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hyphz posted:It's an interesting example, too, since it sets off one of the most common doubts I have in GMing: whether or not I can do this anytime we're in a fight. Most modern games (including Apocalypse World) that encourage this sort of thing have a resource mechanic for this. Your Savvyhead obviously has Bonefeel for a possible 1/session. Fate has either Fate Points or 1/session stunts. Blades In The Dark has limited uses but flexible. For that matter GURPS was doing this back in the 90s.
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Jun 20, 2020 21:41
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Leperflesh posted:If having the dragon make its save against the mcguffin and then eat the antagonist and fly away while the players stand there helpless to do anything would be stupid and anticlimactic, then don't have that happen. Irrespective of what the rules or game mechanics say, you can, as a GM, simply decide that despite the normal mechanism that applies to PCs regarding wands and saving throws or whatever, in order for this scene to present an interesting situation, the dragon can't make its save: therefore, it doesn't. That would be obvious if that was the situation, but the thing is, it isn't. This is essentially a side plot: the real objective is for the PCs to learn that the dragon is basically good, is engaged in a misguided plan to save the world, and that the mage has lied to get the PCs to help them assemble the McGuffin. This then allows what's really suppose to be the climax, which is that the PCs offer to save the world instead, and the dragon then gears them up and sends them into a weird demiplane to fight the actual Big Bad. There's a lot of hints in the adventure that the dragon isn't the bad guy, but there isn't a whole lot of foreshadowing on that last bit. So if the PCs fought the dragon, I was worried they'd basically not be able to access what's supposed to be the climactic scenes of the adventure (with a lot of tactical fights that I knew they'd enjoy). Thing is, for that to happen they not only have to not fight the dragon but also have to not piss it off so much that it doesn't trust them - which is something I really hate in social scenarios (at least the module didn't make assembling this McGuffin be the entire prior plot of the AP - instead, it's more related to learning about the dragon) - and this has been made worse by the fact that the player with the most face-y character also tends to be distracted at the table, and the Diplomacy 4 goblin player has often opened negotiations before the face player has realized something's going on, just to avoid an awkward silence. As for the last point, I hate to sound like a stuck record, but the trick there is that for these players (and for at least a few I've met), the idea that the gameworld is consistent and not adjusting to something as mercurial as the GM's perception of the players' feelings is an important part of the fun in itself.
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Jun 20, 2020 21:45
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 23:05
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I've been giving a lot of thought to fudging and other uses of GM fiat over mechanics as written/dice as rolled over the past few weeks. While I started out leaning towards the "who gives a poo poo, it's behind the screen and everyone is having fun" to start with, I do think that if you're doing that a lot it says something bad about either your mechanics or the way you're using them, and it also stops you from letting the mechanics surprise you and derive enjoyment from that. It also supposes that you as the GM know in advance what the right or fun choice is instead of letting the mechanics reveal things to you. In my own campaign I've started reducing the amount of world-running and NPC decisions I make directly towards a slightly more systematic approach, if only to give the 5E rules a fairer shake (and at least I know that if I don't like something, it's because there's a problem with the rules, or my understanding of them, not because I decided to skip most of the rules and what's left is just getting in the way or I'm making bad choices). I'm also starting to test a few other rules systems and I want to make sure I'm actually judging them well, also hard if I just fudge and ignore things I don't like before even having any kind of proficiency with them. I'm also worried that too much fudging would give an unfair advantage to one player over another when they're in conflict, because this conflict is mediated through the world that I'm fudging and fiating in. If however you discover that playing the game as written requires you to regularly fudge stuff just to keep the game from collapsing then you are playing a bad system and should go play something else. But since the prevailing RPG culture is still heavily steeped in and influenced by a cultural heritage of bad games this kind of fudging is normalised to a degree where it's considered a standard tool instead of an emergency measure. "Hammer, saw, big box of stitches and bandages for when the hammer head goes flying off and smashes you in the face every third swing, screwdriver, chisel."
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Jun 20, 2020 23:39
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Agreed, if you have to fudge consistently to keep the game fun, there's a serious problem with the game's systems and/or they mismatch with your group.
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Jun 20, 2020 23:42
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hyphz posted:As for the last point, I hate to sound like a stuck record, but the trick there is that for these players (and for at least a few I've met), the idea that the gameworld is consistent and not adjusting to something as mercurial as the GM's perception of the players' feelings is an important part of the fun in itself. Do the players, explicitly, want a GM to meet those conditions?
