So, I started up a game of Transhuman Space the other day, and I wanted to ask about how to make my Sim reffing better.

We have three players at the moment, a fourth is turning up next session. Sessions will be irregular (every other Sunday) and take place in my home.

The system is Gurps - something I dislike running, but I can cope. At least, until combat starts (sigh), fortunately that hasn't happend yet.

Let me introduce you to the players.

Ms T (Shyshen) - My partner, and an avowed Rules-Hater. She doesn't read rule books and dislikes the application of mechanics. She states they get in the way of her 'playing her character'. She is playing an inhuman monstrosity, a Cybershell controlled by a Low Empath AI encased in the Skin of an (ex) living human. The AI is designed as an assassin, but was recently released with the last orders "You are free now". Now Shyshen needs to find out what that means.

Mr S (Tyler) - The expert on Gurps, and on THS itself. He knows the system backwards but never particularly plays on the fact. Playin Captain Tyler, a Farhauler pilot (Space Trucker) as a member of the "Gyps Angels" - extreme libertarians beleiving in freedom above all. He and his crew went to the Ort Cloud (edge of the Solar System), and only he came back - with no memories, and a damaged ship. Only other survivor is Mac, a Sentient AI, who has been totally traumatised.

Mr D (Mr Ocelote) - A player I haven't had before, and rather socially awkard. Playing a rich kid from China who was an 'illegal' genetic modification. When his family fell into disfavour, his family enemies tried to have him killed. He fled into space, changing his name and losing a fortune.

At the begining of the session, I started with Shyshen and Tyler - as the prologue had them together, limping into a disreputable port in Langrange 5 (a space port between the moon and the earth)

Now, I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to run a Sim supporting game - as my players seem very keen on this style of play. It is worth noting (for example) that the players are on vastly different points (Shyshen is something like 550pts, the rest are 300pts), so I have tried to be careful about playing to their niche's.

In addition, I took up the idea of using a low-prep play (actually, no-prep - but I intend to alter that) by using three guidelines off of which I would 'riff' everything.

1) The Locations are either Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica (new series) - that is, either Hyperclean and perfect or on the edge of collapse.
2) In the end, everything starts and ends with China
3) In space, everything is peaceful and serene. On land, it is always chaotic.

Armed with this, I launched into the first game.

Now, all in all the game worked quite well. I'm reasonably pleased with in.

Tyler and Shyshen went looking for woek. Mr O was looking for a ship. Mr O found them, and then found them work. (Mr O's niche is the diplomatic one). I had to ensure that D (Mr O's player) didn't hog spotlight time by playing out his shopping trip. Although I did play out any situation with Shyshen being in public. Shyshen's niche is standing out in a crowd. Tyler's niche is being moody and having a ship.

In the end they found someone looking for cargo being hauled to Europa (moon of Saturn). This was a patently illegal cargo run, resupplying one of the sides in the war there before the EU can send a delegation. About 2,500 tons of munitions in fact.

And off they went. They were immediately suspicious of the cargo. Mostly because I told them that it felt like there was something wrong. So, they broke open one of the cases and found that it was full of DPU Railgun shells.
Still unsettled they went about wieghing all the other cases to see if they weigh the same. (This will take weeks) - convinced there will be in one of them.

When we left them, they had just picked up the debris on another ship ahead....
Which meant that the earlier ship was on exactly the same course and left only about 5-6 hours earlier.

Good, stand out moments.
Shyshen dealing with plants for the first time.
Tyler explaining to Shyshen why crawling along the ceiling like some freaky-weird black spider was not a good way of travelling through a densly populated space station.
Mr Ocelote leaping into the party by setting himself up as a middleman and my ability to latch on and support what the players planned to do.
The tension built up by some real simple elements relating to the backstory of Tyler - a rock in the airconditioning unit, going over the security tapes and counting down the crew as they just... vanish. Mr Ocelotes abortive attempts at communication about "These weird burn marks all over your ship then?"

Now, currently I am struggling with two things.
1) When asked for feedback, Ms T said that she did not like the way that I had stated that Shyshen felt nervous about the cargo. I don't see how else I could have got across that the character was subconciously picking up that something was wrong - or is it fair to have to try and make Ms T feel uncomfortable about the cargo? That just seems... manipulative.

