Hmm. When did "aeon" become a speculative fiction buzzword?

@BESW About an aeon ago.

@Magician Zing.

Hrm. I have a question about Eclipse Phase, that I'm not sure how to ask best. In the new sourcebook, there's an alternative method of character generation. And there's a sidebar, comparing it to the old one, saying it gives about 20 points more. I've tallied everything up, and that's not the number I get. I could list my calculations and ask "What am I missing?" but that runs the risk of the answer being "nothing", which is boring.

Or I could ask "So, different character generation systems, what's up with that?" and put my calculations into self-answer. Thoughts?

If I am missing something, it won't matter.

Sounds worth a shot.

@BESW Yeah, but which one?

The second? One moment, let me find precedent.

I found six "what is the difference between?" questions.

one, two, three, four, five, six.

Most are comparing systems, but a couple are about minisystems like classes.

So a "what is the difference between?" question ought to be reasonable, especially if you further constrain it by providing a context.

Hmm. That's not quite like the question I have. My question is basically this: "The book says method A creates characters worth 1100 points, while method B creates characters worth 1080 points. My calculations show that method B should create characters worth 1105 points. What have I missed?"

Mm.

That's a legit question by itself.

(which is splitting hairs and all, but I want to understand the system)

If I put it like this, though, it's likely the answer will be "looks like an error, you're right". Which is not terribly... I dunno. Perhaps I'm overthinking it.

Sometimes answers are boring.

Ok, thanks. Asked.

Hey folks.

Howdy!

Hey.

We RPGed today! Basically an entire short session out of "fail at tracking, oops a monster, crap let's fight it."

System?

BW, still.

It felt good because I saw that I was trusting my instincts (my instincts as a player, not Instincts the game term) and getting cool stuff to happen as a result.

In particular, I've already been in the habit of occasionally making tests that I totally want to fail, because the failure consequences might be awesome.

But that's a bit different from just embracing the possibility of failure wholeheartedly.

I failed a Steel test. You always get the choice of how that failure manifests -- just freeze up momentarily, cower in fear (helps if you want to beg for mercy or avoid some arrow fire), run away screaming, or swoon. And I picked swoon because, I dunno, I was full of trust that getting captured by a terrible monster would turn into something FUN.

There's a new boogeyman ruining RPG discussion. "Narrative" and "cooperative storytelling."

I see stuff like:

> I know that a lot of modern gaming/indy gaming leans more towards linear/set piecing in order to push the more cooperative storytelling model. However, my players and I are much more interested in a more sandbox style of game.

I have no idea what the heck "cooperative storytelling" is supposed to be in the context that most people use it, really. Just heavy use of abstraction and metagame currency?

[squints eyes]

I feel like I understand each string of a half-dozen or so words in that quote, but I have no idea what the quote is saying.

I think it's from a discussion of Edge of Empire, which uses "set piece" as a special term, to boot.

But basically that strengthens my opinion that "cooperative storytelling" is just "meta mechanics."

I regularly attend a "story gaming" group which is exactly what "cooperative storytelling" is, @AlexP

Think games like Fiasco, Microscope, Shock, Geiger Counter, and so on

Sure.

I'm saying it has become like "narrativist" was three years ago.

Wherein people used it to classify a game as having certain superficial elements but really it meant nothing.

I agree that there is nothing inherent in the set piece / railroaded vs. sandboxy style that lends itself to story gaming / narrative style play

I think it gets to that GNS paradigm... generally speaking, story gaming / cooperative storytelling is heavy on the N, usually lighter on the S (although Burning Wheel can be story-ish and it's heavy on the simulation) and often extremely light on the G

In fact, right now the biggest butting of heads that I see WRT cooperative storytelling style games is that on the one hand you have people who "play to win" and who get very sore when their characters lose, and another group that plays to engage in a cool story and respond with laughter and joining in when the GM "punishes" them by adding complications to their character

Hurph.

I'm happiest when my players are complicating their own lives.

I'll accept "story gaming" as a term because, well, Story Games forum has pretty thoroughly established that as the term for Forge-diaspora-ish games and their kin.

sure @ BESW, I would agree with that as well

(Although if you look at SG right now there are a ton of OSR threads for some reason. Go figure.)

