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Interesting Decisions vs Wish Fulfillment (from Pulsipher)
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6347717" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>This seems to me to relate to [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]'s discussion upthread of different approaches to ToH. It's in part about colour/flavour (what do the players want the content of the fiction to be) and in part about mechanics (what sorts of mechanical manipulations do the players want to engage in as part of playing the game) and of course these two things interact.</p><p></p><p></p><p>At least for my part, I'm not unaware of the playstyle that Ruin Explorer describes. My group (both present and past members, the past members now mostly moved to England) includes experts at this: two former Asia/Oceania M:tG champions, plus a couple of guys who used to dominate the local play-by-mail scene.</p><p></p><p>I remember one time in a tournament game we shocked the GM: having entered an encounter in a relaxed way, and being beaten off, we took stock and actually planned and prepared with maximum buffing, Protection scroll use etc, and then swept all before us. (But from memory ended up making a wrong story choice and losing the tournament.)</p><p></p><p>My Rolemaster games also had a lot of this, complicated by the fact that - in our particular RM variant - a lot of the buffing depended upon storing spells and then casting them later (so as to conserve spell points), and also storing spells on non-casters so that they could then cast them later. With a stored spell in RM, normal spells can't be used unless another (expensive) enhancer (Bypass Stored Spell) is used first; and the stored spells have to come out in the same order that they went in. So the whole buffing routine depended upon complex optimisation of sequences of storing and then casting (either via bypass or casting the stored spells) so that everything worked out properly and the minimum number of points were spent on bypass spells and non-stored buffs.</p><p></p><p>Towards the end of the second of two long campaigns, group Time Stop also figured heavily. And in the first campaign, which featured a lot of divination magic, it was common to test any plan under Intuitions (an Augury-like effect) before actually implementing it in the real world.</p><p></p><p>But I don't see that the label "combat as war" is a very good descriptor of this sort of stuff. "Operational play" was a label that used to get used hear by Raven Crowking and others, and it seems reasonable enough. Whether or not it is fun is of course a matter of taste. These days I prefer play in which the scene, rather than preparation in anticipation of the scene, is what matters.</p><p></p><p>I agree with this, and I think that framing it as strategic or tactical <em>within the fiction</em> is a red herring, for the sorts of reasons that Libramarian has given.</p><p></p><p>Within the fiction, for instance, the choice to attack Rutania or Alteria first is a strategic one; but in gameplay there's no reason why that can't be a choice that is made within a framed scene, and the upshot of the choice resolved by one (or perhaps a handfulf of) skill checks. (In 4e, perhaps Diplomacy and History would be the relevant skills.)</p><p></p><p>But (disregarding [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s advice and talking about edition preferences), it's not only about scene-reframing. For instance, a very common criticism of 3E and 4e from old-school players is that they permit items to be discovered via a search check rather than requiring free-form decription of the search.</p><p></p><p>Now let's put to one side that Gygax, in his DMG, discusses both methods as options and says either is fine, or even that a given game can use both, depending on mood and whim. Let's just focus on what a Perception check to search the room actually means <em>at the table</em>. It is a scene-reframing tool: the scene changes from one in which the question before the players is "What's in this room" to "Given that the room has XYZ in it, what are we going to do with/about that?"</p><p></p><p>Diplomacy, in 3E, is the same thing: instead of the scene being "You meet this unhelpful/angry person", the successful Diplomacy check reframes that as "You are in the company of this helpful/friendly person".</p><p></p><p>I'm not a big fan of those 3E mechanics - I think they tend to lead to boring play, as the players reframe scenes away from challenges towards cakewalks. (I don't like free-forming searches, either - so my solution is just not to put much hidden stuff into my game.) I also think that the desire for player-side reframing mechanics is in part a marker of bad GMing: if the players want to reframe your scenes rather than engage them, then you're framing crappy/boring scenes!</p><p></p><p>But my dislike for player-side framing mechanics also means that I don't like scry-buff-teleport, and more generally don't like buff-oriented play very much (which isn't literally reframing but does tend to put the emphasis of play not in the scene itself, but in the lead-up to it).</p><p></p><p>The OSR/"CaW" players who like scry-buff-teleport but dislike 3E's Perception and Diplomacy mechanics therefore aren't just embracing player-side scene reframing. It's more subtle than that. (I think it's connected in complex ways to fictional positioning, and "say yes" mechanics, and other stuff too. I'll elaborate if anyone's interested, though [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] can probably both do a better job.