Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by trooper6

His original post was not a complaint that every time he asks for crunch he's gets a wing it answer. His original post was: I don't know why people think there is no point statting up things that aren't PCs--justify.

Well yes, but that question is nonsense as stated (because the people who never come up with stats for non-PCs are a set that does not exist) so we automatically convert it into a question that makes sense.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by copeab

My benchmark is "Would this roll kill a PC?". Getting hurt -- badly -- is fine. Failure is fine. Death is not fine.
....I would say that easily the best gaming moments I've been a part of had nothing to do with die rolls, but on unexpected player action.

Death IS fine. It is the risk that makes the reward sweeter and applies the tenison to the conflict. If there is nothing to loose, is there really a point?

Unexpected player actions are meaningless without the success or failure tied to the actions. We use dice to decide the success or failure. Removing that element removes the GAMES unpredicatability.

Players are players, they/we ALL do wierd stuff because it keeps the game fun and exciting and makes us feel clever as players. We need those dice outcomes to keep some imparitality in those decisions, otherwise its just the GM saying 'thats a dumb idea.'

Brief example: I once threw a potato at a hovering alien who carried a laser rifle and was actively shooting us. The GM (and other players) immediately berated me for such a foolish action...untill I dropped aces.

Without those Dice, it would have been up to Groupthink to decide whether my idea was worhwhile or not.

Nymdok

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by zorg

I let my players know that we'll ignore die results which don't fit in the game we're going to play.

Again, this is a terribly circular form of reasoning. What is the game you are going to play, then?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by copeab

That's why my players have always known that I may fudge. Die rolls are usually my least favorite things to fudge (damage rolls being the biggest exception, since I roll it privately). It's less obtrusive to change NPC skill levels and numbers based on the situation. So, for example, as the battered party enters the shrine the four elite guards might become two mooks.

Having fun is not a bad thing. Having fun in a way you disapprove of is not a bad thing.

That would be great for you and your group if it were really all that openly represented, but I can't have any confidence that is the case when you say you are playing GURPS but you are really playing some kind of derivative system with as much as half of the original rules replaced by house rules, as your posts over the years attest.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by zorg

Winging and Fudging are only bad if you want them to be.

What kind of winging and fudging activities do your players get to enjoy?

[Ragitsu]

Originally Posted by Molokh

What's wrong with adding the nowing tag to threads where the OP doesn't want to get a 'wing it'?

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...6&postcount=89

Also, I still feel they should not have to take an extra step on a board where mechanics are meant to be discussed.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

As GM, i choose not to roll when a " bad" roll result would, in my opinion, irremediably damage the game.
Or when i see no use for randomness in an event.
And yes, it is purely subjective.
.....
But if i feel the game require rain, rain there is.

I think your definition of game is my definition of simulation game.
This kind of thread truly show that, in tabletop rpg, noone play the same game.

Isn't it also hubris to say : only total randomness can truly drive a game, a GM and players mind are unable to do so ?

Setting Variables have always been up to the GM.

As GM's we dont call for hiking checks to walk across the room, and it is to a certain extent subjective.

When we have a roll is up to the GM.
What we roll against is up to the GM/
What the relevant modifiers are and how much they are worth is up to the GM.

What CANNOT be up to the GM is the out come. He has plenty of control already. The dice need to be outside complete GM controll or else skill levels and abilities that the charachter has are MEANINGLESS.

What good does it do me to put points in a swiming skill if the GM thinks I need to fail 'for the good of the story'. Why would I put even one point in swimming if Im going to succeed at it 'for the good of the story'. Who decides what 'good for the story' is anyway? I suppose you could vote on outcomes...but agin.....that aint GURPS.

There are ALOT of ways to play :)

Rules drive a game. Period. We agree on how something should be done then we try to do it to accomplish a goal. Chess has no random element, but it does have rules. It doesnt happen purely 'in your mind'. Thats not gaming, thats daydreaming.

Nymdok

[SuedodeuS]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Again, this is a terribly circular form of reasoning. What is the game you are going to play, then?

I can see how my statement could be construed as circular, but I don't see how this is. The man said, essentially "If the dice roll doesn't make sense for our setting, we ignore it."