"Cooperative storytelling" feels kinda meaningless to me. Like a term that didn't really come from a principled statement about what the games are about and how they are played.

Surely though you've played lots of DnD where the players may or may not have nominally been interested in a little roleplaying but otherwise get really pissed off or bummed out when they lose battles, for instance

Sure!

This goes to the thing I was saying earlier, today.

About being a bit pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed failing that Steel test.

@AlexP I would use the term "story gaming" (as I have) but I understand the point being made... and a lot of games like FATE lend themselves towards a more cooperative storytelling kind of way of playing

or as another extreme, a game like Dogs in the Vineyard

wherein rolling dice doesn't make your character more able to do something, it allows you to control the narrative more

@JohnCraven What does that mean, though? "Cooperative storytelling" as in "we are all co-authors?"

@AlexP yes, exactly

@JohnCraven Ah, okay, so that's a statement about meta-mechanics.

wanders in from another forum Hey, does anyone else instantly think "awesomely high-tech loaded dice technology" when watching this? www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/12/wearable-computers?cid=16163974/

Rather than have a GM sit there and create a milieu beforehand or whatever, everybody gets together and creates it as a whole... a player can declare that there's a city off in the distance that sells silks, for instance

@JohnCraven I think that's a very different thing from "roll to control the narrative."

@Metamaterialgirl Hello!

They're separate elements that interact with each other

Hi @JohnCraven, I'm a bit embarrassed that I don't know how to hyperlink here apparently.

I'd just toss up the URL, I think?

www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/12/wearable-computers?cid=16163974/

http:// needed.

And if you want to make it hypertext, [text goes here](http://www.linkgoeshere.com)

ah, thanks

Ah, that was the mistake. Had copypasted from a stumble website, neglected the http//.

@AlexP I think it's implied from it. The players' agency isn't only to control the characters inside the GM's predefined world, their own little narrative, but to take liberties with other aspects of the world in order to further the narrative. And then this is reflected in the rules as well - I don't only roll based on what I know and can do, part of the mechanics allow me to effect an action based on a previously undefined part of the world - and get pluses from it!

BESW eats goats for breakfast

Maybe a year or so ago, I saw a DIY for making leather vambraces with a digital dice-rolling display.

The link markup syntax is always - always - the opposite of what I think it is (the () vs. [])

and what @lisardggY said

I always get it the wrong way, so I have this mnemonic device to always go the opposite of what my intuition says. But then my intuition catches up to the proper markup, and then I end up doing the reverse.

Ah, here we go.

Dungeons and Dragons Dice Gauntlet tutorial.

messing with the milieu in-game is a pretty extreme example though; usually you set that up by agreement beforehand or else the game has mechanics around doing so (a la Microscope)

@lisardggY I think "roll to control the narrative" is just the story-games version of the classic RPG design mistake: thinking the goal of the game is "Cops and Robbers but you roll dice to resolve disagreements."

I think the reason this drives old-school GMs nuts is that when you're doing a classical adversarial GM type game, any leeway you give the players to control the world is basically leeway for them to overpower their characters

@BESW it's like Lord Hamster's gauntlet!

"We are co-authors" does not necessarily imply mechanics for contesting who gets to say what. Or mechanics using metagame currency like Fate points.

@AlexP many/most story games don't even really require dice most of the time

In this context, "sandbox" means "explore and discover the GM's world," where "cooperative storytelling" means "we make the world as we discover it."

@BESW In what context? The quote's context? I'm not sure that's clear because, well, how does "we all make the world" jive with "set-piece battles?" (I'm just bringing up the quote to point out that everything is being called "cooperative storytelling" now.)

but "sandbox" can just as easily mean "explore and discover a world which we have all created / are in the process of creating / was created by a third party" whereas I would say that in most cases "linear/set-piece mode" play usually means "go through a specific list of things the GM thought up during the week"

@AlexP True. Hrm.

[throws up hands] Kids these days, with their newfangled slangs.

My experience with story gaming is that the style is often neither particularly sandboxy or linear/set-piece oriented

Like I said, I think it's being lazy about outward mechanics vs. core interaction.

@JohnCraven How would you describe the story gaming style then?

