Balancing "RP" and "G"

[The Shaman]

...I don't try to make the campaigns last that long, they just tend to.

That's a great feeling.

I think a lot of what I see in this discussion and where I land on this question explains why I play Superhero RPGing primarily. Characters don't die, and if they do, they come back in some spectacular fashion. It's totally in genre for characters to last for years, and not die. And in a genre where things like deathtraps and monologing villians are accepted, it's much easier to run/play the idea of "failure without death" to work, rather than that idea is one of blunted risk.

Interesting idea about genres - perhaps this is why so many superhero games come with some variation on the idea of "hero points."

On an old mailing list I was one, populated by the more extreme types of theatrical gms and players, I was the one always arguing the game side of the G/RP equation. And here I'm arguing the other.

You can find me on different sides of the rules-light/rules-heavy debate depending on the specific topic.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Long. Usually between 3 and 8 years for a campaign.

When some characters die, there are always solutions. Bringing back the PC from the dead, or create a new one that joins the company, or create a new company if everyone died and use the opportunity to run different things we couldn't do before. Plus my campaign uses Ghostwalk, so you can actually play your dead character... still.

Let me elucidate - when I mean "die" in the context of the discussion it is "no coming back, character is done" - if the character has means of continuining to play, then that character is still in play.

And when I asked about camgaign length, I mean with the same characters, not generational, party replacements ect. Sorry I wasn't clear.

 

[LostSoul]

got any example from the no-fudge side of how not fudging hurt a game?

I think the obvious ones come from poorly-designed adventures. Investigative ones, for example. If you have one clue that the players need to find, and they fail the die roll to find it, the game stalls and no one has any fun.

 

[The Shaman]

"with all the fudging". geesh. Just how many "really bad results" do you think DND produces that you have to keep surmising that those who fudge in the system have to do it so often?

Let's turn that around for a moment: if 'bad' results are so few and far between, how is it that they are so game-breaking that they need to be fudged?

My players don't play DND because "on a bad die roll or string of bad dice our characters might die!!" Really, they don't. From discussions with them, often about my house rules, the "one roll dead" aspects of DND are some of the elements they dislike and are happy to see that i have adjusted them with house rules and the like.

I don't think most players play any game because they can 'lose' on a single die roll. I think they play accepting the fact that a bad die roll is a part of the game.

as an aside, I had some of my characters die in silly situations too, and that's alright! That makes the game all the more believable to me, and the day I get a character to survive for a long while, I get all the more invested in the game...

Surviving the close scrapes and narrow escapes of an adventuring career is fun for me if my character in fact survives by my skill and good fortune.

(As far as adding a touch of verisimilitude to the game-world, I'm reminded of the scene in The Incredibles where Edna is describing various lethal 'wardrobe malfunctions' - "NO CAPES!" )

 

[Odhanan]

Let me elucidate - when I mean "die" in the context of the discussion it is "no coming back, character is done" - if the character has means of continuining to play, then that character is still in play.

That was actually my point. In my game, depending on the circumstances, a dead character isn't necessarily out of the game. Plus, D&D itself gives you some means to bring back characters from the dead. So in the context of my D&D/Arcana Evolved/Iron Heroes/Ghostwalk campaign, there isn't any need for me to fudge anything. We play out the game, have some excitement and thrill at rolling the dice, and see the game flourish from there.

The story is incidental, after the game has been played. If a player is annoyed because his/her character died, it still died. There are always ways to bring back the character later in the game. As a matter of fact, I refuse to corner myself in a situation, as a DM, where my campaign couldn't go anywhere. I design the campaign as open ended, with ideas on how it could grow, how it could end, basic conspirations/groups/factions/NPCs, a rough idea, and I go from there, building from the experience of the first sessions by making factions, NPCs, etc react to the actions of the PCs. Therefore, there hasn't been any point in the game where I found myself stuck as DM.

And when I asked about camgaign length, I mean with the same characters, not generational, party replacements ect. Sorry I wasn't clear.

Never ran a campaign like this. See above for the example of my D&D+ campaign.

 

[swrushing]

For me it often is. As a player, I get pissed off when a DM fudged. I actually remember a game of Vampire The Masquerade where a GM fudged a die roll on a Domination 6 power (kind of upgraded possession) that would have annihilated my character's will and allowed the Elder (NPC) to use my character's body as a vessel. Basically my character was dead. I thought "shoot". I had provoked the NPC, told him from my 11th generation that I would rip his heart off his chest if he called me again by my real name (the guy was a Tremere possessed by a demon - we didn't know it at the time) and I tried to when he obliged. .

Now, please bear with me for a moment.

it seems like what you are describing is not "the extreme result" but the "expected result".

you are a low generation vampire who has just ticked off a edler with 6th tier powers and he uses his clan focused power on you.

