Why the World Exists

[Scribble]

IOW, you decided that X was fun, but Y was unfun, and rolling the die to determine X or Y, and gaining Y, you chose X.

Rolling a "5" or a "1" or a "20" isn't unfun in and of itself. That roll indicates an outcome, and it is that outcome that didn't fit your vision of what was supposed to happen in that encounter. And because it didn't fit your vision of what was supposed to happen in that encounter, you decided it was unfun.

One wonders why roll in the first place?


RC

Because the majority of the time the system works the way it's indicated it should work.

My vision of the encounter was that the rules should work properly.

I haven't had to fudge anything yet in my current campaign. So ONE wonders what THAT says?

 

[ProfessorPain]

Am I right in thinking you meant to say "As a player I don't want to..." in the sentence I highlighted above?

Otherwise, I agree with you.

Lanefan

Yes. You are right.

 

[The Shaman]

My point really is no matter how little DM input you strive for, at some point you're going to have some. Whether you like to create level appropriate challenges most of the time or just random groupings of encounters.

Of course.

Upthread it was noted that this is not an either/or approach to running a game, but rather a continuum between two extremes. Some skew one way, others the other. I think the goal of some of the referees in this discussion is to run the game-world with a very light touch on the controls. Most roleplaying games provide at least some tools that facilitate (and arguably encourage, by virtue of their presence) this approach, such as random encounters, random reactions, and so on.

RC already mentioned the event tables in 1e OA, which are one of my favorite features of the book. For Traveller I used a nifty little application that generates the skeletons of Travellers' Aid Society bulletins: I could turn these into the "big picture" events going on around the characters, and fit the random encounters directly in the path of the adventurers into this larger landscape.

For example, the TAS bulletin generator might spit out something like a natural disaster on a world of population 8 (that's 10^8, or a population in the hundreds of millions, not eight people, by the way). I would figure out a likely world, and add some flesh to the bones: a tsunami, a plague, whatever. Now let's say I roll a random patron encounter with a doctor or a philantropist: I can use the background generated from the TAS bulletin and decide that the patron wants the adventurers to transport donated medical supplies to the affected world. Now let's say that the adventurers encounter a random pirate ship along the way: the pirates know that merchant ships from across the cluster are transporting medical and other supplies to the affected planet, and with the high value of pharmaceuticals, medical hardware, et cetera on the black market, these merchants become prime targets.

At no time in this am I considering if the encounters are "level-appropriate" to the adventurers. Rather I'm interpreting random results based on my understanding of the setting. Based on a roll on a table, the pirate vessel could be a simple scout/courier, with a single turret, looking to pick off an unarmed merchant, or it could be a mercenary cruiser, with eight batteries of missle launchers and lasers and three times the acceleration, against which the adventurers' free trader is hopelessly outclassed. The scout ship will be crewed by a handful of pirates while the cruiser can carry a platoon of raiders able to overwhelm a merchant crew in a boarding action. Either result is wholly acceptable to me. The fact that the adventurers ship may be bristling with weapons, or completely unarmed, doesn't enter into my decisions about the pirates - the pirates will act and react based on their goals, in this instance obtaining valuable cargo from trader starships while avoiding damage to their own vessel in the process.

I still create encounter locations that I sprinkle around the setting - a lost starship, an abandoned colony station, a pirate lair, et cetera. The hazards associated with some may be relatively minor, while others can be very dangerous. The hazards are appropriate to the situation, not the adventurers. It's up to the players to use the tools available to their characters to determine the degree of any hazards they encounter, and decide the amount of risk they are willing to accept.

My game is not a completely autonomous simulation, though to the degree that I like to use randomizers it's perhaps as autonomous as I can make it. The result is that the challenges encountered by the adventurers vary quite a bit, and therefore their responses must as well. My goal is to provide the players with a sense of being in the setting, that they are part of events taking place on a larger stage, and the degree to which they can influence those events is limited only by their imaginations and the abilities and resources of their characters.

In my opinion this is one of those why tabletop games rule moments.

The DM can create a realistic world, but unlike a computer, can override that realism for the sake of "Yo man that kicked arse!"

First, I can't speak for anyone else, but you'll rarely hear me talk in terms of realism in a game-world. Coherence, internal consistency, verisimilitude, yes, but not realism.

