New RQ - Designer Notes Part Two

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, Pentallion said:

All I know is, I have a lot of players who have a great time roleplaying and make memorable characters, but there is inevitably a time when they haven't the slightest clue what to say and fall flat on their faces, whereas their silk tongued trickster, polished politician, barbarian warlord, whatever, wouldn't be having such difficulties and so I just make them roll for it and keep the game moving.

And we've all encountered that situation I'm sure.

Yes - I sat in a situation where the spokesman of our young Orlanthi tried to act modest and coy when dealing with an important thane of a somewhat hostile clan where boasting and hyperbole would have been appropriate. If the player had made a useful roll before the attempt, at the very least he might have gained an insight how to deal with the NPC as character knowledge (or insight).

[Jeff]

Or the reverse - the player who is personally very loquacious and outgoing, playing a low-CHA taciturn Humakti who gives speeches far better than their character could. We make a dice roll to see if a sword hits (we could just agree to talk that through), I see zero problem with rolling dice to see if a speech, seduction, quick excuse, etc works.

[Mugen]

11 hours ago, Pentallion said:

All I know is, I have a lot of players who have a great time roleplaying and make memorable characters, but there is inevitably a time when they haven't the slightest clue what to say and fall flat on their faces, whereas their silk tongued trickster, polished politician, barbarian warlord, whatever, wouldn't be having such difficulties and so I just make them roll for it and keep the game moving.

And we've all encountered that situation I'm sure.

One of my worst memory was in an Orpheus (white wolf) game, in which the GM didn't use my high social attributes at all during a negotiation. 

As a result, I had to rely on my own skills and go out of my character, because I was not good enough to make a real negotiation and keep playing a role.

The most frustrating part was when the GM basically told me that I had been good at it, but he decided in first place I couldn't win... 

[Atgxtg]

On 2/12/2016 at 11:19 PM, Simlasa said:

 

I just mean that there are some things that really do require some detailed rules be in place and others that don't. I

Not really. It's more a case of emphasis. Most players consider combat important and fun to play, and, say, basket weaving,. to be a bore. Thus we get very detailed rules and spend a lot of time doing the former and little or no rules for the later. Now if people thought that a basket weaving contest, especially one that awarded treasure and put the character's lives on the line, was fun and interesting, there would be very detailed rules for basket weaving that delved into the differenced between "Coiled" basketry, "Plaiting" basketry, "Twining" basketry, and "Wicker" and "Splint" basketry. 

 

It's pretty much teh same reason why there isn't an H&R Block RPG. 

 

Personally, I thing social interaction and a few other areas of RQ could do with a bit more detail. 

[fmitchell]

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Most players consider combat important and fun to play, and, say, basket weaving,. to be a bore.

Then, too, basket weaving typically doesn't have life-or-death stakes.  More elaborate resolution procedures that slow time down to seconds are more satisfying than a single Russian Roulette style die roll.

The trick is to extend existing mechanics to implement the Let's Try To Murder Each Other mini-game. YMMV (Your Murderhoboing May Vary), but I just view combat as a special case of What Happens Next.  The more that rules for Killing Things depart from general rules for Doing Things, the more stuff I have to remember and the more annoyed I get when it's Killing Time.  When the rules for Killing Things dominate the rule book, and I have to keep nearly all of them in mind, I truly resent having to stop the fun collaborative story-telling part of the afternoon to play a skirmish miniatures game.  (Or, in the case of a certain RPG version by a certain board game company, a game of token and card arrangement.)

RuneQuest/BRP/Call of Cthulhu, like most RPGs, define combat as a special case of task or conflict resolution.  Fighting gets a chapter, sometimes less; maybe add a chapter for special circumstances, possibly another for gun porn.  When more than half the rules and/or half the character sheet contain elements used solely during combat, the tail wags the dog.

[threedeesix]

On ‎2‎/‎13‎/‎2016 at 2:14 AM, Jeff said:

Or the reverse - the player who is personally very loquacious and outgoing, playing a low-CHA taciturn Humakti who gives speeches far better than their character could. We make a dice roll to see if a sword hits (we could just agree to talk that through), I see zero problem with rolling dice to see if a speech, seduction, quick excuse, etc works.

While not a social situation, I had a similar incident non-the less.

Back in my RQ3 days, I had a player who was playing a barbarian with a low INT score, as any good barbarian should have. ;-)  However this particular player was a physicist in the real world, and I remember the first time I sent them into a cave, he said he was looking for the ingredients to make gunpowder. No matter how hard I explained it to him, he couldn't grasp the concept of player knowledge and character knowledge.

We're still great friends, now we watch movies. ;-)

Rod

[fmitchell]

12 hours ago, threedeesix said:

Back in my RQ3 days, I had a player who was playing a barbarian with a low INT score, as any good barbarian should have. ;-)  However this particular player was a physicist in the real world, and I remember the first time I sent them into a cave, he said he was looking for the ingredients to make gunpowder. No matter how hard I explained it to him, he couldn't grasp the concept of player knowledge and character knowledge.

