The role of fortune

[jmac]

in a lot of older games, yes.
<skip>
oldschool RPGs didn't have a clear procedure of play. mostly, they just had a clear procedure for combat. the closest they come to a procedure for play in general is in dungeon-crawl-style; the dungeon is basically a flow chart that links together combat and problem-solving scenarios. play is driven by movement from room to room.

<I know very little about GURPS, so skip>
..choose-your-own-adventure, which of course lead mainly to Illusionist play or outright railroading.

would someone please give me some links to definition if "Illusionist" is also a kind of term? %)

I'm not sure, that a clear procedure or strict rules and following them is what we need.

Welcome to the Forge, jmac! Do you have a real name we can call you by?

thanx :) if you really ask, my name irl is Ivan.

Well, lots of games don't have a GM, often distributing the responsibilites of a GM across other players.

That is great, but not always suitable, right?
It's dependent on choice of players and mine hardly allows it.

In all these games, the rules are never arbitrated by the GM.

GM has the responsibility imho. at last, she can take any reasonable measures she thinks appropriate.

For instance, in Dogs in the Vineyard, anyone can call for a conflict to get something they want: the GM is without recourse if the players want to throw down on something. The rules literally say, in the GMing section, "say yes or roll dice". That is, either everyone shares the vision of what's happening, so it happens; or players disagree about what should happen next; or, in most cases, the dice wound the characters, pour salt in them, and they come out changed in ways you wouldn't have expected. That's why Vincent says they drive escalation.

no disagreement here

You'll note, though, there's no facility for saying "We're not gonna roll dice about this." If the GM doesn't want something to happen, she's got nothing to do but throw some NPCs in there to fight with the characters over something - and truthfully, in Dogs, that usually doesn't kill the Dogs, so they get stronger from it, in the unlikely event that the Dogs don't win the conflict.

I'm not sure I understood.
neither GM, nor players can _control_ or be allowed to control things that happen. and anyway - if they will "most likely win" - what's that conflict? I can hardly agree with that "suspence coming from not known price of victory" thing.

How you use those dice ? what they do ? is built into the system, just like your relationships with the othere players is, just like the rule on page 17 about underwater combat is, just like everyone's agreement that they can't meet Abraham Lincoln in this story because it will invalidate the last story.

I don't think that any system can be used as it is - it should be adapted to particulat GM, players, story etc. system is flexible.

What specifically it is that dice do in a given game, that has to be consistent and it has to confirm what's supposed to happen in that specific game. The only reason the GM shouldn't want to roll the dice over something is if either a) the rules don't call for a roll there or b) the rules are broken.

If the outcome is obvious, if others won't object it is or something - we can skip the roll. But GM's or one of the players', or even anyone's desire of something to happen is not reason for rolling or not.

[talysman]

in a lot of older games, yes.
<skip>
oldschool RPGs didn't have a clear procedure of play. mostly, they just had a clear procedure for combat. the closest they come to a procedure for play in general is in dungeon-crawl-style; the dungeon is basically a flow chart that links together combat and problem-solving scenarios. play is driven by movement from room to room.

<I know very little about GURPS, so skip>
..choose-your-own-adventure, which of course lead mainly to Illusionist play or outright railroading.

would someone please give me some links to definition if "Illusionist" is also a kind of term? %)

I'm not sure, that a clear procedure or strict rules and following them is what we need.

hi, Ivan.

you can find a number of definitions in the provisional glossary here on The Forge. the short definition of Illusionism is a game style where the GM has the authority to use Force techniques to create story during play, and the players are unaware of this. there is a companion term, Participationism, which indicates the players are fully aware, but have deligated all authority over story to the GM.

you might also want to read the article called "System Does Matter" that is also in the articles section of The Forge, because System Matters is a very popular fundamental belief here, but it looks like you don't agree with it. this is just an aside.

now, as for the point about clear procedures and strict rules: strict rules is not necessarily what we need, unless the game design calls for it, but we always need clear procedures. if there isn't one in the rules as written, the gaming group will either agree on a clear procedure or flounder helplessly (and not have fun.)

which is why we're discussing the roles dice mechanics or other randomness play procedurally. we're interested in how dice are used in specific games, and which games use randomness to drive the general procedure of play. some games do, some don't, and it seems GURPS has no set procedure for play at all, just procedures for specific moments of play.

except that's only true for the system as a whole. I remember now that GURPS Goblins added dice rolls to character creation and also used periodic reaction rolls to determine God's behavior towards the PCs at any given moment. it also used something akin to a relationship map to prep for game sessions, this makes it stand out as a version of GURPS with a very well-defined procedure for overall play.

