On Thu, 23 Apr 1998 21:39:58 GMT, "Craig Shackleton and Rachel Collishaw" <craig.rachel_at_xtra.co.nz> wrote in 5:556:
> This is true, but I also enjoy roleplaying a reaction to unusual and
> unexpected situations. Dice can provide the unexpected for both the players
> and the GM.
But not the only one. As readers of uk.games.roleplay will know, I recently started an experiement where the dice were replaced by Everway cards. Many of the other game mechanics remained similar to RQ2/3, but character stats became runic affinities (some stats being lost, others created), and skills were regrouped under runic affinities rather than portmanteau headings. Players state their characters' intentions, the GM assesses the difficulty of the task, compares it to the skill the character has in that skill, and draws one or more cards to determine success. The GM takes into account the difficulty, and applies both the card's face meaning and its Tarot-style implications to the action. (You could use a Tarot deck instead, of course.)
The players are no longer saying "I hit the troll". They're describing their intent in detail ("I'm ducking under the troll's club and hitting it in the leg"), and the implications of the card suggest to the GM how well or poorly they fared. The exact upshot is determined by the GM, but I'll often point out the card and its interpretation, and players can role-play into it.
Instead of the sterile dice roll, this method injects human interpretation, and encourages role-playing even in crisis. The unexpected is still there, but you lose a lot of GM's tables and a lot of game mechanics, and add more spontaneity.
It's early days yet -- we're still playtesting and refining -- but the new mechanics seem to improve gameplay enormously.
> [snip]
> >slave collar to the city of Glamour. When you play and fall in love
> >with a favorite character long enough, it comes naturally, with no need
> >for extra nueral hardware.
> >
> Just remember the "long enough." What do you do before that happens?
Work on the character background, and their personality, until you know them like a friend. The weakest characters I've seen or played have been bare-stats characters, played "vanilla", and they never really built up the same kind of depth that PCs already possessed who'd been thought through thoroughly (scary phrase) at the outset.
One of the jobs of a GM is to help players build depth into their characters. I allow at least couple of hours each, or a length email exchange, to PCs, asking questions like,
_at_ Where was your original home? _at_ Are your parents still alive? _at_ What are their names? _at_ How come you don't live at home any more? _at_ When people meet you for the first time, what do they see? What's their likely reaction to you? _at_ What events in your childhood shaped you as an adult? (This is an amazingly effective question)
There's an excellent NPC character sheet in Griffin Mountain which gives something like 15-20 personality facets, and requires a position on a sliding scale from one extreme to another (e.g. Friendly ... Hostile to strangers), and I'll ask a player to use that if they're having trouble with a shallow character.
> I have always felt that RPGs involve the creation of a story by three
> forces; The GM, the Players, and the Dice. The dice add an element that the
> players and GM cannot predict, requiring greater creativity in them to
> compensate. I really enjoy when a random effect either forces me to think of
> a new thing, or throws a new element into the story.
Yes, but the random element need not be as sterile as dice. Dice also force players to think in terms of mathematics when they should be thinking in terms of situation, action and reaction.
> >And, dice aren't used to determine the outcome of real world
> >events, except in gambling casinos.
>
> This, I simply don't buy at all. How can the outcome be uncertain if the
> GM has the final say in what happens? I, as a player, may not know the
> outcome, but I know damn well that it is predetermined and that the GM knows
> what it is.
The GM _always_ has the final say in what happens. Who amongst us has never fiddled the damage to an NPC enemy to achieve a certain result more satisfactory to the campaign, or brought in a deus ex machina to sway the outcome of a jeopardous situation?
It depends upon how well you trust your GM. When I proposed my rules modifications, one thing I made a point of saying was, "If I'm reading cards to interpret what's going on, there's a valid argument that I've taken away from you the means of determining your own characters' destiny." The group responded, unanimously, "Well, that's pretty much the case anyway. We roll the dice, but you already interpret the result to a degree, and this is likely to be a quicker, better way of achieving the same thing. Go for it."
Actually, it turns out that when players stop rolling dice and role-play _instead_, they take charge of their own destiny far more than before.
What I think I'm saying is that it's good to have an element of randomness, but that when the mechanics of using that element jar players out of the actual situation they're role-playing it's a bad thing. Dice almost mandate that dislocation.
> For me, as a GM, there are two events that are near the top of my list
> for enjoying a game. One is when the players totally derail my plot, and the
> other is when the dice totally derail my plot. That's when I have to become
> _really_ creative, and fly by the seat of my pants for the rest of the
> session (or even campaign).
Good players (and good GMs) don't need dice to achieve that kind of derailment. In our group, if you manage to keep to the scenario you planned, you've failed as a GM, because the players use so much initiative that forcing them to the prepared campaign would ruin the game. (That's a polite way of saying that they occasionally tear up the game plan and do their own thing, just for the fun of watching the GM sweat.:-) We have fun...
Jon
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