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themaque
2015-12-18, 06:27 PM
How much does a rules system affect how you play the game? Do you think it has an effect on you at all?

Some people say 4e is nothing but hack n Slash and others honestly experience it's limited RP rules has allowed for their greatest role playing sessions without getting bogged down with rules.

This isn't an opportunity to edition bash but an individual question does something light allow for freedom or stagnation? Does that +2 really make you FEEL like more of a badass?

Personally? Yeah I think it has a great affect on people. I find that playing 3.P I find myself thinking more of a tactical puzzle yet when I'm playing 5e I get annoyed at people turning my story telling opportunity into a war game.

I love Hackmaster rules set, but the nature of the joke can often make it difficult for people to take it for the serious RP opportunity that it is.

veti
2015-12-18, 09:22 PM
Purely my own experience:

The more rules there are for out-of-combat actions, the harder it is to "roleplay". The most RP fun I've had is in 1e AD&D, where most non-combat rules vary from optional to nonexistent. As soon as you introduce skills, rolls and rules for "talking to people", you inhibit normal interaction between people at the table - instead of breezing through on pure chutzpah and the occasional CHA roll, you start mentally weighing odds and calculating modifiers.

Again, that's my own experience, and I know many people will disagree. But it's a big part of why I like a minimalist, combat-centric ruleset.

Dimers
2015-12-18, 09:23 PM
Some of the difference comes from the variety of player who wants to play with a given ruleset, and some from how well-fitted a DM is to it. But yes, I do play differently based on what a game's mechanics encourage or discourage, what they allow or shoot down or fail to address. I'm initially influenced by what a game system claims it's about, too, though in the end it's all about mechanics.

I play 13th Age, Ars Magica, D&D 4e, D&D 3.X, GURPS, Mage, oWoD Vampire and nWoD Vampire somewhat differently from each other, irrespective of who I'm playing with.

neonchameleon
2015-12-18, 09:28 PM
How much does a rules system affect how you play the game? Do you think it has an effect on you at all?

Massively. The rules are part of the world-and-setting building. The playstyles that work under the rules are the playstyles encouraged by the game and the ones I'm likely to use. And indicate what the game is about.

To illustrate, I've played Tony Stark in two different system - GURPS Supers and Marvel Heroic Roleplay. Both were definitely Tony Stark and both of them were engineers, inventors, alcoholics, and manipulative *****. But they were extremely different takes on it due to the differing rulesets.

The most memorable scene with Tony Stark in the MHRP game involved him in a post-apocalyptic universe first attacking the bad guys with a set of drones that were made from the remote control planes in Franklin Richards' toybox and the payload taken from ruined cars to effectively mix napalm, thermite, and sonic screamers (one of the bad guys was Venom). Not quite made in a cave from a box of scraps, but close and he didn't have much time to do it. He wasn't in his armour for various reasons (including it carrying the drones to the fight) and the armour, of course, got trashed and the douche hadn't told his team mates he wasn't in it. So he took the lift to the fight at a critical moment to distract the bad guy - scotch in one hand and saying that "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated". **** move at oh so many levels but great fun and very RDJ Iron Man.

My GURPS Tony Stark would never have got away with most of that. An unarmoured human in the middle of a supers-battle won't make it through half a sentence. Giving Tony alcohol is a very bad move as opposed to something that causes problems but gives benefits. Getting his armour trashed was something he really didn't like as building a new one was such a pain (rather than an excuse to build better armour) - and box of scraps? Really not a good idea. Instead he was a manipulative planner who was on the wagon and trying to take over about half of SHIELD because he could do it better. Fun, but a whole lot less spontaneous - and not the sort of person who would have said "I am Iron Man" in a live press conference because that sort of person would have the life expectancy of a jellyfish in a blast furnace. On the other hand the sheer level of planning/engineering for that Tony would have fallen apart fast in the MHRP setting.



Edit to avoid double posting:


Purely my own experience:

The more rules there are for out-of-combat actions, the harder it is to "roleplay". The most RP fun I've had is in 1e AD&D, where most non-combat rules vary from optional to nonexistent. As soon as you introduce skills, rolls and rules for "talking to people", you inhibit normal interaction between people at the table - instead of breezing through on pure chutzpah and the occasional CHA roll, you start mentally weighing odds and calculating modifiers.

Again, that's my own experience, and I know many people will disagree. But it's a big part of why I like a minimalist, combat-centric ruleset.

IME there are some games where social mechanics actually help with what the game is trying to be. But they are pretty rare - and none of them are older than My Life With Master (2003). Almost all of them have odds that are either trivial or almost impossible to calculate.

Games I'd recommend looking at for good social mechanics: My Life With Master, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Smallville, Better Angels, Hillfolk. But the list is pretty short and all the games are fairly focussed.

