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Ash Rose posted:Something I have been thinking about recently, especially in regard to differing styles of play between older and more modern style games, is the fact that everyone who plays these games are filling the role of both director and audience. Games like D&D tend to lean more towards players as audience, with hidden info, lesser player involvement in world-building, etc. GM-less games fully embrace this by having everyone be equal parts audience and director, and storygames do very firmly plant the ST as the one directing things, the players are all undoubtedly writers who get input and direct agency in the story being told, and even the ST is "playing to find out what happens" The terminology seems kind of like the Forge-developed "stance" theory. See Ron Edwards` take on it, enumerating four stances: Actor, Author, Director, and Pawn (a limited subset of Author, in his view). He rejects the notion of Audience stance, but what you call Audience looks like more of somewhere around Actor and Pawn, while your Director is kind of somewhere between his Director and Actor.
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Oct 12, 2021 15:55
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people posted:Stance Theory This is really neat! thanks for sharing, I'll give this a read.
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Oct 12, 2021 15:56
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Ok, so after going through this, while I can see how there is some overlap in terms, Edwards is talking about how we approach what actions a player takes, and that's not what I was trying to get at. Arguably what I was talking about was closer to GNS, though breaking it down on different lines. Another example of this is wanting to know outcomes of rolls, like if a game calls for you to roll a knowledge check to see how well you understand a thing. An audience apprach would be you not wanting to know so when the GM reveals it one way or the other, you are surprised, wheras in a director mode you might see if its good or bad, and the GM may well tell you if its true, and you can play up being knowledgeable and capable or buffoonish and overconfident depending on the roll. You might liken these to the Actor/Author stances, but the distinction there is that is about what actions you take based on the knowledge you have, whereas what I am talking about is what information and control you have as either a player or GM.
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Oct 12, 2021 16:19
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GNS itself is.. kinda broken.
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Oct 12, 2021 16:46
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Ash Rose posted:Ok, so after going through this, while I can see how there is some overlap in terms, Edwards is talking about how we approach what actions a player takes, and that's not what I was trying to get at. Arguably what I was talking about was closer to GNS, though breaking it down on different lines. Another example of this is wanting to know outcomes of rolls, like if a game calls for you to roll a knowledge check to see how well you understand a thing. An audience apprach would be you not wanting to know so when the GM reveals it one way or the other, you are surprised, wheras in a director mode you might see if its good or bad, and the GM may well tell you if its true, and you can play up being knowledgeable and capable or buffoonish and overconfident depending on the roll. You might liken these to the Actor/Author stances, but the distinction there is that is about what actions you take based on the knowledge you have, whereas what I am talking about is what information and control you have as either a player or GM. I think it might be best to use different terminology, then, because the stance thing is pretty well-developed (even beyond GNS, whatever that means at this point). If it's about knowledge, maybe "discoverer" vs "generator"?
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Oct 12, 2021 16:48
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I think it might be best to use different terminology, then, because the stance thing is pretty well-developed (even beyond GNS, whatever that means at this point). If it's about knowledge, maybe "discoverer" vs "generator"? Yeah, I think your initial terminology was a little confusing. In my mind, the big difference between the two types of play you described is that in one, the players are all involved on all layers of the narrative, while in the other the gm is giving the players a situation and the players then drive the action of creating a story within those bounds. "Audience" invokes more of a railroad or storyteller vibe, which I'd call more of a third style that rose to prominence in the middle years of the hobby
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Oct 12, 2021 16:56
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hyphz posted:GNS itself is.. kinda broken. It’s only “broken” if you assume it’s a taxonomic categorization rather than a lens of critique, and it’s pretty emphatically the latter. In the exact same way that, say, you can view The Thing as a text through a trans perspective regardless of how or if Carpenter intended it to be. It’s one technique for engaging with design, albeit one with flaws that require careful use : just like you half to have care when using statistical modeling or case studies or experimentation if you want to get anything worthwhile out of it.
