When Words Failed Me

[Matt Wilson]

This may or may not be what frustrates Wilhelm (rafial), but part of the frustration of things like bonus dice for me is that my reward isn't tangible currency. It's a lottery ticket. So I get a bonus die for cool description, and it ends up not helping. In such case it feels like less of a reward.

However, I think that the ideas presented in Sorcerer and Sword help to make up for it. If I think of it in such a way that my cool description has garnered me not only a bonus die but also a certain guaranteed outcome. That is, I will most definitely kick the bad guy across the church into the stained glass window. If the roll comes up crap, the bad guy gets right back up, but I was acknowledged by the group as coming up with some cool story stuff.

If I say, "my guy hits the bad guy," and the roll comes up blah, then it's not guaranteed to happen at all.

[greyorm]

Here's a thought from earlier today: if you're worried about the mechanical effectiveness of your character, you aren't playing Narrativist, but Gamist. Sorcerer really isn't a Gamist system, so becoming upset that your character is facing worse odds now, even if just succeeded, seems to be counter to the play-style encouraged by the game.

In general, regardless of system, the point would be, for the Narrativist, how to make the scene play out to address the Premise in the most interesting fashion -- win or lose -- the Color, in effect, becomes paramount, regardless of outcome. The point is not the outcome of the rolls, or the probabilities involved, but what you do with them.

Just an observation. Thoughts?

[Mike Holmes]

To get back to the point about how hard it is to achieve bonus dice, I think that we're encountering some incoherence here in play styles, potentially. That is, if the GM assumes that it's his johb to make effective Challenges for the players, then he'll have very stringent requirements for giving out bonuses for role-playing. But, assuming a player who's just trying to characterize his character's decisions well, this is inappropriate.

Basically, think of it like education. People rail against education in which grades are based on some curve of the outcomes of all participants, grading for "effort" as it were, because it means that you trend down in terms of overall outcome in the long run (or so the theory goes). In gaming, however, you have small groups, and the idea is just to have fun. That is, there's no "product" being produced that has to sell beyond the game itself. So why not just grade on effort. That is, it shouldn't matter in this case that the player did a lousy job of adding something on to the narration. It's enough that they tried to do so. The system encouraged the player to do what they were supposed to do, and they tried. That promoted as much fun in play as possible in the short run. So basing the bonus on the actual outcome in an objective sense doesn't make sense like it might in education.

Is the point clear? Unless there's some competition going on, then these rules are simply designed to promote play that's more fun, and as such should be given out like candy (as we say) in order to ensure that it happens all the time. As opposed to denial, which makes a player afraid to participate for fear of judgement.

Mike