Second, in my experience what "kicks arse" is a you-are-there feeling during play. I consider the game element of roleplaying games essential, but I like that element to be running in the background, allowing us to focus on the experience of the events and encounter of the game-world.

 

[Imaro]

Of course.

Upthread it was noted that this is not an either/or approach to running a game, but rather a continuum between two extremes. Some skew one way, others the other. I think the goal of some of the referees in this discussion is to run the game-world with a very light touch on the controls. Most roleplaying games provide at least some tools that facilitate (and arguably encourage, by virtue of their presence) this approach, such as random encounters, random reactions, and so on.

RC already mentioned the event tables in 1e OA, which are one of my favorite features of the book. For Traveller I used a nifty little application that generates the skeletons of Travellers' Aid Society bulletins: I could turn these into the "big picture" events going on around the characters, and fit the random encounters directly in the path of the adventurers into this larger landscape.

For example, the TAS bulletin generator might spit out something like a natural disaster on a world of population 8 (that's 10^8, or a population in the hundreds of millions, not eight people, by the way). I would figure out a likely world, and add some flesh to the bones: a tsunami, a plague, whatever. Now let's say I roll a random patron encounter with a doctor or a philantropist: I can use the background generated from the TAS bulletin and decide that the patron wants the adventurers to transport donated medical supplies to the affected world. Now let's say that the adventurers encounter a random pirate ship along the way: the pirates know that merchant ships from across the cluster are transporting medical and other supplies to the affected planet, and with the high value of pharmaceuticals, medical hardware, et cetera on the black market, these merchants become prime targets.

At no time in this am I considering if the encounters are "level-appropriate" to the adventurers. Rather I'm interpreting random results based on my understanding of the setting. Based on a roll on a table, the pirate vessel could be a simple scout/courier, with a single turret, looking to pick off an unarmed merchant, or it could be a mercenary cruiser, with eight batteries of missle launchers and lasers and three times the acceleration, against which the adventurers' free trader is hopelessly outclassed. The scout ship will be crewed by a handful of pirates while the cruiser can carry a platoon of raiders able to overwhelm a merchant crew in a boarding action. Either result is wholly acceptable to me. The fact that the adventurers ship may be bristling with weapons, or completely unarmed, doesn't enter into my decisions about the pirates - the pirates will act and react based on their goals, in this instance obtaining valuable cargo from trader starships while avoiding damage to their own vessel in the process.

I still create encounter locations that I sprinkle around the setting - a lost starship, an abandoned colony station, a pirate lair, et cetera. The hazards associated with some may be relatively minor, while others can be very dangerous. The hazards are appropriate to the situation, not the adventurers. It's up to the players to use the tools available to their characters to determine the degree of any hazards they encounter, and decide the amount of risk they are willing to accept.

My game is not a completely autonomous simulation, though to the degree that I like to use randomizers it's perhaps as autonomous as I can make it. The result is that the challenges encountered by the adventurers vary quite a bit, and therefore their responses must as well. My goal is to provide the players with a sense of being in the setting, that they are part of events taking place on a larger stage, and the degree to which they can influence those events is limited only by their imaginations and the abilities and resources of their characters.First, I can't speak for anyone else, but you'll rarely hear me talk in terms of realism in a game-world. Coherence, internal consistency, verisimilitude, yes, but not realism.

Second, in my experience what "kicks arse" is a you-are-there feeling during play. I consider the game element of roleplaying games essential, but I like that element to be running in the background, allowing us to focus on the experience of the events and encounter of the game-world.

First let me say, great post...

Emphasis mine, I think when people speak of "realism" in their game, this is what most if not all people are talking about (I honestly don't think anyone believes a game can in anyway ever approach all the vagaries of true realism), nicely summed up.

 

[Mallus]

- the pirates will act and react based on their goals, in this instance obtaining valuable cargo from trader starships while avoiding damage to their own vessel in the process.

Out of curiosity, would you use an overwhelmingly strong contingent of raiders whose modus operandi was to leave no survivors?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Because the majority of the time the system works the way it's indicated it should work.

My vision of the encounter was that the rules should work properly.

Let's look at this interesting premise.

