Gumshoe, its genus of RPGs, and distancing mechanics

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Where's the character sheet? How can a player choose to create a character who is good at certain things, in such a way that a pattern of specific competence is observable in-world during the campaign?

E.g., the equivalent to purchasing Stealth-16 in GURPS, so that your character can be seen to be better at sneaking, by the other characters who live in the world, than a character who has Stealth-12 or Stealth-10?

There are attributes and aspects, and the nature of one's stated task determines which are relevant. How far off tangent the story goes on a given task is a group decision.

Also note: One of the key elements in most narrativist games is a flat out rejection of Gygaxian Rule 0 ("The GM is always right") and replacement with Narrativist Rule 0: "Don't be a Dick."

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Also note: One of the key elements in most narrativist games is a flat out rejection of Gygaxian Rule 0 ("The GM is always right") and replacement with Narrativist Rule 0: "Don't be a Dick."

When the Forge-inspired games were making their big breakout, a lasting impression I got while looking at the commonalities between them was that someone had had a really bad time from an excessively-dirigiste GM, and was determined to create a game in which a bad GM couldn't ruin it for everyone else.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

When the Forge-inspired games were making their big breakout, a lasting impression I got while looking at the commonalities between them was that someone had had a really bad time from an excessively-dirigiste GM, and was determined to create a game in which a bad GM couldn't ruin it for everyone else.

Many years ago, one of the contributors to my gaming apa published Luce's Laws. They started off with

1. The game master is God: What you say about the rules or the game world is final.

2. In applying Rule 1, remember that you will get tired of playing solitaire.

That's a good summary of my view of the matter. I take it that the players have the ultimate power because they can choose to leave. So I have to run games that make them want to keep coming back. Ironically, I want to have ultimate creative control precisely because it enables me to do this more effectively.

Bill Stoddard

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

When the Forge-inspired games were making their big breakout, a lasting impression I got while looking at the commonalities between them was that someone had had a really bad time from an excessively-dirigiste GM, and was determined to create a game in which a bad GM couldn't ruin it for everyone else.

Many non-forgites have, as well. I reject Gygax rule 0 as absolute drekh, because it was Gygax making up for poor rules.

There is a large subset of people for whom rules are a social contract. If a GM says he's running GURPS, I expect things to work as written, not to be using 3d8 for rolling skill checks, and d8's for damage, d10's for impaling... (I knew a guy doing that...) (Not that I like GURPS anymore, either, but it's illustrative.)

I've had multiple bad GM's through the years. Walked from several campaigns.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's a good summary of my view of the matter. I take it that the players have the ultimate power because they can choose to leave. So I have to run games that make them want to keep coming back. Ironically, I want to have ultimate creative control precisely because it enables me to do this more effectively.

Bill Stoddard

I found it easier by far to NOT have that ultimate control, and let players help build the setting and introduce new elements. "What do you Expect to find?" being the response to "I'm doing a sensor sweep."

Note that I didn't say it leads to better adventures, but it certainly does drive stories into places the players want them to cover.

My favorite example of this was in Mouse Guard... my then 9yo daughter was playing with a group of 5 adult players, me GMing. One of those adults, Steve, came in complaining of a fight. During the player phase, they had recovered, and she still had checks left to spend, as did Steve. He opted to have some of the bad guys they were expecting the net day show up "now"... He rolled "Rebel Wise" and got it. But he'd not specified how many. So she starts to describe the whole pile of them, all 13 expected, coming in early... Steve objects... the make opposed Rebel Wise rolls, she wins... Steves character buys the farm in the ensuing melee, but they win a s a group the battle. That rebel cell ended...

Later that same campaign, One of the players spent a check, in an attempt to rule-out another player's character's boyfriend as the head rebel - mind you, said BF was the captain running the defenses of the Guard HQ - and failed. Badly. Despite a reachable difficulty. So, he was in fact the traitor. C's character wound up killing him herself... Betrayals make for memorable stories.

Truth is, many Forge-inspired games run pretty traditionally, except that players can throw those curves in. In FATE, declarations allow players to put things in directly, to make setting truths, by spending fate points. In HotBlooded and B&H, it's a roll like any other, and the other players (and GM) can bend it if the dice let them, or spend style/honor to make a unary declaration. Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard, you have skills that let you make those narrative elements, rather than needing some stock of points, but the GM sets the difficulty.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So what you mean is that you play, not to determine the outcome of an attempted action, but to determine who gets to narrate the outcome of the attempted action?

