Quote from: RosenMcStern;879662Krueger... you know what? You are a perfect example of a rare type of player whose existence is denied by many authors.

Well, it's denied by more than just authors, and has caused a lot of forum flames over the years.  More on how rare I am down below.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;879662You 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

Well, I may not prefer their games, but I have gone on record as saying that the Xworld system is a great piece of design because it does exactly what it set out to do.  I usually have more of a problem with fans then designers, but stuff like Poison'd kind of speaks for itself and while I don't have a whole lot of nice things to say about Edwards in general after the whole "brain damage" thing, I thought S/lay With Me was an interesting read.  A guy who loves Conan can't be all bad.  

I've also on this site, talked about using a narrative system to, in Forge terms, teach a Gamist to enjoy roleplaying.

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. I only know that it it true "because of experimental evidence".

Well, you're right, we are out there.  For me personally, it's pretty simple.  Roleplaying=Playing a Role.  When I'm not playing that role, I'm not roleplaying.  Every decision you make at the table could be made for a variety of reasons (a lot more than the GNS three, which is what Zak was pointing out a while back) both IC and OOC.  
I prefer the OOC decision-making to be under my control and coming from me for my reasons, not mandated by the game system: because I like roleplaying.  I play a ton of games that stress other things than roleplaying while including or allowing some roleplaying, from 40k, to Necromunda, to MMOs to CRPGs to boardgames, etc.  When I roleplay I want to roleplay, and OOC considerations take me away from that.  As JKim and I put it, I allow a lot less ketchup in my wine before it stops being wine and becomes "wine with ketchup".

Now as to how rare I am, I honestly don't know.  There's a lot like me on this site for example, but then again, there's a lot of popular games out there that don't include much authorship.  
GURPS, HERO, Traveller, WFRP1 and 2, most flavors of D&D, Rolemaster, older d100 based games, pretty much any game without personality mechanics or genre mechanics could qualify.  

One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of people don't care one bit for the game theory behind things, and so as a result, they can't articulate in the same terms you or I would exactly why they like Game A as opposed to Game B.  Not everyone plays Savage Worlds, Fate, Xworld, or other games with robust OOC meta-point economies or outright narrative control mechanics.

You'd almost have to do surveys where you asked people what games they prefer not to play and then look for patterns.  I don't have any illusions about being in the majority, but I don't think I'm that rare in having a "narrative allergy", I just may be the most severe case on record. :cool:

Quote from: RosenMcStern;879662Yet 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.

It comes down to two questions.  
1. Can the OOC, metagame, narrative etc. mechanics be cut whole hog from the system without affecting standard task resolution and probabilities?
2. Is what's left if you do cut out those mechanics preferable to a system that didn't have any to begin with?

CoC 7th, you can cut it out and you still have CoC. - No Harm, No Foul

Atlantis, the Second Age, has HUGE authorship and narrative control abilities, all can be freely cast aside without affecting the core resolution mechanics. - Ditto

The Modiphius 2d20 system is pretty thin when you cut out the narrative escalation and heroic engine of dice pools moving back and forth. - Probably what I lovingly term a "narrative shitshow" , but I'm a couple revisions back so they may have adjusted it some.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879646Sure, 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.

I've never seen such a table. All tables I've seen are "let's try it RAW, and then we'll change it if it doesn't work". To me, that's not even like a houserule, just a "can you do that for me, it bothers me" request. I've had those, never said no:).

QuoteIf 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.

I just said the exact opposite. I might or might not track all the arrows, but "ammunition supply considered infinite" is against the DW per RAW.

QuoteIf 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.

No-stop right here!
First, I hate the "it's not broken, you can houserule it" fallacy about as much as you do (or more). That's not what I was saying.
What I was saying is: Once a book is written, it's just a text. Sometimes, the author doesn't know what the text is saying (case in point: D&D3.0, its playtest, and the arcane classes...)
Who is the final arbiter? Me, the reader!
That's what I mean by "death to the author" - working with the text only. I mean I don't want to hear them explaining what the game is: if you need to explain it more, you should have explained in the book.

