CONAN LIVES! Info on the new Conan RPG

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

I guess what I'm getting at is this:

If you've already established that you're not playing an antagonistic GM (in the vein of Basic D&D), then you've decided that you're not going to kill the PCs unless they're really asking for it (either through stupid or heroic actions, where death would be suitable to the genre). You just want to scare the players, and make the story more dramatic. At that point, why do you need a meta-game resource to regulate that? Why can't you just fudge some dice rolls, whenever you feel like it? How does it improve any aspect of the game when the Big Bad goes down before it can even act, because the GM spent too many Dark Symmetry points on keeping the Dragon up for another round? Is it just a way to keep the GM engaged with the game aspect of it, by giving a resource to manage?

It give the players agency. If you, as a player, take a risk and see the threat pool going up, you know that YOU have a hand in your later fate. Fudged rolls are all in the GM's hands. This engages players directly in the overall dramatic arc of a scene or an entire adventure.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It give the players agency. If you, as a player, take a risk and see the threat pool going up, you know that YOU have a hand in your later fate. Fudged rolls are all in the GM's hands. This engages players directly in the overall dramatic arc of a scene or an entire adventure.

Maybe, but it's extra-character player agency, which can interfere with immersive role-playing. It's all well and fine for a player to make a decision, but if you can't reconcile that with the perspective of the character, then it gets complicated.

I mean, the example could be a textbook definition of meta-gaming, so you really need to be sure that all of the players want to play the meta-game (in addition to playing the actual game). Or I suppose, in this instance, the meta-game is an inseparable aspect of the game as a whole. If I did buy into playing this game, I probably wouldn't appreciate if another player ignored the meta-game and just let the Threat accumulate unfettered.

 

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

In reading this discussion about Threat, I still don't get why it is needed.

Without doing a lot of quoting from the above and writing a wall of text, the simple question is: Why is Threat needed at all? Why is is practical. How does is help or improve the game?

Because, from what I see in all these examples, it is used express the GM's will.

Well, can't he do that already?

Doesn't the GM do everything that has been expressed as the use of the Threat Mechanic in all the examples above? Or, in other words, if you take the Threat Mechanic out, what's lost? What's different about the game?





Let's say you sit down to play the new Conan RPG, and the GM says, "No matter how high the Threat Pool becomes, I will not use Threat in the game for any reason."

What's different about this game, now?

Won't the GM still run his game, make it interesting, throw obstacles in front of the PCs?

Is the only real use of the Threat Mechanic is as a tool to keep players from throwing more than 2d20 for every task throw?

 

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

Maybe, but it's extra-character player agency, which can interfere with immersive role-playing. It's all well and fine for a player to make a decision, but if you can't reconcile that with the perspective of the character, then it gets complicated.

I don't see many Stanislavski gamers going for pulp, nor do I see many games where immersion is anywhere near total regardless of genre. It sounds like you're lookig for a narrativist system?

And yu can easily reconcile Threat with the player's perspective if you want. How many times, in games or in life, do people say, "I'm really pushing my luck?"

You keep taking risks, and sooner or later they catch up with you. You don't take risks and you lead a nice, safe, and mundane life. That's really the entire premise of all RPGs. Your character is not the guy who decides to be a farmer or open up a candle shop. Your character is the one that goes out and risks all for fame, glory, or whatever your unit of existential currency happens to be in that game.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't see many Stanislavski gamers going for pulp, nor do I see many games where immersion is anywhere near total regardless of genre. It sounds like you're looking for a narrativist system?

You're probably right on the first half, though the second part is way off. Still, it's entirely possible to redeem a pulp setting by thoughtful consideration over its premise. I've always wondered at why anyone would want to evoke a pulp feeling, when 'pulp' literally means as cheap as possible.

And you can easily reconcile Threat with the player's perspective if you want. How many times, in games or in life, do people say, "I'm really pushing my luck?"

Now we're getting into probability distributions. In real life, taking one risky action does not actually increase the risk of an un-related action that takes place in the future, even if overcoming an initial risk may convince someone that the future risk is worth taking. In real life, pushing your luck is when a certain action has a 5% chance of catastrophic failure and you keep taking that chance until eventually the 5% happens. It doesn't mean that you have a 5% chance of failure on the first attempt, and every subsequent attempt increases the risk of failure by 2%.

With a Threat mechanic, in this context, you are turning probability on its head and invoking truth from a fallacy.

 

[Water Bob]

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Fine. We take out the Threat Mechanic (that seems to be so central to the 2d20 System.

What now? Players are allowed to Throw 5d20 on every task with no consequence?

Or, you limit players to just 2d20 on every throw....which really isn't the System, is it? The system is: Base of 2d20 on throw, with up to three more dice if the players are willing to play the consequences in Threat.

 

[pollico]

You're probably right on the first half, though the second part is way off. Still, it's entirely possible to redeem a pulp setting by thoughtful consideration over its premise. I've always wondered at why anyone would want to evoke a pulp feeling, when 'pulp' literally means as cheap as possible.

Now we're getting into probability distributions. In real life, taking one risky action does not actually increase the risk of an un-related action that takes place in the future, even if overcoming an initial risk may convince someone that the future risk is worth taking. In real life, pushing your luck is when a certain action has a 5% chance of catastrophic failure and you keep taking that chance until eventually the 5% happens. It doesn't mean that you have a 5% chance of failure on the first attempt, and every subsequent attempt increases the risk of failure by 2%.

With a Threat mechanic, in this context, you are turning probability on its head and invoking truth from a fallacy.

In real life people don't throw dices and get levels. Heck, we even don't have pointy ears with magics!

 

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

Fine. We take out the Threat Mechanic (that seems to be so central to the 2d20 System.

What now? Players are allowed to Throw 5d20 on every task with no consequence?

They'd have to buy them with Chronicle Points.

 

[CoreyHaim8myDog]

You're probably right on the first half, though the second part is way off. Still, it's entirely possible to redeem a pulp setting by thoughtful consideration over its premise. I've always wondered at why anyone would want to evoke a pulp feeling, when 'pulp' literally means as cheap as possible.

Now we're getting into probability distributions. In real life, taking one risky action does not actually increase the risk of an un-related action that takes place in the future, even if overcoming an initial risk may convince someone that the future risk is worth taking. In real life, pushing your luck is when a certain action has a 5% chance of catastrophic failure and you keep taking that chance until eventually the 5% happens. It doesn't mean that you have a 5% chance of failure on the first attempt, and every subsequent attempt increases the risk of failure by 2%.

With a Threat mechanic, in this context, you are turning probability on its head and invoking truth from a fallacy.

Our goal is to capture the feel of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in a fun game. Neither REH, nor this game, attempts to recreate reality. I have my actual life for that. Lots of people love pulp, and pulp does not have to be bad. Raiders of the Lost Ark took pulp and serials and made them into a great film. It's still pulp, but it's also great. It sound to me like you prefer narrativist games. That's totally cool, but why get angry at a game for not being the kind of game you want?

Speaking of, what do you and WaterBob want from a Conan game?

 

[Water Bob]

They'd have to buy them with Chronicle Points.

What are Chronicle Points? Is that the new name of Luck Points in the playtest doc?

If so, don't the rules say that a character can only have 3 Luck Points per game session?