I was playing Runequest with my group.  We, the PC's, are guarding a caravan.  The caravan gets attacked by a vampire cult.  After we defend the caravan, the caravan leader remarks that we, the PC's, are drawing enemies to the caravan with our mere presence, consequently putting women and children needlessly at risk.  I retort that the women and children were the very reason the caravan was attacked, and that if it were not for we PC's defending the caravan, many people would have been lost to the vampire cult.  If anything, we should receive extra pay for risking our own hides protecting the caravan.  The GM pauses, a little surprised (I think the story's rails required us to simply disembark from the caravan at this point, so we could go do something else in the game), and, out of character, says "good point..."  Then, "roll a negotiation check." 

I was a little disappointed.  I just acted out my negotiation in character - why do I have to roll?  Why can't the GM act out the caravan leader's part, and come to a conclusion?  I rolled, and succeeded, but I was still disappointed.  I would rather have just roleplayed the whole thing, even if it was just a few sentences of dialogue, and NOT succeeded, than roll and leave all to chance. 

Similarly, in both D&D groups I've participated in over the last year (playing 3.5, and now 4th edition), it seems like dice are filling in constantly for what could easily be roleplayed.  You go to jump on a horse - roll a ride check.  Perception checks are a constant - "so I'm in the room - what do I see?"  "Roll a perception check."  Negotiation checks...  Gather information checks... Find/disable traps checks...  And generally I fail to see the point, unless it is somehow an issue of pacing or story flow; "make a roll so we don't have to act out a boring scene."  Even if it is an issue of speeding things along, if something is so pointless that it should be passed over, why roll dice at all?  Why not just make something up, if it is important to do so, and move on?

I am usually disappointed, as a player, when I have some idea of what I want to do, and how to do it, and I have to instead roll dice and leave it to probability.  It feels disempowering.  It also feels less like I'm interacting with SIS, and more like I'm interacting with abstract dice mechanics (and this in spite of the fact that I am fascinated by dice mechanics).  I want to engage my environment; poke the floor with a 10 foot pole rather than roll a detect traps check.  I'm not much for the thespian aspect of roleplaying, but I want to argue with various NPC's, not roll negotation checks (unless, again, it's a pacing issue, but then again, I don't want to roll dice to decide unimportant tasks either). 

I really dislike having to keep looking up numbers on my character sheet to decide every little challenge in the game.  Still, as I said, all the groups I have played with insist on rolling for all kinds of things.

The thing is, in a lot of games (ones I've seen anyway), you have skills for a lot of this stuff.  Negotiation, Gather information, Perception, Notice, Detect Traps, Etiquette, Intimidation, Taunt, etc...  So that, in itself, raises the question: when should you use these skills (which means rolling dice and checking the outcome), and when should you roleplay?  If you roleplay and ignore the mechanic, are you cheating?  Are you not playing "the way you're supposed to?"  The book says XYZ... so why are we ignoring that?  Or why do we only selectively utilize the skill system?  I think a lot of players/GM's feel a sort of guilt if they don't use the mechanics.  Hell, maybe a lot of people have never even played an RPG that didn't have such mechanics, and so they don't know there's an alternative (just roleplaying your way through things). 

Some reasons I can think of for having such mechanics in a game:

1) People want to know what their characters can do, and not just this, but also how their characters improve over time.  Perhaps there is some kind of dopamine release at each level up (or skill raise, whatever), when the number on the sheet goes up a point or two (I think this speaks to the addictive potential of games like Diablo and WoW).  Also, people do often seem to want player/character separation.  This is bogus to me, though, since unless you come up with some kind of mechanical algorithm to control your character's thought processes, YOU are still in your character, influencing your character with your own real-world traits (and, IMO, this is what makes RPGing fun).  There is the convincing and understandable argument that a shy person may want to play a true social master, but still, I personally don't see the need for any kind of grand thespian display in roleplaying - you can talk third person about your character, describing what he/she is trying to do, for example,  and still be roleplaying. 

2) There is perhaps the idea that having a mechanic for all sorts of skills and challenges will force a GM to be honest.  It's supposed to empower players.  You, as GM, may not want to reveal some piece of information to me, but by golly I rolled a 20 on my gather information check - you gotta let me know somethin!  Except... it's still the GM's decision (in traditional games at least) as to how to interpret the result.  So why not just skip the mechanical step?  In practice, what I notice is that GM's consistently scale target numbers so that actions will always be challenging or impossible when they desire that.  You're level 1: target number for your perception check is X.  You're level 20; your target number for the perception check is X+20!  So again, in this case, what's the point?  The fox is still guarding the henhouse, but now we've added a bunch of dice formulas to try to disguise the fact.

Of course, it's not a simplistic or cut and dried issue.  I don't want to roleplay combat free-form; I like the randomness of it, and I like that there are rules to help decide it (but I'm not that big on combat in general... hmmm...).  I'm not sure you'd handle something like a computer-hacking situation without rules unless players involved are very knowledgeable on computers, so I can see the value of rules/skills/mechanics for those situations.  I also am not sure I'm comfortable with free-forming magic situations.  Rules can help structure magic in such a way that you can have, for example, magic using characters that don't break the game or make other types of characters - warriors, for example - inferior.  But at what point do the mechanics go too far?  How do you know?  How do you decide?  How do you use skill mechanics in games like RuneQuest, D&D 3.5, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Savage Worlds, Fate, etc?  Do you always roll for negotiations (for example)?  Sometimes?  Never?  When?  Why?

When is it good to roll-play versus roleplay?  Why?  Does roll-playing enhance or somehow supplement roleplaying, and vice versa?  Do you prefer rolling?  Do you prefer straight up roleplaying?  I'm genuinely interested in people's thoughts on this issue.  Personally, at this point, as much as I am fascinated with game mechanics and like the idea of characters growing and differentiating themselves in a quantifiable fashion, I have to say that I tend to be happiest when I am roleplaying through most situations, and leaving mechanics aside for the most part.  How about you?

Nick

The main reason I like the fact that rules are used to decide the outcome of a social engagement is that it allows players who aren't socially adept to succeed based on their characters merits as opposed to the merits of the player. A second, but important, reason is that it gives the GM benchmarks of fairness. In a lot of systems, its not just the roll but the roll and the interaction that determine the outcome, so the GM can assign a weight to the performance, but not so much weight that it overrides the numbers on the sheet. This is important to some players, because lets say I'm socially inept, but I imagine that my character is suave, so I put a lot points into Smooth Talking or whatever the statistic is. Then, another player in my group, who happens to be socially able and good with words, but who has a character with 0 points in Smooth Talking, manages to talk his way past all the baddies. The sociable player may not even mean to do this. It would take a very deft hand by the GM to deal with how the character/player skill discrepancy affect the fiction without the use of some kind of concrete mechanic.

