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Subject: 
Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.geek
Date: 
Thu, 6 Jun 2002 16:14:15 GMT
Viewed: 
3923 times
  
In article <3CFED0A9.574DC0D1@mindspring.com>,
Frank Filz  <ffilz@mindspring.com> wrote:
I'm curious, was this an example of a real scenario, and I'm just
missing things because there's no way you can compress a game session
into a posting or two, or is this a constructed example? If the latter,

It was just a quick example off the top of my head-- certainly, any
such example will have piles of nits one can pick, and that's sort of
my point-- anything's gonna have those sorts of problems, and finding
those problems is exactly what PCs are for.

types of rules that I hate, ones which create a totally unbelievable
world. I am willing to suspend disbelieve in certain circumstances (like

That's why we play with human GMs-- the GM can be sane about application
of the rules. Imagine playing that module (ow..) with a human GM, as
a druid. The GM says the rats advance. The druid waves his torch at them,
and the rats recoil from the heat, unharmed, but not interested in going
forward. The "rule" in the module was that druids die here, but the GM
has fudged the rule, and the player is none the wiser. Sure, this is
_really poor_ module design, but unfortunately, I'm not a professional
GM and while I usually get better than this, my designs ain't perfect,
either.

to allow magic and hyperdrives to work), but in other areas, I expect
the rules to try and survive the test of reality - this is why I think
something's wrong if the PCs wouldn't share the cloak which adds to
charisma so the Paladin can heal just because that would somehow destroy
the "balance" or "mood" of the game, don't create such situations in
your game, or make sure that the restriction is logically part of the
"rules" (for example, perhaps the code of paladinhood wouldn't allow
such uses of magic - but make sure your code is self consistent).

I dunno. A cloak that improves charisma is probably a quite ornate fancy
looking cloak that no self-respecting Paladin would ever wear; Paladins
don't do "finery" and "luxury", they wear functional waterproof cloaks
to keep the water off their functional plate armor. :) Finery and luxury
gets donated to the Church...  I can see where that wouldn't be an
unreasonable thing under the right circumstances. I also don't consider
it reasonable to expect players to ultra-optimize; the idea is to play
a role (hence the term "role-playing game"), not to solve a puzzle.

Once again, why game masters occasionaly _must_ fudge things, look at
a so-called "role playing game" on a computer or game console-- they're
either "hack and slash" or "puzzle solving" at any given time; tabletop
RPGs are (or perhaps I should say "can be") something different because
a GM is not a computer and _can_ fudge things when it makes sense.
Without that ability, the game has basically become a puzzle game
with a few random elements to be discussed over chips and pretzels.

-JDF
--
J.D. Forinash                                     ,-.
jd@forinash.not                                  ( <
The more you learn, the better your luck gets.    `-'



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
 
(...) Ok, this points out a problem with constructions like this, they will have far more holes than something that was thought out. This particular construction is actually a good thought exercise for working out gming and campaign style. If (...) (22 years ago, 6-Jun-02, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Elements of a brick oriented RPG
 
(...) I'm curious, was this an example of a real scenario, and I'm just missing things because there's no way you can compress a game session into a posting or two, or is this a constructed example? If the latter, it sounds like a poorly constructed (...) (22 years ago, 6-Jun-02, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

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