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6347717, member: 42582"] This seems to me to relate to [MENTION=1932]Savage Wombat[/MENTION]'s discussion upthread of different approaches to ToH. It's in part about colour/flavour (what do the players want the content of the fiction to be) and in part about mechanics (what sorts of mechanical manipulations do the players want to engage in as part of playing the game) and of course these two things interact. At least for my part, I'm not unaware of the playstyle that Ruin Explorer describes. My group (both present and past members, the past members now mostly moved to England) includes experts at this: two former Asia/Oceania M:tG champions, plus a couple of guys who used to dominate the local play-by-mail scene. I remember one time in a tournament game we shocked the GM: having entered an encounter in a relaxed way, and being beaten off, we took stock and actually planned and prepared with maximum buffing, Protection scroll use etc, and then swept all before us. (But from memory ended up making a wrong story choice and losing the tournament.) My Rolemaster games also had a lot of this, complicated by the fact that - in our particular RM variant - a lot of the buffing depended upon storing spells and then casting them later (so as to conserve spell points), and also storing spells on non-casters so that they could then cast them later. With a stored spell in RM, normal spells can't be used unless another (expensive) enhancer (Bypass Stored Spell) is used first; and the stored spells have to come out in the same order that they went in. So the whole buffing routine depended upon complex optimisation of sequences of storing and then casting (either via bypass or casting the stored spells) so that everything worked out properly and the minimum number of points were spent on bypass spells and non-stored buffs. Towards the end of the second of two long campaigns, group Time Stop also figured heavily. And in the first campaign, which featured a lot of divination magic, it was common to test any plan under Intuitions (an Augury-like effect) before actually implementing it in the real world. But I don't see that the label "combat as war" is a very good descriptor of this sort of stuff. "Operational play" was a label that used to get used hear by Raven Crowking and others, and it seems reasonable enough. Whether or not it is fun is of course a matter of taste. These days I prefer play in which the scene, rather than preparation in anticipation of the scene, is what matters. I agree with this, and I think that framing it as strategic or tactical [i]within the fiction[/i] is a red herring, for the sorts of reasons that Libramarian has given. Within the fiction, for instance, the choice to attack Rutania or Alteria first is a strategic one; but in gameplay there's no reason why that can't be a choice that is made within a framed scene, and the upshot of the choice resolved by one (or perhaps a handfulf of) skill checks. (In 4e, perhaps Diplomacy and History would be the relevant skills.) But (disregarding [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s advice and talking about edition preferences), it's not only about scene-reframing. For instance, a very common criticism of 3E and 4e from old-school players is that they permit items to be discovered via a search check rather than requiring free-form decription of the search. Now let's put to one side that Gygax, in his DMG, discusses both methods as options and says either is fine, or even that a given game can use both, depending on mood and whim. Let's just focus on what a Perception check to search the room actually means [i]at the table[/i]. It is a scene-reframing tool: the scene changes from one in which the question before the players is "What's in this room" to "Given that the room has XYZ in it, what are we going to do with/about that?" Diplomacy, in 3E, is the same thing: instead of the scene being "You meet this unhelpful/angry person", the successful Diplomacy check reframes that as "You are in the company of this helpful/friendly person". I'm not a big fan of those 3E mechanics - I think they tend to lead to boring play, as the players reframe scenes away from challenges towards cakewalks. (I don't like free-forming searches, either - so my solution is just not to put much hidden stuff into my game.) I also think that the desire for player-side reframing mechanics is in part a marker of bad GMing: if the players want to reframe your scenes rather than engage them, then you're framing crappy/boring scenes! But my dislike for player-side framing mechanics also means that I don't like scry-buff-teleport, and more generally don't like buff-oriented play very much (which isn't literally reframing but does tend to put the emphasis of play not in the scene itself, but in the lead-up to it). The OSR/"CaW" players who like scry-buff-teleport but dislike 3E's Perception and Diplomacy mechanics therefore aren't just embracing player-side scene reframing. It's more subtle than that. (I think it's connected in complex ways to fictional positioning, and "say yes" mechanics, and other stuff too. I'll elaborate if anyone's interested, though [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6688858]Libramarian[/MENTION] can probably both do a better job.) [/QUOTE]
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