2) I'm quite pleased how they got this job, Mr D said "I'm going to look for a job that they could do going in this direction", so I came up with some tasty sounding missions and left it to them to decide. With low-prep play I can get away with this sort of thing much easier. But now I am stuck with what to do about the cargo. I wanted to make the players (characters?) be nervous and wary of the cargo. Now they expect to find something nasty in the woodshed.

But, here is the thing - if it turns out to be nothing am I undercutting the power of the situation? Will the players be less likely to react and riff of my emotive statements if I just decide to drop any plans I may have had?
On the other hand, if there is something nasty in there - how can I introduce emotive statements that *don't* flag up "This is going to be a challenge right here guys!"

Comments welcome.

Hi,

Since no-one else has responded yet, I'll throw in my limited expertise....

It is worth noting (for example) that the players are on vastly different points (Shyshen is something like 550pts, the rest are 300pts), so I have tried to be careful about playing to their niche's.

Ms T said that she did not like the way that I had stated that Shyshen felt nervous about the cargo

Simon wrote:
But, here is the thing - if it turns out to be nothing am I undercutting the power of the situation? Will the players be less likely to react and riff of my emotive statements if I just decide to drop any plans I may have had?
On the other hand, if there is something nasty in there - how can I introduce emotive statements that *don't* flag up "This is going to be a challenge right here guys!"

Hi

This is a general thing but, if you are playing sim do you have a definite story that you are playing to? Do you have a number of scenes/ things that have to happen/discover/people to meet to move the story along?

If your playing along to peoples backstories and improvising and presenting bangs based on the player characters backgrounds/character sheets you may have unwittingly slipped into narratavism.

Its always been my understanding that the dividing line between sim and narratavism is whether its the Gm driving the story or the characters.

Regards
Rob

Hi

I forgot to ask, if you not a fan of GURPS and your wife prefers rules lite, why are you using that system? Could you just apply the background to another system, or are you running or planning to run published modules?

Regards
Rob

Hi all, thanks for the replies...

I'll take them in order - and throw two real proper questions in as well.

Rob wrote:

It is worth noting (for example) that the players are on vastly different points (Shyshen is something like 550pts, the rest are 300pts), so I have tried to be careful about playing to their niche's.

You're looking at low-combat sim, right, and Shyshen's extra points are mostly in combat or movement abilities (such as the 'crawling along the ceiling')? If that's true, then I don't think there will be problems here.

Rob wrote:

Ms T said that she did not like the way that I had stated that Shyshen felt nervous about the cargo

Hmmm...can you expand on why she didn't like that? Was it a general objection to the GM telling her how her character was feeling (i.e. overstepping the boundary of control), or more to the specific suggestion that a "Low Empath AI encased in the Skin of an (ex) living human ... designed as an assassin" might feel nervous about anything?

In the latter case, maybe a less personal "something seems abnormal here" might have been more acceptable to her.

Rob wrote:
The situation on board the ship, with the rock and the burn marks and the 'inhuman monster' PC is really, really cool. As a player I'd really like to be in that kind of situation.

But that might be something of a warning bell because, as established in other threads on this forum, my preferences seem to be pretty gamist.

TonyLB wrote:

Simon wrote:
But, here is the thing - if it turns out to be nothing am I undercutting the power of the situation? Will the players be less likely to react and riff of my emotive statements if I just decide to drop any plans I may have had?
On the other hand, if there is something nasty in there - how can I introduce emotive statements that *don't* flag up "This is going to be a challenge right here guys!"

Wow. That's some tricky stuff there. Hrmmm.

Why don't you drop a lot of potential avenues for exploration, and then react to what possibilities they see as immediately interesting? Like, if they comb the crates for bio-signs, give 'em all sorts of static and cloaking fol-de-rol that they can overcome, and if they overcome it then yep, there were hidden biologicals in those crates. If they immediately break out quarantine gear then you know that the biologicals are probably viral (or worse). If they try to talk to it then it's probably sentient (or worse).

If you do this obviously then people immediately realize that they're in charge of the story, and they sometimes start driving it around in quite lunatic circles. But if you set yourself up with a fall-back plan ("Here's what I'll dump on them if they don't have anything better in mind,") and drift slowly toward that until they drag you onto another course then often they think that they've brilliantly figured out your plan before you could spring it, and headed you off at the pass.