First off, one wonders how the rules can work improperly. If the rules said, for instance, that after each encounter, roll 1d6, with all PCs dying on a roll of "1", then, should that "1" come up, the rules would still be working properly. Likewise, if the use of the dice means that (say) there is a 2% chance of a character dying in an encounter, and a .005% chance of a TPK, then the rules are not working "improperly" when that result occurs.

The rules define what "properly" is.

What they do not define is what "desireable" is, i.e., what game experience is desired by the participant(s) at the table.

When a person fudges a die roll, it is not because the rules have suddenly ceased to work, it is because the working rules have, by chance, caused a result that was not desired by the person(s) fudging the die roll.

For example, if the dice are all rolled in the open, and a roll comes up that means a TPK is imminent, and the whole group opts that the die should be rerolled, then the result is not what was desired by the whole group. The game rules, however, haven't somehow failed to act properly, any more than the rules of chess have failed because you lost your queen.

If a player rolls a miss, and then secretly fudges it into a hit, the game rules haven't behaved improperly; they just didn't give the result desired by that player.

If a DM rolls damage that would kill a PC, and then secretly fudges it into a non-lethal blow, the game rules haven't behaved improperly; they just didn't give the result desired by that DM.

The reason that the aforementioned player and DM do their fudging in secret, BTW, is obvious -- they do not want the rest of the group to know. In the player's case, he probably fears that he will be compelled to accept the original result. In the DM's case, he probably fears either that he will be compelled to accept the original result, or that knowledge of "plot protection" will damage his players' enjoyment of the game. This last is because the DM is well aware that fudging makes the success of the players to some degree illusory.

In either case, plot protection is involved because the fudger(s) have a desired outcome that rolling the dice does not automatically allow. Rolling the dice becomes a means to preserve an "illusion of chance" where chance is in reality constricted.

I haven't had to fudge anything yet in my current campaign. So ONE wonders what THAT says?

It says that the rules are more in accordance with your desired play experience so far. Nothing more, but also nothing less....and for you, that is a very good thing.


RC

 

[Scribble]

Of course.

Upthread it was noted that this is not an either/or approach to running a game, but rather a continuum between two extremes. Some skew one way, others the other. I think the goal of some of the referees in this discussion is to run the game-world with a very light touch on the controls. Most roleplaying games provide at least some tools that facilitate (and arguably encourage, by virtue of their presence) this approach, such as random encounters, random reactions, and so on.

Sure, I'm not arguing that. I just don't think either "extreme" is actually possible, and like I believe mallus was saying, the "types" of DM end up running a game that is in many ways very similar. (Because in the end both rely on both randomness and DM input.)

RC already mentioned the event tables in 1e OA, which are one of my favorite features of the book. For Traveller I used a nifty little application that generates the skeletons of Travellers' Aid Society bulletins: I could turn these into the "big picture" events going on around the characters, and fit the random encounters directly in the path of the adventurers into this larger landscape.

You've taken a random event and placed it in front of the PCs. No matter whether you created the evnt from start to finish, or you randomly rolled it, you still chose to fit it in the place you did.

I'm not arguing either way is better, just that it's two approaches to get to the same conclusion.

For example, the TAS bulletin generator might spit out something like a natural disaster on a world of population 8 (that's 10^8, or a population in the hundreds of millions, not eight people, by the way). I would figure out a likely world, and add some flesh to the bones: a tsunami, a plague, whatever. Now let's say I roll a random patron encounter with a doctor or a philantropist: I can use the background generated from the TAS bulletin and decide that the patron wants the adventurers to transport donated medical supplies to the affected world. Now let's say that the adventurers encounter a random pirate ship along the way: the pirates know that merchant ships from across the cluster are transporting medical and other supplies to the affected planet, and with the high value of pharmaceuticals, medical hardware, et cetera on the black market, these merchants become prime targets.

So you randomly rolled an adventure, vrs someone who creates an adventure. Neither one offers more or less "choice" for the players. You just randomly came up with an event, whereas someone else might come up with the same event based on other factors.

