Game Mecahnics Versus Role Playing Focus

[Spatula]

But it's not your age or anything, just your play style. Older versions of D&D were useless for gear heads. There was nothing to tweak, so they didn't bother to play and found a hobby that suited them better, like tweaking car engines or building model airplanes. Now that D&D permits them to find some enjoyment in the game they stick around, but that doesn't mean they're playing the game for the same reasons you are.

Uhm.

Gamers (and people) aren't neat little boxes of binary preferences. Plenty of gearheads played older editions of D&D. I know, they were a lot of the people I gamed with in high school (and I'm probably one myself). They also played other games (including wargames)!

1e had a decent amount of tweakability: play a magic-user (or to a lesser extent, cleric).
2e had tons of tweaking options via the supplements & settings.
3e is the holy grail for that kind of activity in D&D, obviously.

 

[Spatula]

On the other side we can say that using a complex involved rules set that both the DM and the players use to adjudicate whether your actions succeed or fail means that you you are playing a DM vs players adversarial game. Full stop. End of debate.

That doesn't follow at all. Having a set of rules to adjucate situations doesn't presume any sort of adversarial relationship.

 

[ExploderWizard]

That doesn't follow at all. Having a set of rules to adjucate situations doesn't presume any sort of adversarial relationship.

That was kind of the point. It was presumed only to illustrate that such an assumption was no more or less valid than claiming that judgement calls used to adjudicate situations presumes playing Mother may I.

 

[Spatula]

That was kind of the point. It was presumed only to illustrate that such an assumption was no more or less valid than claiming that judgement calls used to adjudicate situations presumes playing Mother may I.

...but it is. Using a children's game for the analogy is probably being taken as an insult, but I don't think that was Cadfan's intention. You have to ask the DM for permission to do anything, which is how the game Mother May I works (substituting the DM for the role of "mother").

EDIT: Cadfan's analogy is describing a mechanical relationship; the DM controls the "physics" of the game and the players have to query him or her for what is possible and what is not. The intent behind the DM's control is undefined. It could be adversarial, or it might not be.

You're attempting to conflate the presence of rules (such that the physics of the game are publicly known to all parties) with DM intent, when they're no connection between the two. Again, the DM's intent could be adversarial, or it might not be. Whether the game physics are well-known or exist only at the DM's whim has no actual bearing on the nature of the DM-player relationship.

 

[ExploderWizard]

...but it is. Using a children's game for the analogy is probably being taken as an insult, but I don't think that was Cadfan's intention. You have to ask the DM for permission to do anything, which is how the game Mother May I works (substituting the DM for the role of "mother").

And where does such such a notion come from? Are we talking about permission to act or permission to have all the risks consequences involved with that action spelled out numerically before we think about attempting it?

Theres a big difference between the two. Mother may I works like asking permission to act. Old school game judging does not work this way. A player doesn't need to ask for permission to try an off the wall maneuver, yet somehow when in a situation where they could act but the chances at succeeding at the move are unknown it is percieved as " needing permission".

Even if a player wants to try something impossible under the circumstances, there is no need to ask for permission. Simply declare what action you are attempting. If that action involves leaping 30' in the air without the aid of magic or a bizzarre ability you can still try without asking. The action will fail (as expected) but no permission was needed to try.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Uhm.

Gamers (and people) aren't neat little boxes of binary preferences.

Thanks! I didn't realize that!

Or, uhm, no. The opposite. I was speaking in general terms.

"3E is much more gearhead friendly then previous editions (as all PCs can be tweaked far more than any PC in any previous edition), thereby attracting a much greater share of gearheads as a percentage of the population than previous editions."

Better?

In the future though it may help if you don't go out of your way to find a stupid comment in someone's post. While anything can be evidence of rampant moronism, it's more likely just imprecisely phrased and you could find a reasonable interpretation if you looked at it a second time.

 

[Spatula]

Thanks! I didn't realize that!

Or, uhm, no. The opposite. I was speaking in general terms.

