Quote from: ArrozConLeche;981031Shit-posts like this, coming from some of the fuckheads who like storygames don't help:

https://unplayablegames.blogspot.de/2017/08/osr-design-is-stuck-in-past-and-it-is.html
https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?808224-OSR-design-is-stuck-in-the-past-and-it-is-a-pity/page4

To the storygames forum admin's credit, he rightly closed the thread and called this guy out on the bullshit, but the thread is still open in RPGNet.

That article was some of the most pretentious twaddle I've ever read.

Here's the thing: being tired of zero-to-hero and "sorry, you're Taurus of Nemedia, not Conan of Cimmeria" long predates story games and the Forge and all that. My friends and I were already there by the mid-1980s. 4d6, arrange to suit; max HP at first level; switching to other systems that gave you more competent starting characters; you name it--our take on D&D was not "Tower of the Elephant" (as Gronan has advocated) but "Red Nails"--Conan and Valeria go into a dungeon, but they're sure not first level characters. Now you could rationalize that they're higher level themselves at this point in their careers, that Xuchotil was a killer dungeon, etc., etc., and that would be fine. But we just wanted to start there and cut out the origin sequence. I don't mind if I die in the Scarlet Citadel, but I don't want to die grinding rats in the basement of the in--that's not plot immunity, it's just eliminating what I personally find boring. And that's what I've found boring for 37 years. not as a result of Ron Edwards or story-games.com's evil powerz.

That said, I'd rather spoon out my eyeballs than play a great many "story games"--they're usually far too focused for my tastes. But let's be honest and acknowledge the gap between something like Barbarians of Lemuria and Fiasco or Grey Ranks. That characters in the former have Hero Points to influence the dice, soak deadly damage, and sometimes arrange for a bar in the prison cell to be loose doesn't make that game a molly-coddling indulgence in omnipotence or poison to all immersion.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981064Ill have to disagree here. In my experience even Howard's original stories paint Conan as something special... even in his youth he something to be reckoned with above and beyond even the tough Cimmerians. Time and time again he is described as standing tall over those around him, and not just in stature. Over and over he is the last to go down or the only survivor not because of luck but because of prowess. If you wanted to play Conan in an RPG you couldnt simply rely on luck and hope for the best, youd have to start off with something pretty special or have a mechanism in place to allow him to aspire to the same level witnessed in the stories.  Sure, one can play a regular guy who might, or might not, achieve greatness but I think most players want to play somebody special, a hero for lack of a better term. I suppose some dont mind playing a dumb shmuck who dies on his first trip away from home but I dont see the fun in it.

In my case, it comes from being a wargamer.

Troop quality varies.  Troops start as green, and as they get battlefield experience they eventually will become "elite."  Many campaign rules even have an explicit system for this.

I don't see the fun in playing the mightiest of them all.  I'd rather rely on my own judgement than the stats of my character.

Just like "Fight in the Skies."  All pilots start out as inexperienced.  If your pilot has 15 kills and all the bonuses that go with being a triple ace, it's because you're DAMN good at playing the game.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981095In my case, it comes from being a wargamer.

Troop quality varies.  Troops start as green, and as they get battlefield experience they eventually will become "elite."  Many campaign rules even have an explicit system for this.

I don't see the fun in playing the mightiest of them all.  I'd rather rely on my own judgement than the stats of my character.

Which is totally cool. Those of us coming in as kids 6-7 years later were starting from a very different place.

Quote from: Vargold;981090That characters in the former have Hero Points to influence the dice, soak deadly damage, and sometimes arrange for a bar in the prison cell to be loose doesn't make that game a molly-coddling indulgence in omnipotence or poison to all immersion.

In your opinion. Plenty of others DO find it blunts feelings of danger and becomes something of a 'win' button.
I do like the luck mechanic in DCC though, because it's very limited in what it can do, overuse will bite you in the ass, and it feels like a 'real' resource in the setting.

An excerpt from a chapter:

"And as I've mentioned, in a wargame, you ARE going to lose troops.  We were playing a long-term exploration campaign, but there was no guarantee that the same characters would survive to explore the entire world.  We never expected it, any more than we expected all of our forces in any other wargame to survive completely intact.  If Baker Company gets mauled, you reassign Charlie Company to cover that objective and the war goes on.  It's true that "nobody wins or loses D&D" in the sense that you will never be knocked out of a campaign, but that doesn't mean your forces – that is, your characters – won't suffer losses.
   This last bit is really, really important.  We EXPECTED to take losses.  Not just from wargames, but from the books and stories we read.  Sure, Conan never died, John Carter never died… but there was only one Conan.  There was only ONE John Carter.  We knew that we couldn't all be Conan.  Plus, we'd read a LOT of mythology and fantasy.  Great heroes die.  Heracles DIED.  Beowulf DIED.  Njall DIED.  King Arthur DIED (hell, the book is CALLED "The Death of Arthur.")  In fact, many of the knights of the Round Table died, often in feuds with one another (so much for the inseperable band of heroes!)  Tristram, Balin, Balan, Galahad, Gawain, Gaheris, Gareth, Agrivain, Lamorak, Pellinore… all DIED.  In the Clark Ashton Smith story "The Seven Geases," the protagonist DIED in the last paragraph when his hand slips – not only dead, but dead on an arbitrary bit of bad luck.  In The Hobbit, 20% of Thorin's original company DIED, including Thorin himself.  In Lord of the Rings, Boromir DIED.  Theoden DIED (by mischance when his horse falls, not even in battle).  Hama DIED.  Denethor DIED (and Denethor is a tragic, noble figure, not the slobbering, gobbling thing that Peter Jackson shat up onto the screen.)"

