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Compelling and Differentiated Gameplay For Spellcasters and Martial Classes
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7826799" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>As I read the OP, Eubani is correct. See eg</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p></p><p>The issue is not about potency - the ability to efficiently overcome challenges presented to the players by the PC - but about the ability to <em>impact the fiction in distinctive, character-revealing ways</em>.</p><p></p><p>In post 13 in this thread, [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] says:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"> Game mechanics can be written in a way in which they embrace GM judgement and fictional positioning to allow for creative play. You do this by explicitly calling out areas for the GM to apply their judgement as a referee and having fictional positioning requirements built in to how you design mechanics.</p><p></p><p>Fictional positioning requirements need not be <em><u>highly </u>situational</em>. And there is no reason that they must work poorly in "theatre of the mind". Fictional position is not about the location of a token on a map. It's about the table, through play, establishing true descriptions of the circumstances of the characters.</p><p></p><p>A concrete example from my Classic Traveller game - one of the PCs has a suit of powered armour (battle dress) and a rather powerful plasma gun. The use of these is effectively at will. In combat, they are rather awesome in their effects. But the player does not have his PC use them all the time, because it is awkward to do so. Besides their blatant character, there is the devastation that the plasma gun tends to inflict.</p><p></p><p>The two things that [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] mentions are closely related. And they are not about "player control of fiction" as you mean that. They're about the way that the consequences of checks - both success and failure - are established. The focus is on framing of the situation, on calling for checks only when something of established significance is at stake, and on allowing successes to not just <em>change the fiction</em>, but to allow them to change the fiction so as to give the player what s/he wanted out of the situation.</p><p></p><p>In D&D, 4e is the only edition that has systematised this sort of approach. Most of the systems that Manbearcat mentioned upthread as having addressed the concerns raised in the OP adopt some version of this sort of approach.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7826799, member: 42582"] As I read the OP, Eubani is correct. See eg [indent] [/indent] The issue is not about potency - the ability to efficiently overcome challenges presented to the players by the PC - but about the ability to [I]impact the fiction in distinctive, character-revealing ways[/I]. In post 13 in this thread, [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] says: [indent] Game mechanics can be written in a way in which they embrace GM judgement and fictional positioning to allow for creative play. You do this by explicitly calling out areas for the GM to apply their judgement as a referee and having fictional positioning requirements built in to how you design mechanics.[/indent] Fictional positioning requirements need not be [I][U]highly [/U]situational[/I]. And there is no reason that they must work poorly in "theatre of the mind". Fictional position is not about the location of a token on a map. It's about the table, through play, establishing true descriptions of the circumstances of the characters. A concrete example from my Classic Traveller game - one of the PCs has a suit of powered armour (battle dress) and a rather powerful plasma gun. The use of these is effectively at will. In combat, they are rather awesome in their effects. But the player does not have his PC use them all the time, because it is awkward to do so. Besides their blatant character, there is the devastation that the plasma gun tends to inflict. The two things that [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] mentions are closely related. And they are not about "player control of fiction" as you mean that. They're about the way that the consequences of checks - both success and failure - are established. The focus is on framing of the situation, on calling for checks only when something of established significance is at stake, and on allowing successes to not just [I]change the fiction[/I], but to allow them to change the fiction so as to give the player what s/he wanted out of the situation. In D&D, 4e is the only edition that has systematised this sort of approach. Most of the systems that Manbearcat mentioned upthread as having addressed the concerns raised in the OP adopt some version of this sort of approach. [/QUOTE]
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