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Oct 12, 2021 16:58
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OtspIII posted:Yeah, I think your initial terminology was a little confusing. In my mind, the big difference between the two types of play you described is that in one, the players are all involved on all layers of the narrative, while in the other the gm is giving the players a situation and the players then drive the action of creating a story within those bounds. While I think you are getting more of the vibe, I still dispute the idea that this is in any way player-specific, this exists in GM-less games and even within them you might end up doing each to different degrees, Fiasco gives you a ton more control of what goes on and very much places you in the roll of the one calling the shots trying to craft a narrative, another example of that style would be Final Bid. You could also have GM-less games much more focused on discovering what happens rather than crafting it, with a lot of random tables, dice rolls for results, etc. I understand that the overlap with Edwards's terms are confusing, but I am being pretty intentional with the language, I do genuinely think some aspects of the hobby, the way people play the game, and the way systems are designed, can be explained or at least examined in an interesting way if you try and frame it from the perspective of viewing certain people as being "behind the camera" or not.
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Oct 12, 2021 17:10
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In this day and age where RPGing actually does sometimes happen with cameras and mics, "audience" is an increasingly legitimate role/persona. And the audience does have some interaction with the game, depending on platform and format. But, I appreciate that the intent here was that sometimes, players at the table are taking on a more passive stance. I'm thinking of stuff like when the GM is reading text from notes during the prologue or intro to an adventure, for example; or, what several players might be doing while one player and the GM do a single-character event/moment/scene. Audiences interact! They clap and cheer or boo and hiss. These things add to the game! They're worth talking about and considering. I think the director/writer/actor paradigm is a useful one, especially when I think about certain TV shows where it's well known that the actors did a fair bit of improv. RPGs likely still involve more improvisation than any dramatic show (we're discounting Who's Line etc. because they don't create show-long narratives) but they also have writer and director (and producer and assistant director and key grip etc.) "hats" that people at the table may put on a lot or a little. But this metaphor or rubric for thinking about what we're doing while gaming is also just a model and as with all models of course it's not perfect, so of course you can find flaws in the model.
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Oct 12, 2021 17:37
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Leperflesh posted:But this metaphor or rubric for thinking about what we're doing while gaming is also just a model and as with all models of course it's not perfect, so of course you can find flaws in the model. Yeah, for sure! I am not under any illusion that this is like, a comprehensive or wholistic way of looking at things, just a lens that I think can give some insight.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:14
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Ash Rose posted:I understand that the overlap with Edwards's terms are confusing, but I am being pretty intentional with the language, I do genuinely think some aspects of the hobby, the way people play the game, and the way systems are designed, can be explained or at least examined in an interesting way if you try and frame it from the perspective of viewing certain people as being "behind the camera" or not. I think you're going to come into a lot more confusion if you insist on using terms that already have hefty baggage behind them, not just in RPG theory circles, but in common parlance, as well.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:21
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Leperflesh posted:In this day and age where RPGing actually does sometimes happen with cameras and mics, "audience" is an increasingly legitimate role/persona. And the audience does have some interaction with the game, depending on platform and format. But, I appreciate that the intent here was that sometimes, players at the table are taking on a more passive stance. I'm thinking of stuff like when the GM is reading text from notes during the prologue or intro to an adventure, for example; or, what several players might be doing while one player and the GM do a single-character event/moment/scene. Audiences interact! They clap and cheer or boo and hiss. These things add to the game! They're worth talking about and considering. It’s also worth keeping in mind that “improvisation” in the context of film and television often happens during things like table reads or as side-work done by actors off set. Filming and film itself are incredibly expensive, so while there are some high-profile examples of literally coming up with stuff while shooting or on stage, more often “improvised” parts would be better summarized as “actor-driven”. Big chunks of Taxi Driver were improvised, for example, by De Niro in the sense that they weren’t in the script, but he approached Scorcese with his suggestions for scenes and then they were planned and shot : if he’d gone rogue and just started making stuff up while cameras were rolling everyone would be rightly pissed because he’d have been basically loving off on the job while an entire crew with very expensive equipment stood there wasting resources. Similarly Harrison Ford didn’t make up the iconic sword vs. gun scene in the moment because the prop gun was a still a real gun firing blanks and that could’ve killed someone.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:33
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Right, yeah. But that's not that different to: the GM has set up a scene in advance, maybe even knows the outcome (the PCs are going to get past this obstacle one way or another), but doesn't know exactly what the PCs are going to say. There have been TV shows and even films where the actors may have a script, but they have leeway to not precisely quote the script, they can interject with another line if they want, etc. Of course there's more flexibility at the table: for one thing, you can improvise aspects of (or the entire) set! That's missing the point, which is that it's useful to think of players at the table having a mix of privileges, which can be conceptualized with names like "actor," "director," "writer," and even "set designer."
