On 13 Feb 2002 at 8:55, Noctifer@aol.com wrote: > Thing is, a GM who's running a diceless game is immediately going > to set up a red flag in my head. I don't want to play with a GM > that I think is going to be unfair and biased. If they're running > a diceless game, I immediately start wondering why. In the > admittedly few experiences I've had, it was often because they > wanted to be able to dictate where the story went and this > sometimes extended into character interactions as well. I gather "It's a PBeM and dice are awkward" isn't sufficient? > Let me say again that this is all based on my experiences, which I > don't suggest is the end of being, and that these are just my > opinions. I've no problem with other people having different > opinions...that's what makes discussions like this fun. Of course, > I'd love to have someone else chime in here...I'm starting to feel > ganged up on. :) I didn't realize there were so many diceless > gamers around here :) This being a play-by-email gamesite, there are by extension a lot of PBeM players here. Some of us play diceless in PBeM, diced in FTF. > Actually, I misspoke a bit an author can go too far, he just has > greater leeway because he doesn't have the same responsibility to > his readers that a GM has to his players. For an example of an > author who takes things too far, take David Eddings. I love his > Belgariad stuff...it's strongly influenced my games. But his > Elenium series takes things too far. The central character, > Sparhawk, is too much of a bad*ss. Eddings isn't fair to his world > by making Sparhawk so incredibly untouchable. That's "game" balance, though, not diceness. > The author, though, doesn't have the same level of responsiblity > towards fairness that a GM does. If you're going to be a GM, > you've made a decision to create a world, much like an author, and > create situations within that world for adventure, again, much like > an author. When it comes to telling the story, though, you're role > as GM is more limited than that of an author. An author must weave > the entire tapestry of the story and has the convenience of pacing > and structure to get where he wants to go. The GM has a > responsiblity to let his players weave a major part of the story. > If he tries to aim the story himself over-much, you get into > railroading, which is the extreme of what I'm discussing here. I'm still not connecting that with the use of dice or not, except maybe in a vague "Dice can screw up a gamemaster's story, and that's the players' only hope" way. > That's not what I'm trying to say and I'm really sorry that I gave > you that impression. What I've been trying to say is that "If you > run a diceless game, you will screw up the game *for me*." Welllll, okay. But I think I'd have to see a nice double-blind test first. Well, single-blind, anyway, since I guess you couldn't get the *GM* to not know if he was using dice or not. > in that game...the GM was very talented. But in those instances > where I felt my actions, as a player, were affected by the GM's > opinion of what a "good game" was, my "fun-level" was decreased. > In that game, I could overlook these instances and have fun, but I > would have had a lot more fun if they hadn't happened. I know that > there were other players in the game that this didn't bother (and > they likely weren't as much of a "problem player" as I was). I see that as more of a story-vs-character, dramatist-vs- simulationist, thisbuzzwordist-vs-thatbuzzwordist sort of dichotomy, not specifically linked to diced-vs-diceless. Now, maybe in the FTF- only world, diceless games *attracted* more of the "make a good story no matter what" sort of gamemaster, but in PBeM I think the dice get dropped purely for convenience' sake, and there's not much of a definite causal link to gaming style. Hmm. Theory: PBeM attracts people who want to make good *verbiage*, not necessarily overall story, and having to do lots of "If... then..." and pauses for dice resolution interrupts the flow of writing the text. -- Karen J. Cravens (silver@phoenyx.net) ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
