Quote from: Baulderstone;879564What's with that big list of Moves on character sheets then. If he doesn't want players thinking of Moves, it seems he is using the "Don't think o a purple cow" method.

Why are you thinking of purple cows while playing a game, does your GM suck so much:D?

Seriously, that's like saying that a Wizard in D&D can't think of anything but his or her list of spells, or once these are gone, of his AC, HP and attack bonuses, and his saving throws;). I'm not even planning to discuss that point.

Quote from: AsenRG;879566Why are you thinking of purple cows while playing a game, does your GM suck so much:D?

Seriously, that's like saying that a Wizard in D&D can't think of anything but his or her list of spells, or once these are gone, of his AC, HP and attack bonuses, and his saving throws;). I'm not even planning to discuss that point.

The difference I *think* Baulderstone is referring to is that in a traditional game, the player says what the character wants to do, and there are rules in the game for the referee to adjudicate what happens.  Rules as "physics engine", with no other concerns.

AW came out at a time when storygames were just that, mechanics that determined who got to tell a piece of the story, the roleplaying aspect became less and less important.  Like Arminius said, AW was an epiphany of sorts that got the system back to "player says what character does, GM says what the world does".  However, AW still had metalayer mechanics like Hx and some world-editing capabilites that still placed the players partly in the role of story author.  Dungeon World cut down on this to a large degree, but the rules *are* different.

In a more traditional system, if I want to jump, I use the jump skill or some relation of strength, agility, size, etc...  It's an attempt (no matter how abstract) of modeling how you do something.  Even the most basic system is still relating things directly to the character.

Xworld has some very broad moves that don't really point to HOW a character is doing something but WHAT he's trying to accomplish.  In other words, even though it seems very close to a traditional result, it is approaching that result from the Conflict Resolution side, not the Task Resolution side.

Now if someone like Old Geezer runs say Dungeon World, I can imagine it's not going to look all that different from how he runs OD&D.  

One of the key aspects to how Xworld plays is how you treat the middle tier of results, the "Success but" results.  If the GM simply takes control of those and says what happens (or rolls), then it reduces the narrative aspect considerably.  However, as written, you get things like never running out of ammo, fumbling, or having certain bad things happen unless you choose to, or you roll so bad the system says "The GM may now slam you".  

The concepts of fail forward, blocking, "Yes, but" are all coming from the story side.  Tasks are only interesting if they "move things forward" in the shared story we're making.

If you're not consciously making a story, if you're just pretending to live a day in the life of your character, you might spend a whole session never leaving the bar.

A lot of people enjoy roleplaying with that minor authorship layer, that shared knowledge that we're not living a life in a fictional world somewhere, but we're inside an actual form of story and we're making it as we go, and our decisions as players keep that in mind to various degrees.

I don't.  So the Xworld system for me is going to fall flat, because all the baked in "permissions for the GM to bring the pain", "choose your complication" etc all is interfaced with as me, not the character.

If you bring that narrative mindset to any system you roleplay, well then, it's really no biggie at all, they're just adding some mechanics to make easier what you do anyway.  

If you don't bring that narrative mindest, then those mechanics become niggling reminders "hey, you're playing a game", "hey you're part author here, do something dramatic", "decide what would be cool to happen to your character".  I just think "leave me the hell alone, I'm roleplaying here".

Quote from: Arminius;879458Okay, so now here is something to worry about:

http://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4338-new-rq-designer-notes-part-two/

I saw the bit about "everything you can do is on your sheet" in the blog and just winced slightly, decided Jeff isn't au courant with the raging RPG theory debates of the day.

Too many electrons have already been wasted on people being au courant with RPG theory. More practice, less theory say I.
I also think we need more information before concluding whether to be alarmed or reassured by the statements. I can see how it could be read either way.

Getting away from games that require 4 page character sheets or fequent flipping through pages and pages of spells, feats, specific or special moves, and combat options sounds like a really good thing to me.

Restricting what a character can attempt to only and exactly what is explicitly written down on a sheet seems rigidly stultifying.

