New Legends & Lore: Player vs. Character

[The Shaman]

Just throwing this out there as a thought experiment: Why have numbers for the "non-combat" stats? What if Str, Dex, Con had numeric stats, and the other 3 stats didn't exist or just had "a personality descriptor".

As [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] already mentioned, Pendragon does this. 2e Boot Hill is similar: a character's attributes are Speed, Gun Accuracy, Throwing Accuracy, Bravery, Strength, and Experience. Five of the six affect how well your character fights; the sixth, Strength, determines how much damage you can take.

It was because of Boot Hill and that Bravery attribute that I began adopting a somewhat iconoclastic view of character stats. The five attributes, including Bravery, which affect combat include modifiers to a character's speed and/or accuracy with various weapons; the character's Bravery score may increase or decrease a character's speed and accuracy, for example.

Now here's the thing: the Bravery attribute score has a discrete, quantifiable impact on the character's performance in the game - it represents the character's cool under fire. But here was the kicker for me: should Bravery also affect how the character is played? For a long time I assumed, "Of course!" but the more I thought about it,, the more I realized that wasn't necessarily so.

Consider a player character who is a town marshal with a Coward Bravery rating and no Experience; maybe he got the job through a political connection, or maybe the townsfolk stuck the badge on him because no one else wanted it and he didn't have the guts to say no. Now a gang of bank robbers come to town, and it's the marshal's job to confront them. The conventional wisdom is, the character is a coward and should be played as such.

But here's the thing: there's nothing about the attribute itself mechancially which determines if or how the marshal will confront the robbers; the attribute modifiers only speak to what happens if he tries to fire his gun at them. The attribute and the modifiers influence how successful the character is in a particular task; they say nothing about when or how the character decides to attempt the task.

So the marshal checks his six-shooters, grabs a double-barrel from the rack, and walks into the dusty Main Street to face-down the robbers. Now some gamers will cry foul here: "That's not roleplaying the character! He should be running for cover or something!" to which I say, malarkey. The marshal's hands shake like he has the palsy, sweat pours off his brow into his eyes, and his mouth is as dry as an arroyo in August so that when he shouts, "Throw up yer hands!" it comes out as little more than a hoarse whisper, and that is what is represented by the Bravery attribute modifiers, not the decision to confront the gang - that decision is solely the province of the player, who's decided that the reason the marshal accepted the badge in the first place is that he is determined to overcome his fear, no matter what it takes, and is roleplaying that aspect of his character.

In thinking this through, I came to a conclusion, one which seems to get under some gamers' skins: by treating character attributes as a nothing more than a rules interface and not a determinant of personality, roleplaying and character stats may be wholly independent of one another. Put another way, roleplay your character as you like, and let the stats take care of themselves.

For me, this does away with the tension of, say, the loquacious player who used Charisma or Charm as his dump stat; whether you're using something as simple as a reaction roll-plus-modifier or something as complex as Duel of Wits, let the player be as charming and as eloquent as he likes, and let the dice handle the actual result. If the player wants the character to be better at something, then it's on the player to choose that for the character, by whatever means the system supports, whether that's adding skill points, raising an attribute, or whatever - a would-be Cassanova with a 5 Charisma needs to invest skill points in Bluff or Diplomacy or whatever, or accept that he's only going to get play when he's really, really lucky. (Reminds me of a guy I knew in real life - he'd ask out every girl he met, firm in the belief that the law of averages would eventually work in his favor.)

Here's something else to bear in mind: 'DM fiat' is a system. In this system, the rules interface between the character's attribute scores and referee's judgement of the situation. A referee is perfectly capable of weighing the argument made by the player and the influence of the character's attributes to determine success or failure. (And [MENTION=4475]Sammael[/MENTION], in my experience most referees over the age of, say, fourteen or fifteen are capable of making consistent, fair judgement calls, and there are very few games out there which don't allow for referee discretion - no amount of rules can save you from crappy gamers.)

