[ Spawned from this thread ]

I've taken on, largely through foolhardiness, the interesting task of running Narrativist Amber. And here we are with some more running commentary on its progress.

The rules-drift I'm most satisfied with, so far, is to clarify that attributes, where applicable, are king. They trump tactics, they trump resources, they sure as heck trump how beautifully you describe your characters actions.

This has made it so easy to adjudicate one-on-one combats. You look at the stats, and you know immediately who's going to lose, how badly, and how quickly it's going to happen. Unequal sides can make this harder to judge, since there's no straightforward way to measure whether (for example) the 3rd-rank and 4th-rank guys can, together, take down a 1st rank holder. But since alliances in Amber have a half-life measured in milliseconds, this doesn't happen too often.

Be warned: this is the stuff of nightmares for players who are heavily into tactical play. You're essentially saying "All that stuff about maneuvering and gaining advantage? We're skipping that". Warn them explicitly, warn them often. I didn't. My bad. It was ugly.

But for folks who come to a combat saying "Win or lose, my character is going to shine in this situation", I think this rule really works well. It frees them from having to concentrate on the tactics and logistics. When they know (for example) they're going to lose... well then the important thing is to lose with style.

It's also fostered a different attitude toward conflict as a story element. I have seen far less characters seeking out situations where victory is the only goal. Instead they're going into combat saying things like "It'd be nice to win, but the real point is to look good in front of my father... so I'll do some fancy, risky moves, even if they haven't got a snowballs chance of working." It's too simplistic to say that combats have become a tool in the service of character agendas, rather than vice-versa, but I think it's something similar to that.

Edit: I don't know whether Ron will want to be at all associated with this, but I wouldn't feel right not mentioning that it was a comment of his in an earlier thread that set me on the road toward running things this way.

This is the third version of this reply I write; I just cannot decide on how to approach this. I think I'll be content with remarking that what you're describing seems to me dull as all hell, and puts absolutely all power over the story in the hands of the GM. It is clothed as impartial, but really just means that any way the players would have for affecting the story in a conflict situation is taken away, and only the GM is left with decisions (which abilities to apply, mainly).

What frequently happens in this kind of dysfunctional game is that the players start to avoid the rules. This is actually relatively common in D&D and other such systematically problematic games; the 1st level character does quite nicely as long as there are no combats, so presto, the player will do his utmost to use informal narrative technique to skip the combat. I expect that the players will do the same with this kind of Amber, or alternatively be content with the ultimate illusionistic approach.

I've always thought that the point of Amber was largely to win despite the numbers. Thus my application of it is more along the lines of "every detail counts".

The above might seem a little harsh, so let it be clear that if it's what seems fun to you, go right ahead. Just keep your eyes open for how the players react in the long run, and try to find players who like to mainly provide color.

I don't think it's particularly harsh, I think there's just a difference of perspective.

Yes, this system is meant to take away the power of the players to effect the outcome of combat. That doesn't mean that it gives that power to the GM. The GM doesn't have any ability to effect the outcome of combat either. The outcome is predetermined. Nobody effects it.

I think, however, you're overstating when you say that anybody is robbed of their ability to effect the story. They are prevented from seeking one very specific story element (victory if they're lower ranked, loss if they're higher). But the whole gamut of other possibilities is wide open.

Say they're going to lose. They can die with their boots on, fighting to the last. Or they can ask for parley, negotiate a surrender. Or run like a rabbit. Or convince their adversary to willingly switch to another attribute ("You fight with a sword? Only girly-men fight with swords! You wouldn't survive five seconds with me hand-to-hand!") Or bluff their way out. Or reveal that they have critical information their adversary can't afford to lose by killing them. Or....

The only thing they can't do is win. People naturally obsess about that one outcome. When you take it irrevocably out of the equation you free their minds to pursue all manner of other options.

So why was someone first in Strength and first in Warfare losing to anyone else in the game example given in the parent thread?

To put it another way, if it's all about the numbers and not about the details, and the GM is powerless to stop things, then how or who determines which narration of the events is "true?" The winner? The loser? The GM? Some neutral bystander? The first person to say anything?

If the GM is the one who determines what factors are in play and which details are true, then yes, this style becomes Illusionism and probably Railroading. And all the power is in the hands of the GM. If the GM is powerless, and the System has the power, then why don't appeals to the System work?

Do the players have Karmic tokens that they can spend to affect the outcome?

I just don't get how this is supposed to work....

Well, "who resolves the rules" is actually a separate discussion from "how should the rules be resolved". I think that Strict Karma tends to minimize those issues, because the questions that need to be resolved are "how quickly, how badly", rather than the more emotionally charged questions of "who wins, who loses". It makes less difference, in a Social Contract sense, who arbitrates.

So, in the for-instance you raised, if a character first-ranked in Warfare gets into a sword-fight, they're going to win. Every round of combat they will gain progressively more dominance and advantage in the situation. That's not up for debate or arbitration.

How quickly that happens will depend upon the Warfare rank of their adversary. If it is low then the superior fighter will be able to deliver a large amount of damage immediately, and things will get rapidly worse for the loser. If their opponents rank is close to first then the process will be slower, an accumulation of minor victories over time.

Whoever is arbitrating the rules is responsible for judging how much advantage, and how quickly, a given difference in ranks should merit. As I said, that role of arbitration can be assigned in many ways. In my own game I handle it as part of being the GM. But your suggestions of having the winner or the loser handle arbitration strike me as equally valid. I think they'd make the game feel different, so it would be worth considering carefully what you're trying to achieve with the choice.

The idea of Karmic tokens is an interesting one, which I hadn't thought about. How did you imagine that they would be used in the system?

TonyLB wrote:
So, in the for-instance you raised, if a character first-ranked in Warfare gets into a sword-fight, they're going to win. Every round of combat they will gain progressively more dominance and advantage in the situation. That's not up for debate or arbitration.

The idea of Karmic tokens is an interesting one, which I hadn't thought about. How did you imagine that they would be used in the system?

>Nod, nod<

Yes, exactly, Eero! Very well stated.

The system works best for a game where "who wins, who loses" is not the main focus of the story, even when it's the main focus of the characters thought.

I like running Amber that way, I think it's well suited for it. After all, the first book of the fiction has Corwin throw himself heart and soul into a war he knows he's going to lose, and lose it, and he's still the way-cool protagonist.

But if, as you point out, you've got people who want to tell a story wherein their characters are avatars in the friendly competition between the players... well yeah, this is not the system you want.

I've been trying to stay out of this thread, but obviously, I failed. I have a lot of issues with a strictly karmic combat resolution system, but I do actually have what I think is a valid question about the system that doesn't question the validity of the system, so I'm going to ask it.

In the quest to eliminate player input into the victor in a contest, I think that the intentions of the player and character are getting lost. That is to say, the system being proposed seems to presuppose that combat is always about victory of the other player, and thus, if the player is not looking for victory, he or she can do things outside the combat system to affect things, like talking, or running away, etc.

But, when combat is joined, the player no longer has any input even into what he or she hopes to accomplish with the combat other than total victory. What if the player just wants to wound the other person and flee (to take an example off the top of my head for no particluar reason...), or force another player into a trap, or simply keep another player from passing, or defending a child or something from another player... All these differing goals for a combat would change the character's tactics. But, in this system (as I understand it), since there is no room for tactics, the player must fight for an all-out victory or do something outside the combat system. That kind of sucks for Warfare/Strength characters, who cannot use their attributes to achieve anything but total victory, while power characters still have a whole plethora of non-combat and non-"total victory" options. It really limits what Warfare/Strength characters can do, story-wise, while leaving those options open for power characters.

I think this system hamstrings Warfare/Strength characters from being able to use their abilities to accomplish things other than total victory. If the only options are talk and "I fight," then the character's options in story terms are vastly limited, I think. I guess what I am suggesting is that maybe the system be modified to at least allow for simple tactics such as, "I don't let him cross this line," or, "I don't let him touch the girl," or, "I hit him in the face and run." Stuff like that. Or maybe it's not even about tactics (I'm thinking while typing here): Let the player state the general intentions of his or her character, as in, what does the character hope to accomplish in this combat? And then adjudicate by that. I think it takes something away from the process if character's and player's intentions aren't part of the mix.

Just my thoughts.

Also, to be nitpicky, Corwin went along with Bleys' attack because he was afraid that Bleys might win and be harder to unseat than Eric, which means he didn't throw himself into a war he knows he's going to lose. If he'd thought Bleys had no chance of winning, he would have walked away. It's because he feared Bleys might win that he went along.

When I said Karmic Tokens I was thinking about Nobilis, another diceless RPG, which has a system (called miracle points) that allows a player to temporarily increase their character's effectiveness in a given area. These tokens are a limited resource, so deciding when to use them to affect an outcome is a good source of tension. In Amber, a Karmic token could be used to bump up the effective rank of the character temporarily.

