Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9835125" data-attributes="member: 7006">Something I'll be curious about is how either side of the "go in guns blazing and the monster will kill you outright because they are deadlier than you" and the "come up with a good plan and you can succeed" seesaw actually ends up working with one another.  How much mechanical heft does the game have to be able to have monsters kill the PCs using the mechanics?  And does the "come up with a plan" have a mechanical system behind it that works in concert with the "monsters kill you" mechanics... or is it like most games where the success or failure of the plan comes down to the arbitrary decision-making of the GM and what they "think" should or shouldn't work?Because in many of the RPGs I've seen... the side of "come up with a good plan" does not have any mechanical base... but rather it's the narrative decision-making of the GM to decide whether something works or not.  The GM hears the plan as given to them by the players... then based on their own interpretation of what they think would probably happen (based on their own logic and reason)... the plan either succeeds or fails.  Or maybe just to throw a bone to the mechanics of the game the GM asks for a skill check or two.  Which is often what happens in the Social side of something like D&D-- the players and DM improvise a social encounter and the DM then either is actually convinced of the PC's improvised argument and lets them get what they want straight away... or decides to ask for a Charisma-based check (like a Persuasion check) just to give a hint of additional mechanical influence if the DM is up in the air about the results of the social conversation.D&D is one of the few games that has survived and thrived even though it retains these two completely separate parts-- extreme mechanical combat rules heft... and a very blase exploration and social section that is more often than not arbitrarily decided on success or failure by DM fiat on what they think "sounds good" about the player's ideas-- with maybe a skill check or two thrown in.  But it doesn't have any intense "exploration mechanics" or "social combat mechanics".So I wonder what James has in mind with his game Crows?  Does he also try to retain the two completely separate parts of extreme combat mechanical heft and arbritrary GM decision-making on narrative player choice... or will he reduce combat complexity to the same level of narrative decision-making OR will the "plans" that players come up with have an actual mechanical game ruleset behind them that translates their "ideas" into rules you can roll dice against?  I'll be curious to see.</blockquote>

Verification