The other characteristic of FATE that I would add is the notion of "success at a price". Upthread, there was a mention of it being unsatisfactory for a particular PI not to be a very good shot. But, that's interpreting the skill as an actual ability to hit (simulationist style). If I get the FATE notion correctly, you'll always hit if you want to, and have control of the story outcome at that point. The worst the dice can do is impose some additional cost to you to make it happen. Costs can come in the form of "yes, but..." complications added by other players, not just in-game resources. "You shoot the guy, but it was your last round." "But it was your last round and the target's bodyguard comes out of the shadows." "But you were observed by a cop across the street."

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Many non-forgites have, as well. I reject Gygax rule 0 as absolute drekh, because it was Gygax making up for poor rules.

Yes. To me, the whole rule-zero thing looks like it's a hideout for GMs who aren't competent enough to sit behind the GM's screen.

Who can't choose good rules system that will fit their campaign (so that highly desirable things have a high likelihood of occuring, and undesirable thigns have a low likelihood of occuring), and who can't think things through so as to make (and write down!) their house rules before game stat.

I am entitled to high-quality rules. To well-designed rules. Any GM instisting on "rule zero" gives me the impression that he disagrees with that, that he thinks I should swallow the crappy rules he's willing to give me, and I take that as a personal insult.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I am entitled to high-quality rules. To well-designed rules. Any GM instisting on "rule zero" gives me the impression that he disagrees with that, that he thinks I should swallow the crappy rules he's willing to give me, and I take that as a personal insult.

Entitlement much?

As a GM, I consider that my players are entitled to have me try to run the best game I can for them. But how good a game I run is not solely a function of the rules. It depends on the quality of my worldbuilding, the suitability of my choice of theme, the characterization of my npcs, the appropriateness of the situations I come up with to challenge their characters, the quality of the social contract between us, and other things.

And, in the last analysis, someone has to decide what the rules are. The players can make a case for an interpretation, but if I make my ruling, and a player continues to challenge it, delaying the game, then they're spoiling everyone else's fun. There's a reason "rules lawyer" is not a favorable expression! And really, if my players don't trust me to figure out the rules, I don't see why they want to be in my campaign in the first place.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The other characteristic of FATE that I would add is the notion of "success at a price". Upthread, there was a mention of it being unsatisfactory for a particular PI not to be a very good shot. But, that's interpreting the skill as an actual ability to hit (simulationist style). If I get the FATE notion correctly, you'll always hit if you want to, and have control of the story outcome at that point. The worst the dice can do is impose some additional cost to you to make it happen. Costs can come in the form of "yes, but..." complications added by other players, not just in-game resources. "You shoot the guy, but it was your last round." "But it was your last round and the target's bodyguard comes out of the shadows." "But you were observed by a cop across the street."

It doesn't sound like a style of play I would want to participate in. Not that that's news to me; I looked at FATE and concluded that I had zero interest in running it or even having it in my library.

But that's just personal taste. The real question, to me, seems to be, why is this being called "narrativist"?

If I tell a story about what my character does, and the GM says, "Yes, okay, that makes sense. Here's what happens," that seems pretty clearly narrativist: The outcome of my character's actions was determined by the quality of the story that I told about them.

If the GM says, "Yeah, that's pretty good, you get +3 on the reaction roll," the narrative has influenced the outcome by influencing the game mechanics. It's not as intensely narrativist, but the narrative has some control.

But this sounds as if the narrative as such has no control. Instead, I do a pure dice roll thing to gain the right to introduce narrative elements. It doesn't matter if I've previously established narrative that justifies those elements (which is what you're calling "simulationist"), or if I tell a really good story now; what matters is that the other player, no matter how lame their narrative is, got more successes than I did, so the dice mechanic gives their narrative more power. And that just sounds really gamist to me.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But this sounds as if the narrative as such has no control. Instead, I do a pure dice roll thing to gain the right to introduce narrative elements. It doesn't matter if I've previously established narrative that justifies those elements (which is what you're calling "simulationist"), or if I tell a really good story now; what matters is that the other player, no matter how lame their narrative is, got more successes than I did, so the dice mechanic gives their narrative more power. And that just sounds really gamist to me.

Note that this is quite different from die roll used to resolve the outcome of a uncertain event in the game world, which is a simulation of chance in the game world. This, and not the management of Fate Points was breaking point for FATE with my friends and me. Dicing for narrative control, and worse negotiating concessions, hauled us out of an attitude of identification with our characters, and spoiled the dramatic feeling of the narrative as arising out of the interplay of character and incident in a developing situation. We found it mood-busting, SoD-busting, and narrative-spoiling.

When I'm GMing I like character-players to exercise creative initiative, and I find it a problem that they too often feel not entitled to do so. I hoped the FATE might be the answer, but I did not find it to be so.

Writing which suddenly reminds me that in all my time playing James Bond 007 I only ever spent one Hero Point, and that was when having found a speedboat just where I wanted one I spent a Hero Point to have it be a red one.