So, are you describing something akin to "wow, the orc cirtted and did 40+ damage with his axe swing" being fudged away by the GM?

or

Are you describing "the orc swings and does 10 damage", IE a likely and expected result, being fudged away?

the former, from a pro-fudge pov, is a fine example of fudging.
The latter is a bad example of fudging, fudging done wrong.

you don't fudge, or don't fudge well, if you take away the likely, expected result. You don't fudge to take away "the system works". you fudge to take away the blow outs" the whacky way-out-of-proportion results, the ones which look more like a system breakdown than a "what should have happened."

I ran about ten vampire games over about 10 years and from my experience an 11th gen guy getting zapped by an elder with 6 dot dom is an EXPECTED "you fail" not a wild flukey "you fail" though depending on edition willpower might stall the fall for a brief second or two.

So, while this may be the example you want to use to counter my "toss the extreme", it really isn't. its an example of fudging to just totally remove the expected results.

It would be an example of what I call "bad fudging."

as an example of my own, in that midnight game, the Gm once had a dragon spend a full round action to turn around while standing on the ground in an open field. he did this because had he had the varmint do its "expected" full round of attacks, a ranger PC would have died. I noticed it, but I don't think the others did. It was also "bad fudging", even tho no dice were involved.

 

[swrushing]

Let's turn that around for a moment: if 'bad' results are so few and far between, how is it that they are so game-breaking that they need to be fudged?

uh, well, how many tpks are needed to bring a game to a screeching halt?

how often does one need his dismembership insurance?

if by fudging a critical longshot out-of-whack result once in a great while i can help my game be more enjoyable or not come to a premature end, I do.

and that doesn't mean fudging away the expected result of an event, just sometimes saying "i wont accept the longshot extreme."

I don't think most players play any game because they can 'lose' on a single die roll. I think they play accepting the fact that a bad die roll is a part of the game.

Well if that result is just something they just "accept", then it should not leap directly to "and if we say they dont have to acept it, we might as well not use any dice or make any decisions", right?

 

[The Shaman]

You don't fudge to take away "the system works". you fudge to take away the blow outs" the whacky way-out-of-proportion results, the ones which look more like a system breakdown than a "what should have happened."

swrushing, would you also fudge a player character's "wacky" result in the interest of "what should have happened?" Would you take a critical away, or allow a monster to 'save' against a spell, because the results are "way out-of-proportion?"

 

[Lord Mhoram]

That was actually my point. In my game, depending on the circumstances, a dead character isn't necessarily out of the game. Plus, D&D itself gives you some means to bring back characters from the dead. So in the context of my D&D/Arcana Evolved/Iron Heroes/Ghostwalk campaign, there isn't any need for me to fudge anything. We play out the game, have some excitement and thrill at rolling the dice, and see the game flourish from there.

Okay, that makes sense. When I read these kind of thread, with there being fairly standard ways for characters to come back, when someone talks about dying/dead, I read it as "dead, can't come back, out of the game" because worriyin about "basic death", fi you will, in a place where it isn't permanent is just whining.

The story is incidental, after the game has been played.

When I see the word "play" in relation to D&D I do not see it in the definition of a wargame or a boardgame, I think of playing as in "can Johnny come out and play". To me the rules are not rules to a "game" that a group can win or lose, but merely the defintion and structure by which the players interact with thier world. Rules not as in "rules to win or lose a game by" but as in "rules of conduct within this structure". Just as when you play cops and robbers, the story is made up as it is being played (or figured beforehand) so it is in RPGs, that the story is there at the time, not afterwords, and is the driving force behind the situation. The only reason we have dice is to avoid the "I hit him" " you did not""yes I did" arguments. They (the rules) are not those things be played like one would a wargame or boardgame, but to help facilitate the spontaneous creation of the players and GM.

Anyway that is how I take it.

Never ran a campaign like this. See above for the example of my D&D+ campaign.

Ah. What I described is the only kind of campaign I run, or have ever played in.

 

[Digital M@]

Haven't you ever had a player come up with such a great or original idea that you just had to let them do it? I can't believe there is a DM out there that has not allowed a success like that to go on in their games. I have also been know to reduce the HP on a monster by 1-2 pts so a player who is feeling down or underpowered to deal the death blow. I don't see how these things wreck the game but then I am not a huge game head. As I said before I play to share an experience and not to see how tough my character is.

I have players who love to powergame and I will run short dungeon crawls 1-3 sessions where they can pimp their min/maxed characters. After that is done, we move back to whatever we were running before. My campaigns are short, 1-2 semesters. I play in a college town and we start new games every semester. Sometimes we continue what we were doing, other times schedules not mix so new player and new campaign begin.