What Do You Think Of As "Modern TTRPG Mechanics"?

[mamba]

Working through those moves as a GM requires a creative process, reasoning about the fiction and making choices about how to move the situation forward. You are actively involved in the resolution process - it just provides some constraints

yeah, that is where the 'giant' part comes in I agree the analogy has it limits, but the available 'moves' and their resolution to me still feel more restricted than in say D&D

I'll drop the analogy though, did not help clarifying things...

 

[Thomas Shey]

The thing about hit points is that getting hit by something sharp or heavy moving fast is, in most ttrpg settings, the single most common event that in the real world would be likely to have long term consequences. Therefore how you take and recover from damage is one of the first two baseline things you need to get right for any sort of simulation. (The only thing as important is baseline success chance for doing things normal people can with little training).

Banging on about hit points in a supposedly real world simulationist game is like banging on about the engine power in what is meant to be a racing car. I don't care if it has an air dam and spoiler and pretty streamlining if it's using an engine out of a motorbike it's not going to be a good racing car.

That's often been my feeling about it, but I can understand someone who's tired of having to go back to that argument Yet Again.

And I don't think its necessary when talking about OD&D, because, honestly, the other core mechanics (to-hit against AC, saving throws) and ones adjacent to hit points (healing) weren't much better. As I said, you can make an argument that its surrounded by peripheral mechanics that at least attempt some simulation goals, but all those core ones either completely fail at it, or do so pretty poorly.

 

[dbolack]

Twilight 2000 and WFRP both, by 1986, had damage by location... but very different approaches to getting that. T2K has HP by location, and it's a count up. < Capacity, slight wound, ≥ Capacity is a serious wound, ≥ 2×Capacity is a critical wound. WFRP has a no effect until 0 wounds remaining, then a hit results in a roll on the critical wounds table for the location hit.

Then compare that with Harnmaster ( at least the 1986 edition ) which had locations and degrees of severity that had their own saves and a count-up damage system for the locations...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then compare that with Harnmaster ( at least the 1986 edition ) which had locations and degrees of severity that had their own saves and a count-up damage system for the locations...

Man I wish Harnmaster was more reasonably priced...

 

[Micah Sweet]

My point was that while hit points were the standouts in simulation failure, almost all the combat mechanics did that, they were just a little easier to handwave. In the case of saving throws, it wasn't even obvious what was being represented; it looked pretty nakedly gamist for the most part.

You do some working on making hit points make more sense from a Sim perspective, and you've got more breathing room to work on the other issues you mentioned.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You do some working on making hit points make more sense from a Sim perspective, and you've got more breathing room to work on the other issues you mentioned.

The question is, by the time you've done all that, given it was about half the mechanics or more of OD&D, why even bother? Again, assuming its not all about network effect.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

As per my reply to @thefutilist not far upthread, which talks about RM, I think there are limits in that game (and similar games) to how far you can get with committing yourself, as MC/GM, to the game's fiction's own internal logic and causality.

I also discovered this with Classic Traveller - and discovered it the hard way, that is, during a session while trying to adjudicate an action. The PCs had left the domed city in their ATV, following their enemies to the latter's base outside the dome. Up to that point I'd been really happy and impressed by the robustness of the resolution rules, especially for a 40 year old game. But now I looked to those rules, and they gave me nothing. The assumption - not clearly spelled out in the rules, but evident in some near-contemporary scenarios - was that I would draw a map and we would then track the PCs movement on that map. By drawing the map, and making the decision about where the enemy base is, I would thus significantly decide the prospects and likely costs of the PCs getting there. It was terrible! (Both in the moment, and a terrible mechanical framework for a sci-fi RPG that emphasises travelling from world to world.)

I can't remember now what sort of kludge I came up with. Thankfully, once the PCs were at the base and trying to sneak up and assault in in their protective suits, the rules kicked back in - the manoeuvring-in-vacc-suit rules worked terrifically, I was able to use the range-of-encounter rules to construct a rough outline of the base, and when the PCs fled in ATVs while being bombarded from orbit by the enemies' starship, I adapted the small craft evasion rules and they worked terrifically too.

I'm not going to die in a ditch over the rules that workd being conflict rather than task resolution, though I think that would be one feasible analysis. But the contrast between the gap in the on-world travel/exploration rules, and those other rules, was a real one that I felt the impact of in play. Since then we've not done any on-world exploration, and in the fiction this has been handled by the players just having their PCs travel from point A to point B on a world using their (streamlined) starship. Which is a pity, because I find the imagine of travelling the world in an ATV pretty compelling, but has avoided the problem.

I do remember you mentioning your dissatisfaction with overland travel in Classic Traveller before, and I can definitely see that solution as being unsatisfying. (I'd have been doubly frustrated having to pick it up implicitly from another text. And there is some irony, given how future tech developed in the game's world that it should have such a gap about overland travel. I had the sense when I was reading the rules in prep for a game that didn't happen that this was something that was not unlikely to happen, even if it didn't happen regularly.)

My thinking on this has actually come around from spending more time at Adept Play reading the Actual Play reports (the site has tons of videos, but I'm yet to get into the habit of watching other people play RPGs) and thinking more about what Edwards is proposing currently as far as situational play, reincorporation, authorities, etc. I'm still getting my hands around it, but folks seem to be getting really good results with diverse games and in places I wouldn't expect -- a recent post about Stormbringer (1981) was fascinating. Which is not to say that there wouldn't be any bumps or friction, but that maybe there wouldn't be enough to be too bothered by?

 

[dbolack]

Y'all stuck with modern gaming?

I only play post-modern TTRPGs. Currently, the party is working to obtain the Schwarzgerät by assiduously engaging in not obtaining it through a recurrent and cyclical process that involves deep psychological examination and silly songs that intersect with the inherent structural connections between Mickey Mouse and the application of genetic algorithms to solve np-complete problems.

I am reminded of the other manuscript I had at the same time as Nobilis.. from the same author...

 

[dbolack]

Diplomacy- Still the best way to start a Friday night with five friends and end on Sunday afternoon with no friends.

The original Friday Night Firefight rules...

 

[pemerton]

you explained it better below

mostly the bolded part (I am aware of the rest, but that is where the analogy does not work as well)

You seem to think that resolving a player's move, in AW, is profoundly different from resolving a player's declared action, in D&D. I don't know why.