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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7716414" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I read this as quite consistent with my reply to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] just upthread. It's inherent in the RPG genre that players should develop emotional, author/audience-like attachments to their PCs, and this - I think pretty naturally - changes what they value in play, and hence how their RPGing works.</p><p></p><p>(My own view it that the difference between classic D&D as an RPG and wargaming is (i) the player takes on an individual role rather than the "eye in the sky" perspective you describe, and (ii) fictional positioning matters to resolution. The latter is what caused endless, often misconceived, debates about whether or not 4e is "really" an RPG, because the way 4e incorporates fictional positioning into resolution is often quite different from a "trad" RPG.)</p><p></p><p>I tend to disagree with this bit, though.</p><p></p><p>In particular, I think your example of ignoring a "bad roll" shows how significant <em>system</em> is to the sorts of RPGing outcomes we're talking about in this thread.</p><p></p><p>For instance, if the only way to stop the "story that is too good" from being "stolen away" is to ignore the dice roll, there are (as far as I'm aware) two main approaches.</p><p></p><p>(1) The GM does it secretly ("fudging"), which has been widely advocated in RPG rulebooks especially since the late 80s/early 90s. This means that now the players are no longer aware of or in control of the resolution processes. I think this pushes the game very strongly in the direction of "setting/story tourism".</p><p></p><p>(2) The table as a whole decides to do it. This then requires the players to take an "eye in the sky" perspective on whether or not the story is good, which is at odds with one of the very things that (we agree) makes RPGing distinctive and worthwhile.</p><p></p><p>Hence, if I want to avoid circumstances in which "bad" rolls have the sort of unhappy upshot you describe, I want that built into the system in some fashion. One example: all the systems I'm GMing at the moment use some version of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", which means that the GM never calls for a roll unless the situation involves something being at stake which matters to the player, <em>as that player has been build and played by its player</em>. In which case a bad roll <em>doesn't</em> spoil the story; rather, the story is one in which, at the moment of crunch for that PC, things went wrong (this happens to Gandalf multiple times in The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance - first with Saruman, then with Butterbur, then with the Balrog).</p><p></p><p>"Say 'yes' or roll the dice" works well in conjunction with other techniques, too, like "fail forward" - so that allowing <em>failure</em> as a regular part of play <em>doesn't</em> mean the end of the story. But certain resolution systems (especially but not only sim-oriented ones) are very hard to adapt to "fail forward" adjudication.</p><p></p><p>So my own view is that, in fact, system matters a lot. (But I also agree with [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] that many systems are actually not very different in the relevant respects from D&D. Eg changing the resolution mechanic in D&D from d20 to 2d10 or 3d6, or changing the spread of PC ability scores and the way they're calculated - all of which many people would regard as important system changes - probably won't change anything relevant to whether or not D&D supports alternatives for avoiding bad dice rolls other than my (1) and (2) above.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7716414, member: 42582"] I read this as quite consistent with my reply to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] just upthread. It's inherent in the RPG genre that players should develop emotional, author/audience-like attachments to their PCs, and this - I think pretty naturally - changes what they value in play, and hence how their RPGing works. (My own view it that the difference between classic D&D as an RPG and wargaming is (i) the player takes on an individual role rather than the "eye in the sky" perspective you describe, and (ii) fictional positioning matters to resolution. The latter is what caused endless, often misconceived, debates about whether or not 4e is "really" an RPG, because the way 4e incorporates fictional positioning into resolution is often quite different from a "trad" RPG.) I tend to disagree with this bit, though. In particular, I think your example of ignoring a "bad roll" shows how significant [I]system[/I] is to the sorts of RPGing outcomes we're talking about in this thread. For instance, if the only way to stop the "story that is too good" from being "stolen away" is to ignore the dice roll, there are (as far as I'm aware) two main approaches. (1) The GM does it secretly ("fudging"), which has been widely advocated in RPG rulebooks especially since the late 80s/early 90s. This means that now the players are no longer aware of or in control of the resolution processes. I think this pushes the game very strongly in the direction of "setting/story tourism". (2) The table as a whole decides to do it. This then requires the players to take an "eye in the sky" perspective on whether or not the story is good, which is at odds with one of the very things that (we agree) makes RPGing distinctive and worthwhile. Hence, if I want to avoid circumstances in which "bad" rolls have the sort of unhappy upshot you describe, I want that built into the system in some fashion. One example: all the systems I'm GMing at the moment use some version of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", which means that the GM never calls for a roll unless the situation involves something being at stake which matters to the player, [I]as that player has been build and played by its player[/I]. In which case a bad roll [I]doesn't[/I] spoil the story; rather, the story is one in which, at the moment of crunch for that PC, things went wrong (this happens to Gandalf multiple times in The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance - first with Saruman, then with Butterbur, then with the Balrog). "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" works well in conjunction with other techniques, too, like "fail forward" - so that allowing [I]failure[/I] as a regular part of play [I]doesn't[/I] mean the end of the story. But certain resolution systems (especially but not only sim-oriented ones) are very hard to adapt to "fail forward" adjudication. So my own view is that, in fact, system matters a lot. (But I also agree with [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] that many systems are actually not very different in the relevant respects from D&D. Eg changing the resolution mechanic in D&D from d20 to 2d10 or 3d6, or changing the spread of PC ability scores and the way they're calculated - all of which many people would regard as important system changes - probably won't change anything relevant to whether or not D&D supports alternatives for avoiding bad dice rolls other than my (1) and (2) above.) [/QUOTE]
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