So, based purely on the text, I've found my own ways to play a lot of supposedly narrative games - from a purely IC perspective.

(If I find that in the text, I assume that's what the author meant in the first place...but you can prove to me that he didn't mean a pure IC perspective, and I wouldn't change my way of playing. I'm playing AW, or Sorcerer, or TRoS, not the game of "find out what Ron Edwards' intentions were when writing Sorcerer, then play only that"! The game is what the text says. And my way of playing is supported by the text. That means it's RAW, even if it's not RAI. I can only work with whatever has been written).
Even if it's not the intended way, so what? "The street finds its own use for things."

QuoteAs 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.

We do use them as stamina, effort and the like. Check.

QuoteBecause 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.

But my character has access to stamina. And being a sportsman, he knew roughly how much stamina he has...as well as that sometimes, you can push yourself beyond that.

QuoteSome 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.

Yeah, got it. But I find that having only a "succeed/fail" result actually harms my suspension of disbelief. Because sometimes, it is "no, but", sometimes it's "no, and", and so far, and so forth.
Let's use swords as example. When you swing a sword, you can hit, or get parried. But sometimes, that's just a parry and neither one gets advantage, sometimes you push the enemy's blade our of line and have advantage, and then sometimes the parry takes your blade out of line and you've got a problem.
These simple facts have been represented by "critical success" and "critical failure" almost since there are RPGs. Talislanta already includes the "but" results, too - under "partial success" on the success table...and it's an old game that has no meta-currency.
You can say the same about ZeFRS and its colour-coded results, too.
AW is actually offering less options in its rolls.

QuoteThat'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.

Well, yes, system matters - your argument about RMSS and BoL was just a proof for that.
It doesn't always matter the way some designers assume, though.

QuoteYou 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.

Maybe. Again, I'm basing my opinion on their games. (I tried to participate on the Forge forum, read a few posts, and concluded that I can untangle snakes more easily than the circular arguments there. Maybe I just was unlucky with the threads).

QuoteSo 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.

And I don't care, as long as the + is small enough, or situated in such a place that I can use it to hang my coat from it;).
There's a plus, so obviously the designer wanted me to hang my coat on it! What do you mean he said otherwise? I'm not reading his blog, and I needed some place to hang my coat from. So, I'm going to use the + for what I wanted to, and have fun. And that's still using "roleplaying +" as written.

QuoteOne 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.

Nope. I was unused to those to the point that I was looking askance even at the Willpower in V:tM;).
Then I thought about it, and the Willpower thing made sense.

QuoteIt'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...

No, I can see it - I actually agree that if you play in the assumed "story-game" style, the game is different from roleplaying. I've tried that - it just wasn't as much fun, so I'm back.

What I'm suggesting is, you can re-use that line. Or you can hide it behind the right glass...
(Not my best analogy, this one;)).

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. I only know that it it true "because of experimental evidence".

So have I. Do you also have a similar player in one of your groups:D?
What I'd like to see is whether such players can learn to adapt. Experiments are called for, in the name of Science, Superior Refereeing, and the Hard-Boiled Egg!

Quote from: CRKrueger;879670while I don't have a whole lot of nice things to say about Edwards in general after the whole "brain damage" thing, I thought S/lay With Me was an interesting read.  A guy who loves Conan can't be all bad.  

I think we can all agree to that;)!

QuoteI've also on this site, talked about using a narrative system to, in Forge terms, teach a Gamist to enjoy roleplaying.

Well, I should note that you started with a non-narrative system (TRoS). Seriously, TRoS is about as much of a "storygame" as Pendragon. And anyone who tells me you're not roleplaying in Pendragon, will get a recommendation to play Pendragon until he begins to get it.

QuoteIt comes down to two questions.  
1. Can the OOC, metagame, narrative etc. mechanics be cut whole hog from
the system without affecting standard task resolution and probabilities?
2. Is what's left if you do cut out those mechanics preferable to a system that didn't have any to begin with?

And my point is, that a lot of "narrative" systems are as easy or easier to reskin as "regular" systems;).