Knaight
2015-12-18, 11:50 PM
I find the rules make a big difference, both in terms of defining basic game structure (classic GM+players versus something like Microsope), in the level of mechanical engagement they provide, in the level of overhead they take, etc. I mostly GM Fudge, which isn't super engaging on the mechanical level but is very low overhead, with the mechanics fading seamlessly into the background and the events in the game getting a lot of focus. It lends itself well to a lot of styles of play, but I would never run a dungeon crawl in it, and only use heavily house ruled versions for anything too combat heavy. It's also not super codified in the specifics, which affects how people think in game. By contrast, when I've run ORE games the mechanics get focused on a bit more, when I've run Torchbearer dungeons appeared, resource tracking became interesting, and there were mechanical overload problems that would probably drop to manageable after a lot more Torchbearer.

I've also found that as a GM using D&D in any fashion pretty much kills the game, because I end up hating it. As a player, it's always been a little overly combat focused for my taste (because that's what the system does), but I've had fun. It's a mechanical overhead problem, where the game only really works if enough people know it well enough, and while I do my players consistently don't, with occasional exceptions.

oxybe
2015-12-19, 12:49 AM
Does the rules allow me to simulate the fiction proposed? if the rules say you can play Hercules and this piques my interest, I'll roll up a character trying to emulate Herc. If it doesn't properly simulate the head cracking demigod, no matter how much you pretty it up with flowery language, i'll get bored.

Tabletop Roleplaying Games are still Games and execution of the mechanics is vital to a solid gameplay experience.

Imagine, if you will a game that posits one of swashbuckling on the high seas but lacks mechanics that emphasize the back and forth across the deck action scenes often found in such medium or simply treats the boat and ocean as a setpiece rather then a character upon itself (by this i mean little customization on how the boat works and interacts with the world and that whole "boat on water" aspect is glossed over), it's a ****ty swashbuckling game in my eyes.

on the flipside, to use a videogame example, Sid Meyer's Pirates! allows you to go from shore to shore, hiring crewmen and engaging (and capturing) ships, forming alliances with various countries (for good or ill) as well as customizing your fleet of ships and managing this crew of hungry and ill-tempered men is part of the game and it really makes you feel like a swarthy pirate man when you go back and forth across the deck of a boarded ship, your men and the enemy's fighting on the collapsing wreck struggling to stay afloat after being barraged with cannonfire, hopefully managing to capture it's treasure before it sinks.

Seriously go play Pirates! It's really fun and, as the designers went "let's give the player the best YOU ARE A PIRATE experience they can get" it does it real good. It's pretty bad at being a D&D-esque dungeoncrawl, it's not trying to be one though.

in short : the mechanics must fit the genres and tropes of the game you're presenting the player.

goto124
2015-12-19, 12:57 AM
When should social mechanics be used? What should social mechanics be used for? To what extent does social mechanics help with roleplay, if at all?

There seems to be many complaints about games with little to no social mechanics not having the rules to support social things (along the lines of "DnD Diplomancy is too simplistic" or something). And yet... see veti's post near the top of the page.

I find that rules that connect mechanics to roleplay (this includes DnD 3.5e paladin stuff) to be limiting. Then again, I'm not exactly a fan of "oh you want to have certain mechanics? You better roleplay in this fashion".

Milo v3
2015-12-19, 01:27 AM
When should social mechanics be used? What should social mechanics be used for? To what extent does social mechanics help with roleplay, if at all?

There seems to be many complaints about games with little to no social mechanics not having the rules to support social things (along the lines of "DnD Diplomancy is too simplistic" or something). And yet... see veti's post near the top of the page.

I find that rules that connect mechanics to roleplay (this includes DnD 3.5e paladin stuff) to be limiting. Then again, I'm not exactly a fan of "oh you want to have certain mechanics? You better roleplay in this fashion".

Depends on the game. For example, monsterhearts needs to have it's social rules as about 80% of game is social interaction and one of the primary focus points is that you aren't 100% control of yourself. But I'd hate if the monsterhearts system was applied to something like D&D.

oxybe
2015-12-19, 02:27 AM
When should social mechanics be used? What should social mechanics be used for? To what extent does social mechanics help with roleplay, if at all?

There seems to be many complaints about games with little to no social mechanics not having the rules to support social things (along the lines of "DnD Diplomancy is too simplistic" or something). And yet... see veti's post near the top of the page.

I find that rules that connect mechanics to roleplay (this includes DnD 3.5e paladin stuff) to be limiting. Then again, I'm not exactly a fan of "oh you want to have certain mechanics? You better roleplay in this fashion".

there is no catch-all rule for what needs to be in a game... it depends very much on the genres and tropes of your game as well as the playstyle you're going for.

let's say a theoretical game features and wants to emphasize a strong theme of "good VS evil" with the roleplaying there needs to be mechanics for both incentivizing people to be good AND evil, and the difficulties in straddling that line.

in effect a good character should get bonuses, either using in-game currency (in D&D terms items, money or NPC favours) or meta currency (in D&D terms: XP, action points, etc...) for successfully doing their good deeds and the same goes for an evil character and their or evil deeds as well as overcoming challenges by following their G/E mentality in situations where it would simply be easier to cave in and do the good (or evil) deed that would lead to immediate positive results instead of toughing it out as it's the right thing to do.

switching from Good to Evil and back again repeatedly, for example could also cause it's own set of issues as the character is constantly torn between two mindsets.

now, i'm not saying every game needs something like this because it's not appropriate for it. however it does encourage a certain playstyle which the designer might find favourable to the experience he has in mind. which is fine: not every game needs to be a kitchen sink or should aim to be one.

it can be problematic if not well executed, but that's the case with any mechanic.

