A Couple of Interesting Gaming Articles
Two more installments of Robin Law's "Page XX" column have been posted. I think they both bring up interesting points.
The first one is a discussion about social/persuade mechanics in RPGs and the tendency of players to regard loss of control over their characters as a fate worse than death.
Pause for reading the article.
Now that you've read the article, and if you are a person I game regularly with, I think you will agree that the sort of thing Mr. Laws speaks of comes up with some frequency in our games. The most significant example I can think of is the dreaded Dread Gaze. In our Werewolf game years ago and in the recently ended Dark Ages Vampire game, any use of Presence by an NPC vampire to influence the actions of a PC has been met with unremitting hostility from the players. Nothing seems to enrage a player more than having their character be forced to run away from, or otherwise taken out of, combat as a result of a mind-altering Discipline. Yet the PCs do that sort of thing to NPCs in the game constantly. The PCs in the Dark Ages game mind-fucked their way through the world between Auspex, Presence, and Dementation; never hesitating to control or mind rape friend or foe if they thought they could get something useful out of it. In Werewolf, we ignored most of the more "wolfy" aspects and had almost no staredowns or challenges because, IMO, of the dangerous idea that a PC would have to submit and act subservient if they were defeated. On the other hand, most recently in the Ars Magica game, we have been repeatedly Presenced by NPC vampires and there has been no hue and cry. I'm not sure what's different about this situation, except possibly that the vampires are not a primary antagonist and they're all massively more powerful than the PCs anyway. Another counter example would be the games we've played that have a fright mechanic, like Deadlands and CoC. Players have dealt fairly well with this sort of thing when it has been built into the system. To use Robin's terms, when the loss of control is inherent to the system, we seem to do pretty well with it. When the loss of control is an individual spell or power, we tend not to accept it. I also wonder if our reactions have something to do with the power level of the game. That is, we are more accepting of loss of control in games where the PCs are less overtly powerful within the setting.
This brings me to wondering about how the Burning Wheel system will go over with our group. BW has the Steel mechanic, wherein failed Steel tests result in an array of embarrasing character reactions to the stress with the only mitigating factor being that the player has the choice of which reaction to take. However, since the reactions vary between standing there slack-jawed, running away while screaming like a little girl and collapsing to the ground in a puddle of their own urine, I'm not sure that makes things any better. If my above supposition about us handling built-in systems better holds true, our group should have no problem with the Steel mechanic in BW.
The second one talks about how the purpose of a rules-set is to compromise without negotiation. He goes on to divide rules-sets into two general divisions; one in which the rules set is tight and detailed enough to do most of the compromising for the GM, and the other in which the rules are loose and story-based where the GM is forced to take on the responsibility of compromising. He explains it better in the article.
I don't have any real detailed comments on this one except to note that the Vampire game started pretty loose and became even more narrative as time went on. As a contrast, I expect the Burning Wheel system to bring back a lot more emphasis on letting the dice, and not the GM, decide the outcomes of character actions. Granted, BW goes to some lengths to emphasize that the GM and players have a lot of flexibility on deciding how to implement success or failure, and how far the character gets in their overall action before a failure is realized, but the dice still determine the ultimate outcome.
I'm of two minds on this. I like the flexibility of the narrative approach, but I've grown to dislike how fore-ordained the success of the PCs gets to be in that system. I felt like some of the dramatic tension was being leeched out of the Vampire game by the way I was running it mostly diceless. I find myself eager to try out Burning Wheel so that I can compare the experiences and see if letting the dice fall where they may will inject some tension and sense of risk into the game.
I'm curious to hear anyone's comments on this issue. Did you feel the Vampire game was lacking in dramatic tension? If so, do you think that re-emphasizing the dice will help the situation? If not, are you wary of giving the dice that much authority to determine the outcome?
The first one is a discussion about social/persuade mechanics in RPGs and the tendency of players to regard loss of control over their characters as a fate worse than death.
Pause for reading the article.
Now that you've read the article, and if you are a person I game regularly with, I think you will agree that the sort of thing Mr. Laws speaks of comes up with some frequency in our games. The most significant example I can think of is the dreaded Dread Gaze. In our Werewolf game years ago and in the recently ended Dark Ages Vampire game, any use of Presence by an NPC vampire to influence the actions of a PC has been met with unremitting hostility from the players. Nothing seems to enrage a player more than having their character be forced to run away from, or otherwise taken out of, combat as a result of a mind-altering Discipline. Yet the PCs do that sort of thing to NPCs in the game constantly. The PCs in the Dark Ages game mind-fucked their way through the world between Auspex, Presence, and Dementation; never hesitating to control or mind rape friend or foe if they thought they could get something useful out of it. In Werewolf, we ignored most of the more "wolfy" aspects and had almost no staredowns or challenges because, IMO, of the dangerous idea that a PC would have to submit and act subservient if they were defeated. On the other hand, most recently in the Ars Magica game, we have been repeatedly Presenced by NPC vampires and there has been no hue and cry. I'm not sure what's different about this situation, except possibly that the vampires are not a primary antagonist and they're all massively more powerful than the PCs anyway. Another counter example would be the games we've played that have a fright mechanic, like Deadlands and CoC. Players have dealt fairly well with this sort of thing when it has been built into the system. To use Robin's terms, when the loss of control is inherent to the system, we seem to do pretty well with it. When the loss of control is an individual spell or power, we tend not to accept it. I also wonder if our reactions have something to do with the power level of the game. That is, we are more accepting of loss of control in games where the PCs are less overtly powerful within the setting.
This brings me to wondering about how the Burning Wheel system will go over with our group. BW has the Steel mechanic, wherein failed Steel tests result in an array of embarrasing character reactions to the stress with the only mitigating factor being that the player has the choice of which reaction to take. However, since the reactions vary between standing there slack-jawed, running away while screaming like a little girl and collapsing to the ground in a puddle of their own urine, I'm not sure that makes things any better. If my above supposition about us handling built-in systems better holds true, our group should have no problem with the Steel mechanic in BW.
The second one talks about how the purpose of a rules-set is to compromise without negotiation. He goes on to divide rules-sets into two general divisions; one in which the rules set is tight and detailed enough to do most of the compromising for the GM, and the other in which the rules are loose and story-based where the GM is forced to take on the responsibility of compromising. He explains it better in the article.
I don't have any real detailed comments on this one except to note that the Vampire game started pretty loose and became even more narrative as time went on. As a contrast, I expect the Burning Wheel system to bring back a lot more emphasis on letting the dice, and not the GM, decide the outcomes of character actions. Granted, BW goes to some lengths to emphasize that the GM and players have a lot of flexibility on deciding how to implement success or failure, and how far the character gets in their overall action before a failure is realized, but the dice still determine the ultimate outcome.
I'm of two minds on this. I like the flexibility of the narrative approach, but I've grown to dislike how fore-ordained the success of the PCs gets to be in that system. I felt like some of the dramatic tension was being leeched out of the Vampire game by the way I was running it mostly diceless. I find myself eager to try out Burning Wheel so that I can compare the experiences and see if letting the dice fall where they may will inject some tension and sense of risk into the game.
I'm curious to hear anyone's comments on this issue. Did you feel the Vampire game was lacking in dramatic tension? If so, do you think that re-emphasizing the dice will help the situation? If not, are you wary of giving the dice that much authority to determine the outcome?