Time will tell whether we should be reassured or alarmed.

Quote from: Bren;879596Getting away from games that require 4 page character sheets or fequent flipping through pages and pages of spells, feats, specific or special moves, and combat options sounds like a really good thing to me.

Restricting what a character can attempt to only and exactly what is explicitly written down on a sheet seems rigidly stultifying.

Ken and I were talking about the former, not the latter. This isn't some bit of esoteric game theory - this is just an observation that Ken and I have made over the past 30+ years. You express something on the character sheet, players do something with it. You don't - they don't. You ask players to remember lots of rules that aren't easily inferred from the character sheet, and they tend to drop those rules from the game. Not always, but often enough. This is something the RQ2 and RQ3 character sheets were very good about (Ken thinks they were the gold standard for this). So is Pendragon.

So basically, if there is something that you as a designer want players to be doing with a game, make it easy for them to do it. Don't hide it on page 240 of your rule book - make it obvious and express it somehow on the sheet.

I hope this thread won't get too much more derailed by this...

http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/350 is basically where "lead with the fiction" is presented as a major departure from then-current indie fashion. (Don't be distracted by the Bakeresque rhetoric and begging of questions.) And https://corvidsun.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/are-we-ready-to-lead-with-the-fiction/ confirms this (from one of the leading sympathetic observers and participants in the indie movement).

From the first:

QuoteIndie rpgs are hypermechanized. Imagine a couple, dancing, and they're the fiction and the mechanics. Indie rpgs are strict ballroom, and the game mechanics are the man. He leads.

It only takes a few moments either in Google or the search facility of your favorite forum to find a jillion other examples of how "fiction first" or "lead with the fiction" is a really difficult concept in the storygame world.

I haven't played any of the *World games or even read them cover to cover, but in spite of Vincent's efforts, I think it's an open question how far they succeed in casting off the shackles of mechanics-bound play--based not only on readings by cranks like me but also reports of how people are really doing it. But that would definitely belong in another thread, and really, not one I'd be particularly interested in. I'm only posting this here because AsenG's reflexive apologia relies on a clearcut distortion.

Jeff--good stuff!

Stupid Question Time, starring Yours Truly!

What does 'Cult of The Designer' mean?

It's a bit like the idea of egoism in architecture (look it up): the idea that the designer knows best how people should use the thing, instead of anticipating and allowing for people to "colonize" it and make it their own.

From an audience POV the notion is very much one of trying to discern the intent of the designer and judging the game based on how well it enforces that intent. Rather than just saying, "What kind of fun stuff can we do with this thing?"

Quote from: CRKrueger;879594The difference I *think* Baulderstone is referring to is that in a traditional game, the player says what the character wants to do, and there are rules in the game for the referee to adjudicate what happens.  Rules as "physics engine", with no other concerns.

Sorry, but that's quite different from his objection. Which consisted of, mind you, "having a huge list of Moves".
Seriously? When this is a rule of the game, that applies even to the GM?

QuoteBegin and end with the fiction

Everything you and the players do in Dungeon World comes from and leads to fictional events. When the players make a move, they take a fictional action to trigger it, apply the rules, and get a fictional effect. When you make a move it always comes from the fiction.

It's a re-phrased "fiction first" from AW, BTW. It's in the whole family of Something-World games.
If you're not playing the game in this way, you're literally breaking its fucking rules. And in this case, who is responsible that you're getting results you don't like?

QuoteAW came out at a time when storygames were just that, mechanics that determined who got to tell a piece of the story, the roleplaying aspect became less and less important.  Like Arminius said, AW was an epiphany of sorts that got the system back to "player says what character does, GM says what the world does".  However, AW still had metalayer mechanics like Hx and some world-editing capabilites that still placed the players partly in the role of story author.  Dungeon World cut down on this to a large degree, but the rules *are* different.

Yes, there are those capabilities of the game. They're non-essential.

