Topic: Game focus: characters or world simulation?

[GrumpyOldFart]

Grampy,

 think that RM is a bit too number chruncy, and the results aren't always "rational".

Most systems are number crunchy in one way or another, it's the only practical way to move things from qualitative to quantitative. The ones that *seem* not to be successfully put the number crunching as far in the background as they can, make it as invisible as possible. I agree RM doesn't do very well with that part.
Results not always being 'rational', as in 'believable'.... to be honest, that's an audience I don't think anyone will ever be able to please. Examples:

1. You and I may know how different weights and sizes of shields play on the field, but most people won't. A 'believable' mechanic that will please you and me will be so much ballast to most players, as they don't have the experience to make a difference. It'll be extra accounting for no gain, because what they had before was believable by their standards.

2. An actually believable system would not have elves dwarves or dragons. Hmmm... they're supposed to actually be able to sell this game, right?

3. An actually believable magic system would be one where there is a total of ONE magical skill, Channeling. ALL magic is by direct intervention of divine or diabolical forces. There are miracles, there is engineering, there is duping, and there is nothing else.

Given that, I think the evidence suggests that gamers want their games to be "believable".... only not. I think one of RM's major strengths is that it tends to be very modular, making it easier than most to add or cut out pieces in order to fit it to an individual game concept.

I'm sure that GM and players play a large part in the story, but the system must be supportive.

Certainly. But what defines "supportive" varies with the story being supported, right? In other words, you quite simply cannot please everyone. I think trying for a system that's perfect as is with no modifications is a snipe hunt, it's chasing something that not only doesn't exist but cannot exist. I consider a robust RPG system to be one that's easy to modify but hard to break.

Sure is that RM isn't the worst system out there but, perhaps, someone could feeling it not right.

Sure. Including the designers, I've read some of their arguments on the subject.

In addition cooperative RP is a game style of the latest times and a genre all by itself, with dedicated RPG systems.

Moreover, what do you mean "cooperative" RP?

Ask Arioch. What I'm assuming is meant is increasing how much story share the PCs carry as opposed to the GM.

[giulio.trimarco]

In addition cooperative RP is a game style of the latest times and a genre all by itself, with dedicated RPG systems.

Moreover, what do you mean "cooperative" RP?

Ask Arioch. What I'm assuming is meant is increasing how much story share the PCs carry as opposed to the GM.

Yes, the question was for Arioch 

By the way, elves, dwarves and fireball doesn't "hamper" the results of a system.
Races aren't an integral part of RM core mechanics. I can play with all humans and retain the "irrational" results.

But I don't more see the point in this thread.
We are convincing Arioch to continue play RM?

[markc]

 I would have to say I play RMSS and SM:P mainly because of the skill system. To me the mechanics just seem the right way to do it. Yes it is numbers heavy but I am not afraid of numbers as some people are. But then again they might love Live Action Role Playing and I am not into that at all.
 All in all I am happy that there are a number of games out there and hopefully there will be one to fit every persons playing style and game word needs.

MDC

[Arioch]

But I don't more see the point in this thread.
We are convincing Arioch to continue play RM?

No, don't worry about that, I've played RM for a lot of years and surely I won't stop now (plus, my girlfriend likes RM a lot and I can't surely let her down by saying that I don't want to play her favourite game anymore! ).

The reason why I've opened this thread is to see if we could find a way of improving RM.

Moreover, what do you mean "cooperative" RP?

First, let me say that all RPGs are (imho at least) cooperative games. So the expression "cooperative roleplaying", that has been used in this thread (I don't remember who was the first to use it, but that's not important) is probably not a very good one.
Still, what I meant is: will giving to the players a little more control on the events that affects their characters help us to solving some RM problems?
(Note that, for example, we could say that Fate Points already do this: players can choose when and how to spend FP, thus gaining partial control of the "story".)

[markc]

 I think one of the mian things about giving control to the players is that all players are not equle. Some may be great writers and designers and some great role players and I can not leave out the great dice rollers. Do you have a way to solve this problem?