So my feeling is, let the players play how they like, and let the rules do what the rules are intended to do.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The thing I find with the argument about "reactive" dungeons or wandering monsters is that people seem to think that things like Take 20 or Greyhawking a dungeon takes significant amounts of time. It really doesn't.

From Basic D&D:

Searching for a secret door: 1 turn
Move your move rate while mapping: 1 turn
Searching a 10' x 10' area: 1turn

See a pattern here?

1 turn is 10 minutes. Searching that 40' x 40' room methodically takes 16 man turns. Actual time depends on how many in the party are searching.

This is why listening to the description of the area and picking up clues as to the best places to search is a good idea.

The generic search roll renders what is in the actual gamespace meaningless. All that matters is -Do you beat the DC? If so you move on if you roll low then just take 20 and you get whatever you can possibly find anyway. Its all purely mechanical and dull as hell.

There is no real incentive to 'explore the space'.

Personally, I prefer more cowbell.

 

[Hussar]

From Basic D&D:

Searching for a secret door: 1 turn
Move your move rate while mapping: 1 turn
Searching a 10' x 10' area: 1turn

See a pattern here?

1 turn is 10 minutes. Searching that 40' x 40' room methodically takes 16 man turns. Actual time depends on how many in the party are searching.

This is why listening to the description of the area and picking up clues as to the best places to search is a good idea.

The generic search roll renders what is in the actual gamespace meaningless. All that matters is -Do you beat the DC? If so you move on if you roll low then just take 20 and you get whatever you can possibly find anyway. Its all purely mechanical and dull as hell.

There is no real incentive to 'explore the space'.

Personally, I prefer more cowbell.

All right, let's stick with Basic D&D then. Standard party is 6 PC's, plus 3-5 henchmen. We can search that room in 2 turns. Maybe 3. Still not adding large amounts of time to the game.

The problem is, most of the time, when you search, there's nothing to find. You come into a room with X furniture and Y features. Well, that's pretty much the same as the last fifteen rooms - after all no DM is going to advertise a secret something is he? That kind of defeats the point.

So, the party searches everything. Why? Because searching everything is heavily rewarded. The best treasure is always hidden. Makes sense after all - if I have this honking big diamond, I'm going to put it somewhere safe. But, the party doesn't really have the option of ignoring stuff since ignoring stuff either results in you missing significant rewards, or missing significant threats. And, if wandering monster do happen by, well, that's usually just free xp since wandering monsters were almost always fodder anyway. And lots of adventures actually drew wandering monsters from existing encounters, which made later encounters that much easier. Kill them now or kill them later, what difference does it make?

So, even though there's only three secret doors in the dungeon, you still have to search every room, because you have to assume that there is a secret door in every room in order to find the three that are really there.

Heck, I can't be the only one whose group turned into something like this:

DM: You find a four armed statue.
Player A: Ok, I'm the thief, I've got an X check for traps. I'm checking the statue.
Player B: No traps found? Ok, well my elf actively looks for secret doors, I've got a 3 in 6 of finding it.

Wash, rinse, repeat as needed.

I'll admit, I never played OD&D, so, I cannot comment on that. But, mechanical approaches to dungeon crawls are hardly something new. Every group I've ever played in has approached things exactly the same way - throw dice at the problem until it's resolved.

I remember running Tomb of Horrors for one group and, at the part where there's a bunch of secret doors and spear traps if you open them wrong, I asked them how they were opening the door - asked them to stand up at the door of the room and show me. Figured a bit of role play might be nice. The players looked at me like I had two heads. They had zero interest in this sort of thing.

The whole "search it this way, search it that way" got very old, very fast. It was fun for maybe a few dozen sessions, twenty or thirty years ago, but, now? No thanks. I don't ponce about describing exactly how I swing my sword, so, why would I do the same thing describing how my trap expert searches the chest or the wall?

 

[Anselyn]

As an aside: skills and checks are old school.

