Reducing Options to Increase Fun

[Ariosto]

If know that Bob adjudicates X in a certain way, as a player won't I base my decisions on that knowledge?

Why would you not do likewise if you know how Bob adjudicates X in D&D 3.5 or Champions 6 or Rolemaster 2 or any RPG?

How does this have any relevance at all to the statement you just quoted? It does not address the state of affairs in any way, even to deny it. Indeed, the irrelevance of this puffery was the very point of that post in the first place!

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Still, I think the degree of definition skill by skill falls rather short of being as nearly complete as Hussar plainly desires. D&D 3.5 might well go notably further.

There's an element of selection in the game culture. The CoC culture's ethos is not, I think, really focused on exactly how many points to put into which weapons (or anything else) to make an "optimum" character.

Wait, what?

Skill by skill definition? That's not what I said at all. What I said was that it's better to have a small number of generally applied rules, rather than an ad hoc ruling for every situation.

It would be nice if you could stop putting words in my mouth. I'm perfectly capable of saying stupid things without any help at all.

 

[pemerton]

I see the rules as providing the basis of resolving actions. I don't think the rules can cover every possible ditch (trying to stick to one of the earlier examples) and what the exact DC to jump it is, there are just too many variables and we'd end up with a whole page in the rules soley on various DCs to jump a ditch depending on the type of ditch. The rules can provide what a DC would be for what one would consider and easy jump, a more average jump or a downright difficult jump (with snapping alligators at the bottom! ) Then the DM can work within this established framework to assign an appropriate DC for this appropriate ditch.

<snip>

I agree that talking before hand on how one is going to resolve ditch-jumping is less than interesting. But a DM can easily say that he is going to run with a heroic feel (i.e. he likely wants to see you succeed and come up with heroic acts) or a gritty feel.

You obviously haven't seen the Rolemaster Snapping-Alligator-Ditch-Jumping-Static-Action-Resolution-Table!

Actually, RM is (in my view, based on a lot of experience) not quite as bad as its reputation makes out. But in recent years I've become a fan of less simulationist systems which don't require so much heavy machinery, or alternatively so much GM handwaving or discretion (eg what is "heroic" vs "gritty") and which instead set clear mechanical guidelines for the GM (such as DMG p 42, or Robin Laws pass/fail approach). In the latter sort of system the DC is determined by the relevant metagame constraints, and the GM then adapts an appropriate narration of the ingame events - and can make it heroic by describing the tremendous width of the ditch the PC's easily leap, or make it gritty by describing the alligators that take a chunk of heel out of the PC's boots as they just make it across the narrow gator-filled ditch.

 

[Reynard]

How do you define "player skill"? After all, isn't gaming the DM a player skill?

Of course it is. So is mechanical character optimization. But it is pretty obvious that in this context "player skill" refers to relying on input from the player as opposed to simply numerical values printed on the character sheet. It is what man deriders of the "old school" call pixel bitching: saying your character pulls up the carpet and looks behind the tapestries, rather than simply stating the desire to make a search check. And this issue is a direct result of the presence of rules and options in the game -- "player skill" searching for the hidden goods because there's no skill associated with searching for the goods; bypassing that aspect of play is only made possible by the existence of some mechanical, action resolution system for "searching".

This drives to the heart of what I am talking about. It seems to me that the more skills, etc... a game has, the more exclusive it becomes in that actions not listed on the character sheet are excluded -- both those activities not covered by the rules, and those that are but the character lacks any "skill" in. Let's take the introduction of non-weapon proficiencies in AD&D for example (to give 3.x a break for a while). It is wuite common and even reasonable for a DM to ask the player if that player's character posseses the firebuilding NWP when the party is divying up camp chores, simply because a firebuilding proficiency exists. Prior to the existence of such a proficiency, it would be assumed that most adventurer types would know how to build a fire. Moreover, by putting the proficiency there and requiring the player to "buy" it from the same pool of resources as blindfighting, mounted combat and various languages, picking firebuilding becomes suboptimal. And now, you ahve a whole population of wandering swordsmen who can't fend off the wolves or cook their rabbit stew because not a one of them knows how to build a fire.

Leaving it -- and all skill things like it -- out entirely, dealing with it in a reasonable way between player and DM, makes the game more fun and improves the quality and value of play.

 

[Hussar]

Leaving it -- and all skill things like it -- out entirely, dealing with it in a reasonable way between player and DM, makes the game more fun and improves the quality and value of play.

I would say that the problem isn't with the existence of the skills, but rather with that specific implementation of them. The 2e NWP skills were, quite frankly, piss. Far, far too narrow and nowhere near enough choices.

However, I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why not have an "Outdoor Adventurers" stat? This mechanic gives you your relative skill at doing anything outdoorsey that is within reason. Depending on the level of the stat vs the difficulty of the job, you get a mechanic to distinguish my character from yours. Maybe my fighter is a knight who always had a squire. What do I know about cooking rabbits? I had servants for that.

OTOH, your woodsey Robin Hood type has a really high score and can knock up a two storey back split in the middle of the woods using spit and toothpicks.

If there are no mechanics at all, then IME, players simply won't try to do anything.

Take the example of searching the room. The first time, the party goes through the room description, point by point, and searches everything. The second time, they do the same thing. The third time, they turn to the DM and say, "We search the room the same way we did the last two rooms." And suddenly that "Player Skill" thing goes away. It's subsumed by standard proceedures.

Any potential gain in creativity will quickly be buried by repetition. Particularly in a dungeon crawl where you generally have dozens of rooms, most of which aren't really all that different - four walls, ceiling, basic furnishings, maybe a closet.