TRoS not narrative? :hmm:
Well, the way TRoS works is highly dependent on the SAs.  Yeah the system is a highly crunchy ARMA/HEMA simulator, but the title is extremely important.  The Riddle of Steel of course gets it's name from the Conan movie.

Conan first has the riddle posed to him by his blood father, a blacksmith:
The secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan, you must learn its discipline. For no one, no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts... This you can trust.

Conan has the Riddle of Steel answered by Thulsa Doom, the spiritual father of the reborn Conan:
Steel isn't strong, boy, flesh is stronger! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart.

In Riddle of Steel RPG, the question manifests as "What is worth fighting for?", "What is worth killing for?", "What is worth dying for?"  You define that via the game's Spiritual Attributes (Passion, Drive, Faith, Destiny, I forget the 5th type).

Since the game is extremely brutal as far as combat goes, running down an alley to fight 4 guys is NOT a good idea...unless somehow you can invoke a Spiritual Attribute to get additional dice.  The main problem I had with the SAs was that
1. You raised them by using them, and then spent them down to get XP.
2. As they lower, you can even swap them out.

So last week, I ran down a dark alley and WTFPWNed 4 guys because I was invoking multiple SAs, but I spent those down and swapped one out, so I don't care about protecting the innocent and cleaning up the city as much anymore so I'm gonna get deathmopped by those same 4 guys this week even though I'm now a better swordsman.

It's a crunchy combat simulator built on top of a completely narrative engine. Can you flush the SAs and just run TRoS as is? Sure, but you can't not at least look at the narrative structure underneath the whole thing when we're talking game design theory.

Quote from: AsenRG;879681And my point is, that a lot of "narrative" systems are as easy or easier to reskin as "regular" systems;).

Some yes, some no.  Some are worth the time, some aren't.

Quote from: AsenRG;879681Yeah, got it. But I find that having only a "succeed/fail" result actually harms my suspension of disbelief. Because sometimes, it is "no, but", sometimes it's "no, and", and so far, and so forth.
Let's use swords as example. When you swing a sword, you can hit, or get parried. But sometimes, that's just a parry and neither one gets advantage, sometimes you push the enemy's blade our of line and have advantage, and then sometimes the parry takes your blade out of line and you've got a problem.
These simple facts have been represented by "critical success" and "critical failure" almost since there are RPGs. Talislanta already includes the "but" results, too - under "partial success" on the success table...and it's an old game that has no meta-currency.
You can say the same about ZeFRS and its colour-coded results, too.
AW is actually offering less options in its rolls.

True, a lot of systems offer criticals, fumbles or even multiple levels of each to give a variety of possible outcomes and "narrative complications" themselves go back to WEG SW or James Bond as genre conceits.  But when I am playing with genre conceits, I concede I'm playing inside a literary form, by definition.

The idea of Success with minor or even major complications, or even Failure with minor or even major advantages (like the "funky symbol dice" games) however, is relatively new, and comes from the philosophy that the mechanical results should push the story.  

If the GM and players are doing their jobs, the mechanics don't need to push anything.  I hear people say things like "I tried to pick the lock and failed...boring."  If you have unlimited time to stand in front of a door and there are no possible consequences for failure, then yeah that's boring, but that's never going to happen outside of training yourself to lockpick your own door where noone can see you.  A realistically envisioned setting will always have some consequences for failure, and personally I find it's far more enjoyable to see how players will react to failure and what comes next, then us looking to the game designers to tell us "when cool and interesting happens" through mechanics.

I guess we should probably go back to talking about RuneQuest.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879691I guess we should probably go back to talking about RuneQuest.

Because we're confident the new Runequest isn't going to have any of that 'Fail Forward' stuff?

Quote from: Simlasa;879696Because we're confident the new Runequest isn't going to have any of that 'Fail Forward' stuff?

Dunno about confident, but haven't seen a lot of evidence of it.  Plus it is a RQ thread.

Quote from: Arminius;879613It'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?"

Oh.  So like what the Vampire: Masquerade Humanity track was meant to do, because Rein-Hagen had this 'one true way' to play his game and you were not meant to deviate from it?

