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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5157887" data-attributes="member: 23240">I like both approaches, it just depends on the rest of the game. If it does not fit with the system, none of these is acceptable.In a simulationist game, I expect the world to have a definite shape. It may be changed by PC's actions, but is not defined by the very fact of interaction. In such game I expect the system to represent what really is there, who the characters speak with etc. No matter if we are talking about combat or not, the difficulties and possibilities are determined by the fictional content that GM put there. Imagined space rules the system. It is possible to be faced with something trivially easy or impossibly hard, just because it is this way in the game world. But you also aren't expected to overcome everything you encounter, because it is you who sets the goals and chooses the means.In a game with a strong narrative structure (not necessarily "narrativist" in the Forge sense), ruled by the genre, I'm perfectly willing to play (or run) with what you call the "modern approach". The system creates the framework and the players fill it with imagined content. While it can't be said that the system rules the story, it definitely shapes it. And, once again, it works this way both for combat and non-combat activities. It is important to note that in this approach it is not the world changing to fit the party. There is no "world" as a fixed entity at all. There is a story with these main characters, and not any others; the story defined by their backgrounds, their relations, their nemeses. It's perfectly reasonable for the dice rolls to be affected by how important is something in the character concept, not what his level of proficiency is, of for wounds to be something that mechanically help the hero.Finally, in a gamist game, I expect to be challenged myself, as a player. I get no fun from rolling, adding and comparing numbers, I get fun from overcoming challenges by my wits, my social skills, my tactical thinking. It always requires some measure of game world coherence (because otherwise I can't make sensible decisions in it), but it also requires a correct balance. It's not fun and no challenge to fight (or argue with) something trivial or impossible to defeat; it is also not fun to face the same, "balanced" thing every time (even if it is "skinned" differently). The structure of a challenge needs to be simple enough to understand, but also complicated enough to give meaningful choices. In this approach, making things more and less difficult only has sense if they are parts of a single challenge (a political intrigue, a dungeon crawl), joined together by some kind of resource management. For me, a game could have no levels (no power scale) at all and still be fun. But the difficulties need to be varied in nature, requiring different kinds of ingenuity and cooperation from players. This means that the system creates a definite structure and the fictional content may only be shaped in its bounds - even if there are no precise rules that address it.</blockquote>

Verification