NichG
2015-12-19, 03:00 AM
The rules make a huge difference to the feel of the game, but in several layered ways. When these layers conflict with each-other, it can create a feeling of being betrayed by the system, though there are probably ways to design that kind of conflict in a useful manner though I can't think of any off the top of my head (maybe if the game is designed to secretly psychoanalyze the players by seeing what layer they end up being most affected by?)

The first thing any set of rules will do is that it selectively calls attention to certain things, and hides other things. When D&D says 'here's a list of spells - half of them are for combat' then D&D is saying 'combat is a thing which you can expect to be important'. More subtly, there are lots of ways that explicitly calling out certain options from a wide variety can focus player character concepts and the like.

For example, I could start a game of Fudge by saying 'Please make a character. Tell me one thing you're the best in the world at, two things you're exceptionally good at, two things you're good at, and two things you're bad at'. If that's all I said, I would get all sorts of stuff from the players, but probably things from other RPGs they had played. E.g. someone will say 'Stealth is a skill, right? Okay, that's what I'm good at' and the like. Or they might get cute and say 'I'm going to be good at Attacking', thinking that they're breaking the game by saying something a little more general than what the other players said.

But I could then say: 'for example, Joe here is the best at the world at Granting Wishes, he's exceptional at Conjuring Genies and Time Travel, he's good at Death Defying and Being On Time, and he sucks at Keeping His Mouth Shut and Swordsmanship'. Just giving that example would vastly change the scope of what the players would understand to be reasonable. They might not have thought that supernatural stuff was on the table, or really crazy deific hijinks, or whatever. So even though maybe they could have chosen those things, most players wouldn't have without being cued.

The next thing that a set of rules will do is that it will establish some kind of causal relationships between things. This is what lets players reason coherently about the consequences of their actions in the in-game world. 'I think I can win this fight' versus 'no, if I fight, I'm going to lose' etc, as well as more fine-grained detail. The easiest way for rules to betray expectations is when those causal relationships have nothing at all to do with what the things they govern sound like. If my character has the skill 'Summons Genies' but the rules say that every skill just deals damage to enemies and only that (e.g. I can't talk to the genie or ask it for information or have it keep watch or even hitch a ride back with it when it disappears), I will understand that even if the rules told me I could 'Summon Genies' the only thing that I can actually do is 'deal damage to an enemy' and all the skills are just that one skill. At this layer, a good GM can help a lot to prevent that betrayal of expectations from happening - they can logically and flexibly extend things past what the rules explicitly allow for. This layer tends to set if the game feels narrative or tactical or confining or expansive or whatever - the sort of immediate 'what does it feel like to be playing the game' aspects.

Then, you have the long-term consequences of the rules - what the rules ultimately reward with an increase in agency, or punish with a decrease in agency. If gaining XP is the only way to gain more ability to influence the world, and killing monsters is the only way to gain XP, then eventually the game will become about killing monsters. If cooperation is always better than bickering, or vice versa, that is what this layer of the rules will gradually teach. So the overall tone of the game - what is the game 'about' - is strongly governed by the design here. If you design this layer well, players will just automatically behave in a way consistent with the premise of the game, because the rules reward or support that kind of behavior more than behaviors which are incoherent with the premise. If you design it poorly, you get sort of weird behaviors (murderhoboism, etc).

goto124
2015-12-19, 03:26 AM
monsterhearts needs to have it's social rules as about 80% of game is social interaction and one of the primary focus points is that you aren't 100% control of yourself.

Let's say we have a game where 80% of game is social interaction, and the game designers want all the players to feel they have plenty of control and agency over themselves. What sort of social rules would be helpful here?

Milo v3
2015-12-19, 03:33 AM
Let's say we have a game where 80% of game is social interaction, and the game designers want all the players to feel they have plenty of control and agency over themselves. What sort of social rules would be helpful here?

In that case you can do an immense number of different things, except that the players are immune.

goto124
2015-12-19, 04:24 AM
Replace "themselves" with "their own characters".

Milo v3
2015-12-19, 04:27 AM
Replace "themselves" with "their own characters".

Yeah... I was already going off the assumption that themselves meant the characters they played. Having the characters have agency despite social mechanics is easy, just don't have those mechanics apply to the players characters.

NichG
2015-12-19, 04:38 AM
Tie social consequences to action frequency, but allow each action to be totally under the control of the actor. So if your character gets depressed it takes 8 hours to initiate conversation with someone new, but if you're happy it only takes 4 hours.

Describe characters by sets of goals with mechanical rewards for success and penalties for failure, to allow wagering emotional state changes. In group decision making, the largest successful wager has control.

