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Post by Probie Tim on Apr 30, 2017 20:34:17 GMT -8
The GM vows to follow the rules. I have never once vowed to my players that I will follow the rules. I would not want to play with a GM who always follows the rules, either. The GM needs to be able to interpret and adjudicate the rules.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2017 21:24:14 GMT -8
The GM vows to follow the rules. Isn't Rule Zero of many game systems something along the lines of the GM should ignore/modify any rules that people feel don't fit? Not in PbtA. At least with the caveat of, "Here's how to change things, don't come crying to me when you break it."
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Post by Probie Tim on Apr 30, 2017 21:30:28 GMT -8
Guardians of Order had a "role-playing game manifesto" at the beginning of all their books. It read thusly:
For all the things GoO did wrong, I think they did that right.
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Post by lowkeyoh on Apr 30, 2017 21:35:16 GMT -8
The GM vows to follow the rules. I have never once vowed to my players that I will follow the rules. I would not want to play with a GM who always follows the rules, either. The GM needs to be able to interpret and adjudicate the rules. Yet when we get emails where GMs say that NPCs vital to their plot are immune to damage, we all cry foul. Frankly this 'Tell the best story, so some rules don't matter' smacks of my-story-ism. If you're trying to bend the story to what you think it's the most interesting then you are not letting the story develop organically at the table. Furthermore unless you have a time machine and have played both outcomes of a decision, you can't know which is going to result in the better story. You know what's a good story? Having the villain get away to wreck havoc another day. Having a note show up at the party's headquarters that simply says "Almost got me =)" with a photo of the latest victim attached. But I don't think I'd ever hear anyone advocate changing the bad guy so that the party doesn't solve the mystery. That's even the premise of the Dr. Douche thought experiment that have plagued recent episodes. I'm all for yes-and-ing inconsequential details. Am I close enough to the car to activate my earth powers? Yes. Are there any candles in this library? Yes. But giving the party a gold star for doing nothing isn't satisfying. Letting them catch the villain no matter what they do isn't a good story. If they don't put in the work, they don't get the cookie. If they do put in the work, the evidence is clear but they blame the wrong person, that's on them. The bad guy gets away. If their theory fits the evidence or is more interesting than what was planned then sure, change it. But just making the party be right all the time removes consequence. Why even roleplay? Why even have a mystery? Just say 'there was a murder and then you figured it out.'
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2017 21:38:52 GMT -8
Man, some detective fiction fans are going to hate the 'party will end up being right' idea.But then, fans of detective fiction often subscribe to a lot of rules, and presumably would be ok with losing cases if they were playing a tabletop campaign. My idea would be that at the end the players would know who the villain is, but if they hadn't collected enough evidence to prove it the bad guy would be able to walk. (Which could lead to a return visit later on down the line, which the players would be eager to beat) It all depends on what your group wants in the end, like most questions. Man, not just the crime fiction fetishists, but the whole "Is the ogre on the left path or the right one?" group will probably find much fault with this. I subscribe to Stu's philosophy: If the PCs' theory makes more sense than what I had come up with, ESPECIALLY if there are holes in the scenario I devised, SWITCH TRACKS, make it a better story. We're all here, collaborating on a shared story. If I wanted an awesome detective mystery, there are shelves of that at the local library. I see the merits to knowing who-dunit and the merits of leaving it open. The problem with changing your culprit is often the shoddy evidence. And of course the issue with everyone being a suspect is that if they all have means and motive it becomes very hard to eliminate suspects. I'm a firm believer that nothin is determined in the game till it comes out of someone's mouth. Thus as long as everything makes sense, I can take the story in any direction and still provide a satisfying game. One upside to being open to change is that you as the GM get to revel in the mystery as well. It's the same kind of enjoyment some GM's get from running the same scenario multiple times: seeing how it turns out each time. I think one of the skills that is peculiar to rpg's is taking advantage of the groups hive mind. Unlike writers, we only get one shot at our story, no revisions. We may start with a script, but as the players start to improv and interact with that script we have to decide if we want to access that hive mind for ideas or if we want to try to hold to our script. We're like directors who only get a single take. Sometimes the actors have good ideas, it is up to us to asses them and decide if or how we are going to incorporate them into the performance.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2017 21:52:52 GMT -8
