TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Kale!

That aside it is a pretty sheet.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2015 23:44

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:27

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Potsticker posted:

The only RPG out of France I've seen is Cadwallon and it is absolutely one of my favorite TRPGs ever.

If you're familiar with Battlestations, where every action is gameified to make the whole thing more like a board game, that's basically Cadwallon. Even social interactions and it is fantastic.

I see that there is an English version of Cadwallon. One book, how does it compare to 4e D&D rules wise? A game that scratches the 4e itch without being a huge errata riddled mass of books sound pretty good to me. Before it is suggested I have backed Strike.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 23:47

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Thank you, all that sounds like the kind of thing I am into, so I figure I am going to look into it. Confusing rules and overwriting are endemic to most pre-2000 RPG's anyhow, and I have muddled through those just fine over the years.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 00:23

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Well shooting does kind of cut through all the complications inherent to social interaction and problem solving. When you have a gun, everything starts to look like a target.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 01:42

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

It's a problem inherent to the gaming pastime, traditional or video. Violence is simpler and easier to model than everything else*. The problem is how you game up the other stuff without trivializing it, and how you make it fun.

*Not real violence of course, but the cinematic model. MMA gaming is a good example of this, as they still have quite a bit of trouble making grappling and groundwork fun.

remusclaw fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jul 31, 2015

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 01:49

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Siivola posted:

Racing is just as simple to gamify as violence, and I'd argue it also lends itself to better models of both reality and fiction. Tradgame violence hardly ever resembles the action movie spectacle, and many video games struggle as well.

This is my bimonthly rant against violence in games.

It's just a big loving rut we've been stuck in since Gary wrote that stupid wargame supplement. A bunch of dudes wander deep into a perilous dungeon, risking their lives for treasure, which is cool and all, but every sodding game since has followed the formula of "A bunch of dudes [delve/stumble/are drawn] deep into [danger], risking their lives for [a commodity or goal]." And I just realized the common denominator here isn't violence, it's that lives are at stake. You just can't have drama without the highest stakes am I right? Violence is the easiest solution because it's all about them lives at stake.

And even that's been hosed up now that we're all too cynical to believe the protagonist would ever die, or at least not get better. Now it's other people's lives that are actually on the line, because that's the easiest way to keep stakes high while making sure the game won't grind to halt at failure and we can sell the next part of the adventure path to these guys.

True about racing, though I would say that it shares about as much commonality with reality as game violence does. I spend most racing games doing escalating bits of cars violence to my opponents as I run them into divides and use their cars to help get me around corners.

I really like the idea of gaming things other than violence. Where it hits the snag as I said was in being fun first of all, and second in not trivializing it. I have seen long screeds written about gaming companies doing it the wrong way, with Pathfinder and its numbers based romance in their adventure paths sticking out in my mind. People find non violent activities to be important, and so modeling it requires at least as much care as does modeling violence, but what is the right way to do that? Bioware style dialog trees are a new fun way to play a choose your own adventure, limited by needing to funnel you through the same set pieces regardless of your choices. Free-form is what people have been doing for forever when it comes to social interaction, and it works except when it doesn't, but it really isn't part of the game, it relies on the player and the game-master to be on the same page to get any results worth getting, and also necessitates player skill over all else. Skill rules tend toward a dry treatment of such things, the most mechanically consistent and by far most boring approach. Finally there are games like Fate where everything is combat, or more specifically, combat is the same as everything else, and here we hit the problem of whether everything should be modeled in the same way as combat. Does that trivialize violence or does it de-emphasize it as the only solution? I don't have answers, but violence, while a fun part of gaming, shouldn't be the end all of what it consists.

Drama. Have we stripped all the drama from violence? I cant remember the last time an action movie had me tense about the fate of the hero or his or her loved one. Death in video games means a short bit of backtracking and in an RPG it generally means a resurection or a new character being rolled. I don't mean games should be all about PKing, but are we averse to drama as a society? Is that why we stick to no consequences violence and avoid political drama or relationship drama, is it all too awkward for us to engage with? Alternatively, is this just a symptom of escapist entertainment, not to engaged with beyond how it makes us feel in the moment and discarded at a whim as we get back to our lives?

remusclaw fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jul 31, 2015

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 21:28

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

ProfessorCirno posted:

The idea that ALL MEDIA FOREVER involves a lot of violence because of crazy ol' Gygax and his wargames is pretty silly at best. Violence in a fictional setting can be and is pretty exciting - as the entire history of human beings telling stories goes. Before video games there were TV shows which were fine with using violence or the threat thereof to raise the stakes. Before that there were movies - hell, in 1903 The Great Train Robbery, grainy black and white with no sound, had an evil outlaw draw his gun up to shoot the audience. Are we going to claim books never had violence? That war has never been glorified in stories? How many mythological characters don't kill a dude? How many stories of heroism don't involve violence?

