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Old 04-07-2018, 05:10 PM   #51
Neveron
 
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

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Originally Posted by Tom H. View Post
Years ago, I played in a D&D group that regularly had sessions composed of 6 to 8 players not including the DM.

I ended up noticing that the DM began relying on a dominant player to propel the adventure and decision making.

Many of the other players were very passive, watching videos on their devices, until their turn to attack presented itself.

I thought it was a dysfunctional situation for a shared, immersive gaming experience.

I guess many of the players just liked the community spirit of getting together every other week in spite of the back-seat many took.

I assume that different DMs and group dynamics may alter this result.
Back in the day something like that was actually in the rules of Original/Basic/Advanced D&D, although more as a "this person is assigned as the intermediary between the players and DM" thing than the more domineering thing you're describing. Look up the "Caller" role for more on that, I suppose.

You're more dysfunctional experience seems like what I've heard referred to as "Alpha Gamers" in boardgaming circles. (e.g. the person who just takes over the cooperative boardgame and tells everyone what to do.)
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Old 04-07-2018, 07:36 PM   #52
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

Yes, you're right.

I think it would have been more fun if the caller truly consulted the players.

No hard feelings, things tend to evolve or devolve.

One of the reasons I brought up the dominant player situation is that I wonder if there is a sort of "unconscious" pressure for it to develop more readily in a larger group. (The discussion had to do with how many people can play realistically.)

It can be difficult to funnel everyone's input to a caller or GM in a large group. If there is a goal to progress the activity, it may just be social psychology for the GM and a dominant player or two to "find" each other to further the goal.

The players who recede into the background may or may not really mind.

I sort of minded while others appeared not too. I tried to encourage change, but felt a strong resistance.

At some point, I considered the irony of whether I was becoming dominant in trying to return the game back to the players.

There was a dynamic in force, and so be it. People did get together and seemed to appreciate the community, so it's not easy to judge.

Last edited by Tom H.; 04-07-2018 at 07:46 PM. Reason: Added information
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Old 04-08-2018, 04:28 PM   #53
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

I think there's definitely a certain tendency for some games to get so tactically complex that some players just get fatigued and leave the decisions to other players who are more into that whole aspect and have more of a grasp on the big picture. That's alright, really, it's just a problem when it goes too far and you have one player completely taking over for others.

How the Caller worked back in the day was basically just that rather than having ten players individually tell the DM what they're going to do, they discuss amongst themselves and then one person delivers the verdict to the DM.
A large part of the reason that this worked, though, was because OD&D and the like are very mechanically simple: the combat is basically just a wargame, where you push together figures and roll the dice to see who dies and who lives. If you have twenty Fighters on one side and forty Kobolds on the other you don't need to figure out the individual tactics vis-á-vis targeting and whatnot, you just roll twenty d20s (or, if using Chainmail, one d6 or so), randomly distribute the hits, and then do the same for the Kobolds. There's little-to-no tactics involved, you just say who's going to fight, who's going to cast a spell, and who's staying out of it.

The major uses for the Caller, then, becomes the logistical dungeoncrawling stuff. Do you go right or left, who listens at the door and who opens it, who packs what into their bags, and so on. The stuff where the party would actually argue amongst themselves about what to do, basically, and the part of OD&D that most resembles some kind of boardgame.

I'm not all too sure how relevant something like that is these days, however, nor if it's something that would work well with GURPS given the increased mechanical complexity and player agency. Designating someone as a "leader" with a tie-breaking vote could work, I suppose, but I'm not sure that the rest is all that useful in Dungeon Fantasy RPG.
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Old 04-08-2018, 11:55 PM   #54
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

Thanks for that info Neveron.

The experiences that I recall that I disliked the most had to do with more substantial decisions involving travel.

The party may have finished a combat in one locale and uncovered a clue. Suddenly the strong player and the GM had followed the clue to another locale and begun to explore.

Before I could interrupt to, say, explore a body at the original site, it appeared that everybody's character was assumed to be at the new location without any collective decision making.

Many times I tried to backtrack the events, but it wasn't always welcomed, and I had to consider how much of a fuss to press.

A few times I considered that when my combat turn came up in an encounter at the new location, I would finally indicate that my character was still exploring the old location. I thought that may get the needed attention. I also considered that I could be out a whole combat while traveling to the new location or waiting for the party to return to mine.

The strangest thing to me was the passive limbo that the majority of the characters were technically in. If one player starts relocating solo with the GM, exactly where are all the other characters. It's like Shrodinger's cat: you don't really know until you check with them. And how many players are going to say they didn't stick with the party.

This is not meant to be so much of a complaint as a recollection of a surprising group dynamic to me.
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Old 04-29-2018, 10:33 PM   #55
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

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Me, neither.

