With the advent of Gamehawk (April 1, no foolin'), I'm pretty much ready to start up Gavilan. I just haven't decided what system to actually use. I'm leaning toward PowerPoint. ...You know, slideware. (See, here I'm gonna get into a manifesto.) I'm old-school, in some ways. I like the game producing a good Story, but stopping to figure out Story mechanically snaps my suspenders of disbelief just as much as having a wacky die roll make a hero muff the climactic battle scene and break the Story does (and the latter at least only happens unpredictably while the former is mandated). I'm quasi-immersive; I want to be able to just worry about what My Guy is doing, thinking, and so on, though sometimes it's sort of third-person even when I'm a player. On the other hand, I'd rather play freeform in PBeM. Yeah, I wrote a die-roller into the Phoenyx, but I'm pretty sure I've never actually used it in a game. Rules, PBeM-wise, are there so everybody has the same expectations as much as is possible, not to actually be used. I do like character generation rules, but I'm kind of catholic in my tastes. I've been known to say "Give me a character sheet/writeup. But I don't care what system it's in." So what I'm thinking, with the PowerPoint thing, is... I need to know what's important about your character. (Because otherwise it's not important. Duh.) So I want characters summed up in... what's the conventional wisdom, three to five points on a slide? Yeah. Now, behind each of those points is going to be some detail. If one of your points is "Best starship pilot EVAR!!!" you put whatever skills and other traits you think support that behind it. Piloting skill, overconfidence, reputation, previous employers, whatever. Points can be anything. Whatever three to five things sum up your character in his or her entirety, pretty much. (If you come up with something halfway through that doesn't fit into a point, that's still okay, it just means your points weren't right. Or aren't right now, at least.) Now, because Gavilan is all about "Starship Crew as a (Sometimes Dysfunctional) Family," at least one of those points is probably going to be about the character's place in the family. Aboard the Spotted Eagle, the example ship/crew, one of the young supercargo's points would be "The Vargr killed my father." This affects his relationship with his mother (the pilot/owner, though not the best EVAR!!!) and stepfather (the ship's engineer), plus giving him some fun interpersonal issues with all the Vargr the ship run into (which is a lot, since the border is kind of fuzzy. No... hairy.) So do I really need anything more to fulfill my manifesto? In theory, if the points are properly selected, any question that comes up should be answerable (at least partially) by a point. Can the ship evade a pursuer? Well, it's piloted by the best starship pilot EVAR!!! (I don't always play diceless when I play freeform, so it's not necessarily a sure thing a la Amber. Sometimes I roll dice, and if I roll, say, a number out on the far left of the ol' bell curve, I go "Huh. Maybe he should fail unexpectedly even if he's the best..." and see where the Story goes from there. That's as intrusive as I want Story "mechanics" to get, y'know? Or, come to that, as character-can-do mechanics should get.) Can young Joshua Campbell handle himself in a starport barfight? Well, he's The Young Supercargo (that might, in fact, be his principal point), so he might be a little green. But The Vargr Killed His Father in a dockside ambush, so he might have an Unarmed Combat skill backing that point up nowadays. Or maybe a holdout pistol. I know some games (Theatrix some, others more explicitly though I can't think of any names) have things that sound kind of like that, but they're all cluttered up with rules about "activating the descriptor" and whatnot. Mechanics, suspenders, bah. These are just PowerPoint points. And darnit, I don't like animated backgrounds, so they're JUST GONNA SIT THERE. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 03:33:50PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: >With the advent of Gamehawk (April 1, no foolin'), I'm pretty much ready >to start up Gavilan. I believe the technical term is "Yay!". >On the other hand, I'd rather play freeform in PBeM. Yeah, I wrote a >die-roller into the Phoenyx, but I'm pretty sure I've never actually used >it in a game. Rules, PBeM-wise, are there so everybody has the same >expectations as much as is possible, not to actually be used. In this rant I am ABSOLUTELY NOT telling you what to do in your game. I'm just trying to give my own perspective. I like a fairly heavily structured system, in part because I like to be able to define a character quite closely. Even looking through a system's list of powers and abilities often gives me ideas. That's not too much of a problem - if I write up my character as a 200-pointer in GURPS, say, I have a very good idea of what he can do, and I can probably play him in a purely-narrative system. The descriptive idea that Karen suggests later, though, isn't purely narrative. I'm going to call it instead a "four important things" or "FIT" system, since that seems to be the usual sort of number and matches Karen's "three to five". Another, somewhat more complex, example would be Chad Underkoffler's PDQ system (http://www.atomicsockmonkey.com/freebies/di/pdq-core.pdf for the free core rules). The difficulty I have with FIT-like systems is that they leave all that nice juicy detail off the character sheet and in my head, where it may not be accessible at the crucial moment. Let's take Karen's example: when Joshua gets into that barfight, (a) I as his player have to think "aha, TVKMF and so I might have an edge in this fight"; (b) I have to work out on the fly what that edge might be... and then (c) the GM has to adjudicate whether whatever I've just asked for is reasonable. To me, that not only drags things out, it throws me _more_ out of suspension of disbelief than simply rolling the dice would. I as the player am negotiating the reality of the game world with the GM, which kills the immersion; it may just be that I've done an awful lot of wargaming and whatnot, but saying "I'll try to sneak up on him to hit him with a bottle, my Stealth is 11, his Perception is 14, -2 because there's a lot of distraction, (roll) (roll) OK I made it" just doesn't kill the mood for me in the same way. As a secondary problem, this sort of system gives an advantage to glib players, of whom I am usually not one. :-) In the PBEM games I've run, I've usually gone for a fairly complex character generation system (first Dark Conspiracy heavily modified, then later Rolemaster and currently GURPS), because I find a detailed character sheet serves as an aide-memoire. "What can I do in this situation?" (Looks through sheet, spies a skill that he's forgotten about.) "Hey, I'm sure I remember something about lock-picking. Remember when that spy showed me the basics?" That one point in a never-used skill would be such a small part of the character that it would fall through the cracks of a FIT-based description, but rather than the player having to say "oh, um, I have Hangs Out In Low Dives, and maybe I could have learned it there" it's right there on the sheet... I _don't_ necessarily use detailed _play_ mechanics in those PBEM games. I certainly don't set up full GURPS tactical combats. I do make skill rolls for the PCs and generally abide by the random results, but I don't think the stories have been wrecked by unexpected criticals or fumbles. -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>I like a fairly heavily structured system, in part because I like to be RBW>able to define a character quite closely. Even looking through a RBW>system's list of powers and abilities often gives me ideas. Oh, I'm not by *any* means discouraging having a structured system. I'm just saying when you're building your character with that structured system, I'm thinking you ought to be able to put everything that's really *important* to your character into one of the points. Points might, like my EVAR example, sum up a whole batch of skills and disads and all that sort of stuff. It means you *can* gloss them, especially if you're the sort who goes "Oh, I forgot my character would obviously have this skill!" later in the game, but it doesn't necessarily mean you ought to. RBW>The descriptive idea that Karen suggests later, though, isn't purely RBW>narrative. I'm going to call it instead a "four important things" or Is that "GNS narrative" or "Forge narrative"? (Not that I think anybody's established what the latter term actually means...) RBW>"FIT" system, since that seems to be the usual sort of number and RBW>matches Karen's "three to five". Another, somewhat more complex, example RBW>would be Chad Underkoffler's PDQ system RBW>(http://www.atomicsockmonkey.com/freebies/di/pdq-core.pdf for the free RBW>core rules). I think I've looked it over. I like odd numbers better, though. It's a visual-artist thang. RBW>To me, that not only drags things out, it throws me _more_ out of RBW>suspension of disbelief than simply rolling the dice would. I as the RBW>player am negotiating the reality of the game world with the GM, which RBW>kills the immersion; it may just be that I've done an awful lot of RBW>wargaming and whatnot, but saying "I'll try to sneak up on him to hit RBW>him with a bottle, my Stealth is 11, his Perception is 14, -2 because RBW>there's a lot of distraction, (roll) (roll) OK I made it" just doesn't RBW>kill the mood for me in the same way. Nah, in my games you don't get to negotiate reality. I get to roll all the dice (imaginary or otherwise) is all... RBW>As a secondary problem, this sort of system gives an advantage to glib RBW>players, of whom I am usually not one. :-) That's why I like PBeM. RBW>In the PBEM games I've run, I've usually gone for a fairly complex RBW>character generation system (first Dark Conspiracy heavily modified, RBW>then later Rolemaster and currently GURPS), because I find a detailed RBW>character sheet serves as an aide-memoire. "What can I do in this RBW>situation?" (Looks through sheet, spies a skill that he's forgotten RBW>about.) "Hey, I'm sure I remember something about lock-picking. Remember