This isn't to say all games forever need to be about peoples' lives in danger, but to rail that it happens at all is kinda out there.

The problem with violence in tabletop games is that it's so often boring. But that's because for plenty of tabletop games everything is. It's all cold, passionless, and clinical. That's a hard one to fix when the only real conflict resolution that seems to exist is rolling some dice, but the neverending push for "immersive" games that abandon emotion for trying to be as "realistic" as possible sure as hell doesn't help. What sucks out the fun of throwing a fireball faster then using that space to explain the exact dimensions of it and telling players to bring out a ruler?

I honestly don't blame anything on Gygax, he just published a game before other people did. His big win was in being first. That game, OD&D is neither good in its rules, writing, or presentation, but it gets a pass because it is first. Violence is the history of human kind, it is inherently dramatic because it is, by the traditional view of history, the reason for why things change. Escapism takes violence and removes its impact, making it all sound and fury signifying nothing. But gently caress, escapism is fun and we all need it sometimes, I just want to see some non violent escapism gamed in a fun way. Where is His Girl Friday the rpg, or The West Wing?

remusclaw fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 31, 2015

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:05

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Mecha Gojira posted:

Gonna write an Aaron Sorkin based TTRPG, except everyone is dragon people and robots and poo poo.

Nice roll with your witty remark. +2 power bonus to diplomacy with your ex-girlfriend/producer until the end of the encounter. Ooh, scathing take down. You have advantage against millenials and kobolds.

I know you're joking, but applying D20 language kills it for me. This of course hits the problem, not insurmountable I hope, of how do you make it fun.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:21

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

mycot posted:

Okay you're right, gladiators own.

And they too were playing a game of violence that only rarely truly resembled the real thing. They were athletes who endorsed products, made stacks of money, fought mostly to first blood, and got better medical care than the masses. Death matches being the rare and heavily promoted exception to the rule.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:27

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

Siivola posted:

Edit: Oh poo poo you guys posted a whole page when I was writing this thing.

There are actually a bunch of others, you're right. Golden Sky Stories got mentioned too, there's Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and there's a couple of other expressly nonviolent games. And there's also a handful of games that have explicit rules for escalating the violence, which means their default stakes are somewhere below "rip its spine out or be de-spined". Fate, Burning Wheel derivatives and, hilariously enough, old-school D&D spring to mind.

It's nice to have these things, yes. And I'm a big dumb for not actually playing any of these games. (Especially since I even own a bunch.)

Maybe the real windmill that I'm trying to tilt at is how few things characters really have that make an actual game difference, aside from their hit points. To manage, y'know? Used to be a fighter had a whole drat castle to run, and his cleric buddy had a congregation, and that meant something because if you didn't take care of them when the GM sent the orcs into town, you'd have to hire people to go into that dungeon you found. Even money meant something because you'd have to spend it on people to get poo poo done.

Or something, I don't actually have a clue how old-rear end D&D worked. But you get what I'm getting at, right?

Old rear end D&D worked however your local group played it. Only Gygax and friends ever played like Gygax and friends because the game was poorly written to the point where everyone pretty much built their own game out of the cool ideas the text seemed to imply. This kind of thing ultimately resulted in things like Arduin and Runequest.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:30

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 21:27

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

PublicOpinion posted:

Was gladiatorial combat a work or shoot?

Probably both at various times. Story was Pro Wrestling was a shoot once upon a time, but money talks and drama sells more than hour long headlocks.

E: Sports are still drama and not escapism, you can tell because of how seriously people take it, and how often it leads to real life violence.

remusclaw fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jul 31, 2015

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 22:36

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG July Chat Thread: Practical Transhumanist Roleplaying