Different philosophies concerning Rules Heavy and Rule Light RPGs.

[Celebrim]

This is basic GM stuff. We mess with difficulty all the time for reasons of story and drama.

You do.

 

[Celebrim]

Examples of this sort exist for all games. People will not always immediately grasp how a game is meant to be played. They may struggle to get to a point where that’s clear. They may never reach that point.

I don’t think a video showing a first time player trying to play a game in a way that conflicts with the game’s intended approach really supports your argument much.

I don't think you watched the video. The first time or at least novice player is Wil Wheaton and he spends most of the session frustrated by his lack of spotlight and struggling and failing to hide in his facial features his confusion and frustration. The Trad experience he's having is akin to a player in 3.5e D&D who decided to make a conventional fighter, only to watch combat be dominated by highly optimized CoDzilla's and arcane shapechangers.

I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say here… but if I follow it correctly, what’s to stop players (not characters) from recognizing that big moments and spotlight (assuming these are the kind of universal goals you claim) come from playing your character faithfully and without a mind to unearned advantages or even success?

That's a strange question and I'm also not sure what you are trying to say. First of all, big moments and spotlight aren't universal goals and I never claimed that, but they are very common goals to a number of important aesthetics of play, and the sorts of aesthetics of play that seek those moments out even if they aren't the player's primary goal of play are still usually important secondary goals of play. And secondly, because well they just don't. Playing your character "faithfully" and without a mind toward achieving "success" isn't likely to earn you a shining moment of awesome and certainly is very unlikely in a system that judges degree of success by how much narrative control a character has. Whatever in the system determines your character's degree of success, whether the bias of the GM in so much as he likes your style and goals or you as a player, or whether the attributes of the character and how much force the character can assert over the narrative via repeated rules driven success to a large extent is the determining factor in how likely you are to get big shining moments of awesome where the spotlight is on your character and you are receiving the social kudos and approval. There isn't any rule that if you slog away be hardworking and faithfully playing your character that the dice will eventually reward you, or that you'll eventually come out on top in some scenes in comparison to that player with real charisma and stage presence and system mastery and a highly optimized character.

Why can’t a first time player of FATE sit down with veteran players and pick up on good practices that make a FATE game functional and enjoyable?

Again, watch Wil Wheaton sit down with the games designers and players with more system mastery, and more importantly more "rizz", and see how that works out. I've participated in worse Con games than that one, but they weren't committed to film.

This is an astonishingly bad take.

No, it's just not a take that validates your own biases and preferences.[/quote]

 

[pemerton]

I read @Celebrim's statement on "fudging" with respect to PbtA-style games as referring to when a player character makes a Move and the result of the die roll requires the GM/facilitator to make some kind of Move in response, where what that looks like within the fiction are largely within the GM/facilitator's purview, subject to constraints imposed by the rules of the game on the GM/facilitator. I hope Celebrim can clarify if I've misunderstood.

That does seem to me to be a rather idiosyncratic definition of "fudging", which usually involves ignoring the outcome of a die roll.

To call a GM making a move in Apocalypse World "fudging" is quite bizarre.

In classic D&D, when a wandering monster is indicated the GM has to decide where it comes from. Is that now to be called "fudging" also?

It's more than merely "idiosyncratic" to call any GM decision-making "fudging". "Fudging" involves deceit. A GM making a decision when everyone can see that the rules call for one is not deceiving anyone!

 

[TiQuinn]

I don't think you watched the video. The first time or at least novice player is Wil Wheaton and he spends most of the session frustrated by his lack of spotlight and struggling and failing to hide in his facial features his confusion and frustration. The Trad experience he's having is akin to a player in 3.5e D&D who decided to make a conventional fighter, only to watch combat be dominated by highly optimized CoDzilla's and arcane shapechangers.

Are you talking about the Tabletop Fate Core video that's an hour long? Maybe you have some timestamps on what you see as Wheaton's frustration, because I've been watching this for awhile and I'm not seeing whatever it is that you're seeing.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why are you repetitively jumping chasms of the same width? What kind of story is this?

I'm not trying to be obtuse here. This gets to the root of game and story.

If my PC tries to jump an X difficulty chasm today, that's one thing. But if they encounter a similar chasm in the story, then that story is not much cop if the challenge remains the same. In a good story, I would expect to make that second attempt whilst burdened, or hindered, or otherwise penalised. I'm contrasting my first jump, which was hard, with a second attempt, which is dramatically more difficult - a product of rising action and increased tension.

