Diceless ... clueless

[mothlos]

Mothlos, I don't think we'll be able to continue this conversation until you can come to a point where you understand that nothing I've said has anything to do with abusive GMs or lack of trust.  That is very specifically NOT the issue.

Imagine if you will the least abusive, most collaborative, totally non-dickweed GM you can.  Now realize that EVERYTHING I've written so far applies 100% to them too.  Until we're both on the same page about that, we're just talking past each other.

I'm defining abuse as inclusive of ruling by fiat or railroading, not just maciliousness. As I understand it you are saying that as long as the GM can decide things by choosing values which virtually guarantee an outcome why should one bother figuring out values and rolling dice. I'm saying that any GM who does that without the full consent of the players, no matter how nice or well-meaning the GM is, is abusive.

A true GM is by definition is the final arbiter. It is the GM's duty to create a situation with points of uncertainty for players. A Choose Your Own Adventure writer shouldn't be in the business if you aren't ever given a choice about which section to turn to.

While a noble goal, as long as you are going to have a single player called the GM who is given the ability to decide the characteristics of the world, railroading is going to be an issue. I think it is a fair trade-off to have the responsibility for making sure the impossible doesn't happen rest in a single decider.

You can't write rules to block asshat behavior.  That's a given, and totally has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

To your second point, I'm not talking about determining walking down the hall...I'm talking about conflict...the actual moment when two characters in the fiction have conflicting goals.  If there is no uncertainty about how those conflicting goals will be resolved then you have resolution by fiat and the mechanics are just an illusion.

It's not always about goals, though. Sometimes it is simply descriptive like, "Can I climb the cliff?". In your previous post you said that the GM would decide what he or she wanted then set the difficulty for that result. This is abusive behavior. A good GM should try to set aside his or her plans for what 'should' happen and instead be responsive to what the players want to try. If the GM does so, uncertainty mechanics of all sorts are playable. If the GM fails to do this then I agree, why bother.

[Callan S.]

Hi mothlos,
Quickly quoting you

the GM controls all of the parts of the game that aren't mechanically decided.

I might be wrong, but I think Ralph/Valamir is refering to games where everything is mechancially decided. If it doesn't have a deciding mechanic, the GM doesn't make a ruling, it's just impossible to do. For example, from what I know of "My life with master" there are no rules for just wandering up to the master and attempting to kill him straight away. The GM doesn't make a ruling here about doing that because there are no rules to do it - it just isn't part of the game everyone (presumably) decided to play.

I think your insisting on GM tasks and responsibilities which really aren't part of what Ralph is refering to in terms of design. Unless you get him to talk about games where not everything isn't mechanically decided, it's not talking about the same subject with him.

[zoom]

Cool... what a great discussion....

So then for me to balance this game far better between the gm and the players I should develop a way for the GM to be restricted in what they can do.

I had a think about this. In the case of NPC's and Bad guys I thought I would create a threat rating which is the base score that the bad guy gets in any opposed tests and in any tests to see wether the bad guy completes a task.

That way a GM is frozen in what they can do, and because both the GM and the Players have to go off the scale there can be little in the way of breaking any rules.... What do you guys think?

[Valamir]

Cool... what a great discussion....

So then for me to balance this game far better between the gm and the players I should develop a way for the GM to be restricted in what they can do.

Sort of...balance is one of those squirrely words, and I'm not sure how you're using it here.

I'm not talking about balance in power levels between the GM and Players.  That might be a good thing if you want to track down a more competitive road which can be cool but not the issue I was commenting on.

Nor am I talking about balance in authority levels around any kind of tug of war between GM and Players over who gets to own the story.  I haven't found a way to communicate this to mothlos, who's still hung up on ideas of abuse, but as long as you're clear that I'm not talking about "leveling the playing field to make it more 'fair'" or any such notion then that's probably good enough.

I probably wouldn't use the word "balance" but if pressed, I'd call it "Balance of Suspense".  You've got your conflict -- its all poised on a knife edge -- the characters have announced their actions and goals and what not -- its time to resolve...and NOBODY knows for sure how its going to wind up...including the GM. 

How this conflict resolves will color at the very least the rest of the scene and potentially the entire campaign...and its absolutely crucial that none of the people around the table know what the outcome is going to be until the last tweak of the resolution system has been executed.  That may be dice, it may be cards, it may be point based auction, it may be any number of things...as long as the outcome is not preknown. 