I guess, except that I gather the idea failed to gain traction and people played Vampire in whatever way. On top of that, I gather the design itself was such that it was easy to use it for whatever.

I missed the whole WoD era and I really have no interest in the theme or style of WW games.

Quote from: Arminius;879732I guess, except that I gather the idea failed to gain traction and people played Vampire in whatever way. On top of that, I gather the design itself was such that it was easy to use it for whatever.

I missed the whole WoD era and I really have no interest in the theme or style of WW games.

The Humanity mechanic was similar to Sanity in Call of Cthulhu. Your Humanity score helped you avoid having monstrous vampire freakouts. Doing horrible things eroded your humanity. Therefore Vampires needed to monsters to survive but needed to moderate their actions to avoid losing all their humanity and become beasts.

At least, that was the way it was supposed to work. As your Humanity fell, you had to do even greater acts of horror to risk falling another step down. The basic result was that unless your character was committing crimes on the scale of Hitler, you were never going to hit 0 Humanity. The toothlessness of Humanity loss was the reason the game became Trenchcoats and Katanas.

Quote from: Baulderstone;879757The Humanity mechanic was similar to Sanity in Call of Cthulhu. Your Humanity score helped you avoid having monstrous vampire freakouts. Doing horrible things eroded your humanity. Therefore Vampires needed to monsters to survive but needed to moderate their actions to avoid losing all their humanity and become beasts.

At least, that was the way it was supposed to work. As your Humanity fell, you had to do even greater acts of horror to risk falling another step down. The basic result was that unless your character was committing crimes on the scale of Hitler, you were never going to hit 0 Humanity. The toothlessness of Humanity loss was the reason the game became Trenchcoats and Katanas.

You are forgetting that a Vampire's Humanity stat was directly tied to resisting Frenzy. As it falls, your character becomes increasingly susceptible to Frenzy and, as such, becomes compelled to commit more monstrous crimes.

Quote from: Bren;879666Speaking for myself there are, broadly speaking, two types of mechanics.

Justin Alexander created the terms associate/dissociate mechanics to describe what you are explaining here. I prefer the terms "intra-diegetic" and "extra-diegetic" rules, created by my friend Claudio Freda, but they sound more like something that explains why you should take an Alka Seltzer than something about RPGs, so for the sake of clarity we should stick to Alexandrian's wording. Whether you like Justin or not, he was the first one to describe the thing and he gets to "name the bug", like in entomology.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879670You'd almost have to do surveys where you asked people what games they prefer not to play and then look for patterns.  I don't have any illusions about being in the majority, but I don't think I'm that rare in having a "narrative allergy", I just may be the most severe case on record. :cool:

I think most players tend to the "i prefer to roleplay this rather than have the rules intervene" side. You and others are somehow special in the fact that you know that even a little bit of "author's stance" will break your fun. Suspension of disbelief is an all-or-nothing thing, and one must take the player's word for genuine when it comes to "this made me stop having fun".

Yet I think it is quite important to be aware that there is a spectrum between "I prefer game A" and "I really can't play game B". And that the latter case exists.

Quote1. Can the OOC, metagame, narrative etc. mechanics be cut whole hog from the system without affecting standard task resolution and probabilities?
2. Is what's left if you do cut out those mechanics preferable to a system that didn't have any to begin with?

As we have already discussed, in my games this is almost always true. I prefer to have the intra-diegetic part of the rules (the "physics engine") to be self-consistent, and the rest of the rules as totally independent. This has the added value of leaving the game enjoyable to "narrative-allergic" players.

I can remember of only one case when I designed with the narrative mechanics actually driving the action and not accompanying it in order to adjust things slightly in the background. And I really had no choice: no associate mechanics would have worked, because the reference fiction is completely non-self-consistent. Some things happen "because cool", and only a system that measures "cool" could lead the table to the expected result.

Quote from: AsenRG;879681So have I. Do you also have a similar player in one of your groups:D?

Yes. And I know at least one game author (one who makes money from his games, not a vanity press author) who has the exact same problem. Of course, it shows a lot in his games.

