Quote from: ChrisBirch;885720Well we just unlocked the £300k bonus which is a set of Conan d20 PDF's courtesy of Conan Properties and a d20 to 2d20 conversion guide for backers!

More info here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/robert-e-howards-conan-roleplaying-game/posts/1522530

You just sold me and I have zero interest in the system.  I'm not anti-narrative like some others here (Savage Worlds is my current go to system and it has narrative bits*), I just think you (as a group)  made the narrative bits too central to the system and I don't think they do what you claim they do.  Still, you have created a great deal and I'm a huge Howard fan, so while I do not like the system, I do appreciate all the other things you have done and I really look forward to the art and other systemless bits.


*While I think you may have done a bit better just going with Savage Worlds, as you did with Achtung! Cthulhu, rather than your own system, it's hard to argue with success in this case.

Quote from: Jason D;885710It's to help the GM give the players great adventures in the flavor of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, which we are assuming is of interest to anyone who purchases or plays a game called Robert E. Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of.

Jason -

I note the mentions of mass battles and such - are the books that include the Hyborian nations including demographic data? Populations of major cities, the nation as a whole, things like that - the sort of data one would want to know what sort of militia they could call up for those battles, let's say - and distances, geographies, etc?

Any chance at all you could provide an abbreviated peek at an example of that information if it's available?

Quote from: Jason D;885710We're making a fairly traditional game that uses some narrative-style mechanics on top to better create Howardian-style adventures.

Your game has pretty regularly occuring narrative elements though.

When someone spends group momentum to succeed better at picking a lock, they are succeeding BECAUSE YOU SWUNG YOUR SWORD HARDER THAN NORMAL LAST ROUND (and banked the Momentum).

And when the GM spends Doom to let the picts gain initiative, they are going first BECAUSE YOU TRIED HARDER LAST ENCOUNTER (you bought dice with Doom).

These kinds of things have no connection to in-world cause and effect. They are entirely narrative, and they happen in nearly every exchange between player and GM.

This doen't necessarily make the game bad, but it's pretty undeniable that this is a full-on (the elements come out nearly every round) narrativist game.

Quote from: ChrisBirch;885630hi there, we launched the pledge calculator today so that should help - here's a link - http://conan-calculator.modiphiusapps.hostinguk.org/

So yes we unlocked Print Subscription for our two big pledges that now get you all the books in print for 2 years. Basically as we unlock them now, they move in to the Kickstarter 3 waves of delivery. If not we then deliver the planned books over the next two years - backers decide and pay for the number of shipments they want. More info here.



I'll leave you with the new cover for Conan the Pirate by Tom Grindberg - nuff said :-)

So if I take Hoard of Yezdigerd, I can take it all in one shippment? I understand it will take a much longer time to get my stuff of course. But is it an viable option?

Quote from: koewn;885784Jason -

I note the mentions of mass battles and such - are the books that include the Hyborian nations including demographic data? Populations of major cities, the nation as a whole, things like that - the sort of data one would want to know what sort of militia they could call up for those battles, let's say - and distances, geographies, etc?

Any chance at all you could provide an abbreviated peek at an example of that information if it's available?

Still being written, but we're not focusing on raw numbers.

Can I pull that out that a bit?

When someone spends group momentum to succeed better at picking a lock, they are succeeding BECAUSE YOU ROLLED MORE DICE LAST ROUND.

And when the GM spends Doom to let the picts gain initiative, they are going first BECAUSE YOU ROLLED MORE DICE LAST ROUND.

Quote from: Enlightened;885797These kinds of things have no connection to in-world cause and effect.

Please explain to me how dice, character sheets, experience points, character classes, hit points, saving throws, and gamemasters represent in-world cause and effect.

Quote from: Jason D;885890Please explain to me how dice, character sheets, experience points, character classes, hit points, saving throws, and gamemasters represent in-world cause and effect.

This, a thousand times.

So often you see forum posts where people claim their system and/or tastes are "simulationist" or even talk of systems in terms of "physics engines". These people must be almost completely ignorant of the depth of the real world if they think a model written out in a few pages can hope to accurately or comprehensively simulate the real world. Take as just one example the sequential nature of most RPG combat systems. Such ordered events have nothing to do with a real fight where simultaneous attacks abound. Combat order is completely a narrativist trick to get a "story" out of a game in a regularised manner.

