Then I suggest you don't understand what a 'fiat' is. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Although single roll mechanisms are somewhat problematic, perhaps that is what you are getting at? EDIT: AKA the issue with "Save VS Death".



Why did you not include "It is a matter of degrees and regularity..." in the portion that you quoted? Read it as a whole, please. It should help clear up your misunderstanding.

Because "It's a matter of degrees" isn't supported at all by your statement, and the "... and regularity" part was already addressed in my comments?



I understand quite well what a fiat is. Having your character die solely by the outcome of a dice roll (especially one that went unexpectedly well or poorly) is an example of an impersonal fiat. The dice are, after all, an authority by the game rules -- what the dice say happen, happens, unless the ultimate authority (the GM) intervenes. The outcome of the dice is their "decree". A fiat is a decree from an authority.

What can I say? You are simply failing at comprehension, reading in an absolute that just isn't there.

Die rolls add the element of randomness, and therefore increase risk. Regardless of whether you only have 1 die or 30 for a given test there's some chance that you'll fail (and conversely, some chance you'll succeed). Having higher skills, attributes, and modifiers might improve your chances of success, but nothing is ever guaranteed. This uncertainty seems to me like a good thing to me.

And because it's based on a purely random roll, it eliminates (or at least reduces) the perception of bias. If I was in a no-dice, narrative campaign and my GM said "I know you're one of the best marksman in the world, but this time fate's against you and you missed the guy from point-blank range" I'd be pissed at the GM. It would seem arbitrary and like railroading to me. If on the other hand I somehow manage to roll a critical glitch on my 25 die agility+firearms+whatever test, then I'll accept my lumps. And the knowledge that I have a chance of legitimately failing even though I throw an ungodly number of dice keeps me interested.

Not really, no.



I added that EDIT part because I figured you might be confused by that. I don't think using Save VS Death is a good idea (certainly not without a severely limiting it's use). But that is a separate issue.



Um, no. Because the dice don't think, they didn't make the decision to be rolled to start with nor did they assign meaning to themselves. To label 'fiat' what you claim [EDIT:is] fiat is to make the definition so broad that it becomes nigh useless. Now Shadowrun isn't particularly clear about this, although 4th edition is more so than prior editions.

Also I think it would help if you go back and read this to better understand where I'm coming from.

Let's approach this from the opposite direction, then.

You state that one should strive to use dice equally as frequently in combat and in social situations (whether that frequency is 100% of the time or 0% of the time or anything in between). I have absolutely no problem at all with that stance. It seems pretty reasonable, to me, although it's not something I would ever even try to enforce as a GM -- but that's a different discussion.

My contention is with the way you backed up your statement. You made the following absolute statement (absolute statement emphasis mine):



That states, up front and in clear language, that without dice being rolled, someone is "doing things wrong". You then cite as a specific example that the GM isn't making the game challenging.

You then further back up that statement in the next paragraph with:



Again, this supports and follows from your statement "If the dice aren't coming out, somebody isn't doing their job". The two statements, taken together, appear to promote the view that the dice create tension, etc, and without the dice you cannot create tension (because if you could have the tension without the dice, your whole point is, well, kinda irrelevant).




Now, that said, I'm pretty sure I understand what you actually MEAN. I just don't think you're making nearly the right arguments to support your case. Quite the opposite, actually. What (I believe) you're getting at and what you're saying are two different animals.

If you took that alone, pulled it out of the context of my further clarification down further, sure. But the fact that you are pulling it out of context is the underlying cause of your misunderstanding. Further context that is being lost are the Mystweaver descriptions, which that was a response to. But you don't even need the later. Again, read it as the whole.

The last quote you gave doesn't have any absolute nature to itself at all. You are reading it in. :/


Then you have me here, right now, clarifying it for you. Several times. Come on, you don't think I know what I intended to convey? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Of course you do. The problem comes with actually conveying what you intended to convey.

Note, to be fair, I did actually misunderstand you the first time I read the post I originally responded to. I really did think your stance was what I questioned. I see now that it isn't -- but I maintain that my original reading of your post was a valid reading of it, and that even with a very generous amount of latitude given to it, it really doesn't support your actual stance very well at all.

The parts you pulled out have some inherent ambiguities, so could be taken more than one way. ((EDIT: Especially if you strip out the assumptions based on context with Mystweaver's post.)) Which is exactly why I further qualified my statements in that post with the sentence you kept ignoring when reading the other parts. Really, this misunderstanding should have died at "I most certainly did not say that.". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) <end of sidetrack>

This I can agree with, at least (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

BTW, thanks for not turning this into a flamefest. Many others would have. It's refreshing to have a civilized disagreement on the internet from time to time.

