Quote- If the player succeeds in exposing the blacksmith, the blacksmith is exposed, even if he wasn't actually a sorcerer.

I don't know where you get this from. If the blacksmith isn't a sorcerer, the GM can just say, "No, he isn't a sorcerer. How about the stakes are you just try and convince people he's a sorcerer?"

I think you can see that's a rather different thing. If the GM's doing his job, the player ought to know whether the NPC is a sorcerer or not. It's not Call of Cthulhu. The GM is supposed to be revealing everything in play so the players can make decisions.

QuoteThe thing is, Joel, I don't see how it's useful to say "The GM is banned from directly saying that a PC's actions were bad by saying `that's not how Lawful Good people act', but he's perfectly free to indirectly say that by using his control of the scenario to make that PC's actions have awful, horrible, life-blighting and unforeseen consequences." If anything, the second scenario is just as bad at the first: it's the equivalent of the GM slapping the PC in the face with the in-game situation and saying "Bad Dog! Look at what you did!" Either you're allowed to do that in Dogs, in which case the injunction against judging the PCs actions is utterly meaningless, or you're not, in which case the PCs are absolutely unassailable and none of their actions can have consequences that they didn't intend.

Vincent said something to the effect of "If you're doing something like that to play 'gotcha', you're a bad Dogs GM. If you're doing it because your players will enjoy it, you're a great Dogs GM."

Just remember what you're supposed to do.

Quote from: lumpleyDo the Dogs feel betrayed by the NPCs? Then you're fine.

Do the Dogs' players feel betrayed by you, the GM? Then you've cheated.

Quote from: BalbinusIMO the whole Forge movement is born of some people having had some truly shitty GMs, nothing more.

Edit:  And you're right on the trust point, a large amount of story game design seems to be about using the rules to address trust issues at the table.  Personally I just play with people I trust, and we therefore don't need all that stuff.

Look, I wish you'd stop saying that. It's not true for me, and therefore it's presumably not true for many others. I came to these games as a GM who has played with old, trusted friends and had a pretty good time at it. What's more, I've told you all this before.

If you 'don't need all that stuff', why do you think PtA looks good? Something else, presumably. It shouldn't be such a stretch to see that there could be many reasons why people might like other games.

Now, I think we should stop talking about 'player empowerment' because it's a meaningless buzz-phrase.

Quote from: BalbinusIn my experience the language gets coopted for two reasons, neither of which incidentally is malevolent in nature:

1.  Crappy play experiences with railroading GMs.

2.  An interest in sharing narrative control that gets frustrated by GMs who think the game should follow their plot.  That latter element is important, as someone who wanted shared narrative control in a player empowered game would realise they weren't getting all they wanted but would likely not have a shitty experience into the bargain.

IMO the whole Forge movement is born of some people having had some truly shitty GMs, nothing more.

Edit:  And you're right on the trust point, a large amount of story game design seems to be about using the rules to address trust issues at the table.  Personally I just play with people I trust, and we therefore don't need all that stuff.

Agreed (and I don't read you as saying this is absolute and in all-cases).

To be clear: I don't think the co-opting is malevolent; I do think it's sometimes disingenuous -- I've seen people from the indie scene (I can think of one case in John Kim's blog a year or so ago) ask (in apparent seriousness) if they could really be expected to tell people that they're responsible for their part in enjoying games (with the implication being that it was better to tell folks that evil traditional games traumatized them than to expect them to step up and be responsible for their own role in whatever on-going dysfunction they participated in).

I *do* think dropping the language of empowerment (as some pro-theory people have suggested) is the right way to go about it...

But this is the *wrong forum* to be preaching that in: empowerment comes up *here* because it's brought up in other places -- if you want to preach against sin, go amongst the sinners!

Droog, as the voice of reason in this thread, I'd ask you to go to RPG.net (if you haven't already) and let the theory people know that "player empowerment" is a poor term. You could do the same thing on Story-Games.

I'm pretty sure that once theory people stop using it, you're unlikely to see threads here.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.Droog, as the voice of reason in this thread, I'd ask you to go to RPG.net (if you haven't already) and let the theory people know that "player empowerment" is a poor term. You could do the same thing on Story-Games.

I'm pretty sure that once theory people stop using it, you're unlikely to see threads here.