Guardians of Order had a "role-playing game manifesto" at the beginning of all their books. It read thusly: For all the things GoO did wrong, I think they did that right. I'm having a chicken or the egg quandary that doesn't synch up with the above. If minmaxing and munchkinism aren't problems with a game, then how do you explain Pathfinder and the people who love it? Or is it just that problemed people are attracted to pathfinder... Which begs the question of what is wrong with pathfinder that it would attract such a playerbase. I mean, what is up with all these games where you get a stat array or a point buy? If we wanted to kill minmaxing and munchkanism we could make people make characters entirely at random, with no choice involved, thus eliminating the potential for that problem. I guess to be succinct I should just say, "Yeah, whatever man." I think just about every one of those rules is misguided. Especially the one about "If the rules don't say you can't do something, than you can." What? It doesn't say anywhere on my sheet that I'm not a god who can create things by force of will, so can I? It's a simple thing, the rules establish how you use the rules, not what you can do. It's a roleplaying game, not a computer game. The whole point is that we don't need a rule or script for everything. The measure of a good system could be how it handles players wanting to do things which aren't explicitly laid out. This is one of the reasons I like games with uniform conflict resolution mechanics. The game can resolve any conflict, instead of just the ones anticipated by the designers.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Apr 30, 2017 21:53:37 GMT -8
The GM vows to follow the rules. Yeah, but your murderer isn't identified in the rules is s/he? OK in a pre-published scenario, the guilty party may well have been identified, and given all the clues the players have already already encountered pointing towards that person, woe betide any GM who, part way though, changes the villain because "it would be cooler". (Though it could be argued that Agatha Christe did this all the time in her novels.) But what about the Firefly adventure (I think it was called Chasing the Tiger by Rob Weiland) wherein all the suspects could have murdered the victim, all had motive and all had clues that could point to them, but importantly all had alibis too. The only thing that decided who was the murderer was the order in in which the PCs investigate them. There, I'm following the rules and changing the villain at the same time. And when I write a scenario myself, I might set out the perpetrator in the first draft, then change my mind when I get a better idea in the second draft. This could all happen before we start playing, and if it did you would never accuse me of breaking the rules simply because I had a better idea. You'd never know. So we've started playing and the players have a better idea, and I think it's really cool. It's my scenario, not pre-published, so I can change my mind. Given that the whole story was in my head anyhow, or honestly the whole story isn't even there, it's in the imaginative space between me and the players, all my social contract with my players promises is that I'll create an illusion of a consistent world.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2017 21:56:11 GMT -8
The GM vows to follow the rules. And when I write a scenario myself, I might set out the perpetrator in the first draft, then change my mind when I get a better idea in the second draft. This could all happen before we start playing, and if it did you would never accuse me of breaking the rules simply because I had a better idea. You'd never know. So we've started playing and the players have a better idea, and I think it's really cool. It's my scenario, not pre-published, so I can change my mind. Given that the whole story was in my head anyhow, or honestly the wholestory isn't even there, it's in the imaginative space between me and the players, all my social contract with my players promises is that I'll create an illusion of a consistent world. This. So much this. You nailed it.
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on May 1, 2017 4:55:06 GMT -8
At the risk of starting another embargo, I really wish stork got a chance to play in more PbtA games. (He's mentioned Meddling Kids, but I have no idea how finished that was or what the quality was like.) That whole section on Bonds and Flags and things being contrived or not had, what I felt was a lot of misinformation or assumptions. I bag the shit outta Savage Worlds and D&D, but I've at least played them. And more than once. As I'm too far away to do it, get tomes on the show, as suggested, to run you all through something. Or to at least provide accurate info.