In my current project (a Fantasy RPG called Shadows) I handle this by allowing the players to choose when they want to invoke the system, but the GM has a strong indicating mechanic to tell him how aggressively he should deal with the players socially.

Thanks for the reply, Nolan!

Your two main points, as I understand them: 1) mechanics, specifically social mechanics, provide a degree of niche protection, and allow shy players to excel socially as PC's.  2) Social mechanics give the GM guidelines in the interest of fairness.

Speaking to 1): I'm all in favor of niche protection.  Why do you need to roll dice and consult some formula to have it?  What is to stop you, for example, from having characters assign their characters qualities, perhaps based mostly on character background, and having the GM simply take those into consideration in game?  Say I'm tracking some baddies through the woods.  The GM knows my character was raised by druids and I grew up in the wilderness.  There should be no doubt that I'm better at tracking than the urban raised thief character, even if neither of us utilizes anything like an actual tracking skill.  Why can't that same thief character put something like "suave" on his character sheet, and have that be taken into account by the GM during social interactions, even if no dice are rolled for "suaveness"? 

On the other hand, and speaking to your 2nd point, you have something like a "gather information" skill (D&D 3.x).  You use the skill, roll a die, and the GM tells you what happens.  Behind the scenes, the GM has picked some target number (ostensibly anyway), and decided what to give you based on your roll.  This is in line with the rules, but is it really any less arbitrary than what I'm suggesting above?  The GM still picks the target number (or just decides what is going to happen, regardless of the die roll), and also chooses what the die roll will mean.  The book can give guidelines, but if the GM is set on not giving you a piece of information, he/she is not going to give it to you - and how would you know whether you didn't get the info because you failed the die roll, or because the NPC you interrogated didn't have the info, or because the GM simply didn't want you to have the info, even though you did roll high enough and the NPC did have the info you wanted?.  And this is part of my frustration.  I have played with a GM that likes players to be level 20 D&D superheroes.  I also have a very, very strong suspicion that he simply scaled target numbers to be just as hard to reach as they would be for a level 1 newbie PC (effectively nullifying the meaning of being level 20 with regard to certain skills).  IS that how it's supposed to work?  No.  But what's to stop it?  I'd rather cut the pretense and just roleplay it out, regardless of the outcome. 

Just my humble thoughts - I have the utmost respect for differing opinions.  Not just respect, but a genuine curiosity and interest regarding this topic.  Love to hear more opposing viewpoints, or any thoughts on the topic in general. 

Nick

Quite a few years ago I was mastering an old school game. One of the players (kind of powergamer) used to focus his character in combat stats and get over charisma/negotiating stats with roleplaying.

Even though I could give him a bonus for a good point in a negotiation (or a flirting), he had to roll. Always. He didn't like it, of course, and was claiming quite often: 'hey, man, I can negotiate well, why I have to roll?'

One day his character was attacking other PC, and was at an advantage. I gave the other PC quite a good bonus. He got a bit mad about it and stared at me like 'WTF?'. I looked him back, and answered 'hey, man, he plays martial arts and can fight quite well. You don't. But, if you don't believe me, I have no problem about leaving you both roleplay the fight'

I think there are a couple things that are universally messed up in these games you're playing, but also a few things that are a matter of taste (and you seem to think they're universal).

Messed up: The GM making the player roll and then making up whatever result suits him.
Messed up: Rolling constantly for stuff that doesn't matter.
Messed up: The GM feeding you information a bit at a time, on his own schedule, to control "the story."

D&D 3.5 and D&D 4e handle these things differently, so I'd be careful about generalizing.

In 3.5, there's a lot of DM fiat around what happens when a player succeeds on a skill check. Consider setting stakes explicitly with your DM before you roll. "If I succeed at this Perception check, I see whatever is here, right?" "Sure." "What do I need to roll to succeed." "Uh, say DC 18." That can mitigate the "damage" caused by the DM just doing whatever he wanted to do, regardless of your roll. Yes, you're still counting on the DM to be honest about "whatever is here" but if you have talked about this with your DM and he's agreed to be honest, then it comes down to basic human trust. Don't play with people you don't trust.

In 4e, most of the rules surrounding skill checks are pretty explicitly defined, complete with target DCs and consequences. In all of the 4e examples, even the "knowledge check" (e.g., an Arcana roll to see if you know anything about a type of magic) is generally set up with a DC and a block of information that the PC learns on success.

These factors do not address your belief that these tasks shouldn't be rolled at all. Reading between the lines, I gather that you don't object to interaction with the system (I don't see you complaining about rolling during combat, for example), but rather you object to rolling for dumb shit that just doesn't matter. Perhaps you've heard the phrase "say yes or roll the dice," paraphrased from a rule Vincent Baker wrote in Dogs in the Vineyard (a game with a lot of excellent dice rolling that matters). The phrase sums up the idea that the GM often just lets the players do whatever because it doesn't matter. When it matters, when there's more at stake than that silly little task, then that's when you reach for the dice.

In general, a GM can control the flow of information to the players to control "the story." I put it in scare quotes because it generally means that the players on a railroad and have little influence over what is going to happen on any kind of meaningful level. Some players do just play to be entertained for a few hours, but it's pretty clear that you want to have significant "steering power" over the course of events in the game. And you should, in my opinion. So a lot of this comes down to not wanting to be railroaded via information feeding, dice fudging, extraneous obstacles like unnecessary skill checks, and so on.

Not messed up: Rolling for stuff in general and not "just role-play[ing] it out."
Not messed up: Scaling difficulties for characters levels in D&D.

A lot of this stuff comes down to preference. If you're playing D&D 3.5 or 4e, you're playing a game with skills and skill checks. You will be asked at some point to make a Diplomacy check. Can the DM handwave the check for good role-playing? I suppose, but why have Diplomacy on your character sheet if you're going to ignore it when it matters? If you think the game is flawed or not suited to your tastes, try a different game.

In a game where you have no Diplomacy skill, how do you resolve a scene that requires diplomacy? I know you say, "just role-play it," but more than anything else that leaves it to GM fiat. No matter how diplomatically you role-play, the GM can say, "I'm not convinced" or "I'm convinced" and then move the story the way he wanted anyway. So first, if the diplomacy doesn't matter to you or the GM, no one should bother rolling. If it matters to either of you, then it needs a roll (or some other contact with the system). You roll or whatever, and the dice decide what happens.

What if you role-played well but rolled shitty? How do you handle that? A couple solutions:

1. Don't assume a bad roll means poor PC performance. It could mean interference from an external force, or hidden information the PC doesn't have. The PC could have been the most suave diplomat ever but didn't know that the NPC hates elves.