Altair_the_Vexed
2015-12-19, 04:55 AM
Replace "themselves" with "their own characters".
Loads of old games used to muddle up characters with players - so you'd get alarming instructions like: 'If the players continue to ignore these warnings, feel free to kill them.'
:O

goto124
2015-12-19, 05:04 AM
Tie social consequences to action frequency, but allow each action to be totally under the control of the actor. So if your character gets depressed it takes 8 hours to initiate conversation with someone new, but if you're happy it only takes 4 hours.

ERROR: Unable to establish link between the first and second sentence.

Why are there mechanics to decide the mood of my character? At this point isn't it a lot like being mind controlled where you're fighting hard against things that make your characters behave in a negative manner? Isn't this going back to Monsterhearts?


Loads of old games used to muddle up characters with players - so you'd get alarming instructions like: 'If the players continue to ignore these warnings, feel free to kill them.'
:O

Related (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?396300-Need-help-drowning-players!). Take a look at LooseCannoneer's post :smallbiggrin:

NichG
2015-12-19, 07:12 AM
ERROR: Unable to establish link between the first and second sentence.

Why are there mechanics to decide the mood of my character? At this point isn't it a lot like being mind controlled where you're fighting hard against things that make your characters behave in a negative manner? Isn't this going back to Monsterhearts?

The core of your question comes down to 'how can I have rules that allow for influence, without making it feel like you're being controlled?'. So to do that, separate your ability to act with the contents of your actions, and make one sacrosanct. So you can do with with penalties and such, but actually if most of the game is socialization, then penalties are kind of pointless because the most important stuff isn't going to be decided by rolls. Even if you can use a roll to make another guy's roll suck, the fact that the contents of action must be sacrosanct basically makes a penalty system of that sort pointless.

So instead, the thought was to modulate the frequency of action. Think of something like a highschool game. Each day, you have classes and chores and part time jobs and all sorts of stuff that eats into your time. So the resources which is limited is the amount of time you have to be socially proactive. You can't just go and talk as much as you like with everyone at your own pace because before long it'll be the prom or whatever, and you only have 2 weeks to make whatever social outcome you want happen. So now lets say an effect changes how long it takes to get something done socially. That isn't going to take control of your character - it doesn't change your actions or your goals. But it may modify whether your character is able to succeed at them - so it still has real power. In such a game, you could imagine a situation where someone blocks another person's social plans by e.g. managing to get them a detention. Or going somewhere with the target of their manipulations so that their target doesn't have time to talk with them. Or other things like that.

Now, as to the emotion thing, this comes to another point - there are lots of things which as a player you're going to be distant from your character about. We can talk about manipulations in the world costing you time, and you could build the entire game just out of those, but that would be a very distancing set of mechanics. It would encourage the players to see their characters more like chess pieces to move around than to really engage in what they're feeling or experiencing. Without something to make social interaction feel like social interaction, it might as well just be combat with the word 'attack' replaced with 'prank' and the word 'HP' replaced with 'free time' and so on. And that means addressing the point about emotion.

So in order to really sell the feel of the game, the emotions of the characters have to really matter above and beyond the players 'acting' it out. And that does mean relinquishing some control, but it can be done in a way that is guaranteed to be consistent with the player's desired characterization (or at least, which gives the player full responsibility for making it be consistent). And that is to use a wager or bidding system. Thus, the player says 'I wager the following: if I get Debbie to go to the prom with me, I'm going to be Happy (which grants mechanical benefits). But if I fail, I will be Depressed (which grants mechanical penalties)' - and then based on what happens, they are committed to go forward with the wager they proposed. A player can just not propose wagers that would be inconsistent with their character.

The idea would then be to make it so that your ability to have agency outside of your character is directly proportional to how much you wager. So if you want to make an emotionally numb, perfectly rational Mary Sue that is never affected by anything that happens to them, the system will say 'thats fine, but by doing so you also sacrifice some ability to affect anything outside of yourself'. In-universe, other characters notice that your character isn't really 'into it' and don't make emotional connections with your character asa result. That rewards the player for playing characters that are more able to be affected, but allows them to choose that balance point for themselves.

goto124
2015-12-19, 07:26 AM
Is there a system that actually does that? How well did it work?

NichG
2015-12-19, 07:35 AM
Is there a system that actually does that? How well did it work?

No clue. I think some of these elements are in Burning Wheel but I haven't played it. The idea of conflict resolution as a sequence of wagers and escalations comes from there. There are certainly plenty of systems that reward players for playing into their characters' flaws, and those generally work pretty well to encourage more nuanced characters. There's also a variant on this for combat called the Death Flag (from Ryan Stoughton on Enworld) - basically, your character can't die unless you raise the death flag - though you can be knocked out, captured, etc, etc; raising the death flag gains you a powerful mechanical advantage; lowering the death flag once raised costs a resource that recovers slowly.

MrZJunior
2015-12-19, 07:48 AM
I try to avoid learning the rules as much as possible, so I don't feel that they affect my play style much.

neonchameleon
2015-12-19, 07:53 AM
Let's say we have a game where 80% of game is social interaction, and the game designers want all the players to feel they have plenty of control and agency over themselves. What sort of social rules would be helpful here?

