04-07-2018, 05:10 PM | #51 | |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
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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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04-07-2018, 07:36 PM | #52 |
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Central Texas, north of Austin
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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 |
04-08-2018, 04:28 PM | #53 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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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. |
04-08-2018, 11:55 PM | #54 |
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Central Texas, north of Austin
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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. |
04-29-2018, 10:33 PM | #55 | |
Join Date: Jun 2010
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Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
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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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04-30-2018, 12:02 AM | #56 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
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04-30-2018, 03:29 AM | #57 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
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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04-30-2018, 04:54 AM | #58 |
Join Date: Jan 2011
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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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A Literate Programmer's Blog: My blog about whatever comes to mind, including GURPS. |
04-30-2018, 06:46 AM | #59 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
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It worked pretty good, too. IME small groups are the exception - gamers like to recruit too much.
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
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04-30-2018, 02:09 PM | #60 | |||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: [Spoilers] Experience running ISAR and some concerns
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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. Quote:
I personally prefer 6 for tabletop and 300+ for LARPs... |
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Tags |
i smell a rat, isar, party composition |
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