To explain what I mean by "non-essential", let me tell you about a similar game, Savage Worlds. It basically runs on "bennies", which allow you stuff like "I recover from stun", "this is just a scratch" (usually the time to use this one is when you get hit by exploding damage), and so on, character-related stuff. Basically, we've always treated them as "bennies".

SW also has setting-specific rules. Some of its setting versions allow you to do "Story declarations" by spending a bennie (you have three guesses which game was "TBP darling" at the time those supplements appeared:p).
Once, we sat down to play one of those supplements. Bennies flowed as expected. Two-fisted pulp heroics - of the gritty type, Savage Worlds is a meatmincer - were performed. My character died, out of bennies and alone, under a flurry of Indian steel, wielded by an Indian maharajah, because he didn't persuade his friend that the Indian maharajah is not to be trusted (we had fought thug assassins earlier). So my wrestler went to investigate him alone, jumped on his car...ran out of bullets against his bodyguard, chokeslammed the bodyguard, but didn't manage to grapple and the sabre-wielding Nemesis.
All in good fun. Meanwhile, the other player was sitting on a pile of bennies.
Nobody even thought to use a bennie for Story Declaration like "a pair of gangsters appear with illegal alcohol and open fire". It was even plausible.
We just weren't thinking that way, and there's that.

So, based on the above, do you think we were playing a story game? Or were we just roleplaying and using bennies like you use Willpower in V:tR, P:tB and others of its ilk?

That's what I call "non-essential". You track Hx in AW, because when it goes up by enough, you mark an advance. You don't have to play to gain Hx, so you don't do that. (And BTW, if you do that, it's close to be "breaking the rules" in AW. That really is a game that's anti meta-gaming).
And paradoxically, in the end, the story is also better for it. Which is what the book itself is telling you, at several places - "keep the story raw", is the one I can think of without effort, because of the unusual wording.

QuoteIn a more traditional system, if I want to jump, I use the jump skill or some relation of strength, agility, size, etc...  It's an attempt (no matter how abstract) of modeling how you do something.  Even the most basic system is still relating things directly to the character.

And in AW systems, you roll +Tough, +Physical, or whatever.

QuoteXworld has some very broad moves that don't really point to HOW a character is doing something but WHAT he's trying to accomplish.  In other words, even though it seems very close to a traditional result, it is approaching that result from the Conflict Resolution side, not the Task Resolution side.

Unlike 4e powers, no, they're not pointing only how you are trying to accomplish something. Some of them are straightforward, like the Basic Moves - seriously, "going aggro" on someone doesn't need explanation of how you can do it...you just scale it according to the severity of conflict, but you can "go aggro" on someone in a dispute, in a fist fight, or in a shoot-out. For the dispute version, go to the RPG Pundit's Own Forum...
The rest of them are character-specific. You're playing archetypes. Think of what extremely well-trained people should be able to do, then turn it up to 11. Here's an example from the DW SRD, because I don't have any AW-family books here with me.

QuoteThrow Down The Gauntlet

When you challenge someone to a duel, roll +cha.

✴ On a 10+, they choose 2 if they do not accept.

✴ On a 7-9, they choose 1 if they do not accept.

    You take +1 ongoing against them until they defeat you
    They lose the respect of their peers and underlings
    They retreat

"Monsieur, I believe my honour has been sullied by your words. Mon gant, monsieur - et preparez-vous a une rencontre avec vos ancestres!"
Said while leaning on a sheathed blade, and looking him square in the eyes, with a look of "sorry I have to do that".

(OK, I got carried away...the above is French for "My glove, mister-and prepare for a meet-up with your ancestors!")

What's not roleplaying here?

QuoteNow if someone like Old Geezer runs say Dungeon World, I can imagine it's not going to look all that different from how he runs OD&D.  

I'm not Gronan, but when I ran Dungeon World, it was no different from running ZeFRS and BoL the previous two weeks. We were doing a "S&S one-shots" serie;). If anything, ZeFRS was the most stumped, but I think it was because some players had worse hangover than usual that week:D!