2. Roll before role-playing too much. If you roll shitty, have a blast role-playing a fumbled diplomacy attempt. Failure is a blast to play out.

Every recent version of D&D encourages DMs to scale encounters to the party's level. If you want a different kind of play, you'll need to work that out with your DM.

You will probably love Matthew Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming. It singles out four "zen moments" that hearken back to a supposedly older style of gaming: 1. rulings not rules, 2. players skill, not character abilities, 3. heroic, not superhero, and 4. forget "game balance." I think these will speak to your heart.

InkMeister wrote: I was a little disappointed.  I just acted out my negotiation in character - why do I have to roll?  Why can't the GM act out the caravan leader's part, and come to a conclusion?

InkMeister wrote:
I was a little disappointed.  I just acted out my negotiation in character - why do I have to roll?  Why can't the GM act out the caravan leader's part, and come to a conclusion?  I rolled, and succeeded, but I was still disappointed.  I would rather have just roleplayed the whole thing, even if it was just a few sentences of dialogue, and NOT succeeded, than roll and leave all to chance. 

Inkmeister, he doesn't need to use dice, but I think making rulings based off a public guideline (when your D20 hits the table and everyone can see it shows an 18, everyone at the table has some expectation of what that means) is different from just making a ruling. I'm all for diceless roleplay, and I think it can work quite well, but very few games really give you a good framework for doing this (Amber is the only example of something that does, and even that very long book about diceless roleplaying fails to work 100% of the time).

Hi everyone,

I suggest great care in distinguishing between (i) a given technique on principle and (ii) a given technique as one person has experienced it to date. Adam's points are really important to keep this thread from becoming a mess of "well I think's" based on various different contexts.

I also suggest that the term "diceless" is so debased at this point as to mean practically anything, and that we'd do well to use a more specific term for the exact thing being discussed. For example, Nolan, the resolution techniques in Amber are highly quantified and therefore have a lot more in common with standard dice-based techniques than either do with the unconstructed, descriptive-term only techniques that Nick wants to discuss.

Best, Ron

Hello Nick

Why can't the GM act out the caravan leader's part, and come to a conclusion?

Messed up: The GM making the player roll and then making up whatever result suits him.
Messed up: Rolling constantly for stuff that doesn't matter.
Messed up: The GM feeding you information a bit at a time, on his own schedule, to control "the story."

At risk of temporarily derailing the conversation:

Adam,

1. Don't assume a bad roll means poor PC performance. It could mean interference from an external force, or hidden information the PC doesn't have. The PC could have been the most suave diplomat ever but didn't know that the NPC hates elves.

In response to Ron & Nick: When do you mean just role play do you mean unstructured free form role play or is there room for other things besides dice to act as guidelines towards the result. Otherwise, the why use dice thing breaks down into the same thing that most techniques do: Do the dice facilitate the fun? The only pitfall to thinking that way is that I think there's a need to balance between short term and long term: sometimes something that is tedious or distracting now is necessary over a longer period, to achieve a larger goal. I mean, every poster can do what I've done and give you reasons why using the dice might be a good thing, or why systems have done it historically, but ultimately its about your tastes. In the merchant caravan instance that you sight, it seems that the biggest problem with the dice is that they felt like they took away the power of the player to impact the story, is that correct? We could try and think of ways that dice could be used that might avoid this pitfall, or mechanics in place in other games to mitigate this (Hero Points, Stunt Dice, etc...)

Two points I wanted to make:

1) Character advancement on skill checks. When it comes to the whole seemingly arbitrary difficulties set by a GM, where things are X difficulty at level 1 and then X-20 difficulty at level 20, this is not something that either realistically or, in game terms, productively reflects character advancement. A skill level reflects how good a character is at a skill, and therefore the better they get the more handwaving (automatic success) should take place at the lower levels of difficulty, whereas simultaneously it's the GM's responsibility to come up with more difficult things to challenge the player's skill. This applies to social stuff the same way it applies to combat.
As an example, at level 1 the PC should have to roll negotiation just to haggle a better place on a room at the inn. The difficulty here is X. Now, at level 10, we can assume that this character can now succeed automatically when performing this same action, and no dice rolling is needed--but the GM may still call for a roll when trying to convince a reluctant but powerful wizard to assist the group, with the difficulty at X+10. At level 20, both of these actions require no roll, but by now the PCs may have to convince the King to lend them an army, and this difficulty is X+20.

2) Fortune in the Middle, Roleplaying at the End. Adam's point is well taken here. The issue here is if the guy who creates a combat monster by giving himself nothing to work with on the social side tries to roleplay his way past obstacles that the GM really wants to be in one's way, this is comparable to someone describing a fight scene in detail and claiming that this allows him to have defeated the monster without rolling. Why have stats at all in that case? The dice say how well you've done at a given action, but by roleplaying before rolling the dice you're investing more in your own success and therefore the dice feel superfluous. Therefore, roll first and then roleplay like Adam said, to show your success or failure. On the other side, if the GM in your particular example was going to call a roll to negotiate with the caravan leader, he should have informed you of this before he had the NPC engage your character in an argument.

Callan,

You've misinterpreted what I was saying.

First of all, I'm not blaming anyone. No one is being shot. I'm pointing out that a situation is messed up. If play is dysfunctional, regardless of why it is happening, that's messed up. I don't know why you assume I'm blaming the GM; you could have assumed I was blaming the game designer. In reality, I don't know who is to blame, so I didn't assign any.

Second, even if I grant that I'm "shooting the messenger" (and I am not), it doesn't change the fact that the situation is messed up. If those problems are occurring in the game, then the players have little agency to make decisions that matter, and that sucks. It doesn't matter if it's happening because the GM is just playing the rules-as-written, or if it's happening because the GM is ignoring the rule advice and being a choad. So why are you making this point?

Last, I didn't say anyone was untrustworthy. I talked about a fictional situation in which Nick might ask his GM to do something different in the future. In that fictional future, Nick's new solution works if the GM is trustworthy. If Nick's GM is not trustworthy, my solution still won't work, but I pointed out that there is NO fix for such things except not to play with such a person.

To sum: I'm not pointing fingers at people. I'm not blaming people I have never met. I'm analyzing a problem, pointing at what I believe are the root causes, and offering potential solutions--with caveats.

Please stop tilting at windmills.

This thread's hit a moderator stopping point.

There are some fundamentals which were resolved long ago in discussions here which need to be referenced and established as a baseline for further discussion. I haven't had the time and no one else has done it yet.

Please hold off on posting until I do some house-cleaning and clarification here.

