Quote from: Bren;838378To which my players would respond, "We're on Skype now. Tell us now." Ours is a Skype group.

Of course I could email them later, but they seem to really enjoy knowing right away. So I indulge them so they can have their fun.

Would "I'll tell you over ICQ later" change anything:)?

Well, whatever works for your group. Obviously, different approaches might work better or worse with different people, but we share what we do just in case there's something someone else can use;).

Quote from: AsenRG;838384Would "I'll tell you over ICQ later" change anything:)?

Probably not, except I'd have to look up ICQ.

QuoteWell, whatever works for your group. Obviously, different approaches might work better or worse with different people, but we share what we do just in case there's something someone else can use;).

I took it in that context.

I like the increase system for Runequest/BRP the best since stuff gets earned and tracked (i.e. checked) as you play so there is nothing for the GM to catch up on or do at the end of the session. The increases are always modest so, except in the rare cases when someone masters a new skill, the GM really doesn't need to know whether or not the skill improved when planning activity for the next session. The combination of these things means it doesn't matter if the players roll at the end or the beginning of a session.

Quote from: AsenRG;838375Deputy Governor office makes it all different, doesn't it?
I was assuming a low-level official, whose only options would be to destroy the document or follow it.

Um, actually the lower or middle level official would most likely pass the warrant 'upstairs' to the Governor's office for action; this kind of international intrigue is way above most officials, and they'd try to get rid of the 'hot potato' as fast as they could so as to avoid any blame or responsibility.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing usually would wind up on my desk for me to deal with...

Quote from: AsenRG;838375And in what concerns my players, I must preface that with an explanation. At least some of them are exactly those that have as major influence anime, comics, and CRPGs. At least some of them, often the same people, also recognize older SF works if I throw a reference.
Still, when some of them were starting, their major influence was CRPGs, including MMORPGs. Metagaming was rampant, communicating with NPCs wasn't the easiest task.
It was made easier by the fact that I had a whole group like that, with only a couple more experienced players, including my wife and myself. They didn't feel like someone was doing much better, and had an example.
Still, I had to make them stop metagaming (which would have been fine if we were playing the kind of game where you have author's view over the events... but we were playing a variation of the One-Roll Engine, and that's a traditional game).
So, what did I do? I told them the truth.
"You can meta-game or not. I'm going to act like you're not, even if you tell me otherwise. The trick is, my NPCs react to what you were doing 0 you've noticed it already - and are never going to get the message that you "just metagamed". As far as they're concerned, you screw them over to protect the interests of some dubious types...meaning that you're not to be trusted and they can screw you back even if they were indebted to you before. Or you're just behaving strangely for no obvious reasons, meaning you're not to be trusted. In short, your best option is to treat the world as a real, living, breathing world, consisting of living, breathing characters...because I'm doing my best to ensure it's true, and you'll need lots of time before you can even spot my mistakes.
Or you can choose to disregard this warning, and metagame to your heart's content. Like the warning that characters can die or be maimed, and there's no resurrection spells, while healing them back is a one-off deal... it's a warning you'll only get once."
Then I went and did what I warned them about. "Just play the NPCs" is the summary of my style of GMing anyway (which I call Lazy GMing). I couldn't run it otherwise even if I wanted - not without switching my GMing style mid-campaign, which I'm loathe to do.
And then, of course, it was rampant metagaming time. Then they noticed the results were exactly as I told them.
The rest was just playing the game, as they say.

Fascinating! Utterly fascinating to me! This is exactly the kind of thing we'd run into - the NPCs we met all had their own opinions on who we were and what we were doing. Phil would roll for their reactions initially, and then he'd make notes on their cards and use that as the basis for future interactions with them. We learned likewise what the limits were in our world - we figured out very quickly that we were not at the top of the food chain; there were creatures that would like to hunt us.

Quote from: AsenRG;838375I think my players would love that.
But does that mean that carefully disassembling an Eye can teach you more magic?
(I'm asking because I'm thinking of a game that does more or less exactly this - Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk)!

No, it does not. We had no idea how the Eyes worked; we'd very occasionally run into some mage who did - or so they claimed! - but there were a lot of people who got blown up trying to disassemble Eyes.

Quote from: AsenRG;838375Funny, I reacted with "Swords and Planet for the win" the first time I read a summary of Tekumel's history. I mean, isn't it obvious by the different dimensions and relics of a more technologically advanced era?
At the same time, Tekumel is brilliant for allowing Referees more used to fantasy to run it as a fantasy setting. I just don't know why more people aren't playing it!
(It might be because a lot of people are looking for the One Right Way to play Tekumel. But there isn't one, and they get frustrated).

