Quote from: Voros;981237Would you say it is more pre-determined than the fact that due to the mechanics (and intent of the designers) most CoC adventures or campaigns will end in either madness or death?

I pretty familiar with Call of Cthulhu. Most adventures don't end in madness or death. The campaigns I've read, run, and played typically don't end that way for all the characters, although in a multi-part, globe spanning campaign one should expect to lose some characters. Much like the players as a group should expect to lose some PCs in an OD&D campaign.

Quote from: Arminius;981239

• GMing advice that calls for dramatic manipulation within and across scenarios

Could you give an example or two. I'm not sure what you mean by dramatic manipulation.

Quote from: Voros;981241It's fine to say it's not your bag or you simply dislike the mechanic but it is pretty pointless to criticize something for not being what you expected, any game should be judged on how well it does what it sets out to do not what you think it should be doing.

No just like every other form of entertainment, entertainment is also judged on whether or not I enjoy it (or think that I might enjoy it).

QuoteIn terms of a mechanics effect on immersion, I think that is completely subjective and an unlikely complaint from someone who hasn't been playing RPGs for years. We now take the mechanics of trad RPGs as not immersion breaking but for newbies I think all mechanics have that effect until you become use to them.

Unfamiliar mechanics are somewhat distracting. That's different than being contra-immersive. Stepping out of my character's point of view to consider and decide on something that has nothing to do with what my character is doing or thinking is always going to be contra-immersive. How much that bothers any particular player is subjective. The fact that those actions are disconnected from what the character knows, thinks, and does is not subjective.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;981381Since Cthulhu's Sanity mechanic is the beginnings of a storygame, it's no surprise that so many of its modules are so railroady.

Sanity is no more untraditional than are hit points or charm person spells.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981350Virtually any module for any game will be linear or "railroaded" to some extent because otherwise the possible range of actions becomes too large to describe.  Dave Arneson used to call this "One True Way vs Tree of Life" design.

You don't mean this module do you?

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I think you've confused a finite listing of choices with a linear railroad. Every game description is finite. Ergo every game can only have a finite listing of anything. But so long as the GM is does not restrict themselves to only what is written on the page a module need not be linear nor a railroad.

In addition, a single, linear path is not the only possible module design. One can (and to my mind really should) have a path that includes branched events and events in series rather than forcing all events to occur in parallel.

Moreover, at any point in time any tree (phylogenetic tree, Tree of Life, or fricking Yggdrasil) is also finite, i.e. has only a finite number of roots and branches. Not sure what Dave Arneson mean by Tree of Life though. A quick search turned up a bunch of stuff that was not about RPGs.

The dramatic manipulation I'm thinking of inside scenarios is the exhortation to "Escalate! Escalate! Escalate!" In other words, the GM is supposed to steer the action, and use any wiggle room available in NPC decisions, timing of off-screen events, etc., to push the game to a dramatic crisis.

Across scenarios, the GM is encouraged to look at the moral statements made by the PCs' actions and develop new scenarios to challenge them. For example if in one game a player decides to support the idea of parental authority as the foundation of social order in the frontier--say, forcing a runaway child to go back home--then in later scenarios the GM should have situations where parents are doing more and more tyrannical and messed up things, until the PC discovers the limits of their principle (usually ending in violence).

Quote from: Bren;981402Sanity is no more untraditional than are hit points or charm person spells..

I didn't say it was "not traditional", I said it was the seed that grew into the weed of storygames. Game mechanics influence but do not determine play.

Contend with what I actually said, not some other shit you made up. If I wanted that I could just talk politics somewhere.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;981407I didn't say it was "not traditional", I said it was the seed that grew into the weed of storygames. Game mechanics influence but do not determine play.

Sanity mechanics were no more the seed of storygames than was the the Bravery stat in first edition Boot Hill or the charm person spell in OD&D. Sanity is simply mental hit points with the add on of a critical hit table of temporary insanities. But by all means go talk politics somewhere.

Quote from: Arminius;981406The dramatic manipulation I'm thinking of inside scenarios is the exhortation to "Escalate! Escalate! Escalate!" In other words, the GM is supposed to steer the action, and use any wiggle room available in NPC decisions, timing of off-screen events, etc., to push the game to a dramatic crisis.

Across scenarios, the GM is encouraged to look at the moral statements made by the PCs' actions and develop new scenarios to challenge them. For example if in one game a player decides to support the idea of parental authority as the foundation of social order in the frontier--say, forcing a runaway child to go back home--then in later scenarios the GM should have situations where parents are doing more and more tyrannical and messed up things, until the PC discovers the limits of their principle (usually ending in violence).

Thanks that clarifies. It sounds like some annoyingly dickish GM advice I've read somewhere.

Quote from: Bren;981402I pretty familiar with Call of Cthulhu. Most adventures don't end in madness or death. The campaigns I've read, run, and played typically don't end that way for all the characters, although in a multi-part, globe spanning campaign one should expect to lose some characters. Much like the players as a group should expect to lose some PCs in an OD&D campaign.