And this is another place where communication seems to be breaking down. In my view, how something happens in an RPG is as important as what happens. In fact, I would argue that for me how quickly/how badly is a more emotionally charged issue than who wins/who loses. Especially in Amber Diceless where the original mechanic for who wins is (as I understand it) based on how cool your description of what you're doing is.

So running a game in the Amber setting using your mechanic is fine, but it's really not the same as running a game using the ADRPG rules. In fact, it's diametrically opposed in mechanic and in intent from where I sit.

(edit: cross post)

Mark:

I agree wholeheartedly.

I think everybody in this thread is missing what Tony's saying and what he's trying to accomplish with such a system. Personally, I think it sounds like a wonderful way of playing. Boring, schmoring. I'd love to play a game where all the outcomes were fixed and you could focus on HOW you win or lose in a given situation. I don't just think this is a YMMV thing either (though of course it is to one degree or another), I think people are misunderstanding what this would be like in actual play.

Bateson, your "total victory" objection I don't think applies in such a case. If I'm 1st in Warfare, there's no reason that I have to say, "I'm going to kill him." I can say, "I'm going to wound him and make him look ridiculously bad in this swordfight, so he embarasses himself," and then proceed to do just that. Being 1st just means you automatically succeed at everything, where Warfare is concerned.

I think the only concern I have, Tony, is how you resolve situations where different players are bringing different attributes to play. Imagine the former situation, where the opponent was 1st in Social (or whatever the attribute was) and decided to ridicule his opponent during the swordfight, to make his enemy come out looking worse, even though he himself was the one losing the fight. Now you have a 1st vs. a 1st, both trying to achieve the same goal in different ways. Is it a draw? That seems rather uninteresting. Would you just play it out and see who ends up looking the best or least foolish? That seems to supercede the entire need for a resolution system, Karmic or otherwise.

I can say, "I'm going to wound him and make him look ridiculously bad in this swordfight, so he embarasses himself," and then proceed to do just that.

This seems related to a technique advocated by Theatrix, which was also published in an RPG magazine article by the authors -- which they called "Tell me why you fail". i.e. The outcome is explicitly determined at the start, but the GM gives the player control over how and why. I did this at the start of the Conan RPG event Brawny Thews, for example.

However, I think this really needs to be an open process. If the intent is for the players not to concentrate so much on winning or losing, then the players need to be partners in the process. Ideally, a player needs to know going into an encounter whether he will win or lose. For comparison, in Brawny Thews, the first thing I said was to explain that the PCs would eventually be overcome and captured. They knew that before I described anything about the approaching army. None of the players had any problem with this.

As far as the mechanics of Amber, the problem is that one-on-one swordfights or wrestling matches are the only clear case -- but there are a lot of other possibilities. You really need the karmic system to have clear answers for what happens in the case of Logrus, shape-shift, sorcery, items, and so forth. If the results are an intuitive process in your head, then it just makes the contest into wheedling you as GM.

John Kim: On cooperation: Yeah. I've been floating the idea of telling the players the stats of their enemies when battle commences, but some of them are concerned (understandably) that it takes away some of their ability to immerse in the uncertainty of the character. Not sure how to handle that.

Jonathon: I had this horrible mental hangup responding to this, because I kept thinking "Can't they both succeed, and both end up looking like idiots?" Which is (I think) amusing, but doesn't really answer your question.

Your concern about how to adjudicate when people are trying to use different attributes is a very valid one. It's one I've been wrestling with, still being somewhat of a fledgling in this particular way of resolving conflict.

I see two clear paths, neither of which is wholly satisfactory. One is what you outlined, making it a subjective decision and doing the best you can. Probably serviceable in a situation where the rest of the gaming relationship is good, but certainly not a mechanic that helps run the game.

The second way is to define the attributes so narrowly that they have no overlap. In those terms, having first in warfare doesn't give you the ability to declare that you embarass your enemy. It gives you the ability to fancifully cut his clothes to ribbons, which one might reasonably assume (but could not compel) would indirectly have that effect. But, at the least, there is no direct conflict between Warfare and Social then: The warfare guy cuts the others clothes to ribbons, the social one delivers a stinging witticism. Both resolved by the same ruleset, independently... leaving the question of who actually looked better to, you guessed it, subjective judgment. Arrgh.

Because if you narrow the attributes that much then you've left all this huge gaping territory unfilled between them, and everything that happens in there will (once again) be happening outside of the resolution system. Again, it might work out if your group is good but it's not elegant and helpful.

So... yeah. It's a problem. Anybody got a fiendishly simple and brilliant idea for fixing it? I'll bake a batch of brownies and eat them in your honor if you do!

TonyLB wrote: So... yeah. It's a problem. Anybody got a fiendishly simple and brilliant idea for fixing it? I'll bake a batch of brownies and eat them in your honor if you do!

Mark Johnson wrote:

TonyLB wrote: So... yeah. It's a problem. Anybody got a fiendishly simple and brilliant idea for fixing it? I'll bake a batch of brownies and eat them in your honor if you do!

Fortune.

Honestly, to solve the issue I'm stuck on while retaining strict Karma, I would say you would have to hand narrative power over. The popular way to do this seems to be that the loser narrates the results. That would work as follows:

GM: Player X, what are you doing?

X: I'll.... (something nifty using Warfare)

GM: Player Y, how do you respond?

Y: I'll... (something nifty involving a Power)

GM: OK. Seeing X is higher in Warfare by a significant amount, and the Power in question applies but doesn't give enough of an edge, X wins. X, what result do you want?

X: I want... (some final result)

GM: Done. Y, how does it happen?

Y: ... (Several rounds of coolness that end with X getting what (s)he wants)

---

This needs to be spelled out ahead of time. If the players understand that winning means that they don't have control over how they win, it will make things easier. Probably not 100% smooth, but smoother than if it is completely arbitrary who gets narrative control. And it has the added bonus that players like me are much more likely to play less than top-notch characters in order to get the narrative control.

Hi, Tony,

Would you mind addressing how this method of play encourages Narrativism? I hear what you're saying about "we get 'who wins' out of the way quickly so people can decide how they win or lose", but I'm not really getting how that leads to Narr. I think my first take on the issue is something like what Eero was seeing, which is that it sounds like Gamism without The Gamble or Step On Up. I know that's not what you're going for, but I think it's you've seen some responses like "That sounds boring". I'm not against what you're describing so much as I really feel like I'm not getting it.

On antoher point, in the FATE game I'm running, I've found injecting Fortune (as was mentioned earlier in the thread) has been a huge help in avoiding these kinds of logjams. We've had a few situations where the players were at an impasse where they really just wanted to know how two opposing actions would work out and who the victor was, so they could get on with play. I didn't want to impose a rules-based decision in the most contentious case (because Karma-wise, it was really a push) so I just had the two players roll 2d6 and let the higher roll "win". The nice thing about this for our group was that it was clearly arbitrary (and therefore impartial), so there were no hurt feelings.

Actually, Andrew, I'm not sure it does directly encourage Narrativism. It's not that it rewards the raising of themes and internal conflict. But it also doesn't distract from them at all. It minimizes the amount that the rules system and the outcomes (as such) have to be considered during play (assuming good communications about the system itself, of course). So at best it gets the rules system out of the way, and lets the players express a Narr agenda if that's what they want.

I think this as a step in the right direction, because Amber as I've often seen it played puts character effectiveness at odds with the introduction of thematic elements. I've seen it very actively discourage Narr play by drawing so much attention to tactical and aesthetic description that people cannot afford to put any mental energy into anything else. Other peoples experience, naturally enough, may vary.

I'm afraid I don't understand what is meant by Gamism without the Gamble or Step on Up. You're right that I did initially interpret that as being "that sounds boring", but I'd love to have it clarified so I could see what is really meant. Gamism is definitely the CA that I have the least firm grasp on, so a little help in explaining your meaning would go a long way.

Err, what is the player supposed to input into the game in terms of stats? I'm not quite sure.

From what I've read, someone who swordfights better wins the swordfight. The GM decides if the NPC is better than the PC which = the GM decides the outcome of the fight.

That's cool. But why have stats? I mean, perhaps its a hobby assertion thing I'm about to spout here, but stats suggest the player can do something with them. Something tactical. Why give a player something that they can't use?

It's giving someone something that, in other games, lets you figure some tactics in terms of conflict. But in this one it doesn't, its up to the GM who wins. It's sort of like giving a friend some keys, presumably to your house. But when he comes, they don't work in the lock and you decide whether he comes in or not when you answer the door. Why give him a key that doesn't do anything?