QuoteOne of the key aspects to how Xworld plays is how you treat the middle tier of results, the "Success but" results.  If the GM simply takes control of those and says what happens (or rolls), then it reduces the narrative aspect considerably.  However, as written, you get things like never running out of ammo, fumbling, or having certain bad things happen unless you choose to, or you roll so bad the system says "The GM may now slam you".

And that's what I mean when I said "don't think of purple cows" to Baulderstone.
I mean, "if I do that, the system gets completely unrealistic" is a thing...
But the answer is simply "stop shooting yourself in the foot". Choose a "running out of ammo" option already, when it's available!
In fact, doing so is in the rules. "To do it, do it."
If you can't explain how you never run out of ammo...start describing how you just ran out of ammo. I don't need to be the GM, I can just ask you after you roll. "Aren't you running out of ammo now?"
And then, since "playing is a conversation", you have to answer me.

QuoteThe concepts of fail forward, blocking, "Yes, but" are all coming from the story side.  Tasks are only interesting if they "move things forward" in the shared story we're making.

Earlier this week, we were discussing how you "don't roll for stuff that's not interesting"...in The Fantasy Trip. No, that's not story logic.
Fail forward? Yes, it happens in real life, sometimes (and much more often the complete failure when you're talking well-trained people, which the PCs are).
And so on, and so forth. Put yourself in the mental space of a character like the ones in the Playbooks, and do what you should. The Moves will follow.

QuoteIf you're not consciously making a story, if you're just pretending to live a day in the life of your character, you might spend a whole session never leaving the bar.

Happened in an AW game. Of course, it helps that I owned the bar:D!

QuoteA lot of people enjoy roleplaying with that minor authorship layer, that shared knowledge that we're not living a life in a fictional world somewhere, but we're inside an actual form of story and we're making it as we go, and our decisions as players keep that in mind to various degrees.

Conversely, we can learn to play games that have that minor authorship layer without using these. See my example above.

QuoteI don't.  So the Xworld system for me is going to fall flat, because all the baked in "permissions for the GM to bring the pain", "choose your complication" etc all is interfaced with as me, not the character.

Just tell the GM to pick your complications, and be done with it.
And I can tell you that I've had situations when I had to choose between getting pain, and losing situational advantage.
No, I'm not a superhuman, it wasn't a fight. It was practice during the first 6 months of doing ground grappling. Guess what - I'm pretty sure a trained fighter would have seen it even better, and would have had more control over the outcome. You can't stop everything that's coming, so you pick what you can live with isn't exactly an uncommon situation.
So, again: get into the mindset* of the people that can do this kind of stuff, while mostly keeping control over its effects (as my partner at the time did). Many of those problems will simply go away by themselves! Not because magic, but because most stories we consume are written about such people.

*I remember coming to this conclusion in Uknown Armies, but then I forgot it. Then I was reminded about it in a MRQ2:Vikings campaign. Nobody was thinking about numbers during a major fight, we were choosing Manoeuvre after Manoeuvre...and it all seemed natural to all of us. Later that day I read someone complaining how picking Manoeuvres isn't how it goes.
Which is weird, because all of us, including the Referee, had experience with some kind of European or Japanese fencing. And neither of us had any issue telling how a given manoeuvre was scored.

Or at least that's my experience. I get more distracted by having a list of spells than by having a list of Moves. It might be that it works differently for someone else. In fact, I'm sure a lot of these people are going to post within the hour:p!
I can only ask them one thing. "Have you tried getting into that mental space and roleplaying from there?"
And if you tried and it didn't work, well - then a whole slew of RPGs aren't for you. But IMO, it's better to try and learn how to use those games than complain how they're not RPGs. They are, even if they're done with the people that want a bit of shared narrative in mind. And we can learn to play them without using the shared narrative;).


Also: when I started writing this, I was replying to the last post in the thread! Well, that's something.

Quote from: Arminius;879603I'm only posting this here because AsenG's reflexive apologia relies on a clearcut distortion.

And I don't care how the author thinks it's a major departure or stuff. I don't even follow his blog;). I am very much "death to the author" (and I take the XP for the kill, thanks:p).
It's not apologetics: I'm telling you how we've been playing this kind of games since Spirit of the Century. If you played them differently, and they felt jarring, maybe you should try playing them our way;)?