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Oct 12, 2021 18:49
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O yes, exactly. I was just underscoring that they're analogs and not direct apples-to-apples comparisons because it's important for clarity. It can be very useful to use the phrasing of something else to describe things, but if you start taking a metaphor literally you can get poor use.
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Oct 12, 2021 19:23
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Honestly, I think if you're going to go with a performance analogue, something live like a band or theater is closer than film.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:32
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Honestly, I think if you're going to go with a performance analogue, something live like a band or theater is closer than film. I like the theatre angle, what do you think might be analogous terms?
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Oct 12, 2021 20:44
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actor, director, set designer, audience...
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Oct 12, 2021 20:46
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Dramaturgy is a cool word, and is also an important aspect of theater prep that might translate to scenario prep. Even if you're not going to LARP, "I want to run a game set in the Middle Ages" could lead you to think "well, what kinds of NPCs will there be in this tiny village on the Danube", "what kind of literature should I immerse myself in to bring the theme of dealing with the plague to the game", etc.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:50
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KingKalamari posted:Sorry, I should clarify that I'm not thinking about class features/design when I say "mechanical foundation" - I realize in hindsight that's probably an important thing to clarify for a class-based game. There are a lot of problems with the classes themselves, but I think that is a problem that could be addressed without needing to fundamentally change the core task resolution mechanics or math. 5E's math works because there’s so little of it, it’s replaced most class differences with the proficiency bonus and made numbers scale slower or not at all. It's actually frustrating because I as a player still have to fiddle with ability scores and racial bonuses to make sure I have high numbers in the right stats so that I can roll the same numbers as everyone else at the party. You could just print all of the expected derived stats in a table and check from that!  None of this actually means anything unless the class and monster designs are tight, which they demonstrably ain't. Also the stealth rules are missing, so even the skill system don’t work right.
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Nov 10, 2021 07:07
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So this appeared on Industry but it seems appropriate and interesting enough to raise here as well. Plenty of RPG GMing advice, and even RPG rulebooks themselves, exalt the idea of "creative use of a power" but without actually giving a definition of what this means, even when not doing so results in apparently breaking the mechanical balance of the game. The example (posted by Coolness Averted) was one in which players were fighting essentially a giant tentacle monster that lived in water - in D&D 4e. Coolness represented each of the creature's tentacles as having a separate turn and actions. One player was playing a Swordmage. The Swordmage has an ability Aegis of Ensnarement which allows them to "mark" a monster by hitting it. Then, if the monster does not include the Swordmage in its attack, the swordmage can react by teleporting the monster adjacent to themselves. (This style of mechanic, to force enemies to attack stronger martial characters instead of weaker ones, was standard for the Defender role in 4e.) What the player wanted to do was to hit the monster (or one of the tentacles) once and then run away from the water's edge, leaving the octopus unable to reach them from the water and thus unable to include them in the attack - and also unable to attack anyone else, since if the octopus attacked any other party member, the PC would use Aegis of Ensnarement to teleport it next to them - that is, onto land - and then presumably leave it to suffocate. The player saw it as a "creative application" of the power the system gave them. The GM saw it as an abuse of a power that would essentially trivialise any enemy with environmental restrictions (and D&D 4e did have this problem with other powers too, such as the Ranger's Unbalancing Parry in the core). So what's the real goal here? It's commonly suggested that a creative application means a situational one - but this case was situational. Does it have to be somehow unique or non-formulaic, and if it isn't, how is it denied without breaking consistency? What does "creative" even mean in this case? (Does having watched an action movie in the last 10 years count as "creative"?)
