Another reason to dislike this game.

RPGPundit

Quote from: daniel_ream;484792My vibe from this rule was that it was intended as a sort of storygame mechanic: your points also represent how much you're allowed to have that skill affect the story.  IME that breaks down with players who will look at such a rule with a straight resource management approach.  I've had the same problem in games where non-superpowered people should be afraid of guns, but in an attempt to mimic the source genre (i.e., Batman never gets shot, or crippled when he does) the mechanics make guns a mild nuisance, leading to "I charge the cannons!" sort of behaviour from players who have figured this out.

While I have issues with it, this doesn't seem like a "story game" mechanic in the sense of recent Forge-inspired games.  

Mechanics like gun damage appropriate to the genre have been a part of traditional RPGs for ages.  For example, Sandy Petersen explicitly said that the sanity rules in Call of Cthulhu were intended as genre emulation - to make play more like a Lovecraft story.  Toon, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and loads of other games tailored the action to fit their genre.  While a particular implementation of gun damage might be broken, I think the general principle of mimicking the source genre has a long history in traditional RPGs.  

This spending from individual skill pools, though, doesn't have any clear connection to rules like having the player narrate their own victory or such.  It's not simulationist, but it's also not clearly related to story or narrative.

Quote from: jhkim;485101While I have issues with it, this doesn't seem like a "story game" mechanic in the sense of recent Forge-inspired games.  

Mechanics like gun damage appropriate to the genre have been a part of traditional RPGs for ages.  For example, Sandy Petersen explicitly said that the sanity rules in Call of Cthulhu were intended as genre emulation - to make play more like a Lovecraft story.  Toon, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, and loads of other games tailored the action to fit their genre.  While a particular implementation of gun damage might be broken, I think the general principle of mimicking the source genre has a long history in traditional RPGs.  

This spending from individual skill pools, though, doesn't have any clear connection to rules like having the player narrate their own victory or such.  It's not simulationist, but it's also not clearly related to story or narrative.

Speaking out of my ass here (i.e. with no hard knowledge of the system), if it comes down to "gunman can't fire gun because he's run out of Bail Your Ass Out Points", I'd be mighty frustrated.

For me, a big part of the fun in role-playing is, you know, playing a role. Acting out a believable character in a (mostly) believable world. Maybe that's "immersion", I don't know; I don't play the theory jargon game. But if my character has a loaded gun, and freedom of will and movement to fire it, and can't fire it because of some crazy system mechanic, I'd feel gimped.

There's probably a point at which genre emulative mechanics cross into so-called "storygaming". Which is to say, becomes too focused on generating a story, as opposed to creating and mantaining a world the players feel they can meaningfully interact with, which may break suspension of disbelief, or otherwise disenfranchise the gamer. I think that's what Daniel and a few others meant, and I can sympathize with that.

Hope that helps. I haven't actually read or played the Gumshoe engine, so feel free to correct me. My tastes run strongly towards the "trad" end of the spectre, I just don't do the "death to storygames" thing.

Quote from: The Butcher;485108For me, a big part of the fun in role-playing is, you know, playing a role. Acting out a believable character in a (mostly) believable world. Maybe that's "immersion", I don't know; I don't play the theory jargon game. But if my character has a loaded gun, and freedom of will and movement to fire it, and can't fire it because of some crazy system mechanic, I'd feel gimped.

I'd agree with that... but then I think about the various sanity systems in games which wrest some degree of control from players in the name of genre emulation... and I think those are a necessary evil because otherwise you'd have the same old thing where every altercation becomes a fight to the death... no one ever running away scared or cowering in fear... because they all want to be Action Man... because playing a horror game where players refuse to roleplay being horrified gimps the horror.
My preference would be that the 'kill them and take their stuff' guys would just opt out of the Cthulhu game to begin with.

So there's a slope there... with the usual lines drawn to account for taste.
One of mine is 'fate' points... which I usually see argued as supporting a certain sort of heroic/epic 'story'... and they mess with my immersion.

Quote from: The Butcher;485108Speaking out of my ass here (i.e. with no hard knowledge of the system), if it comes down to "gunman can't fire gun because he's run out of Bail Your Ass Out Points", I'd be mighty frustrated.

To be fair, it's not that the gunman can't fire his gun in GUMSHOE.  He can fire it, but will only have the unskilled chance to hit after he runs out of points.  That could be said to represent his being tired, since he can refresh his pool by getting rest.  

However, there are separate pools per individual skill.  So rather than getting tired in general, he gets tired of shooting, but may still be fresh in melee fighting (the Scuffling skill).  

Quote from: The Butcher;485108There's probably a point at which genre emulative mechanics cross into so-called "storygaming". Which is to say, becomes too focused on generating a story, as opposed to creating and mantaining a world the players feel they can meaningfully interact with, which may break suspension of disbelief, or otherwise disenfranchise the gamer. I think that's what Daniel and a few others meant, and I can sympathize with that.

OK, but Daniel was talking about guns not being very deadly as an example of story gaming.  Lack of realistic deadliness is genre emulation, but it has been in RPGs since the beginning.  While vanilla D&D doesn't include guns, it definitely has the feature that characters can often take an unrealistic amount of damage - like falling six stories just to dust themselves off and keep going.  

My point is that D&D may have lack of realism - but it's peculiar to call that "story gaming" - either by Pundit's usage or by the story gamers' usage.