"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[Umbran]

... Asking for a Devil's Bargain seems to me like it increases the player's sense of these things, and hence their cognitive and emotional proximity to their character.

Hence why I deny the claim that Devil's Bargain-type mechanics are, in general and necessarily, inimical to immersion.

Wait a second. You increase the emotional proximity of the player to the character, and that is inimical to immersion?

How is being closer to the character's emotional state working against immersion into that character?

 

[kenada]

Wait a second. You increase the emotional proximity of the player to the character, and that is inimical to immersion?

How is being closer to the character's emotional state working against immersion into that character?

@pemerton appears to be denying the claim it’s inimical to immersion. I may be wrong, but you both seem to agree.

 

[Pedantic]

Wait a second. You increase the emotional proximity of the player to the character, and that is inimical to immersion?

How is being closer to the character's emotional state working against immersion into that character?

You're getting caught on a double negative.

To add actual content: I called out a specific use of "immersion" earlier, which is completely unrelated to the character's (or player's) emotional state. Nothing much is accomplished by drifting the term back and forth.

 

[pemerton]

Wait a second. You increase the emotional proximity of the player to the character, and that is inimical to immersion?

How is being closer to the character's emotional state working against immersion into that character?

No. I deny that it is inimical to immersion.

 

[pemerton]

I called out a specific use of "immersion" earlier, which is completely unrelated to the character's (or player's) emotional state. Nothing much is accomplished by drifting the term back and forth.

Immersion describes a mental, cognitive and emotional state. I mean, what else would it be a metaphor for? It's about being (metaphorically) immersed in the fiction.

 

[Umbran]

No. I deny that it is inimical to immersion.

Whoops. Sorry. My misread. Carry on.

 

[Umbran]

You're getting caught on a double negative.

To add actual content: I called out a specific use of "immersion" earlier, which is completely unrelated to the character's (or player's) emotional state. Nothing much is accomplished by drifting the term back and forth.

Since I misread once already...

Did the specific use claim immersion is totally unrelated to emotional state, or do you say immersion is totally unrelated to emotional state?

Because, for many, it IS related to emotional state...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No deep reading here, I think it's a viable and reasonable goal for a system to propose a specific resolution for nearly all declared courses of action, given the constraints of genre. I don't think it's generally necessary to either default to a generic resolution system, or to require the GM to do on the fly design work. It's fine if it's not perfect. GM-as-adjudicator is the usual fallback, it just should be a fallback, and hopefully can be patterned on similar rules that do exist in the rare cases it's necessary.

So, you are proposing that a 'specific resolution', by which I would assume is meant some sort of rule, a very specific procedure which spells out a result, etc. is implied. And this can adequately deal with all the possible juxtapositions of fictional position which may exist and impact it? I think we already saw something along these lines in 4e's combat system, which IS pretty prescriptive over a fairly wide variety of situations. STILL, it must, perforce, depend on a LOT of GM adjudication. Page 42 (actions not specifically covered by any other rules or powers) is QUITE subjective, though admittedly a good bit tighter than most other RPGs.

The point is, I am highly skeptical that, in the general sense of all types of situations, that any RPG can even approach specifically resolving them all. You have specific rules that cover certain common or important situations that bare heavily on the premise, and then you have, perhaps (not in classic D&D), a general system that can suggest types of outcomes in some fashion where the fictional component is left pretty open-ended.

Now, games CAN work with that, like 4e has tons of keywords and a lot of 'hooks' that are present in PC options (class/PP/ED/Theme/Race/feats/etc) which can produce fairly good notions of what might follow. This is far from 'specific' though.

Lets say I am dubious about this possibility you advance. I can see 2 possibilities, we're talking about different things, or the claim is overbroad. Of course I will be interested in what game you would point to which provides this.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think of situation as the cast of characters and the relationships between them. So there’s only one capital S Situation.

I’m about to play Sorcerer and the way I’m creating the Situation is by detailing the cast and then creating the relationships. In this instance the PC is coming into town and so they have no relationship with him other than by virtue of what he is ‘a demon hunter,’

I think there’s going to be about ten main cast NPC’s and then I’m done. No more main cast members will be introduced.

So in this instance I’ve created the Situation almost in it’s entirety. Now, I can kick back and just be the animating force. Or put another way, I can disinvest myself of having to create more situation.

I think we might be using situation in different ways though?

If you have played Agon at all, it works in a very similar way (no surprise there of course). The GM constructs an Island, which has a cast of characters in conflict, plus possibly some basic locations and the signs of the gods. There are generally 5-ish important characters and from 3-5 locations, some with situation/character affixed, but often beyond the introductory scene its just elements that will 'fall together' in accordance with the motives, relationships, and nature of the characters in question. An island is basically a one-shot adventure, it should take 2-3 hours to play out. So, Sorcerer scenarios are probably a bit 'deeper' and intended to last a couple of sessions I would assume.

 

[thefutilist]

If you have played Agon at all, it works in a very similar way (no surprise there of course). The GM constructs an Island, which has a cast of characters in conflict, plus possibly some basic locations and the signs of the gods. There are generally 5-ish important characters and from 3-5 locations, some with situation/character affixed, but often beyond the introductory scene its just elements that will 'fall together' in accordance with the motives, relationships, and nature of the characters in question. An island is basically a one-shot adventure, it should take 2-3 hours to play out. So, Sorcerer scenarios are probably a bit 'deeper' and intended to last a couple of sessions I would assume.

The base game tends to go longer because the characters are more enmeshed in the setting, so yeah about 3-6. It depends on how many npc’s you have and how quickly and dramatically the various relationships can change.

I tend to play the overwhelming majority of games in this way though. I’m extremely reluctant to make up any new NPC’s in Apocalypse World after the second session, ditto for Monsterhearts. If I do have to make up NPC’s, then I’ll only ever draw them from an established group and I make them purposefully bland unless there’s an already established (compelling) reason not to do so.

I imagine there’s a sliding scale though. On one end is create interesting and compelling stuff and on the other is impartial adjudicator. I tend to lean heavily toward the impartial adjudicator end and there’s both advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is there’s no course correction and so it’s far easier for a game to just tank. Which is exactly what happened the first few times I committed to playing this way.