QuoteWhat I'd like to see is whether such players can learn to adapt. Experiments are called for, in the name of Science, Superior Refereeing, and the Hard-Boiled Egg!

I doubt we would be able to strap Krueger to a lab table and put electrodes in his brain to measure his "fun".

But most important of all, why on earth should we check whether they can adapt? It's their ****ing fun, telling people how they should have fun makes no sense.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879691I guess we should probably go back to talking about RuneQuest.

Too late! I have already managed to hijack this thread and many others on Basicroleplaying.org. Now I have to check with Akrasia if he's on schedule with his sub-liminal PMs that instill hate for Chaosium in the readers' minds. If he has reached his assigned quota, nothing can stop us now. This round belongs to The Evil Competition(TM). Muahahahahaha. All your RPGs belong to us.

Quote from: AsenRG;879130I'm now almost sad, because that might have persuaded me to bash my players into learning Glorantha. They know and like RQ6 already, I think it was their first exposure to D100 games:).

Making them learn a slightly different system and a foreign setting at once is something I could do, if I wanted to - I am that kind of GM and make no excuses about it - but I know they have the most issues with "slightly different" systems, and I try not to subject them to unnecessary stress. So I guess RQ7 Glorantha will be a no-go for a while at least.

So, stick with RQ6 and convert anything that comes out in the new form of RQ.

It should be pretty easy to do. You can use the concept of Special Effects and Combat Styles without needing them in RQ7. Sorcery might change, but sorcery has changed in every version of RQ except in RQ1 to RQ2, so no change there. Other things can be converted on the fly.

You might want to use some of the concepts from RQ7, but you don;t have to use the entire thing.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879687TRoS not narrative? :hmm:
Well, the way TRoS works is highly dependent on the SAs.  Yeah the system is a highly crunchy ARMA/HEMA simulator, but the title is extremely important.  The Riddle of Steel of course gets it's name from the Conan movie.
(snippped for brevity)

Thanks, man, but here are some relevant bits:

• I managed to track and buy TRoS. I have used it for two campaigns since. The above isn't something I ignore.
• "The Riddle of Steel" is my favourite part of the whole Schwartzie movie, so I kinda know the connection. Did I mention I like the game's name as well?
• The SAs are not motivation...but when you use them as measuring your motivation, they actually add to the realism. I'm explicitly not talking genre emulation, I'm talking superior morale beating superior technique. Having been on both ends of this, I can confirm being on the receiving end sucks!

QuoteSince the game is extremely brutal as far as combat goes, running down an alley to fight 4 guys is NOT a good idea...unless somehow you can invoke a Spiritual Attribute to get additional dice.  The main problem I had with the SAs was that
1. You raised them by using them, and then spent them down to get XP.
2. As they lower, you can even swap them out.

Raising them by using them does make sense. On the rest of them - yes, it's not perfect. Just nearly so (said the HEMA guy:)).
I have come with my own justifications for this. When you train to improve, you need motivation to make the leap, so you're "spent" emotionally. Then you need to re-build.
Is the above universally true? Not nearly, but I've had periods that roughly mapped to this, so it doesn't exactly bother me, either (though I see it as more of a game engine than a narrative one - otherwise, you'd need to get your SAs higher and can dispense with the need for skill, and raising those is the point). If it did, I'd switch to improving them by use, lowering them by neglect, and so on. XP per session wouldn't be a new concept.

QuoteIt's a crunchy combat simulator built on top of a completely narrative engine. Can you flush the SAs and just run TRoS as is? Sure, but you can't not at least look at the narrative structure underneath the whole thing when we're talking game design theory.

Again, I see it more as a gamist thing (that serves to get you through battles you're not ready for, since some PCs enter those), but I'm ready to admit there might be different readings.

QuoteSome yes, some no.  Some are worth the time, some aren't.

The exact same thing can be said about all games and settings, indeed.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879691True, a lot of systems offer criticals, fumbles or even multiple levels of each to give a variety of possible outcomes and "narrative complications" themselves go back to WEG SW or James Bond as genre conceits.  But when I am playing with genre conceits, I concede I'm playing inside a literary form, by definition.

