Good Mike -- Bad Mike

[Eero Tuovinen]

I know your approach works in-play for you, but people attempting to follow your written advice, in the way you are explaining it, seem to be failing.

Hey, that's just not true:
a) When I first read HQ, I interpreted it mostly like Mike does. Perhaps I put even less stock to "realism" than he. It's not nearly as strange an approach as you make it out to be. Without that approach the game drifts much closer to GURPS or something, when the realistic expectations and the abstract rules clash.
b) I actually learned to respect and play the game through Mike's numerous, step-by-step threads here in the Forge. He's put it out so clearly, that the actual rule-book is often a pale shadow in comparison.

So I, at least, have got good results from reading and applying Mike. He's one of the better postmodernists in practice, as can be evidenced by reading his explanations of the HQ rules.

I started a HQ game a couple of weeks back, and I can assure you that it's Holmesian through and through. The players are about 15, 16 years of age, and they get the rules perfectly well. The example levels of ability and resistances are used as examples, but the actual ability ratings are chosen mainly based on story importance. The highest rating is currently a "seal of high office" at 5w2, and nobody has trouble understanding the reason, even if it could be difficult to defend by tenets of realism alone. Heck, the second best rating is "Fighting alongside Xue Ron" at 15w, and that was taken just because the two martial artists put up such an effective, sparking show when they first met. In both cases we explicitly decided that these are story arcs to be developed, and so we gave them scores to match.

Still, to continue the actual discussion: does anybody want to address the question of whether one of the styles of play is better or harmful for the other? If so, I suggest starting a new thread. Other than that, I fail to see how this derailment addresses the original topic. It's already been noted that the rules can be read and played in different ways, so it's stupid to continue harping about the right way to read the book still. I at least am not in the slightest interested in how the game is "supposed" to be played, only in the repercussions of playing it in some particular way. And thus far the "Forgequest" style has worked just fine for me.

[soru]

That sounds much more like the way that I play than the way I interpret Mike as playing. I think you are reading way too much into the word 'realism'.

What it comes down to is, when your players bring out the 'seal of high office', are villagers awed and impressed, guards deferential, local mandarins cooperative? Or is it just a worthless token that noone respects, but somehow still has an effect, for out-of-world 'story' reasons?

If a knowledgable sword scholar sees the two characters fighting together, would they be impressed at their coordination and instinctive knowledge of what each other was going to do next (but perhaps know that that still wouldn't be enough to beat the Liu Xen in a straight fight)? Or would they not be able to tell a diference in the way they fought apart or together, it would just happen to be the case that they were more likely to win together than apart.

Or, at the most basic but exactly equivalent level, if you line up two characters with different tall ratings side by side, which would be seen as taller?

The first approach is the realist interpretation for character abilities, in-game perceptions and descriptions generally match what's written on the character sheets (but not, necessarily, in-contest calculated abilities after augmentation and use of hp - you may patch up one patient as well as a paramedic would have, that doesn't mean you were moving as skillfully and calmly as a paramedic would be expected to).

Contrast it with hero points, which just about nobody interprets as something characters know about, or can plan for (although I am sure that would be an equally valid reading of the rules, as it it not explicitly ruled out anywhere). I am sure in the way most people play, there is no magical ability that can detect, compare, boost or drain hero point pools.

Mike, if I have followed his thinking correctly, treats ability scores in the same way that most people treat hero points. So unless you are doing that too, and your examples suggest you are not, then I honestly think you are not playing Forgequest in the way he has explained it.

But perhaps I am wrong.

soru

[Eero Tuovinen]

That sounds much more like the way that I play than the way I interpret Mike as playing. I think you are reading way too much into the word 'realism'.

Actually, from following your perennial discussion with Mike, it seems to me that you're simply interpreting Mike to be playing much more radically than you think. He's complained about that before, has he not?

For the great majority of play you get exactly the same results whether you consider traits a matter of realism or a matter of story importance. As far as actual play is concerned, I think that your and Mike's positions are nigh indistinguishable.

