Full Version: Bad ideas in shadowrun
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| When your giving descriptions, it doesn't hurt to throw in an extra adjective or adverb for flavor. |
I agree. Adjectives and adverbs = good. Describing the nuances of taste for every beer = ass. YMMV.
| QUOTE (James McMurray) | ||
I agree. Adjectives and adverbs = good. Describing the nuances of taste for every beer = ass. YMMV. |
Well, if the PCs taste every beer, then describing nuances of taste would be wise. It would be particularly wise if they tasted every beer and made good perception rolls or have high beer tasting skill. Of course, if the PCs don't drink the beer, there is no reason to tell them
Hell, even then a lot of groups would be better served by a quick
Player: I want to really taste the beer and describe it to impress the Johnson, who we know is a big beer fanatic.
GM: Okay, roll your Beer knowledge skill.
Player: Three hits.
GM: Okay, you describe the taste and nuance to a pretty good degree of complexity. He seems fairly impressed. Take +1 dice in any negotiation rolls you make against him.
I know that I have in the past been too caught up in "good roleplaying" to remember that it's a game. I had (and sometimes fall back to having) this tendency to let myself get overwhelmed in minutia and forget that the game is there to help simulate us doing things that we don't know or know how to do ourselves.
In character dialog and deep roleplaying and detailed descriptions can be awesome, but in the event that it isn't coming naturally for a particular application, just remember that we're playing a game.
*shrug* Don't even know if that's all that applicable to this discussion, but there it is.
Player: I want to really taste the beer and describe it to impress the Johnson, who we know is a big beer fanatic.
GM: Okay, roll your Beer knowledge skill.
Player: Three hits.
GM: Okay, you describe the taste and nuance to a pretty good degree of complexity. He seems fairly impressed. Take +1 dice in any negotiation rolls you make against him.
I know that I have in the past been too caught up in "good roleplaying" to remember that it's a game. I had (and sometimes fall back to having) this tendency to let myself get overwhelmed in minutia and forget that the game is there to help simulate us doing things that we don't know or know how to do ourselves.
In character dialog and deep roleplaying and detailed descriptions can be awesome, but in the event that it isn't coming naturally for a particular application, just remember that we're playing a game.
*shrug* Don't even know if that's all that applicable to this discussion, but there it is.
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| Well, if the PCs taste every beer, then describing nuances of taste would be wise. It would be particularly wise if they tasted every beer and made good perception rolls or have high beer tasting skill. Of course, if the PCs don't drink the beer, there is no reason to tell them |
Even if they do drink the beer, odds are (at least in my group, YMMV) that they just want to have a beer in character, not listen to a discourse on the relative merits of each fictional beverage. As the original advice was being given to a group more interested in the tactical side than RPing, my guess is that the they have a similar outlook to ours.
Certainly if your (and WR's) group likes listening to monologues about beer, they should do it. I was merely saying that the advice being given seemed poorly suited to the situation.
My opinion on description is that you have to treat yourself like a writer or storyteller, because thats exactly what you are. Personally, I like to imagine my SR games like a television series or movie. Whatever the medium, the same basic rules apply. Description should serve a purpose, whether its drawing the characters more into the atmosphere, giving them information about obvious or concealed threats, fleshing out the personality of a character, or bringing the setting to life as its own character.
A GM has to take into account many factors when he/she is "painting the world". Too much description and the players stop listening, too little description and the atmosphere of the game is lost.
Adjectives and adverbs may not always be the best way to describe things though. You can use other tools like exemplification, and abstract and concrete details to make a subject come to life.
A GM has to take into account many factors when he/she is "painting the world". Too much description and the players stop listening, too little description and the atmosphere of the game is lost.
Adjectives and adverbs may not always be the best way to describe things though. You can use other tools like exemplification, and abstract and concrete details to make a subject come to life.
Let's see, two things.
1.) The vast majority of RPGing in my life has been over IRC. There may be a higher tolerance to big descriptions there since that just means big paragraphs which people can choose to read or not to read. I would typically prepare descriptions ahead of time and just paste them to the chatroom so that the players wouldn't need to wait for me to type a long description.
2.) It so happens that today I found a Gary Gygax quote about "roll play versus role play". Here we go:
1.) The vast majority of RPGing in my life has been over IRC. There may be a higher tolerance to big descriptions there since that just means big paragraphs which people can choose to read or not to read. I would typically prepare descriptions ahead of time and just paste them to the chatroom so that the players wouldn't need to wait for me to type a long description.
2.) It so happens that today I found a Gary Gygax quote about "roll play versus role play". Here we go:
| QUOTE |
"There is a small but extremely vocal segment of the hardcore RPG audience, consisting of game designer-publishers and their dedicated fans, that views the game form as being something other than it is. This element believes that "story" and theatrical elements are the true substance of the game form. As the D&D game is action-adventure oriented, and the most popular RPG, it has become the target to attack by this group. It appears that the thinking in this regard is that if the 3E D&D game can be made less dominant in the marketplace, then the door will be opened for their own game products. So the debate continues. Perhaps there is merit in the novel theory of what the role-playing game is all about, but current successes seem to point toward combat and the heroic as remaining the themes that attract players. The 3E D&D game, and its open-source approach, will stand or fall on its own merits. My bet is that the much-abused "hack and slash" RPG format will continue to dominate the marketplace regardless of what happens, for it doesn't preclude other aspects, merely centers on the heroic fight. Hoary as the underlying concept might be, the attraction of this sort of adventure has been popular since Homer's time." |
I'd take that a bit more seriously if Gygax weren't such a twinky combat munchkin 
Honestly though, I do in large part agree with ol' Gygax. My old group's interests skewed more towards brainstorming and problem solving than collaborative storytelling. We preferred breaking and entering over thrashing goblins, but at the end of the day we're still more interested in figuring out how we're going to get into the executive suite/dragon's lair without being spotted by security teams/Kobolds and extracting/rescuing the researcher/princess than I am in discussing the fine bouqet of the latest vintage imported from Tir Tairngire.