Traveler had skills, Runequest and CoC had skills (and I guess they all still do).

And, Traveller had skills on a small numerical scale with excellent passive use of skills.

i.e along the lines of :
Any character with a skill of 2 or more in Engineering inspecting the power plant will recognise that it won't work due to damage to the nutron flow polarity inverter.

 

[Balesir]

Rolemaster was out as early as 1980. But even so I consider the mid-80s part of the early days of RPGs (maybe the second phase but we are still talking 25 years ago).

Ah, I only played a little RM in the late '80s and I had no idea it was created that early. I count it among the vanguard of the "Simulationist by instinct" wave that came along then, in that case. I think RuneQuest led this and HârnMaster was a late follower.

Sure they were. Rolemaster was very much focused on a different RPG experience. It marked a big shift from general abstracted damage to the kind of wound you get. It was also skill-based and used a percentile system.

I will grant you there is a much different aesthetic in game design these days. I see a lot more unified mechanics for example. And I do agree there are more people making focused games today as well (at least focusing on specific kinds of gaming experience---genre focus has been around for a while).

Perhaps more correctly what I am trying to say is that these early games weren't driven by a clear idea of the player focus of attention during play. For me, the ideas expressed on The Forge are a real window, here, even though imperfect and frequently misused and abused. The actual focus of the players as they play the game, even though it is hard to divine accurately, seems like a key to game design objective, to me. A game that doesn't have its aims clear in this respect will tend to be muddled and conflicted in its rules. This will not stop groups that have a clear aim of their own from ignoring some rules and changing others to make the ruleset fit their own agenda, but if that group finds (and tries out - marketing is always a factor) a ruleset that genuinely supports their focus-of-play agenda without modification they will, I suggest, take to it immediately.

Further to this, once rule sets with coherent agenda support exist, I could see players trying out different agendas, consciously (as I have), and finding that they enjoy different ones. If we get to this degree of "market self-knowledge", at least for a minority, we could see a sea change in the hobby, I think.

However, I still don't think that means focused games are where it is at neccessarily (and just for full disclosure here I tend to make focused/niche games, not games with broad appeal). Even though 3E was more focused than 2E or 1E, it still was rooted in a general concept of being open to multiple playstyles. I think 4E is really the first edition to take some GNS concepts to heart and make a truly focused product. And the result has been somewhat mixed.

I think that was/is more or less inevitable. The groups/players that actually had a play-focus agenda that fitted 4E suddenly felt at home, but those who had drifted the rules of earlier editions to fit different agendas found the rules suddenly resistant to their accustomed "flexing"; they felt alienated and possibly even betrayed that these new rules "were no longer made for them". In truth, I don't think the rules had ever been built for them, per se - they were just made "sludgy" enough that they could be "adapted for purpose". "GM fiat" helps, here, as it is essentially leaving creation of the rules in some areas to the GM.

Had 4E been created with a clear agenda of Simulationist support, I think there would have been a similar backlash - but from different people! Essentially the same situation, but with different roles. Does that mean I think another "sludgy" D&D would have been better? No - because that way we would never progress beyond muddled compromise.

I could of course be misunderstanding your position. Perhaps if you gave some more examples of games you believe are focused and examples of well known modern games and where they fall in your mind (savage worlds, 4E, etc).

I don't think you misunderstand, as such, but I have probably only partially made my views clear. My experience of "focussed games" comes mainly from:

D&D 4E - I think this is the first really focussed "gamist supporting" game for the fantasy genre; that it is also the marketing/public consciousness giant in the field has proven both a boon and a curse...

HârnMaster - not really modern, per se, but a late "simulationist drift" game that managed it better (IMO) than any of the others. Many games of this era didn't really have the conceptual tools to know what they were trying to do, I think - but this one came closest, despite that.

