Quote from: SpikeLeaving aside the letter codes that no one cares about anymore:

Character Gen doesn't intrude in the play at the table, unlike the mechanics being described here.

Just as a guess....

That was my guess too. CharGen is off-line.

-clash

Interesting thought about the Mechanic of DitV and why I think I like it.

With a skill-based system like GURPS (the system of choice in my group) there's a tendency to confront a problem as a Skill Check. If you make your roll, you solve the problem - and alot of the time, this short-circuits the "role playing" aspect of Role Playing, and is subsequently one of the problems I sometimes have with my RPing experiences these days. There's no drama to defusing a bomb with an "EOD Check - beat a 15", as it were.

With a bidding system (or even a system of opposed skill checks/multiple skill checks) there is more interaction between GM and player, and hence (I think) more of an opportunity (even if not taken) to "role play" any given situation.

Am I too off base on that score?

Quote from: WerekoalaWith a bidding system (or even a system of opposed skill checks/multiple skill checks) there is more interaction between GM and player, and hence (I think) more of an opportunity (even if not taken) to "role play" any given situation

What do you mean by "role-play" in that context?

Quote from: SpikeLeaving aside the letter codes that no one cares about anymore:

Character Gen doesn't intrude in the play at the table, unlike the mechanics being described here.

Well, it does intrude in the sense that your PC, including his backstory, has been handed to you by the system. The structure is the same: you roll some dice (and metagame as you do), and then extrapolate a story from the results. ("Barely made his Survival Roll this term on an Exploration mission, I guess his Scout/Courier stumbled upon a Zho ship.")

Re. GNS, people may not invoke it quite so frequently these days, but it's not like it's been replaced by anything that's profoundly new, coherent and detailed. So one might as well continue to use it as a descriptive shortcut for playstyles until something better (not the "Big" "Model") comes along.

E.g., right now I'm wondering whether it's because in Trav chargen the G actually produces (etc) the S rather than, as I thought, the N, that's the reason why I like it.

Quote from: John MorrowWhat do you mean by "role-play" in that context?

Hmm. Well, keeping with the one-roll-solves-all example of a bomb defusing:

One Roll: You make it, you defuse the bomb. Move along. You fail it, it goes off. Next character.

Bidding or Opposed Checks: You put your initial effort into it and "bid" xd6 for success. The GM bids xd6 against you effort. This can be described in-character as stating "I gently open the casing and cut the green wire." If you win, you defuse the bomb, but if you lose, the GM can "play" the bomb as it were and state "As you cut the green wire, the yellow light starts to blink faster." initiating more bidding on YOUR part to try to stop the explosion. The GM can continue to bid against you, etc. until the issue is resolved.

Am I making any sense here? I just think that bidding (or again, multiple opposed skill checks like Spycraft 2.0 offers) is a more.. well, its EASIER to make a situation tense, to infuse it with a chance of failure (or the appearence of such) than a straight up skill roll. YMMV of course.

Quote from: David RThis was not much of a problem for my group.

Oh, it's no problem for me either - we just don't play the game as written. It does, however, mean that the game as written doesn't actually do what it claims to do, which is to make the players the sole arbiter of morality in the game.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThat's a very good point. It's why I intuitively disliked the duel of wits in BW. That mechanic transforms roleplayed social interaction into a high school debating club (or the Oxford Union, for our British friends). The substance of the argument, and the PC's investment in it, don't matter at all, except as modifier to a roll. What matters is the player gaming the system at the very moment when the RPing should be at its most intense.

As I understand it, the duel of wits rules in BW are meant specifically for instances where you're in a formal debate, or a situation where the style with which you present an argument is more important than its substance. Swaying crowds and that sort of thing. That's why the rules make it clear that it's not a "mind control" system for actually changing your opponent's mind about something: it's all about whether you convince the audience to support you. Audiences are fickle things and are often irrational, especially since an individual audience member might choose to support or oppose you for reasons entirely unrelated to the topic at hand - that's what I think the BW debate system simulates really well.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityRe. GNS, people may not invoke it quite so frequently these days, but it's not like it's been replaced by anything...

The Giant Fucking Spiders model makes its home here as true knowledges of RPGs.  You would do well to learn its scuttling, hairy strictures.

Warthur: Not so sure I'd use the 'formal debates only', but I only have Burning Empires.  The social combat there is used any time two characters (PC or not...) get into a verbal row, be it a shouting match, or an argument designed to showcase that one of the participants is a goober.

It is not mind control. One participant can simply refuse to play, and the (I'll steal the word from the Ditv discussion) Fallout is determined by a metadiscussion. One person simply can't declare that if he wins his opponent agrees with him.  All he can do is get the other guy to concede defeat...for now.  How well one wins or loses determines how big the 'Fallout' is, and wether or not the winner has to make a concession himself.

