There are games where you might not get to do much of that, through fights being fairly quick.
In Fate, you can only take a few points of stress, so unless your enemy's really tough, I find it tends to come down to a few actions. A lot of stuff before that is various stuff working toward that end. And killing people isn't the aim.
It is my general experience that regardless of a group's natural tendency toward dynamically narrating their actions, the more a system provides mechanical terms/keywords which adequately describe an action, the more likely players are to fall into rote recitation of those terms/keywords with minimal narrative variation.
There's also RPGs where combat is lethal, and you want to avoid it unless it's absolutely necessary. A gunshot or a stab wound has a good chance of being a fatal injury, and you don't want to be on the receiving end of one, but at least combat will be over quickly.
Even in Fate, where narrative is so key, we sometimes fall into that trap of saying "I'm going to use create advantage to set him On fire, which I can do because I'm a fire mage."
When we get into that rut, extra narrative is only consistently brought into play when we're trying to do something less obvious which requires more justification to be allowed.
It's one of the things I really liked when I played Exalted. The system actually had built-in rewards for describing your actions. And frequently, the difficulty of some scenarios assumed you'd stunt at least a few times.
By contrast, games of Roll For Shoes and Cthulhu Dark, because their mechanics are so incredibly sparse and broad, demand more thoughtful narration for every action because there's nothing in the game system to prop up lazy narrative.
@BESW Oh, yeah, that's true. Rather than "I pick up the fire brand and throw at in his face! So I'll roll to create advantage to set him On fire..." there's just the mechanical bits
@BESW That's a concern I have with DW: it's really a game about fighting monsters in dungeons, and there are only so many inventive descriptions I care to use to slaughter orcs.
@Magician Mmm. My very limited knowledge of DW suggests that it's perhaps got a mis-match going on, in trying to fit narrative-focused mechanics onto a narrative model built for crunch-heavy mechanics.
I have an idea about the relationship between the amount of narration required for a game and the scope of activities the game offers, but I can't phrase it quite right just yet.
@JonathanHobbs The more a game expects/requires innovative narration from its players, the wider the scope of arenas for action the game should expect/support, so that the participants don't quickly burn out their narrative juices on a narrow set of actions. The longer the game expects to be played, the more important this guideline becomes (one-session games can be very tightly focused, year-long campaigns need more variety).
(This guideline is important for other reasons, like boredom and the common need to cater to multiple tastes within a single group, which should be obvious and are not relephant to the current discussion of the relationship between crunch and narrative gameplay.)
So the combination of [variety of options x versatility of those options] must be in direct proportion to the amount of innovative narration from players multiplied by the amount of time they will be playing the game.
my only concern is that length of time is already factored into "amount of innovative narration from players", since a longer time necessary means a higher amount
so the second part may be better stated as something like... "the variety of innovative narration expected from players, multiplied by the amount of time they will spend playing the game", or, "the number of unique narrative descriptions expected by the players, which necessarily increases depending on the amount of time they will be playing the game"
@JonathanHobbs If we continue your equational theme, I think that "amount of innovative narration" should be expressed as a per-hour or per-session value rather than a per-campaign value.
@Magician [ping] I think it just clicked why the _World engine rubs my fur the wrong way: it's a system that uses rules enforce creative narration rather than using rules to create environments where creative narration occurs naturally.
The narrative innovation is proportional to the variability of the narrative options multiplied by their versatility, distributed over the length of the campaign
@Grubermensch that's a way of reflecting on a game, the equation I wrote is a way of expressing what is demanded from a system which supports effective narration
or, i guess it could be ordered your way and still as a demand: "the amount of narrative innovation is proportional to this stuff, so make this stuff large"
@BESW there are so many inventive descriptions you can use. Almost every sword dual could be described as a bit of footwork, sword-swinging, and blocking. The exceptions are... exceptional, such as when a master claps a blade between their hands to stop it, or someone kicks someone else, or etc. Beyond that, if you want to keep being original, you have to start becoming a creative killer, finding entirely new ways to do bad things to people, which is kind of disturbing.
and, yeah, if you care to use even more, you eventually have to expand into disturbing territory. so any activity has a natural limit to what you can do anyway.
So again, this is about my favourite topic: how we create environments (in this case through rules) to influence peoples' actions (in this case inventing increasingly creative methods of violence).
(Maybe not linked in a useful way to factor in to our phrasing about the narration people care to perform, but it's still worth understanding there is a theoretical limit)
Ex. In D&D there is a simulationist sort of culture to penalize "called shots", whereas Exalted has stunts, which actively reward you for being interesting.
@JonathanHobbs I think this is encapsulated in the variety and versatility terms in our working equation.
[Tangentially: I am generally allergic to mechanics which hang reward or punishment on a participant's opinion regarding whether another participant is "role-playing well" or "being interesting." It reeks of using treats and a spray bottle to train a dog. That I've done it myself doesn't make me any happier about it.]
