Quote from: The Butcher;827484On a more serious note — I've only played CP2020 once and I've read precious little cyberpunk. Regardless of what one perceives as authorial intent, what sort of genre-emulation mechanic would you have appended to the game?

Because, broadly speaking, I'm in trechriron's "let players roleplay" camp.

But then my 2nd-level paladin just walked into a portal to the Gray Wastes yesterday, so WTF do I know.

I wouldn't change a thing about Cyberpunk.  I love it.  I'm in the middle of running a Cyberpunk 2013 game for a review on my blog.

My comments -- of which the above quote is a minor part -- is that a lot of people were playing Cyberpunk a different way than the designer envisioned.  He wrote in later books that the game turned into something he didn't necessarily see as true to its roots.  I think he labelled that play style "James Bond meets the Six Million Dollar Man" later.

There's nothing wrong with that -- my post is that I think that happens to most games.  The designer has a goal, but that goal usually looks different than what people play at the table.  The play that emerges at people's tables, the rules they latch onto and discard, the things they focus on, looks different and then ends up shaping the line.  I think that rift, between designer(s) intent and the play people really enjoy, is interesting.  The next step, where actual play shapes the line then, is also really interesting.

I think -- and I don't say this over there at RPG.net except to mention Ron Edwards' Sorcerer, but for you to constrain a game so that there isn't drift between the designer's intention of play and the play that emerges for a lot of groups is either to cripple the system or to go to enormous lengths to make it unpleasant to play it another way.  Sorcerer is an example of the former -- I think Burning Wheel first edition is a good example of the latter.

Quote from: trechriron;827471OK. How? What kind of mechanics do you feel help support or represent romance, broken hearts and a sense of longing? Is that not something that emerges out of play? Something the player experiences based on things happening in the game?

I have mechanics in mind that might work, but I don't see those mechanics as mandatory.  Something like Night's Black Agent's trust/betrayal mechanic, might work.

You don't /need/ mechanics for this stuff, though.  People seem to think I'm saying CP is "crippled" when nothing is further from the truth.  People have been doing betrayal and romance for decades with no mechanics. Cyberpunk got chosen as an example because I interpreted later comments by the designer about the game to be instructive regarding my point about play drift, which I describe in the post before this.

Quote from: CRKrueger;827493All that can be accomplished through roleplaying without dramatic genre mechanics.

The psychic trauma of witnessing the supernatural, too, can be roleplayed. Doesn't mean that Sanity in CoC or the Madness Meter in UA aren't fantastic game mechanics.

Hell, I view XP-for-GP as a genre emulation mechanic, hard-coding the almost universal cupidity of sword-and-sorcery protagonists into D&D's DNA. It's no wonder AD&D 2e dropped this rule after Dragonlance persuaded everyone that Romantic High Fantasy D&D was A Thing.

I'm not a fan of obtrusive or gimmicky genre emulation subsystems, but maybe FVB has something just as unobtrusive and brilliantly simple in mind. I'm just not cyberpunk-savvy enough to perceive what sort of genre trope he's going after, here.

Quote from: The Butcher;827503The psychic trauma of witnessing the supernatural, too, can be roleplayed. Doesn't mean that Sanity in CoC or the Madness Meter in UA aren't fantastic game mechanics. ...

Good point.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;827502I have mechanics in mind that might work, but I don't see those mechanics as mandatory.  Something like Night's Black Agent's trust/betrayal mechanic, might work.

You don't /need/ mechanics for this stuff, though.  People seem to think I'm saying CP is "crippled" when nothing is further from the truth.  People have been doing betrayal and romance for decades with no mechanics. Cyberpunk got chosen as an example because I interpreted later comments by the designer about the game to be instructive regarding my point about play drift, which I describe in the post before this.

That's cool. The first post here was a quote from you taken partly out of context.

I am not familiar with NBA. Most of the meta-game mechanics I'm familiar with involve points (fate, action, drama, conviction...) and rate from less intrusive (re-roll, avoid damage) to more intrusive (edit the plot, introduce something, take over GMing...). Also various "traits" that offer bonuses when you do something related to that trait - like having a lover, and any actions related to them giving you a bonus (or penalty). Also, the relationship mechanics in The Mountain Witch. After my stint with various games using these, I felt like they interfered with the experience.

I think it goes along with a fundamental concept (personal philosophy?): playing the game should be MOST rewarding. If the only awards that excite players are improvement, bonuses and cheats - then the game side takes center stage. If the experience is the paramount award, then involving yourself in shenanigans outside the basic things on your character sheet are likely to have more gravitas.

Sure, you can turn that stuff INTO a game. But in the end you are gaming something that really should have an emotional or internal impact. "I collected more relationships than you" may give a player a sense of accomplishment, but lacks any emotional context. Hell, it could cheapen any emotional context that may have been there to begin with.

I feel like a player who pursues such things of their own volition, based on the character's beliefs, motivations or desires to be more... substantive than a player motivated by a game mechanic. I generally come away from games with these mechanics with a sense that something was missing.

Of course, just my two cents, YMMV, and all that jazz. :-)

Do RPG's "model" anything? I thought they were their own thing. Give us some rules, we do some stuff, there are some genre trappings from other media.

Quote from: The_Shadow;827531Do RPG's "model" anything? I thought they were their own thing. Give us some rules, we do some stuff, there are some genre trappings from other media.

Exactly this.  It drives me right up the wall when people howl and moan about how "D&D doesn't 'do' Middle Earth!  It doesn't 'do' Lankhmar!  It doesn't 'do' Hyboria!" (and so on and etcetera).  D&D is it's own fantasy realm.  You (well not "you" but people in general) that interested in those settings should have it in them to pare it into a shape more suiting those realms.  And if that's too much heavy lifting that's not the fault of the game.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827457Edit: And not that you need mechanics for that, but I don't even find enough guidance or advice on how to properly roleplay things of that nature. Not in the core book at least.