In fact, the biggest problem many of them have - Apocalypse World can be horrible with this - is that with several players with their own agency it can be really hard to keep groups together

Actual collaborative worldbuilding?

@Metamaterialgirl A few games (Microscope for instance) are exactly that

Hm. Bears further investigating.

@JohnCraven That's what happens when the characters aren't actually built to share the same story.

Others like... guhhh just can't remember the name of this game but it's an awesome story game set in the Albigensian Crusade... give you a few characters to play, a structure to play through, and some story aids where you can take control of the narrative during someone else's turn, basically, but the genre/milieu is pre-created

So far I've had to either go entirely outside the intended structure of RPG or do very small (few participants) games for collab to work.

@JohnCraven Montsegur 1244

@AlexP Yeah, it's always a potential pitfall. Which is why a lot of story games work better as one-shots then as campaigns, unfortunately

@AlexP THANK YOU

My experience with story gaming @Metamaterialgirl is that if you get the right group of people it can be awesome but it's also very hard for a lot of folks to "grok" this style of gaming

It's a lot more like improvisational theatre than Dungeons and Dragons

If I had to define "story games" -- Games focused on creating interesting fiction, usually with strong themes, collaboratively in play. With mechanics that are tailored to a particular style and structure.

@JohnCraven Right. It can be hard for even a good player to graduate to the level of assistant GM.

@Metamaterialgirl I wouldn't say... "graduate."

I'm not even sure strong themes are a requirement or on the level of "usually"

That implies a hierarchy which just doesn't exist.

There could also be a distinction between 'collaborating on creating the setting' and 'collaborating on creating the story'...

Does Fiasco have strong themes, above and beyond "oh, you're going to screw my character over? Well, you're screwed too"

@BESW A throwaway phrase on my part.

Not married to it.

I've got an awesome player who is great as a GM and as a player, but doesn't really like working as a day-to-day collaborator in the worldbuilding of a game.

@JohnCraven I'll put it this way: I think there's a reason SG forum's tagline was "Writing sad things on index cards" for about two years. It's a joke, yes, but it's a joke about how the games work. :)

@Metamaterialgirl Yeah, a lot of games on the more narrative side of the scale even use pre-generated genres... the FATE system being a great example (with Tales of the Century or Dresden Files, although DF is a bit crunchy for classic story gaming in my book)

@BESW There's that distinction. A good story maker, not a good set maker.

I like GMing but I admit that I'm not a really huge fan of world-building by myself...

He's happiest telling me the kind of things he'd like to see or have happen, and then exploring and interacting with what I build for him from those criteria.

I mean, even when I'm enjoying it I always felt like this should be something other people get to enjoy as well

@JohnCraven Whereas that's one of the things I'm fairly good at, making up settings. But crappy at plot and dramatic development.

Anyway, part of the issue I think we're faced with is that there is no stark dividing line but more of a continuum between gamistic and narrativistic play styles

@Metamaterialgirl The story-games way is basically "Burn plot in a fire. Play with mechanics that encourage a specific kind of dramatic development, so it's easier for you."

@AlexP That sounds tricky as hell to make work in a consistently satisfying way.

I wouldn't even say that I'm "bad" at making up settings (although I'm not experienced with doing so so I'm probably not great at it), it's that I a. don't want to take all that non-gaming time to do that and b. it seems like the kind of thing everyone should have a say in or nobody should

@ALexP There are definitely plots in story-games. Just not pre-determined ones.

@Metamaterialgirl There are a lot of failed design around, sure. And you still have to "get" the games and care about playing them. But it's a lot easier when the game's own structure is about something.

It's amazing sometimes the crazy plot twists a game will take just because everyone is collaborating on something. And it's crazy how sometimes everything will wrap up like a little bow at the end.

@JohnCraven Interesting that it feels that way to you; what makes setting feel like it needs to be collaborative, more than the plot? Or is it that since the plot is already somewhat collaborative (even just 'player decides to wander off'), the setting should be similarly open?

@Metamaterialgirl My whole reason for liking story gaming is that I also think that plotting should be interactive.

@AlexP What would be an example of a game whose structure includes its content?

The trick to keeping people from wandering off in that kind of game is to figure out ahead of time why they aren't going to

@JohnCraven Interesting. 'The carrot is this way, that way only lies sticks' sort of thing?