Read above my previous post: that's not "genre conceits". It's the normal effect of ever trying to perform a task. I'm not talking genre, I'm talking reality.
Alas, it has been neglected in supposedly simulationist games, for reasons that I can't really explain (except maybe by inertia, but I kinda dislike that explanation:p). I mean, I can kinda understand why you wouldn't have "success with complication" or "failure with a bonus" in a gamist system...but why you don't have those in GURPS is frankly beyond me.

QuoteThe idea of Success with minor or even major complications, or even Failure with minor or even major advantages (like the "funky symbol dice" games) however, is relatively new, and comes from the philosophy that the mechanical results should push the story.  

Again, I could care less where it's coming from. It maps better to reality.

QuoteIf the GM and players are doing their jobs, the mechanics don't need to push anything.  I hear people say things like "I tried to pick the lock and failed...boring."  If you have unlimited time to stand in front of a door and there are no possible consequences for failure, then yeah that's boring, but that's never going to happen outside of training yourself to lockpick your own door where noone can see you.  A realistically envisioned setting will always have some consequences for failure, and personally I find it's far more enjoyable to see how players will react to failure and what comes next, then us looking to the game designers to tell us "when cool and interesting happens" through mechanics.

Yes, consequences for failure and success are present more often than not. I'm talking about "consequences for success" and "bonuses to failure" which are often omitted.

QuoteI guess we should probably go back to talking about RuneQuest.

OK! So, why don't we have a "I parry, but my sword is now out of line and I lose initiative" in RuneQuest:D?
Why don't we have a "he parries, but his sword is now out of line and I must press my advantage" result, either? At least we don't have that in most versions.
(OK, technically we have that latter...in MRQ2 and RQ6 only, when you parry an attack that succeeds critically, and the attacker picks Overextend. But we don't have the "parry at a cost" result, yet).
 

Quote from: RosenMcStern;879784I think most players tend to the "i prefer to roleplay this rather than have the rules intervene" side. You and others are somehow special in the fact that you know that even a little bit of "author's stance" will break your fun. Suspension of disbelief is an all-or-nothing thing, and one must take the player's word for genuine when it comes to "this made me stop having fun".

Yet I think it is quite important to be aware that there is a spectrum between "I prefer game A" and "I really can't play game B". And that the latter case exists.

Oh yes, I'm either cursed or blessed by knowing it... That is, I'm the same - it's just that my suspension of disbelief is ruined by illusionist techniques by the GM.
And yes, lots of GMing chapters recommend those. (Which is why I tend to say that lots of GMing chapters are a waste of perfectly good paper). In fact, not recommending those and insisting on a consistent world was what drew me to the OSR first.

QuoteAs we have already discussed, in my games this is almost always true. I prefer to have the intra-diegetic part of the rules (the "physics engine") to be self-consistent, and the rest of the rules as totally independent. This has the added value of leaving the game enjoyable to "narrative-allergic" players.

I'm almost sure I have some of your games, but am unsure about the specifics now. So, how do you account for the effect of motivation?

QuoteI can remember of only one case when I designed with the narrative mechanics actually driving the action and not accompanying it in order to adjust things slightly in the background. And I really had no choice: no associate mechanics would have worked, because the reference fiction is completely non-self-consistent. Some things happen "because cool", and only a system that measures "cool" could lead the table to the expected result.

...you were designing an Exalted engine, weren't you? Right?

QuoteYes. And I know at least one game author (one who makes money from his games, not a vanity press author) who has the exact same problem. Of course, it shows a lot in his games.

Is it John Snead;)?

QuoteI doubt we would be able to strap Krueger to a lab table and put electrodes in his brain to measure his "fun".

Hmm....CRKrueger, how much do you weigh:p?
Also, would you help willingly? We need to conduct some experiments, it seems... For better games, science, and a hard-boiled egg?

QuoteBut most important of all, why on earth should we check whether they can adapt? It's their ****ing fun, telling people how they should have fun makes no sense.