Primetime Adventures - shows how a game that desires resolution based on aesthetics and drama concerns can/should be made, IMO. The switch from "GM fiat" to "combined player aesthetic input with randomness" showed me that non-system deterministic resolution could be done without the unpalatable aspects of "GM fiat". The rest of the system then moulds this to focus on Narrativist play, but I think the "voting chances" aspect has wider applicability in Sim systems, as well.

Universalis - shows how world building can be collaborative (and fun!) without a GM. 'Nuff said.

Pendragon - like HM, got Sim almost right, but for a specific "high concept" genre.

Burning Wheel - a game I really want to play more of, it seems to have interesting ideas in several respects.

The Riddle of Steel - a new take on Simulationist/'realistic' mechanics combined with Narrativist supporting "spiritual attributes" (drives, hates, etc.). I was amused by several "Sim-leaning" GMs who promptly dumped the spiritual attributes as "obviously a dumb addition to a decent core system"!

I think if you could give examples of the kinds of changes you had in mind with these assumptions that would be helpful. Thinking about this one, and while I have certainly seen a fair amount of experimentation for these things over the years, not much of it has taken hold from what I can remember. Damage, action resolution, etc are still handled in the same basic way by most mainstream games. The role of the characters and GM are also very much in the same in mainstream games (though there has been a general softening of rule 0 and I would argue that there is a softer approach to things like character death).

In mainstream games I would agree, but I think that's more a case of "inertia" than anything else. Many roleplayers, after all, want an easy, light pastime, not a session of analysing their own inner agendas to ascertain the most productive way for them to play. This, as in other fields, leads to market inertia and marketing led popularity. That can work well, until something genuinely better cracks the status quo; I may well be wrong, but I think we may be approaching the "tipping point" in that regard.

There are plenty of games out there doing things differently, Gumshoe comes to mind, but these aren't games I see a lot of people breaking out. 4E does come close, but it is still rooted in many of these traditional assumptions. Games where the players take some measure of narrative control that are popular are still pretty limited in this respect---Savage Worlds (a game I love very much) for example has bennies but that concept has been around for a while and it is still very much a game where the GM-Player relationship is traditional.

I haven't played SW (though I would love to), but it seems to have some leanings to gamist support, in which case a GM is desirable. I'm not sure how that works with bennies (handed out by the GM, right?), though.

In general, though, I don't think anyone has hit on a real "mother lode" for generic play in one of the three focus-of-play modes accross all play. 4E (most notably for combat) and PTA perhaps come closest, but they are still unpolished and, in the case of PTA, not written to be really generic (yet). But perhaps we are seeing some mechanisms, and some clear fits with the various requirements, that might mean really coherent rulesets come out soon. In the meantime, I believe those that exist are better, for their chosen agendas, than the "traditional" and "mainstream" games are - they just don't yet have the "killer app" status needed to break the marketing grip of the older methods yet.

I hope these responses don't come across as criticisms because they aren't meant to. I am honestly interested in what you are saying but looking for some clarification to make sure I follow and giving my take where I think I might disagree. But you are making some very interesting points here.

No worries - in a field filled with folk making (apparently) absolute statements and "one true way" claims, it's important to remember (and easy to forget) that divining the present and forecasting the future is a notoriously uncertain proposition!

Can you clarify this concept? What is a good example of challenging the player in actual play?

Sure - let me try with an example. It's not so much the GM (alone) challenging the player, but also the players challenging each other while being allied. What I watch is the social interaction at the table in play; the giving and seeking of kudos, the spontaneous "applause" given by the players. In this respect, in 4E, I see frequently, in combat encounters, attempts to achieve "gotchas" by the players. They seek not merely to do optimum damage to foes (though they do that, too), but also to set up "no win" situations for the monsters. An example:

A fighter is adjacent to a monster (a troll) in fairly open ground, and is marking the troll. The fighter has a flame weapon, but missed the troll on his turn. The rogue moves into a position flanking the troll with the fighter. And shoots a crossbow at it. This sounds mad, but it puts the troll in an unenviable position; it can Opportunity Attack the rogue, obviously, but if it does so it opens itself up to a flaming attack from the fighter - with flanking. If it does not attack, however, it's going to take a strike from the rogue, with sneak attack damage, flanking (+2) and prime shot (+1). The rogue's player gets kudos for the setup. Especially as it has been set up, too, with the warlock; when, predictably, all the trolls gather to hack on the rogue, the warlock does a teleport switch - and then teleports back out in an explosive exit (damaging all the gathered trolls).