For instance, we played a friend's zombie-apocalypse game a couple weeks ago and one of the questions we asked was "how do we keep this group together". In that case we decided that folks were family/friends/servants and stuff

@Metamaterialgirl I don't even think it's a carrot vs stick thing so much as a group fiat thing, wherein everyone agrees to a set of ground rules or justifications beforehand

Okay. A narrative reason. Works for players who care :)

shudders at the memory of a few players who were trolls before the term meant what it does now

Although that being said, a lot of games like Montsegnur or Geiger Counter for example explicitly give you extra characters so that you can wander off and still interact with other players (who are playing their non-primary characters, for instance)

Interesting. Have used that in the past, but usually only for technical reasons (making up a standard 5-member D&D group with fewer players)

For example our Geiger Counter game from a month ago or so was about a medieval town which was beset by wolves (actually werewolves as it turned out - we left that question open going into the game and answered it)... I had a main character who was a travelling alchemist who was around to find a special stone in the woods, but I also played a travelling salesman (who died right away) and... guh, now I can't remember who the other character was

And also since it was GMless I often played the bad guy when it was my turn to do so

@JohnCraven GMless? Huh.

How well did that work?

@Metamaterialgirl I am biased and blessed by the city and group that I am in but it went fantastically well. It was gripping and exciting from beginning to end, the genre, even though people thought it was silly at first (okay, I did) ended up being pretty serious, and the ending was awesomely ambiguous in this "oh man, did we really win or didn't we?" kind of way that everybody loved

@JohnCraven Well hell. bites lip enviously

@Metamaterialgirl Well, yes. The flip side of spreading the power and responsibility between all the players is that the players need to do something with it. We've all played with the "stare at the wall until it's their turn, then they roll the die, say "I attack" and wait for their next turn" kind of players (usually called potted plants in Hebrew). These don't fit in well with this style of gaming.

This meetup group pretty much only played GMless story games, and pretty much all one-shots, although several of the members have their own groups outside of "class"

@lisardggY Exactly. We used to have a guy in our DnD group like that (back when I was in that DnD group) and although he could be a funny guy I could just see him not fitting in with this all that much

@Metamaterialgirl So, the Apocalypse Engine games are a fairly popular recent example, especially when you look at several different ones together. Their basic design revolves around "moves" -- just defining how to roll for consequences for certain game actions. The actions are inherently built to promote certain styles, though. Like, Monsterhearts has lots of actions about relationships and personal feelings -- getting into someone's head by inspiring lust, for instance.

@JohnCraven That's the added layer of complexity. A gaming group isn't just a gaming group. It's also a social group.

@lisardggY Agreed. I guess I find the process interesting: take a novice who has never played, watch them progress through various styles of playing, and seeing what sort of experiences shape them in a way that could contribute to them becoming awesome/crappy gamers, GMs, setting crafters, what have you.

In summary: discover the game style your group can all have fun with, then find game systems which support and encourage that style.

I played a GMless version of Monsterhearts around a couple months ago at that meetup that we still talk about whenever we meet

Or... find a group of people who like the same kinds of things you like and choose the game for that

I'm CERTAINLY not saying everyone should quit Pathfinder in favor of Story Game of the Week

Whereas Sagas of the Icelanders encodes gender roles into the mechanics. Some things are exclusively male or female (you can do it but it's kinda like breaking a taboo). Ditto Sagas makes fighting a pretty nasty deal that will probably end up with "Okay, who's gonna take care of you as you get better?" whereas Dungeon World (a D&D-inspired one) has a lot of moves directly related to combat and physical danger, with gentler consequences.

@JohnCraven Not always an option. I know a lot of people who play with their regular (read: since highschool) group and don't have others around.

Or at least, never considered stepping out of that group.

yeah, true @lisardggY, unfortunately, although less true now with the advent of the INterwebs

When I was in Indianapolis they had a pretty decent RPG community but it was 100% gamey Pathfinder type stuff

@lisardggY I think this is a chicken-and-egg kind of thing, too. If you normally can't do something in the games you play, how do you even know to try? (Obligatory link to Heartripper.)

