Quote from: Spike... but there ain't nothing mechanical about it, and really not too much that is actually clever really.

If you cherry pick and isolate it there's not. If you take into account the relationship between Beliefs and the Artha system (which runs like veins through the entire game) it sure is.

When it comes to the originality argument that you and a couple of other folks keep returning to..all I have to say is that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. But whether it's innovative or not, it's cool to me.

Take the arch swine Buzz on story games -


http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=3933&page=1#Item_0

He says:-

QuoteI"m in a thread on ENWorld right now discussing his posts. The response to my saying, "Hey, there are cool indie games doing this stuff already!", has mostly been, "Nobody cares about those games." Instead, it's mostly people wishing it was 1982 again.

QuoteI think Serenity's consistent sales are proof enough that a license will sell RPGs to non-gamers. You look at the Waves in the Black fan site, and there are quite a few people who were lapsed or non-gamers that bought the book purely because it was Firefly.

The question is whether combining the license with an RPG system that was actually cool would have made it into more than a moderately well-selling RPG that sits on the shelves of Firefly fans everywhere (collecting dust), and instead got those people really excited about story-gaming and made them want more.

Basically, until someone puts Nathan Fillion on the cover of PTA, I don't think anyone can say definitively that story-gaming+license wouldn't fare any better than crap+license.

Your an asshole who hates gamers - of course no one listens to you.

Nixon must go to China!

Quote from: TimIf you cherry pick and isolate it there's not. If you take into account the relationship between Beliefs and the Artha system (which runs like veins through the entire game) it sure is.

When it comes to the originality argument that you and a couple of other folks keep returning to..all I have to say is that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. But whether it's innovative or not, it's cool to me.

Originality is important, given that the discussion revolves around wether or not 'story games', of which BW/BE is held up as a standard bearer, are the wave of the future or not, via innovation if nothing else.

So, if all the 'cool stuff' that BW uses actually predate 'Story Games' then really there isn't much going on for 'em anyway. Doesn't change how fun/unfun the games themselves might be, just their place in this so called revolution of game design.  Thus it is utterly, totally, relevant.

As for your comment about its place in the Arthas system: its no more or less mechanical than the line in the old Shadowrun rules about giving extra karma to a player for 'playing in character'.  Its just more detailed.  Oddly, Shadowrun dates back to, what?, 1989? It also uses d6's, in large handfuls.

My GOD! Burning Wheel IS  Shadowrun!


But seriously: Luke has expressed it best: He wrote Burning Wheel as an RPG that wouldn't let him get away with the crappy powermad GMing he was prone to.

Bully for him. Sadly, I don't want RPG's to regiment play so much that such abuses aren't possible. Its a baby/bathwater situation*.  While he does collect a great deal of good ideas into one place, and implement them beautifully, he also collects some absolutely horrid ideas that seem more prone to annoy people than actually add anything meaningful. Y'know, stuff like Scripted Combat, which turns many people off, a few people like, and so far the closest thing to an 'unmitigated praise' of it is that it still lets you chop an orc in the skull.... whooptie doo. Can already do that with any of the dozens (if not hundreds) of RPG systems I can lay my hands on.




* Rather than muss up my statement with rambling, and feeling rather rambly anyway:  Bathwater wouldn't be dirty if ya didn't wash the baby in it, ya know?  Abuses occur because the rules allow for awesome game play. Restrict game play to prevent abuse, you also remove the potential for that particular brand of awesome. Yes, I know, this does mean you can still have some awesome: so?

Quote from: SpikeOriginality is important, given that the discussion revolves around wether or not 'story games', of which BW/BE is held up as a standard bearer, are the wave of the future or not, via innovation if nothing else.

Ok. To dip into the ever-unfruitful realm of metaphor and repeat myself in a more interesting way...The Mona Lisa was painted with oils on canvas. So was Whistler's Mother. But they're very different paintings. Jailhouse Rock has guitars, drums, vocals..so forth. So do a hundred thousand other brilliant songs. ANY human endeavor follows this same pattern. So we move from greaser rock to doo-wop to surf music to 60s pop to psychadelia, so on and so forth. Each feeding off of the other, but having it's own worth and getting people excited when it's time came due. To hold all subsequent creations up to the same standard of innovation of the first thing of its kind is absurd and pointless.

QuoteAs for your comment about its place in the Arthas system: its no more or less mechanical than the line in the old Shadowrun rules about giving extra karma to a player for 'playing in character'.  Its just more detailed.  Oddly, Shadowrun dates back to, what?, 1989? It also uses d6's, in large handfuls.

My GOD! Burning Wheel IS  Shadowrun!

Yeah, I remember Luke talking about how BW Classic was born out of a long-running Shadowrun game he GMd.  

QuoteBully for him. Sadly, I don't want RPG's to regiment play so much that such abuses aren't possible. Its a baby/bathwater situation*.

I seriously doubt we're ever going to come to any sort of agreement here, but what do you think is being thrown out? And which is the baby? Is that you Spike? Awww...


*Accidentally erased the part I was quoting here*
I like the scripted combat. It's chaotic and bloody without too much danger of insta-death. My group has had some really kick-ass memorable duel-style fights with that system. LOTS of people don't like it one bit. I think it begins to fall apart with middling numbers of opponents (say more than four on four) myself, but I don't have much of a problem with bloody vs. tests for that sort of thing.

Tim

Quote from: Tim*snipped weird sidebar about music*

I seriously doubt we're ever going to come to any sort of agreement here, but what do you think is being thrown out? And which is the baby? Is that you Spike? Awww...