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Post by Probie Tim on May 1, 2017 7:57:22 GMT -8
Frankly this 'Tell the best story, so some rules don't matter' smacks of my-story-ism. I'm kinda missing the point you're trying to get at, Low. But it's all me, I'm sure; it's Monday, and I was up too late last night, heh. So, that said, I'm not advocating that rules don't matter. I'm advocating that the GM matters more than the rules; the GM is first and foremost a judge and an adjudicator of the rules. The game rules are the tools with which the GM runs the game, and sometimes... you have to use a screwdriver as a crowbar. Sometimes a hammer is better than a screwdriver. And the GM *needs* to be able to look at all of his or her tools and pick the best one for the job at hand. If that means that his NPCs only have important stats (instead of being fully generated "by the book") because that works better for him, or that sometimes he'll change the course of the game because the players came up with a better idea than his own, than that's what has to happen. That's all within the GM's wheelhouse. For that to work, though, you have to have trust in your GM to make the right call for the game and for the group. It makes me sad that antagonistic, "dick" GMs have made that trust harder and harder to get, so much so that we're at the point where this discussion is even a thing. I'm going to throw this out there: if you don't have enough trust in your GM to let him adjudicate the rules from time to time, instead of blindly following them in all cases, you're playing with the wrong GM. If minmaxing and munchkinism aren't problems with a game, then how do you explain Pathfinder and the people who love it? I played in a Pathfinder game that Casey ran. I made "substandard build" choices all of the time for character and RP reasons. It drove him insane. I also played in a HERO game that Casey kind-of co-GMed. When building my character's powers, I made many, many choices based on character concept and what seemed cool to RP in my head. He would constantly tell me how I'm doing it wrong and how I needed to do it right. Two different players, same system, vastly different approaches. For me, minmaxing and munchkinism aren't a thing, because that's not the way that I play or what I want out of a game. For Casey, they're his bread and butter, because that's the way he plays, and what he wants out of a game. I think just about every one of those rules is misguided. Especially the one about "If the rules don't say you can't do something, than you can." What? It doesn't say anywhere on my sheet that I'm not a god who can create things by force of will, so can I? I'm pretty certain that they manifesto is meant to be taken within the context of the game being played, and that only straw men would actually think they'd support your argument. But, taken within the context of the game being played, this goes EXACTLY to my point above. If the rules don't state that you can, for instance, leap off of a four story building and break your fall by catching tree branches on the way down, you should be able to attempt it. And since there are no specific "how to leap off a four story building and break your fall by catching tree branches on the way day" rules, the GM has to adjudicate how that happens mechanically.
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mysticfedora
Supporter
The truth lies somewhere in between.
Posts: 281
Preferred Game Systems: 5E, PbtA, OSR
Currently Playing: LotFP, 5E
Currently Running: 5E, PbtA, Stars Without Number, CoC 7e
Favorite Species of Monkey: Kong
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Post by mysticfedora on May 1, 2017 9:44:21 GMT -8
At the risk of starting another embargo, I really wish stork got a chance to play in more PbtA games. (He's mentioned Meddling Kids, but I have no idea how finished that was or what the quality was like.) That whole section on Bonds and Flags and things being contrived or not had, what I felt was a lot of misinformation or assumptions. I bag the shit outta Savage Worlds and D&D, but I've at least played them. And more than once. As I'm too far away to do it, get tomes on the show, as suggested, to run you all through something. Or to at least provide accurate info. I second this. I could do it too, but tomes would be better at it.
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Post by OFTHEHILLPEOPLE on May 1, 2017 11:04:20 GMT -8
Every time I'm accused of not following a rule or steamrolling a player with the rules this is my first response:
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Post by Probie Tim on May 1, 2017 11:06:20 GMT -8
Fuck, I love Darth Vader.
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Post by uncommonman on May 1, 2017 12:15:15 GMT -8
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Post by OFTHEHILLPEOPLE on May 1, 2017 12:16:44 GMT -8
You're not going to post the follow up to that panel? The best moment of that comic next to threatening someone with a rock from Alderaan?
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