Best, Ron

Hello,

I apologize for taking so long. I didn't intend to shut the thread down. My goal here is to outline some points which were discussed here in detail, leading to the conclusion that "roll/role," as a commonly-mentioned contrast in role-playing, is a false dichotomy. I also think that we can stick specifically to the game being described and address a real issue without getting distracted by presumed higher principles.

A few years ago, I coined the term "Murk" to describe a phenomenon which I hadn't been too familiar with myself, but seemed to be widespread in the hobby. I focused strongly on when and how a role-playing, collectively, could not manage to know when to apply any particular rule, especially those concerned with resolution. Joel's thread Mother-May-I and 20 questions: Games GMs play helped clarify the issue a lot. Callan's thread Warhammer; Chaos! Order! Molasses! is a great introduction to it, including his term "Molasses," meaning what it was like actually to get anywhere or do anything during play - slow, sticky, attention-draining, and often pointless. Also, the embedded threads in that one provide a good background.

As a role-player, I didn't experience much Murk in the late 1970s and 1980s; play ran into trouble more often due to clashes in Creative Agenda, or in a certain mis-match between investment in character and investment in play. I can't speak for the wider range of role-playing beyond my experience, except that I was in contact with quite a few Champions groups across the U.S. for a long time, and they didn't seem to run into it much either. It seems to be more common now.

I have some ideas about how it became a major feature of the hobby. These are probably doomed to speculative status forever and best suited to face to face discussions. I do think it's fair to identify the three primary rules systems that settled into primary status during the early 1980s: AD&D in the form of the three late-1970s hardbacks, plus books like Unearthed Arcana and the Wilderness Survival Guide; BRP in the form of RuneQuest (1978, plus Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror, Trollpack, and the three Pavis boxed sets) and Call of Cthulhu (a mash-up of its first two editions across three versions); and Champions, across three editions each with useful supplements, prior to the generic form of the Hero System.

During this time, people grappled a bit with how to resolve interesting problems and conflicts when the characters were not fighting, because most of the resolution rules were concerned with, hell, drooling obsessed with, combat. But I think ... only think, mind you, that the default engagement with one another about what was being imagined tended to hold together pretty well.

I'm thinking as well that the trouble mainly arose when people were confronted by the combination of novels and games, as with Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. I alluded to this in my recent thread on TFT: Wizard,

with books like Forgotten Realms and however many similar ever since, there's a purported connection between a DM's vision of the campaign's story and a novel (or series), in which references to system are more like product placement. So the message to the hopeful user of the game is, the story-of-play is the same as write-my-novel. I think this is exactly the origin of the "system doesn't matter" claim in the hobby, as well as the grotesque confounding of "story" with metaplot.

In other words, and putting aside the merits or lack of merits in something like the Forgotten Realms books or The Wheel of Time, "a good story" or "a real story" was perceived to emerge from a DM/GM with a story-vision, to be visited upon the players, exactly in the same way that a novelist's story is visited upon the readers - as opposed to play itself, with decision-making spread across the participants in distinctive ways, and with its mechanics inserting good and bad bounces for characters, to produce such a thing.

Ah, why not, here's what I was working on. It was easier to finish it than I thought it would be.

When dice are a pretense, then fuck them. Clearly this goes for any kind of formal procedure for resolving something (or better, to establish consequence) ... and that includes dialogue.

It's not surprising that system-as-pretense shows up consistently in all the following circumstances, here all phrased as the GM might say it : "Do their characters notice this thing? And shit! If they don't, then my STORY loses all that important stuff like foreshadowing it's supposed to have, but if they do, then they might do something and screw up the STORY." "Do they alter my NPC's planned behavior? Shit! Can they do that? If they can, then what do I do?" "Are they in a position of advantage relative to physical danger, altering my planned use of combat mechanics? Shit! If they are, then I don't have as good a feel for how this is supposed to turn out. They need to respect my characters' danger to them so they can ally with them later with the proper amount of respect, or my STORY won't have the scene I'm playing in my head."

Here's my point to you: as far as I can tell without having been there myself, when play is Murky in this fashion, then not rolling is not going to be a solution either. The problem was not how to find out how the negotiations went - no! The point was to get you (the players) into putting the characters where they were supposed to go, while maintaining the desperate illusion that all such events were being internally and causally generated, instead of imposed. If I really had to guess, I think the GM called for a roll in hopes that it would turn out the way you were supposed to go. And now, not guessing but speaking from extensive experience, I know a skilled Illusionist GM uses non-formalized mechanics, "just talking," "role-playing," even more manipulatively.

In fact, I realize you didn't tell us whether your negotiation check succeed. Did it? Either way, what happened? Did you stay on the rails? If so, did you know that was happening at the time? If so, did anyone overtly indicate his or her knowledge of that?

I'm beginning to think this thread should reach back even further into The Impossible Thing, Illusionism, Force, and the Black Curtain. But I'll do that another day.

Best, Ron

When I referenced Amber, that was exactly my point, that Amber doesn't use dice but it has some solid guidelines for determining what happens in the narrative, and despite the fact that you do compare numbers (in the game), it is very very free form. A conversation like the one that Nicks talking about would be handled in one of three ways: 1)The merchant is way better at talking than you, the GM tells you you lose, 2) Your way better than the Merchant, the GM lets you get what you want, 3) your close enough at being good/not good at talking: you and the gm describe exactly what happens, word for word, and see what results, the GM uses Good Stuff/Bad Stuff as a guideline when he doesn't have an idea of how thing would go. Its not a free form discussion, but its close.

Wow, looks like a freight train hit this thread, there are so many points that have been raised, I've lost count. I'll say the thing that immediately came to my mind when reading the first post anyway, in the hope it's not too confusing.

Nick, I can totally relate to your disappointment. What I read from your first two paragraphs is this: There you were, picking up all the bits and pieces of fiction that had been created along the game's way, building on them, transforming them into an argument that was rooted in the fictional situation and simply made sense. You were making a good case, and you were probably also acting in character, putting up some performance. And the GM acknowledged you when he said, "good point". You were connecting, he was confirming your interpretation of the fictional situation, your understanding of the NPC and his motivation. The fiction was coming alive between the two of you, you were "getting into it", assessing it, judging it, and this meant something. And then the GM stepped back, taking away the acknowledgement, interrupting the connection by asking for a roll. So it didn't matter after all. You might as well just have said: "My guy tries to convince that guy that it's not our fault", and rolled.

Now that's not to say that the GM was wrong, it's simply what I read from your post as how you felt about it. Maybe I'm projecting, because it's sure how I would have felt. This is something I've been bringing up before, concerning involvement and dedication with the shared fiction, and concerning real judgement of quality contributions. A provocative take on your first two paragraphs would be that you and the GM lingered, for a small moment, at the threshold of entering a higher level of play (higher level of skill, higher level of engagment, higher level of shared understanding, higher level of satisfaction). But I'm afraid bringing all this into the discussion on top of everything that Ron and Adam have already raised would be way too much for this single thread. Let me know if anything I've written resonates with you, then we might spin it off (now or later).