The first thing about good social interaction rules is that they are always designed to a purpose. Monsterhearts has a good set because, in part, that game is very clear about what it is about (teenage monsters and high school horror/drama). How people relate is dependent a lot on their environment.

The second thing about good social interaction rules is that they never outright force the victim's hand. In Dogs in the Vineyard the losing PC in a social conflict has the choice about whether to suck it up and back down or whether to escalate from words to fists or even guns. Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about how far you'll go in defence of what you hold dear. In Apocalypse World when someone passes an intimidate check (go aggro) the victim can always choose to back down - or to suck it up/call the bluff of the attacker. With more nebulous social manipulation abilities there's normally an XP in it for doing what the manipulator says - you can choose not to (and to turn down that sweet XP) but in all cases they leave a choice. It's nothing like 3.X Bluff and Diplomacy skills-as-mind-control.



Edit: Why try to avoid learning the rules? In D&D if you're a second level fighter and facing three basic mooks with crossbows you can probably charge them safely. In GURPS that's suicide. This should affect how you play your character.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-19, 11:53 AM
A games rules are based on it's assumptions, which affect how it's played. For example, in D&D my 1st level character likely won't be making legendary feats of acrobatics such as walking on a tightrope suspended above an active volcano in gale force winds, it's just not part of the assumption, which is levels=competence. Maybe a thief could do it with maximum ranks in acrobatics and 18 dexterity.

In Qin: the Warring States, part of the assumption is that starting level characters have a chance of doing this stuff. Before even getting into Taos a thief with Water 4 (not unreasonable for any physically or martially focused character) and Acrobatics 2 can make it across the tightrope, as long as he rolls a 9. Fully specced for mundane acrobatics he needs a 7 or higher. However, with access to Taos it gets even easier, Tao of the Yin and Yang lets him spend Chi to alter his dice rolls and make it easier, if he has Tao of the Six Directions he can just jump it if he spends the Chi and it's less than his water value multiplied by his rank in the Tao, and if he has Tao of the Light Step at 3 he can run across it at full speed, only having to roll to avoid falling off.

On the other hand, D&D assumes that you'll get access to magical items that give you more powers, whereas in Qin you have to find teachers (or manuals) in order to learn entirely new powers.

So would I feel the +2? It depends. In something like Qin I would, because totals are generally lower, but it would seem almost insignificant in Anima: Beyond Fantasy.

Pluto!
2015-12-19, 02:56 PM
Rules matter.

There are three types of rules that manage player interest:

No Rules: Just what it sounds like. Playing outside the scope of the system is liberating in some ways, but what it usually means is that there really should not be any decisions made in these areas that can make or break the players (barring glaring stupidity) because doing so will often feel arbitrary and cheap. Take social rules in OD&D - they just don't exist. The game is there so players can fight goblins and steal their stuff, not negotiate land disputes with grumpy farmhands.

Dismissive Rules: These are shallow rules made to quickly and unnegotiably push through an unimportant part of the game and get back to the real action. These do not make demands on the player and often come down to a comparison of values or a single roll. Take D&D 3e or All Flesh Must Be Eaten's social rules - you meet another character, roll a die against a target number or opposing roll, and the scene is resolved. Player involvement boils down to a +/- 2 bonus, the smallest and least important of all the numbers going into that scene.

Focusing Rules: These are the rules that go deep, that create minigames that pull players in. Rules in this category place demands and decisions on the player, often involving resource management or weighed risks. Take combat in any edition of D&D or Dogs in the Vineyard's rules for social escalation - they ask players to introduce material, they build tension and focus players' attention on that specific element of the game.

If you tie a complex social scenario like a Hatfield-McCoy feud into your plot in OD&D, AFMBE and DitV, I guarantee players will try to handle it drastically differently in all three systems, and not just due to the packaged genre.

Markoff Chainey
2015-12-21, 09:42 AM
Rules matter.

If you tie a complex social scenario like a Hatfield-McCoy feud into your plot in OD&D, AFMBE and DitV, I guarantee players will try to handle it drastically differently in all three systems, and not just due to the packaged genre.

Totally my experience!

It starts with character generation: A player wants to play a char that can do something in the game. So she optimises her character to be good at something.

If I look at D&D for example, there are plenty of options for combat and very few for social interaction.

So in all likeliness, most chars will have a combat-orientation and maybe one of them will be capable of handling social situations at all.

The next thing is the rules in the book. If 3/4 of the rulebook is about killing things, the game will most likely be about killing things. When there a no rules for social interaction, it may still happen, but combat will definately happen. And without rules for social interaction, there is no need to put emphasis on social skills or attributes, because it will be handled by the player directly anyways.

On the other hand, rules will never (and of course should not) cover all the options of reality, so its very hard to make an easy working system for e.g. social interaction without making it very limiting. Simply because we are used to the myrads of options of social interaction in our daily life.

I personally think that the reason why combat works so well in game-rules is that most people have no idea about real combat and do not bother about being so limited in their options.

neonchameleon
2015-12-21, 11:51 AM
I personally think that the reason why combat works so well in game-rules is that most people have no idea about real combat and do not bother about being so limited in their options.