Sounds like bad system design to me, trying to placate the expectations of gamers despite design intent (a lot like CoC). Am I seeing this wrong?

Noon:

Whoa. Your key analogy really hits on the head how I felt as a player under this system (though I didn't know I was under this system). I know that it isn't Tony's intention for it to be that way, and I'm sure he will say that the system isn't that way, since "highest attribute wins." But it sure comes across this way to the player, or at least it did to me.

Excellent, excellent observation.

One of the weakness of games that rely alot on subjective interpretation is their vulnerability to Calvinballing*. Amber IME is especially vulnerable in this regard because its biggest weakness as a game is that it lacks a decisive IIEE structure...which makes it easy prey to Calvinballing tactics.

The various network of interrelated powers and abilities all with little snippets of rules here and there, but really no cohesive overall system for resolution (a complete IIEE package) is ripe pickings for Calvinballers.

I suspect that Tony encountered a raft of Calvinball players in his experience with Amber and developed this hard Karma approach as a way to deal with it under the assumption that if you took away all of the niggling tools such players could manipulate and just went with strait number vs number with zero tactical influence there would be nothing for the Calvinballers to play with.

When I went to copy the discussion of "Calvinball" from the essay for reference here, I found the last paragraph where is says "One mistaken solution to this tactic is to hide the rules from the players" which seems to me to be exactly what Tony was doing by refusing to discuss the grounds of his ruling.

*

Calvinball
This is the famous "rules-lawyering" approach, which is misnamed because it claims textual support when in reality it simply invents it. Calvinball is a better term: making up the rules as you go along, usually in terms of on-the-spot interpretations disguised as "obvious" well-established interpretations. It basically combines glibness and bullying to achieve moment-to-moment advantages for one's character. A Calvinballer may also be adept at bugging the GM about some rules-detail often enough that a goodly percentage of the time yields a reward for it, but not often enough to tip everyone else off to what's going on.

The big trick of Calvinball is pretending to be still committed to the Exploration. That makes it especially well-suited to disrupting Simulationist play from the older traditions, because the other players' commitment to the integrity of the Dream can be co-opted into one's Calvinball strategy, exploiting the others' willingness to enter into the rules-debate in hopes of a compromise, which of course is not forthcoming. Calvinball then quickly transforms into a struggle for control over what is and is not happening in the imaginative situation.

One mistaken solution to this tactic is to hide the rules from the players in some kind of laughably-secure "GM book" or "GM section," as well as to enforce the ideal of Transparency. The other, more common solution is simply to continue adding rules forever and ever, amen, in order to account unambiguously for any and all imaginable events during play.

Okay, I think I'm getting a handle on it. Let's say Tony wants his game to not so much be about the conflicts that Amberites get into, and more about the ramifications of the choices the characters make (with these conflicts as context). So, say, if there's an attack from unstoppable creatures from beyond Shadow, they really are going to be unstoppable, and what gets played out is more about the character's reactions.

If you go heavy Drama (which is what the core mechanics and Eric's examples in the Amber book suggest) then players might very well start scheming up some huge, convoluted plan to stop the Unstoppable Menace. Whereas if you go pure Karma, that won't happen. I think I can understand how that might work.

There's two things I see as a problem, both of which may have already been addressed:

1) "Nyah, Nyah, I can't hear you." Taking away Drama from conflict resolution is a pretty big drift in Amber. Between the examples in the book, and the "You may already be playing diceless" essay Eric wrote for the Forge, it's easy to see that Amber comes out of the box with a really heavy Drama component. Now Tony may have been exceedingly clear to his players about how he was drifting, but I've been there, and when a GM proposes house rules that change a system that dramatically, a lot of the times the players nod, go "uh huh, okay" and don't actually hear you. (I've had this happen a lot in other systems.)

2) You never get rid of all the Drama. One way to sidestep the straight Karma resolution is to manage to change the battle from one attribute to another. But how that's done is through Drama resolution, isn't it? I'd think it has to be involved somehow, because if it's also Karma (say, if you're running at me with a sword, and I have your Trump out and try to attack you psychically, it's Psyche vs. Warfare) then there's no clear way to adjudicate what happens. (Is it relative ranks, or points spent? etc.)

I guess point #2 is what I meant by, to rephrase it, "empty Gamism". I've seen a fair number of Amber players who really enjoy coming up with crafty, risky plans to win out when they're underdogs. (Arguably they're just following the way Zelazny wrote Corwin.) If what they really dig about Amber is Stepping on Up by coming up with the best plan, then play in this system is going to seem hollow to them. After all, even having the best stats doesn't really matter all that much, since the GM can give an enemy arbitrarily high stats.

I'm leaning towards what Noon's saying -- ultimately it feels like you've drifted so far away from the design goals of Amber that it's not really the same game. (Again, Eric's essay on this site is illuminating, in that it makes it sound as though he came up with the "diceless system" because the only thing his character had going for him was Drama.) Nobody's going to tar and feather you for changing the game, but as you're seeing, the disconnect with player's expectations (even though you told them what to expect) is big.

Whoa... Nice pick up, Val. That's exactly what Tony has done!

Actually, though Amber is my favorite game, one thing that I have found extremely taxing about the game is that a lot of players and GMs think that Calvinballing is actually inherent in the game and encouraged by it. It would be no wonder if Tony has run into a lot of Calvinballers in his travels through the Amber system.

The funny thing is, in my experience, most of the Calvinballing happens with powers. Player: "I use my Advanced Pattern to [do something not even vaguely alluded to in the rules under Advanced Pattern]." GM: "How are you doing that?" Player: "Well, I... [meaningless technobabble]." GM: "Okay."

I hate that! I refuse to engage in power technobabble (Calvinballing) anymore either as a GM or player. I don't know what about the Amber rules makes people think the game should work that way (certainly the rules don't say to do anything like that!), but somehow, it's become normal in the Amber community.

But, what I find so terribly interesting is that Tony seems to be really concerned with preventing Calvinballing or technobabble with regards to physical conflict, which in my experience is not where the problem is. I find that players run at the mouth and try to make up new abilities when dealing with powers much, much, much more than in physical conflicts. I'm a martial artist and swordsman, and even I rarely get more technical then, "I throw a chair at him and swing at his knee." I wonder what happened to make Tony so worried about Calvinballing in physical combat and not with powers.

Well first let me caveat the inherent risk of speculating about what Tony was or wasn't concerned with.

Second let me also note, Capt, that I think if you shift to Tony's perspective that what you were doing quite easily could have set off Tony's "Calvinball" warning flags. Not having been there I obviously can't say how much Calvinballing you were or weren't doing, but from what's been shared in the various threads here, I can say that for someone predisposed to be wary of such play your actions could be interpreted as suspicious.


Now on to your first issue about why its somewhat standard in the Amber community.

I think Amber the game has two weaknesses. One is that I think it was a design mistake to include the ability to have non Amberites as playable characters. This leads to very "splat" based play where you have your token pattern guy, your token trump guy, your token chaos guy, and your token wierd/sorcerer guy from shadow all getting together in a party to mix it up. I think this sort of thing really misses the boat on what Amber is best at, and what, to me, the novels are about. The novels are about a giant dysfunctional extended family. Imagine Dallas if JR Ewing had god like powers.

The point being, that despite all of the rivalries and plots there's still those family ties and family history that you can never escape. I think alot of that gets lost with mixed character play.

This isn't directly material to your issue, but since you had mixed play in your group, I thought I'd mention it, because I've seen this be a contributing factor in other Amber games that didn't work so well.


The bigger weakness in Amber the game is, as I said, the lack of IIEE structure...which boils down to "who says what, when do they get to say it, when does it actually happen, and who decides what the effects are".

What this means is when 1 party says "I'm activating my power", and another says "ok, I'm going to attack him"...what happens?

Does the power go off before the attack because that player declared it first? Does the attack go off before the power because the rules have stated unequivocably that physical attacks are always resolved before powers? Could the attack go off before the power or not depending on how long the power takes and how much of a head start the power activation had? If so, who adjucates this in the absence of a clear round or phase or action point structure. Do attribute differences effect how quickly things happen? If so which attributes and to what extent? Could someone with a slow power but a really high Psyche get their power off before someone with a fast physical attack but a really low Psyche on the grounds of hesitation due to being outwitted?

Now my memory of Amber rules is about 10years dated, but my recollection is that few if any of these issues have any kind of hard and fast rule or rules structure to aid in their resolution. All (or most) of them rely almost exclusively on the GM's judgement with naught but some examples and a hand full of rules and concepts for assistance.

This is also why you see so many "force field" effects in Amber play. Given that the GM has wide latitude to rule on these, he has the ability to play favorites. Also, I'd suggest that even when his decisions are based on a completely reasonable analysis and an internally consistant application, that players who wind up on the losing end of those rulings will have a tendency to see "force fields" even when there are none.

