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» Ship of Fools   » Ship's Locker   » Limbo   » Circus: The Dungeon Master's Guild: constructing a Ship- friendly RPG (Page 14)

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Source: (consider it) Thread: Circus: The Dungeon Master's Guild: constructing a Ship- friendly RPG
IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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DT, I'm not sure that it makes much sense to discuss this in detail. Given the level of personal involvement and sheer time spend on these things, I think there's a very fine line between "critique" and "insult" here. And I'm known to trample happily over any number of fine lines... A few comments, nevertheless.

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
It is really not that uncommon to begin a campaign where you start and discover immediately or very soon into the game that you are currently captured and all your equipment is elsewhere, or you have fallen through a portal into another world, or there is a time rift or whatever.

(Temporary) loss of equipment is different from messing with the stats and skill sets of characters, is different again from manipulating their core assumptions about what sort of character they are going to play. I spend about two hours thinking through my character. There simply is a difference between putting what I have come up with to the test by various situations and changing it without me being able to do anything about it. At some point you have to ask whether I'm still OK with that.

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
The most conventional way to do it in tabletop is to have some encounter happen that the characters just can not win, but allow them to roll and just tell them every attempt failed - then inflict the consequence. In a play by post game like this, that would have meant taking you through a week's worth of gameplay to a pre-determined failure outcome - that seemed likely to be frustrating, unpleasant and off putting.

I would have considered that to be a much better option. It would have cleanly separated what had to happen to make the story kick off (the dive, mercer encounter, storm) from what did not have to happen. And I would much prefer direct instructions to do something over you writing in person of the player. So if you need Dorainen to dive and come back up with a chest, unopened, tell Hart to dive and come back up with a chest, unopened. Leave playing that out to him. And if something will happen no matter what, tell us it will happen no matter what. Why decide for Eliab that Gunrianna will have a hopeless rune fight to the bitter end? Maybe she will, maybe she won't. He can decide what he wants her to do when faced with the inevitable. And if you feel that I need to lose half my gear, then why spend time thinking about what you should take? Force-choice me! Tell me something like "The waves come crashing in and take away an item, choose and roleplay please." Then I will think about it, and I will choose and I as a player will feel a lot better even if I am perhaps a lot meaner to my character than you as a GM dare to be. With play instructions, forced choices and announced inevitable events, I think one can play through a pre-story pretty rapidly. And here's the upside, when we arrive on the beach, we are full with that knowledge and experience. We do not spend endless GM days trying to get our bearings and rolling one die after another just to find out what has happened. That was tedious.

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Having been misused by someone or something, is a powerful motivator for characters to band together and venture forth - who may otherwise have little in common - and this why GMs often use this trope. You will also have seen it many times on film.

Actually, players will pretty much stick together IC no matter what, because OOC they want to play with each other. But yeah, the shipwreck setup was perfectly fine, as was the equipment loss that went with that. Magic that messes with our stats and skills? I don't think that that was particularly necessary. In particular not as something that mods our character sheets. A transient or localised negative magic influence is easily set up otherwise. And the age thing was just yuck in my opinion. Nothing would have stopped you from simply throwing us twenty years into the future, unchanged characters in a future world. That is not nice either, but we all would have been whom we designed our characters to be, just faced with time shock adversity. But age changes who and how you are. A twenty year old is not the same as a forty year old, and a forty year old is not the same as a sixty year old. Much worse to be a twenty year old suddenly being in the body of a forty year old. It's a sort of physical and mental handicap, given that one then does not get any compensation from experience and joy from accumulated memory and history.

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Folk felt the reveal of ageing was too subtle, in my defence I did post *everybody's* altered character sheets on meta - I suspect people may only have read their own. But, really, the subtlety was in order for the players to have a puzzle to solve and make the discovery gradually. Your characters were disorientated and I felt it reasonable for you to take time to realise.

It was hardly a puzzle anybody was keen to solve. It was not made clear to us from the start that we were missing something about ourselves, and we needed this realisation for nothing we thought we were doing. Yes, we needed to realise that we were trapped on the beach. But we need to understand that we are twenty years older for what? You had to tell us (or at least all but Eliab) to carefully read the character sheets and make a readiness roll. It was pretty much pure "gotcha, didn't spot that one, did you - you are even worse off than you thought you were". Well, hoo-fucking-ray.

And as far as roleplay was concerned it was just daft. Just how shell-shocked are we supposed to be to continue interacting with each other and not realise that we are all twenty years older? OK, if we are all lying on the beach, drooling in shock, then that makes sense. But in fact people were swinging into all sorts of actions without much ado. And yes "just so" magic that keeps our eyes from seeing this truth, that works. "Just so" magic always does. That's why it is "just so" magic. It's just not particularly convincing. There might as well be "just so" magic that makes me think that my current age is just what it should be. And anyhow even if this just is the capture magic, then why not make a big deal out of breaking it? As it is, a brutal deception spell gets broken by someone looking at their hands. This has never happened before in twenty years? This is all that it takes? And that's all the result we get? Can we have some external drama please to mark this? A ripple in the space-time continuum? A dramatic lifting off shadows? A loud boom that rolls across the beach? Nope. It's more readiness rolls for all of us, unless we somehow manage to talk to each other about this.

