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Do you enjoy playing roleplaying games in which you have no clue about the rules?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7495219" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I agree with this, but I thought the OP (and the post I replied to not far upthread) were talking about a more deliberate and enduring sort of rules opacity.</p><p></p><p>Well, in classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, 1st ed AD&D) there is no <em>fiction</em> that governs the inabilityof fighters to use magic <em>except</em> the rules for spellcasting that pertain only to wizards and clerics. The whole class architecture is established rules-first, with the fiction to be read off that, rather than vice versa.</p><p></p><p>I've got nothing against that, except that as a player I want to know the rules! (Which will also give me the fiction.)</p><p></p><p>Personally, if I wanted to get the sort of "no mechanics", "fiction first" effect the OP seems to be directed at, I would just use a "no mechanics", "fiction first" system - eg Cthulhu Dark uses a dice pool made up of (1) an occupation die (if the attempted action pertains to the occupation the player chose for his/her PC at PC gen), (2) a humanity die (if the attempted action is within human capabilities), and (3) an insanity die (if the player is willing to risk his/her PC's sanity to succeed). The highest die in the pool is the result, which establishes degree of success (and if an opposed die has been rolled, it also determines whether or not the action succeeds at all). And there are special rules that can be triggered if the insanity die rolls high.</p><p></p><p>Obviousy this is not a tactics-rich system (the closest thing to tactics is choosing whether or not to include the insanity die) but presumably a game in which the players don't know the rules isn't meant to be providing a tactics-rich experience.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7495219, member: 42582"] I agree with this, but I thought the OP (and the post I replied to not far upthread) were talking about a more deliberate and enduring sort of rules opacity. Well, in classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, 1st ed AD&D) there is no [I]fiction[/I] that governs the inabilityof fighters to use magic [I]except[/I] the rules for spellcasting that pertain only to wizards and clerics. The whole class architecture is established rules-first, with the fiction to be read off that, rather than vice versa. I've got nothing against that, except that as a player I want to know the rules! (Which will also give me the fiction.) Personally, if I wanted to get the sort of "no mechanics", "fiction first" effect the OP seems to be directed at, I would just use a "no mechanics", "fiction first" system - eg Cthulhu Dark uses a dice pool made up of (1) an occupation die (if the attempted action pertains to the occupation the player chose for his/her PC at PC gen), (2) a humanity die (if the attempted action is within human capabilities), and (3) an insanity die (if the player is willing to risk his/her PC's sanity to succeed). The highest die in the pool is the result, which establishes degree of success (and if an opposed die has been rolled, it also determines whether or not the action succeeds at all). And there are special rules that can be triggered if the insanity die rolls high. Obviousy this is not a tactics-rich system (the closest thing to tactics is choosing whether or not to include the insanity die) but presumably a game in which the players don't know the rules isn't meant to be providing a tactics-rich experience. [/QUOTE]
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