COMING SOON! -- The Awfully Cheerful Engine on Kickstarter! An action comedy RPG inspired by cheerful tabletop games of the 80s! With a foreword by Sandy 'Ghostbusters' Petersen, and VTT support!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7636483" data-attributes="member: 16814">Yes.  That you don't see a way is somewhat telling.The ruby is cursed.  The ruby belongs to a powerful entity who now declares enmity.  The ruby.... so many ways to make finding exactly what the player wanted into something that the character suffers for.1. applies only to stories the GM has already written down.2. nope, this is already a caveat that player outcomes cannot violate previously establish fiction or genre logic.3. Huh?You've moved the goalposts from "challenging the player's characterization of the fictional character" to "imagine a fictional challenge the fictional character overcomes in the fiction."  The latter is true -- there's a fictional challenge that is overcome if the character fights and defeats an orc.  The former is not true in the above because the author retains full control over the story and character throughout.Oh my.  There's no difference in challenges between the real and the fictional except for those dealing with the difference between real and fictional.  I'm glad that's out of the way -- imagine the confusion one might have!And, you're banging on about dice being required when no one's made that argument.  The argument has been for a mechanic, which can be a broad spectrum of things which, granted, dice occupy a large chunk of.  The big thing here is that the decision is out of the player's hands for it to be a challenge.  If the player retains all power and authority, then there's no challenge -- the player is just picking their favorite color at the moment.This isn't true, though.  The fiction does not exist without a real world person making real world choices.  If we're talking about challenging the characterization that the real world person is using to roleplay the character, then this must take part, in some measure, in the real world as it involves the real person having to accept a change in character and then roleplay accordingly.Really?  Let's look at searching for traps.  Doesn't this mean the player is advancing that if there are traps here, I will find them?  And then the negotiation takes places, usually with a call for a check, the result of which determines if the truth statement is correct or false -- you find the traps or you do not.  This is even further advanced by the GM's notes -- there may not be any traps in which case the negotiation is the GM says you don't find traps.The trick here is that you need to view the play in a new light instead of rejecting it outright.  Doing so shouldn't change your opinions or preferences -- it's just a new vantage point on the same stuff.  You don't lose if you see it.Oh, absolutely you do.  The very concept of a game is a constraint on the players of that game.  How you constrain play is the very function of the rules of a game, and leads very much to the nature of play that game entails.  Claiming no constraints are needed is going back to saying that everything should be cops-and-robbers, only even more chaotic.Nope, you're incorrect.  D&D isn't excluded in this framework.  Recall I enjoy running D&D, so there's no animosity or attempt to subvert D&D in saying this.  Constraints on play vary by system.  Here, you're taking an example of how a constrain might look in some arbitrary system and rejecting the entire concept because the example doesn't fit your narrow experience.  Relax.Here it is in D&D.  The GM establishes that there's an unseen threat (truth statement).  The player declares an action to find the unseen threat (modifying truth statement).  The negotiation goes to the D&D bog standard -- GM says (going to the system).  Here, GM says a check is warranted (going to the system).  The result will determine if the GM's original truth statement holds (threat is unseen) or the player's truth statement holds (character finds threat).  You've previously admitted your ignorance on the play of other systems, yet you continue to display it by defining superior play as only how you play.  It's a bit sad, really.It does, actually, with the proper constraints.Many systems do this in a very structured way.  Say Yes or Roll the Dice, for instance, means the player always gets their action (and outcome) until challenged, at which time dice must be rolled.  Or, in PbtA, if you do something that looks like a move, it's a move and dice are rolled.  Moves are pretty clearly defined.Irony!Um, yes, yes it is.  Definitionally.  Roleplaying is broader than this, so acting is sufficient but not necessary to roleplaying (this means that it's definitely roleplaying, but not required for roleplaying).  You've spent so much energy trying to define things so that they describe you rather than trying to figure out what out there already does.  You don't lose if there are other, equally valid ways to roleplay, or if other systems do things you don't like, or if other systems do some things better than the system you prefer.  It's not zero sum.  Yet, here you are, admittedly ignorant of other options and absent critical experiences, trying to make this a zero sum game defined in a way that you win.  Maybe, try not trying to win but to understand that there are deeper thoughts about how games work that can, without changing your preference one iota, still help you make your game better?</blockquote>

Verification