This is just a very small example - the players are always trying to set up "gotchas" and "ouch!" moments for the monsters - and the monsters occasionally also get one in on the characters. No detailed knowledge of the DM's predilictions is required - no poring over design choices between sessions (although a certain amount does happen), just an understanding of the game rules, some tactical wits and engagement with the game in play. These things are all available to any player at any table where 4E is played.

Another approach is to set up "killer dungeons", where good tactics are essential if the encounters are to be defeated. This approach seems a mite pointless, to me, though, since it only really delays things while new characters are created or some sort of Raise Dead effect is organised. Player rivalry, with encounters challenging enough to make it relevant, works well, for us. Add in the odd "encounter choice" (e.g. where the players have a clear choice between two challenges - maybe a skill challenge or a combat) and the players can be plenty challenged to use their game knowledge to "win".

I can throw the interpersonal and search skills out of 4e and be happy. So I would say that it supports both styles, if not obviously and not officially. Something more official would be better.

It's kind of like removing magic items. There are official rules for that (inherent bonuses), I don't see how that impinged on anyone who likes playing with magic items.

I'm glad these things work for you. But they still skew the balance of your game (which may not be an issue for your group). 4E with no skills is a different game; nothing wrong with that, but for some play agendas it would need to be "labelled" as such. Simpler, then, it seems to me, to just have two games (possibly sharing some core mechanics).

As [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION] already mentioned, Pendragon does this. 2e Boot Hill is similar: a character's attributes are Speed, Gun Accuracy, Throwing Accuracy, Bravery, Strength, and Experience. Five of the six affect how well your character fights; the sixth, Strength, determines how much damage you can take.

Pendragon doesn't have Intelligence, Wisdom or the like, true - but it has a complete profile of "personality" traits.

It was because of Boot Hill and that Bravery attribute that I began adopting a somewhat iconoclastic view of character stats. The five attributes, including Bravery, which affect combat include modifiers to a character's speed and/or accuracy with various weapons; the character's Bravery score may increase or decrease a character's speed and accuracy, for example.

I don't know about "iconoclastic" - I have come to much the same conclusion. Having "character traits" that are supposed to drive the play of a character is unhelpful; the player should decide the character's conscious/intellectual motivations, the traits just describe how their subconscious habits and limitations restrict their ability to carry through on those fine intentions! As such, the limitations, where they are represented at all, should be systemic, not subject to player decision.

Here's something else to bear in mind: 'DM fiat' is a system. In this system, the rules interface between the character's attribute scores and referee's judgement of the situation. A referee is perfectly capable of weighing the argument made by the player and the influence of the character's attributes to determine success or failure.

GM fiat is a part of a system sure - but it implies necessarily another part that exists in the GM's mind. That this part of the system is not visible to the other players can be problematic for certain modes of play, and I can think of no circumstance where it is really useful when applied to action resolution (as opposed to when it is applied to scenario setup or game element definition, when it can be useful). As such, I dislike GM fiat as an action resolution method.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Belasir: Thanks for the thorough reply. I may respond to one or two points if I have time. But I think you have made your position very clear and while I don't agree with you one every point, it looks like you have a well thought out opinion on the matter.

I think fundamentally where I probably am not on the same page with you is the Forge. I think the three categories make sense (but the three-fold model is really all I need for that--the forge elaborations just never clicked for me). I guess I am more concerned about the feel the game is trying to achieve than what the focus of the players (and have to admit I am not a huge fan of approaches where the players take on GM responsibities or where "gamist" concerns interfere with my suspension of disbelief--but that is just a preference). That said, whatever model works best for you, by all means use.