Honestly though, I do in large part agree with ol' Gygax. My old group's interests skewed more towards brainstorming and problem solving than collaborative storytelling. We preferred breaking and entering over thrashing goblins, but at the end of the day we're still more interested in figuring out how we're going to get into the executive suite/dragon's lair without being spotted by security teams/Kobolds and extracting/rescuing the researcher/princess than I am in discussing the fine bouqet of the latest vintage imported from Tir Tairngire.
I don't think mechanics and story are so easily separated in rpg's. Given a choice between a game with interesting tactical challenges but no story (character interaction, drama, or motivation for the conflict) and a game with an engrossing story but no real way to affect it mechanically and odds are I'd stay home. And not the least because neither of those examples are what I think of when I think of role-playing. One is essentially a wargame, the other improv theatre. Either can be fun on its own merits (I'm not here to disparage wargamers or improv people), but they're not what I'm looking for in a role-playing game.
My players are inventive in their own right and we all think similarly some more advanced than others, but we have alot in common so along the same basic lines. So, with minimal description(beyond just "it's a room" but not the wine vintages) we all get the same relatively detailed picture usually with a few personal embellishments. And we all are still used to years ago when we could play from 6 PM till 6 AM every saturday and not want to die on sunday, now with jobs and age... etc. We value our time greatly so we tend to allow self description with key detail and description done by the GM and use the rest for actual crunchy time.
Chris
Chris
David C. Smith on the appeal of the sword and sorcery genre:
| QUOTE |
It’s pagan. And no matter how sophisticated we think we are or how much inside our heads we are, we know that that is the truth of the world. A lot of sophists and intellectuals and otherwise very bright people operate on the premise that we’re basically rational and sane. We aren’t. We’re animals, we’re pack animals. We are somewhat domesticated and we are well-trained, but we are animals. I think that the best sword-and-sorcery fiction takes us on a walk along that thin line, hints at this truth, is frank about this truth, and lets us exercise our imagination in the face of this truth. Just as important, though, and perhaps more important, is the existential awareness in sword-and-sorcery fiction. I call it looking into the abyss. It’s more than just facing our mortality; it’s a visceral reaction to ultimate meaninglessness. It’s not just that we’ll die one day; it’s the fact that we really don’t matter, and that we have no ultimate control over anything. There is always that shadow nearby. And that’s what the monster is, or the abyss, or the flying apes or whatever. The best sword-and-sorcery fiction recognizes this aspect in the genre and deals with it in some fashion. It’s no accident that this genre came out of the same alchemy that gave us H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction, and Clark Ashton Smith’s. I think that they were responding to the zeitgeist, the sense of purposelessness that existed after World War I. This uncertainty and ambivalence about life was pervasive in the 1920s. It was what Sartre would call existentialism. Lovecraft answered this dilemma, responded to this by expressing it as gothic science fiction horror, this awareness of our insignificance. Robert Howard’s characters threw themselves against it with all of their might and went down fighting. Clark Ashton Smith’s stories are the most sublime because they exhibit the wit and insight and irony of cultivated black humor. He was an extremely good writer, as well, the best of the bunch. Also, if you’re going to write this stuff, it can’t hurt to have an emotional or behavioral disorder or to have a cranky streak or a bit of murder in your heart. Even if you just take it out on flies and bugs, the ability to be an s.o.b. once in a while is probably an advantage. ... Anyhow, even if we can develop sword-and-sorcery into a new direction and write it well, it will never be regarded as wholly legitimate by intellectuals and academics because those people tend to be snobbish, and the element of physicality annoys them. You know, it really is about sitting around the campfire and looking up at the stars and wondering what is over the horizon. It might be a castle, it might be a monster, it might be any kind of adventure. As far back as we can go in human history, the evidence is overwhelming that human beings always were on the move. That’s a big part of this genre. That and the dark, whatever’s out there just beyond the light of the campfire. I think that this is where the existential element comes in. This is where Lovecraft and Howard are joined at the hip. It’s amusing that some of the Lovecraft fans have to hold their noses when they discuss Howard. That sure isn’t the way Lovecraft himself thought about Howard. But it goes back to intellectuals and academics being inside their heads too much. You know, their guy never sweats. Lovecraft never sweats, but Howard is out there in the Texas sun every day, isn’t he? Lovecraft is a scholar; he’s inside at his desk. Robert Howard is out there shooting rattlesnakes or riding his horse or something, being vital. And the rest of us who write this fiction are out there with him, too. But there is a long tradition to this disdain. It’s the city mouse and the country mouse. Anything physical or having to do with the outdoors is boys’ adventure fiction, or in some other way it doesn’t qualify for serious thought. You know, for ten thousand years, we sat around the campfire telling stories about killing animals and boasting about physical contests and fighting the elements, and I honestly think that we would like to put that behind us. We have gotten comfortable and material, and it is brain power that has gotten us here. The brainworkers have created the modern world, not the physical laborers. I think this bias runs deep in the modern Western psyche. |
http://www.swordandsorcery.org/int-david-c-smith.asp
I think that he just pwned the people who insist that hack and slash cannot have literary merit, i.e. White Wolf players.
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