No, I am going away from what you concider an RPG. I still concider it an RPG (Role-Playing Game, not miniatures battle game, not boardgame).

Yes, characters can do and know things that the players themselves cannot and do not, which is why the GM gives them information and allows them to do things that the players wouldn't know or do. But it is done is such a way as encourage the players to think, and not say, "You rolled 4 successes you know the story."

Let me give you an example: I once had a halfling thief in AD&D. He was captured and put in a cell, hung from by his hands with metal shackles on a wall. To get out of the cell, I didn't look down at my character sheet to see what skills and numbers I had, I described what I was doing and the GM (Tim Arradondo, who was very good at this sort of thing) determined by my attributes and such that it was a good plan. If I had been an obese mage, I would have had to try another method.

Yes, the characters need to have the proper abilities, but it is up to the player to use them best, not the dice.

Here's my test as to if the rules and such are dominating a game too much: When you give your players a problem (or as a player, when you are given a problem) does everyone drop their eyes to their character sheet looking for that one thing to solve the porblem for them, or do they lean back, get a glassy-eyed look and start to ponder the possiblities? If the former: the rules/numbers control too much, imo. I think that by having so much stuff on the character sheet, you loose sight of your character, I see it all the time.

In the old school games they didn't make rules to cover absolutely everything, for a number of reasons. One of these reasons, I believe, is because they know that the rules cannot cover every situation, so why try? Encourage, and thusly teach, the GMs and players to use their own creativity (remember that word, it is a governing term in RPGs) to solve the problems. By concentrating on the numbers I think that flavor is lost, and flavor is what its all about. (How many times do you order food because of something other than flavor? I am sure it is the forefront of your mind everytime, as it is mine - though I truly do need to worry more about nutrition these days.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif) )

So when your Logic Challenged player cannot come up with a solution (Because the Character is more Intuitive, Logical and Capable than the Player is), then what do you do? My guess is tell him he is out of luck, as that is what you are implying above, at least from how I read it... The stats on the sheet are there to simulate a character... oftentimes a character that is completely different than the Player himself. Dice are also there to control randomness... you could have the most brilliant plan in the world, and the right skills and attributes in combination, along with a respectable dice pool, and still have luck come crushing down upon the character's shoulders (Happens a lot to my character's in fact). Yes, the game is about social interaction, but oftentimes, the stats are what control the outcome. Without the randomness of the dice, you might as well just write a book, as you have already decided how things are going to play out in the end.

And your DnD example is meaningless... Apparently you know your character's stats well enough not to have to peruse the sheet, I know lots of Players who are just like that, myself included... Unfortunately, not everyone has a photographic memory for character stats, and must look at the sheet from time to time.

And as a note... I Often try new food dishes based solely upon their presentation; after all, I have no basis for an informed decision from the flavor of the dish...

Terrible example: many people eat for nutrition (the primary reason, y'know). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Also, price.

The kind of game you suggest is perfectly fine, Rand. It's just not Shadowrun, and it's not what most people think of when they think (tabletop) RPG. It sounds like freeform (-ish).

Yeah, I don't get much chance to actually experiment with a lot of new foods; I cannot generally afford it, so I stick to tried and true most fo the time. But on those ocassions when I can, it is often the presentation that swings my vote... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

As for the game described above (somewhere), I have to agree with Yerameyahu...

When the player is stumped, as happens, then it is up to the GM to give out hints and clues to jump start the thought process (but not replace it), as is appropriate to the characters attributes/stats. And, sometimes we fail. We fail to think of the right thing, we fail to realize something important, etc. Why is that a lesser form of failing to getting bad dice rolls? I don't think it is. Knowing a character is not just knowing their "stats", it is knowing their personality and how they think, stuff that is not put down on a character sheet most of the time - because it is already full of crunch. The more crunch, the less character detail I have noticed...in other words, when you spend so much time on these numbers and other crunch, you lose sight of who the character is, and it becomes that much harder to remember the crunch, as well.




