Academic Plague in gaming

[Nisarg]

Has it occurred to you, though, that your post to me was uncomfortably close to the same ones you complain about? I posted my opinion of Amber and its flaws, and you rushed in to correct me, as much as saying that "I don't get it"...

J

Not really, I don't deny that you get it, my response was more geared toward other people who might be reading this thread who are unfamiliar with Amber. A lot of people who've never played amber are under the impression that its a "best stat always wins" game because they've heard it described that way, and its really more than just that.

As for your statements concerning that its more about convincing the DM; well yes, it is. Amber is a highly social game. Its also unusual in that its a game where the players are usually encouraged to be aggresively competitive with each other.
in conflict situations this boils down to:
a) your attributes and your ability to use them efficiently
b) your ability to take advantage of terrains and special circumstances
c) your ability to express all this to the DM and other players.

Mind you, this applies in just about any RPG.. including D20, where your ability stat wise to do something also depends on your ability to convince the Dm that you should be allowed a die roll to attempt a situation in the first place, and the DM's discriminate selection of what he thinks the appropriate DC should be.

In Amber they just skip the middle-man of the dice, and shift the focus a bit from your stats to your descriptive/rhetorical skills.

Nisarg

 

[TheAuldGrump]

How fortunate for me that I didn't make any such claim.

Unfortunately, that means that either you have completely failed to grasp my posts on this thread, or you are willfully choosing to misrepresent them as a cheap way to further your own side of the argument.

Nisarg

Read your own posts again. While I exagerated (slightly) for effect, you are in fact claiming that 'more people are being driven out of the hobby' than are being brought into it by alternate games.

Today there are people who see RPGs as "art" or as "literature", failed novelists and failed grad students trying to make RPGs into something they aren't, killing it for everyone.
There is also a very very insular and selfish mainstream of gamers, who want games made for THEM.
i.e. most gamers are in their mid to late 20s, and want games that appeal to THEIR generation, THEIR sense of style, THEIR education and THEIR views of the world.
Meaning the average RPG of today will turn off today's 14 year old.

Oh, sorry, I wasn't exagerating, I was quoting.

Quite frankly an 'my way is the only way' attitude is more likely to hurt the industry than some people having fun with a gaming style that you don't approve of. Storyteller still sells, It was written for a market that existed, and it sold to them. The only people that I have ever met with the 'my way or the highway' attitude are D20, Rifts, GURPS, and homebrew players. Not White Wolf, not Amber, Everwhere, or Nobilis (though I have never met any Nobilis players), but D20, Rifts, and GURPS. I have met three players who won't play anything but White Wolf, but they do not go up to people and tell them 'your game suxxx' or 'your game is so pretentious that it is killing the market', or for that matter 'your game is so lowbrow that it is killing the market'. Mostly they LARP and ignore the rest of gaming. And I ignore them.

I am not even saying that I like all of those games, but I am saying that an exclusionist attitude can be held by both sides of an argument. (The only game I really have anything against is GURPS, and that has to do with an outspoken group with exactly the attitued I am speaking of. And yes, they will go up to you in the game store and tell you that the game you are looking to buy is crap because it isn't GURPS. It's like Diaglo x 7.) T

And I vastly prefer 'Storytelling' games to overly complex games that engage you in a calculator frenzy. These turn people off much faster than overly verbose or pretentious games. (The worst for this was a homebrew - your weapon and defense skills were both percentile, but only the attacker rolled, multiplying his chance to hit times the defender's defense. Damage created an equal amount of 'stun', which was subtracted from both your chance to hit and your defense, diminishing by an amount equal to your Con bonus per round, so you had to recalculate everything each time you were struck, and again at the start of your phase. Two of the playtesters never played anything ever again. (The GM also to criticism very badly.))

The Auld Grump

 

[MerricB]

All of which depends on your ability to convince the GM that your explanation for why the battle should go your way is better than your opponent's.

Absolutely. I love Amber - played in a campaign for three years, and GMed it for part of that time - but it suffers greatly by not having a dice task resolution system.

The game can easily come down to GM favouritism.

It is why I am very, very suspicious of any games that want to throw away the rulebook.

Cheers!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Absolutely. I love Amber - played in a campaign for three years, and GMed it for part of that time - but it suffers greatly by not having a dice task resolution system.

The game can easily come down to GM favouritism.

It is why I am very, very suspicious of any games that want to throw away the rulebook.

Cheers!

Heh, the same thing happened in the only Everwhere game I ever played in. If you were female you succeeded, if you were male you failed. The GM ended up marrying one of the female players. Everyone else (including the rest of the female players) left the game after the second session.

I like having a more concrete system, yet with the chaos of dice thrown in. Fortunately they are more common.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* I hate games where the GM gets to arbitrarily decide whether you succeed or fail. Pretty much the only style of play that I truly loathe.

 

[MerricB]

The only people that I have ever met with the 'my way or the highway' attitude are D20, Rifts, GURPS, and homebrew players. Not White Wolf, not Amber,

Luckily, you haven't met the Vampire players I have, who thought AD&D was a game for morons who couldn't role-play to save themselves.

