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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8264146" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm not sure why you're connecting skilled play, problem solving, and exploration, to the rules simulating a physical reality.A problem that the PCs faced in my Classic Traveller game - in the sense that there was something they wanted to do and there was an obstacle in their way - was preventing an Imperial Navy cutter from interrupting their exploration and salvage of an ancient alien starship. The way they solved this problem was by talking to the commanding officer on board the cutter and taking her planet-side for a week-long winery tour while others in the PCs' crew completed their exploration of the alien vessel.None of this depended upon simulation of a physical reality. It did depend upon there being rules - in Traveller that's the reaction table together with the skills (ie elements of character build) that interface with it - to determine what happens in social encounters. This is engaging with the game world's emotional push and pull in just the same way that resolving atmospheric reentry in a vacc suit (which Traveller also has rules for) involves engaging with the game world's gravitational push and pull. I think it would be strange to say that Traveller's rules simulate the creation of a narrative. They might prompt or lead to the creation of a narrative, because at various points they require the game participants to introduce new elements into the shared fiction. I don't know Masks, but the PbtA games that I am familiar with (eg Apocalypse World, Dungeon World) are basically the same in this respect.To me this doesn't seem very different from the fact that classic D&D's rules care a great deal how strong you are, care a bit but not a great deal about how tall you are, and don't care at all about how angry you are. I mean, it's true that different RPGs focus on different features of the characters and the ingame situation. For instance, D&D doesn't separate a character's reaction time from his/her manual dexterity; Rolemaster does; Prince Valiant breaks out manual dexterity via the Dexterity skill but uses only two base stats (Brawn and Presence). In Burning Wheel a PC can fail a Steel check, much as in Classic Traveller a PC can fail a morale check, whereas in D&D and RuneQuest the player also gets to decide whether or not his/her PC breaks from fear or shock (at least if it's non-magical fear or shock).But this doesn't establish any difference between "problem-solving" games and "storytelling" games.I'm not sure how this is very different from a classic D&D MU's spell book. It's a recurrent feature of RPGing that we don't know what, in the fiction, can be achieved by way of a particular character's ability until we actually find out via play. The parameters that shape those decisions can be different, but the decisions have to be made.I think that "role" there should be "roll", and will come back to that.In any RPG players declare actions for their PCs, which - as a necessary condition of success - must be accepted by the other participants at the table as believable in the fiction of the game. Eg in my 4e D&D game one of the players had his PC use his magic to seal the Abyss at the 66th layer. This solved a "problem", of the world draining into the Abyss; though it created another one, of the Abyss no longer siphoning of the matter and energy of the Elemental Chaos.I as GM didn't have to make a roll to establish the existence of the Abyss and its relationship to the rest of the multiverse - I just read it from the rulebooks. And some of the finer-grained details I made up as needed and as seemed appropriate. I don't think a GM establishing the threat or obstacle posed by a Villain is any different in its fundamentals, and it's of technical significance (for how to play the game) but not deep significance that the GM is not required to roll to do so. (Do any D&D GM's use rolls to establish that the Orc Chieftain has commanded the Orcish Ravagers to attack the neighbouring village?)Thus, I don't think that drawing tight contrasts between exploration and creation is helpful in drawing any sort of contrast between a PbtA game and (say) D&D. I think talking about who gets to decide what about the shared fiction is more apposite - which is the topic of [USER=463]@S'mon[/USER]'s thread!</blockquote>

Verification