- Frank

Ron,
I think the overview is a useful historical document to gain perspective by. But in terms of this:

When dice are a pretense, then fuck them. Clearly this goes for any kind of formal procedure for resolving something (or better, to establish consequence) ... and that includes dialogue.

Hi everyone,

Those are great posts, but I think we need to let Nick respond and act as the thread leader.

I'll post just a little based on what y'all have written.

Nolan, that technique you're describing is not "free form" at all. Or perhaps it's better to say, if we want to use the term "free form," we need a better definition of it than merely "not using dice." As far as I'm concerned, as soon as we reference the quantitative/comparative features of the two characters to frame how to resolve this situation, then we've entered mechanics-land, and are well out of anything called "free form," whatever that might be.

All of which is to say, yes, I think your earlier point and my big posts above are compatible. Let's not argue because we agree; that's silly.

Frank, your post addressed Nick specifically, and I mainly agree, so I'll only say I do want to try to avoid the pitfall of saying the "higher level" of play you mention is predicated on abandoning dice. But I think I hit that dead creature a few times already with my keyboard, so I'll leave it.

Callan, my "fuck them" can apply both to play and to design. As it happens, I try to play games without doing that, by instead acknowledging and tolerating the parameters of the pretense in order to discover what might be excellent in some other part of the game. But that's just me in research + fun mode, and it seems unreasonable to ask others to do it, when they're in fun mode alone. So for anyone who's not inclined toward analysis of the game, then yeah, my advice is in fact, fuck the dice or fuck the talking or fuck some specific combination of them, if any of those things is generating Murk. Life's too short to play in that stuff, ever.

So, over to Nick.

Best, Ron

Thanks for all the replies!

Frank absolutely hit the nail on the head with his post.  That is EXACTLY what I'm talking about.  Why did the GM bother to act in character to accuse we, the players, of attracting trouble to the caravan, if my own in-character response was not sufficient, but would instead depend on a die-roll (which did, in fact, succeed, Ron)?  Just as you say, Frank, we could just as easily skipped the roleplay and settled the whole situation with dice, or, as I would have prefered, simply acted the situation out in character.  Even though I succeeded with my die roll, I would have preferred merely acting the thing out, and failing. 

Ron, your posts are both interesting.  I'm not sure I've adequately processed everything, but I do very much appreciate your idea of murky versus not murky.  So, from my perspective, the murk is in the fact that I'm not sure what a negotiation skill means in a game, and a lot of my post is really about trying to figure this out.  So returning to my actual play example involving the caravan leader, am I to 1) roll my negotiation skill and then roleplay with the guard based on what result I get?  In other words, if I succeed, is the fun of the roll the fact that I get to act out a successful negotiation?  Or 2) do we not act out the negotiation at all, but instead let the roll determine what happens, possibly by deciding BEFORE the roll what the stakes are?  (in which case, maybe it was simply bad play for me to invest myself in trying to act out the encounter in the first place) Or 3) do we roll only if we don't feel like acting the situation out in character? 

I mean, when I made the post, I had in mind which option I prefered.  But it's not clear to me how these mechanics are supposed to work.  When do we use them?  When don't we?  What place does in-character roleplaying have in a system where there are skills and mechanics for everything?  THIS is where the murk comes in for me.  I'm genuinely not sure when one should roll and when one should not.  If a game has a negotiation skill and some mechanic to utilize it, then am I wrong for wanting to act out my negotiations without dice?  Does it mean I should be using a different system?  So far, my preference is to not roll for a lot of this stuff, since it feels like rolling overrides whatever effort I put into acting the part of my character.  And I say this as a person who genuinely is not interested in using roleplaying as a way to gain some advantage;  I have no interest in making a character that is a total combat machine, and then using free-form roleplaying (as opposed to formal mechanical procedures) to circumvent that same character's weaknesses.  I'm interested in the free-form because it feels more fun to me, thus far.  But I'm interested in how rolling the dice CAN be fun, which is a big part of why I made this thread. 

AS to rails and whatnot...  I will gladly defer to Ron's far more extensive experience and concede that free-form is potentially more easily turned towards GM manipulation and so on. 

I don't intend for this thread to be entirely about me.  I started the thread with the hopes that I could get some insight into why one would prefer rolling dice to settle negotiatiosn versus acting out a negotiation free-form.  As far as all that goes, I appreciate the notion of niche protection and game balance.  I also happily concede that I don't really want to free-form my combats, and I'm not sure why I feel that way.  Also, I am uneasy about free-form magic.  Am I hopelessly oldschool?  I am very familiar with the rhetoric of old-school D&Ders, but I'm not an evangelist for that style of play, though I find it attractive in some ways.  I am genuinely drawn to what I know of games beyond the D&D world.  I'm wanting to expand my horizons.  But I'm not sure I'm at all sold on the benefits of having negotiation rolls in a game.  My experiences of these sorts of mechanics seem to cheapen my own experience of a roleplaying game.  As my actual play example points out...  having to roll the dice was kind of a jarring, unpleasant thing.  Why invest oneself if you can roll instead?  And is rolling really that fun?  For me, in situations like my actual play example, it's not.  If the main benefit of having negotiation skills and the like is to prevent some kind of munchkinism or the overwhelming power of DM fiat, I'm not sure that's enough for me to be sold on them. 

I feel some of the comments are pretty strongly stated... so let me be super clear here; my intention is to better understand this stuff, not to step on anyone's toes.  Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes.  I'm not trying to tell anyone else how they should enjoy their games. 

Nick

Weeellll....  I can suggest some reasons why the role might have been made.  They may or may not have any relevanece to the actual event in your game, though, but let me throw some ideas out there.

The GM isn't playing one character like you are; the GM is playing every other character.  So while your thoughts can intuitively align with your characters thoughts, this isn't true for the GM's characters; otherwise they will all be the same.  In this context it's quite dangerous for the GM to simply rely on what they personally think is reasonable when it comes to portraying NPC's; after all, there are multitudes of people who fervently believe things I think are quite ridiculous, and vice versa.  In this sense, some kind of randomisation serves as a check on the GM falling into the habit of making all their NPC's think along similar lines.

The second thing is that the result of the roll might not have mattered that much in terms of content, but rather only in subjectivity.  Let's say for example that the GM recognised your point was good, and yet you failed the roll; now whatever happens happens, and you can go away with the feeling that the caravan master was unjust.  Does that make a big difference?  It provides you with a motivation of sorts.  And the same may apply the other way; the GM may interpret the result as meaning that the caravan master was unconvinced there and then - blinded by anger, say - but later comes around to see your point and regrets whatever decision they made.  Or the GM could decide that while the caravan master was not convinced, other people in earshot were and intervene or talk him down.