As an aside, it's completely awesome that here are all these systems apparently that support methods of gameplay that, up to this point, I had to work around a system to get to do.

@Metamaterialgirl Yes, exactly!!

@Metamaterialgirl I spent almost nine years laboring in ignorance of this.

I didn't even really know I WAS twisting a system into knots to get what I wanted; I thought that was how the system worked.

@BESW if you count 'since I started gaming', then it's been...holy crap, about 23 years for me.

Thank you for making me feel young.

Yeah, I too didn't even know about story gaming until well after I attempted to narrate-ify a DnD group and saw it crash and burn

No problem. idly plucks a gray hair

(and it might be like 25 or, um, more years for me)

offers tweezers to @JohnCraven

I don't have gray showing up in my head yet, thank goodness, so I can generally just shave every day and pretend it's not there

I started getting grey in my temples earlier this year...

But yes. A new gamer's whole concept of the possibilities of an RPG is heavily shaped by initial experience; whenever I see somebody who's just treating it as an 'I attack' thing, I feel a pang for them.

@BESW, okay, I'm done making you feel young now. grumble, snort, creak

@Metamaterialgirl I discovered something very interesting in my years of introducing people to RPGs.

@Metamaterialgirl EXACTLY.

Yeah, or what is worse, when you ask the "okay, what do you do?" question to a semi-experienced person and they get the deer in the headlights look because they were never asked that question before

Almost every person I've played with who was totally new to RPGs was an instinctive cooperative worldbuilder.

Totally @BESW

It's like you have to train people up to powergame

@JohnCraven Oh, that look! Like they want to whisper, 'Uh, what am I allowed?'

They created notions outside their character from whole cloth, as well as happily narrating their own character's actions and abilities without regard for what they're "allowed."

@Metamaterialgirl Heh, or they want you to give them 2 choices like it's a Choose Your Own Adventure book

@Emracool Thanks--I should have made it pithier to fit onto the tagline though. :/

I had to regretfully train them to respect the mechanics and the established setting, and then they moved on to the "can I do this?" stage.

Now I feel like I should say something worth being starred

THANKS OBAMA

@JohnCraven A friend ran a game at a con a couple of years ago, an introductory game to non roleplayers. Modern-day investigation. One player was a roleplayer in his youth. The rest weren't.

@lisardggY I have a feeling this won't end well. :(

But yes, one big unfortunate thing about any rpg system is that it limits us from the kind of imagination exercises we indulged in as kids.

They were knocking on a suspect's door, then entered into a dark room. The former roleplayer went into tactical mode, rolled on the floor, drew his gun and prepared to fire. The others... switched on the light.

It had never occured to him. He was conditioned to see that situation as leading up to a fight. Nothing else was relevant.

@Metamaterialgirl EXACTLY, and that's like reason #1 why I love story gaming so much, because it seems to do that a lot less.

@lisardggY Hahahahahahah!

@Metamaterialgirl On the other hand, that's the point and the strength of them: by creating limits and constraints, they focus our energies in a particular direction.

In fact, we were discussing after our games yesterday why we never see movies or TV shows which are 10% as awesome as the stories we've collaborrated on

A well-built game system, chosen with the group's needs in mind, is like scaffolding for imaginative play, rather than shackles.

@lisardggY It sounds like my brother's experience getting his DnD group to play Call of Cthulhu... "There is a knife floating in mid-air in the middle of the room! It's spooky!" "WE ATTACK THE KNIFE"

@BESW. Maybe. Or maybe, somewhere out there is a system that gives us perfect freedom and yet enough structure that 'playing together' is a meaningful term, that leaves us with the kinds of anecdotes you tell ten years later to each other.

Sighs

@BESW I agree. I also enjoy the nickel-and-dime game aspects of D&D (well, of a D&D-style game that isn't as annoying, usually. :))

@JohnCraven Knights of the Dinner Table had a few excellent Call of Cthulhu strips.

I'm not sure I used that idiom correctly, now that I think about it.

@lisardggY That's an interesting point. Reminds me of Cryptonomicon, where Randy is remembering a D&D game where they had to find, kill, butcher, and track the nutritional content of their food.

I probably didn't.

Presumably for fun.

@lisardggY Fiddly?