Could you give an example or two. I'm not sure what you mean by dramatic manipulation.

I've played and ran a lot of CoC and it always ended in madness or death. That was one of the pleasures of CoC after D&D where many people tended to take their character deaths pretty seriously. I don't think any of us were too interested in retiring in semi-peace though and our games had a strong strain of black humour. Our groups also tended to be smaller, 2-3 actual PCs. Of course the adventures had throughlines and intended endings but few of our investigators lasted more than 2-3 sessions.

I didn't use the term dramatic manipulation you must be confusing my post with someone else.

Quote from: Bren;981402No just like every other form of entertainment, entertainment is also judged on whether or not I enjoy it (or think that I might enjoy it).

On a personal level enjoyment is obviously important but since others enjoy what you might not it is not by any measure an 'objective' measurement of quality. A classic misjudgement is also to project negative assumptions onto those who like what you dislike (they are vulgar, unsophisticated or pretentious and phony).

@Kyle
I think to claim the sanity mechanic is the start of storygames is a big stretch, it's like seeing Reds under the bed, once you start looking...

In terms of the dreaded 'railroad':

Obviously one of the advantages of dungeons is that they are limited in scope and easier to handle for DMs as it narrows the range of options for the PCs compared to the wilderness or especially cities. Pretty sure I read a quote by Arneson to that effect, will see if I can dig it up.

Quote from: Voros;981411I've played and ran a lot of CoC and it always ended in madness or death.

My experiences differ.

QuoteI didn't use the term dramatic manipulation you must be confusing my post with someone elses.

I'm not confused. At least not about that. The question was addressed to Arminius. He used the term and has subsequently explained it.

Quote from: Bren;981412My experiences differ.

I am obviously more hardcore than you.

The rate of death in Call of Cthulhu, whenever I've run it, is normally proportional to the number of new players transferring over from an exclusive diet of playing D&D. The rate of insanity is, accordingly, inverse to this as more experienced players make their characters last longer while their sanity erodes.

It may depend upon GMing styles and scenario choice perhaps, but the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep is certainly a grind house. I'd also add that The Haunting, arguably the most played Call of Cthulhu of all, almost always results in some character death.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;981425The rate of death in Call of Cthulhu, whenever I've run it, is normally proportional to the number of new players transferring over from an exclusive diet of playing D&D...

I think this is very true.

Quote from: rgrove0172;980495Where do you think the apparent hatred for story gaming by the pure sandbox guys comes from and for that matter, visa versa?

https://youtu.be/jqDQEm2A6mU?t=7m7s

This session had a long-ass intro. Then it had an even longer-ass narration after that. The GM was obviously trying to tell his story, but the players just wanted to kill stuff, or talk out of character mostly, I think. He also narrates what the players are doing and what they feel, etc. Hand of God stuff, which goes against sand-boxing.

I prefer narration to be no more than a paragraph. Mostly just a couple sentences here and there.

Quote from: Nexus;981397"Use Disassociated mechanics? That's a day in the Box."

"Put Narrative or story elements ahead of virtual world simulation? That's a week in the Box."

"Refer genre or story goals as limitation of character options? Oh, Lawd, get comfortable, boy, y'all gon' be the Box for awhile, son."

"Express an opinion counter to a narrative player's preferences, you're a prison guard (or insert persecutor metaphor of choice)". :rolleyes:

Quote from: Justin Alexander;981434I see where your confusion has come from: You're thinking of "story" as the thing which a GM preps and then needs to railroad the players through. And, therefore, you're thinking that a "story game" must be a game where the GM has such a story.

Exactly that IMO is what a "story game" is.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;981434But that's not what "story game" or "storytelling game" means in general usage. Storytelling games feature narrative control mechanics which either determine who controls a particular chunk of the narrative or they're actually about determining the outcome of a particular narrative chunk. Generally speaking it's impossible for a storytelling game to have the kind "predetermined story" that you're talking about because their mechanics are usually explicitly about splitting narrative control between the players, making it impossible for any single player (or GM) to enforce a predetermined story.

This I would not call a "story game," I would call this a bunch of people collaborating on a bad novel that could never be published and it is not impossible for a single player to force an end result, because what you are describing is a "game" where the dominant personality always gets his way because there is no one to stop him(or her). In other words it operates like Congress, and that does not sound like fun to me.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;981434Your misunderstanding is even more understandable in this thread because rgrove0172 claimed in the first post that "narrative elements", story games, and railroading were all the same thing. This is because rgrove0172 and confused and confusing individual. ("Narrative elements", as far as I can tell, isn't even a widely recognized term in RPG discussions and I can only really guess at what rgrove0172 might have been talking about.)

"Narrative element" = anytime someone speaks = meaningless term.

Quote from: CRKrueger;981456"Express an opinion counter to a narrative player's preferences, you're a prison guard (or insert persecutor metaphor of choice)". :rolleyes:

"Yes'ah. Boss."