(By the way, with all due respect to my fellow players - when you realise that everybody is twenty years older than they should be, you run around screaming that piece of news at the top of your lungs. You do not busy yourself with making horse jerky. I mean, WTF?!)

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
Re plausibility issues, this is not a simulation and I am not aiming for that level of realism - I also don't think it is achievable in play by post or rpg generally.

An implausible story is a bad story. Plausibility is set by the framework of the story, and systematic deviations from what would be plausible in reality are to be expected. But all that is not random but must find its own internal logic. And yes, unless there is a reason not to do that, we default to the plausibility logic of reality. You can supply such reasons to set the framework, but I don't think that you did that here. A simple hint of the form "You feel like you are overlooking something but as you try to concentrate on it, it seems to slip out of your mind." would have made plausible the latter discovery of a deception spell.

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I feel this somewhat misunderstands the situation, at this point in the game you don't know if most of the changes are permanent, this is a magical world - in theory you can walk around a corner and trip over a flask containing an elixir of youth (or more elaborate equivalent opportunity). Jetse could get a powerful wizard to regrow his arm, you just don't know yet. (And his case - the arm loss itself makes no difference to his combat functioning, if you look closely at the mechanics)

Actually, no. As Ariston himself has pointed out, he has implicitly lost his heavy weapon ability since he cannot use two arms to hold a weapon now. Also, I'm sorry, but the effect of having your arm ripped off is not just reducible to whether you get the same combat roll bonus. As far as a roleplay goes, to get maimed is huge. It's not just "oh, oh well, I can still chop off heads even with one arm." (Technically that's probably not true either, Jetse would need months or even years of training to rebalance his body to similar performance.)

And as far as the effect of time goes, I was sitting on the fence about whether I wanted to continue until you posted this. Time is not reversible. I took this to mean that we would have to deal with this apart from the beach. It wasn't just some illusion magic at the beach. Frankly, I didn't think of youth elixirs. Though that would be a bit cheesy...

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I feel that in many ways the playtest set-up was both more boring and more constraining. All characters had hierarchical relationships to each other that would have been tricky to break out of - the game was also vulnerable to player/character loss as it was very much tied to the character of Testwe.

I agree.

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
In an rpg, rather like in EastEnders, if you try to play an entirely realistic response to a character's experiences - then the character is liked to be curled up in a corner quivering within about a week.

Say you are attacked by bandits and you are not a combat character, you survive - perhaps you kill an NPC - in real life, this would be a *very* major event in your life. You could have nightmares for years, you might never recover your confidence, become agoraphobic or whatever. But in a rpg (unless you are playing Cthulu) this doesn't happen. It is next to impossible to rpg that level of emotional realism. Likewise most combat or rogue characters in an rpg would be psychopaths in real live, lawful good alignment or not.

But that comment just ignores story-logic. Of course story-logic is not identical to reality-logic. But is is modded in specific ways away from reality-logic, it is not arbitrary. Look at Arwen and Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings. It's a big romantic deal that Arwen give up her immortality to live fully with Aragorn. Because hell's bells, that would be a big romantic deal for us, a choice between love and immortality. Nevertheless, Aragorn is a one man destruction machine who has hacked and slashed his way through countless enemies of the most terrible form. He should have all the emotional inner life of Conan the Barbarian on angel dust. But the non-heroic aspects of warfare have been modded out of the story-logic. No splatter nightmares for our heroes please. That does not mean that Arwen's act suddenly has become valued any other way than before. That was not modded, that still works. Likewise, hobbits are little country Englishmen who like nice holes rather than nice houses. A minor mod and story-logic is in place. That's how all this works.

There was no indication in the story setup that our usual perception of age had been modded. There could have been. There could have been time lords and all sorts people bouncing around in different ages. We would have modded age-logic accordingly. But no, a crone is still a crone. Age-logic has not moved particularly. In fact, the whole drama of the incident depends on age-logic not having moved. If this was the plaything of time lords, then the reaction to losing twenty years would have been more like "can somebody fix this please?"

quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I have to be honest and say, I really don't get why being middle aged is so horribly worse than being mauled by a dragon. Maybe that is because I am middle aged.

I'm also middle-aged, and I just played a middle-aged character in the test run. I have no problem with middle age as such.

But what actually has happened here is like being unjustly imprisoned for twenty years. And then when you finally get out, you even have these twenty shitty years of prison deleted by amnesia. It is a literal loss of twenty years of lifetime, with no redeeming features, not even crappy memories. Just a blank, and then you are twenty years older.

For a happy-go-lucky type of guy in the full swing of youth, that's just plain deadly. All you were about, gone. And nothing to replace it with. This being forty years old is not a time to finally think about settling down. Because you didn't get to be unsettled for the last twenty years. This is just running into a brick wall of age. Horrible.

At least that's how I see that. In reality, I probably wouldn't think that dying is better than this. But it would be a fairly close call.