I really don't think you gain anything by using systemless resolution. At best, you gain something once or twice and then it goes away.

 

[pemerton]

one thing that has made all this more significant in D&D is a shift in where "the game" is located. It has become much more about picking this or that item -- an ability score, a skill, a feat, a spell, even a magic item -- off a menu. How many picks one gets is a set resource, and the value of an investment depends on someone who made a different pick not getting the benefit.

It is not all neatly reduced to "hero points" as in Champions, but it is in essence the same superimposition of a whole second game. I dare say that in some quarters it may even stand as the primary game, overshadowing all that formerly constituted "playing D&D".

I agree that character build is hugely important in D&D 3E and 4e, whereas it is almost irrelevant in the very early versions of the game (although 1st ed AD&D has hints of it, with 4d6 for stats which can be arranged by the player, and race/class combinations including the fairly elaborate multi-class rules).

But at least in 4e I don't think that "build" overshadows "play" - although it continually informs it, insofar as playing 4e means engaging the gameworld via the mechanical options that are primarily the product of one's character building choices. In this respect I also think you're right to make the comparison to games like Champions (or Rolemaster, or - in slightly different ways - Traveller or Runequest).

 

[Hussar]

Pemerton - I would argue that build was hugely important in 1e D&D. However, since the player had almost zero control over the "build" he couldn't play the game. You didn't get to choose anything at level up - every choice was made for you. You didn't get to choose items - those were provided by the DM. Even spells for wizards were out of the player's hands, although clerics and druids got to choose.

However, I think that the fact that this style of character advancement is pretty much absent from every game that came after 2e D&D (and was largely absent in any non-D&D derivative) I would argue that what "constituted playing D&D" was perhaps not as important to gamers as Ariosto would propose.

Let me be very clear here. Other than D&D (either 1e or 2e) how many games lock you into virtually zero choices as your character advances? Even very old games like Villains and Vigilantes gave you a number of choices as you leveled up. Players like choices is hardly something that started with 3e.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My point was that 'some idea' is not the same as knowing the exact mechanics and percentile chances of something.

If there were no dice and other randomizers in any given game, I might agree with you.

But a PC in a game has no more perfect an understanding of what will happen next than a real person.

I stated that I could do 3 reps of 10 leg presses at 700lbs when I was 22. That is accurate only insofar as it being a understood as a statement of statistical probability. I had done so, more than once. That doesn't mean that I was 100% sure that I could do so every time I walked into the weight room, but rather that- barring X-factors- I could reasonably expect to be able to do so (taking into account my self-assessment of things like my general health, level of intoxication, mental attitude towards lifting on that day, etc.).

So it is for a PC- a Str 14 Fighter, for example- would have a general understanding of how well he could perform a 10' standing jump...and would also understand things like that probability would drop if he's wearing chainmail, or just got nicked by a drow crossbow bolt.

If the physics of the world have been described as behaving in a roughly similar manner to real world physics, then the rules do not need to be that perfect for those assumptions to exist.

If the physics are different, it's more about the fluff. How does this world differ from ours?

And here I thought the game was supposed to be about your imagination, and not an ability to perfect abilities to millimeter precision.

And at no point did I suggest that imagination be taken out of the equation.

However, an RPG has rules for a reason: they get us beyond "Bang! Bang! You're dead!" "No, you missed!" type arguments in play.

The better the simulation of the underlying event that inspired the situation, the easier it is to immerse one's self, precisely because there is a set of rules that determine outcomes, rather than an argument.

 

[Ariosto]

Skill by skill definition? That's not what I said at all. What I said was that it's better to have a small number of generally applied rules, rather than an ad hoc ruling for every situation.

It appears that the bottom line of what you're saying there is that there should be rigid numbers, leaving no room for GM judgment, and that is worlds away from what I have seen in Chaosium games. That's what the lack of skill-by-skill definition refers to: There are no clear-cut factors determining just how hard that Accounting roll should be or just how long this attempt to Persuade takes or how long the effects last.

There's a bit more motive (for most people anyhow, I think) to get uptight about looking up fine print if it's on tickets for which one has paid some currency. People who have not, because the tickets were never printed up (much less sold) in the first place, are not likely to make such a fuss.

I don't think it would tend to go over very well to go into a CoC game and start demanding itemized written accounts of the particulars of every single roll, and then insisting on poring through them every time anyone wants to do anything. ("Hold on, I know someone tried to grab a cat leaping out a window once about three years ago, and I'm sure it was harder than DEX x 5%. It's not under 'c' for cat, though, so maybe 'g' for grab ... just a few more pages ...")

 

[Ariosto]

Pemerton - I would argue that build was hugely important in 1e D&D. However, since the player had almost zero control over the "build" he couldn't play the game. You didn't get to choose anything at level up - every choice was made for you. You didn't get to choose items - those were provided by the DM. Even spells for wizards were out of the player's hands, although clerics and druids got to choose.

That business of not picking stuff off menus in books? That? It's not "building", in anything remotely relevant to the Champions/3e/4e/M&M/etc. sense. Picking stuff is exactly what "building" means, the reason people came up with the jargon to distinguish the process from "rolling up".

Items were not "provided by the DM", unless he was Monty Haul. You chose what you would try to get, and the game was in whether you succeeded or not. Ditto spells for magic-users, along with whatever enchantments they or other spell-casters would undertake.

Hussar, I don't know where you get this balderdash, but it sure as shooting ain't out of the blamed Dungeon Masters Guide!