Because they could then play more games and have fun more easily? Seriously, that's a no-brainer. CRKrueger is prepared to be disappointed in a Conan game, and he likes Conan (and so do I). I'm prepared to adapt to it so it doesn't ruin my fun. Which one would need to do more work to have fun, in your opinion?
And if we could develop such an adaptation technique...well, even then they'd be free not to use it.

QuoteToo late! I have already managed to hijack this thread and many others on Basicroleplaying.org. Now I have to check with Akrasia if he's on schedule with his sub-liminal PMs that instill hate for Chaosium in the readers' minds. If he has reached his assigned quota, nothing can stop us now. This round belongs to The Evil Competition(TM). Muahahahahaha. All your RPGs belong to us.

Or we could simply, you know, discuss that using RQ2/5/6 examples;).
(Whatever is between you, Akrasia and Chaosium, better stay between the three of you. Or else, I'll have to defend my games;)).

Quote from: RosenMcStern;879784Justin Alexander created the terms associate/dissociate mechanics to describe what you are explaining here.

I'm aware. But using his terms doesn't explain which mechanics I find problematic for my character immersion. Additionally, some people aren't familiar with his terminology. And a few people get conniption fits just seeing the terms in print. So I avoid the terms and just explain what sorts of mechanics work better or worse for me.

QuoteI prefer the terms "intra-diegetic" and "extra-diegetic" rules, created by my friend Claudio Freda.

Why do you prefer those terms?

Those terms are new to me. Is a player who uses the same gestures as their character is supposed to be using in the game world or who stands or moves as their character is supposed to stand or move in the game world intra-diegetic or extra-digetic?

I think Plato would describe performing actions as mimesis which is supposed to be contrasted with and different than diegesis. Yet it seems to me that performing the same gestures and motions as my character is a strongly associative activity.

Hell, hook me up!  I'd love to get some good data on what parts of the brain are used at various times and points during an RPG session, especially if we're going to compare and contrast with reading, watching a movie, listening to music, public speaking, acting, etc...

As far as "Success with failure" or "Failure with success" I don't argue that such results can't happen.  They can.  Accordingly, a spectrum that includes them would be more "realistic".  

However, take any aspect of a setting or system, that aspect could be fine-tuned and made more granular to better map to reality.  You do that with everything and you get an unplayable game, so it's always a case of picking your battles and coming up with the right mix of extreme focus, focus, and hand-waving that works for you and your table.

In this specific case of "Success with failure" or "Failure with success" (hereafter called Sf/Fs) results, here's where you can't just ignore intent and structure.  In every case I can think of off the top of my head, whenever I have encountered an Sf/Fs system, the intent wasn't to better map task resolution to reality, the intent was to push story and drama, to place hooks used just for that purpose.  Now you (AsenRG) don't care one bit about intent and purpose, I understand that, but if you're not aware of it or not paying attention to it, then you might miss that because it is supposed to be one of the main sources of narration generation in a game that has narration as a focus, then those results come up WAY more often then they would if we were working to map to reality.

Now, you're a HEMA guy, so obviously you know combat is never just a set of static moves that succeed or fail, it is a flowing event where morale, momentum, initiative can rise and fall, and dramatically affect outcome.  In that sense, TRoS is right, what you are willing to fight, kill and die for does affect your ability.  Personally, I contend that this specifically is why you are so, accepting for lack of a better term, new school things like Sf/Fs, conflict resolution, genre conceits, etc because they make a lot more sense when the action is combat.  When the action is picking a lock, accessing a computer, sabotaging a car, not so much really.

Also, if you love tinkering with systems, then making them work despite themselves can be fun.

As far as the new Conan, fool me once(WFRP3), shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.  You're looking to make that system work.  I could do the same I guess, to be honest I think it would be easier to make work than WFRP3, for example.  However, the time I spend doing that is better spent IMO, in taking the non-system elements and using them to enrich a RQ6 Conan game I already have going. YMMV.  I love tinkering with systems too, but sometimes you're just not using the best or even the right tool for what you're trying to accomplish and so you just put down the butter knife that was at hand and go to the toolbox to get a philips screwdriver.