Where I do agree with you is that 4E is absolutely a gamist (using the forge definition) approach to rpg design and probably the first edition of D&D to embrace some forge concepts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ah, I only played a little RM in the late '80s and I had no idea it was created that early. I count it among the vanguard of the "Simulationist by instinct" wave that came along then, in that case. I think RuneQuest led this and HârnMaster was a late follower.

I am going by memory. But I am fairly sure there were RM products in various forms released at least around 80-81 (I wasn't playing at that time, but I remember having some books with early 80s dates by the mid-to late 80s). I recall RM had a pretty big impact on certain people in my group (who just weren't satisfied with D&D's approach to damage).

I think that was/is more or less inevitable. The groups/players that actually had a play-focus agenda that fitted 4E suddenly felt at home, but those who had drifted the rules of earlier editions to fit different agendas found the rules suddenly resistant to their accustomed "flexing"; they felt alienated and possibly even betrayed that these new rules "were no longer made for them". In truth, I don't think the rules had ever been built for them, per se - they were just made "sludgy" enough that they could be "adapted for purpose". "GM fiat" helps, here, as it is essentially leaving creation of the rules in some areas to the GM.

I see where you are coming from here. But my sense (and this is just my read of the land, I could be wrong) is that most gamers are really somewhere in the middle on these things (however you decide to categorize them). I think the majority of people aren't looking for focused play, but rather want a game that balances focus. To use Forge terms, they want a game that balances "gamist", "simulationist" and "narrativist" concerns. While I think there are a handful of people who come to the table with a very specific agenda, my insincts and experience tell me most people really want something more traditional.

Had 4E been created with a clear agenda of Simulationist support, I think there would have been a similar backlash - but from different people! Essentially the same situation, but with different roles. Does that mean I think another "sludgy" D&D would have been better? No - because that way we would never progress beyond muddled compromise.

I agree to an extent (based on my above post). But I also think something more simulationist would have had broader appeal (I just think there are more gamers into this than something "gamist").

mainstream games I would agree, but I think that's more a case of "inertia" than anything else. Many roleplayers, after all, want an easy, light pastime, not a session of analysing their own inner agendas to ascertain the most productive way for them to play. This, as in other fields, leads to market inertia and marketing led popularity. That can work well, until something genuinely better cracks the status quo; I may well be wrong, but I think we may be approaching the "tipping point" in that regard.

I don't think it is inertia. I just think things like GNS and The Big Model are very niche. They will be around from this point on for sure, but I don't think they are going to catch on as the way games are designed (and I think this is largely because of the split generated by 4E---which we both seem to agree was the first agenda-driven edition of D&D).

I haven't played SW (though I would love to), but it seems to have some leanings to gamist support, in which case a GM is desirable. I'm not sure how that works with bennies (handed out by the GM, right?), though.

I highly recommend it. It is a great game. On the whole it is a pretty balanced system (in terms of focus). But based on what you have said I believe it would appeal to you. I don't know if SW was the first, but I think that is where 4E got the "minions" concept from (I could be very wrong on this one though). The whole game is designed to simulate high adventure/action. So it is great for old fashioned swashbuckling and modern stylized crime settings.

I haven't GMd savage yet, but when I've played the GM hands out bennies and I assume this is the official method (but I could be wrong).

