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Game Theory

  
 
pointless and uncalled for
16:07 / 01.05.02
Now that the sad little gamers on this site are rearing their acne-scarred, pasty faces in to view, it seems like an appropriate time to raise this issue.

For the RPG players here, what is your prefered system for use. Regardless of scenario/background/genre, what do you feel gives you the most playable method of operations.

Feel free to be expansive.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
16:21 / 01.05.02
Fuck. I was hoping this thread was going to have to do with some kind of documentary about Scott Miller's work in the 80s...
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
16:24 / 01.05.02
He he he, acne scarred pasty faces...he he he

anyhoo, i liked Fasa's Shadowrun, since it only used six sided dice (D6), which everyone has a bunch of

AD&D works well to, but likely because i know it, THACO is still a pain though (8-bit theater reference there...)

Diceless systems bore me--"Well, this number is higher than that number so a would beat b" hell, i could kill a samurai with a fork if i were lucky, and thats where the dice come in.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
16:24 / 01.05.02
Who the hell is Scott Miller
 
 
videodrome
16:33 / 01.05.02
He's the songwriter/guitarist for Game Theory, and currently for The Loud Family. Use yer Google.

But discussion of his work goes in music, and I'm not sure that any type of game theory discussion belongs here, despite the lack of a dedicated forum. Perhaps to Conversation?
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
16:36 / 01.05.02
The Shadowrun system seemed OK but half-assed GM kind of spoilt the game for me. so I never really managed to fully work out the flaws. Having a system based on one kind of die is to some extent logical.

AD&D was good, if a little cumbersome at times and often slowed down play, particularly big fights. The flow of play was quite important to the group that I was in. A natural propensity for calculating THAC0 was always beneficial. After about four years or so of play we started introducing our own revisions to the rules system to streamline them.

Cyberpunk worked for me except when dealing with complex combat when the results seemed to be unrealistic (yes, even for an RPG).

Eventually we created our own system based loosely on the AD&D format which is my favourite, but I am naturally going to be biased.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
16:37 / 01.05.02
In policy there appears to be a general concensus that gamer threads should be here and not wasting time and space in Conversation.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
16:45 / 01.05.02
heh, yeah video, go to policy and be heard, oh moderator, tell it to them all that gamers should be put in a special reservation so we dont clutter up your happy little forum
 
 
Trijhaos
16:49 / 01.05.02
Isn't gaming just another form of acting? Doesn't acting deal with theatre? I believe so. So if you connect the dots, this is the perfect place for this particular thread.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:07 / 01.05.02
Please. This topic has no place in this forum. Gaming discussion should be in the conversation, or better yet, on one of the hundreds of gaming forums currently on the web.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
17:28 / 01.05.02
I think gaming can be discussed here...I mean there are a kerjillion forums for talking about Buffy as well.

A RPG shoudl have enough of a rule system so that there is structure and fights move quickly, but the rules in most games get in the way. I played White Wolf last summer and while they have kerjillions of pages of background, their rules are notoriously open and you pretty much do whatever you want, and the GM can decide if it works or not without consulting anything.

Best game system for me was Villians and Vigilantes, the Super-Hero RPG from the 80's where Bill Willingham got his start. I also played the Middle Earth RPG, grteat game system as long as you weren't running it.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:33 / 01.05.02
C'mon. What does Role Playing Games have to do directly with Film, Television or Theatre? You certainly can't make any case for film or television, and the theatrical 'performance' aspect is forced, because it's not on stage for spectators to watch, it's an interactive rather than a spectacular experience. It has NOTHING TO DO with this forum. At all. Whatsoever.
 
 
videodrome
17:38 / 01.05.02
Potus, Elijiah: I've seen nothing in the ongoing New Forums thread besides your posts that specifically directs gaming away from Conversation and to Film/TV/Theatre, so save the patronizing. And 'not wasting time and space in the Conversation'? What, you mean so there's more room for threads about java quizzes? The closest thing to what you're implying is Mordant's post, and I'm willing to go along with that until a decision is made re: gaming forum or no.

Trijhaos: That's an argument I'm much more willing to listen to, and if that's the take, fine. The arguments for the gaming forum have been pretty logical, and I'm not opposed to it in theory.
 
 
cusm
18:01 / 01.05.02
Table top gaming done right or LARP is a form of method acting...

I like the new rev of White Wolf's system introduced in Trinity and established in Exaulted. It fixes a lot of problems, and moves the game forward better. I like the new D20 system, too. Its got its problems, but it works. Otherwise, there's always Champions, still possibly the best game system ever written. You just need a calculator and an engineer to run it, is the only problem.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
18:09 / 01.05.02
i was not patronizing, i think that if Buffy and IF get their own forums, so should gaming
I personnaly think this should go into books, but then the book snobs would get snobby

OH and saying we should go to another site that has gaming forums, thats just a big ol pile of bullshit
 
 
Captain Zoom
02:48 / 03.05.02
Really not sure if this should be here, and really don't give a fuck.

Is there a propensity here then towards more or less rules in an RPG? I've got Over the Edge which just about does away with dice and relies on common sense, and then I've got Call of Cthulhu, which came about when RPGs were young and is quite, um, dice-centric. I've not played any White Wolf, though by all accounts, here and elsewhere, it's pretty good.