MDC

[rdanhenry]

The number of changes that can be made to RM that would constitute improvements rather than simply favoring a different playstyle are limited almost entirely to matters of presentation.

There are a few fairly minor quirks to be patched up (defending with my shield against arrows shouldn't depend on what weapon I'm holding) and I think there ought to be some optional rules for balancing out armor for campaigns that find it too weak (nobody ever says "armor is too powerful in Rolemaster" but there is considerable support for both the "it is balanced" and "armor is too weak" positions -- I expect both are largely right for their own campaign; balance is only meaningful in the context of a specific campaign).

In terms of presentation, there is room for a lot of improvement. Putting out .pdf beta versions to get some extra eyes on them before going to print is a good start. A lot of old gaming product (and not just from ICE) is so riddled with typographical errors, examples that weren't updated to match the published version of the rules, and such that it can be hard to believe there was any proofreading and copy editing process at all.

[giulio.trimarco]

Arioch,

you are referring to mechanic issues or on how RM is played?

Saying that cook isn't a useful skill I must disagree, in part, since It's a GM/Players problem.
If you say that RM is a too random system, etc., I've already pointed out some of anomalies that made me quit years ago.

In every case I found the fate points solutions a very BIG (non elegant) patch, like the one of the WFRP 1st, too letal at start that necessitate to gives more lives to PC.

For everyone out there that is interested in see how an RPG system can render hundreds of skill useful, check out Imagine Role Play http://www.role-playing.com/index.php.
If it's still in business...

[GrumpyOldFart]

markc, the "number crunching" doesn't bother me either, although it intimidates some of my players. I only object to it on the principle that anything whose presence doesn't add something to the feel of the scenario should be invisible, no matter what it is. If it's not necessary, make it vanish, otherwise it will distract someone. Maybe not you or me, but someone. And yeah, I don't think RM does a very good job of making the numbers vanish, so if that bugs you RM is probably not your game. The skill system is why I stay with RM as well.

So the expression "cooperative roleplaying"...is probably not a very good one.

I agree, that's why I went with

increasing how much story share the PCs carry as opposed to the GM.

Still, what I meant is: will giving to the players a little more control on the events that affects their characters help us to solving some RM problems?

Hmmm... no one knows the plot until someone comes up with a scenario. As it currently stands, the GM is basically the player who is designated as being the one stuck knowing the plot so as not to spoil it for everyone else. Please understand, I'm all in favor of giving any given player all the story share he can handle. What I'm wondering is how you go about giving players authority over plot direction without either a) spoiling it for the sake of getting an agreed upon direction, or b) having plot direction become essentially random, according to which party member's priorities are in control at the moment.
To be sure, random direction freeform games can be fun. But I wouldn't sic a freeform game on a group of green players and expect them to enjoy it... or for that matter to understand it.

Ultimately it comes down to the power balance between players and GM, which always gets pulled and twisted anytime you get a power mad GM or one or more power mad players. Keep in mind that players and GMs, especially green ones, both can be power mad world-wreckers out of ignorance or clumsiness, not just by intent. In the absence of such "Godzillas" destroying game worlds, I think the current balance does pretty well. Not least because you as a player have the option of going to your GM and telling him, "Hey, I want more say in where this goes", and the two of you conspire on it.
But don't forget that if the story is going into the handbasket, it's primarily his problem to fix it, much more than any individual player's.

[Arioch]

I think one of the mian things about giving control to the players is that all players are not equle. Some may be great writers and designers and some great role players and I can not leave out the great dice rollers. Do you have a way to solve this problem?

MDC

Could you elaborate, I don't understand what you mean 

[naphta23]

RM give only one outcome: death.

Nope: the enemy can surrender. The enemy can get hit unconscious.

Even if you use the whip to punish a prisoner you will probably end with a dead one  ... 
Even if you try to grapple an enemy you will mime it ... if not killing it.
And you have no control on it.