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Nov 10, 2021 13:09
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hyphz posted:So what's the real goal here? It's commonly suggested that a creative application means a situational one - but this case was situational. Does it have to be somehow unique or non-formulaic, and if it isn't, how is it denied without breaking consistency? What does "creative" even mean in this case? (Does having watched an action movie in the last 10 years count as "creative"?) I mean, I love creative solutions to problems in RPGs--it's the main thing I enjoy about the medium--but it's not something I try to do mid-combat in 4e, since it completely misses the point of what's good about 4e. That's an ability that works well within the confines of a self-contained mechanical system, but the ability to forcefully teleport your opponents at little to no cost is hilariously overpowered if you're allowed to use it creatively. It's exactly the kind of cool ability that 4e deemphasizing creative common-sense mid-combat problem solving allows for, but it's also the type of ability that means that you really shouldn't be angling for those kinds of strategies unless you want everything to break. So, my take is that you should just try to make sure everyone's on the same page as to what type of game you're about to play. Maybe chocolate is my favorite flavor of food, but that doesn't mean I'm going to insist on pouring chocolate syrup over a steak dinner--some games just aren't about certain activities. Sort of like was said last thread. . . theironjef posted:I generally just say like "Whoa, you payed a ton of money to play Great War of Magellan or Vanishing Point or whatever. Don't you wanna actually play it?" and it's fine from there. As much as I like trying to solve problems on the narrative layer in RPGs, if the RPG you're playing is doing something cool on a different layer it's silly to try to sidestep it. I think it's fair to just tell the octopus-teleporter "that's not what this game is about", and then try to make sure there's a better matching of player expectation/desire and system in the future.
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Nov 10, 2021 15:10
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that octopus is still going to take a few (many?) rounds to suffocate right? I honestly don't see a huge issues there.
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Nov 10, 2021 15:18
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I think it's hilarious that there has been all this years-long pushback on comparing 4E to an MMO, and yet several people's solution to a completely reasonable interpretation of the rules leading to an unexpectedly overpowered result is "nerf it". I mean, sure, you don't have to wait for a software patch, but still.  Okay, I'm being unfair: the WoW devs usually aren't this angry at users for daring to play the game they're given and find an exploit.
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Nov 10, 2021 15:20
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punishedkissinger posted:that octopus is still going to take a few (many?) rounds to suffocate right? I honestly don't see a huge issues there. There's also no reason why it would be immobile removed from the water. Real octopi certainly aren't. Depending on how the DM felt about it, maybe its first priority would be to move back to the water and maybe it wouldn't, but this isn't necessarily an example of an 'I WIN' button.
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Nov 10, 2021 15:37
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punishedkissinger posted:that octopus is still going to take a few (many?) rounds to suffocate right? I honestly don't see a huge issues there. Nah man, the issue is this is a tactical giant octopus fight. You know those work, right? You're all on the wrecking ship and there's an octopus head piece and some octopus tentacle pieces on the board. We all pretend each octopus tentacle is its own unit - you can knock one tentacle back from the ship and not send the whole octopus flying after it, because the conceit is there's a lot more octopus tentacle you don't see or care about. But if they are their own units, then you can't kill or move or debuff everything on the map just by doing it to one tentacle. I'm pretty sure that a lot more people would agree with the creative use of the swordmage teleshoot power to get yourself and a fellow party member out of a tavern brawl, by getting them to throw a punch at you and teleporting yourself and "your attacker" away. That's using the power to accomplish the purpose of the scene, to deal with the tavern brawl, rather than to reframe the scene entirely by invalidating the tactical abstraction.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:30