And even the people that do have an idea are normally happy to go with Holywood Physics

neonchameleon
2015-12-21, 01:31 PM
Does that +2 really make you FEEL like more of a badass?

Not much. But that push 1 - i.e. the ability to throw that ogre back 5ft and drive forward into the space where they were as a matter of course. Now that does. +2s are just abstract numbers. Hit points are just abstract numbers. Other things have actual consequences.

veti
2015-12-21, 05:13 PM
Yeah... I was already going off the assumption that themselves meant the characters they played. Having the characters have agency despite social mechanics is easy, just don't have those mechanics apply to the players characters.

If the players are immune to the rules, then what's the point of having them?

Present information as the PCs perceive it. It should be easy enough to slip in bits of information (or misinformation) that will make the players more inclined to believe A rather than B, and to like C more than D.

When someone casts "Charm" on a PC, I don't tell them "you feel friendly towards this guy". I tell them "You recognise this guy, he was a friend of your mother's" (or whatever, adapt to match character background and whether he's targeted the whole party or just one PC). The players may or may not realise what I'm doing, but either way it gives them a much better cue for how to roleplay along with it than just "you're inclined to trust him".

Cluedrew
2015-12-21, 06:07 PM
I find that rules that connect mechanics to roleplay (this includes DnD 3.5e paladin stuff) to be limiting. Then again, I'm not exactly a fan of "oh you want to have certain mechanics? You better roleplay in this fashion".In a sense it is, actually it very much is, but I think it is a good sort of limiting because it limits the interaction between the narrative and the mechanics in a way that makes sense.

For instance lets say I'm playing a fighter. When I swing my sword a group of goblins 30ft away take damage. Later I kick a troll so hard it turns to stone. Eventually you find out that my fighter (in terms of role play) is a wizard (in terms of mechanics). How I attack is role-play too. Yes this is an extreme example but well I don't have time for a more complex argument right now.

Milo v3
2015-12-21, 08:44 PM
If the players are immune to the rules, then what's the point of having them?
Because people often do not like being mindcontrolled and told "you like this person because they rolled high on diplomacy" despite the fact they might really annoy you or annoy the character that you are playing, obviously exceptions can be made when someone does something like being literally mind-controlled. In D&D NPC's cannot use diplomancy on you, but they can use charm person.

Dimers
2015-12-21, 08:48 PM
For instance lets say I'm playing a fighter. When I swing my sword a group of goblins 30ft away take damage. Later I kick a troll so hard it turns to stone. Eventually you find out that my fighter (in terms of role play) is a wizard (in terms of mechanics). How I attack is role-play too. Yes this is an extreme example but well I don't have time for a more complex argument right now.

I would love to see that fighter! :smallsmile: #joinmyparty #somethingforeveryone

(I mean, depending on the game system and group. But as a general rule, yeah, that fighter sounds excellent and fun.)

Cluedrew
2015-12-21, 09:21 PM
I would love to see that fighter! :smallsmile: #joinmyparty #somethingforeveryoneIf there is a party/game where Barsley the non-sequester fighter fits in sure.

A stab of his dagger can always draw blood, even if the target is 40ft away.
A kick of his foot can cover everything in sight with cooking oil, even if he kicks a polished floor.
A slash of his word can cut 10 men with fire and ashes.
Legends fly from him as an axe flies from that hands of a master seamstress.
Barsley the non-sequester fighter!

goto124
2015-12-22, 12:30 AM
I've got no problems with refluffed wizards.

Although the first time the 'fighter' turns the troll to stone, I'll ask "Let me see your character sheet! GM, are you sure he's not a Marty Stu? (One moment later) Why didn't you just let me know he's actually a wizard who happened to be refluffed? You got me worried about him overshadowing the rest of the party!"


When someone casts "Charm" on a PC, I don't tell them "you feel friendly towards this guy". I tell them "You recognise this guy, he was a friend of your mother's" (or whatever, adapt to match character background and whether he's targeted the whole party or just one PC). The players may or may not realise what I'm doing, but either way it gives them a much better cue for how to roleplay along with it than just "you're inclined to trust him".

Shouldn't the player be wondering why the GM is arbitrarily altering their character's backstory?

"Sorry, but I never knew any of my mother's friends." "Sorry, but my mother never had any friends with a beard." "Sorry, you may be my mother's friend, but you literally tried to kill me."

Segev
2015-12-22, 01:04 AM
Well-designed rules give OOC motivation for players to have their characters make in-game choices that feed into the narrative the game is trying to support.

Because we're not in a game-specific part of the forum, I am going to use Exalted as an example.

A great example of a rule that does what it's designed to is "stunting." Stunting is, at its heart, just giving cool, narrative descriptions to your actions. Instead of "I attack the goblin," you might say, "I bring my sword down on the goblin's skull." Such descriptions actually give you bonus dice to the action, based on how much the description adds to the immersion of the scene. Moreover, the stunting rules explicitly encourage players to incorporate the environment into their actions, using either elements already described as present or actively editing in elements reasonable to the scene to use. In a castle described as having a long red carpet leading to the stairs, the swashbuckler might describe how his hard-soled shoes let him slide smoothly past the armed thugs trying to bar his path (gaining a bonus couple of dice on his athletics check to slip by them). He might also describe how he cuts the rope leading up to the chandelier, letting its falling weight assist him in his climb to the second floor balcony. The first involved incorporating existing descriptive elements; the second added one (the rope and chandelier), but they made sense in the scene and enriched it.