RBW>when that spy showed me the basics?" That one point in a never-used RBW>skill would be such a small part of the character that it would fall RBW>through the cracks of a FIT-based description, but rather than the RBW>player having to say "oh, um, I have Hangs Out In Low Dives, and maybe I RBW>could have learned it there" it's right there on the sheet... Some of that is more of a problem with design-at-start vs. develop-in-play (if I recall the terminology correctly). Only with my, it's a clearly developed character (often, anyway) that I can't quite get out of my head onto the paper. I can't list off all the skills and whatnot, but when the time comes I have a solid gut feeling about whether the character should be good at something or not. "Oh, that fits," or "No, that doesn't fit." No, it really doesn't make sense, but that's how my brane werkz. Sometimes. Other times yeah, the character sheet IS the character, right from the get-go, and I'm fine. RBW>I _don't_ necessarily use detailed _play_ mechanics in those PBEM games. RBW>I certainly don't set up full GURPS tactical combats. I do make skill RBW>rolls for the PCs and generally abide by the random results, but I don't RBW>think the stories have been wrecked by unexpected criticals or fumbles. That's because you haven't had Carl and his Curse Of The Green Pickle in your games. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 05:25:56PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: >Is that "GNS narrative" or "Forge narrative"? (Not that I think anybody's >established what the latter term actually means...) "Purely narrative" to me would basically mean cooperative story-telling with no rules at all and no formal system for resolving conflicts. >Nah, in my games you don't get to negotiate reality. I get to roll all >the dice (imaginary or otherwise) is all... But... "TVKMF, so I'm always a bit twitchy in situations like this and I have a holdout pistol" is acceptable by your example. "TVKMF, so in this sort of violent situation I go into an unstoppable cold rage and knock out everyone in the bar without them being able to do anything about it" presumably wouldn't be. So there has to be some sort of discussion, during the game, as to just what the player can get out of this quality. A detailed skill system moves that discussion forwards to character-creation time, so it doesn't slow down play to the same extent; FIT can't do that because the player has to invent new things his quality might be able to do, on the fly. (Which, now that I think about it, might be great for a four-colour superhero game...) >Some of that is more of a problem with design-at-start vs. develop-in-play >(if I recall the terminology correctly). I see the point there, I think. The way I deal with that is usually to reserve some points for things I forgot during the design stage (with GM cooperation); this seems to be a good idea in a new game anyway, since it's often not quite apparent just what the PCs will be doing until the game's started. But I like small changes to accrue over time as well. We end an adventure having done a favour for the Federation Navy, so we get the chance to have certain officers as contacts. Or we studied a pre-collapse starship, and our engineer is learning the basics of how their power cells worked, but he's not very good yet. (Both of these things happened in _Tempt Not the Stars_.) These are too small to be represented within FIT (at least as I understand it). >That's because you haven't had Carl and his Curse Of The Green Pickle in >your games. I don't believe I've seen the "pickle" reference before... not since I joined Gamers, anyway, and I don't believe the archives are currently searchable. -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Roger Burton West wrote:
> I don't believe I've seen the "pickle" reference before... not since I
> joined Gamers, anyway, and I don't believe the archives are currently
> searchable.
Back when I was in high school, I played D&D with one of my brothers
and our friends. I almost always gamemastered, and this day was like
any other. We were sitting in the little room upstairs, eating
sandwiches for lunch, and the characters were fighting a lich or
something. I don't remember what module it was, but I remember it
being a bad fight. I kick ass with liches.
My big bad is about to smite my brother's character, which will
probably knock off his last few hit points. I pick up my twenty-sider
and prepare to roll. My brother raises his kosher dill and points it
at me, intoning, "I curse you with the CURSE OF THE GREEN PICKLE."
I rolled a one. The heroes took down the big bad, and ever since
then, I have been cursed with bad luck when it comes to dice.
Last Christmas (I only see him at Christmas, when he comes home to
visit), I reminded my brother of this. He'd forgotten, of course, but
he said the words to release me from the curse. I'm not convinced it
worked... there weren't any pickles involved, he didn't seem too
sincere, and I still suck at rolling dice.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ Trim Your Quotes! ]
ANY system works with enough hammer thumps.
