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HJRP 19-13
Jun 22, 2017 13:33:06 GMT -8
via mobile
Post by uncommonman on Jun 22, 2017 13:33:06 GMT -8
And that's fine, play how you like but if you play a "gritty game" you can't just ignore the risk of character death since that is one part of that type of game. That's like saying you play DnD but don't use dice, it's not right. Poppycock. Balderdash. There's much more to gritty than character death. It's an atmosphere, a feeling. It's a world without black or white, but instead a million shades of gray. Where demons abound and even the angel's halos are bent, tarnished, and balanced precariously on tamped down horns. A world where true sunlight rarely sees the dirty streets. Streets that even the nearly ubiquitous rain can't wash clean. Yes BUT... If the players know they are exempt from death they don't have as much to loose. I think that a important part of a gritty setting is the risk of death, you don't have to kill characters but if the risk isn't real it isn't gritty.
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Post by chronovore on Jun 22, 2017 15:26:57 GMT -8
I would contend that there's no reason a random encounter can't BECOME part of the story. Oddly enough, this is at the heart of a nightmare DM story I have been trying to frame and write to HJRPG — but in short: the DM was hewing extremely close to the module-as-written, but improvised a barroom brawl during one session. Due to an interesting crit-miss and its consequences, he specified more about a random NPC than intended; our group focused on that NPC. This was the Pathfinder Swords and Shackles campaign; we were captains of our own pirate ship. Participants in the barroom brawl were locked up by the city guard. We bailed the NPC out from jail, with the intent of press-ganging him into service on the ship — the same way our PCs had started the campaign. We had some parley with the NPC about his belongings, and what we would ransom with the quartermaster. This exposed some improvised backstory, which only made the NPC more interesting to all of us! We were excited to see our DM extend his range, and start filling out the world on his own! Instead, our DM freaked-the-fuck-out. He claimed that our actions would endanger our alignment, call down our Gods' wrath on us, and maybe get us in dutch with the Pirate Council. We pointed out that this was pretty common pirate practice not just in the Pathfinder world, but in our world as well. We pointed out that most of us were chaotic neutral. He wasn't having any of it! He seemed cornered. He went on a rant for nearly 3 hours because were interested in a character that he didn't feel comfortable with the repercussions it may have had on the module. I've role-played for decades. This was the worst session I have ever participated in. In every situation where my players have become interested in a character or organization or object, yes-and' ING has been the way to keep everyone engaged and immersed. In the spacious, wide ranging, and copious backlog somewhere, Stu, you mentioned our college game session where you and Fred found a car. We rolled randomly to find out just how useful its contents might be. Would it have gas? Would it have been broken windows, useful for keeping zombies from grabbing you? One of you rolled a critical success, so I loaded it up with gas, an intact body, some weapons, and even cocaine, reasoning that it had been a drug dealer's bug-out vehicle. That random roll and our interpretation of it led to some of the most interesting role-playing of that campaign.