Why did I know that mentioning food was going to get to some people? Of course we eat for nutrition, that is why the big trend in food for the last 70+ years (with a small number of years - like 5-10 - reversing that) has been to overprocess food to the point of it having next to no nutritional value, hence the expanding waist, and decreasing lifespans. (But, yes, I agree that price does play a pretty-big part also - damn capitolism and being on the wrong end! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif) )



Well, as it says in the main book about there being no right or wrong way to play, I guess it IS Shadowrun - just not the one you would like to play. And yes, it is much more freeform in ideology, for a reason: I like the art of the game much more than the science of the game. (Probably has something to do with the fact that I liked art in school more than math/sciences.....) I just know that my most memorable times playing games have had little to nothing to do with what I rolled on a die, and if you think back and find the same, maybe more freeform is what you truly want as well. If not, then: "All ahead full, Mr. Sulu!"

And Yera, I have come to find out that I don't fit in the "majority" of just about anything....even in those things that aren't in the majority themselves.

It's not about what I'd like to play. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) If it's a problem saying it's 'not Shadowrun', then I take it back. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) My point was that it's not what everyone else thinks when they think Shadowrun, that's all; the book has numbers and rules. Anyway, I guess that covers it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Well, I can agree with a few points above... I generally enjoy the roleplaying aspect of roleplaying games a great deal... getitng into the head of someone that is not you. However, the rules (Stats) provide a framework for things that are outside of the framework of the player. How many players are World Class Marksmen, or Martial artists, or Researchers, or any other occupation. I would be willing to bet that that number dwindles into insignificance for the players of the game. Also, How many Players have the capacity to Work complex multi-stage calculations in their head (Logic 6+)? I would say that that number also pales into insignificance for players. Sure you will have one or two from time to time, somewhere int eh world, but really, how many Players can be as smart as Einstein and as suave/deadly as James Bond?

Have you ever had a game where you could think rings around the GM? I have, and it is often times a bad experience. There is generally no suspense, as you can see things coming a mile a way (plots tend to simple for those sho surpass the GM), and you are able to outperform and outplot any of the opposition that is thrown against you by that same GM because you have a greater intellect. Some would call that cheating... Now, reverse that a bit. When you have a Genius level GM who is capable of plotting things out 15 levels deep, and even your most thought out Clues (Which to you are exceedingly obvious) are just whinging by their ears as they continuously miss them... Sound like fun?

The stats are there to handle that situation, if you continue to downplay the stats, the characters will never fulfill their potential. Many players have characters that are so much more advanced than they are, that there is no way you can compare them. It is these stats that make the game fun for those players. They now have a chance to actually play something that they will never be, whether that is intellectually, physically, or socially superior. Why would you penalize the Player for their Character's abilities? Why would you just not allow them to roll their dice pool when the player is stumped rather than lead them by the nose with clues that they contiunue to miss. A simple roll and the plot moves on. The Story progresses. All forcing a player to try to out-think you is going to do is frustrate the player when they can't.

I know the above is an extreme example, but I have actually seen it a time or two. Not everyone thinks the same, and what may be painfully obvious to one person is inadequately modeled for someone else entirely. If the insistence is on the "Story" above the capabilities of the Players/charcters (They are the Protagonists after all), then why not just write a book? Since you have already decided how the plot will unfold based upon your desires, and you do not let the Stats interfere with that at all, where is the satisfaction for the players and their characters when they accomplish something, regardless of whether they out-thought the GM or rolled really well?

I am really curious to how you actrually handle this in game...(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Rand, I think you're blaming the numbers and the dice for a fault that is really coming from lazy GMing. Whenever our Face tries to say something like "my character has a Charisma of 6, and an Etiquette of 5, I get 4 successes, do I totally dominate the social situation, or what?", I remind him that it is me who tells him when he rolls what, and then I ask him what he says to the guy. I let him RP for a bit until he has gone far enough in a certain direction and *then* I tell him to do a test, although if his RPing was bad, it mightn't be the Charisma+Etiquette test he was hoping for. Or I let him do the Charisma+Etiquette test to see if he just screwed up or if he REALLY screwed up.

I'm a bit sceptical about the no dice-rolling idea, I think the dice-rolling gives the PCs the feeling they aren't *completely* delivered to the whims of the GM. Without dice, every failed attempt at anything becomes personal.