Such a situation is a Calvinballer's dream playground because all one has to do then is be able to assemble a plausible sounding explanation and by using personal charisma, petulant bullying tactics, plaitive pleadings, or just plain old chuztpah (or some combination of the above) a player can wind up having undue influence on the GMs rulings. Because the GM doesn't have a structure of precedent to fall back on such situations typically resolve as personal on personal conflict with both sides able to find "rules support" for their case.

Calvinballing can happen in any game...but Amber is particularly prone to it because of the weakness in its IIEE. D&D is also prone to it for nearly the opposite reason...because there are so many rules that are exceptions and special cases.


I'll conclude by saying that my experience is different than yours in that I've seen Calvinballing used with physical conflict as much or even more than with powers (largely because my play relied less on powers to differentiate characters so there was less opportunity for it).

How often have you seen the guy with high warfare try to use his high warefare for EVERYTHING. "Of course I notice that...part of being a combat guru is situational awareness and alertness...I see all, notice all"..."Of course I can run that marathon using my Warfare score, as a trained soldier how many miles of roadwork must I have done carrying a full load"..."Of course I can stay up for 3 days straight and use my Warfare instead of Constitution...as a trained soldier I spent many hours on sentry duty"..."Of course I can use my Warfare to repair that truck, soldiers often have to jury rig machines in the field and pick up this or that ability".

One could repeat the exercise with each of the attributes. This is actually encouraged in the (otherwise humorous) section in character creation where the GM carefully explains which is "the most important" attribute.

Andrew:

On the first ("Can't hear you!") issue... yeah. I underestimated how thoroughly and repeatedly I needed to say the same thing. I think, interestingly enough, that the argument that resulted has helped the remaining folks in the game (myself included) to really open their ears to each other. It's an ill wind, etc., etc.

On the second ("Empty Gamism") issue, I think I get you, but I'm not totally sure, and I'll tell you why. If I've got you wrong, hopefully you'll correct me.

You point out (quite rightly) that if one puts forth a Strict Karma system, and the immediate response of the players is "Okay, let's figure out how we'll reverse these decisions when they're not in our favor" then you've just pushed the calvinballing one trivial battleground further into the future.

But that's only one possible player response, isn't it? At least in my game, people seem to have responded by saying "Okay, let's figure out how our player input is still vital to the story when it can no longer sway these particular decisions".

I guess what I'm asking is, do you think it's a Gamist system however the players respond to it, or only if they choose to interpret it from a Gamist point-of-view?

Val:

Quite correct about assuming we know what Tony was thinking. Tony, please allow me to apologize in advance if I have inaccurately protrayed your motivations in this thread.

Second off, at the risk of getting my hand slapped, and not to start a whole discussion, I do need to say this: I was not Calvinballing.

Calvinball: making up the rules as you go along, usually in terms of on-the-spot interpretations disguised as "obvious" well-established interpretations.

lack of IIEE structure

Such a situation is a Calvinballer's dream playground because all one has to do then is be able to assemble a plausible sounding explanation and by using personal charisma, petulant bullying tactics, plaitive pleadings, or just plain old chuztpah (or some combination of the above) a player can wind up having undue influence on the GMs rulings.

Because the GM doesn't have a structure of precedent to fall back on such situations typically resolve as personal on personal conflict with both sides able to find "rules support" for their case.

The definition of Calvinballing is actually kind of dangerous, because it makes the line between someone genuinely and earnestly disputing a rule interpretation, and someone Calvinballing a question of what's going on in the player's mind, which is impossible to prove one way or the other.

Noon,

See, this is the slippery slope I'm talking about with this whole Calvinballing idea. A GM makes what the player considers a questionable ruling. The player, in good faith, therefore explains to the GM what he or she thinks is wrong with the ruling. "Uh-oh!" the GM thinks, "How can I get out of explaining this ruling? I've got it! Accuse the player of Calvinballing!"

Then, if the player attempts to explain why his or her complaints are valid and should at least be addressed, the GM calls the player's defense Calvinballing too (which you seem close to doing in my case)! Then, the GM never, ever has to take any accountability for his or her rulings ever! Awesome! If the player says, "No, I'm being reasonable," you throw at him or her:

remember, it [Calvinballing] camoflages itself as being reasonable

captain_bateson wrote: See, this is the slippery slope I'm talking about with this whole Calvinballing idea. A GM makes what the player considers a questionable ruling. The player, in good faith, therefore explains to the GM what he or she thinks is wrong with the ruling. "Uh-oh!" the GM thinks, "How can I get out of explaining this ruling? I've got it! Accuse the player of Calvinballing!"

Noon wrote:

captain_bateson wrote: The definition of Calvinballing is actually kind of dangerous, because it makes the line between someone genuinely and earnestly disputing a rule interpretation, and someone Calvinballing a question of what's going on in the player's mind, which is impossible to prove one way or the other.

But that's the point, calvinballing involves camoflaging the whole thing as something reasonable for a player to contribute and quite okay. If calvinballing was dog ball obvious, no one would/could do it.

It's hard or impossible to tell them apart. But dangerous or not, the practical needs of running a enjoyable session require some evaluation to be made at some point.

Noon wrote: Though really I can't figure out why your character couldn't run out of the bar, throwing a chair as a distraction. Sure, it'd be more boring than what was likely to happen (I doubt it was all done to kill your PC...if that's even possible in amber), but basically the system used encouraged you to run off, so it was system Vs what the GM wanted.

Here I completely disagree. If the actions in question are nearly indistinguishable, then I don't see why I as GM should give a damn what the secret intention is. i.e. If a player is "calvinballing" in a completely reasonable manner, then it is fine by me.

Well, that seems pointless to me. In this case, the opponent had Logrus coming up, whose tendrils can reach through Shadow far faster than a person can run. Running away puts him where his opponent can reach him through Logrus but he can't strike back. Given time he can lose himself in shadow such that it would be difficult if not impossible to search for him. But if he's right there and the Logrus is nearly up, it seems clear to me that he's just running into the tendrils.

Noon:

First off, I'm not in this discussion because I was, as you say, "wronged". I'm just finding it interesting. But I think you're showing a lack of respect for my participation if you choose to view everything I say as, "He's just saying that because he was wronged." I'm assuming that your participation is in good faith and I hope you will give me the same courtesy. I would appreciate it.

Second, your murder analogy is not apt. If I kill someone in self-defense and the district attorney decides to prosecute, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to prove I committed murder, and I have a chance to dispute the allegation in court. But, when you said that my defense of the intimation that I might have been Calvinballing set off your Calvinball sensors, it became clear to me the danger here: if there's no way to tell whether someone is playing Calvinball or not AND defending one's self from an accusation of playing Calvinball is itself seen as playing Calvinball, then the player automatically stands guilty as soon as he or she is accused. There is no opportunity for defense. No appeal.

Your murder analogy would only be apt if a person who killed in self-defense couldn't defend him or herself without it being seen as "proving" that he or she committed murder. That's not the case.

It just worries me whenever someone sets up a condition in which someone is guilty as soon as they are accused. That seems to be what is set up by here. I legitimately question a call. The GM's Calvinball sensor goes off. Any further attempt by me to explain myself is seen as further playing of Calvinball -- and, the more reasonable my defense, the more it apparently the more likely it will set off Calvinball sensors. So, now, the more reasonable I am is seen as further proof that I am playing Calvinball, so the GM does not feel obligated to explain his or her ruling. If am unreasonable, then, even if it proves I am not playing Calvinball (though I doubt it would), the GM does not feel obligated to give me a ruling because I am being unreasonable. And I now wear the scarlet letter of being a Calvinball player. It's a no-win situation for the player.

I guess what I am saying is this: a definition is only useful if it gives one the ability to discriminate between the thing being defined and other things. I'm questioning the usefulness of the definition of Calvinball because it doesn't help us discriminate between someone playing Calvinball and someone lodging a legitimate grievance. It also offers someone accused of playing Calvinball no way to defend him or herself, by definition. I think that's a problem. Maybe there needs to be a thread on Calvinball. I don't know.

How does this touch on the idea of strict Karma adjudication in Amber?Well, first off, you brought it up because you thought they were related. Also, it seems that a big part of the idea behind the strict Karma system is to eliminate the playing of Calvinball. But, if we can't discriminate between legitimate questioning of a ruling and playing Calvinball, will a strict Karma system really resolve the problem? It won't eliminate the asking of questions and questioning of judgments, at least not with most groups. Keeping the rules secret sure won't work and will likely backfire. It especially won't help if the GM does not resolve, in advance, the very good questions you raised earlier about how long things take, who gets to go first, etc.

