Sorry, my internet tone sometimes comes across as disparaging when I don't mean for it to be. I wasn't trying to say there's anything wrong with using terminology. I do software engineering in the military sector. I live and breathe specialized terminology.

It's pretty much a necessary evil. Otherwise every sentence in posts about bang-driven play would be repeating the definition of bang. As long as it isn't overdone and there's a handy reference, specialized terminology can help fast forward discussions, and make them possible where trying to talk would have been too tedious otherwise.

Quote from: SettembriniLook here: http://hofrat.blogspot.com/2006/06/john-henry.html#links

for an excerpt.

That's good stuff, Settembrini! I have to get my hands on this book.

"Brute force is not always the way to achieve a desired goal, and a good RPG will offer player characters opportunities to use their wits as well as their weapons."

Quote from: WarthurI remember flipping through a copy once and not being impressed; a lot of it seemed to be an exercise in stating the obvious. Melan's right that the 1E DMG is a better source, as is Gary's Q&A threads on Dragonsfoot.

And his "Ask Gary Gygax" threads at EN World, the total of which may be longer.

Yes, and you can learn all you need to learn about steak and whiskey!

Wow, that story-games thread goes on! Their thread didn't stay on track about Gygax's Roleplaying Mastery, so ours doesn't, either.

They continue the discussion about how D&D doesn't promote/allow/encourage (they keep changing the qualifier) "Bang-driven play." Which of course is utter bollocks.

Anyway, they really don't know D&D. Mike Holmes lays out a situation as an example, where a Chaotic Neutral thief swipes food from a starving peasant, the Lawful Good Paladin hears about it and demands he give it back.

Quote from: Mike HolmesThe thief player decides to refuse to cooperate with the Paladin's reasonable request to return the stolen items. Heck, he doesn't want his alignment changing so that he can't reasonably use his theif powers on whoever he comes across!

What are the options of the player of the Paladin?
A) Let the theif get away with it. Everyone is disappointed because the Paladin acted out of character. Especially disappointing to the player of the Paladin, because he really wanted to play the character as being unflaggingly for good.
B) Attack the thief to get the stuff back. In AD&D1E, this would be the player's only option - there weren't any social skills or anything back then. In fact, if it's BD&D or earlier, there aren't even any rules to attack to subdue. The only way to overpower somebody is to kill them, or get them to surrender. This is dissapointing to both players because the result will be one or more wounded or dead characters, which is a waste of tactical resources.

Now, he's mixing up all the different versions of D&D and choosing the worst rule in each case - "worst" in the sense of reinforcing his point. Now, in AD&D1e, the GM was supposed to note the "drift" of a PC's alignment. You could have your character do a few minor things outside their alignment, but if they consistently acted against it, or did something major, then they'd have to change. Alignment change got a level drop, so it was serious.

Now, by any reasonable reading of things, if someone gives up something to a threat of force, that's a minor alignment violation, if a violation at all. Secondly, Chaotic Neutral characters hold that "absolute freedom is necessary", and whether this causes good or ill doesn't matter. Reasonably we could say that a command of a Paladin is a violation of your freedom; but the thief could weigh it up and say that being conked over the head would be a greater violation of his freedom than giving up the food to the starving peasants. It says later on that you can have obedience and service in chaotic societies, it's just all out of mutual consent and not obligation; so some compromises are possible.

Now, as to D&D having no social skills, for my copy of AD&D1e this is true; but it's also true that there are many guidelines for roleplaying NPCs. As well as alignment, you can roll up or choose for NPCs traits like "pessimist" or "hedonist" or ""deceitful" or "avaricious". So when PCs are interacting with NPCs, it was expected the players would roleplay it; it didn't occur to Gygax to have skills doing the job. I'm not defending this approach specifically, but I note that almost thirty years after AD&D1e was written, this remains controversial - what do we do if a socially-clueless player has a socially-skilled character, and should PCs be able to affect each-other with their Intimidate, Seduction, Fast Talk and so on? So we can't bash old D&D for not having rules for social interactions between PCs, because few games do - most games expect you to just roleplay it.