TJ: In my experience, the more crunch, the less "getting into the head" of the character. I have seen it time and time again, in games I ran and games I have been a player in. Now, I have played these games just like the rest of you (with dice and numbers and such) and the thought of diceless is weird to me too - but I don't let weird stop me (usually (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ). Of course most of the players aren't all those things you mentioned, and yes their characters may be and that is the challenge of playing the game. Not being something but pretending to be. No you don't have to make them actually do the things, that is where you guys seem to be not getting this. I have just begun to look into the diceless stuff (remember I said that at the beginning) so, no I don't have all the answers to exactly how it works out, but it does have an appeal (to me) because of the over-crunching I see going on in games today. Perhaps a meld would be better? I don't know yet. But I do know that I want to ROLE-play much more than I want to ROLL-play. (I do know this: that for the vast majority of things "really" either we can do them or we can't. And if we can't, then maybe the challenge isn't rolling high enough, but thinking and finding another solution to the problem - not everything should be solvable with a high enough roll. Nothing about diceless says that every situation is a "you win-or-lose",at least not the bits I have looked into.)

As it pertains to GMs that are either too dumb or too smart, well, just like when you look for a group to fit your personality, you look for what you want there too. Its the same thing. If you are relying on the dice to for your games entire sense of mystery, well I say this: Get out. Get another group. You can do better - eventually. Find the group that fits you. And I know all about dry spells, prior to the game I am running now I hadn't played for about 3-4 years, and then it was only a couple of one-shots trying out different rules systems (D&D 4e and Dark Heresy).

Myrgan, Do you call the salmon that swims upstream to die lazy? Having to fight through the rules of a game is a waste of time that takes away from the time you could be working on the campaing. Plus, I don't know about you but I work a full-time job as well so when I sit down to work on a game, I don't want to have to worry about making sure I cover an esoteric rule from page 326, paragraph 5, book-9. I want to be writing up the backgrounds of the NPCs, the history of the story, the description of the locations. The numbers of the situation are the last things on my mind.

You all seem to think that it is all about the whims of the GM, well isn't now? No matter what you roll, the GM can always say: "Miss!" You don't know what is behind the screen. You don't know if that NPC has something special helping him out. The situation dictates the responses and it is up to the GM to judge if the right responses are being made, dice or no dice.

Rand, TJ, Yerameyahu,

You are all right. None of you is wrong.

From a player's point of view (that would be me), it takes a good blend of both raw role-playing and dice to make a great game. When I GM (not that often any more) my games tend to be a number crunch and hack and slash. My group likes it for the fast pace and "lets have fun attitude" (very pink mohawk).

Our primary GM has a long story plot that he has worked up with a lot of twists and clues within clues. He knows what we as players are capable of and he pushes us (as players) to our limits for both mechanical and roleplay ideas. If we as players miss something he usually has us roll for our characters to determine how big of a clue he will give us and so on. It is a comfortable blend of the two styles. Comfort of course would vary from group to group. It really helps to also know your players and their characters.

As always just my 2 Nuyen.

D

All very. very true...

Rand, sorry about the "lazy GMing", I didn't mean to attack you, I just meant to say that the degree of role-playing a GM tickles out of his PCs doesn't have to have much to do with the instruments supplied by the canon, i.e. rules, numbers and dice. They are after all only instruments, some groups spend the whole time polishing them, others use them to role-play, and even get them bent and dirty in the process.

But originally I was going to say "Cool, do away with the canon, far out! Sounds like an interesting project", it's just that after thinking about it, I have my doubts. Role-playing has it's limits, there are situations that just have to be decided. You can have your PC talk 10 minutes about how she holds the gun, what she does to control her breathing, what she thinks about to control her nervousness, which part of the target is hidden behind the sight from her point of view, what she concentrates on when she squeezes the trigger, etc, etc... at some point a decision has to be made as to whether she hits the target or not. You can either leave that decision to chance, i.e. let her role some dice, or you, as the GM, can dictate what happens. In my experience, dictating just doesn't go down too well with players. You can dictate to their disadvantage for the purpose of building up to the climax or whatever, and they'll be thinking "why the hell not? Its a reasonable idea, dammit", and you can dictate to their favour, even try to reward them by letting them shine, and they'll be thinking "oh thank you for your boundless generosity, your Highness". Whatever you dictate, you won't see them jumping up and dancing like they would when they just rolled 8 hits with 10 dice at a crucial moment of the game.