Does that make any sense? I should probably be referring you to past threads on this, if you find the notion at all gels with your style.

Lamorak33 wrote:
This is a general thing but, if you are playing sim do you have a definite story that you are playing to? Do you have a number of scenes/ things that have to happen/discover/people to meet to move the story along?

Lamorak33 wrote:
If your playing along to peoples backstories and improvising and presenting bangs based on the player characters backgrounds/character sheets you may have unwittingly slipped into narratavism.

Its always been my understanding that the dividing line between sim and narratavism is whether its the Gm driving the story or the characters.

Lamorak33 wrote:
I forgot to ask, if you not a fan of GURPS and your wife prefers rules lite, why are you using that system? Could you just apply the background to another system, or are you running or planning to run published modules?

Simon wrote:
1) The Locations are either Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica (new series) - that is, either Hyperclean and perfect or on the edge of collapse.
2) In the end, everything starts and ends with China
3) In space, everything is peaceful and serene. On land, it is always chaotic.

Hi

The pay off for Sim is generally 'being the character' yes? Thus if playing bang-sim you will be giving the character the opportunity to behave as their character would do, not necessarily as they, the player, 'want to'. An example here is from a game like Pendragon with personality traits. Dyed in the wool sim players might decide what the character does based on what he thinks his character would do based on the personality ratings.

I think the only problem you may suffer from is playing with an incoherent agenda. You obviously have a mix of players who have different creative agenda proclivities which can lead to a break down of the social contract to a lesser or greater extent. Gurps doesn't help because it is quite incoherent, don't you think? But the game will still be good I suspect as you sound like a good GM. I'd like to play in that game.

I'm only fairly new so I can offer opinion but little in the way of advice. I will leave that to the more sage contributors!

Regards
Rob

Lamorak33 wrote:
The pay off for Sim is generally 'being the character' yes? Thus if playing bang-sim you will be giving the character the opportunity to behave as their character would do, not necessarily as they, the player, 'want to'. An example here is from a game like Pendragon with personality traits. Dyed in the wool sim players might decide what the character does based on what he thinks his character would do based on the personality ratings.

Ron wrote:
Now, I look at it a little differently, which is that Sim is much smaller than implied by those essays, and is best understood as a form of celebration of the prevailing enthusiasms/assumptions about some starting material.

Lamorak33 wrote:
I think the only problem you may suffer from is playing with an incoherent agenda. You obviously have a mix of players who have different creative agenda proclivities which can lead to a break down of the social contract to a lesser or greater extent. Gurps doesn't help because it is quite incoherent, don't you think? But the game will still be good I suspect as you sound like a good GM. I'd like to play in that game.

Simon wrote: Oh yeah, we all have different agenda when we come to the table, but here is the thing. I' running this game (for the first time) on purpose. I'm mostly hoping that my entusiasm for "Isn't this cool!" will make people realise that this is what we are here to do.
If they get no reward from me as the GM for inchoherent, Gamist or Nar play and I feedback to them about what I liked then we should be able - through feedback and positive re-enforcement - come to an understanding about what I'm tryng to do with this game.
Add to that the fact that art of the Social Contract is that, in this case, the game is about exploring/discoverng the ... setting, I hope that Incohernce won't set in too much.

Simon wrote:
Now, I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to run a Sim supporting game - as my players seem very keen on this style of play. It is worth noting (for example) that the players are on vastly different points (Shyshen is something like 550pts, the rest are 300pts), so I have tried to be careful about playing to their niche's.

Simon wrote:
In addition, I took up the idea of using a low-prep play (actually, no-prep - but I intend to alter that) by using three guidelines off of which I would 'riff' everything.

1) The Locations are either Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica (new series) - that is, either Hyperclean and perfect or on the edge of collapse.
2) In the end, everything starts and ends with China
3) In space, everything is peaceful and serene. On land, it is always chaotic.

Simon wrote:

And off they went. They were immediately suspicious of the cargo. Mostly because I told them that it felt like there was something wrong. So, they broke open one of the cases and found that it was full of DPU Railgun shells.

