D.T. Pints
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JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
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Post by D.T. Pints on Apr 19, 2014 7:18:23 GMT -8
Recently in one of the Argument Phase videos, malifer (Josh) mentioned that as a player, combat is interesting, especially because you have something at stake. As a GM, it is just something that often gets in the way between point A and point B, and is also sometimes just a time killer ( hear here). Obviously this isn't always the case, however as a GM who is more interested in the collaborative story generation and role playing - and not as into the mechanics of the game for the sake of the mechanics - how can I get excited about combat?As an example, I never use random encounters. I'm not into combat for combat, so if it doesn't server the story, I ain't doing it. I might have an encounter that only occurs when the party is delaying (e.g. they decide to camp somewhere to regain their spells; I might not want that to happen without consequences), but that's not a random encounter cause I'm ready for their shenanigans. Yeah the story shouldn't stop just because the swords and lasers are out. My New Dark Age game continues tonight with the PCs face to face with a shadowy shotgun wielding antagonist. And with Stu Venable's Moment of Truth game you'd better find another way to deal with a gun in your face than "I attack!" because it will go badly. Combat (or the threat of it) should serve to increase tension or further connect the characters together (Dude! I just saved your life...) Especially with you tomes playing Dungeon World every roll results in the narrative being affected. Roll complications and suddenly the story takes a crazy left turn and each of those complications can be specifically tailored to each individual playbook. Having said that where is HyveMynd!
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Post by malifer on Apr 19, 2014 9:21:12 GMT -8
Yeah the story shouldn't stop just because the swords and lasers are out. My New Dark Age game continues tonight with the PCs face to face with a shadowy shotgun wielding antagonist. And with Stu Venable's Moment of Truth game you'd better find another way to deal with a gun in your face than "I attack!" because it will go badly. Combat (or the threat of it) should serve to increase tension or further connect the characters together (Dude! I just saved your life...) We are starting to tread heavily into an area of semantics. D.T. Pints may not like math, but I still have nightmares about CrunchGate 2012. If your players are in a tense scene/encounter that is not combat from my perspective and is quite fun for me as a GM because I want to be able to react appropriately to whatever plan the players come up with. But once lines are drawn, maps/minis come out, initiative is rolled or whatever and it transitions into that combat I do it for the players. Hopefully it is exciting for the players that is my reward. Upon further introspection maybe one reason I don't get excited about combat as GM is I am fairly certain about the outcome of most combats, since I will not be utilizing my forces in the most efficient way that would allow me to "win".
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Apr 19, 2014 13:47:58 GMT -8
Sounds delightfully like some Argument Phase fodder!
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Apr 19, 2014 17:55:45 GMT -8
Yeah the story shouldn't stop just because the swords and lasers are out. My New Dark Age game continues tonight with the PCs face to face with a shadowy shotgun wielding antagonist. And with Stu Venable's Moment of Truth game you'd better find another way to deal with a gun in your face than "I attack!" because it will go badly. Combat (or the threat of it) should serve to increase tension or further connect the characters together (Dude! I just saved your life...) We are starting to tread heavily into an area of semantics. D.T. Pints may not like math, but I still have nightmares about CrunchGate 2012. If your players are in a tense scene/encounter that is not combat from my perspective and is quite fun for me as a GM because I want to be able to react appropriately to whatever plan the players come up with.But once lines are drawn, maps/minis come out, initiative is rolled or whatever and it transitions into that combat I do it for the players. Hopefully it is exciting for the players that is my reward. Upon further introspection maybe one reason I don't get excited about combat as GM is I am fairly certain about the outcome of most combats, since I will not be utilizing my forces in the most efficient way that would allow me to "win". To me that should be all the combats. Unless its a moment of epic badassery just for the PCs to show how amazing they are. But that quickly gets old and should return to conflicts that have tension and meaning.
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Apr 19, 2014 17:57:12 GMT -8
Ditch the charts, discard the dice - go one step beyond (LARPing) . . . Give the players real swords with live blades and immerse yourself in the role of their opposing combatant. Now that'd be pretty exciting for any GM - possibly fatal but exciting none the less . . . Aaron Careful with that word...say it three times and you might summon her holiness.
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Post by Kainguru on Apr 20, 2014 0:30:31 GMT -8
Ditch the charts, discard the dice - go one step beyond (LARPing) . . . Give the players real swords with live blades and immerse yourself in the role of their opposing combatant. Now that'd be pretty exciting for any GM - possibly fatal but exciting none the less . . . Aaron Careful with that word...say it three times and you might summon her holiness. That's a very different sort of excitement . . . Aaron
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Post by malifer on Apr 20, 2014 5:50:38 GMT -8
We are starting to tread heavily into an area of semantics. D.T. Pints may not like math, but I still have nightmares about CrunchGate 2012. If your players are in a tense scene/encounter that is not combat from my perspective and is quite fun for me as a GM because I want to be able to react appropriately to whatever plan the players come up with.But once lines are drawn, maps/minis come out, initiative is rolled or whatever and it transitions into that combat I do it for the players. Hopefully it is exciting for the players that is my reward. Upon further introspection maybe one reason I don't get excited about combat as GM is I am fairly certain about the outcome of most combats, since I will not be utilizing my forces in the most efficient way that would allow me to "win". To me that should be all the combats. Unless its a moment of epic badassery just for the PCs to show how amazing they are. But that quickly gets old and should return to conflicts that have tension and meaning. D.T. Pints, you son of bitch. Okay. I find your idea of combat so broad I can no longer follow your perspective. What is and isn't combat. Character Creation? What about Traveller Character Creation? Josh's goddamn definition of Combat * - Any time I am using a rule from or referencing a rule found in the COMBAT section of the rulebook. In supplement to my rebuttal I would add this Euler's equation says that if you cut the surface of a sphere up into faces, edges and vertices, and let F be the number of faces, E the number of edges and V the number of vertices, you will always get V – E + F = 2. For example, take a tetrahedron, consisting of four triangles, six edges and four vertices. If you blew hard into a tetrahedron with flexible faces, you could round it off into a sphere, so in that sense, a sphere can be cut into four faces, six edges and four vertices. And we see that V – E + F = 2. Same holds for a pyramid with five faces — four triangular, and one square — eight edges and five vertices and any other combination of faces, edges and vertices. *Josh's definitions are not definitive and only apply to people named Josh **. They should not be taken as scripture and/or law they are but a pittance of the opinion of one man. **This in itself was a definition of Josh and should be taken as so, meaning that it only applies to people named Josh in such that the person named Josh is the one that wrote the definition herein and does not necessarily apply to all Joshs throughout Time and Space.