--------------------
They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984

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I believe we may just to have to agree to differ on this, but I thought that it would be inappropriate not offer an explanation in response to the issues raised.

--------------------
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged
Curious Kitten
Shipmate
# 11953

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
(By the way, with all due respect to my fellow players - when you realise that everybody is twenty years older than they should be, you run around screaming that piece of news at the top of your lungs. You do not busy yourself with making horse jerky. I mean, WTF?!)

I'm of indeterminate age, species and sex. I don't know what species I am, I could after twenty years of ageing I could be on my last legs or like Dorainen feeling no ill effect. Getting on with the immediate problems seemed more sense IC.

--------------------
Happiness is not having what we want but wanting what we have.

Posts: 107 | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged
Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153

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quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I take that point but, if a dragon bit her arm off, or she went through a portal to another world - that would also nix the marriage plans.

Any major event will have a significant impact, and functionally - unless you have a lot of pregenerated resources and geneology for a world, characters are simply not going to be able to interact much with people well known to them - one or two key NPcs might be related but that's about it. The effect is then that adventuring parties would usually need a reason why they don't just send a message asking for help.

My point was more that the background set out the character I intended to play. I didn't plan on ever meeting Gunriana's father or future husband or anyone else from her character description in the course of play itself, it was more that I intended to role play a teenager at that particular time of her life with those social circumstances hanging over her. And while it's true (and expected, and good) that characters evolve through play, there's a difference between bad stuff happening to a character during a campaign that I respond to by letting them change, and being told right at the outset that my character is twenty years older and therefore has a radically different relationship to the world than the one I wrote.

I don't want to complain about this, or make too much of it, because I'm really enjoying the way this story is going, and because I don't think it was outside the scope of acceptable GM character-fuckery. I do think that there is a line between GM decisions that say "this is what happens to your character..." and those that imply more "this is the character you are now playing...". Decisions like this are very close to that line, and I want to make the general point that I think these need to be made carefully.

Looking forward to seeing what happens next.

--------------------
"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"

Richard Dawkins

Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Kelly Alves

Bunny with an axe
# 2522

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quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
I do think that there is a line between GM decisions that say "this is what happens to your character..." and those that imply more "this is the character you are now playing...". Decisions like this are very close to that line, and I want to make the general point that I think these need to be made carefully.

FWIW I tend to agree-- even given what I have said about GM control. The one area where a player should have some control is character generation-- within the limits of that game scheme, of course.

Of course all that goes out the window if the GM is setting up something where our basic perceptions of reality are compromised...that is well within a GM's remit.

--------------------
I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.

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Autenrieth Road

Shipmate
# 10509

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I wonder if reactions would have been different if the travellers, partway through the campaign, perhaps even early on, had encountered a time maelstrom which had the same effect of aging and stripping?

[ 09. June 2014, 12:44: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]

--------------------
Truth

Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Autenrieth Road

Shipmate
# 10509

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I'm enjoying reading all the things other players think of.

I'm also enjoying both wandering around getting to know the other characters (and to some veiled extent the players who animate them), and working out what to try next in the adventure DT has designed for us.

It's interesting playing Frithwynne. I hadn't quite realized it, but she's basically a very straightforward person, despite being willing to scrap and scrounge if needed to make her way in the world. Being immersed in Frithwynne, I find myself, Autenrieth Road, completely unable to think of things like "Find Hidden should be concealed from strangers" (thank you Mary Drake) or "here is our cover story" (thank you Gunriana) -- and this even though when we're playing Mafia I am continually thinking of schemes. Very very curious.

--------------------
Truth

Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Autenrieth Road

Shipmate
# 10509

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Doublethink, you indicated somewhere after Prince Testwe's Peregrination that you had said in the intro to it that everyone (except Daniel and Arabella) knew each other from travelling together, but that we didn't roleplay as if we did.

Do you remember any examples of roleplay that seemed to be in contradiction to "characters who all know each other"?

I didn't understand your observation at the time, and now that I'm puzzling about the game and the metagame in the Kavetseki Incident, I'm trying to shore up my understanding of all aspects of RPG, in case it helps me contribute better and understand what's going on better.

--------------------
Truth

Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984

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Well looking at the begining in order:
  • Brandon doesn't recognise his travelling companions on waking (though that could be disorientation)
  • Guriana's first reflections suggest she is unfamiliar with Bayain, Ik and Hestor - has known them only a very short time
  • Stone seems to basically just know Clawdine, and needs Ik to introduce himself - does not know Guriana


--------------------
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged
Autenrieth Road

Shipmate
# 10509

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Thanks, DT. Now I understand what you meant.

I feel as if on the surface I can pretend like I understand how RPG works, but then things happen and I find myself thinking I'm somehow missing everything essential.

[ 22. June 2014, 19:46: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]

--------------------
Truth

Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984

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I think if I were to tweak anything in the mechanics, it would be the success thresholds. OK skill should give you a better than 50/50.

We should maybe rig the odds to give the players greater chances.

[ 13. July 2014, 21:06: Message edited by: Doublethink ]

--------------------
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged



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