@JohnCraven Sort of. Involving bookkeeping.

@Metamaterialgirl Heh, I remember that. (Although I should since I just read it last year)

@Metamaterialgirl A group of adventurers is fighting through a goblin-infested dungeon. Their scout reports that the next room is filled with tough-looking goblin soldiers. They need a plan for this battle.

Yeah, I think "fiddly" is the term folks like to use in boardgaming for that

@JohnCraven One of my faves. Have to go back every so often and lol at the Cap'n Crunch scene.

The gnome speaks up: "Send the minotaur in first! He's expendable."

The minotaur looks down at the gnome, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. "What's expendable mean?"

@BESW Goblin thinks fast, says "Brave and powerful! And handsome!"

The gnome stares up into the minotaur's dumb brown eyes and explains, "It means very brave."

Meh. I do think that some games just lend themselves more to narrativist style play than others do

"Oh, okay." The minotaur is happy, and they continue to plan.

The plan does wind up involving the minotaur entering the room first, naturally.

Like DnD is great for folks, don't get me wrong, but you really need to have stat blocks of monsters out there and properly balanced encounters and cool terrain and so on and all that implies a guy going in and pregenerating that

FATE on the other hand is something you can literally play, even as a GM, out of your ass

(okay, not literally)

(that was disgusting)

He charges through the door, screeches to a halt in the middle of the goblin horde, and thunders: "FIGHT ME! I'M EXPENDABLE!"

@JohnCraven Interesting. Most players do care about the fate of their ass, however. In both a narrative sense and otherwise.

@Emracool The chat's too busy to rehash this now, but I think "perfect freedom" is meaningless here. All the forest metaphor is saying is "There's no opportunity cost to ripping up system(+) if you don't have any, because you've already done it before you start." (+ - system in the Forge sense, which is to say the actual structure of our play, not rules in a book)

@Emracool The kind(s) of narrative style I'm referring to are the RP-heavy and/or heavily collaborative story-game-ish style

The gnome loses a turn laughing, and the goblins are all stunned for the first round of combat.

@BESW Wait, the goblins know what expendable means?

(flashes on James Alan Gardner)

@Metamaterialgirl Maybe it's Eberron?

@Metamaterialgirl Oh, if there's anything goblins know about, it's being expendable. I'm guessing they had the word drilled into their heads since infancy.

@Metamaterialgirl Any D&D (3.5) player worth his stuff who's using a minotaur makes Int his dump stat; a PC minotaur has worse Int than an ordinary minotaur, who is already dumber than the average goblin. Also, it's funnier this way.

Dammit, now I don't like the story as much because it sounds cliched

It's funnier if he's just big and dumb and is also a scary looking minotaur than if all minotaurs are big and dumb and this is quasi-racist

@Emracool It is. Earlier on I listed a few of them.

Heh. That's another thing. D&D tropes, and how much of them are worthwhile narrative spice, but on the other hand, limit a player's assumptions about How Things Are in a given world. Which can be fun to subvert, actually. Or subvert the subversion, if it's gone that far (lookin' at you, Drow).

@Emracool Your perfect freedom definition is a good one.

@Metamaterialgirl I don't remember the specific webcomic (OotS?) where there's an evil Drow that's rebelling against his cultural standard of being chaotic good rebels against their evil culture.

@Metamaterialgirl Yeah, that is one reason why I kind of dislike DnD (all Dwarves are brusque, all elves are fey and/or sad) and why I like re-envisioning of the "Thousand Points of Light" world, whether it's Eberron (where elves are ancestor-worshipping people who live in far-flung places and who are often pretty bad-ass) or Burning Wheel (where you really have to deal with their super-long lifespans and elven grief as a game mechanic)

@lisardggY Could have been. Z'drri or whatever.

@JohnCraven All my dwarves are Russian (with Imperialist and Communist cities), for that reason.

(Also because the Russian accent is more fun to do.)

better than Jewish, the way Tolkien had it!

also in that world I guess dwarven women are hot

@Emracool Eh, I suppose that means shooting for a system with minimal meaningful limitations, given what a given group of players is likely to try. It'll be different with a bunch of narrative players vs. a bunch of power gamers.