This is basic GM stuff. We mess with difficulty all the time for reasons of story and drama.

I don't, at least not deliberately. I always try to adjudicate difficulty based on setting logic and precedent. Story and drama are not my main consideration.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I do think a heavy combat system is going to set expectations of a routine experience. Some folks are after that and lean heavy into the game aspect of an RPG. I don’t think it limits the overall narrative in the end.

It would certainly be a big surprise to Hero Games fans.

It comes down to knowing how to make a system work for you. If you prefer a flexible, yet vague guideline, that’s a fine preference.

I'd say its an okay only as long as its transparent. If its opaque then its hard for me to see it as anything but someone privileging putting people who like to have some ability to make intelligent decisions in the dark, and its going to be hard for me to call that "fine".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why are you repetitively jumping chasms of the same width? What kind of story is this?

One that happens to have you jumping chasms frequently, some of which will likely be of approximately the same width?

I'm not trying to be obtuse here. This gets to the root of game and story.


This is basic GM stuff. We mess with difficulty all the time for reasons of story and drama.

Then you should be messing with the conditions, not just difficulty. Changing difficulty without changing what the situation represents is bad drama and worse story.

 

[Umbran]

Why are you repetitively jumping chasms of the same width? What kind of story is this?

You seem to be missing the point.

I'm not trying to be obtuse here. This gets to the root of game and story.

Well, allow me to repeat - this is NOT ABOUT STORY.

Maybe I'm jumping the chasm twice because I have to go back and get a piece of equipment. Maybe I am jumping a totally separate chasm two months and three sessions of play later in the story, that just happens to be the same width because that's the way the GM made it.

Why you are jumping another chasm of the same width is not material. The fact is that the desired consistency is that, barring some meaningful difference, the two should still be mechanically the same. And a player should be able to guess that a narrower chasm will be bit easier, and a wider chasm harder - that the mechanics of jumping are pretty much set and predictable.

Now, there are playstyles in which players aren't looking for that - in which an obstacle is there for its narrative valence. In that kind of play, we probably wouldn't stipulate an exact width of the chasm, and instead would describe it in terms that fit the moment. But the desire for this consistency doesn't come out of such playstyles. In the playstyles that call for this consistency, the drama of the moment is a result of, not an input to, the scene.

 

[Faolyn]

Sure. But "cool" is a very subjective thing and what someone will consider cool varies from person to person. So "the rule of cool" very quickly makes the process of play about what discovering a) what the GM thinks is cool and catering to the GM's preference or b) doing the same thing with the dominate personality at the table if that dominate personality isn't the GM (Bob decides what is cool and everyone follows his lead).

OK, I know I'm late to the discussion, but wouldn't a regular group who's gamed together for a while just know what everyone thinks is cool?

It seems like the only way this would be a problem is if "Bob" here is a jerk who doesn't care about the others' feelings--and with that, the problem is with Bob, not the gaming system.

I mean, if everyone is respectful of each other and wants to make sure the game is good then this...

And yes, this becomes the dominate play mode at some tables, where you just cater to what the GM thinks is cool, flatter the GM, and generally predict the GMs whims as a methodology for gaining success and spotlight because you as the player aren't given any currency in any form that lets you specify concretely how you can change the fiction.

...won't be a problem.

And if it is a problem, then talking to Bob about his overwhelming personality is the next step. And if Bob doesn't change and it's unfun for people, ask Bob to leave. If this means that someone has to learn how to be a GM, then so be it.

 

[Arilyn]

OK, I know I'm late to the discussion, but wouldn't a regular group who's gamed together for a while just know what everyone thinks is cool?

It seems like the only way this would be a problem is if "Bob" here is a jerk who doesn't care about the others' feelings--and with that, the problem is with Bob, not the gaming system.

I mean, if everyone is respectful of each other and wants to make sure the game is good then this...


...won't be a problem.

And if it is a problem, then talking to Bob about his overwhelming personality is the next step. And if Bob doesn't change and it's unfun for people, ask Bob to leave. If this means that someone has to learn how to be a GM, then so be it.

Exactly. Gaming is social and it's definitely not the game's fault if there is a dysfunctional group. Any game can fall victim to that!