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Post by ayslyn on Jun 22, 2017 15:38:53 GMT -8
Poppycock. Balderdash. There's much more to gritty than character death. It's an atmosphere, a feeling. It's a world without black or white, but instead a million shades of gray. Where demons abound and even the angel's halos are bent, tarnished, and balanced precariously on tamped down horns. A world where true sunlight rarely sees the dirty streets. Streets that even the nearly ubiquitous rain can't wash clean. Yes BUT... If the players know they are exempt from death they don't have as much to loose. I think that a important part of a gritty setting is the risk of death, you don't have to kill characters but if the risk isn't real it isn't gritty. Go ahead and show me where I said there should be no risk of death.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2017 21:48:42 GMT -8
I would contend that there's no reason a random encounter can't BECOME part of the story. Oddly enough, this is at the heart of a nightmare DM story I have been trying to frame and write to HJRPG — but in short: the DM was hewing extremely close to the module-as-written, but improvised a barroom brawl during one session. Due to an interesting crit-miss and its consequences, he specified more about a random NPC than intended; our group focused on that NPC. This was the Pathfinder Swords and Shackles campaign; we were captains of our own pirate ship. Participants in the barroom brawl were locked up by the city guard. We bailed the NPC out from jail, with the intent of press-ganging him into service on the ship — the same way our PCs had started the campaign. We had some parley with the NPC about his belongings, and what we would ransom with the quartermaster. This exposed some improvised backstory, which only made the NPC more interesting to all of us! We were excited to see our DM extend his range, and start filling out the world on his own! Instead, our DM freaked-the-fuck-out. He claimed that our actions would endanger our alignment, call down our Gods' wrath on us, and maybe get us in dutch with the Pirate Council. We pointed out that this was pretty common pirate practice not just in the Pathfinder world, but in our world as well. We pointed out that most of us were chaotic neutral. He wasn't having any of it! He seemed cornered. He went on a rant for nearly 3 hours because were interested in a character that he didn't feel comfortable with the repercussions it may have had on the module. I've role-played for decades. This was the worst session I have ever participated in. In every situation where my players have become interested in a character or organization or object, yes-and' ING has been the way to keep everyone engaged and immersed. In the spacious, wide ranging, and copious backlog somewhere, Stu, you mentioned our college game session where you and Fred found a car. We rolled randomly to find out just how useful its contents might be. Would it have gas? Would it have been broken windows, useful for keeping zombies from grabbing you? One of you rolled a critical success, so I loaded it up with gas, an intact body, some weapons, and even cocaine, reasoning that it had been a drug dealer's bug-out vehicle. That random roll and our interpretation of it led to some of the most interesting role-playing of that campaign. Why didn't anyone stop him and just have a quick grown up discussion? As much as you guys wanted to interact with said NPC, I'm willing to bet you would have gone along if he had asked you to stop because it made it uncomfortable for him to run the module. Sometimes you have to accept the limitations of the person running the game. We all want the best experiance possible, but not everyone is ready to go off their training wheels just yet. Could he have found a way to handle the situation? Probably, but I'm guessing that a 3 hour blow up was a result of more than just what happened in the session. That kind of melt down usually is a result of other pressures in a person's life. The straw that broke the camels back could be anything.
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shinigamitwo
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 45
Preferred Game Systems: oWoD, Deadlands, D&D
Currently Playing: Deadlands HOE Classic - The Doctor Rides Agin!
Currently Running: Vampire 20th Anniversary
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Post by shinigamitwo on Jun 23, 2017 14:14:55 GMT -8
I would challenge that this is bad player behavior not on the GM. The player's described action of "screaming until they actually hurt me" has only one conclusion, the Skaven hurt him. He stated that he would not stop till then. As you said, he could have just given a wound rather then picking up the dice but most would just pick up the dice for a weapon blow. The player knew the dice exploded. The system prevented the GM from making a story of the death by retconing the death with mechanics, which the player knew would happen if the blow was great enough. Meaning that the GM was stuck either ignoring the players agency, "Fine, you scream," or picking up dice to stop the characters screaming, which might lead to character death. So to me he stood before a man with a cannon that may or may not be loaded and demanded that he fire and then was unhappy when it turned out to be loaded. Maybe he should have just gone "I scream for a while," or "I scream until they whip me or take an action to make me stop, then I stop." He might wanted a specific outcome but clearly did not communicate that well enough with the GM. This is a natural consequence death just like "I stab the dragon with my butter knife" would be.
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shinigamitwo
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 45
Preferred Game Systems: oWoD, Deadlands, D&D
Currently Playing: Deadlands HOE Classic - The Doctor Rides Agin!