Good for you - you found it out, and that's really cool. In my experience, most gamers have never read any Sword and Planet stuff - quite a few have never heard of Fafherd and the Grey Mouser. And I agree with you - there is no one right way to play Tekumel, I think. As Phil himself said, "here's my world, now make it your own."

Quote from: AsenRG;838375Funny, that. I remember a similar advancement mechanic being much reviled. I just can't find links right now, but the really funny part is that the arguments against it seemed to boil down to "depends on the Referee's cooperation" and "isn't traditional" (whatever traditional was supposed to mean).
Life is ironic.

Wow. Not that I'm surprised, as our tradition in games was to use miniatures on the table for both tactical games and as tactical displays; I've been told that real RPGs don't use miniatures because Gary Said So. Ah, right; what are all those 40mm Elastolins doing, then?

Quote from: AsenRG;838375Interesting enough, Reimond Feist's stories feature an invasion from a clan-based world with no steel and no riding animals, situated in another dimension...

Kelewan is Tekumel, actually. Ray was in a D&D campaign out on the West Coast when his GM opened the rift between the worlds and used EPT as the model for the alien world. When Ray came to write his books, he contacted TSR for permission, and they were happy to grant it to him as they'd fallen out with Phil. I talked to Ray years later, and he was Not Amused to find out that TSR had given him incorrect information.

(This has been a scandal in the publishing trade for years, and a very sore point with a lot of folks on either side of the fence.)

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838401Wow. Not that I'm surprised, as our tradition in games was to use miniatures on the table for both tactical games and as tactical displays; I've been told that real RPGs don't use miniatures because Gary Said So. Ah, right; what are all those 40mm Elastolins doing, then?

Shrug.  By the time Gary was running Greyhawk the Elastolins were across town in Don Kaye's garage.

I don't know if Gary would have used them if they'd been handy, but I can state that in the 1972-1975 period Gary never, ever used miniatures while running Greyhawk.

Which proves nothing other than that he didn't use miniatures and Dave did.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838292ask Old Geezer about the trash collector machines,

Aiieee!   Aiieee!  Aiieee!

Quote from: AsenRG;838375I can devote it to resolving everything...or I can use a proto-wargame/boardgame for the domain stuff, Stress Meters for the reactions of NPCs and PCs alike under stress, and a combat system in case of, well, combat. Possibly a different system for spellcasting and research, too.  (And of course, I can always choose not to bother, if the result is obvious). All of this would be almost the opposite of Frei Kriegspiel, right?

Nope.

In Free Kriegspiel the referee can use any number of charts, graphs, dice, tables, sines, cosines, tangents, knives, forks, and spoons of energy he or she desires.

The difference is that the referee is the final arbiter.  Somebody rolled an instant kill, either player or NPC?  The referee is completely within their purview to overrule the dice and say "No."

However, the wise referee does this judiciously.  Now, in original Free Kriegspiel, and in Braunstein, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, only the umpire had access to the rules.  We knew that a guy who was nekkid was easier to kill than a guy in plate armor, but we had no idea of what the mechanics were.

That's not the case now, so the referee needs to be more open about it if the players know the rules.  However, a good instance was a game of "DBA" (a miniatures wargame) I played.  The dice said that a group of light infantry, charged by an equal number of plate armored knights on armored  horses, routed the knights with almost no losses.  Now, based on a pretty good knowledge of the medieval period I'd have no trouble as referee saying "That could not, did not, and will not ever happen, period."

To summarize, the rules are to support and help the Free Kriegspiel referee, not to tell them what to do.  So your example is absolutely not out of line with Free Kriegspiel in the slightest.

Quote from: Old Geezer;838419Aiieee!   Aiieee!  Aiieee!

I sense a fun story!
Once again I conjure thee, Old Geezer, Tell Us What Happened!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838400Good for you - you found it out, and that's really cool. In my experience, most gamers have never read any Sword and Planet stuff - quite a few have never heard of Fafherd and the Grey Mouser. And I agree with you - there is no one right way to play Tekumel, I think. As Phil himself said, "here's my world, now make it your own."

Well, "campaigns on an alien planet" is part of the sub-title of EPT. I think Mr. Barker wanted to point us in the right direction:)!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838401Wow. Not that I'm surprised, as our tradition in games was to use miniatures on the table for both tactical games and as tactical displays; I've been told that real RPGs don't use miniatures because Gary Said So. Ah, right; what are all those 40mm Elastolins doing, then?