Frank wins, but his use of unhanded tactics and wanton spilling of indescretions makes him look callow and unpleasant... say.

QuoteOne participant can simply refuse to play, and the (I'll steal the word from the Ditv discussion) Fallout is determined by a metadiscussion. One person simply can't declare that if he wins his opponent agrees with him. All he can do is get the other guy to concede defeat...for now. How well one wins or loses determines how big the 'Fallout' is, and wether or not the winner has to make a concession himself.

This is starting to remind me of some teachers and LEGO...Reality is determined by consensus.
:rolleyes:

Quote from: fonkaygarryThe Giant Fucking Spiders model makes its home here as true knowledges of RPGs.  You would do well to learn its scuttling, hairy strictures.

I actually sublated GFS into my own version of the Big Model.

GM: "Round the corner of the hallway you suddenly behold... GIANT FUCKING SPIDERS!"

Player 1 (his wife): "Honey, I slept with the pastor."

Player 2 (pastor): "Oh shit, they got the prof... wha?"

Quote from: WerekoalaHmm. Well, keeping with the one-roll-solves-all example of a bomb defusing:

One Roll: You make it, you defuse the bomb. Move along. You fail it, it goes off. Next character.

Bidding or Opposed Checks: You put your initial effort into it and "bid" xd6 for success. The GM bids xd6 against you effort. This can be described in-character as stating "I gently open the casing and cut the green wire." If you win, you defuse the bomb, but if you lose, the GM can "play" the bomb as it were and state "As you cut the green wire, the yellow light starts to blink faster." initiating more bidding on YOUR part to try to stop the explosion. The GM can continue to bid against you, etc. until the issue is resolved.

Unless the bomb blowing up is off of the table in the second example (and it sounds like it might be), you can simply assign a time to perform a disarm task that gives you N tries before the bomb explodes (and maybe it explodes right away on a fumble) in a traditional skill system without jumping through hoops to have the GM "play" the bomb.  The bomb isn't an NPC.  It's a thing.

Quote from: WerekoalaAm I making any sense here? I just think that bidding (or again, multiple opposed skill checks like Spycraft 2.0 offers) is a more.. well, its EASIER to make a situation tense, to infuse it with a chance of failure (or the appearence of such) than a straight up skill roll. YMMV of course.

All you seem to really want is more rolls before the final result is figured out.  As I mentioned above, that's easy enough to do with a conventional skill and task system.

On the topic of Bomb Disarming I can definitely see an advantage to NOT just breaking it down to a simple die roll.  I mean, it's fairly nerve wracking, and you want the player to be fully committed to his character's actions.

I'm not sure dice bidding is necessarily the way to go (with opposed bids from the bomb?? ugh...)

But taking the time to scrounge up every penalty and bonus to the roll possible could definitely serve to rachet up tension at the table, especially if the player is having to come up with positive bonuses on his own....

It makes that one roll suddenly FEEL important, you know?


Or is that too metagame? Making the player feel something like his character would?

Quote from: Pierce InverarityAs an afterthought: Given that what one dislikes about this type of mechanic is the way in which the G produces (or codifies or steers or whatever) the N, how come one is madly in love with random chargen in Traveller?

For me, this is intimately tied to a point I made (or tried to make) over in the drowning & falling thread.

QuoteThe key would be the interpetability of the abstraction in how scenes are framed and resolved. E.g. if a character plotted to assassinate an opponent, I wouldn't waste a whole lot of time on description that wasn't well-connected to the representational mechanics available[....] If the game didn't have rules for toppling a bookcase on someone, throwing them off a cliff, or pushing them off a boat, then I'd be profoundly disinterested in narrating anything but the most general details of the dastardly deed, in order to justify rolling the dice.

Also,

Quoteif an event or attempt was worth much effort describing, it was worth representing mechanically. None of this "fortune at the middle" stuff where you make a generic roll and then indulge in story-time descriptions to explain how it came out that way; nor the approach (carried to the extreme in Wushu) where your description matters, but only trivially, in that any old thing will do as long as you say enough of it. No: announcing the action & rolling the dice is the action (in a sense), and either hard & fast rules or an external intellect (in the form of the GM) would ensure that whatever you described your character doing would be considered fairly, in resolving the outcome.

Now I suppose someone might say I was arguing for rolling dice whenever somebody described anything, like the GM talking about the landscape, and never describing at all if there wasn't a diceroll involved. But no, really, I'm just saying that if description can influence an uncertain outcome, it should be linked to the outcome, and if it can't mechanically influence the outcome, then it should just be optional. And by "should" here, I only mean "If the goal of the design is to support my sense of immersion & playing the character, as opposed to telling a story or engaging in amateur theater."

There is no game but GURPS and Kromm is its prophet.