Yeah, Shadowrun GMs can do something behind their screen and say "Miss!" all the time. A GM that does that won't be a very popular GM for very long. That's exactly the point!

Injury mods are semi-permanent. It's not something that is likely to change up and down frequently during combat. Even so, compared to a lot of the situational modifiers it's still a rather smooth one to deal with.

--



It depends on the dice man.

With my dice, I tend to throw somewhere between 3:1 to 2:1 (33-50% success rate). My GM's dice when he throws for NPCs tends to land around 50-75%. The GM's brother tends to fall around 25-33%.

Generally speaking, I only trade when the roll is for an activity that isn't rushed. I should recommend to the GM's brother that he does tradein's more often since that usually is about his hit rate. Perhaps suggest it to the GM so his insanely lucky dice rolls aren't constantly screwing us over.

I like the idea of doing using variable thresholds in combat. It makes a lot of sense on a number of levels, and I think it can be fairly quickly implemented at the table. As a baseline, it is similar to simply putting in +/-3 modifiers. From a simulation perspective, it adds a lot more realism as you can reflect that some kinds of things are so much harder to do that you just might not be able to do it at all. For example, RAW, shooting a moving target at long range with cover is no different than shooting a long range target standing in the open. The defender (may) get some additional dice on his reaction test, but there is no reflection in the rules for the fact that those kinds of shots are extraordinarily difficult to make, and even experts often miss.

My suggestions:
- Ranges. Each range increment should increase the threshold by one. Scopes add one die per range increment. This means scopes are useful, but they don't make 1-km shots trivial.
- Cover. 1 for partial, 2 for good.
- Target-in-motion. 1 (or 2 if particularly difficult movement pattern).
- Shooting improperly. 1. By this I mean if you are firing a heavy weapon while standing, or a machine gun from-the-hip, or something like that. Big enough, bad-ass enough troll or an appropriate gyromount could nullify this.
- Called shots. 1 or 2, depending on how difficult the shot is.

I think those are the only ones I'd impose, and leave the other given modifiers "as-is". I might - might - consider having a smartlink lower the threshold by 1, but I'll have to think about that one for a while.

I agree. As they say, "Each to their own." My sincere hope is that everyone sitting down to a game table has fun. (Of course, the hope extends beyond the game table, but this is an RPG board. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) )


Sorry too, got defensive and it wasn't necessary. ("I got feelings too, y'know?" he says in whiny-man voice. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/talker.gif) ) But you are wrong, to a degree. The more you make someone deal with one aspect of something, the less they can deal with the other aspects. People are a finite resource, so is a person's ability to work on something - hence all the labor laws. If a game system has a lot of crunch, dealing with that crunch takes time and energy that is taken away from dealing with the other parts, namely the roleplaying parts: history, story, NPCs (history, story, description, quirks, etc..), atmosphere, etc.. Example: If it takes me 40-90 minutes to just put together an NPCs stats (it has happened) then, I am a little burned out by the time I begin working on their personalities and such. This is where the lazy part does come into play for me: I love game companies to put out as much NPC, maps, adventures and such so that I can raid them. It makes putting together an adventure and campaign easier for me.

But, my point is that I have noticed a trend to concentrate more on the numbers/dice than on the RPG-ing, and I don't like it. It is too much like a miniatures game than an RPG, to me. So, I am searching for new things and new ways and even though some of these new ways seem weird to me, and they generate the typical "that's different, kill it" feelings, I push those aside to truly give it a fair shake. (Or at least as fair as a 40+ yr old can......sigh......)


