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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2012 21:47:13 GMT -8
So Tappy gets a lot of flack for his drunken statement but I have found in some levels it holds true. Now I know you all want to jump on me for sucking the Tappy wang but please understand where I am coming.
I have been exploring new systems and finally got to play some at the Con but one of my core gaming groups is basically just dnd 3.5 (not even pathfinder). Every time I suggest a new system I normally get a bunch of moans about learning a new system and how hard it is to find the time do such a thing even though when one of the other guys DM's he doesn't follow any of the rules. Finally I got them to go to 2E DnD (which honestly is a big stretch).
Now I cherry picked out of my friends the group that should be better then the others at roleplaying but once they hit this system it was just gripes and moans. All they wanted to do was fight and level instead of flesh out their characters. They were so worried about leveling that I was basically sick of going to game because it was just complaining time about the system and their frailty.
I went back and thought about great games I had been in and truly sat and analyzed them, one being Tappy's con game. Thought about what normally happened when I said a challenge is before the group and most of their first responses. They would all look at their character sheets to find some sort of answer (skills is what I am assuming they were looking for). So last night I got fed up and took all of their character sheets away. Instead I wrote all of their gear on a side of a note card and basic combat info on the other. Success, all the could do was star at each other and thus give their attention to who ever was talking.
Now would I suggest that every system you take away a character sheet. No, but sometimes when you are introducing a system a character sheet can be a false home. I felt this such as I was sitting down to the Stu's Savage Worlds game. Having been a heavy DnD'er, I found myself looking down to examine what I could do in a situation at times (like if there was a bluff or intimidate skill). So I feel when you are taking a native crunch player (i think 3.5 is crunchy) and put them in a fluffier system, sometimes removing the character sheet helps them more because it takes their crutches away.
Disclaimer: JIB is not allowed to respond to this for 1 day because if he does I will never be able to respond without blindly agreeing.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on Apr 12, 2012 0:43:55 GMT -8
I wrote all of their gear on a side of a note card and basic combat info on the other. Success, all the could do was star at each other and thus give their attention to who ever was talking. You do realise that this is the design for the AD&D 1e character sheet, right? ;D I would say OSR has this charm, back in the days when skills were what you imagined you could do and you held eye contact around the table because that was where the game was played rather than inside a rulebook/character sheet. I, too, laughed along with Tappy's AMAZING story! He sounded irresponsible, being drunk did not help that perception, but as he said: he knew the game and was ready to make rulings on it. It was a very OSR game.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2012 4:17:51 GMT -8
Now I know you all want to jump on me for sucking the Tappy wang but please understand where I am coming. Best. Sentence. Ever.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 12, 2012 6:09:34 GMT -8
I played in a game once where we were not allowed to have character sheets during game play. Everything was on the sheet but we were not allowed to see them. We had them between game sessions but when it came time to play we had to give them to the gm. This was particularly interesting for spell casters who had to REMEMBER what spells they had prepared. The effect of that was that the rules didn't matter to us when we were playing and it was very immersive and lead to some very fun play.
It worked for that group it would not work for every group.
There are times that I think character sheets, books and all the other paraphernalia of the game actually inhibits role playing, but to make it work the gm (in particular) really has to know the game and the characters and the npc's and the monsters and ... (list goes on) ...
So, while I do not disagree with the premise, it doesn't work for every player or every game or in every situation and can be a very dangerous place to be in.
Just my 2 krupplenicks worth, your mileage may of course vary.
JiB
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2012 8:17:53 GMT -8
There are two types of games that don't use character sheets: board games and improv theater (such as charades).
If you want to play a game that has either no role-playing or all-roleplaying, a character sheet is optional.
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clanhanna
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Preferred Game Systems: Storyteller, O.R.E, Mongoose Traveller
Currently Playing: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, D&D 5e
Currently Running: Vampire: The Dark Ages
Favorite Species of Monkey: Peanut-buttery Rhesus
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Post by clanhanna on Apr 12, 2012 9:24:46 GMT -8
This was particularly interesting for spell casters who had to REMEMBER what spells they had prepared. I could see that actually working in a con game. Give the players a list of their abilities (combat maneuvers, spells, whatever) with brief color text of what those do; maintain a "master list" as GM enumerating the mechanical specifics for each of those. When the player says "I want to do X" you can tell the player, "Okay, roll this." Once again, it involves more work on the part of the GM... and it definitely would be a setup that would benefit from team-GM'ing (one running story, the other running mechanics).
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HyveMynd
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Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
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Currently Running: The Sprawl
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Post by HyveMynd on Apr 12, 2012 16:41:38 GMT -8
I've been wanting to run a horror game where the players have either no or an extremely stripped down character sheet. It would mostly be an experiment to see whether the lack of 'mechanical' information enhanced, detracted from, or had no effect on the quality and/or quantity of the role playing.
As people have said though, it would be a lot more work for the GM.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2012 18:08:32 GMT -8
Having been the GM who just did this, it is ALOT more work and you need to get yourself trained on how to do it. I periodically would look at the player and say make a save vs "X", he rolls tells me the number and I stared for a second before I realized he doesn't know the result.
I also believe heavily that the system matters, as the cowboy stated older DnD systems didn't have traditional character sheets and the system understood this because there was not alot of information to really write down on one. Imagine a Pathfinder character sheet with no skills, set saves, and a set attack bonus. Kind of blank in comparison really. I am not sure how much Hero would work as a sheet-less system but from what I hear it does not sound really feasible because of its complexity.
What system do you want to run it in so we can make suggestions? I have done several horror campaigns and have figured organization methods to help out in running them but you may use a system I haven't GMed yet.
