Quote from: Aos;545518ITT: textwalls textwalling textwalls that don't even know they're textwalls.

You are posting in a textwall thread.

Quote from: John Morrow;545560You are posting in a textwall thread.

I hate to admit this, John, because i know that you have a lot of good stuff to say about gaming, but it's the textwall and endless links that stop me from engaging with you.

Shallow, i know, but i simply don't have the time to get involved in such back and forths, and it makes me a little sad.

Quote from: John Morrow;545560You are posting in a textwall thread.

It's what I do John, when I'm not trying to take over the world that is.
Look I used a smiley!

Quote from: One Horse Town;545561I hate to admit this, John, because i know that you have a lot of good stuff to say about gaming, but it's the textwall and endless links that stop me from engaging with you.

Shallow, i know, but i simply don't have the time to get involved in such back and forths, and it makes me a little sad.

For me it's a lack of energy. A few years ago I would have done it, but grad school essentially killed my attention span.

Quote from: Aos;545563For me it's a lack of energy. A few years ago I would have done it, but grad school essentially killed my attention span.

What's this thing you call 'grad school?'

Quote from: One Horse Town;545564What's this thing you call 'grad school?'

It's a gateway to bitterness and unemployment.

Quote from: John Morrow;545410That's not the problem, as I see it.  The problem is a matter of degree.

Ideally, yes. But when I see people bitching on ENWorld because the playtest documents include "mother-may-I" features like guidelines for assigning DCs not listed in the rulebook, I'm forced to conclude that the "degree" in question has reached idiotic proportions.

QuoteIn this old Usenet message Mary Kunher discusses how players and GMs may assess situations differently and how relying on the GM to make that assessment can be unsatisfactory...

Mary was a special flower whose ability to roleplay could be disrupted by someone breathing the wrong way at the gaming table. I always respected her ability to articulate her perspective and her needs, but her experience is way out on an extreme. Unless I'm actually playing with Mary Kuhner, I'm not going to use her experience as any kind of guideline for what needs to happen at a tabletop.

Furthermore, quoting Mary is an interesting choice. IIRC, she didn't use a tabletop grid or miniatures. The "objective mechanical system" she's talking about is, in fact, the exact same mechanics that Benoist and I are talking about.

The idea that the only way a GM can communicate an objective mechanical model of the game world which the player can then manipulate through objective mechanics is through a battlemap is false.

Quote from: John Morrow;545426Yes, this can happen, but why not take a look at why it happens rather than take the tool away?

Because it is specifically the tool that causes the problem: It is the presentation of a map on a grid that triggers the problem in these players. In order to solve the problem, you have to take away the process of measuring distances on the tabletop.

QuoteCan you give a specific example of what they did that you didn't like with the map and markers and did differently without them?

It's difficult to find a direct apples-to-apples comparison because they didn't interact with the exact same scenarios.

But, for example, these players would generally confine their movement on a grid to the default mechanics for moving around the grid (by counting out spaces). When the grid wasn't present, they would interact with their environment in a much more dynamic and varied way. Present them with the map of a rope bridge and they walk across the bridge; present them with the description of a rope bridge and they'll do things like shake the bridge to knock people off or cut through the ropes.

A common malady is the perception of the world in two dimensions because they're looking at a two-dimensional map. Remove the map and these players would suddenly start swinging on chandeliers.

QuoteThe problem is not that non-verbal depictions are required to take them into consideration.

Not in my experience. For example, just a couple sessions back in my OD&D campaign I had players making decisions like "we'll wait for them to go past and then attack them from behind" (facing), "do they have any ranged weapons? no? then we'll stand on this side of the rope bridge and hit 'em with ranged attacks" (range), and "we'll spread some oil around so that when they charge us they'll be slipping and sliding" (terrain features).

You and Gleichman are both very, very limited in your approach to these issues. You obviously like to interact with information in one very specific way and apparently have a great deal of difficulty believing that other kinds of information and other kinds of communication can exist.

I'm not trying to attack you with that statement. But I am trying to make you understand that you're operating under a very bizarre supposition in which a GM using graphic aids is communicating with players but a GM using words is not. The reality is that both forms of communication are valid and both forms of communication are capable of objectivity (and also capable of a lack of objectivity).