<snip>

1) When asked for feedback, Ms T said that she did not like the way that I had stated that Shyshen felt nervous about the cargo. I don't see how else I could have got across that the character was subconciously picking up that something was wrong - or is it fair to have to try and make Ms T feel uncomfortable about the cargo? That just seems... manipulative.

Simon wrote:

Now, I think I've got Sim - apart from the 'Reward Cycle' problem I'm having. And I'll say this bluntly - I think you're waaay off base with regard to Sim play.

So, I think we are going to have to back off on this discussion until we can agree on what we mean by Sim play. I'm aiming for what Ron states - a celebration of what makes the setting cool. You suggesting that Sim is 'being in character' isn't helping any - because thats not what Sim play is.

The best thing to do is, i'm afraid to say, read the essay, check the threads in the GNS forum at the moment and post any questions about Sim play there.

I'm glad you like the situation, but any ideas why it rev's your gamist engine?

Again, almost from the top.

Joshua wrote:
Have you not discussed your intentions with the players?  Are you trying to lead them to Sim, rather than moving towards Sim together?

Liminaut wrote:
Starting the game with the GM's partner being vastly more powerful than the other players is a big warning flag to me. The other players have their "right to dream" as well, and having a "dream" of carrying the bags for another PC isn't going to be a lot of fun.

Liminaut wrote:
Sounds like the Serenity RPG.

Liminaut wrote:
What made Shysen feel uncomfortable? If you want to do Sim, then _do Sim_. Describe the boxes. Does Syshen have a special Shysen-sense that warns of plot complications? What do the boxes look like?

And if they get the description and don't figure out something is off ... well, that's Sim. Telling the players straight off that "they feel like something is wrong" is enforcing a narrative direction by indicating a direction for their actions.

Simon wrote: So, yeah - some links would be fab.

Simon wrote:
See, this is my weakness in GMing.
I want to include a scene involving the cargo. I need to say "Hey, guys - do you fancy investigating the cargo?" without saying "Investigate the cargo, dammit".
My problem is that I did the latter, not the former.

Hi all

Thanks for the advice. I've another session starting in oooh... 50 minutes?

I'll post a report on how this session went later.

Ok, session two happend on Wensday night.
Firstly I'll go through what happened, and then talk about what I think came out of the situation

When we left our intrepid explorers, they where just coming upto the debris of another ship, which appeared to be on the same tragectory and a similair velocity.

In our 'hard sci-fi' genre this is significantly unusual enough for them to be very nervous.

The use a 'ladar' (laser imaging system, highly accurate upto 2,500 miles) to find out that the ship was once originally a tube ship (like their own), which appears of have slowly ... fallen apart. Many questions where asked as to "why didn't it all fly off in different directions?" They looked closely at the edgest of the 'bits' and decided "Beam weapons" - lasers - "Cut this ship apart"
"Cool, I though, lets go with that"

So, they accelerate and then hold about 1km from the debris of the ship, and take a closer look.
Shyshen (the robot) was sent over to have a closer look. During this time, they discover another rock in a cooling pipe feeding the reactor. This one is also from the Ort Cloud (see the first session), but more importantly - the pipe would have needed to be cut open and re-sealed to get the rock in there...

The first bit of ship they come across is about 40 sq.meters (120 square ft) by about 10 meters deep. More investigation reveals that two sides where neatly cut, but the other two sides where pre-weakend, probably on a molecular level.
They guessed what had happend was the ship was sabotaged, and diced. When the lasers hit, the weakend hull meant that cubes of the ship simple ripped themselves off. Leaving whole sections still sealed.

They use a micro camera to investigate the sealed section that Shyshen was on, and found that this was some sort of function room, with tables, chairs and some sort of cybershell in the corner - rocking backwards and forwards.

They check it out, and find a horribly traumatised AI called Antony (no reason, first name that came to me) trapped in the shell - just enough of the AI was in the Cybershell to make it run, but all the memories etc was kept in the core computer which the cybershell was run from.
Essentially the AI was blind, deaf, amnesiac and without a sense of touch. All it had was it's internal sensors. They discovered the Core Computer (which was part of the central 'spine') which was (obviously) down powered and started to drag it over to the ship along with the cybershell.

Shyshen continues it's investigations, while Tyler and Mr Ocelot continue to try and work out what the hell happend.