The reason this is important has nothing to do with preventing the GM from going all "author / railroady" on the players (although that is a common side effect).  The reason its important is because this uncertainty is the creative fuel that will take your game to places that no peson would (or potentially even "could") imagine on their own.  At THAT moment of resolution...everything changes...the world has changed in a manner that was not predicted and NOW the story is going to go somewhere new.  Through the resolution system EVERYONE (including the players) had impact on where it was going to go, but NO ONE (including the GM) had control.  At that point the narrative takes on a life of its own and obtains a synergy of creative energy that is not possible (at least not reliably so) if someone has fore knowledge or direct control of what was going to happen.

I had a think about this. In the case of NPC's and Bad guys I thought I would create a threat rating which is the base score that the bad guy gets in any opposed tests and in any tests to see wether the bad guy completes a task.

That way a GM is frozen in what they can do, and because both the GM and the Players have to go off the scale there can be little in the way of breaking any rules.... What do you guys think?

Maybe...I'm not entirely clear on what you're suggesting.  But if this simply means that now the players know exactly how many points they have to spend to win, then you've just reversed the problem, not fixed it.

[Callan S.]

Maybe...I'm not entirely clear on what you're suggesting.  But if this simply means that now the players know exactly how many points they have to spend to win, then you've just reversed the problem, not fixed it.

Nay! Unless it's a game like snakes and ladders, where you win by pure randomness, then your winning will be influenced by what you've figured out. That means at some point a person could say 'I know exactly how to win this' and there would be no more suspence for him, he just wins it.

The problem with the traditional GM role is that once he figured it out, he could usually string it along for as long as he liked. Whole sessions. Whole campaigns even. But it's still okay to have a minute or two of non suspence for someone in a game, despite that.

What zoom's described is the point where you know their stats, you know what you'll need to spend, you know how to win (it's not GM fiat, you spend, you win). Cool, now lets work backwards from that point, to where you didn't know and figure out why you didn't know.

[simon_hibbs]

You are correct that if I as GM know you have 16 "points" that as long as I don't know how many of those points you choose to spend for a single task that I am uncertain as to whether or not you'll succeed at that task.  But I'm still pretty much in control of whether or not you succeed in your overall objective.  If you failing would "make for a better story" I can totally arrange to 18 points worth of difficulty in front of you spread across 4 tasks. 

As has been pointed out I think, this is also true of diced games. Many times in my life as a gamer I've seen GMs arbitrarily have things happen regardless of the dice, or simply given NPCs massive modifiers or 'grow' special abilities that make things happen the way the GM wants them to. It can be done crassly or it can be done subtly but no game is immune to this.

What diceless games, whether Karma based or resource based do is put this out in the open, so that it's much more transparent. But they also need to provide mechanisms for affecting the outcome, and they do this by providing the players with resources that can effect changes in the game world.

For example suppose a party of Amber characters are attacked by a massive fireball. One character might shape shift into a salamander that's immune to heat, another might emergency Hellride away to another dimension. A third character might cast a Freeze spell on himself and another might just be so tough he survives anyway. When facing overwhelming opposition characters must get creative, calling on allies or using Pattern  powers to modifty the environment to favour themselves or the lead the enemy into a trap.

What Erick Wujick realised is that the mechanics of comparing two character's abilities head to head really aren't very interesting. What is interesting is what options their abilities make available to a character. In Amber you can't cleverly manipulate the game system to gain statistical advantages, you have to get clever at using your character's abilities, what you know about your character's strengths and your opponent's weaknesses, which powers and abilities trump which other powers and abilities, or how you can use resources in the game world to achieve your goals. Diceless mechanics are more than adequate to facilitate such play.


Simon Hibbs

[Callan S.]

Hi Simon,

Ralph's not knocking the idea of diceless systems, he's refering to a resource leak (can be in dice games too), where the GM can draw on an unlimited amount of resources.

This can then be drawn on over and over again in the interest of a 'better story'. A common denial is that players can see the GM do this and can show unhappyness or discontent. This is simply flipping the problem around - the player draws on showing discontent over and over again, in the interest of a 'better story'.

The problem with unlimited resources vs unlimited discontent is that it goes on for an unlimited time. It takes something outside of the game, like someone saying or infering 'don't be a dick' to break that cycle.

Many gamers think that isn't a problem. But it stops you from actually playing the game, and if you think you have, your in a delusional state. For example, say your playing chess against a woman with a big cleavage and she fusses with them when your about to take a significant piece or checkmate her, to stop you doing that. That's not chess anymore, because those boobs are more important than any piece on the board or move you could make. If you think you've really played chess like this, your in a delusional state (but if you don't care about chess and are there for the boobies though, your fine!).