Exalted is an action/adventure game, and the stunting rules empower those who act in flashy, interesting ways. Compare this to a system where describing something like leaping off a wall to get an angle over the shieldbearer's head with your crossbow would involve 1-3 extra, difficult rolls just to manage, and the penalties for firing while flipping in the air would be crippling. Such a system (which is how I've seen a number, from D&D to L5R, run) would discourage anything but basic attacks and defensive moves.


Another set of rules that didn't, initially, do their job so well in Exalted are those for the Fair Folk. In Exalted, the fluff of these creatures is that they're sentient stories that encase themselves in false flesh and feed as glorious, beautiful monsters on the souls of humanity. They drain entire villages to sate their hunger for Creation-born emotion, and are horrifying monsters that make you LIKE it as you succumb to their appetites.

The mechanics, however, made their feeding - while necessary for surviving the game world proper - not something that was even tempting to do to excess. Their mote pool (kind-of like mana or magic points) is small, and easily filled to the brim and more by a light nip at a human's soul. One human suffering a little bit of a reduction to his Valor, his Compassion, his Conviction, his Temperance, or his overall Willpower per week or so, and they're golden. A village could keep them going indefinitely with nobody having more than one bad week every few months, and barely noticing that most of the time.

Sure, the fluff says that it "tastes good," so Fair Folk often gorge themselves in a feeding frenzy...but no rules back this up. It's possible to do, certainly, but it's wasteful. It doesn't get you anything, and it costs you future ability to feed AND draws unwanted attention from powerful beings who might want to stop this horrible monster. There aren't even coercive "must resist temptation" rules to force it (which a lot of vampire games use to keep vampires feeding far beyond the required amounts).

A later bit of errata actually gave benefits which could be obtained from "overeating." Bonus stats, increased powers, and other goodies which made the gorging Fair Folk into a more powerful being...for a little while...actually gave reason to be tempted OOC to engage in what is supposed to be tempting IC, and moreover gave more dramatic urge to engage in it precisely because "good" reasons could be thought of. Present a fair folk's player with a victim who "deserves" it and a chance to use that power for his own goals (which, perhaps, are lofty!), and the temptation is so, so much sweeter.


So rules should be written with an eye towards what you want players to do in the game. What is the game about, and what do you want to enable and what do you want to encourage? If you have "the corruption," and some element of free will acceptance or behavior modification is a part of it, have it REWARD, by the rules, "giving in." Suddenly, the PLAYER is experiencing some of the same temptation as the CHARACTER. No longer is it inherently "the game taking away my control over my PC," but it's instead a personal temptation and torment. Give in, and you get something you want. "Feeling good" IC translates to something that is emotionally satisfying OOC.

Rules are important, too, to enable players to play characters with abilities they, themselves, lack in the real world. This is one reason combat rules are usually so involved: the majority of us just aren't that good at fighting, but we want our characters to be. (Also, we don't want to be physically hurt or hurting others, but want our characters to have that ability in the game.) The "no rules for social stuff" crowd often fail to realize that all that means is that you're making your character have a cap on his social prowess equal to your own social prowess vs. the GM. This may not be a bad thing, if that's how you want to do it! But if you want to play Enrico Suave`, but you couldn't talk a girl (or boy) into letting you hold a door open for her if it was the only door out of a burning building, you probably want a system that gives you rules to help you determine just how good at being a sexy seductor Enrico really is. Just as you want rules to let you know just how good with sword and fist Master Sargent Max Fightmaster is, since your own expertise with both is "you want to hit the other guy more than he hits you, preferably with the hardest, pointiest parts of your weapons."

hifidelity2
2015-12-22, 05:00 AM
How much does a rules system affect how you play the game? Do you think it has an effect on you at all?



100% - different rule system lead to different game styles

I will take 3 just as an example

(A)D&D – of whatever version
More Hack and Slash (H&S) as that is what it is designed for. Yes you can do political but that requires the DM to come up with rules (where you aren’t just walking around dominating people)
Once I get to mid level (say 5) as a fighter (to keep it simple) I can charge 3 crossbow armed mooks and should win

GURPS
While it does H&S and allow many different styles it has rules for social interaction. (We play that you can Just roll, Just rollplay or do both- this allows those who are more introvert to still play a “Face” character if they want)
However even at moderate level If I charge the same 3 Mooks I could be killed by the 1st volley

Paranoia
While there is H&S its more likely to kill yourself rather than anyone else. Loss of a PC is part of the “fun”
Social interaction is trying to shift the blame onto anyone else


So 3 totally different systems, all are Roleplaying and all would come up with totally different solutions to the same porblem

veti
2015-12-22, 02:42 PM
Shouldn't the player be wondering why the GM is arbitrarily altering their character's backstory?