At no time in this am I considering if the encounters are "level-appropriate" to the adventurers. Rather I'm interpreting random results based on my understanding of the setting. Based on a roll on a table, the pirate vessel could be a simple scout/courier, with a single turret, looking to pick off an unarmed merchant, or it could be a mercenary cruiser, with eight batteries of missle launchers and lasers and three times the acceleration, against which the adventurers' free trader is hopelessly outclassed. The scout ship will be crewed by a handful of pirates while the cruiser can carry a platoon of raiders able to overwhelm a merchant crew in a boarding action. Either result is wholly acceptable to me. The fact that the adventurers ship may be bristling with weapons, or completely unarmed, doesn't enter into my decisions about the pirates - the pirates will act and react based on their goals, in this instance obtaining valuable cargo from trader starships while avoiding damage to their own vessel in the process.

Maybe level appropriate means different things to different folks.

I don't design level appropriate things with the idea that the PCs will always be able to defeat their enemy. Just that in some way they have a chance. That chance might be easy, or it might be hard. I find this more realistic.

I also design encounters based on believability. It's not believable for the mercenary cruiser, with eight batteries of missle launchers and lasers and three times the acceleration to randomly show up in the san francisco bay outside my office.

So while we might both use random encounters, mine are more tailored to the locations.

I still create encounter locations that I sprinkle around the setting - a lost starship, an abandoned colony station, a pirate lair, et cetera. The hazards associated with some may be relatively minor, while others can be very dangerous. The hazards are appropriate to the situation, not the adventurers. It's up to the players to use the tools available to their characters to determine the degree of any hazards they encounter, and decide the amount of risk they are willing to accept.

Same thing mostly, but I also intersperse some stuff based on the actions the PCs took, and how other people would logicaly react to that, or what I've decided some NPCs are up to, or just what my group finds fun collectively.

My game is not a completely autonomous simulation, though to the degree that I like to use randomizers it's perhaps as autonomous as I can make it. The result is that the challenges encountered by the adventurers vary quite a bit, and therefore their responses must as well. My goal is to provide the players with a sense of being in the setting, that they are part of events taking place on a larger stage, and the degree to which they can influence those events is limited only by their imaginations and the abilities and resources of their characters.First, I can't speak for anyone else, but you'll rarely hear me talk in terms of realism in a game-world. Coherence, internal consistency, verisimilitude, yes, but not realism.

Same mostly. I tend to find that what some find promotes Coherence, internal consistency, verisimilitude promotes the opposite in others. I think it has to do with how people interpret and use the rules.

Second, in my experience what "kicks arse" is a you-are-there feeling during play. I consider the game element of roleplaying games essential, but I like that element to be running in the background, allowing us to focus on the experience of the events and encounter of the game-world.

Me too.

 

[Scribble]

Let's look at this interesting premise.

First off, one wonders how the rules can work improperly. If the rules said, for instance, that after each encounter, roll 1d6, with all PCs dying on a roll of "1", then, should that "1" come up, the rules would still be working properly. Likewise, if the use of the dice means that (say) there is a 2% chance of a character dying in an encounter, and a .005% chance of a TPK, then the rules are not working "improperly" when that result occurs.

The rules define what "properly" is.

What they do not define is what "desireable" is, i.e., what game experience is desired by the participant(s) at the table.

Sure that's fair.

But when the rules imply they will work in a certain way, which the group desires, and then they don't- that's improper.

When a person fudges a die roll, it is not because the rules have suddenly ceased to work, it is because the working rules have, by chance, caused a result that was not desired by the person(s) fudging the die roll.

This isn't what I'm arguing. You're inventing an argument that I am not making, so please stop.

No the rules haven't suddenly ceased to work. They worked improperly to begin with, we just didn't notcie until it was too late.

It says that the rules are more in accordance with your desired play experience so far. Nothing more, but also nothing less....and for you, that is a very good thing.

Yes, the rules so far seem to functuion as they indicate they should. Which is indeed a very good thing.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Sure that's fair.

But when the rules imply they will work in a certain way, which the group desires, and then they don't- that's improper.

Can you give me a couple of examples where this was the case, including how the rules implied they would work, and how they actually worked?


RC

 

[The Shaman]

Out of curiosity, would you use an overwhelmingly strong contingent of raiders whose modus operandi was to leave no survivors?

In a bog-standard pirate encounter, no. Pirates want cooperative merchants who give up their cargo, and killing indiscriminately increases the chance a merchant will fight back at all costs instead of accepting the loss.

On the other hand, if the encounter is with privateers in a war zone assigned to destroying enemy shipping, then yes, then I would consider it based on the reaction roll. That's a risk the adventurers accept if they enter such an area.