Same goes for the 'don't be a dick' technique, because it opperates in exactly the same area as the boobies do - outside of the game.

Many gamers actually include 'don't be a dick' as part of the game - however, it means they can never buy a new game and play a new way, because like the boobies, 'don't be a dick' is far bigger and more important than any of the rules - so obviously new rules wont change anything that's important about play. Here their delusional about having played a new game AND they are trapped in the same type of play over and over - regardless of the quality of that play.

Bah, I went on when I meant to just add some bullet points. To summerise, that's where resource leaks lead to.

[simon_hibbs]

Ralph's not knocking the idea of diceless systems, he's refering to a resource leak (can be in dice games too), where the GM can draw on an unlimited amount of resources.

But surely GMs always have unlimited resources. They get to arbitrarily decide all of the stats of the NPCs, they get to decide the value of any situational modifiers and if they secretly change or add to the abilities of NPC's, who's to know? What you and Valmar seem to be saying is that diceless systems are pure illusion but illusion is possible, in fact it's easy, in just about any system. As I said diceless games bring this all out into the open. GM's can't play a shell game where they claim it's all open and fair when actually they rigged the whole thing from the start, as I've see (and done to be perfectly honest) so many times. In a good diceless game, as in any game, it's the ingenuity and creativity of the players in the face of the challenges presented by the GM that make the game fun.

You don't need dice to make a situation unpredictable, all you need is unpredictable people. So long as the actions and choices of the players are not always predictable in advance, and can affect the outcome of the game then I don't see a problem.


Simon Hibbs

[Valamir]

Actually, no.  Not all systems give unlimited resources to the GM.  Dogs in the Vineyard for instance details exactly what all NPC stats look like from a numbers perspective, the GM merely assigns traits to the given die codes.  PTA allows the GM to decide the difficulty of a conflict only by spending from a limited budget which is replenished only according to set rules.  In The Shadow of Yesterday only the players get to decide when and when not to "Bring Down the Pain". 

You are correct that most traditional games work as you've described...which is why most of them require a ton of drift and rely primarily on the social contract to find a playable balance for the group.

But, again, I'm not talking about the GM abusing the system to railroad the players.  I'm talking about whether or not the GM knows what the outcome of a conflict will be in advance of its resolution.  That fore knowledge is a bad thing, regardless of whether the GM uses that knowledge in an abusive way because it changes the creative synergy around the table.

In a "non-fiat" system (dice / cards / auction / whatever) the GM is not certain of the outcome*, because even if they make the conflict difficult -- by setting a high target number in a dice game, or bidding alot of points in an auction game -- they don't KNOW that the conflict will resolve in the way they've weighted it.  That lack of knowledge is what I'm talking about.

*unless they really are using heavy handed tactics to give the illusion of uncertainty...which as has been pointed out is beyond the ability of mere rules to control.

[Callan S.]

Hi Simon,

As I said diceless games bring this all out into the open. GM's can't play a shell game where they claim it's all open and fair when actually they rigged the whole thing from the start, as I've see (and done to be perfectly honest) so many times.

Do you mean they bring the target number out into the open? Absolutely. But the process for deciding that target number is still hidden - as Ralph noted, if you have 16 action points, the GM can easily arrange 18 points worth of tasks over four tasks or something before you get to your real objective, so as to control whether you get to it. That's all hidden still, wouldn't you say? The diceless system has exposed part of that, but it's not the whole deal.

But surely GMs always have unlimited resources. They get to arbitrarily decide all of the stats of the NPCs, they get to decide the value of any situational modifiers and if they secretly change or add to the abilities of NPC's, who's to know?

Your a forgey kind of guy - so your not the sort to just say the GM gets to decide this as if its a tradition to be followed. You'd be saying the GM gets to do it, to achieve some practical quality. What is that quality? Say the GM doesn't get to decide anything - it's like a boardgame. What would you say were missing out on? Try and name just one thing - the most important thing.

If you can name it, then we can look at if it really needs a 'GM has unlimmited resources' rule to support it or not.

[zoom]

Hi there...

So I've had a think about everything that has been said and I've come up with this... you tell me what you think guys.

GM - A gm has the mission/dungeon/campaign setup as per usual. Only this time he had various monsters and baddies that all have a threat rating which dictates how many points they have when dealing with the PC's.

PC - The PC's have all their points ready to be used (like bidding) including the important Booster points which can increase any normal points they have.

