Hey there. I saw a thread on non-gamers "challenging assumptions" and whatnot. It made me think of some recent experiences, but the ansuing discussion was pretty "meta" compared to what I was thinking.

My regular group sometimes includes one person who's an occasional, casual gamer. She only knows the games she plays and has no connection to online gamer culture or the industry/scene/whatever.

She often says some interesting and forthright things. She was describing her character's action during a game and I explained that she'd have to wait for her initiative to come up, and she simply said:

"Initiative's pretty stupid."

Naturally, she's right. Oh, and in case some of you are going to recommend a phase system -- well, she thought that was pretty lame too.

Basically, she thought that actions really don't have a coherent order apart from what the actions actually are. She wanted to do something (a grapple, I think) that wouldn't have made sense using initiative, but would have been fine in a simple exchange of blows (stuff/whatever).

Other targets of her scorn include damage rolls in most systems and rolling to hide from folks.

So, any similar experiences? Again, I don't mean larger issues like Shall We Have a GM. I mean standard mechanics that you see in a whole bunch of systems.

Hi Malcolm,

For me? Hit location rolls, as expressed after the roll-to-hit. It represents a kind of time-reversal, as in, we're not going to worry about what you were trying to hit until after we know it hits.

Then add the option for called shots to that, with penalties, and it moves from nose-wrinkling to toss-hands-in-the-air.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Not to de-rail the thread, so just an aside: order/announcement systems have come a long way recently, avoiding both "initiative" and phase-based mechanics. PM me if you want a list.

For me it's stuff where rules don't seem like "rules."

Systems where you say "I have X Skill" where X can be anything from "Viking Bad-Ass" (which presumably gives long-boat navigation, tactics and strategy, survival skills, all kinds of combat, revelry, etc.) to a specific school of fencing (where a character might be trained in more than one)--and the player and GM have to figure out when/where it's appropriate. I don't get that--it seems like you could bypass it by just saying "do whatever you want and I'll argue about it if I'm so inclined--and wee, there's no way to decide."*

I've seen arguments over "cool move bonuses." Every move my character does is cool. If you want me to describe it, ask me. If you tell me my move isn't cool enough to get the bonus, go hang. Seems like extra handling time where it may not be wanted/needed (and, worse, if you have a buddy who's idea of cool is 180-degree yours you got serious issues: "I hit him with the wrench in such a way that now he's *inverted*" "hun?" "upside down." "How does that work?" "It's a special move." "Completely upside down, like hanging in air?" "yes. for a second." "hunh."** ;)

-Marco
* Risus gets around this sorta by having the skills be defined as "cliches." But because of they way inappropriate cliches can be used/must be used, it creates (for me) other problems.
** This is based (somewhat loosely) on an actual in-game dialog.

Hi Marco,

Quick clarification: Feng Shui does not have such a rule (even though for some reason people always cite it as doing so); Sorcerer does, Dread does, and Exalted does.

Best,
Ron

Heh. I realized that after I posted and edited it (I've never seen FS but it's top in my mind on the cool-move list for some reason).

-Marco

The only thing that has ever really bothered me about RPGs is hit points. The concept that the first three bullets couldn't kill you, but this fourth one probably will just blows away any sense of realism other elements of the game might introduce.

Most other elements don't really bug me. I realize that RPGs are just arbitrarily simplified models of the real world. Thus, I expect a few cases where an elegant real-life curve has been mangled into a straight line.

In fact, I don't want to shut newbie gamers down in situations like this, so I often politely recommend that they come up with a rule system that does things the way they expect. More than once I've had someone either come up with this hideously complex monstrosity, or a decision that the original rules weren't so bad after all. Either way, it's always an eye-opening experience for the newbie that helps them understand why RPGs are the way they are.

The most important "standard RPG concept" that I find newbie players have trouble grasping is mission selection.

Again and again, those silly know-nothings come in thinking that they can just pick whatever plot hook or adventure opportunity or character goal sounds most interesting to them and go haring off to it, instead of cautiously weighing the degree of challenge against their abilities.

Of course, I'd be remiss in my GM duties if I didn't set them straight real quick when they get too big for their britches that way. A dozen or two dice of dragon breath or a barrage of autofire ranged killing attack work wonders for teaching these kinds of careless idiots to fear the consequences of their actions (or half the time, to give up on playing altogether).

Just kidding about that last paragraph. Put me down as a very very remiss GM.

- Walt

Heck, I'm a relatively experienced gamer, and "mission selection" is almost totally beyond me.

Heck, I'm a relatively experienced gamer, and "mission selection" is almost totally beyond me.

100% of that rings home for me Walt.

I do tend to think that this method of play has declined somewhat. But I think the primary reason for that is simply the demographics of 80s gamers getting older and not having the copious free time of underchallenged undergrads to create such monstrous tomes any longer.