An RPG system is a model and therefore explicitly an abstraction. They will forever be fated to the abstract. They can't hope to have a high goodness-of-fit to the real world without being exceedingly dense and voluminous. Instead they have always been and always will be aiming for a goodness-of-fit to genre and story. That necessitates a number of approximations and assumptions in order to get the model to work (i.e., be an enjoyable game).

Quote from: Jason D;885890Please explain to me how dice, character sheets, experience points, character classes, hit points, saving throws, and gamemasters represent in-world cause and effect.

Experience points, character classes, hit points, and saving throws are pretty demonstrative.

When you do things you get experience.
Archtypes exist.
Hit points are meat points (GURPS, etc.) or fatigue points from dodging blows (depending on the game). In D&D 1E, I believe there is a blurb explaining several different in-world explanations for them (divine intervention, the experience of knowing how to shift out of harms way, luck, etc.).
Saving throws are like any other kind of task roll. "I try to avoid the danger."

And dice, character sheets, and gamemasters are real world things that don't have anything to do with game world internal cause and effect.

You say...

Quote from: Jason D;885890We're making a fairly traditional game...

So I'm confused.
Do you think that all games are actually narrative games because they contain the things you listed?

I curious, what do you think the difference between a traditional game and a narrative game is?

Quote from: Stainless;885905So often you see forum posts where people claim their system and/or tastes are "simulationist" or even talk of systems in terms of "physics engines". These people must be almost completely ignorant of the depth of the real world if they think a model written out in a few pages can hope to accurately or comprehensively simulate the real world. Take as just one example the sequential nature of most RPG combat systems. Such ordered events have nothing to do with a real fight where simultaneous attacks abound. Combat order is completely a narrativist trick to get a "story" out of a game in a regularised manner.

An RPG system is a model and therefore explicitly an abstraction. They will forever be fated to the abstract. They can't hope to have a high goodness-of-fit to the real world without being exceedingly dense and voluminous. Instead they have always been and always will be aiming for a goodness-of-fit to genre and story. That necessitates a number of approximations and assumptions in order to get the model to work (i.e., be an enjoyable game).

It's not a matter of simulating the physics of the real world. It's about things having some in-world footprint.

Abstract is fine. Unrealistic is fine. As long as there is some in-world explanation.

Quote from: Enlightened;885906Do you think that all games are actually narrative games because they contain the things you listed?

I curious, what do you think the difference between a traditional game and a narrative game is?

I keep bringing this up, and no one seems to be listening.

The distinction between "narrative game" and "traditional game" is pointless and abstract, meaning different things to different people.

Hexes/grids, combat rounds, experience points, leveling up, etc. are all weird abstractions that have nothing to do with anything actually imagined in a game world, yet are as equally abstract as are fortune points, gm resources, or momentum-style mechanics.

If you're judging games by these categories, what do you mean by them, and why is this distinction so important to you?

Quote from: Madprofessor;883843Crypts and things is an excellent hack of Swords and Wizardry/OD&D for swords and sorcery style games.  It's old school D&D hacked for the Hyborian Age with the REH Trademarks and serial numbers filed off. It's very different from RQ6 (classes/levels etc).  If you want Conan with D&D - this is it!

Thanks! I was a contributor to C&T.

(My house-rules for S&W were meant to emulate settings like Hyborea, and many of those rules were later integrated by Newt into C&T.)

So "Conan with D&D" is very much the point of C&T!

Quote from: ChrisBirch;885720Well we just unlocked the £300k bonus which is a set of Conan d20 PDF's courtesy of Conan Properties and a d20 to 2d20 conversion guide for backers!

More info here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/robert-e-howards-conan-roleplaying-game/posts/1522530

I was holding off on backing this kickstarter (I've come to dislike kickstarters in general). But this moved me to finally back it at the 60 pounds level (print book + the PDFs).

The entire catalogue of the previous Conan RPG was too good a deal to not take. And it'll be nice to have what promises to be a beautiful print rulebook (whatever I end up thinking about the 2d20 system itself).

Quote from: Jason D;885908The distinction between "narrative game" and "traditional game" is pointless and abstract, meaning different things to different people.

The terms are simply shorthand and you know that very well.

tl;dr version:
In a RPG...