That's one reason why I dislike attributes for Intelligence.  Education or Quick Wits, maybe, but "intelligence" 1) is too general and 2) obstructs players' problem solving abilities.

On the other hand, I would have declared that "gunpowder" in a fantasy world either doesn't exist or requires a more difficult alchemical process than as seen on that one episode of Star Trek (which Mythbusters demonstrated is kind of true in our world too).  I'd also have him explain to the class what a "gun" was and why it needed "powder".  Then we could all have a good laugh about silly barbarian superstitions.

Edited February 15, 2016 by fmitchell

[SDLeary]

16 minutes ago, fmitchell said:

That's one reason why I dislike attributes for Intelligence.  Education or Quick Wits, maybe, but "intelligence" 1) is too general and 2) obstructs players' problem solving abilities.

I've actually changed it back to a familiar stat in my house system... Wisdom. What you know and capacity for knowledge, from both formal and informal sources. 

SDLeary

Edited February 15, 2016 by SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

8 hours ago, fmitchell said:

That's one reason why I dislike attributes for Intelligence.  Education or Quick Wits, maybe, but "intelligence" 1) is too general and 2) obstructs players' problem solving abilities.

On the other hand, I would have declared that "gunpowder" in a fantasy world either doesn't exist or requires a more difficult alchemical process than as seen on that one episode of Star Trek (which Mythbusters demonstrated is kind of true in our world too).  I'd also have him explain to the class what a "gun" was and why it needed "powder".  Then we could all have a good laugh about silly barbarian superstitions.

I'd have just let the character blow himself up. It was a rather common occurrence in the early black power days. Heck, it still happens today.

[soltakss]

9 hours ago, fmitchell said:

That's one reason why I dislike attributes for Intelligence.  Education or Quick Wits, maybe, but "intelligence" 1) is too general and 2) obstructs players' problem solving abilities.

On the other hand, I would have declared that "gunpowder" in a fantasy world either doesn't exist or requires a more difficult alchemical process than as seen on that one episode of Star Trek (which Mythbusters demonstrated is kind of true in our world too).  I'd also have him explain to the class what a "gun" was and why it needed "powder".  Then we could all have a good laugh about silly barbarian superstitions.

In the gunpowder example, they'd have to make an Alchemy roll to be able to find the ingredients.

I like the INT characteristic as it allows me to ask for an INTxn% roll, where n depends on what is asked. If they fail then they don;t know in game. If they succeed they've had a flash of inspiration.

 

[Simlasa]

On 2/13/2016 at 8:40 AM, Atgxtg said:

Not really. It's more a case of emphasis. Most players consider combat important and fun to play, and, say, basket weaving,. to be a bore. Thus we get very detailed rules and spend a lot of time doing the former and little or no rules for the later.

I consider combat important but I generally don't find it all that interesting compared to stuff I get to do 'in character'... talking to NPCs and other PCs, exploration, investigation, problem solving. Partly because dice rolling isn't all that exciting for me.

So calling for MORE dice rolling for social situations (rolling against INT, WIS, CHA, etc. is good enough IMO) feels, to me, like it's taking away, rather than adding, fun.

As it is, with combat, I don't like having to make more than a few rolls to discover the outcome. I used to play Earthdawn and we were rolling gobs of dice for every combat action... drove me nuts. Then again, that's a game where results on basket weaving really can be important.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Simlasa

[fmitchell]

On 2/15/2016 at 0:14 AM, SDLeary said:

What you know and capacity for knowledge, from both formal and informal sources.

That's more or less how I'd treat it.  I'd keep the name "Intelligence" but use a different dictionary definition: "the collection of information of military or political value" ... or, more generally, practical value.  Like social skills, INT exists to support players who lack those abilities in real life, but it doesn't replace good ideas or sudden insights.  (It also has more specific roles in the rules, e.g. spell capacity, skill modifiers, which is why I'd just leave the name as is.)

Edited February 16, 2016 by fmitchell
parenthetical

[bturner]

On 2/11/2016 at 8:42 AM, Baulderstone said:

Compare that to RuneQuest, where you may lack a skill to perform an action, but if you can find a bag of treasure and trainer, you can pick up a new skill in a new field without it limiting you in your other endeavors. 

While I am not the biggest fan of using your character sheet as a menu to decide what to do, at least in RuneQuest, the menu options are a lot looser, and you are a lot less constrained in what you can add to the menu. 

These are excellent statements. RuneQuest provides lots of opportunity for characters who never knew that (for example) they were going to learn how to build and use (magical?) hangliders to do exactly that. This is a huge strength of the game. The fact that the standard skills list provides a good 90% answer to most typical situations is another strength - having a completely blank character sheet can mean that in an unexpected situation a player's mind can just go blank for lack of hooks to work with (not good for MGF). If the player knows that their character has good skills to fight, to raise horses, to cook, and to tell plausible lies they will use those as building blocks. It's the referee's job to ensure that those elements don't also become straitjacketed limits.