Best and worst RPGs

[Stark]

Showing your age there, though the original Deathtrap Dungeon was a bugger for it's time.

Remember the Sorcery books?

The Shamutanti Hills
Khare-Cityport of Traps
The Seven Serpents
And one last book that I can't recall the name of.

Crown of Kings, biatch! Is it wrong I thought using ZED to go back in time was fucking cool?

[Stark]

I also find it funny that you talk about fat impotent power tripping nerds and go on to use an example that involves solving an adjudication issue by letting the player power trip.

This is pretty much everything that's wrong with your attitude. It's actually quite hilarious.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Covenant, I think we're both having to descend to the very obvious in order to explain this, we probably are just talking at cross purposes. The example that flashed into my mind wasn't James Bond, it was a late seventies Richard Harris movie that was repeated a few months ago- Juggernaut, with a mad bomber depositing all sorts of devious devices on an ocean liner.

The bomber was a disgruntled ex- EOD man himself, and had boobytrapped his bombs extensively with multiple, nested, mutually reinforcing layers of anti- handling mechanisms. I was thinking of having to describe to the player, in literally forensic detail, exactly what they could see and hear so that they could deduce how the boobytraps operated and work their way round them.

You can do that in live roleplaying with an actual physical prop, like the multiply boobytrapped chest that gave us the best LARP quote ever; Luke, 'Simon, how much black powder did you put in these flashbangs?' Simon- 'Who needs black powder? I can get C4 for thirty quid a kilo.' 'Simon' (not real name) is ex RAF Regiment, we believe him, but we also trust that his sense of safety and his sense of humour are well grounded and separated.

Give an incomplete description, or assume that the mad bomber has successfully hidden something from the player and refuse to tell them about it, and that could be considered cheating- I know I'd feel cheated if I was the player. I think we are thinking about two different things, two different approaches at least- bold dramatic decisions on one side, slow, tense, intricate puzzle solving on the other.

The dice roll that would be appropriate there is a contest, possibly a multi- step extended contest, of demolitions skill, to see how much the character can figure out- then hit the player with their options. This is what you see, and what you think you understand- what are you going to do?

I'm not sure that differs much if at all, in practise, from what you say you would do. Except that I enjoy improvising, and don't necessarily have a 'this is the plot' plot, more a sort of groundswell of history overlain with a constellation of NPC's with agendas of their own that the players can fall in with, fall out with, set themselves up against, or best of all, subvert. Sometimes, hideous screwups actually do happen. Quite a lot of the time, they're actually highly amusing.

The actual mechanics of the game- leave combat aside for the moment- are first and foremost a translation device to put the player into the characters' shoes, tell them what they see and more importantly what their character thinks.
Second and almost as important, safety net for when the players want to do something genuinely, truly stupid. Not an override, just a warning. Player decision always takes precedence, they're not bound by the dice- but some times, a lot of the time actually,the characters are supposed to be smarter than the people playing them.

There's no mechanical method of resolving internal conflict- unless you're playing White Wolf's Wraith, where the player on your left got to play the voices in your head- but there can be and are mechanical justifications for it, for making the player think and make choices.

Ultimately, it's all support hardware for telling a story, and it's the stories that get taken away from the table, and are still getting talked about weeks or months afterwards, that matter. Or, in the case of some of the truly gigantic misunderstandings and explosions (which tend to go together for some reason) years.

[Ariphaos]

The worst game I ever had the misfortune of playing is without a doubt CP 2020. Retarded metaplot, arrogant to a flaw with nothing to show for it ("If you don't like it, go back to your game with the happy elves" Yes. That would sting if you didn't suck. Hard.), and an absolutely atrocious system.

As for the best, hm. I don't really care for most systems, I think the closest to what I like is Legend of the Five Rings, but they like to play goof with skills (I ignore the metaplot. The Clan War will be driven as my players determine, thankyouverymuch).

In terms of setting, pre-Clan War L5R, Shadowrun, or Exalted. Occasionally Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, or Star Wars, but for the most part I prefer my own stuff. I did run a 'The Realms Must Perish' game out of a sadistic desire to see everyone in Toril die. Which was a lot of fun.

[Gunhead]

The actual mechanics of the game- leave combat aside for the moment- are first and foremost a translation device to put the player into the characters' shoes, tell them what they see and more importantly what their character thinks.
Second and almost as important, safety net for when the players want to do something genuinely, truly stupid. Not an override, just a warning. Player decision always takes precedence, they're not bound by the dice- but some times, a lot of the time actually,the characters are supposed to be smarter than the people playing them.