Don't be silly. RPG.net is way too big for any one voice to have an effect. Story Games tends to talk about specific techniques. And the Poobutt talks about anything he likes whether it's true or not.

'Theory people'! As if there were some homogenous mass of people one could point at. There are all sorts of people in all sorts of states of intellectual confusion.

Quote from: droogDon't be silly. RPG.net is way too big for any one voice to have an effect. Story Games tends to talk about specific techniques. And the Poobutt talks about anything he likes whether it's true or not.

'Theory people'! As if there were some homogenous mass of people one could point at. There are all sorts of people in all sorts of states of intellectual confusion.

Perhaps true; I'm just saying: if you're going to preach on the side of reason and righteousness, it's better to do so in places where those things are wanting.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.Perhaps true; I'm just saying: if you're going to preach on the side of reason and righteousness, it's better to do so in places where those things are wanting.

You're a fine one to talk about disingenuousness. I'm going to go back to ignoring you.

Quote from: droogThere are all sorts of people in all sorts of states of intellectual confusion.

I like it when people talk about me.

Quote from: droogYou're a fine one to talk about disingenuousness. I'm going to go back to ignoring you.

Sorry -- I certainly wouldn't blame you for ignoring me, but that wasn't meant to be nasty -- more playful: *I* haven't been ignoring you, and agree with at least some of what you've said here and recently otherwise.

To be clear: I agree with you and wasn't being disingenuous calling you the voice of reason: "empowerment" as a buzzword has somewhat banal history. Your suggestion that we ignore it is a good one made in any forum.

In the spirit of not-trying to piss you off, I owe you a response to the theory-people thing -- certainly the specific dogma isn't unified (and it's less so now that it was 2 years ago). Still: the unifying thread that I see in these discussions (including, on topic, the use of the word "empowerment") is the belief that indie games / gamers are superior to traditional games/gamers. In that sense I see there as being a coherent body of thought behind a significant portion of the theory community (c.f. IPR's marketing slogans).

Anyway, if you don't feel you're superior because of your gaming preferences, this community doesn't include you, and you're on the righteous side of the gaming divide along with me (e.g. people who think they're superior for other reasons )

Anyway, feel free to return to your regularly scheduled debate.
-E.

Quote from: droogLook, I wish you'd stop saying that. It's not true for me, and therefore it's presumably not true for many others. I came to these games as a GM who has played with old, trusted friends and had a pretty good time at it. What's more, I've told you all this before.

If you 'don't need all that stuff', why do you think PtA looks good? Something else, presumably. It shouldn't be such a stretch to see that there could be many reasons why people might like other games.

Now, I think we should stop talking about 'player empowerment' because it's a meaningless buzz-phrase.

Sorry Droog, to be honest I tend not to think of you as a storygamer, possibly as I don't really think of Heroquest as a storygame.

PTA is a fair point, in that many storygames don't fit my description and therefore I was being too general, but I would note it's not a system which tries to legislate for a lack of trust between the participants in the same way say Burning Wheel does.

BW always strikes me as being very similar to Rolemaster in many ways, I don't see it as being a story game in anything more than branding personally, it looks to me like a fairly solid trad rpg.

Quote from: droogI don't know where you get this from. If the blacksmith isn't a sorcerer, the GM can just say, "No, he isn't a sorcerer. How about the stakes are you just try and convince people he's a sorcerer?"

I would say that the stakes either way are whether or not the PC convinces the townsfolk that the blacksmith is a sorcerer; it's just that in one situation he is and the other he isn't.

I think it is problematic to expect the GM to up and say "Hold on, this guy isn't actually a sorcerer" at the beginning of the conflict. It would seem to a) utterly sabotage any investigative element the game might have, b) put the player in the always-awkward situation of having to separate IC and OOC knowledge of the blacksmith's status (even though many players can do that just fine, I consider it polite to avoid putting them in a situation where they have to), and I am not sure it is necessarily stated or implied in the Dogs rules that that is what you should do in such a situation.

QuoteVincent said something to the effect of "If you're doing something like that to play 'gotcha', you're a bad Dogs GM. If you're doing it because your players will enjoy it, you're a great Dogs GM."

Ah, but isn't the whole point of Narrativist systems is to create a structure whereby the GM can't play "gotcha"? And what happens if your players enjoy it but at the same time the GM's saying "Gotcha! Your PCs are assholes!"?