What it comes down to is, when your players bring out the 'seal of high office', are villagers awed and impressed, guards deferential, local mandarins cooperative? Or is it just a worthless token that noone respects, but somehow still has an effect, for out-of-world 'story' reasons?

The point of the matter is that these are the same thing, there's really no discernable difference. Villagers are awed, guards deferential and mandarins cooperative because that's necessary for story reasons! All the attributes a realistically depicted seal of high office would have, the story-based one also has, because the story would be flawed without those attributes.

The difference between approaches comes to the fore in much more marginal situations than that. Ask questions like "How great a rating should this seal have?" or such, and perhaps some small difference can be discerned. My answer would be that I gave the item that rating because I wanted it to inspire awe in the players as well. A realistic consideration would gauge the exact authority the office in question wields.

But as far as depiction in the game world goes, there's not much difference.

Or, at the most basic but exactly equivalent level, if you line up two characters with different tall ratings side by side, which would be seen as taller?

If it's a matter of competition, I would use the challenge mechanic, of course. Let the dice decide! If it doesn't really matter, the players of the characters can decide among themselves which one is actually taller. If one of the characters is a giant, he gets a massive improvisation bonus, if the situation is somehow in doubt. But normally it's the same as if measuring skill in fighting or anything else.

For me, the rating means just story potential, nothing more. "Tall" at whatever just means that this is something we're going to incorporate in the game. Simple, and says nothing about the game world yet. The traits are not yet game world facts, they just become facts through the challenges. I have 5w5 in swordfighting, but that doesn't mean that I'm the world's best swordsman. It just means that when we have the competition, I'm pretty certainly going to become the best.

Mike, if I have followed his thinking correctly, treats ability scores in the same way that most people treat hero points. So unless you are doing that too, and your examples suggest you are not, then I honestly think you are not playing Forgequest in the way he has explained it.

That's a great comparison. As I understand, that's exactly how Mike does things. But that doesn't make the game so strange as you make it seem: that just means that the in-game perceptions are based on the informal color of the game, which just happens to coincide with the trait values as long as there's no reason for deviation. This is a very sane perception: my character is a good surgeon because he's had years of experience and a office in a high academy, not because he happens to know that his trait is 5w2. The characters do not know about traits, they know about what happens in-game. Likewise, they don't know about hero points... but they do know that heroic things and strange coincidences happen. In my game this one character, Xue Ron, has consistently always used hero points when fighting a nemesis of his, and consequently the latter really thinks that Xue Ron is on the same level of skill he is.

But be that as it may, this is all already tread ground. Soru: start a new thread, write digests of the positions thus far, and propose a structured argument against Forgequest (man, that's a funny name). I'm sure that Mike will then tell us if you've understood him correctly.

[soru]

I probably will start that new thread, but first:

This is a very sane perception: my character is a good surgeon because he's had years of experience and a office in a high academy, not because he happens to know that his trait is 5w2. The characters do not know about traits, they know about what happens in-game.

These two statements seem contradictory, unless you actually played out those years of experience and teaching.

The way I'd read the first one is that, as backstory and explanation for your characters high on-sheet surgeon trait, he is stated to have had years of experience and training.

In this view, traits are a way of presenting information about the world, and characters know about the world they are in, including a lot of things that never happenned in-play.

But the second would suggest he still only has the potential to be a good surgeon, maybe he is, maybe he isn't.  If he botches his first few operations, he is not a good surgeon suffering from a curse, crisis of confidence or simple run of bad luck, but an incompetent.

soru

[Eero Tuovinen]

In this view, traits are a way of presenting information about the world, and characters know about the world they are in, including a lot of things that never happenned in-play.

But the second would suggest he still only has the potential to be a good surgeon, maybe he is, maybe he isn't.  If he botches his first few operations, he is not a good surgeon suffering from a curse, crisis of confidence or simple run of bad luck, but an incompetent.

Ah, you can only take that view if you don't believe in probability math. Sooner or later the numbers will carry out, and the true skill of the character will surface.