*Accidentally erased the part I was quoting here*
I like the scripted combat. It's chaotic and bloody without too much danger of insta-death. My group has had some really kick-ass memorable duel-style fights with that system. LOTS of people don't like it one bit. I think it begins to fall apart with middling numbers of opponents (say more than four on four) myself, but I don't have much of a problem with bloody vs. tests for that sort of thing.

Tim

Wow, so you can cleave an orc's skull with an axe in BW? Whoda thunk?

Seriously: Nothing in what you just said about scripted combat comes from the actual scripting of the combat. In other words: I can point out and name half a dozen game systems that are 'chaotic and bloody without too much danger of instant death'... not the LEAST of which is good olde fashioned D&D.

Where, pray tell, does the scripting come into play?  Aside from the fact that you admit it tends to fall apart outside of one on one duels (result: use shorter vs tests to resolve outside the scripting...)

In other words: It turns off many gamers, can be hard to learn (from you earlier I think...), and is really only useful in one on one duels (ironically, Burning Empires is the exact opposite: its only useful in mass combats...), and in return you get the exact same sort of combat you get in an unscripted system.

In other news: I just submitted a patent for a car with five wheels.




EDIT::: I forgot to touch your baby bathwater question. Now, really, I did address this, it was in the small font at the end, but:

The baby, in this case, is the awesome gaming that results from unfettered GM's doing 'their thing'. The bathwater is the abuses that come from unfettered GM's doing 'unawesome things'.  By restricting the GM you toss, or attempt to toss, the bathwater of the abuses right out the window. Now, as anyone who has slung large heavy trays of water around might tell you, its not that neat, and water tends to go everywhere...sometimes even out the window, while the baby almost certainly is going right out. SO, you rid yourself of the awesome, and move the abuses all over the room and maybe the street.

Wow: that was hard.

They don´t even send quality viral marketers these days.

Too lame to flame.

Quote from: SpikeIn other words: It turns off many gamers, can be hard to learn (from you earlier I think...), and is really only useful in one on one duels (ironically, Burning Empires is the exact opposite: its only useful in mass combats...), and in return you get the exact same sort of combat you get in an unscripted system.

I go-you go, roll a d20, roll some damage is the source of a lot of migration from D&D to other systems, Spike. Do you have a point here?

This is a total blind alley, anyway. I have not once argued that Fight! is going to be inserted into some mainstream system and 'save' gaming. I haven't even argued that my favorite game is going to 'save' gaming.

Tim

Quote from: SettembriniYap yap yap yap yap

I'm not a viral marketer, Settembrini. I'm just a guy who is talking about his favorite game and what he thinks (and hopes!) will happen in the next few years with gaming.

I'll shut up now though, I've got a game to get to.

Tim

EDIT:

QuoteThis is a total blind alley, anyway. I have not once argued that Fight! is going to be inserted into some mainstream system and 'save' gaming. I haven't even argued that my favorite game is going to 'save' gaming.

Come on, Tim.

RD said it.
You coming here defending him and BW implies that you subscribe to that. Elsewise, you are in the wrong discussion.

This one is about RD and his take on "story", BW, D&D and other stuff.

Open another thread for voicing your precious little opinion on BW and scripted combats.

Either you discuss the above points, or you post elsewhere.

Quote from: TimI'm not a viral marketer, Settembrini. I'm just a guy who is talking about his favorite game and what he thinks (and hopes!) will happen in the next few years with gaming.

Tim

Funny, that´s the line all these little tools use.
Do they coordinate themselves?
Oh, wait. They do.

Quote from: SpikeSure, I suppose its nice to have the game book back your play when you argue your dread pirate would 'of course!' have a pistol up his rectum after you've been captured and tossed in a prison sans weapons...

... but there ain't nothing mechanical about it, and really not too much that is actually clever really.

GURPS has a trait you can choose for your character, "Gizmos". Anything your character would normally carry by virtue of their skills or background, and which would fit in a pocket, the player can say the character has, even if it's not on the character sheet. They give examples like a PI having a pistol on him - even though he was just searched through a checkpoint.

Does this mean GURPS is a "storytelling game"?

I mean... GURPS?!

Quote from: Kyle AaronDoes this mean GURPS is a "storytelling game"?

I mean... GURPS?!

Just relax, and let these two fine gentlemen help you:

Story games are not the future of roleplaying games. They are a future. If the hobby is to grow, then the reverse is the future of the hobby. Clever little systems and niche genre emulation have their place. That place isn't growing the hobby. That place is in appealing to people who already game and who are looking for a change and don't mind things like mechanics that only become apparent after weeks of play or don't mind the commitment needed to wade through hundreds of pages of dense mechanics. The future (or the 'saving' as Ryan would have it) of the hobby is in drawing new players and i think that the game aspect is far more likely to do that than the story aspect. Games need to appeal to as large a group as possible. Story won't do that. A more mainstream appeal will. What that is, who knows.:confused:

Teh Comedy Goldmine never stops:

http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/iWeb/RSDanceyBlog/Blog/1A28B7E7-6D72-4000-8CD8-462FE0BD5E36.html

Persistence. Tabletop RPGs have it, MMORPGs do not. This is somehow related to organized play and storytelling.

I think Ryan is out of a job and has been playing WoW a lot in between spurts of writing his Iacocca-style autobiography.

And then somebody sent him Burning Empires and a bottle of scotch in the mail, and an hour later everything suddenly began to make some marvelous kind of sense.

Wow... I'm not sure how Ryan thinks shared GMing/narrative control and simultaneously massively multiplayer offline gaming go hand-in-hand...

But this is starting to sound AWESOME!  Raven C.S. McCracken awesome!  I eagerly anticipate the next chapter.