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Apr 20, 2014 7:51:24 GMT -8
I see. I see where this is going. I've apparently backed you into a corner with this mama bear defense of your amorphous definitions of combat complaints so you attempt to hold a mirror to the medusa's face (of this discussion...so to speak) by throwing a bunch of Math (my vampire garlic...) at me. Boom! I do believe I've just crammed FOUR metaphors into one sentence.
By the way I do believe battling each other with math and metaphors would be an exciting combat. I'll be kickstarting my new game system M&M the RPG in PV=nRT or in two shakes of an easter bunnies tail.
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Post by Kainguru on Apr 20, 2014 8:34:30 GMT -8
There is a distinction between conflict and combat . . . Aaron
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Post by malifer on Apr 20, 2014 8:35:51 GMT -8
There is a distinction between conflict and combat . . . Aaron I knew I liked you.
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Post by malifer on Apr 20, 2014 8:42:08 GMT -8
I see. I see where this is going. I've apparently backed you into a corner with this mama bear defense of your amorphous definitions of combat complaints so you attempt to hold a mirror to the medusa's face (of this discussion...so to speak) by throwing a bunch of Math (my vampire garlic...) at me. Boom! I do believe I've just crammed FOUR metaphors into one sentence. By the way I do believe battling each other with math and metaphors would be an exciting combat. I'll be kickstarting my new game system M&M the RPG in PV=nRT or in two shakes of an easter bunnies tail. Math & Metaphors the roleplaying game sounds amazing. Just imagine all the potential splat books!
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Post by Kainguru on Apr 20, 2014 8:59:10 GMT -8
I see. I see where this is going. I've apparently backed you into a corner with this mama bear defense of your amorphous definitions of combat complaints so you attempt to hold a mirror to the medusa's face (of this discussion...so to speak) by throwing a bunch of Math (my vampire garlic...) at me. Boom! I do believe I've just crammed FOUR metaphors into one sentence. By the way I do believe battling each other with math and metaphors would be an exciting combat. I'll be kickstarting my new game system M&M the RPG in PV=nRT or in two shakes of an easter bunnies tail. Math & Metaphors the roleplaying game sounds amazing. Just imagine all the potential splat books! . . . a veritable metric fuck ton? . . . Aaron DYSWIDT
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Post by guitarspider on May 3, 2014 5:17:44 GMT -8
Bit late to the party, but anyway, here's my thoughts on combat as GM: Combat needs to be non-trivial in a story sense. Even if you're playing Superman and have no chance of dying, there needs to be something at stake that desperately makes you want to win (or not loose). Combat must have a reason to exist, an underlying conflict, even if the players do not know it at present. Even more important, combat is a means to make that particular conflict come to a head. The final fight isn't great, because it has the best action, it's great because the conflict that's been there all game is finally going to be resolved. MacBeth has terrorized Scotland all play long, and now McDuff is going to take revenge... hopefully! The less combat and violence are used, the more effective they will be, when you do use them. MacBeth is not actually a violent play until the very end. All the violence happens off stage, except the final confrontation. The reverse is true as well. Why is the end of Hunger Games so damn effective? Hunger games throws violence at the reader all book, but when it really matters, violence is absent, to great effect. I think this is why you can get excited for combat: combat is going to determine what happens, how it all plays out, and nobody sitting around the table knows the outcome for sure. Imho there are more reasons not to be excited for combat, but that's not what you were asking.
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on May 3, 2014 7:11:13 GMT -8
I really enjoy "gaming experiments" guitarspider. I would be very interested in a game that demands that all conflicts be settled non-violently. (Jackercon.) I have a quasi-similar situation now in the final episode of my Pathfinder game. The PCs fear that by spilling blood in the Great Star Chamber they will curse it forever to open gates only to the World's Below and the realms of demons. So they are scrambling to deal with the encroaching slavers while trying to not kill any of them in that room, while trying to keep their refugee charges safe at the same time. Very creative moment. Again its within the context of a very "fight centered" game but a reminder that "PALADIN SMASH!" can't always be the go to answer.
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Post by guitarspider on May 3, 2014 7:48:28 GMT -8
I can totally imagine running a game without violence. There's a number of ways to make that work, say a Primetime Adventures episode about some politicians backstabbing each other (a la Borgen).
That situation in the Star Chamber sounds amazing.
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