What a character thinks is mostly up to the player. If game mechanics spport some kind perk / flaw system they can influence the character in some way.
Warning players of monumental stupidity is completely in the hands of the GM, and I'm really curious how game mechanics can in any way prevent players from doing something stupid.
Game mechanis also allow us to simulate a skill or ability that the player might not possess. This has nothing to do with the characters being smarter or dumber than the players.
A character should not be defined by game mechanics. Game mechanics give a framework for the character to influence the world he is set in, give the player a yardstick on how well his character can do this in given situation and give both the GM and the other players a common point of reference.

-Gunhead

[Covenant]

Concept of the day: Dice are a portable version of a random number generation device, correct? They generate a random number between their top and bottom intergers at a roughly equal spread. Know what's also a randomness generator?

A person guessing. If you give players a choice between a few different options, that can work the same way as a random number pulled from dice, assuming the probability is the same. If a character needs to hit an adjusted 20 to make this Skill Check you've designed, and he has a +10 on his skill, that means about half the time he'll make it. That same dice roll could, therefore, be reduced to a question of "X or Y?" rather than dice. Something dice don't let you do as easily is reward players for paying attention or being clever, especially if the choices would have otherwise been handled by randomization.

Covenant, I think we're both having to descend to the very obvious in order to explain this, we probably are just talking at cross purposes. The example that flashed into my mind wasn't James Bond, it was a late seventies Richard Harris movie that was repeated a few months ago- Juggernaut, with a mad bomber depositing all sorts of devious devices on an ocean liner.

That would have been fine if I hadn't been very specific about the types of situations I was talking about:

Indiana Jones guesses the weight of the idol, and moves a sandbag onto it, failing, and triggering the boulder. What skill is used here? Appraise Weight (gold/sand) and Run? This could be entirely roleplayed. James Bond guesses the right wire to cut, stopping the bomb right as it reaches 007 seconds to go. What skills are used here? A roll versus luck? Or you could make the player have to choose.

Given that situation, the only choice is "which wire?" Not an infinitely complex thing that requires a physical prop, so what you're doing is inflating the difficulty of my example to make it sound absurdly complex without dice. It isn't, and I'll get to that after your next statement:

The dice roll that would be appropriate there is a contest, possibly a multi- step extended contest, of demolitions skill, to see how much the character can figure out- then hit the player with their options. This is what you see, and what you think you understand- what are you going to do?

See, okay. You've talked up this big fucking bomb with all the tripwires and powder and blinking lights and shit, and what happens? "Roll your fucking Demolitions." A single diceroll is equal to a single decision. Saying "I try to defuse the bomb" and "I try to defuse the bomb, I'm rolling demolition," is the exact same expenditure of effort on both sides, except you remove the needless stupidity of the dice roll. And a multi-step contest of skill, or other things? At this point, you still need to have prepared descriptions of the explosive, or else they won't know what to be rolling against--unless all they keep doing is rolling demolitions over and over, and I hope you can step back a moment and realize how pointless, bland, and anticlimatic it is to base such an emotional highpoint as this--without need--on randomized number generatoin.

You as a GM are investing effort into designing this, and basically asking the players to go on intellectual autopilot by not challenging or engaging them to do anything other than roll the dice. They won't even need to pay attention, just ask you what they're rolling. There goes the tension your over-wrought bomb scenario was meant ot create.

Except that I enjoy improvising, and don't necessarily have a 'this is the plot' plot, more a sort of groundswell of history overlain with a constellation of NPC's with agendas of their own that the players can fall in with, fall out with, set themselves up against, or best of all, subvert.

I find this statement ironic from someone who has complained about all those descriptions they would need to think up just to provide some context for their player's decisions, when you're already just throwing them into a sandbox and asking them what they want to do with it. Trying to keep that world properly fleshed out is orders of magnitude more work.

The actual mechanics of the game- leave combat aside for the moment- are first and foremost a translation device to put the player into the characters' shoes, tell them what they see and more importantly what their character thinks.

Second and almost as important, safety net for when the players want to do something genuinely, truly stupid. Not an override, just a warning. Player decision always takes precedence, they're not bound by the dice- but some times, a lot of the time actually,the characters are supposed to be smarter than the people playing them.