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Apr 12, 2012 19:04:43 GMT -8
I was going to try and use one of my favorite systems that gets no love at all, Ubiquity. It's a dice pool system similar to nWoD; task resolution is simply Attribute + Skill +/- modifiers, roll that many dice, count your successes, and compare them to a Difficulty Number. The thing I really like about it is the "binary dice"; each individual die only generates either a success or a failure. So it's really easy to eyeball stuff or "take the average" as the game calls it, since you just chop the total dice pool in half and assume that many successes.
That makes it really easy to keep the player in the dark about things, or to not interrupt the narrative by busting out the dice.
I thought it would be an interesting system to use without a character sheet, since when the character attempted an action I could quickly total up their dice pool and tell them how many dice to roll. They'd have an idea of how much their Attributes, Skills, and/or modifiers were contributing to the pool, but not exactly.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 13, 2012 6:17:48 GMT -8
I think there's a very salient point in this whole discussion. That being that it is very possible to get hidebound into the idea of, "I have skill (x) because my sheet says I do so I can do that, but I don't have skill (y) because it's not on my sheet so I can't even try to do that. Taking the character sheet out of the mix COULD with some players free them from that thought process.
It would NOT work for all players or all gms or all game systems. I shudder to think about trying to do that with Hero characters.
Cheers,
JiB
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Post by muntjack on Apr 13, 2012 15:05:39 GMT -8
I've been wanting to run a horror game where the players have either no or an extremely stripped down character sheet. It would mostly be an experiment to see whether the lack of 'mechanical' information enhanced, detracted from, or had no effect on the quality and/or quantity of the role playing. At the last con I was at, I ran a horror game using the old World of Darkness rules. The characters at first couldn't remember who they were or how they got where they were. Instead of a sheet at first, they had a file folder with a test subject number for a name and their basic attributes and willpower score. They played for almost an hour before I let them have their character sheets, and that was when they realized some aspects of their past. It worked out pretty well. They played pretty cautiously, and it added quite a bit of suspense.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 13, 2012 15:20:37 GMT -8
I've been wanting to run a horror game where the players have either no or an extremely stripped down character sheet. It would mostly be an experiment to see whether the lack of 'mechanical' information enhanced, detracted from, or had no effect on the quality and/or quantity of the role playing. At the last con I was at, I ran a horror game using the old World of Darkness rules. The characters at first couldn't remember who they were or how they got where they were. Instead of a sheet at first, they had a file folder with a test subject number for a name and their basic attributes and willpower score. They played for almost an hour before I let them have their character sheets, and that was when they realized some aspects of their past. It worked out pretty well. They played pretty cautiously, and it added quite a bit of suspense. I did something similar with the "Sleepers" game I ran at Gateway. The characters all woke up in what they thought was a hospital and with no idea how they got there. All they had at the beginning was a brief bio about their character. About an hour into the game they found a computer and when one of them managed to hack into it they found files about themselves and that's when I handed them their character sheets. It went over pretty well with the players. Cheers, JiB
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Post by ayslyn on Apr 13, 2012 15:47:00 GMT -8
I started my Fireborn game with a flashback. Each of the characters was given a name, a brief description of their character, and their goal in the scene.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on Apr 13, 2012 23:24:55 GMT -8
I've been wanting to run a horror game where the players have either no or an extremely stripped down character sheet. It would mostly be an experiment to see whether the lack of 'mechanical' information enhanced, detracted from, or had no effect on the quality and/or quantity of the role playing. At the last con I was at, I ran a horror game using the old World of Darkness rules. The characters at first couldn't remember who they were or how they got where they were. Instead of a sheet at first, they had a file folder with a test subject number for a name and their basic attributes and willpower score. They played for almost an hour before I let them have their character sheets, and that was when they realized some aspects of their past. It worked out pretty well. They played pretty cautiously, and it added quite a bit of suspense. I wanted to run the same sort of thing for a Cyberpunk campaign - high level characters awaken with a loss of memory (i.e. level) in a maximum security prison with NPCs breaking them out - but, alas, no player was interested. The story idea went over like gangbusters on the Cyberpunk forum however. IMO, when the stats take over the player, the game has ended and that old 1990's AI program "auto resolve" wins. It's a game of Battleship. It's kind of like RPGing an I.R.S. tax audit. No matter what the stat, good or bad; no matter what the result of the roll, favourable or unfavourable; for God's sake players let there remain a human element at the game table (applicable to everyone equally, including the GM). Call it a fudge, a Fiat, or just plain being a human! But the success you're all describing originates from convention games, not from games advertised at the local hobby store. There may be a different player expectation in that. This technique's success, again in my IMHO, relies on players relaxing at the game, not holding the GM or the other players' feet to a rule's fire. And the GM cannot be a douche. Trust. Going a little further.... Trust may be harder to achieve for some when the concept of first game preparedness includes novelizing an elaborate PC back story and min/maxing complex character generation mechanics for PC concept before players even gather together to play. (This does not happen at a con game.) If player feels he does not want to "lose his investment of time" in char-gen then the game - one of attrition (WotC's "player should lose 20% of resources") - will default to less enjoyable from a human interaction perspective. I do see this as a kind of adversarial end game between players desperately holding on to the statistical game mechanic programmed into a character sheet rather than letting go and /playing./ In such a case as I describe, where table trust is low and initial character generation investment is high, character sheets become necessary crutches to play rather than the handy accessories they were once sold as in 1979.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2012 6:10:47 GMT -8
No matter what the stat, good or bad; no matter what the result of the roll, favourable or unfavourable; for God's sake players let there remain a human element at the game table (applicable to everyone equally, including the GM). Call it a fudge, a Fiat, or just plain being a human! I feel this way about every game I play. Once, while playing Scrabble with my wife, she got the letters to spell Dalek. You bet we allowed that and damned be the rules that say otherwise!
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