No problems and likewise.

Jerk! <j/k>

Hillarious. LMAO almost forgot that was this weekend!

OK why am I carring a cross. Simple. Some of you are cocks. At least on this forum. While not as bad as the old days there is still a legacy, a tradition of abuse with an attendant' you dont like it leave.

You disagree with what I have written. OK. But you have not just disagreed but derided my belief/experence and openly insulted me over it.

Yes I invited it. In five years I have had one such incident but I have seen plenty. Unfortunately am also the type of guy knowing that attack is coming and is beyond being stopped, to thumb my nose at the bastards on the why in.

Some of you are literaly just choosing to read what you want to read. Cain and Dwight talking to you here. An example is just an example, you have authority issues. And if you're not willing to actually read another person's answer you're not even trying to understand their point of view.

Critas, am sorry I have wound you up to point of swearing, your normally level headed and I respect this. If you want I will PM an explaintion to you.

As I said, I choose the tool that in my experence worked best. This is in part because I have studied martial arts and eastern philosphy for over fifteen years. I am also sick of people that do not understand but talk the talk, regurgitated from people that do understand.

In general Dumpshock has a terrible reputation because of this behaviour. Every person I have met that has heard of dumpshock in, Christ, 11 years. Treats it with the same distain as they reserve for gential warts because they have seen this type of attack. I am not even going tell you what my frenship group call it.

Am fustrated that a vocal minority keep fucking up an otherwise decent area, if you think am playing the matry it because I knew I was going to get this kind of reaction. Can you honestly read through this and say hand on heart, that there was a open, mature, balanced response?

And I apologise, am tired of biting my tongue and walking away, while someone is being an offensive wanker on these boards.

I read it as saying that the dice add a certain randomness to the tension and drama, something that can't be planned for because it IS random... That is the reason dice are used... to bring some randomness to the table.

Very well said... I wish my comment was as clear as this is... If there is no randomness in the action, tehn you might as well be writing a novel, as all outcomes are then no longer random.

Ah, the "woe is me" card. I've read your answer. It's not just that you're being pretentious about it, it's that you're wrong.


Hahahaha! I call Bullshido on that one! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif) You're doing a good job of talking the talk, but not backing it up.


I can honestly say that there was a response equally as mature and balanced as the remark that spawned it.

This topic too has been hijacked and tortured to death... Please keep in mind that not everyone likes to play their games the same way... hopefully we can continue to have open discussion without all of the vitroil that has been flowing as of late...

Ahhh, What do I know anyway?

I still say that you need both (Roleplaying and Dice) to create a story, that is both fun and full of tension, and allows for randomness to occur without the predictability of a novel...

Because lets face it, if you really wanted that predictability (Diceless, or minimal dice rolling), you should really be writing a book, rather than trying to provide a collaborative environemnt that the player can interact with and, ultimately, influence by his actions... If you remove random chance, where is the fun?

It's still collaborative story telling: it's as if you were writing a book with other authors, each of them writing the actions of one character... It's a bit different from writing the book on your own.

Collaborative can be done to an extent without dice or with nearly no dice, but the principle is still the same. There are game systems that are built around that. Nobilis and Amber are two diceless systems that come to mind as attempts. Polaris is one that I've played that only periodically uses dice, and it's very collaborative. Although I think it's telling with it that the harder the players push against each other the more often you'll end up at it's single die roll tie-breaker resolution.

However there are specific things that the mechanics/processes of these games do to make the human input more useful as a randomizer, to equalize the input from all players. Random is another way of saying "unknown", if you can get the decision making out of individual people into the group rather than just into dice that works to the same way. To an extreme with Polaris since there isn't a single GM there. People take turns in the various roles in the system. It falls into a grey area between GMless and troupe play.

The idea of the GM/ST/DM being the final adjudicator and leaning heavily on that in play (whether the rules tell you to or not), especially for directing of a predetermined plot and much work being done prior in a decidedly non-collaborative way, as Pendaric describes, is antithetic to collaboration.

I always saw this as the polite, mild place. Bullshido.net is the other place I spend lots of time posting and by comparison that is much ruder, profane, and more full of personal attacks, etc. Frankly, though, it's also a lot of fun once you stop staking your ego on what people say on the internet and just decide to participate in the discussion/argument without personal pretense and not have to worry about wording everything with a light step.