Dogs is not an investigative game.  In Dogs the players should know very quickly what is going on in town, the point of the game is what they choose to do about it.

So, in Dogs you don't struggle to work out that the blacksmith is a sorceror, you find out very quickly who the sorceror is and then try to deal with that knowledge.

The game is very explicit about this, it has clear advice about resisting the temptation to make the players work out what is going on as that's not what the game is about and it doesn't work so well for it.

Quote from: WarthurI would say that the stakes either way are whether or not the PC convinces the townsfolk that the blacksmith is a sorcerer; it's just that in one situation he is and the other he isn't.

If you know the blacksmith is not a sorcerer and you still try to convince the townsfolk he is, that is a decision made with full knowledge. It therefore makes a statement about either you or your character or both.

QuoteI think it is problematic to expect the GM to up and say "Hold on, this guy isn't actually a sorcerer" at the beginning of the conflict. It would seem to a) utterly sabotage any investigative element the game might have, b) put the player in the always-awkward situation of having to separate IC and OOC knowledge of the blacksmith's status (even though many players can do that just fine, I consider it polite to avoid putting them in a situation where they have to), and I am not sure it is necessarily stated or implied in the Dogs rules that that is what you should do in such a situation.

As Balbinus points out, DitV is not an investigative game. It's a game of moral decision. It is the GM's duty to fully reveal the town.

As for politeness, it would be polite to ensure that the players know what they're getting into before they get to the blacksmith. Before they start playing the game, indeed.

QuoteAh, but isn't the whole point of Narrativist systems is to create a structure whereby the GM can't play "gotcha"? And what happens if your players enjoy it but at the same time the GM's saying "Gotcha! Your PCs are assholes!"?

No, the social aspect is always paramount. If you enjoy it, you enjoy it. Some people would enjoy the 'gotcha', and there's nothing wrong with that. Some people wouldn't enjoy playing DitV at all, and there's nothing wrong with that either. But it's pretty clear how it's supposed to go.

Quote from: -E.In the spirit of not-trying to piss you off, I owe you a response to the theory-people thing -- certainly the specific dogma isn't unified (and it's less so now that it was 2 years ago). Still: the unifying thread that I see in these discussions (including, on topic, the use of the word "empowerment") is the belief that indie games / gamers are superior to traditional games/gamers. In that sense I see there as being a coherent body of thought behind a significant portion of the theory community (c.f. IPR's marketing slogans).

Anyway, if you don't feel you're superior because of your gaming preferences, this community doesn't include you, and you're on the righteous side of the gaming divide along with me (e.g. people who think they're superior for other reasons )

Okay, E. Until you show me otherwise, I'll take this at face value.

The thing is, almost everybody feels that their ways are superior. Look at almost everything Settembrini has ever posted, for an extreme example. It's pretty hard to point at any one group and say that they're righteous. The most you can say is that some people are snottier than others. That doesn't seem to depend on what they're actually playing or talking about.

When you get to talking about a huge, heterogenous body of people like RPG.net, all generalisations are moot. I see a whole lot of people talking about things they know very little about, which is nothing new.

I wouldn't call myself righteous. I just like to be precise and stick to what I know. I don't mind if people disagree with me, but when they cross my arbitrary line of respect I start hitting.

I'm a blacksmith and a sorcerer. It drives the ladies wild.

QuoteAs Balbinus points out, DitV is not an investigative game. It's a game of moral decision. It is the GM's duty to fully reveal the town.

This is clear from the explanations given here, and from various forum posts by Vincent Baker. I would submit that it isn't clear from the core rulebook; certainly, of the three different GMs (including myself) who independently ran Dogs one-shots in our local gaming scene, all of them ran it as an investigative game. I'm also not sure I would enjoy it if the situation were simply presented to me on a silver plate.

QuoteNo, the social aspect is always paramount. If you enjoy it, you enjoy it. Some people would enjoy the 'gotcha', and there's nothing wrong with that. Some people wouldn't enjoy playing DitV at all, and there's nothing wrong with that either. But it's pretty clear how it's supposed to go.

Again, this is apparent from Baker's forum posts but if you judge the game on the basis of the rulebook this is far from clear.

At this point, I don't see that Dogs does anything especially revolutionary which couldn't have been achieved by writing an essay about how lame "gotcha" moments are and how GMs should be more careful about how they use them.