, that are great (maybe overwhelming, but winning by sheer luck doesn't make good story) for him. Wouldn't it be boring, if the greek hero faced only chalenges, that are "piece of cake" for him, while being utterly overwhelming to normal folks?

CoC and Midnight are examples of Hector type heroism. The difference between being bold and foolhardly is not lost on players. Sometimes being heroic means contemplating the latter.

Regards,
David R

Foolhardy can be all right, even heroic.

Just don't expect survive.

While I find heroes of the "ordinary" and "mythic" variety (just to sort them out in my own head) both entertaining, there's something bout ordinary heroes that makes their accomplishments satisfying in ways beyond just being entertained. There's more to be said about guts, smarts, and spirit when there's real risk involved, win or lose.

Jackalope, it sounds to me like you really favour the Greek model more.  Otherwise, give me an example of the "anglo-saxon" model of heroism that matches what you're saying you want?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;258244Jackalope, it sounds to me like you really favour the Greek model more.  Otherwise, give me an example of the "anglo-saxon" model of heroism that matches what you're saying you want?

From what he has described so far, I think he means Jack Bauer from 24, model of heroism.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: RPGPundit;258244Jackalope, it sounds to me like you really favour the Greek model more.  Otherwise, give me an example of the "anglo-saxon" model of heroism that matches what you're saying you want?

Not really.  I like the cinematic model of heroism.  Like action heroes.

Like consider Die Hard's John McClaine.  He's a "normal guy," but he's obviously very competant, he can take an epic level of damage and keep fighting, and he regularly does things that I consider extremely bold, like leaping off the side of an exploding skyscraper with nothing but a fire hose to keep him from falling.

That is what I consider "bold" and "heroic."  That's what I want from gaming, as a player, and that's what I try to give my players as a DM:  the opportunity to do wild and crazy stuff.

The sort of playstyle Kyle is describing I find incredibly stiffling.  Because DM's like Kyle, in my experience, do things like say "Well the firehose would never possibly hold you, and you'd probably let go of it when you snapped at the end of it anyways, so make a strength check." ::rolls dice:: "You fall to your death.  Make a new character."

Do you know how many fighters I've lost trying to jump on the back of monsters?  Seven.  do you know how many times I've seen that work in a game of D&D?  NEVER.  You know how many times I've seen that work in fantasy fiction?  BUNCHES.

That's the thing that drives me crazy about the style of DMing Kyle is talking about.  As a player, you are entirely dependent on the whims of the DM.  You must play to his prejudices and biases.  You can't do anything he thinks is stupid or foolhardy.  You can't be heroic on your terms, but only on his terms.

And in my experience, those terms always fall far short of what I consider heroic.  They tend to fall into the range of the frightfully dull and "realistic."  It frequently comes off as the DM not wanting to let you do anything that might actually be awesome.

The worst part of this is that whenever I inherit a new player from one of these DM's, I have to spend months training them to not be so freaking timid and craven all the time, to actually take risks and do heroic things.  I'm always telling my players that I run a cinematic game, and that I am more likely to hand out big circumstance bonus for actions which are daring, creative and heroic than I am to reward devious and underhanded attempts to "beat the game."

A little while ago in the Ruins of greyhawk campaign I'm in, I had to temporarily play this little kid, Toby, who follows are group around.  he had to beat a goblin in single combat, in order to free us.  So we get into the combat, and after 15 rounds (lots of misses) of the same steps repeated over and over, I was getting bored.  So I tried something tricky.  The goblin had a few javelins, and would throw them at me.  if I moved away from them, he'd go collect them.  After he ran out, he would charge me with his shortsword.

So I got him to throw his javelins at me, readied an action, and when he charged me I grabbed a javelin and set is as a pike to catch the Goblin on his charge.

You know what the DM did?  Pointed out that you can't set a javelin against a charge, applied the non-proficient weapon penalty, and then applied the improvised weapon penalty, giving me a whopping -8 to hit.  So of course I missed, since I needed a critical.

This is why I laugh when Kyle says "Fortune favors the bold."  I tried something bold, rather than doing the safe thing and continue to repeat the same pattern of combat (which is what I went back to, and a boring half hour later the goblin finally fell to the death of thousand papercuts), and got reamed by the rules.

My bold action didn't play to the DM's prejudices, so he punished me for being clever by stacking massive penalties onto my attack that made not doing it the smarter option.  If it had played to his prejudices, then maybe it would have worked.  Me, I would have waived the penalties, given the player a +2 to hit, and had the javelin score double damage it it worked.  Totally outside the rules, total judgment call.