AD&D1e has rules for subdual, and also has rules for "Non-Lethal and Weapons Combat Procedures", with the three basic techniques of Pummel, Grapple and Overbear.

What Holmes is really describing is a player issue, not a rules issue. The thief player is going against what the paladin player wants, and vice versa. And by arguing in this way and seeking conflict with each-other, both are going against the party as a whole. Holmes himself notes that the approach of AD&D1e is,
"1. Each player rolls up a character.
2. Then all the players together are a party."

So in the game group, the roleplaying of the characters must be such as to balance the individuality of the characters, and the interests of the group as a whole. Players who have their characters do things they know that will piss off other PCs we call "jerks". This is possible in any game system, and no game system prevents it. Suppose AD&D1e had social skill rules - say, the Paladin could use his superior Intimidate or Diplomacy to persuade the thief - well if your character is forced by the rules to act against what you want them to do, you're pissed off.

So social skill rules, in this case, would make the thief-paladin player conflict worse, not better. The players must find a way to make their characters work together. Again, this is an old problem in rpgs, and not restricted to D&D: "why are these guys all together?" Gygax addresses that, too, suggesting giving them a common purpose they can work towards. So for example the thief might just give up the peasants' food because really their mission is to save the princess daughter of the King, for which they'll get a large reward.

But nothing in-game prevents the players from being jerks to each-other.

Quote from: Mike HolmesNow perhaps there's a third option here of some sort, but in actual play in situations like this, these are the only two options I've ever seen anyone take. And I've seen both of them taken. And the choice made actually has far less to do with tactical sensibilies or such than with the metagamed arguments that players will make around the subject as it's about to happen.

I would say that this is not a failure of the rules, but just that he'd played with some jerks. Now, what are his D&D experiences? Perhaps being part of some decade-long campaign? Several groups with short campaigns of a dozen sessions to tackle some adventure module? To his credit, he tells us,

Quote from: Mike Holmesforgive me if I can't recall precise details from a game I haven't played much in 25 years

So we can reasonably infer that his criticisms are in fact speculation coming from a few bad experiences. This reinforces my old theory that a lot of hostility of Forgers towards "traditional roleplaying" comes from their having little experience of it, and that experience bad. Rather as if after my first girlfriend screwed around on me with my best friend, I had then developed an elaborate theory about how women are all bitches, they can't help it.

At least McMurray pwns him in the thread, though,

Quote from: James McMurrayI can only marvel at the horror that your D&D gaming must have been if you thought a lack of social skills meant you could never interrogate, negotatiate, or otherwise interact socially in an attempt to achieve a desired result. But I don't really think that's how you played, I think it's how you've chosen to model the scenario so it best fits your outcome.

and later gives him examples of how the paladin could persuade the thief without violence or social skills.

Holmes doesn't give up on it, though.

Quote from: Mike Holmesit may interest you to know that, when playing in 1979, that, in fact, no, we never, ever, spoke in character. There was no text that indicated we should in the editions we played, and no examples of it in the books.

DMG, 1978, pp97-100 - an example where the players often speak in character. Then in the red box Basic D&D, there was a solo adventure to introduce you to the game, and in that you spoke in character. Nowhere does it say "you should speak in-character sometimes." But you know, maybe Gygax thought he didn't have to state the obvious. The obvious like McMurray said,

Quote from: James McMurrayYou're definitely right, people that value their own fun over all other things don't work well together in shared fun environments.

Holmes still just wants us to try Burning Wheel, though.

I think the wankiest moment comes from "lachek", whoever he is.

Quote from: lachekAs for the source to the statement that early iterations of D&D were no more immersive roleplaying experiences than playing Warhammer 40K with only one figurine per person, I'm going to have to leave that as an exercise for the reader - because frankly, that's such a well-known fact that:
    a) Since it's not a matter of contention, it's moderately hard to find sources claiming either it or the contrary, and
    b) I just can't be bothered proving it for the benefit of the few that somehow missed it.