Yeah, and in turn, I'm not really surprised, either;).

Quote from: chirine ba kal;838404Kelewan is Tekumel, actually. Ray was in a D&D campaign out on the West Coast when his GM opened the rift between the worlds and used EPT as the model for the alien world. When Ray came to write his books, he contacted TSR for permission, and they were happy to grant it to him as they'd fallen out with Phil. I talked to Ray years later, and he was Not Amused to find out that TSR had given him incorrect information.

(This has been a scandal in the publishing trade for years, and a very sore point with a lot of folks on either side of the fence.)

Kelewan is Tekumel?
Ok, now I know how to get some people interested in Tekumel:D!

Do you also happen to know how close the events in Mr. Feist's books follow the events in that campaign?

Quote from: Old Geezer;838420Nope.

In Free Kriegspiel the referee can use any number of charts, graphs, dice, tables, sines, cosines, tangents, knives, forks, and spoons of energy he or she desires.

The difference is that the referee is the final arbiter.  Somebody rolled an instant kill, either player or NPC?  The referee is completely within their purview to overrule the dice and say "No."

However, the wise referee does this judiciously.  Now, in original Free Kriegspiel, and in Braunstein, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, only the umpire had access to the rules.  We knew that a guy who was nekkid was easier to kill than a guy in plate armor, but we had no idea of what the mechanics were.

That's not the case now, so the referee needs to be more open about it if the players know the rules.  However, a good instance was a game of "DBA" (a miniatures wargame) I played.  The dice said that a group of light infantry, charged by an equal number of plate armored knights on armored  horses, routed the knights with almost no losses.  Now, based on a pretty good knowledge of the medieval period I'd have no trouble as referee saying "That could not, did not, and will not ever happen, period."

To summarize, the rules are to support and help the Free Kriegspiel referee, not to tell them what to do.  So your example is absolutely not out of line with Free Kriegspiel in the slightest.

That's exactly it. Under my example, you don't need rules that expect the Ref to be the final arbiter - if they do, he still has to consider whether what happened is within his ideas of likely.
Personally, I wouldn't forbid even the knights being routed, if the probability of such an event is small enough it's unlikely to happen ever again. Who knows all that might happen in a fight?
I don't pretend to know it all - or rather, for all I know, everything is possible - so the dice are as good as anything else. And better to be limited by dice than by the information the GM has, given that many, many GMs simply don't have nearly enough information. Often, the people that wrote the rules have put more research into coming with specifics.

Of course, from the players' perspective it's the same, Frei Kriegspiel or not, as long as the GM is good. You tell your plan, point out what are the advantages, and the Referee rolls some dice and tells you what happens. Given that half my group doesn't even want to learn the rules, I could as well run Frei Kriegspiel if I wanted!

In a historical game, "the dice are the dice" is not a rule I personally will abide.  Light foot are not going to stop and rout heavy charging cavalry, period, just like somebody's not going to make a Tiger Tank explode by stabbing it with a bayonet in a historical WW2 game.

Sometimes the dice need to be ignored.

Quote from: Old Geezer;838521In a historical game, "the dice are the dice" is not a rule I personally will abide.  Light foot are not going to stop and rout heavy charging cavalry, period, just like somebody's not going to make a Tiger Tank explode by stabbing it with a bayonet in a historical WW2 game.

Sometimes the dice need to be ignored.

A WW2 game that includes a die result of Bayonet vs Tiger Tank = Killed Tiger is stupid rules design. If you see light foot routing heavy charging cavalry as the same magnitude of stupid yet your rules include that as a result in the combat table why not, oh I don't know, fix the bad rule?

Quote from: Old Geezer;838521In a historical game, "the dice are the dice" is not a rule I personally will abide.  Light foot are not going to stop and rout heavy charging cavalry, period, just like somebody's not going to make a Tiger Tank explode by stabbing it with a bayonet in a historical WW2 game.

Sometimes the dice need to be ignored.

Quote from: Bren;838523A WW2 game that includes a die result of Bayonet vs Tiger Tank = Killed Tiger is stupid rules design. If you see light foot routing heavy charging cavalry as the same magnitude of stupid yet your rules include that as a result in the combat table why not, oh I don't know, fix the bad rule?

Perfectly possible as long as the bayoneter is wearing socks.