Yeah, FATE would crash and burn if you delivered it to a bunch of straight up power gamers. Even the rules that do exist are squishy. A rules lawyer would HATE that game

@JohnCraven "This game fails right away if you play it wrong" is a feature, not a bug. :)

@JohnCraven My rules lawyer jumped at the change to make his own rules, so... to each his own.

Ah, rules lawyers. I can kind of sympathize with them, the poor dears, since anyone raised on D&D pretty much had to develop some of those traits in simple self-preservation.

@AlexP So long as the "wrong" way is properly telegraphed.

One of the big problems with Forge Games was that too much about how to play them was left unstated.

OK, depends on the kind of rules lawyer, sure

@BESW One of the biggest problem with Forge games was that a lot of them were poorly explained, yes. The other big problem was that a lot of them were poorly designed. :)

I used to play DnD with a guy who memorized the books, basically, and who would only chime in on the rules to say what was mechanically correct whether that helped the party or not, and he was really cool with losing sometimes and also making GM-fiat changes

I never played the Forge games I don't think

@JohnCraven I love those guys.

@JohnCraven Dogs in the Vineyard and My Life With Master are probably the best known.

@BESW Yeah it makes the GM's job around 50% easier

Perfect Mechanus paladins.

Okay, then I have played Dogs in the Vineyard

It's in my mind a bit too crunchy for a good story game but it does seem to lend itself at least reasonably well to campaign play

I played DitV once. I don't know if it was the GM or what, but I really didn't feel like I got what the game was trying to do.

@JohnCraven You described a system as 'crunchy' before...here's my big dumb look. O.o?

I felt like there's a morality play that's already been written, and all I have to do is navigate the relatively limited choice of moral options for my character.

@lisardggY A big part of the issue, I think, is that it is kind of early in the story game genre and as such is like, um, the Indianapolis microbrew scene.., "WE ARE GOING TO MAKE THIS AS NON-BUDWEISER AS WE CAN GET READY FOR SOME EXTREEEME BITTERNESS"

You guys might like The Princes' Kingdom; it's DitV lite.

@lisardggY The game kinda sucks unless you can put yourself in the mindset of a teenager who's carrying the weight of his or her whole community and way of life. And make the NPCs people that you care about (good cheat: make them relatives).

@Emracool Right, if they're pure bureaucrats they're actually not bad. It's the rules lawyers combined with cheat mindsets that make it a headache.

@Metamaterialgirl Crunch = mechanics, compared to fluff, which is the flavor given to the mechanics.

Got it.

Yeah, what @Emracool said. Crunchiness is basically the extra book-keeping and rules-memorizing you have to do in a game. FATE is for instance relatively low in crunchiness in RPGs inasmuch as you roll 4 dice with +s and -s on them to determine all your outcomes

@JohnCraven By "Indianapolis microbrew scene" you mean "The story of why everything that is not budget lager is an IPA now, throughout the US, forever and ever," right? :D

@AlexP I feel for your non-PNW soul if that's what you think

If you get a D&D expansion book and it's 3/4 about elven ballads and gnome coming-of-age rituals, and only 1/4 is weapons and feats and prestige classes, you've gotten a lot of fluff without much crunch.

I've got an excellent 6er of porter in my fridge right now

Hey, I like extremely bitter microbrewed IPAs!

@JohnCraven I've seen other beers, too. But yesterday I was buying from the "make your own six-pack" wall and like 70% of the bottles I looked at were IPAs. Which is really frustrating when you're looking for good cooking beer.

I realize too late that my beer metaphor is completely unapproachable if you don't live in Seattle or Portland.

@Emracool The cheaters are the ones who only bring up the obscure rule when it lands in their favor. A true rules lawyer lays it out regardless of personal consequences. That's all the distinction I meant.

For some reason I'm now craving Rice Krispy treats.

@JohnCraven Fate (it's not an acronym anymore) uses fluff as inspiration for crunch custom-made by the group.

All the fluff and crunch.

@AlexP I feel you. All I have to say is, it's different over here. IPAs exist and people like them but there are a LOT of non-IPA alcoholic fermented hops beverages to be had here

@JohnCraven Don't worry, I got it. :)

We have a company here, Pyramid Brewery, who for years did nothing but make hefeweizens