• Some choices the player makes are the same choices the character could make.
• Some choices the player makes are ones the character can not possibly make.

These are two different things. Period.[/I]

Full Version:
Every RPG has mechanics that let your character interface with the setting.

Some mechanics are more abstracted than others.

When a player uses a mechanic, are they making a decision that their character in the setting could have made or are they making a decision that character does not have?

To some people the difference between these are immaterial.  The game is the game, the rules are the rules.  There's a lot of people to whom there literally is no difference because they never break through that 4th wall into their character to begin with, so, naturally, they never get pulled back out by a mechanic.

To other people though, if they are playing their character, they want to try and enjoy the experience of thinking as thei character as much as possible (you know, the whole "playing the role" thing).  The fact that I'm picking up dice and rolling when I attack instead of grabbing a sword and boffo larping it doesn't mean that my decision to attack isn't something my character can be doing, therefore I can make that decision and still be in the headspace of my character.

Once I get to decisions where I can choose a greater chance of success with the knowledge that the GM is going to get a similar boost, then I leave the realm of thinking as the character, to the realm of thinking about the character.

Every single action, I remove myself from the character, and as a player, decide whether I want to designate this action important enough to pay Doom for, knowing that I'm "kicking it up a notch".  

Doom is a mechanic designed to mimic the dramatic tension, ebb and flow of an electrically charged Howard story.  It works as intended.  I actually like the mechanic for what it is.

But, for my preferred Roleplaying experience, it's "too many mind".
Mind on the Doom.
Mind on the Momentum.
Mind on the Fortune.
For IC immersion I need "no mind".

Any system that includes narrative mechanics is like driving an extremely high end sports car.  It's designed for a specific experience, and that experience is ACTIVE.  You can't just cruise in a Lambo, you have to drive that fucker.  

Narrative mechanics are there to be engaged, they don't "fade into the background", that's not what they are for.  You get in there and work that Doom, and the more you put as a player to see things as a story and to actively engage with the story, the more you get out of the system as the 3 different point pools start flowing back and forth and things get really moving.

My group had a second session with the game, and it was fun...it's just not the same type of fun that our regular RPG sessions provide.

It's kind of funny, RPGs with narrative mechanics are one of the only sold products where you see people claiming the selling points of their product don't exist or aren't relevant.

Quote from: Enlightened;885907It's not a matter of simulating the physics of the real world. It's about things having some in-world footprint.

Abstract is fine. Unrealistic is fine. As long as there is some in-world explanation.

Do Luck or Fate have an in-world footprint? They're certainly not part of simulationist "physics" but are certainly part of genre simulation. Characters in stories can be lucky and may even have "earned" their luck - but they don't tend to stand around aware of the lucky/blessed status.

Quote from: Anselyn;885943Do Luck or Fate have an in-world footprint? They're certainly not part of simulationist "physics" but are certainly part of genre simulation. Characters in stories can be lucky and may even have "earned" their luck - but they don't tend to stand around aware of the lucky/blessed status.

Depends on the implementation.  Usually no, but sometimes yes.

For example, in WFRP1 Fate was literally that.  There was a cosmic battle between the Chaos Gods and the Gods of the Old World and even though you were a Halfling Rat-Catcher, you were someone who was Fated to take place in that battle.  As a result, you had a Fate score, but those points could only be used to stop you from outright dying, that's it.  There was no choice for the player to make regarding them.

Some games have similar Luck mechanics that are a bit more active, in that they allow for rerolls.  Again, in some systems and settings, Luck or Karma is actually a *thing* in that setting that does have some footprint.

In a lot of games though, there is no footprint.  However, usually a game with that type of Luck, it's trivially easy to ignore, remove, or simply treat as a "Lucky so less chance to die" aspect if you prefer.  The game doesn't expect Active engagement of the mechanic.

Some games, like Savage Worlds can ramp it up or down.  You can have a Pulpy, Cinematic Bennyfest, or you can tone it down, and limit the uses, but since the system was kind of designed for Full.Benny, it doesn't play quite the same.

I'd say 2d20 is like Savage Worlds, in that you could ramp it up or down, but it's more dependent on the narrative mechanics then SW is.  2d20 is a lot closer to Fate or Cortex on the spectrum, even if it doesn't go that far.