This sooooo much the old Forger way. "We have established the Truth, and you are not qualified to doubt us. Be silent, ignorant scum."

Whoever ludanto is, he says,

Quote from: ludantoFirst of all, while "Don't be a Dick" is a good rule of thumb, it does NOT make a good social conflict resolution system.

Actually, it does. That's what we have the GM for. "Hey, don't be dicks. Jane, back off on Dave. Dave, shut the fuck up and roll the dice."

The more I read, the more I am convinced that the whole story-games and Forger scene comes about from a few bad game groups who spawned these lonely bitter gamers. There's some crappy DM out there we can blame Ron Edwards on.

_____________________

Could we move this thread to the Theory or Off-Topic subforums, please? Whichever the mods think is more appropriate. Talking about how rules in general do or don't stop players being cocksmocks to each-other is a theoretical sort of issue, I think. And mocking other rpg discussion forums is Off-Topic (or RPGPundit's Own!)

I should also like to note that normally I look at my copy of AD&D with nostalgia, but no desire to play. But reading story-games changes all that. It makes me want to play or GM it, and do it well, just to be able to say, "bullshit." But of course they'd find some bullshit excuse to dismiss that... after all, they know The Truth! Even if they've hardly ever played the game and don't remember its rules properly, they know The Truth!

Quote from: Kyle AaronI should also like to note that normally I look at my copy of AD&D with nostalgia, but no desire to play. But reading story-games changes all that. It makes me want to play or GM it, and do it well, just to be able to say, "bullshit." But of course they'd find some bullshit excuse to dismiss that... after all, they know The Truth! Even if they've hardly ever played the game and don't remember its rules properly, they know The Truth!

That's how I deal with it...and ignore their "truth" when it gets asinine.  I deal with real academicians doing real academic dick-waving all day long.  I don't like it when hobbyists do it...I just want to drink some beer and kill some monsters.

Quote from: 'Some Guy from StoryGames'B) Attack the thief to get the stuff back. In AD&D1E, this would be the player's only option - there weren't any social skills or anything back then.

Yeah right, Ace. Sure it would. :rolleyes:

Quote from: 'Kyle Aaron'The more I read, the more I am convinced that the whole story-games and Forger scene comes about from a few bad game groups who spawned these lonely bitter gamers. There's some crappy DM out there we can blame Ron Edwards on.

This could merit a separate thread, but for now, I'll just express agreement and copy a recent post of mine from ENWorld for those people who don't read it:

QuoteA lot of people have this perception because of poor experiences with juvenile DMs. Teenagers often make dumb mistakes, especially when it comes to trust, fairness and human relationships. That is why they aren't adults - they have yet to learn all these things over several years. Here's the problem: in the hands of an immature person, games can lead to pretty f-ed up social dynamics, betrayals, unpleasant power fantasies, etc. It is not the fault of the game, but the participants will blame it anyway. This, in some, leads to negative stereotypes which are reinforced by a whole corpus of anecdotal evidence. I will have to mention that old school games are not the sole targets for these stereotypes: often, it is "traditional" games in general, or GMs in general, or gamers in general (RPGNet's "Creepiest Gamer" thread, for example, is a veritable treasure trove of self-hate and condescension towards one's fellow gamers, feeding on a sad and sick one-upmanship).

I think there is a strong impetus on part of those who suffered from these negative phenomena in formative years to make games "safe" - to build anti-abuse catches into the rules or the social structure of the books. This, in many ways, has turned into a general crusade for "fairness"; today, it extends to initiatives to prevent item loss, abolish random ability scores and hit points, remove save or die for the last time, etc. etc. etc. Safety.