Sure, you can simply tell the GM "tell me what happens in the partial-success-with-complications", but if the table prefers to go RAW, ie. the player chooses, that's a completely different mindset.

If no matter what game you play, ammunition supply is assumed infinite, then that's a different game then running out of ammo depends on (how much you started with)-(how much you fired) or based on whether you or the GM thinks it would be a good dramatic complication.

If you're a "death to the author" type gamer, then it doesn't matter what game you play, you tweak it to serve, *but* saying that because I can throw the rule out doesn't mean the game wasn't designed with certain things in mind.  Rule Zero doesn't mean all games are just some flavor of an Ur-system.  Full-blown RMSS is not Barbarians of Lemuria and it never will be, unless you cut off and switch covers and lie.

The Rule Zero fallacy always goes like this:
Question: Why do you like Game A and not Game B.
Answer: Game A is different than Game B in the following ways...
Reply: But you can change Game A and Game B in those ways, so any difference or attempt at distinguishing characteristics is moot.

In other words any defense of SystemX that includes "but you can put the work in to change SystemX into SystemY" - isn't a defense of SystemX.

As far as Savage Worlds goes, yes Bennies are a form of OOC metagame economy usually meant to simulate genre, whether they move into full-blown narrative authorship or not.  Whenever you spend a Benny (unless you really cut down on their usage to represent something like stamina, effort, or whatever) you're not roleplaying.  Because your character doesn't have access to Bennies, it's not an In-Character decision, therefore by definition, you're not roleplaying when you make that decision.

Some roleplaying games include a whole lot of OOC mechanics, in other words, they put a whole lot of non-roleplaying into their roleplaying games.  When I interface with a mechanic, I want it to simply be task resolution to figure out if a decision/action my character makes succeeds or fails.  I don't need the mechanics to tell me if the results are interesting or dramatic, the result that simple success or failure leaves my character and what I do with it is the part that will make it interesting.

That's where Cult of the Designer comes in both from The Gaming Den side and the Forge side.  The whole point of the Edwards/Baker movement is "system matters".  You want X, you design for X.  You want drama and story, you give players mechanics to affect drama and story outside of just roleplaying their characters, because just roleplaying their characters wasn't cutting it for them, which is why the Forge got made in the first place.

So yeah, they may be designing a game where you do a lot of roleplaying, but it's roleplaying+.  I don't want or need the +, and prefer systems that come without it so I don't have to remove the + myself and potentially alter the whole foundation.

One thing I've found is pretty difficult is explaining the whole "roleplaying+" side of things.  Again, for people who always play games with some genre mechanics or other types of metagame currency like Fate points, Bennies, whatever, the definition of roleplaying to them always includes the +, the shared 4th wall idea that we're playing a game on two levels, the character level and the player level.

It's trivially easy for someone who like to solely roleplay with as few OOC decisions as possible to see that line.  Some people (not saying AsenRG is one of them) just can't see that line.  Which is when things usually get nasty with regards to brain damage, delusions, etc...

Quote from: richaje;879601Ken and I were talking about the former, not the latter. This isn't some bit of esoteric game theory - this is just an observation that Ken and I have made over the past 30+ years.

Good to hear, it's just that there's two ways to look at it.

One is...
Gm: What do you do?
Player(Looks at sheet): I do {something on the sheet}

The other is...
GM: What do you do?
Player: I do {whatever the player wants to try}
GM: Do you have {some type of skill, power or mechanic}?
Player(Looks at sheet)

The difference is the player chooses the course of action from his mind, not his sheet, the sheet is going to contain some kind of mechanical value that the GM can use to determine the roll, but it's not a case of "If I don't see it, I can't do it."

However, I've always been a proponent of good character sheet design, and you're right, RQ2, RQ3 and Pendragon are examples of "charsheets done well".