Which begs the question of whether a strict Karma system is any more or less likely to dissuade or eliminate Calvinball than the system outlined in the ADR rulebook. Conversely, if the GM does better define the things you point out, will a strict Karma system dissuade or eliminate Calvinball any better than the system outlined in the ADR rulebook? Moreover, how does the cost/benefit analysis come out when the amount a strict Karmic system decreases Calvinball (if any) is compared to the loss of player freedom and input?

I don't know. But I think those are some of the questions our discussion on Calvinball raises.

John: Yes, the Logrus thing was top on my mind in my decision to attack rather than flee the bar.

Noon: The question of how long it should take to Shape Shift, summon the Logrus, and create Logrus tendrils was part of the argument which was never resolved, so I don't know what Tony's view of it was. I thought I should have had time to attack or run. Tony seems not to have, but I don't really know what he actually thought. You'd have to ask him.

Good point. We can actually chuck all thoughts about who is wrong and who is right in the case of Calvinballing, because the culprit is the system. With an appropriate system you just can't Calvinball, or, rather, there's no need to do so. Basically a system that allows you to Calvinball is almost asking the player to do so. I really can't call it the fault of the player that's doing it. They're just as confused about what they should be doing, and interpreting like mad to protect themselves.

Can't you see that this is precisely what you were doing, Captain?

Not your fault, the system makes it so that you feel a need to be defensive (and by system here, I refer actually to both the original system and Tony's drift of it). So you act defensively, trying to ensure that the GM doesn't accidentally take away that part of play which you value. It's a completely sensible reaction. In this case, it is "self-defense."

It doesn't have to be that way, however. There are plenty of systems in which you can feel safe and never have to question the GM. Instead of seeing them as an adversary from whom you have to rip a favorable result, they're a facilitator who works with you. As a result of the system, not of any particular attribute of the GM.

This was precisely Ralph's point. The system causes the calvinballing, and then the typical response is to hide the rules. This is so classic a case of this thatit's not even a question of whether this is the case, but rather how we can enshrine this example for future generations.

Mike

Well, I still don't really agree with your interpretation. I don't think the system is the problem in this case, and I don't think Calvinballing is an apt term for what happened.

The problem wasn't with interpreting the rules. I think rather it was with interpreting Tony's statement of "we don't throw the rules out the window even when dramatically appropriate," in the light of the ruling and his refusal to make an explanation. Tony and I weren't differing, in my opinion, over interpretations of the rules. Tony wasn't using them. He was using an alternate system. He thought, somehow, that everyone understood this. I didn't. As far as I knew, saying that we're going to adhere to the rules means adhering to the rules in the rulebook, unless the GM has established alternate rules. Tony thought he had established what the alternate rules would be. But I had no knowledge of them and therefore interpreted his statements about not throwing the rules out the window in the light of the ADR rulebook rules.

Further, it was a problem with the social contract. Tony felt that it had also been established that his rulings were not to be questioned. I never got that memo.

As far as interpreting the rules, I wasn't exactly finding little nitpicky phrases here and there in the rules and adding them together to get a new interpretation. I guess it depends on what you consider interpretation. I'm not sure how else to interpret rules like, "A full-body shift takes 1-2 minutes," other than to think a full-body Shape Shift will take 1-2 minutes. In this case, it didn't. From Tony's statements about adhering to the rules, I was under the impression that we would be following the ADR rules at all times. But we never were. Tony meant that we would not throw out his ALTERNATE rules even when dramatically appropriate.

Calling it Calvinballing when a player questions a GM ruling that grossly and flagrantly violates the rules, as this one did, further demonstrates my assertion that the term Calvinballing has little or no meaning. We weren't arguing over whether or not a Feat lets the player act twice this round or twice next round or something. We were arguing about whether the rulebook was in use at all! As far as I could tell, it wasn't. It wasn't like Tony interpreted one rule differently than I would have. The whole damned ruling did not (and still does not) make any sense whatsoever in the context of the ADR rules. Calling that Calvinballing is like calling it Calvinballing if, in a D&D game, the GM decides that player's Armor Classes no longer matter, that players only get to act every third round while bad guys act every round, and that hit points are stupid so everyone just has 5 hits, all at once, for no apparent reason, and acts as if it has always been that way, refusing any kind of explanation. Would it be Calvinballing to point out that the rules allow players to act in each round? Or that characters are supposed to build up hit points?

Also, a big part of the problem was that Tony had preemptively implemented the false solution to Calvinball -- hiding the rules -- at the same time as he altered the rules. And then came up with the idea that the social contract freed him from explaining his rulings.

So, from my point of view, a ruling that was in no possibly way consistent with the ADR rulebook was made. When I asked for an explanation, I got hit with the preemptive strike against Calvinball at the same time as the sudden change in the social contract hiding the preemptive strike against Calvinball. Since the strike was preemptive, there had not been any Calvinball in the game, and there was no way for me to know that Tony was worried because he'd seen Calvinballing before at some point in his Amber career and implemented the hide-the-rules policy. So I acted on what was available to me: Tony's public statements about following the rules and the rules themselves. A rule has absolutely no use whatsoever if you become a Calvinballer just by referencing it, especially in a case as egregious as this. No system with a GM would be immune to Calvinballing then, because the rules in place that prevent Calvinballing could not be used as a challenge against a Calvinballer because it would be Calvinballing.

BTW, I don't even own the freakin' ADR rulebook. That's how much of a rules lawyer and Calvinball player I am. I haven't needed it in years. Because I don't get into these kind of fights playing Amber. Not until now. I only consulted the rulebook when another player asked me in a PM to tell him where in the rulebook he could find the rules supporting my objections, and I had to call a friend to look stuff up for me. My objections weren't, "On page 19, it says that demi-humans get a +1 against mistletoe wielding hunchbacks on April 20th, therefore the Lord of Evil dies." My objections were things like, "Did he Shape Shift instantaneously? Or did it take a long time like in the ADR rulebook? If it was instantaneous, what did my character actually see? And if not, why didn't my character do something during that time?" This is not nitpicky, Calvinball-type stuff. This is: "What color is the sky in your world?" type stuff. I was asking not only to try to overturn the judgment: I was asking because I had no freakin' idea what had just happened in the game world. I still don't really know if the other character transformed instantaneously or if my character just stood frozen for two minutes or maybe something else. I don't know.

So, fine. If that's Calvinballing, and if that shows that there's a weakness in the Amber rules, even though we weren't using them in the first place (I just thought we were), then fine. To me, that simply means that every dispute over the rules in any game anywhere at any time is Calvinball and therefore Calvinball is a meaningless term.

But, I would be interested to know what you believe makes a game safe and non-adversarial no matter the GM. I almost never feel adversarial with Amber GMs, but it happened this time. I just don't know how, absent a GMless system, that the system can account for what an asshole a GM can sometimes be. But, if you have some examples, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks!

Hey Capt. I don't think anyone is trying to point the finger at you or anything. The whole situation is unfortuneate enough for there to be a) plenty of blame to go around and b) no point whatsoever to assigning it.

From a purely educational perspective though there is some usefulness in disecting the situation a bit. I hope we aren't crossing a line with you.

As far as interpreting the rules, I wasn't exactly finding little nitpicky phrases here and there in the rules and adding them together to get a new interpretation. I guess it depends on what you consider interpretation. I'm not sure how else to interpret rules like, "A full-body shift takes 1-2 minutes," other than to think a full-body Shape Shift will take 1-2 minutes.

Ralph,

on that last bit (timing) I would admit that (like most of the rules in ADRPG) it's not specific. However, there's definately at least one place in the rulebook where it's unequivocably stated that if a sword is coming at you while you're trying to invoke a power, the sword's going to win. And that note's for things that arguably take less time than the 1-2 minutes involved in Shape Shift.

Honestly, debating the issue as phrased (absent Tony telling us more about his side) is almost impossible, because there really isn't anything in the visible, observed rules to support it. We just don't know enough about it to make a specific ruling. I recognize, though, that that's not why we're banging on it -- we're doing so because it's a helpful example.

(Then again, there's several places where the book uses hyperbole and contradicts itself, but those are usually restricted to play excerpts illustrating how the GM might screw with the players' heads.)

Val: No, no lines are being crossed. I just found it interesting that the way the idea of Calvinball was being applied it could apply to anytime a player challenges a GM's ruling. I know I wasn't playing Calvinball. But the logic problems with applying the term were to juicy to pass up.

With regards to time management... uh... well, doesn't that mean that every game that doesn't set forth exact times for every possible action is vulnerable to such a problem? Even in round-based games, I've still seen all kinds of, "Well, how many rounds do you think that will take?" sort of discussion, because no game can cover even a portion of the actions players will take.