[jmac]

you might also want to read the article called "System Does Matter" that is also in the articles section of The Forge, because System Matters is a very popular fundamental belief here, but it looks like you don't agree with it. this is just an aside.

[/i]

I totally agree - system matters.
It's not much a question for me if randomness factor should be used at all - it definitely should. So system is to "control" this randomness by setting procedures of dice rolling etc - thus adjusting interactions with environment etc to support genre and mood, for example.
(sorry I haven't read the article still)

now, as for the point about clear procedures and strict rules: strict rules is not necessarily what we need, unless the game design calls for it, but we always need clear procedures. if there isn't one in the rules as written, the gaming group will either agree on a clear procedure or flounder helplessly (and not have fun.)

[/i]
I don't mean "get rid of them", I'm no anarchist :) actually I love all sorts of systems.

I mean players, GM, situation are all above the rules.

which is why we're discussing the roles dice mechanics or other randomness play procedurally. we're interested in how dice are used in specific games, and which games use randomness to drive the general procedure of play.

[/i]
hmm. The general procedure of play is determined by nothing but GM and players. They are usually inspired by the system, or adopt it's general procedures of play into their own unique design.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

We're wandering afield due to overfocus on just one of the systems I mentioned. The question is not, "Why does this particular game use a particular dice mechanic", but "Why does this game use a dice mechanic at all, when it does, and not at other times?"

The games I want to discuss are:

• Trollbabe (I'd like to hear Ron's input on this)

• Prime Time Adventures (Matt? Where are you, man?)

• The Mountain Witch (Tim? Where you at?)

• D20 (Does anyone here play this system?)

• GURPS (I don't mind discussing this further in the larger context. Let's just not get stuck on it.)

• Amber (as a counterexample — folks are passionate about it, and some of those folks must be here.)

I'll take my moderator hat back off now. Don't make me put it back on.

[Marco]

While I'm certain that "how the player felt about being in control of the action" was a design goal of yours for JAGS I'm not sure I buy the "far more concerned with" part.  I can see how moving from a wide dispursion die roll to a tight dispursion die roll is a nod in that direction...but if you were really "far more concerned" with players perceptions of controling the action there are many many other non GURPS-esque mechanics that accomplish that goal far better.  Clearly the monte carlo simulation aspect of that style of rules was important enough to you to make you not want to move away from it entirely.

I mean otherwise...using a design structure whose best feature is being a simplified-for pen-and-paper monte carlo simulator for you game would have been a really poor design choice, and I definitely don't buy that for a second.

I don't know how to rate my care for "simulation" vs "player empowerment"--but I don't think that your take on it concides with mine.

1. I'm not sure we know exactly what the "design structure's" "best feature" is. For one thing, I found the stronger curve a useful tool in a fairly deep variety of trade-off moves that a player can choose in combat. One could say this design pattern's best feature is that a set of strong probabilities with a randomizer's best feature is making a satisfying strategic playing-field.

2. I wasn't trying to be out-of-left-field. I realize you didn't say that monte-carlo dice techniques (a bunch of input modifiers and a randomizer that are supposed to create a realistic resolution to a situation) is "anti-story" or "anti-challenge."

What I thought was that if I say the technique skewed towards what I might call "monte carlo simulation of an imaginary reality" then either that skew is in-favor of, neutral towards, or antithetical to, say, story-as-a-goal. I can see a strong case being made that it is (Han Solo navigates the asteroid field that statistically "should have destroyed him").

However, in practice, I don't think that's true (or, at least, not necessarily true). The reason I don't think it's true is that the situations that are simulated are often constructed in context of another goal. If this is the case then the design pattern is not specifically designed to do a specific thing--but it is a tool that has multiple applications (including, depending on how the dice-mechanic and input attributes are constructed, player-empowerment, challege, simulation, or others).

My point is that a tool that, for example, models 1-1 scale conflict is very good at serving a huge variety of goals. It is certainly not as close to a war-game as I think many of these arguments make it out to be.