For those groups that continue to play this way, and I suspect that its a non trivial number, the majority are almost certainly using and relying on that same tome of information...now likely scattered between several binders, a couple spiral bounds, their PC hard drive, and a mess of lost information now irretrevably found only on outdated diskettes that can no longer be read.

I don't think we hear that much about this culture because by and large they have everything they need. They aren't likely to frequent internet sites where the majority of the discussion is about recent releases because they aren't about to upset the apple cart and have to try and restat their work to a new system.

Since their game (whatever it was originally) has probably been houseruled into near unrecognizability and their world is almost certainly unique (and likely a pastiche of whatever novels, movies, and history books attracted their attention at the time) they have little in common with other groups doing the same thing and so tend to be fairly insular. New members may come and go, but the campaign is never ending.

I've known groups like this. I've quit groups like this (the main campus RPG group at Penn State was exactly like this, with a core of 3-4 adults who played and a legion of rotating students. It was the adults group. The students were there solely to 1) round out the party, and 2) serve as an excuse to spend university resources.

A lot of that connects with my experiences as a gamer.

"Mission selection" is only beyond me as a skill. One one level, as a gamer, I should be able to look at things, weigh the risks, and go "hmm, that looks right for my level." But for whatever reason, I've never been able to successfully develop that skill.

That's all I meant. :)

Hey Walt,

Enter the GM, who's carrying....setting notes of sufficient scope and detail to make Tolkien's life's work look like a page of haiku....It's a big world, and designed for characters of all conceivable effectiveness levels....So if the course you freely (perhaps too carelessly) choose your character to follow happens to take your character within range of an oppositely aligned (or just hungry) creature whose attacks require the roll of all the d6s in the GM's thirty-pound dice box, well, you can just kiss your character goodbye, sorry, thanks for playing.

Yeah, I played with this guy once back in 1985. It was a pick-up game of AD&D¹ in an open gaming room at the King Con comic book convention on the campus of Eastern Michigan University. Chargen took nearly three hours, and featured some pretty exotic chart-based randomizations. Had I rolled 00 on the chart for psionic ability, I would then have rolled on a second chart. A 00 on that chart, and then another one on a third chart would have made me the ultimate power in the universe. And of course, it wasn't all gravy. If I recall, my actual roll on that chart was one percentage point away from some kind of ambulatory vegetative state or narcolepsy condition or something.

And yeah, I was dead in under fifteen minutes of play. I don't remember the exact details, but some half-human/half-phoenix person took a disliking to me in the very first scene. It was in a tavern, of course. The half-phoenix used a fire breath ability to incinerate me at the bar.

And I was out of there...the first dead character of the game, and I couldn't have been more thrilled. I recall being generous, "Cool game. Thanks for running it." The player to my right, who'd kindly shared his bag of pistachio nuts with me during chargen, looked pretty forlorn as I packed up my stuff.

Paul

¹ purportedly

Oops, sorry about the misintepretation, Alexander. But since we're now on the same page, I'm all the more curious about your perspective on this.

Lack of mission selection skill has obviously not prevented you from gaming. How has it affected your play experiences, particularly your choices of game groups and game systems?

Would it be a stretch to intepret this lack of skill on your part as at least partially due to lack of inclination? After all, weighing risks can amount to buying into self-enforced restrictions on your decision-making freedom, which can range up to de facto railroading. Not everyone's idea of fun.

Which (getting back to the real thread topic) has been my whole point; my sympathies obviously lie with those darned reckless ("dumbass") non-gamers who are just trying to do what the game copy tells them they can do.

Paul, yup, that's the guy all right. But it sounds like you already had gaming experience at the time (it was at a con, after all). And it doesn't sound like mission selection ability or inclination was really a factor in that instance. But imagine if you were a freshman who'd heard about D&D and went to try it out in that guy's regular campus game.

The real damage isn't the character getting killed for overreaching, it's when that's compounded with the scornful reaction. This happens because a non-player taking on a too-difficult challenge and suffering the consequences is misinterpreted, through the acclimatized players' lens, as greed getting its rightful comeuppance.

- Walt

[edited to adjust for Paul's post that I cross-posted with]

I'm curious; while what you describe here is clearly disfunctional - do you think a similar style of play can ever be functional? GMs with whom I have e-conversed have esposed such a style as the 'True Way of GMing', arguing that an extant world with its many dangers and potential player-killings offers more versimilitude (sp?) with an encompanying depth of emersion.

It's not something I've ever attempted or experienced so I'm kind of in the dark.

IME you can do missions without the "dumbass" factor, even with a GM a lot like the one described above.