Currently Running: Vampire 20th Anniversary
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Post by shinigamitwo on Jun 23, 2017 14:41:39 GMT -8
GM: "So you're walking through the forest, and suddenly... *rolls a d6 on the table, sees the result of 1*... you encounter something! Hang on... *rolls a d20, spots the result of 13, looks on the "Random Wilderness Encounter table", sees 1d6 orcs, rolls 1d6 and gets 3, quickly rolls 1d8+1 for each of the orc's HPs* three pig-snouted and tusked humanoids with greenish-grey skin hop out from behind a tree! They brandish their swords at you, grunt, and rush in for the attack!" ...versus... GM: "So you're walking through the forest and suddenly three pig-snouted and tusked humanoids with greenish-grey skin hop out from behind a tree! They brandish their swords at you, grunt, and rush in for the attack!" I dunno. I'd certainly realize the former was a random encounter. From the perspective of the narrative, of the story, there's no difference. But from the perspective of the players? Yeah, I think there is a difference. Having seen the GM roll the dice, consult the charts, do some quick stat generation, yeah... I now know that the orcs I'm fighting were a random encounter, that they aren't actually part of the larger story. They're only there because the GM rolled a die and got a specific result. I would argue that what you described dear Probie is two methods of getting to the same spot and not a random verses non-random encounter. The random comes not from how I made the encounter but from what purpose it serves. Namely, are we fighting 3 orcs because the game insists that when you travel you roll to see if you fight any monsters so that why you have to fight these 3 orcs or is it because the Party has been fouling a trade deal for an Orc Chieftain. This has lead to me changing how I handle this kind of thing. First, I determine why this encounter is happening. Is this something that is plot relevant or is this world building. If the first, you bet your ass I've fully stated and planed this fight in the standard mechanics of fighting (whatever they are for the system) and am abiding by the decision of death (which is generally on the table). If the second, then I create a "Narrative combat" (side note, this probably would not work well with a narrative game, but I haven't run any). Narrative combats are one roll from every combatant and that is it. That roll determines the costs of the combat and what resources you chose to use. Then we move on. This way we don't bog down a game with lots of combats that are only there to consume resources to make life harder or to "give XP" but get to instead focus on the ones that make them big damn hero's. This has the side effect of it is REALLY hard to die to one of these as the injuries are intentionally limited. (My example system uses a 6 hit location with 5 wound levels and only 2 of those locations are "deadly" to show you how limited) An example for clarity: We are playing Deadlands Hell of Earth. You are traveling from Genericsberg to Randomtown and doing some light scavenging along the way. As scavenging is not plot relevant but something world building that might result in conflict, we roll a Narrative combat, after a couple of scaving rolls are done (a modification of Deadlands Random encounter set up). I randomly roll that you are fighting some Black Hats (apparently you're near Denver) and ask that each player decide what roll they want to make. As the players all know that Black Hats are well, black hats, they choose to fight. Three roll shootin' while one rolls fightin': sword. The shooters score a success, a failure, and a botch resulting in 1d6 ammo lost from shooter 1, 2d6 ammo and 2 wounds to shooter 2 and 4d6 ammo and 4 wounds to shooter 3, while the swordsman rolled a hit for 1 wound and no ammo loss. Rather than drawing initiative and rolling out everything I instead describe how the party spotted and dispatched a group of Black Hats, though one got a lucky shot off on S3. Ultimately the party has lost some resources, which is what those Black Hats are for, but we haven't wasted 2 hours getting there. They would have gotten XP as well, but this is Deadlands so they might have lost some instead. Edit: Why yes, I suck at this whole forum formatting thing. Why do you ask?
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Post by ayslyn on Jun 23, 2017 17:14:46 GMT -8
With all due respect, but that sounds horrible. First, the players immediately know which fights are tied to the plot and which aren't. You've lost some great opportunities for mystery, doubt, red herrings.... Second, IMO that just sounds boring.
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sdJasper
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 30
Preferred Game Systems: GURPS, Fudge, PDQ
Currently Running: GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars
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Post by sdJasper on Jun 23, 2017 17:31:00 GMT -8
This reminds me of a player I use to have. He claiming to be a "method actor" player type, but was the worst at meta-gaming (not that they have to be mutually exclusive... I just had normally thought that they would be).
