So What is a Roleplaying Game? Forked Thread: Clark Peterson on 4E

[GlaziusF]

GlaziusF, on the whole I like your posts, but this bagging of Rolemaster has to stop!
Sure the system has its problems, but it is playable. (And actually has certain features that distinguish it from other ultra-simulatonist mechanics like RQ and Classic Traveller and make it a viable vehicle for vanilla narrativist play.)

I'm specifically referring to combat resolution and critical hits.

And actually some of the best times of my life were playing in a Rolemaster-engine MUD where the computer running the thing took care of combat resolution and critical hits.

The human brain is a 2-Hz system with 3 bytes of RAM. It is actually not that hard to make it page fault, but if Rolemaster combat isn't the iconic example of that, what should be?

Seriously, open to ideas here.

 

[GlaziusF]

Try to imagine that some group out there was playing Stone Age D&D and there was no money (much less shops) and worked tools of any sort (even a bag to carry your stuff in) and weapons were extremely rare and valuable.

So everybody's gear is equally crap, the combat system stays as-is to reflect it, all loot becomes effectively "art objects" and a really nice flint knife is mechanically and monetarily equivalent to a +3 dagger.

And if your cavemen walk through a time portal to the "modern fantasy" age, they don't even have to change, because they're generally more muscular and cunning or whatever, and any given piece of their gear will sell for a premium because it's a valuable cultural artifact.

 

[xechnao]

...what?

What does that even mean?

I have never started off a campaign by saying, "let's go around the table and have everyone share what it means to them to 'live the adventure'! And then we'll write a design document!"

Is that what you're suggesting? That before people play a game they all have to sit down and somehow create the setting and rules and everything from scratch?

A published product is nothing more than a proposition of some agreement or standard to begin with. The rules and the fluff you buy stand for this sort of thing. Alternatively you can make yours. If you agree and happy with the standards of a book then the book can provide a great deal of help: the book already provides the needed work to organize and present in a functional way the standards you need. The problem is to actually find such a book that you agree with its standards and they cover enough of the ground you deem necessary so are satisfied with.

 

[GlaziusF]

A published product is nothing more than a proposition of some agreement or standard to begin with. The rules and the fluff you buy stand for this sort of thing. Alternatively you can make yours. If you agree and happy with the standards of a book then the book can provide a great deal of help: the book already provides the needed work to organize and present in a functional way the standards you need. The problem is to actually find such a book that you agree with its standards and they cover enough of the ground you deem necessary so are satisfied with.

Somehow, I'm reminded of those psychological experiments that described doing laundry in as abstract a manner as possible.

Okay, yes, step 1 is the social contract but most people just use the default value there, namely "Hey Homer, us rowdies are gonna go play D&D, you wanna come with?" This works surprisingly well.

The problem is that the system you design/adopt/desiopt as the reification of your social contract has to actually be usable by humans with nothing but their human brains. Or, y'know, usable on the aggregate interface and decision mechanism you want to present to them which may include computer assistance or other forms of preprocessing/parallel processing mechanics, but in general what you're working with is humans and human brains with maybe a reference sheet, a scratchpad, and a pencil to help them along.

 

[xechnao]

The problem is that the system you design/adopt/desiopt as the reification of your social contract has to actually be usable by humans with nothing but their human brains. Or, y'know, usable on the aggregate interface and decision mechanism you want to present to them which may include computer assistance or other forms of preprocessing/parallel processing mechanics, but in general what you're working with is humans and human brains with maybe a reference sheet, a scratchpad, and a pencil to help them along.

Of course. Here is why the need of imagination for a game designer.

 

[pemerton]

The human brain is a 2-Hz system with 3 bytes of RAM. It is actually not that hard to make it page fault, but if Rolemaster combat isn't the iconic example of that, what should be?

Seriously, open to ideas here.

I don't have a lot of other suggestions for human pagefaulting in RPG combat. Classic Traveller starship combat might be an example (at least my geometric imagination is not good enough to really control the motion of my starship).