-Marco

[Garg]

Hi there.

    I'm new here, so I hope I can avoid blundering too terribly.  I've been reading around the various forums for a bit, getting a feel for the community.  I figured it was about time I contributed something, so I decided to start with something I know.

    Amber does not make any use of dice or any other Fortune mechanic.  I believe Ron himself cites ADRP as one of the examples of systems using Karma for task/conflict resolution in the glossary, so I'd guess that's fairly common knowledge.  (For those who aren't familiar with it, in short, there is an auction for Attributes wherein all participants bid for first rank - and first rank in a field can best others in that same field readily.  I can explain further if needed, but since it's off-topic...)  A given character's luck is effected by a Karmic mechanic as well, so even chance isn't a matter of chance.  There is a great deal of room and an equally great amount of pressure (mostly the good kind) to get creative about the approach to a conflict to mitigate or maintain the difference in ability, should the conflict fall back on rankings.  When the players are on their game, this can result in some entertaining and fun situations.  However, when the players are off or being rushed, it can be as mechanistic and dry as the dullest of dice-fests.  Where a more typical RPG inserts dice rolling, ADRP inserts rank comparisons.  Similarly, where there would be a situational modifier to a die roll, ADRP relies on the GM to adjudicate how significant those circumstances are to the parties involved in the conflict and modifies the resolution accordingly - with respect to rank but not based purely on it.

    I suppose the short version is: Where there would be randomness, ADRP relies a set of fixed numeric values compared and modified in accord with the creativity of the players (to garner situational modifiers) and judgement of the GM.

Garg

[Doug Ruff]

• D20 (Does anyone here play this system?)

[support group]Hi, my name's Doug, and I play d20[/support group]

Or at least, I played a lot of Spycraft d20 last year, and have played other SRD based-games quite a bit too.

If we're looking at 'core' SRD d20, then the majority of dice rolling tends to come during (i) combat and (ii) skill checks.

I think one of the more revealing design decisions behind d20 is the introduction of 'Take 10' and 'Take 20' rules (there wasn't a similar procedure for older incarnations of D&D, even those with roll-under proficiency checks). The ability to Take 10 or Take 20 under certain circumstances (that usually coincide with "when there is no meaningful conflict"), means that there is a considerable diceless element to d20 which is sometimes overlooked.

(I'm not sure how this maps to task-based resolution vs conflict-based resolution, or if it maps at all, but I think there's a similar distinction in play.)

Extrapolating from this, and my own play experience, I'd say that the chief why behind d20 dice rolling is to add uncertainty, but specifically to add dramatic uncertainty when characters have opposed agendas, or when the consequences of failure (against an 'inanimate' opponent) are significant.

[M. J. Young]

I totally agree - system matters.
It's not much a question for me if randomness factor should be used at all - it definitely should. So system is to "control" this randomness by setting procedures of dice rolling etc - thus adjusting interactions with environment etc to support genre and mood, for example.

Welcome, Ivan. I'd like to make two comments in connection with this.

The second is if you get a chance, you probably want to read Erick Wujcik's article in the articles section, Dice and Diceless:  One Designer's Radical Opinion. While I think around here Erick is preaching to the choir, and he fails to distinguish clearly between what we would call karma (resolution based on comparison of character values) and drama (resolution based on what a player or players at the table choose to have happen; the terms come from Jonathan Tweet's work in Everway), still he makes an excellent case for "diceless" play.

The first comment, though, is that there's probably going to be some dissonance in our communication due to a significant difference in our understanding of the term "system". System, here, is not the rules that are in the book. They're "rules", and they serve as an authority which may be cited by the players in the course of play to support a statement proposed ("of course my Ranger can track, it's in the Player's Handbook"; "you rolled a thirteen, that's a miss according to the chart"). Rather, "system" is a subset of the social contract between the players, the means by which the group actually does determine/negotiate what is real within the shared imagined space.

Thus you can't play without a "system" because "system" means "how you actually do play". Also, saying that the players are "above the system" is correct but confusing. The system is part of the definition of their relationships with each other, and as such they have the power to modify it and yet are never outside it completely as long as they are playing. In a sense, "how to modify the system" is part of the system.

(Hey, I like that. I'll have to remember it.)

I hope that helps you understand what people are saying here.

--M. J. Young