Shyshen then finds the bridge, also still sealed, with about a dozen corpses floating about. Shyshen streams the info back, and the others are a little upset. Especially by the corpse exposed to hard vaccum (the players discriptions of what happens to a body in space was icky).
They again broke their way in, turned on the emergency computer on the bridge and check out the bodies.
About this time they had got the Core Computer onto (outside of) the ship, and set about powering it up.

Shyshen made some unpleasent discoveries about the corpses. Something had made round holes in the bodies, about 1/2 an inch round, with an exit wound the same size as the entry wound. "Either a low velocity projectile - which in low G is pointless, or some sort of thrusting weapon" said Shyshen "If I where to kill all the crew here, then they would have injuries similar to this, but more rectangular"
"If I were to...? Who is this?" thinks Mr Ocelot, now more than a little disturbed.

About this time, I thought we would have a little payoff.
Just after they plugged in the Core Computer, Mac (Tylers AI) piped up "Ummm - Tyler? Did you plug in the computer?"
"Yes Mac"
"It's just that according to this, it was Antony (the AI they where rescuing) who killed all the crew..."
"Oh god... Mister, get into a VaccSuit - Shyshen get back here!"

As Shyshen launched itself back to the Ship, it was accosted by a Combat Droid in the shape of a Snake. It's prefered method of Attack? Well, in 0g, it would latch onto it's opponent and thrust it's pointy tail through the victim... just like all those poor people in the bridge.

The fight was short lived, but there was a lot of panic onboard the ship about if the Cybershell on the hull of their ship could break through in time to prevent them unplugging the computer (no, it couldn't).

Shyshen disabled the Combat droid. Mr Ocelot and Tyler unplugged the computer. Everone sat down.

That was more or less the end of the session.

What did I make of it all?

Well, the game was organised the evening it was run, and as it was run from 8pm - 11pm, it was quite tightly packed. We had one brief diversion when Ms T (Shyshen) was called away on the phone - which held things up a bit. However the other two players filled their time by discussin what could have done this. So, no real loss here.

But here is the problem - the system is holding us back a lot. I called for about 3 rolls - the players voluntered for 3 rolls. 4 of the rolls where "Using the sensors".
*sigh*
The problem is that with Gurps, it doesn't allow what I want it to allow - for the players to become involved in the creation of the world.
The system doesn't support my Sim needs because it's me (the ref) who decides what requires a roll and me (the ref) who decides what is "the truth" - but dammit, the session showed me that I don't have a monopoly on the good ideas!

All the players inputed a lot into SIS - a lot. From defining names, Structures and other bit's of colour to simply the best idea of the night (which I shall be using).
The reason all the bits of the ship are heading in the same direction is because it is being dragged along in the wake of something with it's own gravity - thats either a proppelled and large Asteroid, or a spaceship powered by a microsingularity. I mean, thats just fantastic and not what I would have thought of.

What I am saying is I need a system that allows for the players a much greater control over the dream, because they know as well as I do what is being celebrated.
I'm sorta drawn to two systems - a variation of the Pool, or Universalis.
Now, the Pool seems to be extreamly 'no-myth' - which is to say that it doesn't take into account the dream by making things that are 'in-line' with the dream more likely than things that are 'counter to the dream' - Except for the +1-+3 dice from the ref.
So, I was thinking of a version of the Pool where the dream is written, line by line. Sorta world "Character Sheet"
So, if someone (say, me) introduces "Snake Robot combat droid" with "Fights in 0g really well +2".
Then, if you end up in a fight with the Snake Robot in 0g, and you take the +2 dice - what ever happens it fights really well.

But then I think "Isn't this just a bad version of Universalis" and then think "Do I really want to change the system?"

But worst of all I think "GURPS is not supporting my Sim style game - becuase, contrary to popular belief, I'm not finding it Sim supporting but instead illusionist technique supporting.

Ok, generally I think I've got the hang of Sim - but Sim with "bass playing" ref-style and greatly empowered player input? GURPS aint working for me...

You might not want to abandon GURPS just yet. I'm guessing that your GURPS gearhead player put a substantial amount of time into character creation. Am I right? He might have a lot invested in that character, through that process.