When we run RM combats, however, pen+paper are a must for recording OB/DB splits, adding on appropriate buffs, etc. So the number of operations performed is broken down into small steps, with results recorded along the way. It's not a zippy experience, I'll concede. The payoff is in (i) the degree of player control facilitated and (ii) the detail of the resolution.

 

[GlaziusF]

I don't have a lot of other suggestions for human pagefaulting in RPG combat. Classic Traveller starship combat might be an example (at least my geometric imagination is not good enough to really control the motion of my starship).

When we run RM combats, however, pen+paper are a must for recording OB/DB splits, adding on appropriate buffs, etc. So the number of operations performed is broken down into small steps, with results recorded along the way. It's not a zippy experience, I'll concede. The payoff is in (i) the degree of player control facilitated and (ii) the detail of the resolution.

So you're "page faulting" and "writing to disk".

A page fault isn't a bad thing. Invalid page faults are a real pain, but your computer pulls off tons of valid ones all the time whenever it has something in the swap file but not in physical memory. There's nothing wrong with it happening, it just means you need to reference something that's passed beyond immediate memory.

I will continue to call Rolemaster combat "page faulting in real life".

 

[Celebrim]

The human brain is a 2-Hz system with 3 bytes of RAM. It is actually not that hard to make it page fault, but if Rolemaster combat isn't the iconic example of that, what should be?

Technically, the human brain is a ~20-Hz system with about 5 million parallel processors and at least a terabyte of RAM. The onboard video memory alone makes our best video cards look like one of those HP calculators from the '70's that had the red LED's for a display.

But none of the software on it was not written to run Role Master (or even say addition), the cache uses an optimization technique for storing images that is so lossy that it totally obliterates text, and it takes several seconds to perform a read from secondary storage.

 

[GlaziusF]

Technically, the human brain is a ~20-Hz system with about 5 million parallel processors and at least a terabyte of RAM. The onboard video memory alone makes our best video cards look like one of those HP calculators from the '70's that had the red LED's for a display.

Shannon and Weaver were off by an order of magnitude?

Somehow I doubt that.

When you give people doing a reaction time test multiple stimuli (say, a red light, a blue light, and a yellow light) their reaction times increase over baseline. If you run the breakdown of stimuli though Shannon-Weaver's equations (involving essentially the negative log 2 of probability) you get a consistent ratio of one second increased reaction time per two bits of information.

Similarly, "the magical number seven, plus or minus two" as the limit of working memory is well-documented. I call working memory "RAM" and long-term memory "storage", though strictly a better comparison might be that long-term memory is RAM and working memory are the registers. But who learns about registers these days?

The front-side bus, the interface between registers and RAM, probably is speedier than the brain's core processor, and I'm not going to argue that there aren't some sweet electronics on the motherboard, but the chip itself is very limited.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Allows you to take on a uniquely designed persona of a fictional character

How unique does a rpg character have to be? Totally original or simply noticeably unique from other characters being played in the campaign?

If there is only ever one Half-Elf Paladin in the campaign that character is certainly uniquely defined by being a half-elf paladin.

I've played the Dallas RPG the characters were predefined and it was actually fun as long as one could get into soap operas. Same with various superhero RPGs, most of them are more fun with "name" heroes.

A Lewis and Clark rpg could be fine and dandy. One needn't play the persona of a fictional character at all.

Provides rules for improving that character

The existence of a persistent universe makes improving a character possible. Acquiring wealth, influence and fame are all methods of character improvement .

In OD&D character improved by gaining levels, acquiring wealth, finding magic items, acquiring followers and henchmen and building a stronghold.

In classic traveller a character improved by gaining wealth and building social contacts.

Provides rules for task resolution, including combat

This is completely and totally covered by telling the players it's the GMs role to determine the odds of success for things not explicitly covered in the rules. Such a statement is surprisingly enough an explicit rule that covers task resolution.

Provides rules to help the GM adjudicate social interaction

Social interaction is covered or assisted by the rules in any game that provides a social score - D&D has always done it with Charisma. One needn't even use the "reaction table" which could cover a vast range of social interactions, one would just need to keep mind in the Charisma score.