Hm, so "care" got snagged on a bit. Lets see. In DW, you're not rewarded for flowery descriptions of orc decapitations. You still use the same mechanics, same move. As exhaustion sets in, people will default to the path of least resistance. If I've come up with a novel way to describe fighting orcs 10 times in a row, for 11th I'll just go "and I stab him".
The trick, I think, and this was true for 4e and pretty much any other game, is to offer enough variety that the same fundamental action of stabbing someone is viewed through a different lens each scene. Orcs on a bridge, cutting ropes, flying down. Shark in the water below. Orc arrows as we try to climb up.
@BESW That's why I keep saying Inspiration is a poor copy of aspects (even if it came from WoD). Fate doesn't require constant permissions or break if they're given.
In DFRPG if you had a Broken leg Fate points had to get exchanged every single time it came up.
@Magician Fate Core said "Wait, what? We (the devs) never intended it to be taken to the literal extremes you guys are going to! Forget the whole thing."
The worst outcome of unimaginative use of aspects or constant permissions to do so in Fate is that you'd get somewhat boring scenes. Do you want to carry sand in a bag and throw it into everyone's eyes for Blinded aspect? Fine. Here are the rules, here's what it'll do.
The Fate point economy is at the heart of Fate being (as I think I've said before) a manifesto about the skeletal elements which from which a particular kind of interesting story can be built.
Fate effectively says, "If you have these generic elements which interact in this way, it will hard to not tell an interesting story regardless of the particulars you choose."
It also means as a GM I don't need to worry about a player using their aspects in a "wrong" way that might break the game somehow. Do you want to use it and does it make any sense at all? Cool, pay up.
There's no inadvertently breaking the game with rulings that get extrapolated into house rules that everyone needs to watch out for constantly.
@Grubermensch It's not GM-less, but the GM isn't seen as the Benevolent Overlord Who Doth Rule Over Us All, either. They're just the first among equals, the guy who settles issues when it's needed, and the representative of the NPCs and world. They don't call all the shots, they don't have authority to arbitrarily decide the rules, or so on.
In D&D, the DM has absolute authority. In Fate, the GM is just another one of the players, and he's the one playing all the characters the others aren't.
In fact, one of the key elements of Fate gameplay is that players can acquire narrative authority over the game pretty easily, by succeeding on rolls or by spending game currency (Fate points).
@Grubermensch Well, D&D also has (totally ad-hoc) rewards for narrative innovation: the GM in several editions is encouraged to award bonuses to rolls and/or extra XP.
@Grubermensch so a reward factor for taking certain actions, or being innovative..? i'm not clear on what it represents exactly, but i'm not sure that's the best way to factor it in
@JonathanHobbs Ah, like some peoples' opinion of the Fighter or Monk classes in 3.5, or post-Essentials 4e characters using pre-Essentials weapon expertise feats.
So, more important than options simply existing in the system, are the ones people are actually going to use
@Grubermensch we don't need to be that specific in the equation. N is already about the innovation from each player. The innovation for each character will vary depending on the mechanical options available to them that they will want tou se.
@JonathanHobbs That'd mean a 3.5 game with nothing but Fighters would have a shorter innovative shelf life than a 3.5 game with all Bards... that scans.
So the combination of [variety of options x versatility of those options] must be in direct proportion to the amount of innovative narration from players multiplied by the amount of time they will be playing the game.
The narrative innovation is proportional to the variability of the narrative options multiplied by their versatility, distributed over the length of the campaign
@Grubermensch N = innovative descriptions you'll see from a player, x = the variety of appealing mechanical options available to that player, f = the versatility of how those options can be used, t = time playing the game
In D&D, shooting is something you do with your bow to attack someone and damage them, so f is low. In Fate, 'shoot' is a skill that can be used to injure someone, scare people, create covering fire, or so on: f is high.
@Grubermensch wouldn't that just naturally decrease x? our equation isn't that precise and is qualitative more than quantitative, so you can just discount mechanics people will rarely want to use
x is the amount of mechanical options available. f is the amount of things you can do with them. let's put it this way: Roll for Shoes has basically just "pick a skill and roll it" for an action, and maybe "oppose someone if it's interesting." In Roll for Shoes, 'x' is a very low number. However, you can do almost anything through this mechanic, so flexibility - f - is high.
Therefore, if the amount of playtime is the same, Roll for Shoes has the same N as a game where you have a few dozen mechanical options (x is high), but you can only ever do one very specific thing with any of them (f is low).
@JonathanHobbs I would say that the numbers are changing throughout a game of RFS. X is the set of all the player's skills, and f_i is probably something like the inverse of the skill score.
If the lion's share of a session's actions fall into the set [fighting hordes of things], vs also doing things in the set [solving dangerous puzzles] and [negotiating with Baal].
N ~= SUM[i in X](p_i * f_i) / log(t) Where N: player innovation; X: set of possible actions; p_i: probability that action is available; f_i: narrative flexibility of action; t: length of campaign
@Grubermensch Naturally. Well. Stabbing a goblin and stabbing a bullette is different, even if it's the same fundamental action. You get to describe how it bursts out of the ground and you scramble away (while stabbing it).