This is a profoundly awful reason to use dice-based skill mechanics for all these little stupid contests. You as the GM tells them what they see, not the dice. The player is who decides what their character thinks, not the dice. Why do people insist on yanking control of the character's thoughts (not success or failure, mind you) away from the player who plays the role of the character they designed, described, and made backstory for? There's also a huge issue of tying perception to competancy which leaves combat-heavy characters out of the loop during non-combat situations... so I've got strongly disagree here.

As for the second, no, the skills are not a safety net for when the players want to do something stupid, and you're a liar for asserting as such. Skills can succeed or fail regardless of situation or your desire for them to save the player, that's the nature of the dice, and it's the GM who decides what skills can be used when and where, as well as modifiers and so forth. You can either ask them to roll (with a chance of success or failure) or you as a GM can just give them a clue. The only difference is the addition of a roll--in both cases you're dangling a safety line. If you want to take command of someone's player and say "Alright, roll me your Demolitions skill to see if you think that's a bad idea," then you've already crossed the line and removed the role playing aspect. If people want to do foolish things, not consult you, and not listen when you try to steer them--just let them fail. Why let failure only happen at the behest of the random numbers--the one, least satisfying way to fail?

Note, we're not even talking about conflict resolution or combat here, as you've also stated--so this is just standard skill-check stuff. If your players are running into Critical Intelligence Failure and possible game-breaking on a non-contested skill check, there is something else horribly awry in this game, and it isn't the players.

[Stark]

Don't forget rolling Demolitions is also modified and the result interpreted. The skill is rolled even if this is bomb 4 of a set of 6 in the campaign, all exactly the same, because of the simulationist approach that says 'players must die due to random die rolls' and reduces the complexity or decisionmaking to 'I will check my skill - ratatatatatat - oh look I made it'. It's all about increasing your numbers so the dice say you can do retarded things (or just the necessary things for the campaign, failing at which results in the campaign stalling and additional content being generated), because obviously playing in a cooperative fashion where non-opposed checks are unnecessary mean the players will just swan through the whole thing. Because, let's face it, the dice are the only real obstacle in simulationist 'roleplaying', and that's better than 'the expert thief can pick the lock without a roll'. The REAL character is the character SHEET. Climaxes must be skill-driven, because that's what the simulationist player has spent his years of gametime improving - not his imagination, or his role-playing, or his teamwork.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I recall some fuedal japanese RPG where due to character creation dice rolls, someone actually had to kill his character, and two characters had to try and kill each other, before we even started playing.... Which might of been interesting role playing, if you hadn't had to spend hours rolling on the family history table during character creation....

---edit 2---
though redeeming family creation table results was that we did manage to get characters in the party of six who were exact duplicates of of Snowblood, and Lonewolf (though the later was forced by the rolls to commit suicide before the game began, rather then hunt down the bastard and kill him)

[Ariphaos]

I recall some fuedal japanese RPG where due to character creation dice rolls, someone actually had to kill his character, and two characters had to try and kill each other, before we even started playing.... Which might of been interesting role playing, if you hadn't had to spend hours rolling on the family history table during character creation....

I had a similar incident to that wherein my character rolled
1) My character joins a rebel faction in my home country (Glantri of Mystara)
2) My character's faction starts a coup
4) My character is the only survivor.
3) The coup is successful

...we thought that it was a bit implausible for my 1st level wizard-fighter to be the king of Glantri. But it was funny.

[The Yosemite Bear]

To be exact our female Mage's mother was a member of a defeated clan, who was raped by a member of the conquering clan and thus mom raised the daughter to be a magical weapon against the winning clan. Our cleric happened to be a member of the clan that did the conquering, and our Samurai was a member of the defeated clan who knew too much about the betrayal and felt he had to kill himself....

[The Yosemite Bear]

Mind you back when Iron Crown did a lord of the rings RPG I was the only easterling in the party....

talk about fun times.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

For practically as long as I've been gaming I've been using a heavily modified Storyteller system. Dice are really only heavily used in combat, and I generally don't even pay attention to 'health levels', but rather just keeping general tabs on how much damage people are taking.

Outside of combat, for most things where the outcome is uncertain, I've developed a rather easy method of determining a random outcome. I simply tell the player to pick a number between one and ten, and then roll a single d10. How many points they had in a relevant skill would determine a sort of margin of success. If the number they picked was within said margin of success around the number actually rolled, they would succeed.