Yeah, my view is that you don't necessarily need mechanics (although positive feedback loop reward mechanisms are nice - reward players for their PCs acting like Streets of Fire characters, and they'll act like Streets of Fire characters) but you do need some GMing advice, which really wasn't in there. There wasn't really GMing advice for a cop game either, afaicr, even though Cop was one of the classes. Mechanically, the game I own (CP 2020) very very strongly incentivises playing Solos, since they will wipe the floor with everyone else in combat, and encourages a combat + netrun game; the Arasaka tower massacre without the romance element.

Quote from: The Butcher;827503The psychic trauma of witnessing the supernatural, too, can be roleplayed. Doesn't mean that Sanity in CoC or the Madness Meter in UA aren't fantastic game mechanics.

Hell, I view XP-for-GP as a genre emulation mechanic, hard-coding the almost universal cupidity of sword-and-sorcery protagonists into D&D's DNA. It's no wonder AD&D 2e dropped this rule after Dragonlance persuaded everyone that Romantic High Fantasy D&D was A Thing.

Yup, I was just thinking about XP for GP, since I use it in my 5e D&D game - it's a fantastic sword & sorcery genre emulation mechanic (unlike 3e/PF's focus on using gp to buy magic items). In Streets of Fire the Michael Pare character works hard to earn money, that he then throws back in the face of the guy who hired him - if you want behaviour like that, then xp for getting the money, and bonus xp for throwing it away (like the 'Arneson Rule' where you get XP for carousing away your GP), seems like the way to go. Likewise xp for rescuing Ellen Aim, XP for romancing Ellen Aim, bonus XP for leaving her at the end!
I generally find that xp is the perfect mechanism for incentivising a particular play mode, much better than Bennies, Inspiration etc which often feel anti-immersive. So I guess a list of the kind of things that should earn xp in the appropriate genre would be good.
Incidentally I don't find it matters much what the xp actually do, how levelling up actually progresses the pc - getting better at combat through doomed romance works just as well as getting better at combat through grubbing for gold pieces.

Quote from: trechriron;827516Good point.
That's cool. The first post here was a quote from you taken partly out of context.

I know it's partly out of context, but I'm  criticizing a very specific premise that about what the game specifically wanted to model (and maybe by implication, what the sources are about). I pretty much reject that premise outright.

I don't mind storygames mechanics. In fact, I actually like them but that's a different discussion from what I intended in the OP.

Quote from: The_Shadow;827531Do RPG's "model" anything? I thought they were their own thing. Give us some rules, we do some stuff, there are some genre trappings from other media.

I definitely believe some games do.  Mekton definitely models "real robot" mecha shows.  Marvel Super Heroes definitely attempts to model the action and story structure of 80s Marvel comics.  Doctor Who and it's initiative system are definitely using rules to attempt to model the new Doctor Who TV shows.

Quote from: S'mon;827589Yeah, my view is that you don't necessarily need mechanics (although positive feedback loop reward mechanisms are nice - reward players for their PCs acting like Streets of Fire characters, and they'll act like Streets of Fire characters) but you do need some GMing advice, which really wasn't in there. There wasn't really GMing advice for a cop game either, afaicr, even though Cop was one of the classes. Mechanically, the game I own (CP 2020) very very strongly incentivises playing Solos, since they will wipe the floor with everyone else in combat, and encourages a combat + netrun game; the Arasaka tower massacre without the romance element.

it really does, doesn't it? I tended not to play solos and my enjoyment on the game was very GM dependent.There was exactly one game that I enjoyed in which I wasn't a solo (I was a Corp). The one time I tried to play a Rockerboy, I got creamed right away because all the GM did was throw a cyberpsycho at me on the very first opening scene of the very first session.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827633I know it's partly out of context, but I'm  criticizing a very specific premise that about what the game specifically wanted to model (and maybe by implication, what the sources are about). I pretty much reject that premise outright.

I don't mind storygames mechanics. In fact, I actually like them but that's a different discussion from what I intended in the OP.

From my POV, you are confusing "storygame mechanics" with mechanics which encourage genre simulation.

Quote from: Gabriel2;827634I definitely believe some games do.  Mekton definitely models "real robot" mecha shows.  Marvel Super Heroes definitely attempts to model the action and story structure of 80s Marvel comics.  Doctor Who and it's initiative system are definitely using rules to attempt to model the new Doctor Who TV shows.

Outside of storygames, they tend to model physics and combat. Everything else is kind of left up to the GM (edit: and the players).

I'm not familiar with MSH, though. How does it attempt to model story structure?

Quote from: Gabriel2;827636From my POV, you are confusing "storygame mechanics" with mechanics which encourage genre simulation.

What are the differences, in your opinion?

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827637Outside of storygames, they tend to model physics and combat. Everything else is kind of left up to the GM.

I'm not familiar with MSH, though. How does it attempt to model story structure?

It attempts to encourage the types of behaviour you see in characters in the comics.  This is the Karma mechanic I mentioned earlier.

Karma is a pool of points you can use to influence die rolls.  Do good and heroic things, you get more Karma.  Do bad things, and you lose Karma.  Do something evil like killing, and you lose ALL your Karma.  But if you keep doing good stuff, you have these points to push yourself when needed.  

It's a mechanic for those scenes in comics where the hero dips into his reserve of willpower and determination, and finds the strength to act outside his/her parameters.  The same mechanic also makes other players want to keep a close eye on Wolverine so he doesn't kill anyone, because if he does then the whole team loses their Karma pool.

It reinforces the desired behaviour, just like XP for GP encourages characters in AD&D1e to seek out treasure above all else.