I guess I'm saying this: In every game, time estimates have to be made. It's just a question of how often. Amber does give, as Andrew noted, a lot of information on how long things take and what is faster than what. But no, the Amber rules don't tell you how long it takes to throw a chair. I guess the game assumes that the players and GMs can figure that one out on their own. I imagine your response will be, "See, it's open to different interpretations." Yeah, but if a player and a GM can't agree that it takes less then a minute to throw a chair, then the problem is not the game system. And, sure, a player can say, "It takes thirty minutes to throw a chair. The rules don't say differently!" But there is a certain basic level on which the GM and the player have to have an understanding in order to play together. Like agreeing on using the English language with standard (for instance) American usage. Or that communication has meaning. But then you devolve into philosophy of linguistics. But that's not the system's fault. Like with your D&D example. One of the fundamental basics of old D&D was the "round" and what you could do in a "round." If the player or GM just chooses to deny the basic premise of the game, that you can only swing once per round, then there's no game. There's only a game if the players and GMs agree to abide by the artificial rules of the game. In the case of Amber, actions take as long as they really take, and only very rarely have I seen significant discussion about how long it takes to throw a chair, for instance.

And I don't think that's what happened here anyway. I believe, from what I have gathered from Tony, that his resolution system just doesn't take the time it takes to invoke powers into account. So, while I was arguing that it only takes a second to throw a chair, I was unknowingly making a meaningless argument to Tony, whose system ignores those factors. I just didn't know that. I don't think, if Tony were using the normal ADR rules and taking the time to Shape Shift into account, that Tony would debate that a character can throw a chair faster than another can Shape Shift (though his first defense of the Shape Shifting was that demonform was a "familiar form" and thus the other character could shift to it very quickly... which, I think, led me on a wild goose chase, thinking that time did matter when it never did... I think Tony was trying to appease me without telling me the rules and didn't realize this would only add to my feelings that the rules were being trampled -- the rules, BTW, say that shifting to a familiar form takes 1-2 minutes, more if it's not familiar). So, once again, I have to say I don't think the ADR system was the problem. We weren't using the system. THAT was the problem.

I asked the noticing question too. For the record, my character, who is very familiar with Chaos and Chaos Lords, was backing away eyes warily locked on the other character in case he did something like, oh, say, Shape Shift. Or, say, get up from the table and move toward my character. My character was looking for those signs. But, even so, I didn't know whether my character had missed it somehow or if the other character had transformed instantaneously or what, because Tony would not and has not told me. All I know, still, is that the other character was able to Shape Shift, raise the Logrus, and form Logrus tendrils without my character noticing and before my character could get out of the bar. Since Shape Shifting alone takes 1-2 minutes, if my character had failed to notice the shift, she would have left the bar and been six blocks away by the time the other character finished shifting. This is what I mean about this ruling being layer upon layer of wrong. Each explanation leads to another contradiction. That's why I can't puzzle it out. I mean, I'm not trying anymore. I've given up. Who cares? But I hope you can see the problem. A number of people have played Devil's advocate for me on this issue in an attempt to see if there's a logic that I've missed. But I still haven't found it, they haven't found it, and sorry to say, you haven't found it.

There are a lot of problems with the ADR system, in my opinion. I say this to allay fears that I am just an Amber apologist. I'm not. But I sincerely think this issue stems from using home rules without the players realizing it and then not explaining those rules. Not the system. Unfortunately, since the system was not in play when the whole thing happened, I don't think it says much about the system one way or the other.

CB,

The murder analogy was given by xiombarg, not me. I said it was something similar to what I would say and I support it, but I didn't say it, it isn't mine. As for the wronged thing, thats something else from his post.

Now, you've given two long posts about it, but I'm already aware its all too easy to call witch, in terms of calvinballing. Yes, it doesn't require evidence, yes the other person can't defend if one accepts it doesn't require evidence. Yes, that makes it dangerous.

THAT is why its not a black or white thing...its a shade of gray, a guaged meter. Because you can never be sure, since it is primarily an assertion of belief rather than anything else. Someone can show up on that meter even if their not calvinballing. It's like my partner, she went to the air port and the explosives detector beeped around her, TWICE! That doesn't mean she had explosvies on her.

But man, I even mention that your showing on the meter and you create two massive posts delving into its logical phalacies. Thats the point though, it should be clear that it ends up being a matter of faith...the matter of the case can be argued on and on without end. Without resolution by logic, you move on to the next resolution method which involves who you trust. Now I'm just another internet stranger, so you shouldn't believe me casually...but your posts keep falling back to proving how illogical it is, thus it shouldn't be applied.

Now, either trust me on this or not, but that just makes the calvinball meter rise more, for me. How do you get out of this loop? Stop trying to dismantle belief/gut feeling with logic. As a peer I've read the posts and realised the technical details are all so DAMN MESSED UP, I can not apply logic here. Instead I'm running on gut instinct, because that's all myself or many other posters can offer. Its okay if you don't believe me, but don't turn to a logical dismissal, because I didn't offer it in that spirit.

Now lets look at something I said previously:

No, I'm not making a conclusion about you, I'm saying if you were defending yourself the same way in the game/after the game and Tony was already leery about calvinballing because of the system....well, its a car accident waiting to happen, IMO.

Noon,

Sorry about the misattribution of the murder analogy.

I've about said everything I ever wanted to say on Calvinball anyway, so feel free to move the discussion forward.

One thing is certain.

This thread, and the preceding one, definitely reassure me that I'm doing the right thing transferring my Amber Diceless to Guardians of Order!

Still, since many here are unfamilar with the conventions and habits of Amber Diceless Role-Playing, I'll try to insert a different perspective on the discussion.


First off, let me respond to the following observation:

Mike Holmes wrote: ...There are plenty of systems in which you can feel safe and never have to question the GM. Instead of seeing them as an adversary from whom you have to rip a favorable result, they're a facilitator who works with you. As a result of the system, not of any particular attribute of the GM.

Erick Wujcik wrote: ...There are plenty of Game Masters with whom you can feel safe and never have to question the system. Instead of seeing them as an adversary from whom you have to rip a favorable result, they're a facilitator who works with you. As a result of the Game Master, not of any particular attribute of the system...

TonyLB wrote: ...You look at the stats, and you know immediately who's going to lose, how badly, and how quickly it's going to happen...

captain_bateson wrote: ...I outlined the factors in the ruling that contravened the rules...

...ignore anything you hear that your character has not heard... when you are playing in character, you've got to ignore everything you know...

Arguing with the Game Master is always a bad idea...

...Rather than questioning your Game Master's action, instead ask questions from your character's point of view...

As with stage magic, role-playing demands a certain 'suspension of disbelief.' Put your faith in the Game Master, and always, always, always, always look through the eyes of the character.

Erick,

I'd be happy to discuss this with as soon as you pay me the $7.50 you owe me.

Just kidding. Anyway, as I've tried to make clear, I didn't understand, in character, what had happened. That was a big part of the problem. It's hard to react to something in character if you don't understand what it was that your character experienced/saw/heard/felt. I didn't.

I did ask questions to attempt to establish what had happened from my character's point of view.

As I said, perhaps in this thread, perhaps in the other, I only started getting into specifics from the rulebook once another player asked me where he could find stuff to back up the questions I was asking.

Just for a reality check on the "never argue with the Game Master thing," in my scenario called "The White Road" at AmberCon...uh...maybe 6? You argued with me for like ten minutes about some power or spell you wanted use and my interpretation of it. I bring this up not to accuse you of hypocrisy, but merely to point out that while it is true that arguing with Game Master may not be a good idea, it's a difficult ideal to live up to, especially when you think you're getting screwed. You didn't ask me questions from your character's POV. You acted like you were the GM and kept trying to hand down a ruling to me, though you were the player. No one can live up to the ideal you have set. Especially when you can't get the GM to tell you what the hell your character experienced. I suppose you could say that I could have played it like my character had a stroke or something and missed what was going on, but then that breaks my ability to believe in the game.

Putting utter faith in the Game Master is also an unreachable ideal. Your players don't do it, Erick, and you don't do it. Once again, I know, because you questioned something Corwin did in "The White Road." If you had utter faith in the GM, you wouldn't have done that. No one can live up to your ideal, not even you, so don't act as if they can and don't say that I should have.

What you always seem to have missed, in my opinion, is that the ideals you outlined in the book are unrealistic and beyond most players and GMs. They're good ideals and they would work in a perfect world. But then, so would the League of Nations. Also, I rather think that the player and the GM are mutually responsible for each other's fun. Why continue to play in a game like you've described? Just to make fun of it in character? That might be your choice. It's not mine. You don't seem to get that people have different playing styles and that not everyone likes yours. I don't. I made a vow after AmberCon 6 never to play in one of your games nor to allow you to play in one of mine, because our styles of play differ too greatly. You think the GM should be inviolate and unaccountable to the players and I don't. But you don't really, either, because when you play, you expect accountability and the right to question the GM just like everyone else.