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Jun 21, 2020 00:03
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 00:28
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Absurd Alhazred posted:*dusts off GNS* well, you see, there are three kinds of players...
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Jun 21, 2020 01:19
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To use the Amulet of Bullshit Dragon Control you must... (Roll 1d6) 1. Be of a very specific bloodline 2. Perform a profane ritual the PCs would never do 3. Pay a massive xp cost 4. Swear yourself to the service of a dark god 5. Be a lovely dragon tamer prestige class 6. It was one use, sorry
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Jun 21, 2020 01:50
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hyphz posted:As for the last point, I hate to sound like a stuck record, but the trick there is that for these players (and for at least a few I've met), the idea that the gameworld is consistent and not adjusting to something as mercurial as the GM's perception of the players' feelings is an important part of the fun in itself. So give them what they say they want. Write down the world and let them interact with it, and when they gently caress up and pick a fight they can't win, wipe the floor with them and tell them YOU DIED.
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Jun 21, 2020 01:57
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 01:59
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Mr. Prokosch posted:To use the Amulet of Bullshit Dragon Control you must... - know the dragon's Actual True Magic Name. Mr. Johnson who is betraying you (what a tweest!) thinks he does, but the most he can do is scramble the dragon's thoughts for a little while. Of course, in the next supplement, there will be specific rules for finding an Actual True Magic Name because everything in the game needs to be strictly mechanized so the players can force the GM to give it to them.
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Jun 21, 2020 03:12
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, there's no real way around death being an option if you want to avoid fictionalizing and narrativising while playing. Which honestly leads to a fun experience in itself, but is mostly compatible with rulesystems in which it's easy to roll a new character and where playing characters with different seniority is fun. Or vast overcomplicated nitpicky world simulators like Hackmaster. Which, once again, is explicitly the sort of game that the people that Hyphz complains about should enjoy. It tells you to set the dungeon/wilderness up like this, and use random encounter tables like that and to let the dice fall where they may. So when they try to be clever and bypass the adventure but pick the wrong direction to go in, they'll probably get lost and ground down and die or else walk into a too-tough area and get one-shot and die. But should they then complain that it's unfair and that they're clever plan should have produced results, you can just point at the map and the tables and go "but alas". Which should make them realise that actually they really enjoyed the whole thing because it was all written down and hasn't been altered when they wandered off the rails. Right?
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Jun 21, 2020 04:01
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 04:02
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Absurd Alhazred posted:How could they argue with this fun logic? They can't, because it's a consistent, preexisting world that doesn't change based on the GM's loving feelings, but is instead rooted in mathematics and tables and hex maps drawn in loving pen.
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Jun 21, 2020 04:09
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No, but they can just be unhappy, and I don’t know how to deal with that. Plenty of people do have contradictory desires, and plenty of media will feed them (podcasts I’m looking at you..). And I’m convinced that some people don’t really like what RPGs actually are but keep playing anyway because what other hobby has even a possibility of letting them feel like a goddamn wizard/princess/Batman/etc?
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Jun 21, 2020 05:53
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hyphz posted:No, but they can just be unhappy, and I don’t know how to deal with that. Plenty of people do have contradictory desires, and plenty of media will feed them (podcasts I’m looking at you..). And I’m convinced that some people don’t really like what RPGs actually are but keep playing anyway because what other hobby has even a possibility of letting them feel like a goddamn wizard/princess/Batman/etc?
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Jun 21, 2020 12:26
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hyphz posted:No, but they can just be unhappy, and I don’t know how to deal with that. Plenty of people do have contradictory desires, and plenty of media will feed them (podcasts I’m looking at you..). And I’m convinced that some people don’t really like what RPGs actually are but keep playing anyway because what other hobby has even a possibility of letting them feel like a goddamn wizard/princess/Batman/etc? He prayed this prayer every morning and every night. He was a good man, a just man; he wasn't perfect, but his sins were few. One day after thirty years, there was a bolt of thunder that rolled as he finished his prayer. MELVIN, I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE said the Lord. MEET ME HALFWAY HERE - BUY A TICKET.
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Jun 21, 2020 12:50
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I'm geniunely unsure how a solution can exist here. As far as I understand, this theoretical group wants a game that is heavily predictable and works on an ironclad, simulationist ruleset free of GM fiat, but... they don't want the possibility of ever losing or struggling with the tactical challenges posed? This is unwinnable.
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Jun 21, 2020 14:50
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Nessus posted:There was once a man who prayed every day: O Lord of Heaven, let me win the Lottery. I’m pretty sure in this case there’s no ticket to buy. RPGs in the long run simply cannot do those things. They can function as tactical games with those roles, or they can enable you to write stories with those characters in.