For instance, just tonight one Bastet character unknowingly got her hands on a Hellraiser puzzlebox. She decided she really wanted to push the pretty shiny button on top of the box. I gave the order to pick a number between one and ten, she chose three. The dice roll turned up a seven, I had decided her wits score of three gave her a margin of success of two, which meant she could have chosen any number between five and nine and succeeded. Unfortunately, she didn't, and she got her finger sliced off as the Puzzlebox began changing.

I'm in the process of developing a more refined sort of character sheet that best fits my gaming style. I so far have stats reduced basically to Strength, Dexterity, Wits and Perception, how strong you are, how flexible you are, how fast you can react to shit, and how good you are at noticing shit. I've decided social skills and basic intelligence are far better role-played rather than dice-rolled.

[Covenant]

Attributes are usually pretty pointless, even if they are tempting summations of a character's capabilities. Mostly they just act as modifiers for skills and combat, but there's the issue of minmaxing, so it's kinda silly--it's just one more thing to optimize. Plus it doesn't do much on it's own, so you might as well skip 'em and replace it with something more specific.

One thing I do in my homebrews, and want people to move more towards, is combining attributes, core skills, and feats into a set of flavorful defining characteristics--and then just give everyone else a roughly human normal capability for the rest. Let's say your setting was a mystery and shootout Film Noir + Elder Horrors theme. Call of Casablanca, where your character search for the stuff that dreams are made of--literally. Some primary traits to use instead of attributes would be:

• Knuckles: -physical fighting ability, including guns, taking the role of strength, constitution, and dexterity. In general, the difference between armor and dodging is mostly irrelevent in the long-term of combat, as is strength. Also, there's not many strength or constitution 'skills' so by rolling these into one package you make it easier for someone who wants to be combat heavy to afford to be such, without sacrificing everything--and you also make it harder for anyone to be entirely useless.
  
  Smarts: -obscure learned skills and gut instinct, being a combination of intelligence and wisdom. Skill checks are quite often unnecessary, but allowing characters to buy skills and increase their character's brainpower is legitimate. If someone wanted to play a brilliant researcher, letting them buy some of these skills enables the GM to say "It's a book of Sumerian Lore, which Professor Pabodie can read as The Annals of Ancient Beasts, a partial copy of which resides at the Miskatonic Universary where he taught."
  
  Grip: -willpower plus sanity, for handling the effects of Eldritch magic, excessive gin drinking, and resisting the requests of leggy dames who had to walk into your office. Sanity is useful for the theme and also parlays into how consumed by embittered hard-boiled longings your character is. Willpower is a useful catch-all trait, something which individuals rarely have complete control over and which comes up in moments of extreme duress, and thus a good choice for dice-rolling contests.

And that's it. Your skills will be based on a set of core traits that cover the stuff you'd need to roll, and nothing is a waste for anyone. Then you can do things that are more fun, and give feats and traits to modify those and help add some zazz to your character such as "White Knuckled: When you Lose Your Grip, you still retain your full Knuckles score." Allow players to pick a number of associated feats or traits equal to their rankings, so a level 3 Knuckles gets you 3 related feats, and best case, let people use special tricks depending on their levels. You end up with a small set of variables that leads to players having a toolbox of solutions to problems.

One thing I really love about 4e are their divisions of powers of once "per turn, per encounter, per day" sorts of things, and I'd really like to look into revising my style of skill system to incorporate more skills that are also powers, (not much of a leap for combat skills) but also including some that operate like a "Who Wants to Be a Millionare" set of lifelines, letting the player expend one of their once a days to ask the GM to eliminate some of the choices (if you give the player a choice between 3 actions, you'd cut it down to two with a bit of flavor text as to why) or a chance to choose incorrectly and then have the GM give you a second chance, and such. Now, if you make it do BOTH those things, and use up charges from the same pool, you create a situation where people are better off (mathmatically) using them before they fail... but if they do so, they could also expend them needlessly before they have to! The risk/reward and gambling mechanic would be great for a RP-heavy system.

So long as you don't offer too many pointless skills, and let people put their XP into buying a variety of things, you could have a lot of fun with that and bridge the gap between the benefit of an RP'd system and the risk of player stupidity.

[Stark]

Yeah, the use of cooldown-powers rather than tables of capability is good, because it means players can decide things (ie bust a gut lifting big rock or saving strength for later) rather than the semi-random super-modified strength roll they needed before. Working with actual resources leads to better roleplaying and more intuitive decision-making, rather than back-and-forthing on character sheets and skill definitions and crap like that.