I think one of the most fascinating things about you creating the Amber game is that you created a great system and yet I have felt you always missed the reasons why it was great. You're like the creator of a TV series who has to be gotten rid of halfway through the first season because he doesn't get why people like the show. He thinks it's something else than what it really is. I have always felt that way about you, Erick.

BTW, Jim and Ron both think the ruling was outlandish too, so apparently they don't "get" Amber either. I'll bet if I ask Carol and Don they would agree with me. I bet a lot of the old guard would. So don't make it out like it's just me. Ron was on the phone with me when the ruling came down and his reaction was much more explosive than mine.

Also, I brought the discussion of this ruling (which is actually supposed to be located in another thread) to the Forge and not to an Amber board because I knew that Tony had gotten a lot of his ideas for that game here, and because I thought some of those ideas might have been the problem. On an Amber board, I would have been much more likely to get sympathy: Tony's ideas about strict Karma went over like a lead balloon on one. But here, I was more likely to get a useful answer. That's all.

Oh, one other thing: Tony had explicity done away with the idea of only thinking and seeing things as your character would. In fact, I was the lone proponent that people should play their characters properly. Tony said to me something like, "I do not care at all about you doing what your character would do." He didn't want that: he wanted Narrativism, not Simulationism, and our character's POVs were only important as far as they advanced the story.

I was actually going against the grain of the game BY asking questions about what had happened in character. I was the one who was arguing FOR your ideas as stated above in your message, Erick, which was against the grain of the game.

So, it's a non-sequitir, though you didn't know it, to say that I should have been looking at things through my character's eyes or whatever. Those "rules" which you are quoting from the ADR book were already done away with by Tony before this happened. I was the only one still clinging to them, in fact.

Erick Wujcik wrote: My beginner mistake, which I never made again, was to protest the utter incompetence of the Game Master.

However, in retrospect, weeks later, I realized that I had erred.

That I was the one responsible for having fun.

What I should have done, you see, is to simply react in character to all this idiocy.

To drag this howlingly back to the original topic:

Am I wrong to say that a strict Karma resolution mechanic is significantly at odds with the Amber Diceless Roleplaying system, which is a Drama emphasizing Drama/Karma hybred? If not, then my original statement still stands – the entire problem that has spawned over a hundred posts was that the system being played was not the system the player was expecting.

I can see an argument for claiming that a strict Karma mechanic could work with the Amber setting, but (again) it would be best not to claim that it was ADR. Much like saying "I want to play D&D, but without the dice," saying "I want to play Amber without the Drama mechanic," is saying "I want to play the game, but let's ignore the system."

And that's where the dysfunction lies.

(And, bouncing back to the sidebar issue: Is there any way to play a Drama mechanic without everyone seeming like they're Calvinballing?)

Hi Mark,

You wrote,

Is there any way to play a Drama mechanic without everyone seeming like they're Calvinballing?

Mark,

Good call to get back on topic. Anyone who wants to keep discussing the ruling can do so in the thread I started for it.

I do think that the ADR system is a Drama/Karma hybrid with great weight placed on both the Drama and the Karma. It is quite a rules drift to go to "Strict Karma." In theory, I wouldn't think it was such a rules drift as to be essentially a different game. But maybe it is. At least, depending on how it's implemented. I don't think "Strict Karma" explains the system well enough in and of itself.

I think in this, we end up back with comments made earlier, either in this thread or the other, about how there are a lot of vague factors in the ADR system that aren't really defined enough to be directly fit into a "Strict Karma" system. I think that a GM wanting to drift to a "Strict Karma" system will have to change and rewrite more of the rulebook than it first appears. How to deal with more than one attribute affecting a fight, how to deal with powers and their time factors, and how to deal with the intentions of the players and characters involved, as I noted a long time ago.

Yeah, on second thought, it is quite a drift, perhaps even so far as to be a new game. I think that a GM who wants to run Amber using "Strict Karma" should consider the affect of such a system on all aspects of the game and then define how he or she intends to handle them. Then tell the players. Because "Strict Karma" is kind of like "zero tolerance." It sounds simple in theory, but is actually complicated in practice.

Does anyone else have any cool insights? I think I have pretty much contributed all I have to say on this topic.

So what is the "roleplaying" component supposed to be in a strict Karmic interpretation of Attributes, timing, environ and such?

If only the highest Attribute matters, what role the Player?

Not to be glib, but... "Anything else".

The players in the game have taken to referring to it as a "win the battle, lose the war" sort of system, largely because we first thrashed through its ramifications in terms of warfare.

The question that got raised was this: Can Benedict, armed with a butter knife, fall in battle against ten million commando soldiers with the best technology available, led by the second-ranked character (let's posit "Finndo") in warfare.

The answer, by the strictest of strict Karma? No, he can't. He's Benedict. Eventually he's going to kill everyone on the opposite side, even if he has to do it himself, one by one. So what remains for Finndo to do?

If his one and only goal is "Kill Benedict", he is doomed to perpetual failure just as surely as Wile E. Coyote. Which, honestly, can be a lot of fun. You might well just play out permutations of that for a while. It shows something about Finndo if he can't give up, even as it becomes clear he will never succeed.

But it is exceedingly unlikely that "Kill Benedict" is his only goal. Let's posit (yet further) that he wants to have his armies tear down Amber, for his own insane or logical reasons.

Would killing Benedict help cement that goals? Of course it would. But that option isn't available, so you go to Plan B. How big of a force do you need to have gathered to keep Benedict unavoidably occupied for eight solid hours? Ten million? Twenty million? Gather them. Throw them at him. Sack Amber while he's having his bloodbath. The simple way for Benedict to, in turn, counter that is to stand in a pass that your troops (Moonriders, for instance) must pass through to get to Amber. Then he has once again reduced your plan to "1. Kill Benedict, 2. Everything else".

Better yet, use any of a million dirty tactics to get Benedict to voluntarily step aside. Find his lost daughter and train her to lead the army against Amber, then play on his love of family. Convince him that the other Elders are just using him as a pawn, so that he heads off to sulk in his tents like another famously all-killing warrior I might mention.

So are there ways to "counter" those dirty tricks? Of course there are. Say Benedicts daughter is leading the charge against Amber. He can choose to kill her in order to defend his city. Will he? How should I know? I don't exactly have a rules mechanic on hand for determining how he'll decide that (though I totally agree that such mechanics do exist).

So, IMHO, there's still a lot of messy, subjective, drama-based judgment calls that have to be made in such a system. There are certain very specific story elements that are predecided, and the rest runs pretty much by consensus and subjective judgment.

It's probably inferior to a rules system where everything the players might want to do is supported by an objective rules mechanic, and superior to a system where nothing they want to do is supported. Seems to be working out for my game, right now, is about the best I can say.

TonyLB wrote: Not to be glib, but... "Anything else."

TonyLB wrote: The players in the game have taken to referring to it as a "win the battle, lose the war" sort of system, largely because we first thrashed through its ramifications in terms of warfare.

TonyLB wrote: So, IMHO, there's still a lot of messy, subjective, drama-based judgment calls that have to be made in such a system. There are certain very specific story elements that are predecided, and the rest runs pretty much by consensus and subjective judgment.

Okay, let me roll up my sleeves a bit here.

I think we have different perceptions of what "conflict" is... or at least we emphasize different conflicts in our styles of play.

Example conflict from my game: Pierce is the PC son of Bleys by a now-defunct marriage. Fletcher is his teenage NPC half-brother, son of Bleys by a loveless political union. Bleys has consistently favored Pierce over Fletcher. Fletcher asks Pierce to help convince Bleys that he (Fletcher) is ready to assay the Pattern. Pierce genuinely doubts that he is ready, but also knows that Fletcher has been belittled many times under the guise of "protecting him from things too hard for him to attempt".

So Bleys asks Pierce "On your word, gambling his life... is the child capable?" What does he answer?

captain_bateson wrote: ...in my scenario called "The White Road" at AmberCon...uh...maybe 6? You argued with me for like ten minutes about some power or spell you wanted use and my interpretation of it.

OK. That's good. I'm with you 100% on centering the game on Drama.
Drama is completely the province of Player input. So the entire range of "soap opera" gaming is in the hands of Player choice.

Unless there is Conflict (meaning Attributes.) Or unless the apparent Drama is really Conflict brewing out of sight of PC.

"What do you mean I'm broke?" Pierce asks his bookkeeper.

"You agreed that Fletcher might waive his participation of warrant on that last import of silk, your highness," the bookkeeper says softly. "When the pirates took two out of three ships, you defaulted on the whole warrant. Until you can draw upon the Treasury for your annual stipend, your accounts are overdrawn."

