A Question Of Agency?

[FrogReaver]

Of course not. I'm not the one (nor would I ever) advocating/championing opposing party argument/parley fidelity or believability/coherency per our experiential (in our lives) derived model of parley or whatever you want to call it.

I don't see how anyone ever reading my words on these boards would think I am.

The games I run are undergirded by genre logic, thematic potency and coherency, dramatic impetus, and what is required to make a TTRPG work.

So I don't give a crap about Face NPCs securing parley victory at an Alice in Wonderland rate. Not only don't flinch, it NEEDS to happen for functional, thematically coherent, dramatically fortified TTRPG play.

But I simultaneously don't flinch at martial PCs doing all of the "unbelievable" things I mentioned above (I mean...they can wade into mortal, melee combat against Ancient Red Dragons and somehow survive and slay the beast) right alongside those "unbelievable" Face PCs! Not only don't flinch, it NEEDS to happen for functional, thematically coherent, dramatically fortified TTRPG play.

Good. So Couldn’t this be as simple an issue as you and others disagreeing about what is appropriate genre logic?

 

[Manbearcat]

I am being polite. I put it there because I think your analysis is actually an attack on the playstyle.

Thank you for coming out and saying this. That is exactly what I was getting at and every time I cite "hostility to analysis" this is what I'm getting at. You perceive that I'm hostile to your playstyle and the words I put on the internet are bad for you and your playstyle. Therefore you need to defend your playstyle from my hostile analysis (the impetus for your responses).

 

[Bedrockgames]

BRG. This is truly frustrating.

I've been accused of semantics in this thread (when I 100 % WAS NOT playing rhetorical semantic games...nor would I ever...they're an obnoxious waste of time).

Above, I don't know how to look at your first paragraph (pertaining to my 1).

How is "believable to BRG" meaningfully different from "fidelity to BRG's model of a reasonable simulation of x (parley/argumentation between opposing parties in this case)." I have no clue why you're dyng on this hill.

If you would like, just sub "believable to BRG" anytime I say anything like fidelity to a simulation of x or causal logic constrained/coupled or whatever. It doesn't matter. You find it a reasonable approximation to thing x, therefore good for play and your immersion.

What I'm asking is "why do you find it believable?" It is clearly UNbelievable. If you (BRG) as a Face PC via Free Roleplay in your games are moving position-entrenched NPCs off of their positions at anything resembling the rate that you invariably are...well, the only thing its approximating is genre and wieldy for a TTRPG. Those are both fantastic things! But they're not believable in any (even the most ridiculously lose) interpretation of the word!

I really don't know what to tell you, except that the frustration is mutual. I think we just have very different ways of approaching. You keep trying to force me into this real world simulation box and I keep telling you that isn't what I am aiming for at all. I am aiming for something much lighter, which I call believability. Which is stuff like is the world internally consistent, are the NPCs responding logically what the players are saying (NOT are they responding with the success rate of real world people having conversations: honestly I am not even sure what that looks like or means to be honest). Basically believability is believable enough for the purposes of a game. Again, you are approaching this with an engineer mindset. I am not. I don't think that difference can be bridged by any amount of analysis or communication at this point (we've interacted a lot and you seem to have a lot of difficulty understanding my point of view).

The basic difference in meaning is believable to me isn't about me coming up with a working model of how people interact in the real world with numerical hit rates. I am not trying to achieve a simulation of when you have firmly entrenched people presented with strong arguments, they capitulate X percent of the time in real life (I seriously don't even know where that information would be obtained from). All I am trying to figure out when I run an NPC, is whether what the player said would move them, persuade them, prompt them to act in a certain way. And it is all very intuitive. And the aim is to produce a world that feels believable (which as I have said does not mean feels realistic).

 

[Manbearcat]

Good. So Couldn’t this be as simple an issue as you and others disagreeing about what is appropriate genre logic?

What is "this" in the above sentence. We've discussed tons and tons and tons of things here.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Thank you for coming out and saying this. That is exactly what I was getting at and every time I cite "hostility to analysis" this is what I'm getting at. You perceive that I'm hostile to your playstyle and the words I put on the internet are bad for you and your playstyle. Therefore you need to defend your playstyle from my hostile analysis (the impetus for your responses).

I think honestly we probably are better off not interacting Manbearcat. I haven't seen anything useful or productive come from our exchanges. My honest opinion is your analysis is hostile to the playstyle. Am I hostile to all analysis? No. But I also am not going to just think the way you do because you say something in a post and believe it is logical or convincing.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think honestly we probably are better off not interacting Manbearcat. I haven't seen anything useful or productive come from our exchanges. My honest opinion is your analysis is hostile to the playstyle. Am I hostile to all analysis? No. But I also am not going to just think the way you do because you say something in a post and believe it is logical or convincing.

To be clear, you've just confirmed what I wrote above. That is all I was looking for.

And hokey doke. No interacting. Take care.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To be clear, you've just confirmed what I wrote above. That is all I was looking for.

I don't know that it did manbearcat. I really think you fundamentally don't understand my position on these things (which again, why I don't think continuing to engage is useful)

 

[FrogReaver]

What is "this" in the above sentence. We've discussed tons and tons and tons of things here.

The issue of others disliking the inclusion of the kinds of martial abilities you mentioned.

 

[FrogReaver]

I personally find the traditional label mildly annoying because most of the games that get included very much represented a break from tradition. Speaking as an OSR fan the GM techniques and playstyle of Vampire as outlined in it's text is pretty far removed from B/X. As is modern D&D.

What is a better shorthand term for such games?

I’m not particularly tied to traditional but I don’t know a better differentiating descriptor.

 

[Fenris-77]

What is a better shorthand term for such games?

I suspect they are advocating for a more granular approach to the definitional work rather than simply a different term.