GM - Has 2 bad guys on the stairs where the player must run up, He secretly assigns how many points each they will "bid" to stop the player getting past them.... The GM also checks the combat charts he has for any modifications to this point total for things like higher ground and second opponent.

Player - is faced with the dilemma of running up the stairs past 2 bad guys and then onto the roof where he must jump from one building to another..... He secretly decides to use points from his construct to generate "sports Trainers" plus points from his physical attribute and some extra points from his booster.

Both player and GM then announce what their points/bids are and from this result you can see if the player has partially succeeded, succeeded or failed to get past the bad guys.

Lets say the player makes it..... he is now faced with a dilemma, he used valuable points to pull of that feat of acrobatic Free-Running and now has to run and jump over the 20 foot gap between this building and the other. Does he spend valuable action time replenishing his point pools or does he try to make the jump with the points he has and hope he makes it.....

The GM now decides that the bad guys, having been made to look like fools, split up. One goes after the Player and other radios for backup. He decides that the Bad guy chasing the player moves cautiously and as such takes time to replenish his point pool (threat rating). As usual though he does not tell the player this and waits to see what the player decides to do....

The player decides to risk it on the notion that them bad guys could be running up the stairs after him and he hasn't got the points for a prolonged battle on the roof top. He runs and throws all the points he can to jump the gap.

The GM then checks the movement chart and it shows the point cost for movement and other effects such as wether conditions ect and then asks the player for his point total (bid).... the player gets a partial success which means he's holding on with one hand.....

The player then decides to wait a moment to catch his bearrings and as such replenish his Point pool...


Thats how I envisage the play happenning..... (there is an awful lot more to the game than just this but this is the basics)

Can anybody tell me if I've got problems with what I've written above?

[Valamir]

I think you've got enough there to put in a rough form and start playtesting.

You'll probably need to spend some time finding the right balance of frequency for your refreshes...too frequent and you remove the scarcity of the currency...and it probably gets a bit fiddly.  Too rare and no one can do anything.

That will take some actual play to nail down the right ratio for you.

[simon_hibbs]

But, again, I'm not talking about the GM abusing the system to railroad the players.  I'm talking about whether or not the GM knows what the outcome of a conflict will be in advance of its resolution.  That fore knowledge is a bad thing, regardless of whether the GM uses that knowledge in an abusive way because it changes the creative synergy around the table.

Sure, but even in a karma or resource based system the GM doesn't know that, because the players can have such a wide variety of abilities and stratagems they could try that how they choose to attack the problem, or even to not attack it and maybe even change the whole terms of the conflict, cannot be predicted by the GM in advance.

Yes if the GM dictates that in this scene you have to fight this enemy and you have to use such-and-such an ability and you are not allowed to come up with anything original then yes, the GM will know what the outcome will be. But if that's how the game is set up then you've already got loads of problems that are far beyond the scope of this discussion.

In a "non-fiat" system (dice / cards / auction / whatever) the GM is not certain of the outcome*, because even if they make the conflict difficult -- by setting a high target number in a dice game, or bidding alot of points in an auction game -- they don't KNOW that the conflict will resolve in the way they've weighted it.  That lack of knowledge is what I'm talking about.

And what I'm saying is that this is not always a particularly interesting kind of uncertainty.

You can have certainty of outcome in some situations, which lead to uncertainties in how those challenges are eventually overcome. You're closing off some possible outcomes in order to create a particular type of challenge. Now to be sure this suits some genres and not others. Take Doctor Who for example. Nobody trying to fight Daleks or Cybermen militarily is ever going to win just by rolling well (except maybe each other) because what makes them so scary is the fact that in a direct conflict they are unbeatable, so the interesting thing in a Doctor Who story, or game, is what other tricks, techniques and resources The Doctor or the players use to confound their plans. Yes there are absolutes, but those absolutes are can be a vital dramatic ingredient in the challenge of the game.

Maybe that kind of game isn't for everyone, and doesn't suit every genre but it can still be a lot of fun.


Simon Hibbs

[Valamir]

Sure, but even in a karma or resource based system the GM doesn't know that, because the players can have such a wide variety of abilities and stratagems they could try that how they choose to attack the problem, or even to not attack it and maybe even change the whole terms of the conflict, cannot be predicted by the GM in advance.

Yes if the GM dictates that in this scene you have to fight this enemy and you have to use such-and-such an ability and you are not allowed to come up with anything original then yes, the GM will know what the outcome will be. But if that's how the game is set up then you've already got loads of problems that are far beyond the scope of this discussion.