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Jun 21, 2020 15:57
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Zeerust posted:I'm geniunely unsure how a solution can exist here. As far as I understand, this theoretical group wants a game that is heavily predictable and works on an ironclad, simulationist ruleset free of GM fiat, but... they don't want the possibility of ever losing or struggling with the tactical challenges posed? This is unwinnable. Struggling is fine, it’s the issue of losing without agency that’s problematic. That’s understandable but very difficult to deliver because in most systems, any encounter that requires careful tactics can also be sunk by bad dice rolls. But with the mention of GNS, Ron Edwards did talk about this, although he called it “the impossible thing before breakfast”: for the GM to write the story while the players play the main characters. Which is impossible because you can’t write a story without the ability to deciding the actions of the main characters. Still, it’s an idea a lot of people like which is probably how it got embedded as a basic of RPGs in the first place.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:02
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Your descriptions of the group sound like even if they lose with agency, they will wear the world out with their efforts to show it wasn't their fault and they got screwed somehow.
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Jun 21, 2020 16:16
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 16:25
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hyphz posted:Struggling is fine, it’s the issue of losing without agency that’s problematic. That’s understandable but very difficult to deliver because in most systems, any encounter that requires careful tactics can also be sunk by bad dice rolls. If we're acknowledging that it's extremely difficult to deliver, why can we not just walk away with the conclusion that your group needs to adjust their expectations?
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Jun 21, 2020 17:06
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hyphz posted:I’m pretty sure in this case there’s no ticket to buy. RPGs in the long run simply cannot do those things. They can function as tactical games with those roles, or they can enable you to write stories with those characters in. hyphz posted:Struggling is fine, it’s the issue of losing without agency that’s problematic. That’s understandable but very difficult to deliver because in most systems, any encounter that requires careful tactics can also be sunk by bad dice rolls. Splicer fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 17:25
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hyphz posted:Struggling is fine, it’s the issue of losing without agency that’s problematic. That’s understandable but very difficult to deliver because in most systems, any encounter that requires careful tactics can also be sunk by bad dice rolls. He's right, it is impossible to write a story without the ability to decide the actions of main characters, so why try? RPG stories are, in 99% of cases, not authored, they are discovered. I'm going to assume that "sunk" here is that they lose. I won't go into detail talking about how if the consequence for them losing is game over but nobody wants the game to be over then that shouldn't have even been a potential consequence, it's been covered. If you have an encounter that is lost entirely on the basis of the players not succeeding on every roll, everybody is allowed to be frustrated with this turn of events. It sucks to have a plan or a gimmick or a trick and have it not work because the randomizer said no, I don't think anyone would argue otherwise. It is however unreasonable for the response to be "GM, how could you let this happen?" ideally you'd have a table culture where you can all commiserate with each other that it all went to hell and if you've set the game up correctly there will still be a story to be experienced, just not the one you expected (this is playing to find out). If you have players that hate the possibility of random chance making them fail and taking the story where they didn't expect, then you need to either play a system without a randomizer or one that has mechanics that let you overrule it (Conan 2d20's Fortune is an example in my mind right now). Otherwise you have to accept that things will not go how you expect every time and be fine with that. The strength of having a randomizer is that you can attempt things that are unlikely to succeed and pull them off so the story goes in a different interesting direction and that you can do things that are normally rote and routine and have them also not go as you expect and the story go in a different interesting direction. There's dozens of stories in the good/bad/piss thread that have a goblin or chump enemy getting a wicked sick crit on a guy they needed a nat20 to hit and he became a recurring rival/nemesis and it was cool as hell as far as everyone involved was concerned. This is part of what makes some people (lunatics in my mind) love randomized crit effects, its because a thing happens and now the story is about your one-handed witch with a hook or whatever whereas if everything had gone as planned/expected it would have been a case of fireballing some goblins and move on. A lot of games have mechanics in place where if you have a certain chance of succeeding or an item or a skill then you just auto-succeed at basic tasks, like you don't have to roll to chop wood or whatever because the story is probably not going to go in an interesting direction because you successfully chopped 99 logs but that last one was a real doozy, but the games with these mechanics in place are also saying that the fact you can fail pivotal moments (like combat, talking to people, generally 'opposed' rolls) is really important to the sorts of things it wants you to do. There's also a distinction to be made between failing a roll because it was difficult and unlikely to succeed and failing your 99% chance of success roll six times in a row. The latter is "oof, this is bullshit" while the former is "guess your plan wasn't as good as we thought"