In this way, the roll can add to play, and produce events that were otherwise unexpected or unlikely if it were just an argument made player to player, and therefore be fun.

Hi Nick,

I'm going to do something I rarely do and choose part of your post for bit-by-bit dissection. Please double-check me on whether I've disrespected the bigger picture of your post.

I'm not sure what a negotiation skill means in a game, and a lot of my post is really about trying to figure this out.

So returning to my actual play example involving the caravan leader, am I to 1) roll my negotiation skill and then roleplay with the guard based on what result I get? In other words, if I succeed, is the fun of the roll the fact that I get to act out a successful negotiation? Or 2) do we not act out the negotiation at all, but instead let the roll determine what happens, possibly by deciding BEFORE the roll what the stakes are? (in which case, maybe it was simply bad play for me to invest myself in trying to act out the encounter in the first place) Or 3) do we roll only if we don't feel like acting the situation out in character?

I've been watching this thread and it is churning up flashbacks of similar problems I've had as a GM.

When I was a teenager, I had a long-running GURPS campaign with a couple friends, and we all thought very highly of "good role-playing". The "social skills" in GURPS didn't make a lot of sense to me apart from adding color, and I never used reaction rolls or the reaction table. As the GM, I just went into the shared imagined space, and when social conflicts came up, we always handled it "in character" through dialogue and narrated actions, unless someone was using a mind power or similar. I just couldn't see how social skills and reactions could be quantified without stripping out a fun and meaningful dimension of the game; it seemed like using the social skills and reaction rolls reduced rich narrative interaction and dialogue to a pass-fail die roll, and I knew nothing of Fortune In The Middle or other methods of tying the narrative interaction to the dice.

My friends were gifted thespians, which made the game come alive. For the most part, not only did they get away with role-playing social skills that weren't listed on their sheets, I probably awarded them Character Points (GURPS's XP) for it. But not having a formal system to deal with social conflicts created a lot of trouble too, for reasons already mentioned in this thread. Because we had no rules, the only methods I had to push back were acting and GM fiat. Clever manipulators (which was probably part of our social contract), the players could usually get me to say "good point" and twist my NPCs' wills around their plans. As a reaction, I basically kept most of the main NPCs out of their reach, except for a few encounters in carefully-controlled environments; sometimes these scenes were driven toward preconceived outcomes (so that the NPC could escape alive), which was both alien to the rest of our game and uncomfortable.

The other problem this created was that it eroded meaningful scene-framing. I had no concept of GM authority over the beginning and end of scenes. GURPS had an interesting system for tracking character time between adventures, which could be used for training, employment, travel, or other things. But we almost never used that system, since the players knew they could get more Character Points and social resources in the game by role-playing every single interaction. This led to some dramatic, vivid, and life-transforming events in the fiction, but it also created hours of banal, mundane, aimless scenes and pointless conflicts. While it kept the players in the driver's seat as far as exploring the fiction, it often degraded and deprotagonized their characters. To put it another way, we often played scenes where nothing interesting was at stake, just in case something interesting might come up. Is that what people mean when they talk about "sandbox"-style roleplaying?

I recognize that last part as bad prep: there probably should have been more overt stakes in the fiction generally, so that character choices in any scene will bang. On the whole, we had fun in spite of our lack of meaningful scene-framing, but so much simulation burned me out. After that, I didn't role-play again for years, not until my daughter was born. It was then that I discovered games like Sorcerer and Trollbabe that really illuminated me on the role of systems in role-playing social conflict, particularly how dice rolls can be combined with narration to creatively enrich the role-playing experience rather than emasculate it.

Nick, you mentioned a few different ways to deal with social conflict in the fiction: A) Make a skill roll and role-play the result. B) Determine what may happen and roll for a result. C) Just roll, and note whether you succeed or fail. D) Just role-play, narrating the actions and dialog without using dice. My sense is that A, B, and C would feel artificial and knock you out of character immersion, and out of the fiction, and I can see why; hence my strong preference for D in the GURPS campaign I described. Reading Sorcerer helped to knock my brain open about the use of fortune mechanics in social conflict:

"Rolls force the situation to CHANGE and victories describe the DIRECTION OF CHANGE."

I recommend you read Jesse's article on social conflict in Sorcerer, and if that speaks to your condition, share it with your GM. The fact is, most role-playing texts are not clear on the role of narration in any kind of conflict. D&D 4E allows the GM to assign a +2 or -2 modifier to a roll based on favorable or unfavorable circumstances, but that's about it. GURPS goes into much more arcane detail, but it doesn't deal with these issues as squarely as Sorcerer.

Ron wrote: If it really matters to you, then ask them, and I mean collectively and in person, not just the GM and for God's sake not by email.

Just as a side note, to me it looks quite the opposite of Franks estimate (which you agreed with), where the GM acknowledged the point, then somehow took it away by asking for a roll. Quoting Frank

And the GM acknowledged you when he said, "good point". You were connecting, he was confirming your interpretation of the fictional situation, your understanding of the NPC and his motivation. The fiction was coming alive between the two of you, you were "getting into it", assessing it, judging it, and this meant something. And then the GM stepped back, taking away the acknowledgement, interrupting the connection by asking for a roll.

That last post was for Nick, just in case I left it confusing...

Hi everyone,

Nick, I’m glad I interpreted your post correctly, I thought it was an excellent example and well presented.

I really see two linked follow-up questions. One of them is how to make mechanical skill checks, in particular concerning so-called “social skills”, meaningful and consequential. And the other is how to make in-character acting and moment-by-moment verbal negotiation between the real people at the table meaningful and consequential.

This thread is already deep into addressing the first question, which is good and well. My initial reaction was to tackle the second question because I personally have found that to be the crucial point of my enjoyment of play. It appears that not everyone places equal emphasis in this regard.

I’ll leave the “higher level” aside for now, and I’m with Ron that it isn’t predicated on abandoning dice. Me personally, I enjoy in-character acting and moment-by-moment verbal negotiation of the in-game events because I feel they provide context and substance to what happens to the characters.  This is something I have found to be absolutely vital to my enjoyment of play. It challenges my imagination, wit and acting skill, and I enjoy it in particular when playing with imaginative, witty players who are good actors.