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On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Roger Burton West wrote: RBW>"Purely narrative" to me would basically mean cooperative story-telling RBW>with no rules at all and no formal system for resolving conflicts. That's pretty much me and pbem, yeah. RBW>"TVKMF, so in this sort of violent situation I go into an unstoppable RBW>cold rage and knock out everyone in the bar without them being able to RBW>do anything about it" presumably wouldn't be. Sure, with the insertion of "try to" before "knock out." The Young Supercargo point is gonna work against that, though. RBW>So there has to be some sort of discussion, during the game, as to just RBW>what the player can get out of this quality. A detailed skill system RBW>moves that discussion forwards to character-creation time, so it doesn't RBW>slow down play to the same extent; FIT can't do that because the player RBW>has to invent new things his quality might be able to do, on the fly. RBW>(Which, now that I think about it, might be great for a four-colour RBW>superhero game...) Well, not necessarily. You have supporting slides, and all... RBW>I see the point there, I think. The way I deal with that is usually to RBW>reserve some points for things I forgot during the design stage (with GM RBW>cooperation); this seems to be a good idea in a new game anyway, since RBW>it's often not quite apparent just what the PCs will be doing until the RBW>game's started. RBW>But I like small changes to accrue over time as well. We end an RBW>adventure having done a favour for the Federation Navy, so we get the RBW>chance to have certain officers as contacts. Or we studied a RBW>pre-collapse starship, and our engineer is learning the basics of how RBW>their power cells worked, but he's not very good yet. (Both of these RBW>things happened in _Tempt Not the Stars_.) These are too small to be RBW>represented within FIT (at least as I understand it). Sort of. Ideally, they'd go under a particular point (or add/replace a point) if they're anything significant/lifechanging. Otherwise, they're part of the history, which is a bit different from being part of the character. RBW>I don't believe I've seen the "pickle" reference before... not since I RBW>joined Gamers, anyway, and I don't believe the archives are currently RBW>searchable. Actually, I think Google's already spidered them. (Inktomi hit it first; its spider was pretty much following viceroy page-for-page. Google picked it up within 24 hours, though.) But yeah, it apparently hasn't been mentioned here, nor on Usenet (which was actually where I'd expect to see it). -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 02:50:26AM -0600, Roger Burton West wrote: > So there has to be some sort of discussion, during the game, as to just > what the player can get out of this quality. A detailed skill system > moves that discussion forwards to character-creation time, so it doesn't > slow down play to the same extent; FIT can't do that because the player > has to invent new things his quality might be able to do, on the fly. > (Which, now that I think about it, might be great for a four-colour > superhero game...) Truth and Justice suits that to a T, and yes, it is great for a superhero game. (I've spent most of my gaming life torn between the cool fun character building point by point, and the more flexible rules-light type of systems. Supers is my favourite genre -- T&J hits an almost perfect sweet spot for me personally. Plus it talks about Northrop Frye.) -- Chuk Goodin cgoodin@sfu.ca Alien Light GM http://www.phoenyx.net/alienlight ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Chuk Goodin wrote: CG>(I've spent most of my gaming life torn between the cool fun character CG>building point by point, and the more flexible rules-light type of CG>systems. Supers is my favourite genre -- T&J hits an almost perfect sweet CG>spot for me personally. Plus it talks about Northrop Frye.) Me too. I like really detailed character generation systems (Champs, GURPS...) and then actual play mechanics that only serve to define what the character generation means, not to be used in actual play. Heh. The PowerPoint system, I suppose, would be more to give a presentation to the other players (and lurkers, and even the GM though you'd want to follow it with the details there) about what your character is, I think, than necessarily replacing whatever system you best like to define it. It also defines (and this is very significant) what's important to you about your character, rather than what cost the most points. Chris' first character in our supers game, for instance, was much discussed in Carl's blog... he was ridiculously wealthy. But for Chris, this wasn't saying "I want my character to be a Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark kind of guy, with lots of complications arising from business competitors and stuff." He was saying "I don't want my character to have to deal with mundane concerns like money." In the first case, you can take Wealthy tempered with Duty or Enemies or whatever, and in the second case, you take plain old Wealthy. And that's fine for times when the player is saying "I want power without responsibility," but not so fine for when the player is just saying "I don't want to deal with this in this campaign, please." I'm not sure how I'd sum up Magma in slideware, and whether Doesn't Have To Worry About Money would rate being a point, or whether it would be a genre assumption to say he doesn't have to worry unless it's part of his secret-identity point, though. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 09:23:46PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > In the first case, you can take Wealthy tempered with Duty or Enemies or > whatever, and in the second case, you take plain old Wealthy. And that's > fine for times when the player is saying "I want power without > responsibility," but not so fine for when the player is just saying "I > don't want to deal with this in this campaign, please." > > I'm not sure how I'd sum up Magma in slideware, and whether Doesn't Have > To Worry About Money would rate being a point, or whether it would be a > genre assumption to say he doesn't have to worry unless it's part of his > secret-identity point, though. Yeah, in my supers games PCs don't worry about money unless they've specifically been created with some kind of a hook there -- either they've taken disadvantages regarding it, or it's a Hook of some type. -- Chuk Goodin cgoodin@sfu.ca Alien Light GM http://www.phoenyx.net/alienlight ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Chuk Goodin wrote:
> Yeah, in my supers games PCs don't worry about money unless they've
> specifically been created with some kind of a hook there -- either they've
> taken disadvantages regarding it, or it's a Hook of some type.