Imagine, for example, you are GM'ing a Heroic High Fantasy Campaign. Larger than life heroes battling the darkest and most vile of creatures. While in town, a large wagon going up a steep hill loses control and starts barreling down on a shop. The ever-charismatic duelist decides he should save the fair maiden working there and hops over the counter, grabs her, and attempts to jump back over to safety. Well, it's a somewhat high counter, and the woman is confused and flailing a bit, so you call for an Acrobatics check. Critical failure. He hopped a bit too early and hits the side of the counter with his face. A point of damage, which means he needs to roll against knockdown/stunning. Critical failure. Eck. You now have an unconscious PC behind a stall that's about to be crushed. Well, now the strongman gets involved. He reaches over the counter and pulls the terrified woman to safety without an issue. He then leans over the counter to try and grab the duelist. He's in a bad position, and some stuff has fallen on the duelist, so he needs to make an ST check to actually pull him out. Critical failure. You call for a DX check to keep his balance. Critical failure. The strongman is now inside the stall, and the wagon is only 1 second away. All he can do is brace himself as the heavy wagon slams into the stall. You roll for damage, and get maximum, resulting in a death check for the strongman, and two for the duelist. The strongman barely fails his - he's mortally wounded. The duelist succeeds at the first, then critically fails the second. He's dead.

As the proverbial dust clears, your group decides that, while morbidly humorous, the duelist's death, and the strongman's potential death, is not at all keeping in the spirit of Heroic High Fantasy. So, you ignore the rolls and decide that both characters are seriously injured but will recover with enough rest. The players are happy because they don't lose the characters they spent hours building to a random accident. The group is happy because the characters still are larger-than-life heroes ("Nobody could have survived that!"). Everyone wins.

I'm not saying this is the One True Way to play. But there are groups for which it is preferable to the alternative. The important thing is that everybody has fun - if fudging an outcome makes things more fun, I don't see a problem with doing so. If it makes things less fun (such as by making the players feel like their actions don't matter, destroying verisimilitude, or simply fostering antagonism between players and GM), then one should not do it.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I disagree strongly. I don't stat up things more than necessary. This is actually important because I run sandbox style simulationist games where the players are free to talk to any random person in the world. And I'm not going to refrain from running a game set in San Francisco until I've statted up the 750,000 inhabitants.

This does not lead to statless winging. Why? Because GURPS has guidelines. Everybody starts with 10s in their stats. Professional level in a skill starts at 12. If a player says out of the blue, "I want to talk to a librarian," I make up the character right there in my head based on the logic of the gameworld and the system. I figure: Librarian, All 10s, IQ 12, Research 14, Other relevant skills at 12...which is the same thing I would have done if I had designed the character beforehand and wrote it down.

I don't have an objection to this sort of thing.The spontaneous creation of particulars whose need could not be reasonably foreseen is an important and proper game-time function of the referee. But I feel that it is an equally important and proper prep-time function of the referee to set down the particulars with reasonably foreseeable needs. I believe this is supported by the GURPS rules as a whole and individually, and that a builds of novel abilities or geographical data that the GM has a mind to use ahead of time are foreseeable particulars. Would you care to run a game based in San Francisco without dwelling on the logistics of traveling around the city, for instance? Would you feel justified to overlook the cost of a cab ride when preparing for characters of limited means and instead make up some uninformed cost figure when the party needs to get from the a park on Waverly Place to the provost's office at Stanford?

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

Here we disagree. All of GURPS rules are optional.....I think most of us would agree that the gamemaster and players should have a common understanding of what rules set is being used - if not the specific rules used, at least the spirit of the rules used.

Yore right. We are free to add in and leave out whatever we as GMs see fit, and it has been that way since the dawn of RPGing.

If you and your players comletely WAG the rules and handwave till your shoulders hurt and have a good time in the 'spirit' of those rules. Thats fine, but there does come a poitn where you've left out som many rules as do be engaged in a completely different activity. That threshold is not the rules, but the mechanics.

Once you abandon

3d6 for success, (quick)contest, and reaction mechanics
Attributes - Skill - Technique heirarchy/structure
Power - Advantage - modifier heirarchy/structure
Attack/Defense Combat system

Once you loose any of these, You've gone from GURPS to something else.

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

I'm going to go ahead and half agree with you here. Yes, I think a gamemaster needs to make sure she is in tune with her players about what is rigth about the story. Yes, dice can be helpful to add a sense of fairness while pushing the story in directions the players and gamemasters may not have thought of on their own.

No, I don't think that to be a roleplaying game, the story needs to be driven by randomness. The story doesn't tell itself, the participants do. At any level of play, the gamemaster and players are making up the story and choosing when to roll dice and when not to roll dice. At any level of play, the gamemaster and players are determing what die rolls that they do make actually mean.

If you allow the dice to play thier role<snicker> then its an adventure for EVERYONE becuase no one knows how it will end. This is a lot of control to give up, but its largely worth it :)

You want to debate setting? Genre? SKill and Advantage sets? Fine, but dont jerk with whats under the hood, which is just those three tiny dice.

As I stated above, we already have plenty of control of the dice and modifiers and as you point out, the interpretation. If we controll all this and the results too then why even have dice? To use them when we want to and how we wan to and then dissregard what they say seems....odd.

Nymdok