I disagree. If you use your whole OB with a whip and you're a proficient whip-user, what do you expect when attacking? Using the whole OB indicates that you want to see your opponent dead, doesn't it? And even then your GM should have at least some common sense when you want to torture your victim. Sometimes, asking for a roll is asking for trouble. Just tell the GM that you want to cause some pain, period.

Some for skills. You roll and ... puff, a 66. Damn, I've a 120 in climbing!
Fun at the start... but after a while it gives a sense of randomness...
Or the opposite.

Believe it or not: even skilled car drivers can suffer an accident. Even professional ski-athletes can fall down & break a limb. That is called bad luck, this is life.

You face a impassable lock. A lucky player will roll. 100. Puff, you unlocked the lock.
I have experiences in witch a player complained about his "excessive" luck.

There are people in this world who are lucky. That is unfair, but this is life. A former schoolfellow is such a lucky person - whatever game (with a random element) you play, he is going to win, because fortuna smiles at him. Every. Single. Time. Yes, it is unfair - but there is also nothing you can do against that.

And for the spells: I always hated (A)D&D for its spell system. Memorize a spell, cast it, no danger or possible fail to fear. Never. Fighters and thieves were useless after a few level-ups, any combination of a wizard and a cleric could do better - just think of Invisibility or Silence 10'. Magic is mighty and absolut relieable. When I discovered Shadowrun, I was happy that there is a price to pay and perhaps some danger, if you wanted to cast a spell - but soon I realized, that you only need some decent stats to ignore most of the dangers of spellcasting.
In Rolemaster, spells still are powerful and useful, but finally the casting really can have a disastrous result. This is why spellcasters rarely cast spells in every available situation - they should always ask themselves if the situation justifies the risk.

Please do not be offended, but I completely disagree - all points you mentioned why you are unsatisfied with Rolemaster are almost exactly the points, why I chose it as my favorite game.
And by the way: in (A)D&D, for example, you make a skill check and the result is binary, most of the time: success or failure (a natural 1 or 20 is the same as in Rolemaster, but the possibility to roll one of those numbers is a lot higher...). Rolemaster has variations in the degree of the success.

(Note that, for example, we could say that Fate Points already do this: players can choose when and how to spend FP, thus gaining partial control of the "story".)

Sorry, if I misunderstood you, but when are the player not in partial control of the story? 
I once had a GM whose adventures where like straightjackets and I really detested it. There is a reason why I prefer RPGs over computer games: I have the option and the chance to go my way or do the things I want to do. If I want to blackmail the guard, why can't I? Because the GM doesn't want it? Because some programmer forgot to write the script? I want freedom and I want to decide if I want to pursue the adventure or if I look for another one without being punished for not following the pointers.

[markc]

I think one of the mian things about giving control to the players is that all players are not equle. Some may be great writers and designers and some great role players and I can not leave out the great dice rollers. Do you have a way to solve this problem?

MDC

Could you elaborate, I don't understand what you mean 

 Sure no problem. What I mean is that to give controll to a player or players can cause a problem. If you give players controll of your face to face game. they can lead the game in a direction in which it is only fun for them and no one else. If you give each player a time to shine that may work but not all players like to play in that type of game. They may just like solving problems, creating magic items, combat, keeping notes, drawing maps or integration of war game mini-games into the RPG game.
 I can say that I try and have one easy to see "event" going on in my game as well as many sub-plots or minor plots. IMO this has to have meaning in the game. By that I mean if they follow a minor plot line and ignor a major one the major plot "event" should happen.
 If you need more just say so or give me point to address. Or if you could explain handing the game over to the players line. There might be something lost in translation.

MDC

[Arioch]

(Note that, for example, we could say that Fate Points already do this: players can choose when and how to spend FP, thus gaining partial control of the "story".)

Sorry, if I misunderstood you, but when are the player not in partial control of the story? 

Yes, sorry I used that term again (story) which is pretty confusing. 
I should have said, as in sentence above, "control of the events that affects their characters".