Question asked by me to GM: "My character is an experienced ranger what does he think about that section of the map? What does his professional woodland and monster hunting experience tell us about our chances."

GM: "Umm ... make a roll [rule checking]. He thinks there are orcs there but in [checks pages] smallish numbers usually. Six to Eight."

Me: "What's an orcish ambush like? Do they ... use bows--or just come charging out?"

GM: "Charging."

Me: "Make sure you tell me when we are reaching an area that is constrained enough to be ambush worthy. I think my character would recognize that."

GM: [considers] "Okay."

No dumbass. And I can't tell how to factor character strength either especially (and certianly not in the version of D&D we were playing). IME GM's usually respond well to "my character's an expert but I'm not--let's figure out what he would know." After all, they can't very well tell you that you've lived 18+years in this world and don't know anything (1st level characters might not get much data in a level based system, yes--but presumably you still had a mentor and were still trained).

I'm not saying that the mission based thing doesn't happen or shouldn't--but the fairly (IMO) mean "what did you expect, dumbass" bit doesn't have to.

-Marco

I'm not saying that the mission based thing doesn't happen or shouldn't--but the fairly (IMO) mean "what did you expect, dumbass" bit doesn't have to.

I'm running D&D for a group made up mostly of non-gamers, and as they exit the opening "tutorial" levels, I'm running into a problem of mission selection. The comments so far have been helpful, mostly because they show me that I'm on to something good by showing me the less favorable alternative. :)

I find that I am creating a number of appropriate objectives for different challenges in an area. So in Oakvale, the small village on the way to the large city of Geniir, there is a hook to a dungeon adventure (actually, two hooks that lead to the same adventure) and one that gets the characters into an adventure involving a white dragon that lives in the area. The dragon is a part of Geniir's tale as well, and I imagine her to be more powerful than the PCs can handle at the moment (haven't given her stats yet). If the PCs decide to follow the dragon storyline, though, I am planning to give them a lower-level story that pertains to the dragon but doesn't put them in a 40x40 ice-walled room with her. They'll meet her minions, sure, but the mission would be more about confirming or denying her existance in the first place than about confronting her and getting her dead.

Alternative missions that go in the direction the party'd like to go might be an interesting alternative to pitting them against whatever Big Bads happen to be at the end of the line. If the party is level 5 when they decide to go find the dragon's lair, maybe they meet her children (half-dragon hobgoblins) rather than see her in her full glory.

On the other hand, I like to keep my Big Bads unstatted until they come into play, so I can adjust their difficulties on the fly. The wererats at the docks in Geniir might be base-level CR 2 beasties, or they might have some class levels.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread, but I was interested in Walt's points and thought I'd stick these out there.

Hey Alexander,

...as a gamer, I should be able to look at things, weigh the risks, and go "hmm, that looks right for my level." But for whatever reason, I've never been able to successfully develop that skill.

I think I can diagnose this. What's up is that you've subconsciously decided you value your personal characters to the extent that they are a "whole package" of effectiveness and significance. And this scheme of valuation is in direct conflict with the distributed effectiveness built into the game system. I imagine your play is characterized by efforts to demonstrate that your character is a "whole package," and probably a high incidence of character death.

I know, because I'm the same way. My thief characters in the early 80s had an exceedingly high mortality rate. Cleverness is metagame in AD&D, and so, pursuant to demonstrating the whole package of significance, I would get my characters into situations that their effectiveness couldn't extricate them from. I once got turned to stone in a crawlspace I'd discovered by paying careful attention to detail when looking at a treasure map. The party had to break me into pieces to remove me as an obstruction.

Of course, I deserved what I'd got for having "gone it alone." But no matter the extremity of consequence, my pursuit of non-distributed significance was unremitting. I was trapped in a world I didn't make. I didn't want to live, if living meant constant and conscientious aversion to risk and personal initiative.

Paul

Meaning that you both prefer Narrativism without any Gamism, and Marco prefers some player challenge to remain involved. I'm so surprised.

The original subject was what things throw newbies. How did this become a diatribe on what we as players don't like? To say that your opinion is that of all newbies is to claim that the mainstream has the same preference as you. And look, Paul and Marco claiming to represent the masses. I'm so surprised.

Mike

It's funny. I recognize most of elements of the style that Walt describes, but I had very positive experience from it. I, too, encountered such gamers first on my college campus (U of Chicago in '87 in my case). The gamers I met match with much of Walt's experience -- various post-college gamers, thick wad of game-world notes, etc.

As Mike said, this is really off-topic, so I started a new thread on Mission Selection and Player Authorship.

Marco wrote: After all, they can't very well tell you that you've lived 18+years in this world and don't know anything....

Hello everyone,

Back on topic, please. And I mean really on-topic, exactly what the first post is about.

Best,
Ron