When I designed I Smell a Rat, I had "a well-rounded party of six 250-point adventurers" in mind, which is why I wrote Advice: Scaling Encounters (p. 3). I'd consider a party of four including a bard and a thief to be half-strength. A "typical" group would be something like a high-damage barbarian meat shield, a warrior-healer cleric with decent arms and armor, a heavily armored holy warrior or knight, the inevitable skirmisher with absurd Move and active defenses (a scout arrow machine gun, or a martial artist or swashbuckler harasser), a "thief" who's more of a backstabbing and crossbow-shooting assassin, and a wizard with a dozen ways to blow people up and set them on fire.

In the GenCon runs I did, that's pretty much what people opted for without much encouragement from me.
I just think a lot of us have different ideas on what a "well-rounded party" is. First off, I doubt most groups include six players. More than four is atypical in my experience unless dealing with truly veteran players who know how to keep things moving. Secondly, most of the archetypes you listed are just a small part of the professions. I feel confident saying that most new players will not create of group of optimized killers on their first try. So this leads me to believe that ISaR is more orientated towards vets than newbies.

Honestly, I don't think adventures should be orientated towards optimized parties. I'm a self-admitted power gamer but I'm almost always the minority. And as a GM, having to tune down everything for fear of killing the players is annoying.

However, looking back, the above has been my experience with nearly ALL published adventures for all games. I have not come across one that worked as advertised. Instead, they require tuning, some more than others. Which ISaR fully admits and has provisions for in the encounters.

But going back to my original point, I do not considered the group Kromm listed as well rounded. They're optimized killers who will have serious trouble doing anything else but killing. Which can be a problem in games like GURPS where knowing when to avoid a fight, or at least stall, is paramount. Which is why I think the Bard is seriously underestimated.
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Old 04-30-2018, 12:02 AM   #56
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

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They're optimized killers who will have serious trouble doing anything else but killing. Which can be a problem in games like GURPS...
Good thing they aren't being played in a GURPS game then... ;)
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Old 04-30-2018, 03:29 AM   #57
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

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So this leads me to believe that ISaR is more orientated towards vets than newbies.
As far as I can tell, DF in general is targeted at people with a certain nostalgia for old school dungeon crawls. Such a group will, unless tripped up by lack of system mastery, create a reasonably optimized dungeon crawling party.
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Old 04-30-2018, 04:54 AM   #58
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

Which fits "vets over newbies", ultimately. I think that's what tripped me up. I expected it to be dungeon crawl genre, but not necessarily for people who've played that extensively before.

Evileeyore - sure, it's not GURPS, but if stalling and knowing when to avoid a fight isn't supposed to be a part of the game nor anything but fighting, then we can seriously cut out the thief and bard and a lot of skills. I suspect you weren't entirely serious, but I think LordMunchkin's points deserve taking seriously.
(Please don't take this as being angry at you, just a disagreement with your argument.)

I've been able to adjust my expectations of DFRPG a lot based on this thread, and for that it's been very valuable. I'm slightly disappointed by its focus on highly optimized characters and system mastery, but it's still a great system that I think I can run a fun campaign in for my group :)
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Old 04-30-2018, 06:46 AM   #59
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

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I just think a lot of us have different ideas on what a "well-rounded party" is. First off, I doubt most groups include six players. More than four is atypical in my experience unless dealing with truly veteran players who know how to keep things moving.
We ran DFRPG with a group of six: one having had some experience with D&D, one being myself, and the rest being complete tabletop newbies. And we ran online, which is notoriously slower than face-to-face, although we did use video conferencing.

It worked pretty good, too. IME small groups are the exception - gamers like to recruit too much.
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Old 04-30-2018, 02:09 PM   #60
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Default Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns

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Evileeyore - sure, it's not GURPS, but if stalling and knowing when to avoid a fight isn't supposed to be a part of the game nor anything but fighting, then we can seriously cut out the thief and bard and a lot of skills.
One can stall and avoid fights without the Bard or Thief, so even with those two things in the game, Bards are Thieves are largely not needed.

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I suspect you weren't entirely serious, but I think LordMunchkin's points deserve taking seriously.
I was serious and I addressed the singular argument that I felt was wrong: DFRPG is not GURPS. Throw your 'GURPS' assumptions out the window.


DFRPG isn't "all about fighting and only fighting". It's all about loot acquisition. Now, on that, one could sneak, steal, and trick the loot out of the hands of the enemy, but most people who want to play Old School Dungeon fests aren't into that. They want to fight, and so we have what we have.




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It worked pretty good, too. IME small groups are the exception - gamers like to recruit too much.
My thirty years of experience are exactly the opposite of yours. Almost every group I've gamed with preferred smaller groups, 4-6 people including the GM.

I personally prefer 6 for tabletop and 300+ for LARPs...
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