So on the one hand, you have a tendency towards tight, rules-based exception design (WotC being the main culprit) where your narrowly defined actions in 3.0 become narrower in 3.5 and eventually become, in the case of 4e, literally, a deck of powers you tap, play and recharge.

On the other hand, you have a "If the players need it, put it on the sheet" design ethos.

The problem is, those two approaches share some terminology, so it's easy for people who worry about the WotC approach to see shades of that in the "smart charsheet" approach.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879646It's trivially easy for someone who like to solely roleplay with as few OOC decisions as possible to see that line.  Some people (not saying AsenRG is one of them) just can't see that line.  Which is when things usually get nasty with regards to brain damage, delusions, etc...

I find some of these conversations puzzling. I can't say that I "like to solely roleplay with as few OOC decisions as possible" but I prefer staying in character at least some of the time. Yet I think the line between what are clearly OOC mechanics and what are clearly in character mechanics is clear.

Granted there are a few fuzzy places in some popular rules e.g. are Force Points in WEG Star Wars IC (i.e. known to and accessed and sensed by the PC) or are they OOC (i.e. known to or accessed and sensed by the PC (I'd argue that Force Points are IC, while Character Points are not). Are hit points in D&D IC or OOC (seem like a bit of both to me since in real life I never sensed a health meter that I could rigorously track). But the fuzzy places never seem to be what most people focus on. The disagreement seldom gets past what seem clearly different types of mechanics.

Quote from: Bren;879596Too many electrons have already been wasted

All my electrons are 100% recycled.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879594The difference I *think* Baulderstone is referring to is that in a traditional game, the player says what the character wants to do, and there are rules in the game for the referee to adjudicate what happens.  Rules as "physics engine", with no other concerns.

.... snip ....

If you don't bring that narrative mindest, then those mechanics become niggling reminders "hey, you're playing a game", "hey you're part author here, do something dramatic", "decide what would be cool to happen to your character".  I just think "leave me the hell alone, I'm roleplaying here".

Krueger... you know what? You are a perfect example of a rare type of player whose existence is denied by many authors.

You have a full, undeniable grasp of all the theory behind forge/story/narrative/younamethem games. Unlike some people who bark against the swine all the time, you understand them. You know how they work.

And you don't like them

I have spent some time in the last years investigating why some kind of approaches and mechanics break suspension of disbelief for that small-but-yet-existent subset of gamers who have the same problem as you. And I have come to the conclusion that it is entirely subjective. You, and a distinct portion of the RPG community, simply do not have fun playing in that way. Even the slightest hint of author's stance breaks the game for you. Why, I do not know. I only know that it it true "because of experimental evidence".

Yet people like you do exist. And a designer should take into account that if he uses some techniques in his game, then the game will automatically become "non-fun" for a distinct portion of his potential audience.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;879662I have spent some time in the last years investigating why some kind of approaches and mechanics break suspension of disbelief for that small-but-yet-existent subset of gamers who have the same problem as you. And I have come to the conclusion that it is entirely subjective. You, and a distinct portion of the RPG community, simply do not have fun playing in that way. Even the slightest hint of author's stance breaks the game for you. Why, I do not know.

Speaking for myself there are, broadly speaking, two types of mechanics.

A) A mechanic that is connected to something that the character in the game world is aware of and has control over or that is used to resolve something that the character in the game world is attempting is an in character type of mechanic.

B) A mechanic that is not connected to something that the character in the game world is aware of or has control over and is not used to resolve something that the character is attempting in the game world is an out of character type of mechanic.

The first type tends to be less disruptive of feeling like I am my character in the game world and facilitates acting solely as my character in the game world.

The second type includes mechanics that require me as the player to make decisions not as my character in the game world but from some out of character (OOC) perspective - be that OOC perspective as an author, as a director, or as a player managing some source of metagame currencies that the character in world would not be aware of and could not himself access.

OOC mechanics like character building or creation and character improvement and growth tend to little or no problem for me in maintaining an in character perspective because (with rare exceptions that are often themselves somewhat in character) those build, creation, and growth mechanics do not occur while playing the character but in between or outside of play.