Quote from: Aos;545563For me it's a lack of energy. A few years ago . . .

tl;dr

Quote from: Justin Alexander;545598But, for example, these players would generally confine their movement on a grid to the default mechanics for moving around the grid (by counting out spaces). When the grid wasn't present, they would interact with their environment in a much more dynamic and varied way. Present them with the map of a rope bridge and they walk across the bridge; present them with the description of a rope bridge and they'll do things like shake the bridge to knock people off or cut through the ropes.

A common malady is the perception of the world in two dimensions because they're looking at a two-dimensional map. Remove the map and these players would suddenly start swinging on chandeliers.

I have noticed this as well.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;544996Unless they have been given ample reason not to trust the guy a few feet away from him...in which case you wonder why they're sitting at THAT table to begin with, but it does happen.

Well exactly, but that's a more important difference than it looks at first glance.  If the guy calling the shots is the GM, then if you don't like how this GM runs the game, you can just find another GM to run the game.
If the guy calling the shots is the game designer, then if you don't like how the designer thinks the game should go, you just can't play the game.

If game designers get to call the shots, then every single game of RIFTS would feature a -10 penalty and no bonus to dodge ranged weapons, every single Vampire game would be about dealing with your humanity, and every single game of LotFP would be full of whatever bullshit idea Raggi defines as "weird fantasy".  There'd be no Dark Albion, there'd be no vampires with uzi-and-katana trenchcoats, and there'd be no surviving RIFTS characters.

Fuck that. Speaking as a successful game designer, its the GM who MUST be the boss in an RPG group.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Planet Algol;545607I have noticed this as well.

I've said this more than once but I have been subtle.  To be concise and specific I have mild CP. I can walk with braces but a scientific fact about some forms of CP is that your multitasking ability degrades sharply after 3-4 inputs.  So yes, grids and Dwarven Forge stuff combined with battlemats and miniatures literally causes overload and shutdown for me. I just don't need that many different simulation vectors to immerse myself in the situation via rpg's and the more you add the more locked in I get until either total boredom or shutdown arrives.

Quote from: B.T.;545517Only the DM should know the rules because otherwise the players might get ideas about what they can do.

Absolutely. Players become far more lame and uncreative once they think they know what they can or can't do.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;545621Absolutely. Players become far more lame and uncreative once they think they know what they can or can't do.

RPGPundit

I am so glad you have a sense of humor and recognize irony and stupidity all at once.

Quote from: Mistwell;544725I think the "pleading, subservient tone" is a vast exaggeration on the part of the people making the argument.  I have seen convention and game store games where I can at least see some players perceiving the events are playing out that way.  I don't tend to think like those particular players, but I think that's where it sources to.

I think the assumption that this never exists is false, I just think it's not a common thing, nor do I think a set of rules should be written with the lowest common denominator in mind.  But I do think bad DMs are fully capable of making this happen.  I think you're giving too much credit to just how bad some DMs can be.  And, how bad some players can be.  I am not fond of the "badwrongfun" type of argument, but there definitely are some truly fucked up DMs and players out there (however rare they might be).  The thing is, I don't think any rules can solve for that problem - not even if you had 5000 page tomes dealing with every conceivable situation.

Sorry the thread has moved on since this, but I have living to do on the weekends, so I respond when I get to it Anyway, I suppose I can agree with you here, but still stand by the view that the "mother may I" non-argument is a fallacy made in bad faith that uses the problem you're describing as an excuse by folks who don't actually like RPGing anyway. This is a people problem, and trying in any way to blame the game is at best a mistake and at worst an outright lie. It's not even a very good lie. However, it makes assholes that use it, like Gleichman for example, stand out really well. Kinda like a big neon sign indicating who's going to lie, denigrate, and belittle (it's sad really, because they feel the need to drag others down to feel better about themselves, but if they can't take responsibility for their own issues I'm certainly not going to lose sleep over their emotional pain) rather than discuss anything in good faith or get the therapy they desperately need.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;545299It's a cooperative storytelling game, and in order to cooperate or add anything, each player has to be in control of their own additions to the story.

:forge:

While it can be,and is played that way by some, cooperative storytelling isn't D&D.