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I had a similar idea at first blush that just having the individual tentacle teleport and wow now a functioning tentacle is coming out of a wall magic is weird. (And we’ve found a compromise that somewhat rewards the player without demolishing the gameplay.) However, while novel ways to handle it as a DM are good thought exercises and practice for coming up with cool table rulings, we’re not really engaging with the question as asked. It’s not “how could I deal with this specific monster-player interaction?”, it’s “how do you balance novel solutions vs utilizing the standard system? Here is an example of that tension.” Only engaging with the example isn’t really trying to answer the question, unless you’re saying that the problem itself doesn’t exist and there will always be an ideal compromise possible at the table : which is just a fancy version of “a good GM will fix it”.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:34
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Xiahou Dun posted:I had a similar idea at first blush that just having the individual tentacle teleport and wow now a functioning tentacle is coming out of a wall magic is weird. (And we’ve found a compromise that somewhat rewards the player without demolishing the gameplay.) Okay, so try this: it's the difference between acting in the scene as the GM has framed it and breaking the GM's frame to reframe things to suit you. Teleporting one tentacle acts within the frame; teleporting the whole octopus breaks it. There's absolutely some measure of GM skill at play here, in that one of the skills of "a good GM" is to be able to frame a scene with a definite goal and a broad scope of possible actions that don't break the frame.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:48
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I think there's really three things going on that can be investigated: 1. The swordmage has an ability with a specific set of mechanics, but those mechanics aren't flexible enough to anticipate or work (as intended?) in every possible situation 2. The GM hasn't accounted for every character's full set of abilities in designing the encounter. Which is understandable, because doing that is very very hard 3. The GM has intentionally bent or ignored or bypassed the rules. They've done so for good reason - to create a unique and interesting encounter - but in doing so, they've also set up a situation where the game's rules will encounter the rule-breaking in unanticipated ways. For 1: does the ability have a maximum opponent size that can be teleported? What if the swordmage has an item that lets them fly, and they step off a cliff. Is it intended that they can drop enemies to their deaths? What if they tag an enemy, and then make themselves completely inaccessible - there's many ways to do that - what happens to the enemy? I don't, honestly, remember the full halo of rules surrounding the swordmage's ability, so maybe the game provides answers for some of these questions: but in an RPG, I think creative players are likely to find ways to try to exploit this ability, or perhaps just exploratively discover its limits. IMO in a healthy gaming environment, the GM and player would collaborate to find "reasonable" answers - be a fan of the character, let them be a badass, it's OK to occasionally blow away what was going to be a tough encounter, but, also find reasonable limits that maintain reasonable party and game balance. For 2: I think this is inevitable, and part of GM skill is developing instincts and habits for dealing with these situations. As above, occasionally a character will blow away an encounter, or, perhaps find an encounter unexpectedly deadly, because the GM forgot about some detail (or the player did). How much hinges on this giant octopus being an aquatic fight against a bunch of tentacles and a head? Maybe there's already minis on a board, maybe the GM needs a 15m break to stat out a "whole octopus" differently, I dunno. It's OK to call a time out or take a few minutes to figure out what to do, and being honest and saying "Oh, I forgot you could do that, let me figure it out" is a totally good and fine thing to do in a game. I also don't think #2 is a thing you can completely eliminate through "good game writing" - any RPG is likely to have something like this come up from time to time. For 3: This is kind of one of the hazards of creatively changing the rules. I mean, in 4e you can just have a really really big enemy, they take up X squares, there's rules for this... but those rules maybe weren't' flexible enough (like you can't occupy the same square as an enemy, so you couldn't "stand in the middle" between a tentacle and the body of the monster...) so the GM decided to be creative and make up a multi-part, semi-disconnected creature. That, to me, maybe highlights limitations in the rules themselves (the game doesn't anticipate wanting this specific encounter flavor?) but also it's probably unreasonable to point at the swordmage's ability as broken in any way if it's being applied to a situation that wasn't by the book. Instead, it's incumbent on the person who decides to start hacking the rules, to cope with unexpected consequences of doing so. Some games have to be hacked, because their rules are broken as written, but that's covered by #1: with #3, this was a voluntary decision to deviate from the book. e. all of this is more or less separate from the question of how to design a game and run a game in a way that allows players to be creative in ways the rules didn't specifically encode or anticipate. I guess. They're all related to that, though, even if the specific example isn't exactly that. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Nov 10, 2021 |