But at the end of the day, it's all DM whim.

Sounds like you need the stunting rules from FtA!

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;258311Sounds like you need the stunting rules from FtA!

Possibly, I'm a big fan of stunting rules in general.  I also like action point mechanics, sometimes (kind of hate them in Eberron, as I can NEVER actually seem to use them, they're way too limited in their application, and need to be spendable on things like Save DCs for spells).

That's sort of off the point though, which as gotten a bit lost.

Here's the point:

We say that Hector is better than Achilles, but in reality, nobody actually games like that.  Nobody actually plays Joe Ordinary up against impossible odds, entirely reliant on "player smarts" to survive, because it quickly becomes obvious that "player smarts" are extremely limited by "DM's imagination."

Taken to its extreme, the style of play Kyle is describing require absolutely no rules, no character sheet, and no dice.  The player simply describes who is character is,and then what he does, and the DM decides if its reasonable and if it succeeds.  The only thing needed is "player smarts."  And of course, in that style of play, the player is extremely limited by what the DM considers reasonable, likely, and foolish.  Anyone who has ever played with a DM dumber and less informed than themselves knows where I'm coming from on this, the sense of absolute frustration with a DM who thinks your every plan is foolhardy and certain to fail because he's either on a different page than you, or lacks imagination.

So instead we have characters that can actually do something, and we have rules that remove the arbitrariness of the DM's imagination as an obstacle to playing how we want.  Characters that exist somewhere between Hector and Achilles.  And that's my point, that the real potential for gaming is between those posts, not at the extremes.

Which means it's kind of ridiculous to insinuate that people who don't want to play utter clods -- powerless cannon fodder whose only advantage is the smarts of the player playing them, an advantage that is completely unreliable and entirely dependent on how "good" the DM is -- want to play gods.

I think it's clear that Kyle should play Nicotine Girls. Those little slappers are heroic if they get through a day.

droog I like heroic, not depressing.

I like to see ordinary people doing extraordinary things, not ordinary people doing ordinary things.

And no, I wouldn't have Detective McClaine's player make strength checks for him to swing down a lift shaft. That's because I GM for game groups, and groups act as a team, and so they make plans so that no-one has to live or die on the basis of a single dice roll.

Player smarts are more important than character ability or player dice rolls.

Anyway, McClaine is not a Hectorian hero. He's an Achilles dressed as a Hector. That's the nature of movies - script immunity is a powerful protection. rpgs are different to movies, they have no script, so for PCs to survive the impossible, they need hero points, GM fudging or the like.

Mixing up the two types of heroism is something our Western culture does a lot. It's why there are all these arguments about munchkinism, or about whether Challenge Ratings are a good idea, about the Tyranny of Fun and all that stuff. Ultimately they're arguments about whether we should play in a game Hectors or Achilles, which is the most fun.

Perhaps it's better to think of it as a range. For example, Clash's StarCluster games have people generally Hector-like, in that they are competent but very much mortal. However, everyone has 1-3 "Lucky Breaks" each few years of their lives - their moment to be Achilles. That's not a lot, though - compared say to a GURPS character with high levels Luck, once every five or ten minutes of play.

For my part, if games have any kind of fudging mechanic at all, I favour ones where the players can choose individually their levels of fudging - so, XP as Hero Points. If you survive by luck all the time, then you don't improve your skills; if you survive only by skills, then they improve. This lets players individually choose to be swashbuckling or gritty as they wish.

One neat mechanic, in a game I played online once, was to have Hit Points as Hero Points. It was called Drama Dice or something, when you reached zero you were unconscious or dead, you could spend them to turn failures into successes, and you lost them as you got injured. I can't remember the name of the game though, and haven't seen it since. But it's another that lets the player decide the level of fudging.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;258332droog I like heroic, not depressing.

Don't knock it till you've tried it. Seriously, if you're sincere in your expressed preferences, you may well find something in it. Try playing it with non-gamers.

As for me, I like playing NG and HeroQuest. Horses for courses.

Quote from: Jackalope;258284That's the thing that drives me crazy about the style of DMing Kyle is talking about.  As a player, you are entirely dependent on the whims of the DM.  You must play to his prejudices and biases.  You can't do anything he thinks is stupid or foolhardy.  You can't be heroic on your terms, but only on his terms.

Maybe that's what d20 was/is trying to avoid, by having specified difficulties for doing particular things.

Quote from: Age of Fable;258338Maybe that's what d20 was/is trying to avoid, by having specified difficulties for doing particular things.

Tyranny of Fun!