Tony,

Okay, so you want certain key plot outcomes to be decided by strict karma, at which point everyone agrees to structure their drama to make that outcome happen. I'm with you so far.

I think your next step needs to be to articulate any guidelines or rules for "What constitutes an Attribute-conflict?" Where would you personally draw the line between using drama-subordinate-to-karma-outcomes vs. just-drama?


Arref,

Arref wrote: So how does the Player learn that he is overmatched and in an Attribute contest in this situation? Is it the negative feedback that no matter how he tries to straighten his money trouble, he fails?

Hans... ever so close. Close enough to give me warm fuzzies and make me feel that I've been understood.

But even so, I'll clarify one point.

I don't want to have key plot outcomes be decided by strict karma. That would be restrictive and annoying. Key plot outcomes should be in the hands of the players, not the rules.

I just don't think that who wins or who loses in a duel is key to the stories my group is telling. It is useful, perhaps unavoidable, background against which the main story is told. But it's not what the story is about, and it doesn't embody the mode in which the most important player choices will occur.


I agree with you that the next step in the game should be (and was) defining clearly for everyone what the attributes covered and what they did not. That was one of the first orders of business after the debacle that showed me that the ground needed to be thoroughly surveyed, mapped and agreed upon.

I don't know whether specifics of what assignments we're experimenting with in my game will be helpful, though I'll provide them if people are interested.

Generally speaking, I think that it's best to describe one limited but practical story element that is dictated by the attributes. Make very sure that it's not something that the players want or expect to have be critical to the structure of their stories.

So, for example, our version of Warfare decides who lives and who dies in an armed conflict (in the final analysis). Any armed conflict that a first-ranked warfare character persists in will eventually end with him in a field littered with his dead enemies. And that's all that is certain.

TonyLB wrote:
I don't want to have key plot outcomes be decided by strict karma. That would be restrictive and annoying. Key plot outcomes should be in the hands of the players, not the rules.

I just don't think that who wins or who loses in a duel is key to the stories my group is telling. It is useful, perhaps unavoidable, background against which the main story is told. But it's not what the story is about, and it doesn't embody the mode in which the most important player choices will occur.

Generally speaking, I think that it's best to describe one limited but practical story element that is dictated by the attributes. Make very sure that it's not something that the players want or expect to have be critical to the structure of their stories.

Hmm, okay, so key outcomes are meant to be decided by drama, not karma. With that in mind...

As Eero said, it looks like you're fundamentally playing freeform, with all its associated pros and cons. However, you've got this vestige of the Amber mechanics (the Karma scores) still hanging around. I think you're keeping that vestige around to reinforce some "Amber Color" and allow for really fast adjudication of who's winning what war, et cetera. All so you can you can get the Amber backdrop "out of the way" so you can frame your way into the bangs you care about.

Thus, your de-facto system has this big value judgement in it that says "The following things are interesting to keep in mind, because they're what provide the Amber Color, but ultimately they're not what the players are supposed to be caring about." And those "unimportant" things include pretty much everything that's mechanically relevant in the published Amber game book. That's some seriously[/] heavy Drift right there.

I also agree with Eero that it's important to acknowledge that you're not playing Amber Diceless Roleplaying. Not even close. You're playing a game that maybe once was the Amber game but has now been Drifted past the point of all recognition. It's also vitally important that your players understand that as well; if any are laboring under the assumption that you *are* playing Amber... that situation is a ticking time bomb.

Am I anywhere near the mark, or am I reading too much into this?

I am totally clear, at this point, that I am not playing standard ADRPG.

And I don't think that the players don't care about there being fights. Fights have gotten real popular since we clarified the system, in fact. Folks are lining up to beat each other up.

But they aren't, as players, being competitive about it. Which makes a big difference in the feel of play. So I don't think that the karma system is an iirelevant vestige. It encourages cooperative story-telling.

Am I making any sense here?

TonyLB wrote: Am I making any sense here?

Wow, go to one game convention...

Erick (if you're still reading - heh, this is why, as I understand it that Greg Stafford doesn't get into rules debates any more, too), I understand your point about the Gamemaster. Everyone agrees that there has to be a raport there, and I think it's obvious in this case that there wasn't one. But, well, you know the position that System Does Matter. Not only, but as well. Does that mean that Amber is doomed to failure in play? Obviously not. It just means that I think this is a chink in the armor (of what's otherwise a very innovative, and interesting game).


Captain, if I clarified that by "system" I meant the system being used at the moment - not what was in the book, but the system as it was being interpreted (or even altered if you like) by Tony - if I said that, would your opinion change? You say, essentially that the drift (and that's what it is) to Narrativism is playing a different system. It's precisely my point that the system as written makes Tony feel that such drift is neccessary.

1. Tony drifts neccessarily.
2. Cap'n is used to the other most likely drift.
3. Mayhem ensues.

Again, it seems to me that you're behaving defensively about behavior that I said was, in fact, expected - would have done myself maybe. As I said, if this is Calvinballing, then you can't blame the Calvinballer, making you right - just calling somebody a Calvinballer isn't enough. You were in a trap with no graceful exit, so you struggled against it in the only reasonable way you could. No surprise. So there are malicious Calvinballers, of whom you are not one, and those pushed into a bit of Calvinballing by incoherence. (BTW, the fact that you don't "need" the book is actually evidence in my favor, if you think about it).

Was the problem exacerbated by the social level problem? Of course, and the model predicts that. Unfortunately there's nothing that we here can do about your social problems. That's between the two of you to fix by kissing and making up.

Mike

P.S. Mark, yeah, that about sums it up nicely. The way around this problem in the future is to make people understand your version of the rules, Tony - meaning far more than just a phrase or two. Like the book, copious examples would help.

Mike,

Hmm. I can see your point about being pushed into playing Calvinball by incoherence. But you only see that from the God's eye view of the situation, which is hard when you're in it.

I think my resistance to the idea that I was playing Calvinball stems from the fact that my intention was never to play Calvinball and I never felt that I was, since I didn't know about the strict karma system Tony was using. So, I guess it's kind of like particles and waves or the speed of light: it's all relative. By the point of view of the "strict karma system" being used I was playing Calvinball, but since I didn't know about the system, I had no way of knowing I was playing Calvinball.

So, maybe, my objection is about intent: I don't want to have to take responsibility for playing Calvinball when my actions fit the definition of playing Calvinball only when viewed in terms of a system put in place by the GM without my knowledge or consent. That is to say, my actions would not have been Calvinball if we were using the standard ADR rules, but since we weren't (unbeknownst to me), my actions became Calvinball, which means my actions themselves didn't define whether or not I was playing Calvinball. The GM's choice of system and lack of clarification did. I'm resistant to the idea that someone else's actions can define my actions without my knowledge or consent. Does that make any sense?

Nevertheless, I see your point. I think that the problem is that "rules lawyer" and "Calvinball" seem like perjorative terms and no one wants a perjorative term applied to them. Especially in a case like this, where the exact same action can become Calvinball based on factors outside the person's control. Maybe there needs to be a separate term for involuntary Calvinball, like the difference between manslaughter and murder or something (not that it's good to be convicted of manslaughter, but it's better than being called a murderer). Or, perhaps, the terminology you used would work: "malicious Calvinballer" vs. "involuntary Calvinballer." Something like that, to make it clear what the player's intent was. I might have been less defensive (though maybe not) had I understood the difference.

You say, essentially that the drift (and that's what it is) to Narrativism is playing a different system.

Mark Eddy mentioned Nobilis as an excellent "resource allocation" diceless system. I second his opinion, and will also mention the several other such systems on the market: Active Exploits and Marvel Universe. All could be used quite effectively for Amber and in many ways are superior to Amber Diceless Roleplay. I recommend them to any diceless enthusiast who wants less vague rules.

I know many people who play "hard numbers" ADRP, and it works best if the gamemaster is able to define what is and is not possible for any given character to accomplish at a certain level of ability. Most gamemasters do not, alas, and that leads to conflicts over what I like to call "perception of competence". What ADRP fails to mention is that sometimes story needs take priority over character competence. Everway and Theatrix both address this superbly and at length, and I consider them to be the premiere diceless gamemastering resources.

As an aside, I have met pretty much all of the original ADRP playtesters at various conventions over the years. Which is our captain_bateson, I'm forced to wonder?

Hello,

It's far past time for this thread to be laid to rest, and for secondary topics to be taken to their own threads. It's now closed.

Michael, your curiosity about captain_bateson may or may not be satisfied by contacting him or her directly, but that is the only permissible way to find out.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: It's far past time for this thread to be laid to rest, and for secondary topics to be taken to their own threads. It's now closed.