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Classic Traveller - a dice-driven game
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<blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 7303890" data-attributes="member: 99817"><p>That's cool. I find it interesting how <em>close </em>this is - both in spirit and in mechanics - to the Apocalypse World Engine.</p><p></p><p>For example, a player may say "I want to dash across the courtyard to get to the dune buggy" and the MC says "With all the gun-fire that's a defy danger... you sure? It's gonna hurt if that goes wrong." And the player can look at the defy danger move and see the roll (+cool) and the specific outcomes, and you can freely discuss the stakes. So you go from fiction into transparent conflict resolution and back into fiction.</p><p></p><p>And Traveller is often doing the same thing; eg. Administration - a throw of 7+ will successfully resolve normal interactions without further problems; Leader - Leader 3 or better will allow soldiers to obey orders without hesitation; Vacc Suit - A 10+ to avoid dangerous situations applies whenever a non-ordinary maneouvre is attempted. All conflict resolution, all completely transparent!</p><p></p><p>What this doesn't do is give guidance on failure:</p><p>i) Does a failed vacc suit roll lead to drama? How do we create dramatic fiction from these rolls?</p><p>ii) Or does it lead to death - with the threat of death supposed to make the <em>roll</em> dramatic for the participants, even if the resulting fiction is mundane?</p><p>iii) Or do we try and convince the player there is the threat of death, even though we as GM know there isn't, to give the illusion of danger, an ersatz tension?</p><p></p><p>I think a lot (most / all) of early rpgs were supposed to work on (ii). But in practice it isn't very effective: neither success nor a dead PC are interesting drama, and a plausible threat of death results in very high casualty rates, which contradicts another stated goal of creating long-running campaigns.</p><p></p><p>As a result, many games were drifted very quickly towards (iii) - although sim rpgs with lethal combat and little healing (RQ, Traveller, later WHFRP) were much more resistant to drift.</p><p></p><p>Later designs said that the way to create a dramatic experience for the players was to create dramatic fiction, and then started creating processes for doing (i). I think Traveller's higher level mechanics ('more operational' as you put it) lend themselves to that very well, but you're required to put together the final piece of the puzzle yourself...</p><p></p><p>Sorry - your post was long and there are other bits I could pick up on, but Traveller's resolution system - and the very clear attempts at transparency with the players - always appealed to me. I'm picking my way around why.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="chaochou, post: 7303890, member: 99817"] That's cool. I find it interesting how [I]close [/I]this is - both in spirit and in mechanics - to the Apocalypse World Engine. For example, a player may say "I want to dash across the courtyard to get to the dune buggy" and the MC says "With all the gun-fire that's a defy danger... you sure? It's gonna hurt if that goes wrong." And the player can look at the defy danger move and see the roll (+cool) and the specific outcomes, and you can freely discuss the stakes. So you go from fiction into transparent conflict resolution and back into fiction. And Traveller is often doing the same thing; eg. Administration - a throw of 7+ will successfully resolve normal interactions without further problems; Leader - Leader 3 or better will allow soldiers to obey orders without hesitation; Vacc Suit - A 10+ to avoid dangerous situations applies whenever a non-ordinary maneouvre is attempted. All conflict resolution, all completely transparent! What this doesn't do is give guidance on failure: i) Does a failed vacc suit roll lead to drama? How do we create dramatic fiction from these rolls? ii) Or does it lead to death - with the threat of death supposed to make the [I]roll[/I] dramatic for the participants, even if the resulting fiction is mundane? iii) Or do we try and convince the player there is the threat of death, even though we as GM know there isn't, to give the illusion of danger, an ersatz tension? I think a lot (most / all) of early rpgs were supposed to work on (ii). But in practice it isn't very effective: neither success nor a dead PC are interesting drama, and a plausible threat of death results in very high casualty rates, which contradicts another stated goal of creating long-running campaigns. As a result, many games were drifted very quickly towards (iii) - although sim rpgs with lethal combat and little healing (RQ, Traveller, later WHFRP) were much more resistant to drift. Later designs said that the way to create a dramatic experience for the players was to create dramatic fiction, and then started creating processes for doing (i). I think Traveller's higher level mechanics ('more operational' as you put it) lend themselves to that very well, but you're required to put together the final piece of the puzzle yourself... Sorry - your post was long and there are other bits I could pick up on, but Traveller's resolution system - and the very clear attempts at transparency with the players - always appealed to me. I'm picking my way around why. [/QUOTE]
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