This was a "don't worry about money in an active way" too.
"We need to get there quick, we'll use one of my helicopters."
"We need 5000 pounds of Weed-be-Gone, some explosives and detonators,
and a small railway car? Just put it on my credit card."
It was more of a power than anything, although there did seem to be an
element of "I don't want to deal with the 'my secret identity is
interfering with my real life'" thing going on as well. Not only was
he filthy rich, his company was entirely run by very trustworthy
people. And if I suggested that someone might be curious about what
he'd been doing with with that cargo van and why it had bullet holes
in it, he hand-waved it as being unimportant. It was clear that he
wanted the money to cover up everything he didn't want to have to deal
with.
I could have done some very interesting things story-wise with
bullet-riddled vans, borrowed helicopters, and tracing the purchasing
of explosives to him... but it was apparent that he would have been
unhappy with the story taking that turn.
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) Gamers List Owner
[ The Fudge List -- http://fudge.phoenyx.net/ ]
Hey, you work at McDonalds, you can afford it!
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On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 03:33:50PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > With the advent of Gamehawk (April 1, no foolin'), I'm pretty much ready > to start up Gavilan. > > I just haven't decided what system to actually use. I'm leaning toward > PowerPoint. > > ...You know, slideware. What is Gavilan? I feel I've missed some discussion here. And slideware sounds reasonably cool -- I'm a fan of systems like PDQ and Risus. I agree to some extent with Roger's comments about the detail triggering ideas, and I've also found cool hooks or bits for a character by trying to get that one last point spent. Guess I'm just wishy-washy that way. -- Chuk Goodin cgoodin@sfu.ca Alien Light GM http://www.phoenyx.net/alienlight ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Chuk Goodin wrote: CG>What is Gavilan? I feel I've missed some discussion here. The game I've off-and-on threatened to start. It gets first mention (by name, anyway) here: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/main/00001944/ (That's also off in the older archives, which I haven't regenerated yet, so some links might not work. Carl just put a local Perl on the new server, so I should be able to do all that this week. Whee! Of course, I've also put it off because I haven't had anybody jump up to fix up the HTML and CSS all purty, and I only wanted to regen once if I could get away with it...) Most of the discussion actually happened off on our local-group mailing list, because it was tentatively going to become a live game, but now it's not, again. Whenever I get those archives Gamehawked, I can point stuff there (or more likely, pull across to the Gavilan group-to-be via the Gamehawk wiki-to-be). -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > > Most of the discussion actually happened off on our local-group mailing > list, because it was tentatively going to become a live game, but now it's > not, again. Whenever I get those archives Gamehawked, I can point stuff > there (or more likely, pull across to the Gavilan group-to-be via the > Gamehawk wiki-to-be). I'd have no complaints whatsoever if it did end up being a live game. :) -Bill Hamilton ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Bill Hamilton wrote: BH>I'd have no complaints whatsoever if it did end up being a live game. :) Even if we held it at Roger's house? -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 09:02:16PM -0600, Karen J. Cravens wrote: >On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Bill Hamilton wrote: >BH>I'd have no complaints whatsoever if it did end up being a live game. :) >Even if we held it at Roger's house? I have a large table. :-) -- Roger, gaming grognard, misunderstanding for fun and profit Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
