Fiddly Bits, Power Cards, and Imagination

[Raven Crowking]

Actually, it happens once or twice in a year of gaming, but because it's usually very cool when it does work, by the power of tall tales it becomes commonplace.

"Your experience is different than mine, therefore you are a liar or mistaken." Hrm.

In the RCFG playtests, which have strong encouragement for stunting, stunts have occurred in better than 75% of all game sessions, either utilizing the Special Manouvres rules or the Combat Advantage rules or both. The occurance of stunting is much higher as a player learns the system, because the system rewards stunting. Thus, playtests show a definite increase in stunting by individual players over the course of rules familiarization.

This isn't "once or twice in a year of gaming" and it isn't some distant past being viewed through rose-coloured glasses. Nor is it a single "super player". It is very much across the board.

EDIT: You will have a chance to see this in action, I suspect, when I do pbp playtesting here on EN World in January.



RC

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Relax, Raven. I thought the Homer Simpson reference would establish that I was being at least somewhat tongue in cheek.

I'm not calling anyone a liar, but I am a confirmed skeptic. If you do a survey, everyone's kid is above average. If you listen to anecdote's, everyone's game is super awesome-sauce with a cherry on top.

I've studied memory, by the way, in both humans and rats. It is amazingly imperfect. Every time you access a memory, you change it. Tell a story a dozen times over a dozen months and details will change substantially. Anecdotes that we decide are exemplars and access a lot become more important in memory. When you think about or talk about your gaming, you are predisposed to segue to awesome anecdotes, which reinforces the awesomeness of all the associated memories.

Basically, every time you think about some awesome gaming, inside your brain, associated gaming memories in general become more awesome.

I actually have the opposite situation. Every time I think about any of the gaming I've done since around 1996, I'm reminded of very, very creepy dudes doing creepy things that forced me to leave that gaming group fast. If didn't have a handful of awesome anecdotes from middle school and high school, I'd probably be firmly convinced that the media freakout of decades past was a good idea and the hobby should be purged. With fire. Instead, I keep sticking my toe into various gaming pools in the hope of having older memories reinforced.

Back to actual gaming instead of memory theory.... your system reportedly encourages stunts, so you are doing exactly what I thought the OP should do in my first post in this thread. If I'm a smart man who had a good thought (and I'm reasonably sure I am, but see "everyone's kid is above average" for a dose of skepticism on that point), then I should, in fact, expect that you would have higher than average rates of "stunting" in your games. I am a smart man, so I clearly cannot choose the wine in front of you....

What was I talking about again?

To sum up... we are all entitled to our experiences. I reserve the right to be skeptical of the experiences of others and make lighthearted jokes about them involving mythical versions of Homer Simpson.

Similarly, you are entitled to think of me as the crazy scientist with the tinfoil hat, if you like. No skin off my nose. But my actual memories are no better or worse than yours. It just turns out that I have data to back up the fact that everyone's memories are pretty awful, and the result of possessing that fact is that I am extra skeptical.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And I am running actual trials right now, so I have data about what is actually occurring in playtests to refer to.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, it happens once or twice in a year of gaming, but because it's usually very cool when it does work, by the power of tall tales it becomes commonplace.

We had this gamer at my LFGS with the gift of gab. He was 7 foot tall if he was a foot. He had a shock of red hair... etc etc.

This. This is my experience. Ok, not the red hair guy, but, the first bit.

RC, as a question, who is running the games when you are playtesting?

 

[Garmorn]

And I am running actual trials right now, so I have data about what is actually occurring in playtests to refer to.

I have to ask, how many DM's are you using? How many are already creative players? Do you exclude people who don't like that type of creativity?

I have played in well over 15 groups over a period of almost 30 years. I have seen very few creative actions that you speak up in play. Most of the creative of that type I have seen allowed player to get around limitations that where part of there characters. Few were designed to over come limitations/lack of rules, just for the neatness of it.

Another problem I have seen is that they all rely on a DM judgment call. Judgment calls are never consistent until they are writen down and because solid rules.



I have notice that how are what got players into gaming makes a difference. Did they come straight from computer games? Reading fantasy? Or how about military gaming like Gygax? Each back ground combined with different personalities have a impact on how their personnal creativty shines through.

 

[Hussar]

Garmorn, just to add to your list of different sources for different experiences, I think a big one is how often did they play modules. Honestly, I think that has been the source of much of the difference that I've seen between my experiences and others.

 

[Ariosto]

The 4e powers are just "meh" to me, but a lot of folks find them delightful. If I'm going to spend that kind of time and energy, then I would rather go for a more general system, such as 3e, GURPS, Hero System, or Basic Role Playing.

Come to think of it, comicbook superheroes tend to do a lot more wacky stuff because, well, that's what they do. It's a bird ... a plane ... no! It's -- Collateral Damage Man!* The swordsmen in adventure fiction? Not so much, I think. Of course, neither does fiction or film tend to spend so much time zooming in on things in slow-mo as some games do.

I don't remember "surfer elf" from Tolkien, and could do without remembering him from Jackson (Doctor, my eyes). At any rate, a little of that goes a long way. Anything loses its funky fresh flavor on heavy rotation. (Drizzt! "Ouch." Drizzt! "Ouch. So, this is going to help me quit smoking, eh?")

*What's up with the "It's a bird!" guy, anyway? Yeah, it's another pigeon. Thanks for raising the alarm.

 

[Hussar]

Ariosto brings up an interesting point. Is the lack of "funky maneuvers" a hold over from the sources people bring to the table? As he said, there's no "surfer elf" in Tolkien. Could it be that people don't do flashy maneuvers because they want to emulate a different kind of fantasy?

 

[Ariosto]

Judgment calls are never consistent until they are writen down and because solid rules.

If it's just trivial citation of a codified stereotype, then the "stunt" or whatever is no longer so creative, eh? Unless your compilation has anticipated so many that nobody actually turns to page 20,000 to look up the rule.

 

[Raven Crowking]

RC, as a question, who is running the games when you are playtesting?

I have to ask, how many DM's are you using? How many are already creative players? Do you exclude people who don't like that type of creativity?

Right now, I am running all of the playtest games. This is, admittedly, a weak point in the playtesting process, but one I am working to overcome. In fact, I am working up a playtest module with pregen characters.

Hussar, you have exhibited an interest in trying new games (you have a thread to that effect). I would encourage both you and Garmorn to participate in (run) the playtest module when finished (January due to holidays). See if the rules make a difference in your game experience. Try something new. Cut the game up from an informed perspective. Get a playtest credit in the completed Player's Guide.

The playtesters range in age and experience (the youngest was 9 when she started). As of last night, I hit the "I must turn wannabe playtesters away" stage. Half of the players I haven't met prior to this playtest.

Last night's game (six players, seven characters) saw three seperate uses of the stunting rules, one of which backfired on the character (natural "1", which grants an AoO in RCFG). It doesn't hurt that the monsters can stunt, too. When a ghoul scrambles up a tree to get an attack/damage bonus, or to improve its AC by ducking around the branches, it doesn't take long for players to want those bonuses, too.

IMHO, of course, and IME.

I have played with hundreds of gamers, in several American states and in Canada. I believe as a result that it isn't just the GM who enables player creativity, and it isn't just the game rules. You have to have both. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the game rules influence play under other GMs.

So by all means, yes, playtest the game for me! Add your data to my own! Hussar, since you're doing so much pbp right now, your experiences would be especially valuable as I intend on a "Running a pbp" section in the GM's Handbook.



RC