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Jun 21, 2020 17:31
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Well, ok.. I think this gets very philosophical at this point but hey, it's in the title of the thread so what the heck. It's a point in the difference between a person/character's actual experience, and the experience inferred from third-person observation, which is often paradoxical. "Dodge this" turns out to be a great example. It's a really cool scene. Would it be cool to be Trinity in that scene? It's quick to answer yes, but with a bit of extra thought it becomes plain that's actually wrong. Trinity is the one person in that scene for whom the scene has no coolness or surprise whatsoever. She cannot surprise herself with her own appearance. She made a prediction as to where the agent would be, went there and shot them. She could have been wrong, it just turned out she wasn't. This makes perfect sense when you think about it, but nonetheless there's that weird belief that Trinity's experience in that scene would be awesome which generates that initial answer of "yes" to the "would it be cool to be her?" question. And this is all over culture - pretty much any desire to be celebrity or anyone else on display ends up with some component of this. I think it's the tension between these three that results in situations like with the players I've experienced. They want to feel like they are Trinity, but they also want to reliably have cool scenes of that type. And those two turn out to be at odds with each other, because what's cool for viewers isn't necessarily cool for Trinity and vice versa. Now, how we deal with this in RPGs, where people tend to be projecting onto fictional characters who are defined only by that third-person experience. One way is to take the game entirely into the third-person experience, which is what AW and other games do. Do I feel like I "am" Fabian? No. Is it fun anyway? Yes. In fact, if I felt like I was Fabian it'd be less fun for the exact reason above. Fabian would not have been surprised by Fabian drawing silver bulets, he put them in his pocket before he left that morning and spent a few weeks making them. So this works great in that case, but at the same time it's different from the classic goals of RPGs, and could potentially be problematic if the experience of manufacturing silver bullets was a key part of the experience I wanted to have from the game (it wasn't). One way is to take it entirely into the first-person experience, which gets very grognardy. It means that Trinity's player literally does have to guess where the Agent's going to show up and hope they're right. Maybe they won't be, maybe they will never be in the entire campaign, but they will be making the same decisions Trinity would actually be making throughout. And the third way is what I guess we can awkwardly call "back propagating" the experience - that is, engineer the character so that their first person experience can be closer to the inferred one. In this case, this would mean giving Trinity the ability to teleport. In that case, what she did is literally what she appeared to do on screen. This reduces its significance for the other characters and the viewer, since if they know she can teleport, that tactic is no surprise; and it potentially unbalances the character or game. But on the other hand, Trinity's player gets the gold star - they get make the same decisions as (that version of) Trinity, and at the same time have the experience inferred from that moment in the film. And it seems that in indie we have a ton of narrative games that take the first approach, and a ton of OSR games that take the second, but very few that take the third. Which is a shame because it's the closest to the approach taken by D&D and the "mainstream" RPGs and associated with the abdundance of magic and in-character kewl powerz in those games. But trying to fix up that approach to deal with its issues (caster supremacy etc) should be an area of development rather than just abandoning it in the way that indie games seem to have done.
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Jun 21, 2020 18:25
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hyphz posted:And the third way is what I guess we can awkwardly call "back propagating" the experience - that is, engineer the character so that their first person experience can be closer to the inferred one. In this case, this would mean giving Trinity the ability to teleport. In that case, what she did is literally what she appeared to do on screen. This reduces its significance for the other characters and the viewer, since if they know she can teleport, that tactic is no surprise; and it potentially unbalances the character or game. But on the other hand, Trinity's player gets the gold star - they get make the same decisions as (that version of) Trinity, and at the same time have the experience inferred from that moment in the film. I'm not sure what the difference is between giving Trinity the ability to teleport and giving her an ability called Bonefeel that effectively lets her teleport.
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Jun 21, 2020 19:54
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admanb posted:I'm not sure what the difference is between giving Trinity the ability to teleport and giving her an ability called Bonefeel that effectively lets her teleport. Ask Trinity.
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Jun 21, 2020 20:06
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Your descriptions of the group sound like even if they lose with agency, they will wear the world out with their efforts to show it wasn't their fault and they got screwed somehow. hyphz's players, as described to this thread, are not really deriving fun from any RPG but from tormenting hyphz. TTRPG is merely the mechanism they use for toying with their chosen punching bag.