Quote from: Vargold;981090That said, I'd rather spoon out my eyeballs than play a great many "story games"--they're usually far too focused for my tastes. But let's be honest and acknowledge the gap between something like Barbarians of Lemuria and Fiasco or Grey Ranks. That characters in the former have Hero Points to influence the dice, soak deadly damage, and sometimes arrange for a bar in the prison cell to be loose doesn't make that game a molly-coddling indulgence in omnipotence or poison to all immersion.

To a degree. I draw the line at d6 Star Wars and Character Points/Force Points. They are narrative tools, yes. However, they can only affect the skill or attribute rolls of the character or NPC that spends them. They cannot be used to change the environment around them, so no "arrange for a bar in the prison cell to be loose" to change the situation the characters find themselves in.

Quote from: Simlasa;981098In your opinion. Plenty of others DO find it blunts feelings of danger and becomes something of a 'win' button.

"In [my/your] opinion" is what this is all about, though, right? Immersion is a spectrum, not a binary state (even if people on that spectrum experience it as a binary state). It's messy: I've been in B/X D&D games where I felt like I was pushing a game piece around and in Microscope games where I was utterly IC for much of the time. And other times I've been totally immersed in 2nd Edition while recoiling from a Fiasco game that felt like going through the motions.

OTOH, Gronan, Lancelot and Bedivere and Ector de Maris all made it to the end of the campaign, and they didn't start as level 1 squires either. 8 of the 9 members of the Fellowship of the Ring lived. Conan walked out of Xuchotil with Valeria. Coll did die in The High King, but it wasn't due to a bad roll while fighting a house cat. Ged and Tenar and Fafhrd and the Mouser and most of the carbon-copy Fellowship in Sword of Shannara made it through. There's taking losses (Theoden gets crushed by a horse fighting one of the most powerful sorcerers in the history of Middle-earth) and there's taking losses (Fineous Fingers fails his open locks roll in room 2 of his first dungeon). Some people opt for a game that gets you to the first option right away; others enjoy the second option. But it's clear to me that the inspirational materials support both.

Quote from: jeff37923;981104To a degree. I draw the line at d6 Star Wars and Character Points/Force Points. They are narrative tools, yes. However, they can only affect the skill or attribute rolls of the character or NPC that spends them. They cannot be used to change the environment around them, so no "arrange for a bar in the prison cell to be loose" to change the situation the characters find themselves in.

I should clarify: I'm only fine with the environment-changing power in the context of really pulpy stuff, the sort of material where cliffhangers are customary and characters are frequently beneficiaries of improbable coincidences. If a player wants to use one of his "Ass-Saver Points" to find a loose bar in his cell in such an environment, I'm fine with it, especially since he's now down an "Ass-Saver Point" when he faces Set Reborn later on.

In less pulpy games, definitely no environment-changing.

Quote from: jeff37923;981104To a degree. I draw the line at d6 Star Wars and Character Points/Force Points. They are narrative tools, yes. However, they can only affect the skill or attribute rolls of the character or NPC that spends them. They cannot be used to change the environment around them, so no "arrange for a bar in the prison cell to be loose" to change the situation the characters find themselves in.

Yeah, that's really the demarcation for me as well. If they're just about your PC and could represent something in the setting... like added effort... and aren't unlimited or free of consequence... I'm usually fine (still not something I want in horror, historical, or 'gritty' settings). But editing external stuff, the setting, puts me right off.

Quote from: Vargold;981113OTOH, Gronan, Lancelot and Bedivere and Ector de Maris all made it to the end of the campaign, and they didn't start as level 1 squires either. 8 of the 9 members of the Fellowship of the Ring lived. Conan walked out of Xuchotil with Valeria. Coll did die in The High King, but it wasn't due to a bad roll while fighting a house cat. Ged and Tenar and Fafhrd and the Mouser and most of the carbon-copy Fellowship in Sword of Shannara made it through. There's taking losses (Theoden gets crushed by a horse fighting one of the most powerful sorcerers in the history of Middle-earth) and there's taking losses (Fineous Fingers fails his open locks roll in room 2 of his first dungeon). Some people opt for a game that gets you to the first option right away; others enjoy the second option. But it's clear to me that the inspirational materials support both.

And at the other end of the spectrum there is the guy at GaryCon a couple years back who published a long bitch and wail in his blog because he got shot down playing Dawn Patrol.

And he actually said "I don't want to play a game where I can lose."

This is one of the things I like about Uncharted Worlds, my preferred SF RPG. You have accumulate Data Points which give you +1 to rolls, but you only get them by researching or investigating. So yes, you can leverage a Data Point to get out of the Klingon brig, but only if you've earlier spent time researching Klingon security systems or engineering.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981117And at the other end of the spectrum there is the guy at GaryCon a couple years back who published a long bitch and wail in his blog because he got shot down playing Dawn Patrol.

And he actually said "I don't want to play a game where I can lose."

That's incredibly stupid.

Also, I would love to play Dawn Patrol--never got a chance.