In one game I had a series of "random encounters" that would pop up from time to time while the adventurers made their way across a jungle from one adventure site to the next. The player in question was "shocked" multiple times because the random encounters each related to the overall events that the players were investigating. Some had clues to the bigger picture, some were just natural consequences to the overall problem.
The player just didn't know what to do. He had a hard time trying to figure out if they were "suppose to" check out the random events (when they could avoid them) or not. I had been role playing with this guy for years, and I strait up told him that there was nothing they were "suppose to" do. I like to run a pretty sandbox-y game, and if they wanted to jump ship and run from the local problems that was fine. But this guy just had some hang-up because I rolled an encounter at "random" that it somehow meant something different than if I had "plotted" it.
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Post by chronovore on Jun 23, 2017 22:39:29 GMT -8
Why didn't anyone stop him and just have a quick grown up discussion? As much as you guys wanted to interact with said NPC, I'm willing to bet you would have gone along if he had asked you to stop because it made it uncomfortable for him to run the module. Sometimes you have to accept the limitations of the person running the game. We all want the best experiance possible, but not everyone is ready to go off their training wheels just yet. Could he have found a way to handle the situation? Probably, but I'm guessing that a 3 hour blow up was a result of more than just what happened in the session. That kind of melt down usually is a result of other pressures in a person's life. The straw that broke the camels back could be anything. You're completely right, that there were a number of other problems involved, and this incident was simply the crystallizing catalyst. The DM was not fond of Pathfinder, wasn't comfortable in the rule set, was frustrated that our 2hr/week, sometimes only twice-monthly game was veering toward the part of the campaign that shifts from buckling swashes into Pirate Council court intrigue… There may have been person Real Life Stuff bubbling through as well. We did try and ask him why he was having such an overwhelming reaction to our interactions with a character he'd placed in his game. We even asked what he thought we should do. He was not behaving rationally. Every time one of us attempted to help, he'd grow more shrill and accusatory. From my perspective, he was having a panic attack. It was a bad scene. This DM is not a subscriber to "Yes, and…" — in the realm of DMs using modules, I know that's common. This DM shut down just about anything that looked like it would veer off the module's listed options, unless he personally found it amusing. Ironically, though we were pirates at sea, railroad tracks were commonly visible beneath the waves. My suspicion is that our fascination with this character he improvised triggered a feeling of being cornered into working the NPC into the module, essentially having made a trap for himself.
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Post by chronovore on Jun 23, 2017 22:55:03 GMT -8
Which is, oddly, impossible in GURPS. (YEAH!)Not true. You can bleed to death from a hit to the leg. People seem to think it's only death if it's instantly so, which isn't how most people die. GURPS doesn't always get the amount of bleeding right though. A cut off leg can kill you lickity split if no one it there stop the bleeding of the femoral artery. Well, OK, "impossible" is an overstatement, but aren't the bleeding rules optional? I seem to recall that, in terms of direct damage, limbs can receive something like ½ HT damage before they become crippled, but a character can't be killed by repeatedly being hit in the same limb, only crippled. Maybe it's even ⅓ HT for hands or feet? I'm up to season 8 or 9 in the backlog, and Stu mentioned these rules several times in various conversations, and they matched what I recalled.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2017 0:02:15 GMT -8
Not true. You can bleed to death from a hit to the leg. People seem to think it's only death if it's instantly so, which isn't how most people die. GURPS doesn't always get the amount of bleeding right though. A cut off leg can kill you lickity split if no one it there stop the bleeding of the femoral artery. Well, OK, "impossible" is an overstatement, but aren't the bleeding rules optional? I seem to recall that, in terms of direct damage, limbs can receive something like ½ HT damage before they become crippled, but a character can't be killed by repeatedly being hit in the same limb, only crippled. Maybe it's even ⅓ HT for hands or feet? I'm up to season 8 or 9 in the backlog, and Stu mentioned these rules several times in various conversations, and they matched what I recalled. Yes, they are optional. However, I don't think its fair to call into question the realism of wounds if you are choosing to not use the rules present for making the game more realistic. GURPS runs everything from supers to zombie survival horror. You have to expect that certain 'optional' rules are what make the game function in each of those different settings. Otherwise we'd need multiple games of GURPS that had every optional rule dropped in for the setting in question instead of a core set of two books. The rule may be optional to GURPS, but it seems like a mandatory pick for a game that prizes realism.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2017 12:36:05 GMT -8