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Nov 10, 2021 19:52
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The swordmage's ability here hinges on whether there's an upper limit on how big the critter is that they can teleport. If it's size M only, then the 'port fails even if they're targeting an individual tentacle, because the tentacle is part of a larger whole no matter how you're representing it on the map. If there isn't an upper limit, then the swordmage can teleport tarrasques around, which is, uh, interesting.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:07
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Just to get us on the same page I'm assuming this is not some fancy power but the basic class feature aegis of ensnarement:quote:At will, teleportation, minor action, close burst 2 Yes, you can yoink the tarrasque 50 feet. ...probably. I dunno if it resists teleport effects or not. A standard teleport rider that does not appear in this power is that if you try to teleport something into a dangerous situation such as a fall, acid pit, or black abyss, they get a save, and I know the tarrasque is p. good at saves. In this type 3 frame, one octopus tentacle is one target. You don't get to interdict the entire octopus attacking people, so you don't get to teleport it all either. Glazius fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Nov 10, 2021 |
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Nov 10, 2021 20:24
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In this specific case, I don't see why the tentacle just gets teleported with the swordmage and then acts normally for a few more turns until killed. The teleport severs it from the rest of the kraken, but since it's a tentacle, it can survive and continue to act for a bit when severed.
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Nov 10, 2021 20:29
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Another approach is to say that the octopus is using up 81 squares of space under the water or whatever, the characters are all one or more "levels" above the body and the tentacles are just reaching up into squares on their level, each can be treated independetly for targeting etc. but there's still actually one big monster there: and there isn't room to place the whole thing next to the character, so the teleport fails per the rule. But to address the "creativity" angle, maybe the teleport stretches the tentacle out really long! What I'd want to avoid is a screeching halt to the action while we discuss and debate exactly what a "teleport" is. It invites questions, like what if two monsters are holding hands and I mark and then teleport one. OK what if they're tied together. What if one is riding the other. What if one is literally inside another. As soon as you start improvising mechanics to apply to a situation that wasn't anticipated, you kind of open the door to this sort of argument. Some folks genuinely relish these arguments, they can be a fun way to explore an imaginary space together... but if you want to keep the action of a scene going, it's best to make a quick ruling that isn't massively unsatisfying for anyone. And either severing a tentacle, or stretching it, would accomplish that but leave lingering questions about how teleport works, while just saying "it doesn't work this time" is maybe unsatisfying for the player especially if they just spent two rounds setting it up, but also a reasonable call based on the mechanics given of the power.
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Nov 10, 2021 21:02
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Glazius posted:Okay, so try this: it's the difference between acting in the scene as the GM has framed it and breaking the GM's frame to reframe things to suit you. Teleporting one tentacle acts within the frame; teleporting the whole octopus breaks it. Yes, exactly. I'm pointing out that in the original framing, the question is a general one so solving the specific case of the tentacle isn't helpful. It's an illustration of the issue, not the issue itself.
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Nov 10, 2021 21:02
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Yeah. The classical example is the swinging on the chandelier. The GM put the chandelier there, the player then attempted to engage with it to do something swashy and cool in a scene, and then we figure out how it works. The main pitfalls being:
This is not, notably, an argument for building chandelier mechanics into every roleplaying game. But it is a thorny issue that begs consideration. Characters are equipped with explicit (mechanically statted) and implicit (not statted but "ought to be able to") capacities, and players are usually encouraged in some way to be creative in roleplaying games, including in combat. But dealing with their creativity is challenging, can set unfortunate precedents, and can expose limitations or weaknesses in the game mechanics.
