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: 8419728" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't GM RPGs so I can tell people a story (whether or not they trust that it will be interesting to them).I don't play RPGs so I can be told a story by someone else.I don't think those are character flaws on my part. They are part and parcel of my comportment towards playing a game with a shared fiction vs (say) reading a book or watching a film.Who is the you in that sentence. I think it's obvious to everyone that when I, [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER], walk out my front door I control some things - where I move my legs, how I greet people, thus to some extent how they greet me in return (given that I am familiar with the typical customs and responses of my neighbourhood - eg I am able to cause a shop assistant to come and help me by attracting their attention and saying Can you please come and help me?). Some other things I don't control, like whether or not it is raining. Some things I could control - eg if my neighbour is watering the plants I could make that otherwise by punching them or throwing a rock at them - but I choose not to because it would be vicious or stupid to try and exercise that control.When it comes to RPG, I try to avoid doing stupid or vicious things to the friends I'm playing with. But I do do reasonable things. Eg I try and make them imagine certain things, by speaking appropriate words. And I try to get them to agree on the content of a shared fiction, by putting certain ideas forward. Now they often have their own ideas about the shared fiction, and our ideas aren't always compatible. Eg consider this from the last session I played (Agon 2nd edition, using my island of Kassos that I wrote for [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER]'s <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/not-the-iron-dm-tournament.682199/" target="_blank">Not the Iron DM thread</a>):* I told the players what was happening when they arrived on the island (the storm, the crowd ready to sacrifice Pythios, and of course the signs of the gods). They accepted all this because they deferred to me as GM. * The leader PC decided they would assist with the sacrifice. We framed the contest of Resolve & Spirit. The check succeeded. And this caused us all to agree that Zeus had accepted their sacrifice. * I then said that Chryse had hurled herself into the water, after her son. * One player declared that his PC dove into the water to try and save her. This was a contest of Blood and Valour. I asked the other player if his hero was helping, or joining in the contest. He said that he was. He didn't want to act only on Blood and Valour, though (it's a weaker domain for him). So he spent a point of Pathos to introduce his Craft & Reason also. We talked about what this might mean in the fiction, and agreed that he ran down through the town and grabbed rope, so that he could anchor himself before he waded into the wild waters. * The rolls were made. Both players failed. So when it came time to recite the deeds of their heroes, I asked them - as the rules dictated - to tell us why and how they had suffered. The player whose character had roped himself up before entering the water said My rope was too short to let me reach her. He thereby caused me and the other player to add that idea to our conception of the shared fiction - in my mind the bold hero who had dived off the cliff was struggling in the breakers while Chryse drowned, just out of reach of the more cunning hero who had sensibly roped himself but underestimated the length of cord he would need. * I also cracked a roleplaying nerd style of joke - You grabbed 50 feet of rope when you needed 60! - and that caused the player of the cunning hero to laugh.Agon is written by John Harper, and so it is pretty clear in explaining whose job it is to say what when. One thing it doesn't say is that the GM is the only one who gets to establish the shared fiction. In the little episode of play I've just set out, here are (some of) the occasions on which the players exercised the sort of agency [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] is referring to:* The players (with the player of the lead hero, naturally enough, taking the lead) established that successfully completing the sacrifice would placate Zeus; * The player of the cunning hero established that he could get rope from the town - it already being established (by me) that it was a town of handicrafters and market stalls. * That same player established that his rope was too short to let him reach the drowning Chryse.I read Dark Empires pdf:The game master clearly describes the situation and environment to the players. The players use common sense and what they already know about the world to decide upon and then clearly describe their characters actions. The gm will then decide if their suggested action is feasible and then apply the consequences. If the outcome of the situation is unclear, is very risky or has a poor chance of success the player and gm both roll 2d6. If the player rolls higher than the gm they succeed! If the gm rolls higher, the player fails in some way or the action succeeds but at some cost. The difference in the results indicates the degree of success or failure.This is not a complete specification of the action resolution procedure. It doesn't tell us who decides if the outcome is unclear, risky or has a poor chance of success. It doesn't tell us what success consists in (eg is it task success, intent success, or both; and does Let it Ride apply or not?). It doesn't tell us how consequences and/or costs are to be established.If the answer to those questions is the GM decides whether a check is made, success is task success only, Let it Ride does not apply, and the GM may make up whatever consequences and/or costs they like, then we have a game of zero player agency (as [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER] described)That can be contrasted with my Agon play. The rules tell us when a check is to be made - ie when a conflict/context occurs - and that is not a sole decision for the GM. As soon as I go to narrate some action or event the players which were otherwise - like Chryse hurling herself into the water after her son - they are able to call for a contest. And once it is determined whether they prevail or suffer, they get to recite their deeds consistently with that mechanically-dictated result. In Agon, success goes to intent as well as task, and there is a clear statement that Let it Ride applies.Or consider Classic Traveller - a much more "traditional: RPG from 1977. It specifies certain circumstances which trigger throws - eg certain manoeuvres in a vacc suit that require a throw to avoid a dangerous incident occurring, or certain encounters with officials that require a throw to avoid close inspection of documents, etc. These various subsystems reflect the various sorts of subject matters that matter to Traveller (so it has subsystems for officials and for fighting and for recruiting and for space travel; but not for composing music or doing academic research). So again, the rules tell us when a check is to be made - ie when the right sort of "trigger" occurs for one of these subsystems. And then the subsystems tell us whether things go well or badly for the PCs and most of the time they are framed either in terms of finality (so no "takebacks" by the GM manipulating offscreen fiction) or with express rules for retries. It's not as tight as Apocalypse World, but it's quite different from what is found in Dark Empires.This isn't accurate. It's not accurate of Classic Traveller. It's not accurate of Rolemaster - eg if a player decides that their PC casts a fireball spell then the GM doesn't have any sort of decision to make: the player makes the appropriate rolls, and whomever is in the AoE (as established by the shared fiction) suffers the appropriate concussion hits and crits.If a PC talks to a NPC in RM, then there is action resolution via the Influence and Interaction table. The GM has to decide the difficulty of the check, by adjudicating the fiction. but doesn't get to unilaterally decide what follows from the attempt.Even in Moldvay Basic, if a player declares (as their PC) I try to open the door and there is nothing in the GM's map or key to suggest it's an atypical door, then the player is entitled to make the appropriate check as modified by STR to see if the door opens. It's not the case that the GM gets to decide every consequence of every action declaration.There have always been RPGs around, with associated techniques, that give the players more than zero agency in [USER=99817]@chaochou[/USER]'s sense,</blockquote>

Verification