I don't think this is the sensible way. I think we have to recognise the problem as human, and don't make (futile) attempts to fix it through rules. The only solution is itself social; the ability of adults to be selective with their friends, or occasionally aid the maturation of their fellows (as pretentious as this sounds). Juvenile people make mistakes, and some people always remain juvenile. In the hands of sensible, mature people, old school games are safe.

That's all.

Actually, the whole thread is pretty interesting, check it out.

Mike Holmes isn't just "some guy on story-games", he wrote Universalis!

Seriously, I lke the guy, he has useful things to say about many things, it's just that on his occasion he's talking bollocks.

It's just a strange thing that people could have a game session or two of something and then develop a whole rpg theory as to why it's crap and their Brilliant New Game will "fix" that. I mean, I've played lots of games I didn't like - I didn't come up with any theories, I just didn't play them again. And I don't blame a few hundred pages of sloppily-written, badly-edited, saucily-illustrated rules for someone being a dick - even when that someone was me.

Edit: and your ENWorld post is very sensible, Melan. And I don't say that only because it's the essence of Cheetoism: "Fuck System. People Matter."

In related news, Robin Laws, reflecting on what he got at GenCon, PWNS indie game designers:
   Dear Indie Game Designers:

You know I love you. It is only out of the staunchest hope and admiration that I say any of these things. I want only to be able to spotlight pure awesomeness during the annual post-Gen Con Tribute Pile Shout Out (which due to various family events will probably appear after the film festival this year.) And you all seem to have gotten the memo about pitching your games clearly and concisely. So please, Indie Game Designers, please contemplate the following additional admonitions.

Learn the difference between a text font and a display font. I know you adore that kooky font. But I really like ice cream and don't eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Take your favorite passage from your game and read it out loud in the voice of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel from The Simpsons. That's the impression you're giving my setting your main text in a goofy, hard-to-read font.

A game is not a forum post. No matter what amazing advice Ron Edwards or Luke Crane have given you, you don't need to quote them in the body of your rules text. Nor does it help to cite RPG theory to explain what you're doing. If you can't explain it in plain language without citation or reference to critical vocabulary, what you're saying doesn't actually make sense.

Likewise, minimize the discussion of the long personal journey the rules represent for you, and also how great your various collaborators are. How can I congratulate you if you're already doing it yourself?

And, most of all...

Show the same excitement in your writing as you do in all those demos you run. If indie gaming is all about expanding boundaries and exploring new territories, why do so many of the rules texts read with all the zest of a clock radio instruction manual? Psych yourself into GMing mode before you sit down to write. Zing up that prose, horizon-busters!

Okay, I was going to chastise you, Kyle, for rubbernecking at that car wreck of a thread...but that lachek character really is a hoot. Esp. the quote about early D&D being no more than a miniatures game with one figure per person. Because we can now discount that entirely, with what we know about Braunstein and Blackmoor. Take a look at the last post on this page for example.

QuoteDave Wesley had devised an idea for a different kind of game all together. He created a scenario set in a fictional German town, called, Brownstein. The scenario had the usual wargame elements. Two opposing army commanders, both with orders to take and hold a bridge that might be crucial to the battle. But, then things got a little weird. Dave knew that around eight people usually showed up for the get-togethers, which basically left six people standing around watching the two army commanders go at each other. So, at this time, he developed "roles" for the others to play in the scenario. In addition to the army commanders, he had: the mayor of Brownstein, the banker, the university chancellor.The list went on and on. Each role had its own unique briefing on the situation and its own objectives and goals to achieve. When around 20 people showed up that night to play — instead of the eight he had planned for — he improvised and created roles for them to fill — right there, on the spot.
He had envisioned that players would come to him one at a time in the room (where the map of the scenario was placed) and he would brief them on the situation. To keep the game interesting, the players would not be allowed to share information with each other outside of that room. But it wasn't long before two players, one an officer in the Prussian army, and the other a pro-French radical student, came into the room together stating that their characters had challenged each other to a duel. Not to be caught flat-footed by such a request, Dave immediately improvised a rule and rolled some dice and declared that one had shot the other...and the victor was being hauled off to jail.