Well, if they do it ALL the time, of course, no one would ever succeed at anything. My point there was, you (the player) don't actually know in those cases whether the GM "let" you succeed or not. So, to say that using dice devoids the GM of his "Master of ALL" powers that he is granted by being the GM is like carrying around your baby blanket as a bullet proof vest: pretty-pointless. And, by having them "roll in front" of everyone just tells me that you might as well be playing a miniatures battle game and not an RPG, with the GM doing nothing but placing the next fights foes in front of you. (IMO.) Wait! Isn't that D&D 4e?!? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

What I meant was, I don't think that the injury mods are enough. A -1? Really? That is nothing, even looking at a die pool of 6-7, it barely affects it. When you are looking at dice pools easily exceeding 10 dice, it is nothing. Getting hurt can really affect you, and SR is a game where it DOES affect you. I haven't found any rules where you can shrug off the injury mods - without a power or something like that. (Like using Composure to temporatrily resist the effect.)

I was thinking, in order to further make the players more likely to look to defense, that making each level a TN modifier: it increases the TN of everything they do by the injury level. This will make it so that someone who is seriously injured act that way, they have seriously increased the difficulty of every action they take and may say, "sorry guys, but I'm no help to you back here. I should get out of here." And the others can say, "Damn! Ralph's messed up pretty-bad, we should get him out of here." "But what about the case? We are supposed to be getting the case!" "I know. But it's not worth Ralph's life. We need to get him out of here!" Drama. That is what it is about for me. Plus, those guys with the huge dice pools will still have some chance at doing many things, even things that would be hard for ordinary folk, but just not still be able to shoot the wings off a fly at 100 meters. (Which should be what the awesome gunman can only do when he is healthy.)

Runner smurf, a lot of what you have down there is exactly what I was thinking. The speed in use for combat is a big point for me. The rules do have an option of static TNs for firearms with medium range = 1, long range = 2, etc.., so the concept isn't all that foreign to SR.

There are some augments that allow you to ignore some of the injury modifier.

Adrenaline Pump lets you ignore the modifier while it's active.
Damage Compensators lets you ignore a number of damage boxes (both stun and physical) up to its rating (max 12) for the purposes of wound modifiers. So with a Rating 3 Damage Compensator, you don't start accruing a wound penalty until 6 boxes of damage. For a cool 180,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) you would need to take either 15 stun or 15 physical damage to achieve a -1 wound modifier. So you would need 14 Body or Willpower to have the ability to take wound modifiers. =X
Pain Editor lets you ignore the wound penalty from Stun damage.

I use variable thresholds for all aspects of SR4A. I find that it works better to highlight the value of augmentation. Everything converts from dice pool to threshold on a 1-for-1 basis. Works pretty well so far. To cut down on combat I took away the dodge roll (and skill) and just treat the dodge bonuses as +threshold and penalties as -threshold. There are still a few things that increase dice pool instead of threshold (positive qualities mostly, some augmentations) but over-all my players never have to change their dice pool and many tasks are actually a challenge now.

That's how Exalted 2e works, basically. 1:1 seems like it wouldn't work at all, but whatever is fun for your table. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) There are certainly many, many variations possible between static and random resolutions in RPGs.

Is variable threshold supposed to work by adding together all the + and - modifiers and adjusting the threshold number up/down based on the result divided by three rounded down?

So if you have +3 and -6, you would increase the threshold by 1?

+9 and -3 would decrease threshold by 2?

At least until the threshold hits 1, at which point you'd probably want to either give them bonus dice or apply some sort of penalty to the other person in the case of combat, maybe giving them a threshold before hits count towards dodging.

Yuck, an extra step in something that is supposed to fast-track. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, but you figure most fights are won or lost before the first round is fired.

Which falls under the "power or something like that" scenario. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/twirl.gif)


With my idea, most of these numbers would be pre-generated so that it would be faster. Hopefully. And funner. Again, hopefully...


Not quite sure as to the meaning behind this statement (which depends upon the emphasis of the "you" in there). If 1) serious, then yeah, they are, with the only mystery being that we don't know the outcome until after the fact (by this same philosophy, a die that comes up a 5, had a 100% chance of being a 5 at that time, only prior to that we couldn't know that), or 2) snide: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Phhlllththththththth... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)