You said that gearheads didn't play D&D and played wargames instead. That's not speaking in general terms, that's simply incorrect. It's also one-dimensional sterotyping of a subset of gamers that you admit to not understanding.

 

[Spatula]

And where does such such a notion come from? Are we talking about permission to act or permission to have all the risks consequences involved with that action spelled out numerically before we think about attempting it?

Theres a big difference between the two. Mother may I works like asking permission to act. Old school game judging does not work this way. A player doesn't need to ask for permission to try an off the wall maneuver, yet somehow when in a situation where they could act but the chances at succeeding at the move are unknown it is percieved as " needing permission".

You have a point in that it's not quite the same situation. But in practice it often comes down to the same result: the DM defines what is and is not possible but that information is not available to the player, except through experience with that particular DM. So yes, you don't need to ask permission to slide down the banister and crash into the villain, but you'll want to know roughly how the DM is going to adjucate that before potentially wasting your action on it. "If I slide down the banister and crash into the villian, do I have a reasonable chance of knocking him into the brazier?" If the DM is going to throw up all kinds of obstacles to the act ("Make a DEX check to stay on the banister... OK, roll to hit the villain's AC... OK, make a STR check with a -10 penalty... Alright, the villain takes 1 point of fire damage."), then he's effectively saying, no, you can't do that. Or rather: sure you can try, but you would be foolish to do so.

 

[Cadfan]

On the other side we can say that using a complex involved rules set that both the DM and the players use to adjudicate whether your actions succeed or fail means that you you are playing a DM vs players adversarial game. Full stop. End of debate. It doesn't matter if the rule makes much sense, if you are happy with the rule or not. You. Are. Playing. DM. vs. Player.

You can say anything that you want. But if the DM is just pretending to be your adversary, then its not really an adversarial game. Meanwhile, if conflict adjudication boils down to asking the DM to rule your way and trying to convince him to agree, then you really are playing Mother-May-I.

Theres a big difference between the two. Mother may I works like asking permission to act. Old school game judging does not work this way. A player doesn't need to ask for permission to try an off the wall maneuver, yet somehow when in a situation where they could act but the chances at succeeding at the move are unknown it is percieved as " needing permission".

Eh, now you're just arguing labels.

Mother May I, the actual children's game, works by asking permission to act. What I'm referring to and what everyone in this thread and in previous threads where other people have used the term "Mother May I game" have been referring to doesn't actually involve asking for permission to act. It involves asking for permission to succeed.

I don't have a better label for this type of game. Come up with one and I'll use it. I don't really care.

The basic point stands. Rules light situations frequently boil down to lobbying the DM for a particular outcome. Just as a rules heavy game involves metagaming about what outcomes the rules promote a rules light game involves metagaming about what you can or cannot talk the DM into deciding.

The former isn't bad if reasoning in-game and reasoning metagame produce similar outcomes, ie, if the rules are reasonably plausible and internally consistent. The latter isn't bad either if the DM is good at deciding things that make everyone at the table happy. But good or bad, the metagaming happens either way.

 

[ExploderWizard]

You have a point in that it's not quite the same situation. But in practice it often comes down to the same result: the DM defines what is and is not possible but that information is not available to the player, except through experience with that particular DM. So yes, you don't need to ask permission to slide down the banister and crash into the villain, but you'll want to know roughly how the DM is going to adjucate that before potentially wasting your action on it. "If I slide down the banister and crash into the villian, do I have a reasonable chance of knocking him into the brazier?" If the DM is going to throw up all kinds of obstacles to the act ("Make a DEX check to stay on the banister... OK, roll to hit the villain's AC... OK, make a STR check with a -10 penalty... Alright, the villain takes 1 point of fire damage."), then he's effectively saying, no, you can't do that. Or rather: sure you can try, but you would be foolish to do so.

You have a point here too. It's too bad that poor DMs making lame calls ruined the concept of game judging for a lot of players. Dms that do such things are irritating. They say " you guys never try anyhing cool" and then when a player is ready to try he or she gets shafted by a DM making the kind of calls you gave an example of. With a good DM an old school game is awesome, but I have been in enough bad games to know how much it can suck.