A key point in this type of negotiation is the point where the players at the table assess the fictional situation, using their real, human judgment, making a decision based on their idea of likelihood, or genre conventions, or tone which they imagine for the game. That decision may have mechanical consequences that lead to fictional consequences, or it may only have fictional consequences. And even if it’s the latter, it may still incorporate some mechanical scores into the process of decision making. Vincent Baker has termed this key point “Moment of Judgment” and you should absolutely read his excellent blog post if you haven’t already. It also quotes some great people. ;-)

Nick, I think you were disappointed by the GM because you felt he denied that Moment of Judgment. Your own interpretation of the fictional situation was that your argument could not fail to convince the caravan leader. There was no point of arguing about it, the argument made sense and he had no reason not to follow it. It had been established that your character had said what he said, so the GM would have had to assess this and act accordingly. There was no space for a skill check to determine how convincing your character had been—the argument stood for itself.

Now we don’t know if your GM really denied his judgment, or if he just has a different idea of what a skill check means. Here is where the Moment of Judgment and the Murk connect.

- Frank

Hm, this thread seems to have faded out which is a pity because there were some points I still wanted to make. I’ll just go ahead with some musings on the intersection of a Moment of Judgment and a skill check in a traditional RPG. I used to think it was rather clear. As I saw it and always applied it in my games (for all task resolution based systems), a skill check was meant as a tie-breaker in a situation of doubt. Can I swing across the chasm on that rope? It’s not impossible, but neither is it trivial, so the dice will tell.

Some rulebooks of traditional RPGs explicitly stated, and I used to think that those who didn’t took for granted two things:

1) If something was trivial, you’d succeed without a roll. “You don’t need to roll to walk down the street.” The German RPG, Das Schwarze Auge, has often been laughed at for a practice of not following this rule which somehow evolved among the players. With some GMs, a person who could swim reasonably well faced a statistical chance of ~50% of drowning when swimming in a lake on a sunny day. I used to think that common sense should suffice to see this couldn’t be right.

2) If something was impossible, you’d fail without a roll, or much rather, you just wouldn’t try because that would be silly. A normal human cannot jump straight up to the fourth floor of a building. Not even Jacky Chan.

And this would be the Moment of Judgment, the point where a player (usually the GM in a trad game) decided whether something was trivial, impossible, or somewhere in between, the last meaning a dice roll would determine the outcome. Sometimes a little bit of a debate would ensue and the GM might even change his mind. Sometimes a player would accept the GM’s final judgment only under protest, but by and large, in the groups I played in, there was a common understanding and usually the group would find the GM’s judgment mostly appropriate.

In the so-called “social conflicts” it was just the same, only the required judgment tended to be more complex and sometimes not as transparent. Let’s say your character is holding a knife to a little boy’s throat and telling the boy’s mother to hand over the ruby or else... Now if the mother is a normal person, I’d probably say this is trivial, she will hand over the ruby without you needing to make an intimidation check. But what if the mother isn’t a terrified normal person, but a ruthless scheming noblewoman in a Swords ‘n Sorcery setting who knows your character to be much too honorable for his own good? Suddenly I’m thinking the GM wouldn’t be out of bounds to simply have her laugh at you: “Or else what, you pathetic fool?” And I can imagine games in which I, as a player, would be totally thrilled by such a move. I find this kind of interaction to be the most challenging and fun part of role-playing, this is where strong contributions really shine and lame contributions really... don’t.

And that last bit, to my mind, is the core of the “roll-playing vs. role-playing” debate concerning “social conflicts”. Some role-players prefer to leave the outcome of social interaction entirely to the dice because they don’t want to submit themselves to their fellow players’ judgment in this field. And there may be valid reasons for them doing so. But me personally, I find play to be the poorer for it.

- Frank

I guess one of the reasons I held off posting, is because I'd say 'So that moment of judgement - you can decide for him how he judged the matter? As in you say he definately denied the moment of judgement. Like you know the process of his own mind better than he does?'. It's like there's actually a second moment of judgement going on in the observer here, as to whether the other person is 'thinking right'.

While I think that that's technically correct, there is nothing in the universe I'm aware of that ensures saying what's technically correct will go well.

It measures up like this: if the rule hands the GM full authority on this, it's just 'I don't have to follow rules/what I've agreed to if I don't think somethings right' on the observers part. Indeed I'm pretty sure lumpley principle is either being bent to this idea these days, or was this all along (and I projected a functional variant onto it when first readig it).

Historically : Of course you have a mechanical set up where nasty things like your characters ears getting clipped off (we have an old thread on that somewhere), or being orc raped, or whatever are within the wideranging capacity the rules grant him. Human brain thinking this can't be right, it argues against it. This becomes a gamer tradition. And it becomes traditional to ignore the rules on a regular basis and call it 'good roleplaying'.

Hi Callan, let me make a few clarifications. I didn’t say Nick’s GM denied the Moment of Judgment, I said that Nick felt he had denied it. That’s a huge difference. I don’t claim to know what’s going on inside other people’s heads. For Nick’s game, heck, I don’t even know enough to say how I would have ruled, as GM.

But in a game I play in myself, I will have a notion of what makes sense and “fits” in the fiction and I will argue it to the other players if I feel the need. I indeed believe that these things are not purely subjective, there are objective criteria by which they can be reasonably assessed. That’s not the same as saying my own judgment is always right, mind you. Of course it isn’t. I remember we debated this exact question before and had to agree to disagree, so let’s maybe not resurrect that debate.

Concerning all those bad gamer traditions, luckily I’ve had contact with them almost exclusively in internet discussions. I don’t really care about them. Abuse is always possible, but a concept isn’t wrong because the wrong people mistakingly applaud it. But let’s be clear about one thing: “The GM is always right” is the most stupid sentence that has ever been written in an RPG book.

It’s sometimes helpful for players to not question every single call by the GM and grant him the benefit of the doubt so play can move on and not be stuck in endless discussions and justifications. But that requires the players to trust the GM is not trying to screw them over, and such trust cannot be imposed by the author of an RPG book. You don’t just claim it as a GM. You need to earn it.

- Frank

My reading of the initial situation (and what Nick was complaining about in regards to gather information checks etc.) is a difference between the players and gm on the value of System (in this case specifically the mechanical factor of a skill check) versus Character, Situation and Setting.  The Gm is emphasizing the system and allowing the specifics to be abstracted by resorting to a skill check.  What the character said makes sense and has some value so we'll check on it but he doesnt value the situation enough to develop it further by exploring the character of the caravan driver and his response to being attacked and engage the pc in a dialogue that could change how the situation turned out.  In the end he resorted to system and let the roll determine the relatively meaningless results of the situation.

I talked a bit about D&D earlier but I'll expand a bit.  D&D featured a lot of combat and we at one point tried getting dramatic and making descriptions of our actions, swinging swords wildly or crouching and aiming for a certain target point, but all those descriptions are essentially meaningless when you have a group of 10th level characters with 60-90 hit points fighting a half dozen monsters with similar hit points.  The abstract nature of hit points and the combat system rendered the description of the actions meaningless.  You could describe the most amazing battle manuever but it didnt really matter it all came down to the math of subtracting hit points until the combat was resolved.