They exist, I'm afraid.

In Real Life (tm), people in all walks of life decide that the way they handle things is the One True Way. They form little cliques, and unfortunately many people who encounter those cliques decide that is the way the entire world works.

It is not a problem with one particular method of playing the game, but instead a way of looking at the world that exists in many forms.

I have a problem with games that set themselves as being Superior to others by virtue of their difference of style. Different, yes, but superior?

Cheers!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Whereas the ones I have met were pretty darned flexible. (Big exception, not pertaining to gaming - do not have a fundamentalist religious viewpoint, a few of them were the most religiously intolerant people I have evr met - the gamers not the religicos.)

And I can see where meeting a clique of folks with this attitude would breed ill will, I know that I will never play either GURPS or Rifts because of the local groups, but I also realize that they are local. I may be too judgemental of people who are too judgemental. A flat out statement of 'this style of play is wrong' brings out my fangs.

The Auld Grump, do not mistake a polemic for a debate.

 

[Nisarg]

Heh, the same thing happened in the only Everwhere game I ever played in. If you were female you succeeded, if you were male you failed. The GM ended up marrying one of the female players. Everyone else (including the rest of the female players) left the game after the second session.

I like having a more concrete system, yet with the chaos of dice thrown in. Fortunately they are more common.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* I hate games where the GM gets to arbitrarily decide whether you succeed or fail. Pretty much the only style of play that I truly loathe.

Just to clarify, did you mean "Everway"? If not I'm not sure which RPG you're talking about.

In any case, every game comes down to GM arbitration, whether its by fudging rules, or fudging dice rolls, or determining when to allow a roll and when not, or whether to give the pc an easy time or have him face a gaggle of tarrasques.

Amber is just a bit more honest about it.. but that said, just like any game needs a fair GM, Amber especially requires a fair and relatively experienced GM to pull off.

Nisarg

 

[Nisarg]

Luckily, you haven't met the Vampire players I have, who thought AD&D was a game for morons who couldn't role-play to save themselves.

They exist, I'm afraid!

I have never seen an actual GURPS or D20 player walk up to a kid in a gaming store and tell him that the game he was thinking of buying was wrong or inferior.
I have on several occasions seen Exalted players do that; get up from the gaming table at the FLGS and tell some kid that he shouldn't get D&D because its inferior.

Nisarg

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Just to clarify, did you mean "Everway"? If not I'm not sure which RPG you're talking about.

In any case, every game comes down to GM arbitration, whether its by fudging rules, or fudging dice rolls, or determining when to allow a roll and when not, or whether to give the pc an easy time or have him face a gaggle of tarrasques.

Amber is just a bit more honest about it.. but that said, just like any game needs a fair GM, Amber especially requires a fair and relatively experienced GM to pull off.

Nisarg

Yes, Everway, I seem to have taken the game Everway, and the book Neverwhere and conflated the titles. However most games do not make that the sole means of determining results. The system is only as honest as the GM, and in Everway he holds all the cards. *shuffle* Ummm, so to speak.

I have never seen an actual GURPS or D20 player walk up to a kid in a gaming store and tell him that the game he was thinking of buying was wrong or inferior.
I have on several occasions seen Exalted players do that; get up from the gaming table at the FLGS and tell some kid that he shouldn't get D&D because its inferior.

Nisarg

Unfortunately I have, and been in the same room when the Rifts and GURPS players started arguing over which was the one true game while the customer walked out of the store without purchasing anything. It was a religious war between the two groups, I swear. Why the shop manager doesn't throw both groups out I will never know, but gods the Rifts players buy a lot of books. (Though until the new GURPS came out I never saw any of the GURPS players buy anything.)

The local Exalted players on the other hand are a quiet bunch, Exalted I am afraid is much picked upon. (I have heard it called 'Storyteller made stupid' more than once. Once from a twelve year old - sadly one of my students at a summer program.) I got a free copy of Exalted, but have never played.

And whie I don't like the GURPS players much, I don't even like the system for Rifts.

The Auld Grump

 

[Acid_crash]

I have never seen an actual GURPS or D20 player walk up to a kid in a gaming store and tell him that the game he was thinking of buying was wrong or inferior.
I have on several occasions seen Exalted players do that; get up from the gaming table at the FLGS and tell some kid that he shouldn't get D&D because its inferior.

Nisarg

I have seen both. But, I think over the years I have seen more D&D Players do this than any other single subset of the gaming community, but Exalted players (and I am guilty as charged) comes close around here.

I say guilty because I believe, after playing both games, that Exalted is a superior game to D&D in all aspects, but that is my opinion. And I do tell others to try Exalted simply because it deserves to be played, and I think it is better. But, I only say it once, and only once, and I also do it to let people know that there are OTHER games besides dungeons and dragons. But, after I say it once, I leave it be.

I still roleplay in any game (never even heard of Amber or Nobilis) at least once to give it a try, and will continue to do so.