In our GURPS games, our GM gives out "Plot Points" when a player contributes a cool idea. Plot Points can then be spent by the player, to influence the plot in some way. We also steal an idea from the Buffy RPG: if the GM railroads your character for the purposes of the story (the villian escapes; the bomb goes off; your best friend gets eaten by vampires), then you get a free Plot Point in compensation.

(...And I have just now realized that I have been hordeing these Plot Points for no good reason. If we were playing Gamist, then of course it makes sense to hang on to Plot Points - or Hero Points, or whatever - until the perfect tactical moment. But in a Sim game, I should be using these Plot Points, and using them hard, to drive play towards the things I find the most interesting.)

So, my advice: if you use the Plot Point idea, make sure your players use them. And not just for cheesy gamer stuff, like "I open the lock" or "my aim is true". Make sure that they also use them for cool plot stuff, like "I find out that my mother is an AI Ghost, enslaved by a megacorp."

-Pôl

The Pool is good in it's own right. Might be good for what ails ya. Better yet might be something less drastic, like FATE. Give lots of FATE points, and they can use them to do worldbuilding stuff.

Here's a thing: with your current play, when the players are coming up with ideas like the gravity well and lasers cutting the ship up, are they aware that you're using their ideas? If they're not, then at best all they get out of finding out that their idea is "right" is a gamism sense of having guessed the nature of the situation. If you tell the player that you're using their idea, however, then they're rewarded by the introduction of the idea into play. Very different thrills here. If you're after simulationism, I'd tell them that you're using their ideas. This then rewards them for coming up with such stuff.

Heck, twist GURPS in a real

Donjon

Mike wrote:
Here's a thing: with your current play, when the players are coming up with ideas like the gravity well and lasers cutting the ship up, are they aware that you're using their ideas? If they're not, then at best all they get out of finding out that their idea is "right" is a gamism sense of having guessed the nature of the situation. If you tell the player that you're using their idea, however, then they're rewarded by the introduction of the idea into play. Very different thrills here. If you're after simulationism, I'd tell them that you're using their ideas. This then rewards them for coming up with such stuff.

Mike wrote:
Heck, twist GURPS in a real

Donjon

way, and make it so that any successful roll like a sensors roll allows the player to define the situation. That's a lot like the Pool, and the players get to keep their investment as Pol points out.

Mike

Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but you just might want to check out my in-process game, Shock: Social Science Fiction. Playtest version 0.1.0 has been released, with the full release in March.

It has full support for world-building on the fly, and is about asking the questions that Transhuman Space claims to ask, but with ways to discuss them.

It's funny, but I was thinking, hmmm, haven't I read of some game design recently where the idea is to promote the whole "What If" nature of sci-fi. Simon, definitely check out Josh's game.

Simon wrote:
I think they are aware of it, but honesty (in this case) is the best policy.

If on the other hand the mechanics linking A to result B are defined then it is, irrespective of the Ref (or anyone else), a meaningful decision to do A. If the mechanics involve chance, then you are making a decision to take a risk.

And that idea is pure gold. It's GURPS, but with narration rights defined. I'll try it out and see what happens.

I think the guideline will be
"If you make a roll, and succede - you can define the result, otherwise I will"
"If I ask you to make a roll, and you succede then I can define the result, otherwise you will"

Let's see how that works out.

Yes, GURPS sucks.

I had decided if I were to take a stab at Transhuman Space again, I would use either the HeroQuest system (supports narr with detailed pre-existing setting) or Mike Holmes' Synthesis (similar to HeroQuest, but emphasizing ideological shifts).

But you might be happier exploring the shared-world building avenue. If you and your players have never played Universalis before, it could open your eyes.

Hi all.

Yeah, Josh - Shock looks real good.

I need to get my head around it and see if I can make it work for Gurps - but there is going to be one big ol' problem with shunting over to it. It's GM less. And I'm the GM...

Heh, I'll see if I can convert THS to Shock and see if it works out. Maybe a "Demo Session" would work...

Mike wrote:

If on the other hand the mechanics linking A to result B are defined then it is, irrespective of the Ref (or anyone else), a meaningful decision to do A. If the mechanics involve chance, then you are making a decision to take a risk.

That's pretty profound. It's the same thing as what I said above, really. The mechanics here are providing proof of an arbitrary space in which these statements are being made. As opposed to one where hidden biases may be affecting things in unknown ways. Cool.