I think that is the heart of the matter.  A willingness to abstract that level of detail is harmful to any vision of what is going on in the moment.  I think one of the problems in detailed complex systems, like the D&D combat system or Gurps and its infinite skill list is that the mechanics can easily overpower the fictional content.  I'm not sure whether it's an actual desire or preference on the part of those doing it or just a habit that one tends to slip into but it's definitely something I've noticed since the beginning of my experience with rpg's.

Caldis: But the opposite can be equally true. If things are two specific or tie too specifically to "in fiction" content, people either have to frame their narrative to the rules (which they have to do an a highly abstract system, like AD&D's combat system (one roll per minute)) or they have to try to determine how rules apply to fictional content in a very specific way.

Hi Frank,

As much as I understand you describe it as relevant whether the GM shared some sort of moment of judgement. Your only question is whether he was doing this or something else. Let's say hypothetically he definately did share a moment of judgement with Nick, then denied it - your saying in that case that denial of judgement is relevant somehow, when the shared rule is the GM pretty much does whatever?

Hey Callan, but it's not "the GM does whatever"! The GM gets to make the call, but not all calls are equal. That's exactly my point.

- Frank

Frank, your so used to taking the left fork in the road, so to speak, when I try to point out the right fork in contrast, you think I'm refering to the left and that's also the one I'm taking "Come on, you know the GM doesn't get to do whatever - your here next to me on the left fork in the road!". I'm not.

The rule says the GM can do whatever then he can do whatever and all calls are exactly equal. It's like in chess where if the rules say he can move a piece a certain way, he can, and all the moves he can make are equal. As in they are all perfectly valid. In an RPG however he uses 'do whatever' it's valid use of the rules, no matter how much suck 'whatever' is. This is the right fork in the road.

"But that's horrible!"

Yes it is. It pushes, bloody strongly, the desire to design rules that grant the GM considerably less power and the rule empowered ability to only do fun things (fun by the designers measure, atleast, and playtesting to check that's the case whilst in design). To move on from 'The text says the GM can do anything...but he can't do anything, ya know!'

I would question exactly who is somehow empowered to decide which calls aren't equal, but there's not much point. I'm pretty sure having described the right fork, you'd say it's drastically different from what you do (am I wrong?). It's an alien at the dinner table moment for you ("You can't seriously play in that way!"), if I estimate correctly. But atleast you know when I say whether he ignored the moment of judgement is irrelevant, I'm talking about having taken the right fork in the road, not the left.

Callan, I understand your line of argument, but I don't understand your point. I just can't relate to it, like, at all. To pick up on your example of Chess, if someone were to play Chess with me and make random moves, valid by the rules but without any strategy whatsoever, so I'd wipe him out in no time (although I'm a lousy Chess player), what point is there for either of us playing? There isn't any. So is Chess broken, as a game? Of course it's not! Would Chess need rules to stop people from making stupid moves, is that your conclusion? Are you looking for a game that people can enjoy by making random decisions, without any purpose or common sense, just by following the rules?

- Frank

Facinating. The fork grows deeper.

To pick up on your example of Chess, if someone were to play Chess with me and make random moves, valid by the rules but without any strategy whatsoever, so I'd wipe him out in no time (although I'm a lousy Chess player), what point is there for either of us playing? There isn't any.

Playing chess not to win is not playing chess. Its like if we play poker, but there's no money involved, and people bet like the chips don't mean anything... this might be fun or functional or whatever but its not what most people are looking for when they talk about playing poker. I can't remember the name of the thread but this reminds me of a topic you started about people playing D&D and not wanting to have a big conversation about what playing D&D is about or this game is about or whatever.

When you sit down to play chess you do so with certain expectations that are probably reasonable, for the other person not to share those expectations isn't a negative quality in them, but it is a miscommunication between the two of you, because without those expectations your fundamentally changing the nature of the game.

I've heard an account of someone thinking a certain unit in starcraft was just coooool, so he made tons of them. Essentially random activity. Then another player turns up with units weak to them and as the accounts go, the first players units breathed on them and they vaporised! Won the game! Sometimes by sheer ballsy luck, random wins.

People can win without playing to win (lucky bastards). It's not a requirement.

Indeed I've heard of someone losing a duel in wow and calling the winning player crap, because he did 'all the wrong moves'. Sometimes people become so wrapped up in their expectations, their expectations are more important to them than who won or who lost.

but its not a question of winning or losing, its about the definition of the activity. you can bet like an idiot and win poker because you've got good hands, but the meat of the game lies in the betting and the bluffing, in guessing what the opponents thinking, its where the fun is for (some/most) people who play. The fun in chess, why most people would want to play, is because its cerebral and strategic... People go to these activities because they provide a certain type of enjoyment/engagement that is associated with them, and facilitated by them, but not 100% in forced by them (all though, in the long run, one type of play will be more successful than others). Doing something else when playing them, without the consent (on some level of the other player(s)) is thoughtless at best and shitty at worst. 

Nolan, your treating your definition as if it's the default. Dave Sirlin has the nickname 'low strong' because in street fighter, he'd often use it with a particular character (when he estimates it'll score him a win) the low strong attack over and over (18 times in a row on one count). Isn't street fighter about all sorts of moves? Doesn't that make thoughtless or at worst, shitty? If he uses throws, doesn't that make him 'cheap'? It's worth reading the essay on the scrub in terms of this. (personal side note: not that I endorce Sirlin as a forum moderator - he's a little immature for that)

The only pivotal thing I think exists is this: If they win, are you going to congrats them or say good game? Even if you think they used some other defintion?

Your defintion isn't just play to win, it's meet your expectations or your thoughtless. Alot of other people would congratulate the other person, even if they are a clueless lucky bastard. They still won. There are alot of people who follow this second definition of congratulating, regardless. Those are the people who find what I described, fun. We could go on and on, but I think you'll find those people exist and in high numbers (though I suspect in low numbers in the roleplaying community...but that's just a side suspicion).

All moves are equal is entirely functional (particularly given a game that mechanically shifts itself to it's own end (as opposed to one waiting on 'fictional cues' to move towards the end)). I suspect for Nar as well, if it's actually designed that way too. I dunno about sim, so if you wanna argue I'm wrong there you've got plenty of room from me to do so.

For this thread to continue, Nick needs to bring it around to relate to his thread topic and general hopes for the discussion. Otherwise it ends here.

I am not saying the discussion in the last page and a half has been poor. I am saying that it's time for people to take it to daughter threads with Actual Play starting-points of their own.

Moderator hat definitely on.

Best, Ron