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Nov 10, 2021 21:12
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I think another one that comes up often is the airburst question. Pretty much every d20 game has a fireball spell. In pretty much every such game, a key disadvantage of that spell is that it is non selective; it will hurt your buddies if they're caught in the area. This means that it usually has to be used at the start of an encounter before melee fighters have entered battle, which has a bunch of weakening effects: it makes it difficult to use if ambushed, it means it has to be used based on an estimate of the enemy's strength, and so on. So, usually sooner or later the question will come up: if the enemy is Large, can you throw a fireball into the air so that it bursts 5' above the heads of the party, but catches the enemy's top half in the edge of the burst? It makes sense. It doesn't break any rules, although the modelling of character height is extremely weak in most rule sets. But it is not generally clear that an enemy being Large is intended to be a possibly significant weakness. If it's like a giant or something it would be understandable as the distinction as clear, and that's a very powerful opponent. But a Large creature can be, like, just a regular bear.
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Nov 10, 2021 22:58
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I've personally allowed my players the airburst Fireball when I've ran 5e, and to be honest unless the enemy is surrounded on literally all four sides by friendlies, it's only extremely rarely superior to centering the fireball behind the target and catching them with the explosion's edge, since there's no damage falloff from center or anything to incentive otherwise. For my part I've done enough magic pixel hunting in XCOM to expect it from any tactics game that isn't extremely rigidly grid-bound, so I can't be surprised if my players do likewise. For the extremely small number of spells with both a primary target and a secondary AoE (Ice Knife comes to mind), I think the monster would have to be a lot bigger than the player before I'd allow it.
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Nov 10, 2021 23:30
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I think that's the kind of thing where it's a good opportunity for GM discretion. Maybe a flat check they can get better at as they level if the creatures are within one size of each other. Chance that the elf gets singed but the dwarf escapes. I have to catch up onto the thread but I've been playing a lot of paranoia 2e, where everything is GM discretion. The goal is to make the players laugh and betray each other in a dystopian hellhole. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Nov 11, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2021 00:02
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Leperflesh posted:The classical example is the swinging on the chandelier. The GM put the chandelier there, the player then attempted to engage with it to do something swashy and cool in a scene, and then we figure out how it works. The main pitfalls being: I think the chandelier example lives on two similar but distinct, uhh, threads of this discussion. There are two big reasons to give a bonus for interacting with the established fiction: if it's useful and if it's cool. Both can be good, but different campaigns will probably want to reward them to different degrees. Rewarding useful/smart play (dousing the fire elemental with a bucket full of water) encourages creative problem solving. Rewarding cool play (swinging from the chandelier) encourages dramatic storytelling. The chandelier swing is cool but not really useful in most situations. I think this actually makes it in some ways simpler to handle--if the players are trying to take an action that genuinely seems more effective than default attacks, it should probably work for as long as it's available. If they're attempting something cool, though, they should probably only get a bonus for as long as it's cool and novel. It never stops being a good way to evade a bunch of AoO while getting down the stairs fast, but it only gives bonus damage the first time. I'm generally not a big fan of these clever ideas just being a damage bonus or whatever, in the first place. In practice, functional ideas tend to be more "trick the orcs into splitting up before attacking" and less "+2 to hit every time you tell a goblin their shoe's untied".
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Nov 11, 2021 00:04
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Swinging off a chandelier is also risky, though. There's a reason people usually just use the stairs.
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Nov 11, 2021 00:09
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Old school referees like to ask "Are you sure you want to do that?" when the players ask to do something which seems ridiculous, but I've found it more productive to ask "What do you expect to achieve by that?", which is a good way of establishing how the players are envisaging the world as working and giving yourself a chance to clarify how you think the world works. To take the chandelier swing as an example: one player might say "I can swing past that whole line of guards and get an attack on each of them just by holding my mace out, and they won't be able to counter-attack me because I'll swing past too fast!" This seems both implausible and something which will make the fight un-fun so maybe I won't go for that unless the guards are genuinely just mooks who PCs should be scattering like dead leaves every turn. A different player might say "since I'm trapped up here on the balcony, swinging on the chandelier will allow me to quickly get over to the other side of the room and join up with the rest of the party. That seems both more plausible and a cool way to get out of a bind. I like the idea of establishing whether you are going by rule-of-useful or rule-of-cool (and have had fun in games in both modes), and with getting diminishing returns if you keep spamming the same tired thing if rule-of-cool is in effect.
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Nov 11, 2021 00:53
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