Well, realize that for Mrs T that, in fact, she may not yet have experienced mechanics that support what she needs herself. She might actually need "freeform mechanics" if you will. For her that might be the best system available. She may intellectually understand your need, but she also may not share it.

OTOH, showing it to her, perhaps she may become interested. Who can say?

Mike

Simon wrote: Yeah, Josh - Shock looks real good.

I need to get my head around it and see if I can make it work for Gurps - but there is going to be one big ol' problem with shunting over to it. It's GM less. And I'm the GM...

Heh, I'll see if I can convert THS to Shock and see if it works out. Maybe a "Demo Session" would work...

If nothing else has come out of this thread, finding my own voice on "Why mechanics are good and not just a nessecary evil" has been incredibly worthwhile. I've been struggling for some time with the fact that I knew that mechanics can make a game better (and not just in a "preventing arguments" way) - but was unable to express this to any satisfaction.

And here I was able to explain to Ms T (who thinks that mechanics just get in the way mostly) why they are good. "Tyranny of the Structurlessness" has also informed this opinion as has some of the worst abuses of Illusionist Reffing techniques (Especially in LARP).

Simon wrote:

Mike wrote:
Here's a thing: with your current play, when the players are coming up with ideas like the gravity well and lasers cutting the ship up, are they aware that you're using their ideas? If they're not, then at best all they get out of finding out that their idea is "right" is a gamism sense of having guessed the nature of the situation. If you tell the player that you're using their idea, however, then they're rewarded by the introduction of the idea into play. Very different thrills here. If you're after simulationism, I'd tell them that you're using their ideas. This then rewards them for coming up with such stuff.

I'm not telling them.

This is a mistake, thanks for pointing it out for me.

I think they are aware of it, but honesty (in this case) is the best policy.

Jim (by the way, welcome back man),

I agree with you generally here, that there are multiple forms of sim that are possible to pursue here. But I think that Simon has been pretty clear about which sort he wants to try to promote. If he'd said that he wanted to do "Open Sim" then I'd have tried to give him adivce on that. But he seems to be more into the idea of co-opting everyone into the whole worldbilding exercise.

Or you might be saying that the players might be looking for participationism, too. But both participationism and open sim are pretty darn hard to make entertaining. For the former you really need to do a huge amount of prep and make play a great song and dance show. For the latter, you have to do a lot of prep in terms of making sure that the world is densely populated with interesting things to bump into (and the general problem that 99.9% of everything you prep will be missed). This is why illusionism is usually the next step from this sort of play - it allows the GM to ensure that his prep doesn't go to waste.

So, on top of Simon saying this is what he wants, I think he's made the choice of the easiest version to play. For whatever that's worth.

Mike

Thanks, Mike!

I completely take your point. If Simon's goal is to lead his players in a more participatory direction he's getting good advice. I just wanted to throw a couple of flags up there explaining why it might turn out that they don't want to go. I got the impression from the quoted message that Simon feared he was doing his players a disservice by not giving them credit for the contributions he took up and by not giving them a formal role in the worldbuilding and he might not have been.

If I got to replace "the Right to Dream" with a catchphrase of my own it would be "Yes, Myth!" Because I think the key to sim is a rejection of the "No Myth" method - it says either "You're wrong!" or "So what?" to that. As far as many kinds of sim is concerned, there ARE facts about the game world that exist only in the GM's head or only in the setting book or the random table even if they haven't been encountered in play, and there ARE facts about the PCs that exist only in the players' heads even if they haven't been encountered in play. You can say "That's not literally true" all day and all night, but (many flavors of) sim is sim because it acts as if it were true. I want to keep this tied to as tied to Simon's campaign as possible so I don't threadjack. My belief is that "No Myth" sim is possible in principle, but I think it's a rare "skewer," and the reasons for that may crop up in Simon's efforts to transform his game. That said, he's of course not required to keep running a kind of game he'd rather not run.

Best,

Jim

Hi all.

Mike wrote:
Well, realize that for Mrs T that, in fact, she may not yet have experienced mechanics that support what she needs herself. She might actually need "freeform mechanics" if you will. For her that might be the best system available. She may intellectually understand your need, but she also may not share it.

OTOH, showing it to her, perhaps she may become interested. Who can say?