That's why I said "adapt to match character background".

Raimun
2015-12-22, 06:05 PM
Rules of the game are important.

They can help to set the mood among other things, such as story telling, interaction or more gimmicky things such as background music and props.

For example, a game of Call of Cthulhu played with Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu-ruleset would be a whole different game from Call of Cthulhu played with standard Savage Worlds-ruleset.

You could claim that the rules of the game don't affect your roleplaying but I'd like to ask: Don't they?

I find that the knowledge of the mechanical framework, (ie. the very fabric of reality of the game world), helps me connect better to a game. I make different kinds of decisions, depending on my knowledge of the physical realities involved. Something that would be utterly hopeless in Chaosium's game might be still considered a fighting chance in Savage Worlds.

It's even in the name of the hobby: Role Playing Games. The term 'Game' implies that there are certain rules within (even though RPGs are not defined solely by their rules). Other storytelling mediums which don't have rules, such as theater, movies and books, are not defined as games.

RedMage125
2015-12-22, 06:41 PM
Purely my own experience:

The more rules there are for out-of-combat actions, the harder it is to "roleplay". The most RP fun I've had is in 1e AD&D, where most non-combat rules vary from optional to nonexistent. As soon as you introduce skills, rolls and rules for "talking to people", you inhibit normal interaction between people at the table - instead of breezing through on pure chutzpah and the occasional CHA roll, you start mentally weighing odds and calculating modifiers.

Again, that's my own experience, and I know many people will disagree. But it's a big part of why I like a minimalist, combat-centric ruleset.

You make a very good point, and I am not saying you're wrong, but there's a counter-point to that.

And that is rules for things like "talking to people" and "swimming" PROTECT players from arbitrary calls by DMs. Yes, a DM may "Rule 0" just about anything, but with a system in place that says "a roll of x gets y result", players can know what they need to TRY to do to accomplish what they WANT to do.

Your point is still a good one, but there's always another side to the coin. It boils down to preference and the people you game with. I ran 4e and chose to view the lack of game mechanics as free-form roleplay space. And I almost exclusively DMed during the 4e time.

goto124
2015-12-22, 07:17 PM
A thought occured to me. If gaining benefits is tied to social stuff, how do you avoid situations where one player progresses far beyond and overshadows everyone else by having better RL social skills or even knowing the GM better - stuff that social mechanics are supposed to help prevent?

Dimers
2015-12-22, 09:33 PM
A thought occured to me. If gaining benefits is tied to social stuff, how do you avoid situations where one player progresses far beyond and overshadows everyone else by having better RL social skills or even knowing the GM better - stuff that social mechanics are supposed to help prevent?

Let the socially weaker players use a lifeline OOC -- they can always ask the more socially adept players for aid in describing/explaining/presenting. They might end up getting a few points in their IRL social stats if they're paying attention. But for the most part, I run social stuff very mechanistically, and I don't enjoy game systems where the player's social skill is a big factor.

NichG
2015-12-23, 02:08 AM
A thought occured to me. If gaining benefits is tied to social stuff, how do you avoid situations where one player progresses far beyond and overshadows everyone else by having better RL social skills or even knowing the GM better - stuff that social mechanics are supposed to help prevent?

I don't think you should use social mechanics to prevent that. Let people feel awesome at what they're awesome at.

Use DM active balancing instead. Don't force the socially adept player to be worse artificially. Just recognize the imbalance and give the weaker player more opportunities, easier challenges, or other forms of assistance. Also you can try asking the more skilled player to voluntarily tone it down if it's really extreme.

It's no different than if you have one player in the group who is better at mechanical optimization. They can also overshadow the other players. You could just provide pregens, but then you're depriving them off something they find fun. So it's better to talk it out and get them to take the other players into consideration.

veti
2015-12-23, 04:27 AM
A thought occured to me. If gaining benefits is tied to social stuff, how do you avoid situations where one player progresses far beyond and overshadows everyone else by having better RL social skills or even knowing the GM better - stuff that social mechanics are supposed to help prevent?

The same way as you prevent a player from overshadowing everyone else by being better at character optimisation, by having a more comprehensive grasp of the rules, or by just getting lucky in creating the perfect character for this particular campaign...

That is - there's no mechanistic guarantee, it's a matter of communication between players and DM. If you think the group is getting out of balance, you need to tell the DM - and the DM needs to do something to address the issue and watch out for it in future. It's a learning experience.

goto124
2015-12-23, 06:24 AM
What, no one has brought up the "person with huge muscles IRL wins all the Str checks" analogy? :smalltongue:

Having some degree of mechanics helps. But to what degree?

Milo v3
2015-12-23, 07:09 AM
There is a tabletop game where you physical skills matter mechanically, dread. Since the way you tell if you succeed or not is through the players real-life dexterity, with each time you need to see if you die or not you have to pull a piece out of a jenga tower. This is because it's a horror game and the mechanics cause suspense as each risky action of the player makes it closer and closer to the inevitability of someone's character dying.