As I've said a number of times, there are many ways to skin the cat of achieving GM uncertainty.  Is it possible to envision a game where the interaction of fixed scores, special cases, synergy bonuses, cooperative effects, exceptions, and modifiers is complex enough that a GM can't suss out what a player's numerical capability to confront a challenge is?  Sure.  I haven't seen any and such a system might be hard to do and keep it fast playing, but sure.  Its totally possible.  GM uncertainty acheived.

But for any Karmic / Resource based game that a) I've seen, and b) is likely to be easily playable any GM whose played half a dozen times has no problem at all looking at your character sheet and figuring out what your numbers allow you to do.  He won't know what creative excuses you'll come up with for applying those numbers.  He won't know what twisty turny strategem you'll use to try and get as much advantage as you can...but he's played with you enough times to know how you think and ultimately it all comes down to what numbers match up against what numbers...and if he knows all those in advance, the level of uncertainty regarding the final outcome is pretty minimal.

I mean I know your "fight good" skill is a 4.  I know your "think smart" skill is an 8.  I throw a challenge at you that has a "fight good" threat of 6.  Its hardly going to surprise me that you're going to try some clever player trick to switch the arena to "think smart" and win.  Sure I won't know what your clever plan is...that'll be fun seeing what stuff you come up with...but the outcome isn't ever in any doubt.  You'll win, as soon as you finagle some way to draw upon your "think smart".  I totally know that going in...I know the numbers on your sheet and I know you've done that every session we've played so far.

Expand the situation from 2 possible skills to 5 or 10 or 20...yeah, its gets a little bit harder to juggle the permutations but lets face facts, comparing numbers to see which is higher ain't rocket science and you probably only have a couple "big ones" that you try to steer most conflicts to anyway.  And yeah it gets harder yet when you have a party of characters with different combinations of numbers.  But it still isn't that hard.  I know Steve is going to try and bring his "magic stuff 10" and Bob and Jack are going to try and combo their "acrobatics 5" and "martial arts 7" and I know that this opponent is supposed to be tough but beatable so I have to put enough of its stats high enough that you can't just walk over him and I have to leave at least one number low enough so that when you suss out its weakness you can target that and win...at which point it just becomes an exercise in narrative sparring until you come up with the right combination to defeat the opponent that I knew going in you were going to defeat.  Or if I didn't leave a weakness it becomes an exercise in narrative sparring until you realize you can't win and give up.  And sure once in a while you'll come up with something that I didn't see coming and I'll be stunned and you'll be crowing, but once in a while ain't good enough.

And what I'm saying is that this is not always a particularly interesting kind of uncertainty.

You can have certainty of outcome in some situations, which lead to uncertainties in how those challenges are eventually overcome. You're closing off some possible outcomes in order to create a particular type of challenge. Now to be sure this suits some genres and not others. Take Doctor Who for example. Nobody trying to fight Daleks or Cybermen militarily is ever going to win just by rolling well (except maybe each other) because what makes them so scary is the fact that in a direct conflict they are unbeatable, so the interesting thing in a Doctor Who story, or game, is what other tricks, techniques and resources The Doctor or the players use to confound their plans. Yes there are absolutes, but those absolutes are can be a vital dramatic ingredient in the challenge of the game.

Maybe that kind of game isn't for everyone, and doesn't suit every genre but it can still be a lot of fun.

All true.  But I'm talking about uncertainty related to the outcome of a conflict.  Taking on Daleks militarily isn't really a conflict...any more than jumping into a pool of lava is a conflict.  The interesting thing in Dr. Who is indeed what other tricks he uses...that's where the conflict is, and that's what the GM should have just as much uncertainty as the players have as to what the outcome will be.

In other words when the good Doctor decides he's going to Jury Rig the Tardis to travel upside down through the time portal inorder to reverse the polarity on a stolen Pterydactyl egg from which he's going to make a giant omlett with cream cheese -- "and by this method, will the Daleks be defeated"...then the GM ought to be saying "wow...lets see if that works" just like the players are.  And that's not reliably produceable in a resolve-by-fiat system...or by a system that essentially devolves into a resolve-by-fiat system.
But I feel like we've all been saying this same thing a number of times already, so if Zoom has what he needs from the thread I'm happy to let it lie.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

My call is that zoom has received what he needed from the thread and that it has come to its natural end. There's no reason to post here further. (zoom, great job, by the way - it's an excellent example of a First Thoughts thread.)

Simon, the issues you've brought up are not, ultimately, aimed at what zoom was asking about, so I encourage you to bring them up yourself in a new thread, in Actual Play.

Best, Ron