 

[ExploderWizard]

Sure - let me try with an example. It's not so much the GM (alone) challenging the player, but also the players challenging each other while being allied. What I watch is the social interaction at the table in play; the giving and seeking of kudos, the spontaneous "applause" given by the players. In this respect, in 4E, I see frequently, in combat encounters, attempts to achieve "gotchas" by the players. They seek not merely to do optimum damage to foes (though they do that, too), but also to set up "no win" situations for the monsters. An example:

A fighter is adjacent to a monster (a troll) in fairly open ground, and is marking the troll. The fighter has a flame weapon, but missed the troll on his turn. The rogue moves into a position flanking the troll with the fighter. And shoots a crossbow at it. This sounds mad, but it puts the troll in an unenviable position; it can Opportunity Attack the rogue, obviously, but if it does so it opens itself up to a flaming attack from the fighter - with flanking. If it does not attack, however, it's going to take a strike from the rogue, with sneak attack damage, flanking (+2) and prime shot (+1). The rogue's player gets kudos for the setup. Especially as it has been set up, too, with the warlock; when, predictably, all the trolls gather to hack on the rogue, the warlock does a teleport switch - and then teleports back out in an explosive exit (damaging all the gathered trolls).

This is just a very small example - the players are always trying to set up "gotchas" and "ouch!" moments for the monsters - and the monsters occasionally also get one in on the characters. No detailed knowledge of the DM's predilictions is required - no poring over design choices between sessions (although a certain amount does happen), just an understanding of the game rules, some tactical wits and engagement with the game in play. These things are all available to any player at any table where 4E is played.

Another approach is to set up "killer dungeons", where good tactics are essential if the encounters are to be defeated. This approach seems a mite pointless, to me, though, since it only really delays things while new characters are created or some sort of Raise Dead effect is organised. Player rivalry, with encounters challenging enough to make it relevant, works well, for us. Add in the odd "encounter choice" (e.g. where the players have a clear choice between two challenges - maybe a skill challenge or a combat) and the players can be plenty challenged to use their game knowledge to "win".

Smart tactical choices such as this simply require a degree of system mastery much like the old "read the monster manual" of previous editions.

Rules and system experience are the same no matter what game they are applied to.

 

[Anselyn]

Belasir: Thanks for the thorough reply. [...]. But I think you have made your position very clear and while I don't agree with you one every point, it looks like you have a well thought out opinion on the matter.

Seconded. An excellent analysis and presentation. Two points occur to me.

I think Belasir mentioned DQ in a previous post. I'd like to praise that as a game from 1980 that had a remarkably clear set of rules that were well written and well cross-referenced (IIRC). It provided an excellent tactical battle game at the heart of the system along with an evocative magic system. I played DQ2 for most of the 80s and it was great for its time (and I can appreciate why it was to Belasir's tastes too)

Secondly, there has been a lot of talk of GM fiat - and I feel that the word "fiat" is both technically correct but inherently slightly perjorartive. Interestingly, we also talk about DM's being the arbiters of the rules - but we don't want them being arbitrary.

So, my question, for Balesir really, is when one is playing your style of game as detailed above and you find a rule that is in the rulebook and known to all but not clearly stated as it transpires that the players have different interpretations of the rule do you then.

a) Go by the DM's interpretation of the rule.
b) Discuss comunally the correct interpretation of the rule until the correct undertanding of it is clear, which may take a while.
c) Go for a quick consensus of the probable meaning and find a definitive understanding later - possibly by consulting the internet etc. The GM charing the discussion.

I think my groups would go for c) so that play continues. But, my point is that even with rules as well written as DQ, at some point all games need issues settled. What's your instinct or habit over these issues.

 

[The Shaman]

Pendragon doesn't have Intelligence, Wisdom or the like, true - but it has a complete profile of "personality" traits.

Good point.

Having "character traits" that are supposed to drive the play of a character is unhelpful; the player should decide the character's conscious/intellectual motivations, the traits just describe how their subconscious habits and limitations restrict their ability to carry through on those fine intentions! As such, the limitations, where they are represented at all, should be systemic, not subject to player decision.

Some players do "character traits" well - one of the players in my Flashing Bladers game plays his "Don Juan" disadvantage to the hilt! - but otherwise I agree.

GM fiat is a part of a system sure - but it implies necessarily another part that exists in the GM's mind.

Here we must agree to disagree - a referee is part of the system, and has been for centuries, as in Kriegspiel, the ultimate source of the gamemaster.