My Players often come to me and ask:
"How does this ability work?"
"This example contradicts the text, which is correct?"
"How do these abilities interact?"
Generally I have a fairly solid response to them,
and generally these are good questions.
RPGs can be notorious about being unclear --...
Has anyone read the "Fell's Five" D&D comics? I thought they were really good. The characters had lots of personality, with enough stereotype but not too much, and the art style was
hur hur hur yes actually that adjective is entirely appropriate in my opinion
:D
and now i want to make a drag and drop client-to-client thing for something my friends and i are getting up to, and i have to puzzle over what to make it in
WPF has a relatively strict layout engine and i'm not sure it'll be conducive to a lot of drag-and-drop, HTML doesn't do client-to-client without a server in the middle, Java is Java...... and it's possible I'll just have to make my own GUI from the ground up, game style, in XNA or some kind of Python or Ruby framework...
woe betide me. also i should get back to that Fate Looms project.
Is it considered 'best-practice' to come back and edit a question with the actual solution that was used in the situation?
For example, I have a question (Playing a loyal character without it being boring) that attracted a number of good answers of which I selected one as being the best for my s...
@Oxinabox I am interested in using that, but this is a lightweight card game sim. It'll have decks, you'll have a hand, and you'll play cards in front of you, and drag things around. Not sure if WPF will play nice with me needing to do that; maybe it can.
it will play nice with much more complicated drag and drop than any lighter framework. Things like draging and dropping part way can be done with the canvas element (iirc). I haven't done much more than the most basic drag and drop myself though.
I really would like it if questions for [nwod-god-machine] were not tagged [nwod] except in specific circumstances like "What changes have been made to X" While they tend to (in some areas) be compatable,
it is like tagging dnd questions: [dnd3.0], [dnd3.5]
@GMNoob I'm sure it can do some of the stuff relatively easily. It's the rest of the stuff I'm more concerned about being able to program half-decently. Flash being a technology that's going obsolete, I'd rather not invest in learning it either.
@Adeptus Yeah. There's less and less reason to use Flash nowadays, and APIs like WebGL are seeing to it that the rest of the reasons are going to go away too.
@GMNoob That's the thing: I know C# very well, I know WPF and XAML decently, and I know HTML5/JS/CSS very intimately. Flash might have drag and drop and networking built in and easy, whilst C# will only make networking easy and HTML will only make drag-and-drop easy, but Flash being unfamiliar to me makes everything else harder because I'll have to learn everything involved in making a decent Flash application.
@GMNoob JavaScript has OOP, just a different inheritance model - and I use CoffeeScript, which dresses it up in traditional OOP terms like classes anyway.
@GMNoob I need to do a lot of that stuff, though. This is more than just drag and drop with networking, there is a lot more to it.
I'm sure you think it won't work for you, but really you are missing out because of regrettable missinfornatiin. But maybe you should see if unity has peer to peer and an easier way to make a ui
@Oxinabox Nothing particularly special about HTML5 that helps that, just so happens to be part of the spearhead in a new era where we're finally figuring out how to make HTML support all the cool stuff we're doing with it.
Because the text in HTML interactives is still just text. (VS in flash where it is (alway?) images? (Maybe its not maybe all the flash i have seen was made crap). You can select it and copy and paste
@GMNoob I think he's saying you can get a DIV or somethin' to go float around the screen, or you can drag and drop it and do other fancy things with it, but the text inside the DIV is, after all that, still text, and you can select it and hit CTRL+C and paste it elsewhere. I think Flash would still be happy to let people do that. A framework like WPF would not allow for doing that.
Individual memes like that don't make a good basis for a character, I think. They do make a basis for actions/aspects/whatever. Print out a bunch of wordless meme images as cards, deal out a hand to everyone, play as appropriate.
I have a sense of scale for what your island is like now.
Most places I ever visit in this city and its surroundings are in the center - around Brisbane and Woolloongabba - and halfway down to the southeast, and sometimes the airport.
Based on your positioning of Guam in that screenshot, from Woolloongabba to... Chernside... is the primary developed area with Brisbane at the heart of it.
I live just below the "s" in Brisbane, and I grew up around Forest Lake.
The pictures I posted the other week were taken south of the M15 icon.
I relapsed into a couple of games of GeoGuessr the other week.
I landed in a forest in Lapland and managed to pinpoint my location by finding the nearest liquor store, only to find out that you have to guess your ORIGINAL position, not the current one. :(
@BESW .... given the relative overlay, you live close to where I live, and grew up close to where I grew up (at least, where I grew up here - my single-digit years were in Sydney)
There is a ongoing issue with the tagging of the various Editions of the World of Darkness Lines. See:
Shall we review the various World of Darkness tags' use?
Clearing up White Wolf World of Darkness tags
I want to tackle a new small part of that problem, now. While it is still in infancy.
...
My Players often come to me and ask:
"How does this ability work?"
"This example contradicts the text, which is correct?"
"How do these abilities interact?"
Generally I have a fairly solid response to them,
and generally these are good questions.
RPGs can be notorious about being unclear --...