@ marck: ok, now I've understood.
For what I mean with handling the game to the players in RM think to Fate Points, that are probably the existing mechanic closer to my idea (which is still not very clear even to me, in case you haven't noticed  ).
For example: a character is fighting agains an orc, the orc hit the character and score a 66 on a critical, which would led to the death of the said PC.
So the player controlling the PC spend a Fate Point, making the orc re-roll the crit and thus avoiding his character death.
That is basically as the player said: "Look, realism in this fight isn't really so important to me. I'd prefer that my character survive this battle."
He's taking partial control over the events around his characters, cancelling an event that as a player he don't like and replacing it with another one. He is also telling to the GM (and the other players) a little more about how he sees his character, about how he would set the "scope" of the campaign (his character isn't someone who'll die against a single orc, so probably he wants to set the tone of the campaign on a more "heroic" level, or maybe he simply doesn't think that combat is important).

[thrud]

LOL, I can attest to the fact that it's already very much possible to affect the story as a player.
A couple of weeks back our group managed to bypass half the adventure by comming up with a clever idea. The GM was not pleased... All that planning wasted. We were happy though.  

I guess that's why I have a problem seeing your problem. To me there is no problem and that's why I think it's mostly a GM/player issue not a game issue.

[giulio.trimarco]

Please do not be offended, but I completely disagree - all points you mentioned why you are unsatisfied with Rolemaster are almost exactly the points, why I chose it as my favorite game.
And by the way: in (A)D&D, for example, you make a skill check and the result is binary, most of the time: success or failure (a natural 1 or 20 is the same as in Rolemaster, but the possibility to roll one of those numbers is a lot higher...). Rolemaster has variations in the degree of the success.

Don't worry, we are talking  !

BTW, you disagree, but you haven't demonstrated why I'm not right.

The whip issue is there.
If I have a 230 OB and use it against tied up prisoner he will just die, ok with you.
If I have 10 OB? With all the bonuses from a static target, with no DB, and a 1d100 roll I could come up at least with a A cirt.
That can, again, randomly come up with a death prisoner.
Without mension of a famble from he whipper... 

Surrendering foes are story driven GM decisions, not system rules.
Unconscious by hits means a combat that has gone for at least 10-15 rounds (a veeery long combat). Or you have delivered two E crits (with accompaning 50 hits) coming up with only hits...

I don't want to clutter the post with other replays, there is already another thread.

[Arioch]

LOL, I can attest to the fact that it's already very much possible to affect the story as a player.

Please re-read what I've said in my above post:

Yes, sorry I used that term again (story) which is pretty confusing. 
I should have said, as in sentence above, "control of the events that affects their characters".

That's something completely different from having players coming up with cool idea (I don't have anything against that: I simply don't plan how adventures should develop since I know that no GM plan survives the players  )

[thrud]

I would argue that you are slightly off target with that one. There are whips and there are whips.
The whip in arms law is a Bull Whip and if you use it like you propose the prisoner would most likely die irl as well. If you choose to go easy so not to kill the prisoner you could use pummeling criticals and there might be some more appropriate weapon table as well? If you choose to hold back you don't get the full OB, thus you have less of a risk of accidentaly killing the prisoner.
If you get a more appropriate whip then the problem would be a lack of appropriate weapons table.

It's like this, you don't use the club table when you give the target a caning. A school cane (rattan) will not deliver the same damage as a club.
So, if you want to discuss the problem of accedentally killing the prisoner while torturing him you should look at the problem from another angle.
The solution is a new book, "Arms Law 2" or a "Arms Law the ulimate edition" or whatever...?

Possibly one could write some rules add-ons  for sparring, torturing, barbrawls and other situations where the purpose is other than killing your opponent.
One has to remember that the arms law tables were built with one purpouse,all out battle with the intent to kill your opponent.

Fate points are a great way to give that heroic flavour.

Arioch> If you give the players the ability to "control of the events that affects their characters" they become roostery and the game becomes boring very easily. If you decide to enter combat you risk getting hurt, plain and simple. If you stumble when you jump the ravine you will get hurt.

[markc]

Arioch;
 Thanks for the info.