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Jun 21, 2020 20:11
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 20:24
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There are absolutely popular games that use the mode of ‘give players powers that let them replicate a genre, within a primarily simulation-y and structured setting’ - the Chronicles of Darkness games, for example. One Werewolf Power is literally ‘show up where they don’t expect to murder them’ which can be expressed either as teleportation or keen instincts for the hunt. In general these games go out of their way to construct mechanics that, when they’re working well, encourage players and characters to slide into genre tropes for in-setting reasons. They just hinge less on pure power fantasy and more of an alloy between power fantasy and horror, because that way the forces compelling characters action compel a mixture of good and bad things that players can feel like they’re struggling to control. The formula does a good job of that experience engine play style.
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Jun 21, 2020 20:33
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hyphz posted:"Dodge this" turns out to be a great example. It's a really cool scene. Would it be cool to be Trinity in that scene? It's quick to answer yes, but with a bit of extra thought it becomes plain that's actually wrong. Trinity is the one person in that scene for whom the scene has no coolness or surprise whatsoever. She cannot surprise herself with her own appearance. She made a prediction as to where the agent would be, went there and shot them. She could have been wrong, it just turned out she wasn't. This makes perfect sense when you think about it, but nonetheless there's that weird belief that Trinity's experience in that scene would be awesome which generates that initial answer of "yes" to the "would it be cool to be her?" question. And this is all over culture - pretty much any desire to be celebrity or anyone else on display ends up with some component of this. I strongly disagree with this reasoning and this, to me, frankly shocking conclusion. GM: "OK, Trinity, the Agent hit Neo and has him downed in the same zone as himself, at gunpoint. What do you do?" Trinity: "Hmm. The closer I can get to him, the less time he has to dodge... but if I get too close, I'm in hand to hand and he'll destroy me. Can I sneak up on him?" GM: "You can try. There's no cover at all, and the Agent knows you're here. Agents are also extremely perceptive, but he's currently distracted by having finally gotten Neo down. It's an opposed test and he's going to get a two-difficulty point bonus to his Perception because of the circumstances." Trinity: "OK I'm gonna spend... all of the remaining Momentum from the party pool, that's two dice plus my base two dice... you know what, I'm adding a point to the Doom pool to get a fifth die as well. We need this to work. The rest of the party: "Oh poo poo..." Trinity: "OK I rolled... wow. Four successes, plus that's a natural 1 which is another success. No Complications!" GM: "The Agent rolls three successes. You've won the Struggle, you've successfully snuck up on the Agent, and you have two Momentum..." Trinity: "Oh hell, I know what to do. I'm spending both Momentum on a Swift Action Momentum Spend to immediately gain another Standard Action..." GM: "You can do that, just remember it increases the Difficulty of this action by one step..." Trinity" And I'm gonna immediately shoot this bastard Agent right in the head at point blank range. GM: "OK, normally attack actions are always opposed, but the Agent doesn't know you're there." Trinity: "I go 'Dodge This' and then I shoot him right in the head." GM: "Called shot increases the Difficulty another step, so that's D3 unopposed test" Trinity: "I only have two dice and there's no momentum left. I'm... I'm gonna put another doom in the pool, for one more die..." The rest of the party: "oof, that's gonna be trouble next scene" Neo: "shut up guys, I'm about to die. Go for it Trin!" Trinity: <rolls> Three successes! Holy poo poo! Neo: "holy poo poo!" GM: You've aced the Agent. Wow! Hyphz: "Well, you see, that wasn't actually cool or fun for you, Trinity, because you knew all along it was what you were trying to do, or something." Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 20:51
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Why can't Trinity's player use an "anticipation roll" to get a sense of where the agent is? They're not Trinity, they're playing Trinity. Trinity isn't real, but being able to role-play them at all requires us to be able to infer their actions as if they were. If Neo had asked Trinity how she'd done "dodge this", what would she have said? Would she say "I teleported"? Would she say "Tank got a lead on his predicted coordinate and beamed it to me?" Or would she say "Eh, he looked like he was going to land there and I guessed lucky?" Now, which one of these did the player do in the game mechanics? How well do they match?
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Jun 21, 2020 20:53
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She'd say "he was so focused on shooting you, Neo, that I was able to get close to him without him realizing. Sneaky!" and Neo would go "whew, thanks Trinity, I'm stupid but you're smart and I'm super disappointed that you're not the protagonist instead of me" and then they would kiss.