I recall a game called Torg that came out in the early 90's and the system relied on maths that I didn't even understand when I was in school. And things like Living Steel, where the damage charts took half an hour just to sort out one wound. Is this good or bad? Do you prefer lots of tables and charts, or a basic framework that leaves you the hell alone as far as creating the game? You can probably tell from the tone of this post which I prefer.

And, for what it's worth, if this belongs anywhere, it should be in Books, as RPGs are published in that format.

But Trijhaos' explanation of this thread's presence here is interesting too. Who really gets into character here? When you're playing, do you enforce a "no out of character dialogue" rule? Or is it a case of "Then I say this"? The group I'm with now are all ex-drama people, so our games become quite theatrical on occasion. At one point we were confronting our nemesis while our fighter was taking out the big smelly giant in another room. We'd entered into a bit of a dialogue with the guy, hoping to avoid pointlessly slaughtering him, when the fighter walks back into the room. To illustrate this, his player got up, went into the kitchen, grabbed a big knife and strolled nonchalantly back in, knife/sword dangling casually by his side, asking "Hey guys, what's going on?" This after our nemesis assured us that our friend was no longer of this earth. It was quite dramatic and humourous. But I guess you had to be there. What're your games like?

Zoom.
 
 
w1rebaby
11:05 / 03.05.02
I can't believe nobody's mentioned GURPS, which I am excessive fan of and have played to the exclusion of almost everything else for the past few years. You can do anything from comedy to hard SF, all at once if you prefer.(1)

One of the points about GURPS is that it has different levels of complexity, which are all theoretically compatible. Okay, there's a basic level of complexity that's greater than OTE(2) but the principles are fairly simple. From that, you can build up and up and up according to what your interests are. For instance, basic combat is a fairly straightforward affair. Advanced combat, you can start using hex maps and hit locations. If you want to get really technical, you can add in new hit locations and specialist martial arts rules.

Or, you can add detail to other skills like Acrobatics or Savoir-Faire so you can have characters who excel at delivering acid remarks but are bad at remembering which fork is which.

basically it's the sliding scale which is attractive, though the high upper level of the sliding scale does mean the system attracts realism freaks

AAAAnyway, on zoom's other point about acting: In general I put quite a lot of effort into creating a coherent character, so I like to make sure I play that character well, and the groups I prefer are composed of similar people. We don't really need to enforce "out of character dialogue" rules because it's unusual enough that someone will act out of character, in fact they might end up going to make coffee in character.

This may not be "theatre" in the sense of performing a dramatic piece to a non-participating audience, but I don't really see the difference between this and, say, a closed improv session. Or is there a hint of snobbishness creeping in here, Flux?

---

(1) The GURPS IST sourcebook, however, is a disgraceful simplistic rip-off of Stormwatch and should not be purchased, unless you like throwing expensive sourcebooks across the room.

(2) While I like OTE, it relies an awful lot on GM whim which could lead to inconsistency between sessions. "You said that listening to Slayer on my Walkman was worth a bonus die in combat last week, and now you say it's a penalty die!" "Did I? Er..."

(3) Doesn't really get very physically "theatrical"... though I remember rolling around on the floor at one point trying to pick up a set of keys with my teeth. My character had been tied up in his flat. It's a long story. I'm sure it amused everyone.
 
 
Trijhaos
17:44 / 03.05.02
I'm working under an assumption about gaming here. You see, I've never played d&d or anything like it in my life, so I just figured people would act in character while playing.

You know, like take for instance a party that has to retrieve a jewel from some king. Now James the law-abiding tax-paying gas station clerk would probably try to talk the king into peacefully handing the jewel over. On the other hand, Ingbar the chaotic evil dwarven beserker, James' alter ego in the game, would smash the king in the groin, take the jewel and collect the reward.
 
 
betty woo
18:16 / 03.05.02
My prefered system of play is live action; I don't find tabletop all that satisfying. I'm more interested in the storytelling and theatrical aspects of roleplaying, rather than a goal-oriented quest. The fewer rules, the better - stopping to debate mechanics only gets in the way of the story flow. Done well, live-action play fits the model of Immediatist theatre that Hakim Bey postulates in "Immediatism" - a theatre of play without spectators, where everyone engaged in spectating the story/play are also directly, actively involved in its creation.
 
 
Knight's Move
14:09 / 04.05.02
We always worked on the theory that if something happening was insanely cool or fucking embarressing for the character/group we would try to let it happen. We preferred systems that allowed dice fudging for the sake of character. Equally though we tried to find systems that allowed loads of variation and difference between levels of character expertise so things that had an increasing number scale (Kult, Warhammer) over small variants (World of Darkness). When it came down to it though most of us were never serious enough to let e.g. characters die so we fudged everything and busked the rules to enjoy ourselves. Kind of the point unless you played with hardcore wierdos...
 
 
w1rebaby
22:57 / 04.05.02
The fewer rules, the better - stopping to debate mechanics only gets in the way of the story flow.

To an extent, but if you have a GM who handles the whole mechanics issue, and a group of players who are very familiar with the mechanics, then they become transparent. As long as they're basically good mechanics and don't contradict real-world logic, it's not a problem.

I am of the opinion that mechanics actually aid the flow. The thing is, RPGs really don't correspond that well to a storytelling concept, in my opinion (and I will fight anyone from White Wolf on that point). The "game" aspect actually enhances the experience, and differentiates it from some sort of group creative writing project. The fact that you don't have complete control over the progress of the story is significant.
 
  
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