A good point I've seen before is the random encounter. What is the purpose of a random encounter? I kind of think it's an evolutionary leftover in game design. What are you going for? D&D has had (in 1e and I think 5e again now) a random dungeon generator - in that case, yes, have random monsters, possibly more powerful than the PCs. But in a game, a random encounter off a chart is really just Random Damage and Resource Expenditure. And in earlier editions especially of D&D that caused the problem of the 15-Minute Workday -- "I cast my one spell and now we need to rest or else I'm useless..." I don't get it. People play D&D to have a fantasy adventure, then bitch when they have to fight some strange creature. That's the point of the whole game. Overcome this fantastical challenge! --- I agree about D&D. To me, D&D is the game where you step out of civilization, and anything can take a shot at you. It wasn't like an MMO where 'Oh, I'm in the starter zone, an ogre isn't going to grab me up and one-hit me.' There has been a lot of design and gaming theory change since it started. D&D, I think, is still a lot of 'Build your best 100-point squad and go out and survive as long as you can'-wargaming with a roleplaying overlay. Now, everyone's mileage will vary of course. To me, that's kind of baked in the cake, like you said. Now, other settings or campaigns may be a lot more 'safety features engaged on the holodeck'. And it will vary GM to GM. But I think we all agree that this is a discussion that needs to be had during character creation, although as was said before, certain games by their nature it's generally assumed about the characters shuffling the mortal coil (CoC, Paranoia, and some gratuitous rolls in Rolemaster.)
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Post by chronovore on Jun 25, 2017 17:57:51 GMT -8
Well, OK, "impossible" is an overstatement, but aren't the bleeding rules optional? I seem to recall that, in terms of direct damage, limbs can receive something like ½ HT damage before they become crippled, but a character can't be killed by repeatedly being hit in the same limb, only crippled. Maybe it's even ⅓ HT for hands or feet? I'm up to season 8 or 9 in the backlog, and Stu mentioned these rules several times in various conversations, and they matched what I recalled. Yes, they are optional. However, I don't think its fair to call into question the realism of wounds if you are choosing to not use the rules present for making the game more realistic. GURPS runs everything from supers to zombie survival horror. You have to expect that certain 'optional' rules are what make the game function in each of those different settings. Otherwise we'd need multiple games of GURPS that had every optional rule dropped in for the setting in question instead of a core set of two books. The rule may be optional to GURPS, but it seems like a mandatory pick for a game that prizes realism. Fair enough, but my original statement stands: in the RAW version of GURPS, without the optional rules for Bleeding, it's impossible to kill a character by damaging a limb. You and I are each right, depending on how deeply the rules are being pursued, including the optional ones.
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Post by mook on Jun 25, 2017 20:01:56 GMT -8
Fair enough, but my original statement stands: in the RAW version of GURPS, without the optional rules for Bleeding, it's impossible to kill a character by damaging a limb.I wonder if that's actually odd, though. Not being an axe murderer I can't be sure, but it feels like (with bleeding out of the equation) it actually would be hard to kill someone by just hacking away at their limbs.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 25, 2017 21:15:38 GMT -8
Fair enough, but my original statement stands: in the RAW version of GURPS, without the optional rules for Bleeding, it's impossible to kill a character by damaging a limb.I wonder if that's actually odd, though. Not being an axe murderer I can't be sure, but it feels like (with bleeding out of the equation) it actually would be hard to kill someone by just hacking away at their limbs. Given that certain species can regenerate limbs, it depends on what you are hurting. Even with bleeding, the wound might close on its own. It's as true in the game rules as in real life, thus why many broadhead designs include more than two blades (to ensure wounds don't close of their own accord).
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