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Jun 21, 2020 20:55
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Leperflesh posted:She'd say "he was so focused on shooting you, Neo, that I was able to get close to him without him realizing. Sneaky!" and Neo would go "whew, thanks Trinity, I'm stupid but you're smart and I'm super disappointed that you're not the protagonist instead of me" and then they would kiss. And that's cool. Your example is what I called the OSR approach being used successfully. But you can't judge a game experience that includes rolls, on one particular value of that roll. The delivered game experience also includes the possibilities of the sneak roll or the attack failing and the players being left with no Momentum and two points in the Doom pool. And when you watch "Dodge This" in the cinema, is your first reaction to think "Wow, she must have been thinking carefully about resource management in order to do that?"
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Jun 21, 2020 21:02
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 21:05
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This is a point we got stuck on earlier: That in many TTRPGs, you don't get to decide when your character succeeds vs fails at actions they attempt, you just get to try them. But, Hyphz - if she hadn't succeeded at that shot, with a competent GM Trinity and Neo would have other opportunities to succeed. Trinity could have said 'Dodge This' and the Agent dodged (or didn't die instantly) and another character could have helped finish the Agent off, or Neo could have escaped. With a competent GM, there's always ways that a player investing in an action like that does positive things for the team, even if they don't kill the antagonist. Just, a brief list of ways that could go if Trinity's player rolls real badly: The Agent manages to dodge, but Neo is alive, while Trinity is now fighting an extremely potent enemy. Play up the sacrifice involved, and give Trinity's player a few more chances to fight the Agent. The Agent reveals some new Agent power that lets it get up from the attack or prevent the gun killing it; the story has to go in a different direction. Trinity's player has other powers or effects to bring in, so maybe losing that one shot isn't the end of the world, and the player can say 'well it wasn't guaranteed but it was worth trying.' One thing it's true TTRPGs with rolled chances don't do is narratively structure player success to ensure their badass moments go perfectly, but another thing they can do with that is practice letting badasses not succeed. Characters who try to do something risky and fail aren't less badass as people, aren't less courageous or dedicated or clever, and it's the GM's job to highlight that. "Ok, you shoot an Agent (something nobody has managed to do in this scene!) but... these things aren't human, their bodies aren't real, and they don't die like they should. The Agent turns back to you with a glowing green hole in his face where your bullet came out, bleeding numbers. The agent - it, not he - sounds incredibly pissed off when it says, "You shouldn't have been able to do that." " Yes, this is playing fast and loose with Matrix canon but like, who cares? Play to lift your player characters in the fiction. Help them be how the players imagine them.
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Jun 21, 2020 21:24
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Leperflesh posted:I strongly disagree with this reasoning and this, to me, frankly shocking conclusion. Same. And this also works in a PbtA game if Trinity's player spends a Hold from an appropriate move. Hold is a great mechanic for genre emulation, and it cuts out a lot of mechanical work where the players have to interact with the dice and the rules instead of with what's happening in the fiction. Same result, just more abstract and less chance of the dice taking away a cool scene. And if I were playing Trinity ? In either system I'd be super stoked that I made something cool happen.
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Jun 21, 2020 21:27
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 15:44 |
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I've had plenty of in-game experiences where my character got to do badass stuff that was both supported by the system and involved emergent outcomes generated by the system, analogous to that thing with writing Trinity's cool moment as if it were in a tabletop. So like, these things are possible, if to a large extent subjective, and my fancy pants parable's point was: Your table's gotta be buying in. If they're laying there saying, "We need you to provide us with a mechanically rigorous system in which we never feel as if we're having the numbers fudged in our favor to any real extent, BUT ALSO it needs to make us feel like cool-rear end genre-appropriate badasses, AND ALSO if you don't do it we're going to bully you, AND IN ADDITION we should win prizes for watching," your group are being dipshits. I suspect that you (Hyphz that is) are generalizing out from some thoughtless commentary and your own interpretation of same, because as a fellow herbivore I recognize the signs of "I'm piecing together something from spotty casual indirect input" in your reasoning. As a final remark, I assume in the context of the film that Trinity was intended to have walked up to the Agent and shot him; he was simply completely focused on Neo, for obvious reasons, and did not see her coming. I am genuinely puzzled as to how this turns into "teleportation," except in so far as anyone who moves around between shots in a film is "teleporting." It might mechanically have some degree of, "OK just move next to him" if you're on a tactical grid, but that's because it really intensely loving sucks when you're one movement or two movement short of doing your drat thing, and the answer is either "complete your move, but don't do your thing!" or "do your thing at a substantial penalty, because you didn't complete your move!"
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Jun 21, 2020 21:34
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