Already in 1967, people were playing roles, not merely pushing lead around a map. And Blackmoor was an extension of the same concepts--pure roleplaying, using  Chainmail as an adjunct for the resolution of physical actions:

QuoteAround the same time, heavily influenced by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings <http://www.thelordoftherings.com/>, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax (who were both in the Castle and Crusade Society) were interested in bringing a mythological fantasy component to their games. So Gary wrote a fantasy supplement to Chainmail. That small addition caused Chainmail to become the best-selling product of Guidon Games.
After a weekend of too many monster movies and nonstop Conan novels, Dave decided to chuck his stuffy Napoleonic campaign and create a medieval fantasy-flavored Brownstein, called, Blackmoor. For the players, Blackmoor was a real trip. Instead of making up characters, Dave had each of the players enter the world as themselves! But Blackmoor was a dangerous place, (ask one of them to tell you about the vampire rosebush) and the players were getting worried about getting their alter egos killed, so they quickly retired those characters and created new ones that they weren't afraid to lose.
The major conceptual difference between Blackmoor and the previous Brownsteins was that for all their RP elements, the Brownstein games were stand-alone for the most part and had only a loose connection from one session of play to the next. Blackmoor was different. The game never ended. The characters progressed, and as Dave rewarded them they become more powerful — or finally got killed. They used Gary's Chainmail rules to handle combat, but very quickly needed additions to handle all the situations the players were facing.

With this, lachek's claim (and Mike's) falls apart completely.

Quote from: Kyle AaronMike Holmes isn't just "some guy on story-games", he wrote Universalis!

So I guess he's famous or something? Aha. Nice to know.


( )

In other words, you were going to chastise me for rubbernecking at the car wreck, until you looked and realised just how interesting a car wreck it was

On the Braunsteins, there's a link to a discussion with Wesely himself somewhere in my Big List... let's see... ah, here it is.

Also it seems that if there was no connection between the different scenarios Wesely ran, it was mainly because he ran them months or years aart with different players. I imagine that if he'd been able to run them regularly with the same group, the idea of having the same character each time would just naturally have popped up.

I've also seen Dave Arneson talking about how they didn't rely on dice too much, like for a save vs poison you'd make some roleplaying argument as to why the character should live... pretty thespy stuff. Can't recall where I saw him say that, though.

Hmmm, on looking around, I still can't find it. I did however find this interview where he tells us that when he got Chainmail, one of the first things he did was houserule it in response to player complaints.
   Combat in Chainmail is simply rolling two six-sided dice, and you either defeated the monster and killed it … or it killed you. It didn't take too long for players to get attached to their characters, and they wanted something detailed which Chainmail didn't have.
He was unhappy with the rules, and he made new rules to fit! He listened to his players, and that's how D&D was invented. That is, he wasn't a jerk about things. But apparently house rules shouldn't happen and no GM ever listens to the players, or the players to each-other, in the story-games version of "traditional gaming." Bizarro.

Edit: On Arneson's rather rambling page here, he says,
   Well since there were NO rules for practically anything the players wanted to do the game was "loose" and "unstructured". The old referee got VERY good at thinking on his feet. I say I was good because the game, and I, both survived the player's onslaught. And even without a lot of rules we had rules lawyers back then too! Thank he lord for that black notebook. Even if the rules weren't all in there I was usually able to convince the players that the rule was in the black folder, or at least would be soon.
So sometimes there were no rules for things, but the group figured out a way to handle it anyway. What would Mike Holmes' imaginary Paladin and Thief players say to that, eh?

Quote from: Elliot Wilenbut that lachek character really is a hoot.

You know, I never really understood internet hostility.  "It's just the internet, fuck it," was my motto.  But when you call cool people that I've met assholes, it's different.

Just because someone doesn't look at gaming the same way you do doesn't mean they are an asshole.