Fate Points:
  Yes I agree that Fate Points replace one event with another by design. Why is this mechanic so liked by RM fans? IMO it is because quite a bit of time and effort goes into  creating a PC. Again IMO this is good and bad. First it makes a player make a number of decisions about his character. These decisions often take time to do right or at least do right in the GM's game. For new players often I help them creat a PC and it takes about 4 hours to go through all the rules about stats, skills, into to combat and level up to level between 3 and 5. And often they come back to me and want to change something. This is fine IMO as even long time players decide to take a PC in a different direction than they orrigonaly intended.
 So Fate Point were included to help with the time involved in PC creation IMO. It also is almost always a bummer when a long time character is killed and the party has no way to save them. It has even happened to me in a game I Co-GMed. I had used all my Fate Points and my PC went to -[CO+ranks in BD+3*Race Stat bonus], this is a house rule and is different from the book. It also is late so the formula I use might be a bit different. It sucked. It was a bummer but that is the way the story went. Lucky for me that we were in a place in the adventure I got another PC in one or two sessions and did not have to sit out a month or more.
  But then again I am more in favor of a game that it takes me longer to generate a PC than a shorter time. I am playing in a game now with the New World of Darkness using there Mage system. It is complex in that you can do so many things with the spell system you have to plan your PC very well to be effective. I also like playing PC's that have a flaw somewhere in there make-up. This can be tough to pull off and not make the PC a total write off. But again I am having a fun time and I am attachd to my PC. Would I have more fun playing RM or SM? Maybe, but the game story would be very different as the systems approch game design from opposite positions. One from a strait story is king and the other that rules provide a frame work that the story sits in. 

Randomness:
 Life is random in what does and does not occure. There is a chance that I will get hit by lightning today. A small chance but a chance non the less. Also the wip and other weapons like it should have a house rule limiting the max crit result  it can inflict. I think there are other weapons out there like the dart but again maybe it is 1 in 10^99 that it will hit you in the eye and damage you brain. But there is a chance.
  I can see how people would want a crit chart for every weapon. But not having writen a complete crit chart myself I can only repete the comments of others who have. "It is horrible. Please do not make me write a crit chart." I can also see that weapon group crit charts like in the Combat Companion might work for designer and players. And hopefully keep everyone sain in the process.   

Anyway thanks for reading the long post. Keep it going.
MDC

[thrud]

markc> Well put. Dying sucks but that's life.

[Arioch]

Arioch> If you give the players the ability to "control of the events that affects their characters" they become roostery and the game becomes boring very easily. If you decide to enter combat you risk getting hurt, plain and simple. If you stumble when you jump the ravine you will get hurt.

Thrud: If I thought that playing with someone could make the game boring, I'd simply prefer not to play with that person. The problem here is not game control (or what you want to call it), is that that person is a... well I don't want to be rude.  

  Yes I agree that Fate Points replace one event with another by design. Why is this mechanic so liked by RM fans? IMO it is because quite a bit of time and effort goes into  creating a PC.

Yes, yes, yes! That's what I'm trying to say from the start of the topic, thank you markc!!  

That's why I'm saying that RM is somehow "schizophrenic": because it gives you complete control on character creation and almost no control after the game begins. It makes you spend a lot of effort in creating a character, providing him with lots of detail (which is something I absolutely LOVE of this game), but then all this effort may be "wasted" after 5 min of playing if you fumble really bad a moving maneuver...

[thrud]

Haha, now I think I understand you Arioch. I totally agree with that last statement. You pour your soul into creating a wonderful character and it's almost like a love affair. Then you get bumped off by a wandering Lugro in the first 5 minutes. That totally sucks.
It's still not a flaw within the game. Adventuring is dangerous and if you can't take the heat stay out of the kitchen. The smart way to play this is to play easy adventures in the begining. Some wise person once said levels 1-5 are just getting to know the character.

Fate points eliviates this issue. You are touched by god and this gives you a few fate points. In the end it's up to the GM and how much he/she will allow? Maybe a more creative use of fate points would solve your issue?