Meanwhile, what are we to think of his inexplicable failures? We haven't played through those years of experience, as you yourself said. The character claims to us, "I am a world renowned doctor!", but how do we interpret it when his actions do not carry it out? A curse, crisis of confidence, bad luck? Surely not lack of skill, when the character tells us that he is actually a really good doctor. If he can strut out a couple of NPCs he's cured, it's all the more reason to believe that his skill will show itself.

The point is, this kind of thinking is based solely on the in-game information, and doesn't have much to do with the trait value. The player can manipulate the latter, but has scant responsibility to actually have the two meet: most of the time he will, but he doesn't have to. Forcing it causes these problems of scale the people are harping about, while just not caring doesn't cause any problems. I don't care one whit how the players build up their characters, the rules take care of that: increase some ability, and your character starts to succeed more in using it. Why's that? If you think that the success is inexplicable or unrealistic, why'd you take the increase in the first place?

[Peter Nordstrand]

Eero,

Soru does not want to understand. He probably feels threatened by the idea that some people have different preferences than he has. He blatantly ignores both common decency andf Forum policies. He does no respond to questions. The only thing he has accomplished is to destroy the topic, twist the purpose of my original post into something unrecognizable. He seems very afraid. It strikes me as quite unhealthy, actually.

I strongly dounbt that there is any point in ever talking to him again.

[EDIT: One more thing: I have stopped watching this topic.]

[Mike Holmes]

I don't understand the acrimony that this topic causes. Not my thread (does't seem to be anyone's anymore), but all I can say is that it would do to take the personal judgements out of the thread.

FWIW, #5 Does not say that one has to divorce ability ratings from in-game levels of competence to achieve the style of play that I use certainly, and I doubt anyone else uses. I have said that repeatedly before. The concept of delinking the two is supposed to be an exercise for the mind which has, IMO, a certain outcome. Yes it's a deconstruction, and yes, it probably confuses the hell out of some people. I'm not particularly concerned. Because for those people, they can, as I've said, just ignore #5 (or any of the other heresies). Again, these are just my own interpretations, and I if only a few people get what I'm talking about - and they have - then I think it's worthwhile to state.

The reason that I've said that I don't want to discuss the "what we get from it," which seems to be the sticking point here, is because I think that it's something very esoteric that I've tried very hard already to elucidate as well as I can. If I haven't succeeded before, then I doubt that I will on another try. So I'm not particularly inclined to try. Given that there's no reason for anyone to even think about #5 if they don't want to, I don't see this as problematic.

Now, I've been complicit in going off on this tangent - it seemed that the thread was about the article in general, but I think Peter may have had the more focused intention of discussing the initial issue about #10. So I'm going to start a new thread here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=150138

Further, if Soru, or anyone else wants to start a thread about #5 specifically, that's fine, too. Despite my reluctance to talk about it, I will try again if people really want me to do so - I feel that it would be dishonest not to do so if asked. I know that doesn't sound enthusiastic, but that's the best I can muster for a point that I think has really been overworked.

Mike

[contracycle]

Soru does not want to understand. He probably feels threatened by the idea that some people have different preferences than he has. He blatantly ignores both common decency andf Forum policies. He does no respond to questions. The only thing he has accomplished is to destroy the topic, twist the purpose of my original post into something unrecognizable. He seems very afraid. It strikes me as quite unhealthy, actually.

Come on Peter, this sort of outright abuse is totally unacceptable.  It seems you much prefer to resort to the ad hominem than address any issues in a constructive manner, given my experience to date.

And all this completely baseless personal slander, all on the basis that someone does not agree with your view or does not see what to you is "obvious", is against both the forum policies and the sticky on the HQ forum warning against Gloranthan elitism.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Gareth,

I was quite upset when I wrote that post. I acknowledge that I have no idea what soru's personal motivations are. I am not qualified to make statements about his health, either. My post was out of line.

Name-calling, personal slander and the use of invectives has no place here, whether it comes from me, from you, or anybody else.

[Ron Edwards]

Back to topic, folks.

Best,
Ron