Trying to Describe "Narrative-Style Gameplay" to a Current Player in Real-World Terms

[The-Magic-Sword]

Nvm

 

[MichaelSomething]

Yes, though I was also being conscious the same person is our only source of information on what was said and how it was presented.

Clearly the OP should invite their friend to Enworld so that they can post their side of the story.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Clearly the OP should invite their friend to Enworld so that they can post their side of the story.

If WotC still wants their D&D channel to be an ongoing thing, they should give us a Judge Judy style show for these sorts of issues.

(Not Another D&D Podcast does Dungeon Court episodes where they rule on game conflicts listeners write in about and it's a great format.)

 

[payn]

If WotC still wants their D&D channel to be an ongoing thing, they should give us a Judge Judy style show for these sorts of issues.

(Not Another D&D Podcast does Dungeon Court episodes where they rule on game conflicts listeners write in about and it's a great format.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

That was the game we were playing, and he knew that but didn’t understand the implications until it was explained. Now we all get it and when we are playing genre games we stick with them.

Does that include the player the OP "corrected"?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Gameplay resolution in Star Wars FFG is more granular than in DND.

This is, to be clear, a game that has a soak stat for how many points of damage a given creature can absorb, a pierce weapon quality to get around soak, and you can use a shield to produce setback rolls to accuracy seperate from that damage reduction, and encourages you to say, make it out of Cortosis so it can't be sundered by lightsabers. It has 'Talents' that let you stack 'Incidental Actions' in combat to effect powergame combos that circumvent action economy, let you make stat substitutions to make sure you make checks with your best stat, and variously improve your defenses, and other stats in all kinds of different contests.

Just look at some of this stuff, this is not a loosely defined game, this is some serious crunch.

I can see why your player wants credits, all the ships have prices and customization hardpoints they can further spend to customize it.

Edit: sorry have to add one more example, you're discussing how having their mind on money and upgrades is a distraction from the game, the game is telling him his Scoundrel can circumvent the rarity of goods on illegal goods by taking a stacking talent that appears a bunch of times in a character advancement tree, paying an additional 50% of the price per reduction level of the rarity.

Seriously, look at the tree:
View attachment 384616

I have to agree. Many of the mechanics in FFG Star Wars are at least as traditional as most forms of D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Given that @innerdued "loved" @Aldarc's post, I'm confident that Aldarc's description of the situation is accurate.

This isn't universally true.

Suppose, for example, that progression in the game is - in the fiction - taken to be luck or divine blessings or increased self-resolve. It often won't make sense for a protagonist to aspire to being luckier, or more blessed - these are things that are "by-products" of aspiring to other things, such as things that might lead a hero to being blessed, or gaining in self-resolve.

That doesn't seem to be the case for these kinds of characters in the Star Wars universe though, st least not universally.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I appreciate you trying to point out the things you see in EotE. It's possible there is more "traditional" game living in the weeds in EotE than perhaps I expected. And that does perhaps change some of the color of my interaction with the player in question.

But a couple of points ---

First, D&D is an utterly useless point of comparison for me, particularly 5e. I haven't GM-ed a D20 based game of any kind since 2009. Couldn't care less about D&D, and especially don't care about 5e. I don't own 5e, I don't play 5e, will never GM 5e. Ever.

My primary game of choice since 2010 is Savage Worlds. I easily have 500+ GM hours in Savage Worlds, across at least 4 different genres (fantasy, modern, sci-fi, cyberpunk).

I definitively know that EotE is much LESS granular than Savage Worlds, on both an individual action-resolution scale and mechanical interactivity scale. And Savage Worlds certainly has a relatively equal gear-based component, but because Savage World's core combat is much more heavily reliant on key sets of numeric equivalences (attack vs. parry, damage vs. toughness) than EotE, it's much easier for gear stats to send the numeric ranges out of bounds.




Again, I appreciate your intentions, but let's just say, I am more than fully aware of all of this. I had all of this mechanical granularity and more in Savage Worlds. I don't need EotE for this. I literally suggested to the group at the beginning that I would have no problem using houseruled Savage Worlds to play this campaign. It was both eminently possible and desirable for me as a GM to do so, if the group had gone that direction.

We went with EotE ultimately because of what it offers that isn't based on the granularity of the core rules. I and two of the players wanted the additional narrative components that Savage Worlds doesn't have natively.

Telling me how much "trad" stuff still lives in EotE is ultimately non-productive. I'm not playing EotE for the "trad" side of things. If I want "trad", there's better options for sci-fi than EotE, frankly.




Point taken. I'll try to go easier on the player in question when he gets a gear hard-on next time. Still doesn't mean that the player choosing to ignore the narrative-oriented things EotE brings to the table isn't a category error on the player's part.

I still think this is an error on the player's part only from your perspective. Your player doesn't seem to have known what they were getting into, as much as you tried to tell them (and it seems you put some real effort in there). If they did know, it seems like they would have been outvoted by you and the two players interested in playing a narrative-focused game.

 

[dbm]

Does that include the player the OP "corrected"?

I’m talking about my experiences - ask them about theirs

 

[pemerton]

the idea that the narrative and story that is generated and that the characters grow through is its own un-indicated "leveling experience" can sometimes pass players by. Unless the GM goes out of their way to highlight just how much influence and notoriety the characters now have in the game world that they might not have had levels and months previous.

Some games are all about the narrative, and for those types of games I suspect it is rare for the players to not know and understand how their characters have become more and more of a presence in the game world (based on reactions from NPCs and so forth.) But D&D doesn't tend to be one of those and thus a GM needs to teach their players this different way of seeing what a "character" is and what a character can "become"-- more than just numbers on a sheet of paper.

I started a thread, a while ago now, that discussed one aspect of this: Scenario starting points and PC's position in the gameworld