Roleplayer Ramblings
Not much turnout for gaming last night. Maybe Friday would have been better, but two nights a week is a little much for me. Ah well. The three of us played a game of Munchkin, then tried out some rules for a homebrew fantasy "sky pirates" game. And we wrapped up with two of four heroes dismounted (though possibly saved from falling to their demise) and four of six enemies disabled in one form or another. After that, naturally, there was discussion about the rules...
Some of it seemed a little silly. He'd conceived of it taking a long time to stow the single-shot firearms after use. We argued that it would really make so much more sense to have them tied to your mount's saddle (for long arms) or the pilot's harness (for pistols). Easy, easy thing to do and you can simply drop your weapon without losing it, since reloading is supposed to take forever.
Otherwise... well, I see this behavior elsewhere, but this particular member of the gaming group exhibits it the most. He wants to add in a lot of realistic little details. So we have initiative counts for each action, and bonuses based on multiple stats, but at different levels (Int contributes a little to accuracy, but Dex more). You can turn one hex face, but the following count you have to move straight (mount momentum!), and some mounts moving two spaces every other turn. All sorts of little things like that.
What he (they) don't seem to realize is how much all the little extra fiddly bits added to the rules make things complicated, hard to learn, and slower. With ten people on the map, the initiative count system required us to get out a piece of paper and make a chart to keep track of when actions were ready. For a battle that's maybe "average" in size, that was hideously complex. If it were a duel, it wouldn't be quite so bad. Keeping track of extra movement on alternating turns was difficult enough we switched to just a base move 2 for the faster mounts partway through. The melee-in-flight rules he had in mind sounded interesting, but resulted in very predictable outcomes that drew things out unnecessarily in the case we had in play (melee-weak enemy maneuvers to use his mount's attacks while melee-strong PC maneuvers to use his own attacks, and in result they totally miss one another).
Wanting to include some reality in game rules is admirable, but a game needs to be playable. That's precisely why a lot of major systems "dumb things down."
We also discussed the idea of a task resolution system using dice pools rolled out of view and bidding dice against one another. That looked interesting, but had a lot of issues that would need to be addressed ranging from the emotionally-unsettling encouraging secrecy at the table to the value of specialized characters for higher pools, to the hideously-high amounts of dice that could pile up as encounters get larger. Neat, but it would take work to make practical.
I was also asked what I thought of the Dresden Files RPG system (which we haven't played in quite a while now). I offered my summary critique: I like the thought of it and how everyone can influence the goings on, but I just can't see how to make it work at the table. That might be a personal issue based on my own RPG "upbringing," the compels and invocations and PC influence on the story just don't seem to work in practice like they're designed on paper. There seemed general agreement to that. I don't know. Players, in my experience, rarely seem to want to affect the scene beyond what their character can do. And if someone is playing a character according to its design, it feels like either every single action is a valid compel or none of them are.
Some of it seemed a little silly. He'd conceived of it taking a long time to stow the single-shot firearms after use. We argued that it would really make so much more sense to have them tied to your mount's saddle (for long arms) or the pilot's harness (for pistols). Easy, easy thing to do and you can simply drop your weapon without losing it, since reloading is supposed to take forever.
Otherwise... well, I see this behavior elsewhere, but this particular member of the gaming group exhibits it the most. He wants to add in a lot of realistic little details. So we have initiative counts for each action, and bonuses based on multiple stats, but at different levels (Int contributes a little to accuracy, but Dex more). You can turn one hex face, but the following count you have to move straight (mount momentum!), and some mounts moving two spaces every other turn. All sorts of little things like that.
What he (they) don't seem to realize is how much all the little extra fiddly bits added to the rules make things complicated, hard to learn, and slower. With ten people on the map, the initiative count system required us to get out a piece of paper and make a chart to keep track of when actions were ready. For a battle that's maybe "average" in size, that was hideously complex. If it were a duel, it wouldn't be quite so bad. Keeping track of extra movement on alternating turns was difficult enough we switched to just a base move 2 for the faster mounts partway through. The melee-in-flight rules he had in mind sounded interesting, but resulted in very predictable outcomes that drew things out unnecessarily in the case we had in play (melee-weak enemy maneuvers to use his mount's attacks while melee-strong PC maneuvers to use his own attacks, and in result they totally miss one another).
Wanting to include some reality in game rules is admirable, but a game needs to be playable. That's precisely why a lot of major systems "dumb things down."
We also discussed the idea of a task resolution system using dice pools rolled out of view and bidding dice against one another. That looked interesting, but had a lot of issues that would need to be addressed ranging from the emotionally-unsettling encouraging secrecy at the table to the value of specialized characters for higher pools, to the hideously-high amounts of dice that could pile up as encounters get larger. Neat, but it would take work to make practical.
I was also asked what I thought of the Dresden Files RPG system (which we haven't played in quite a while now). I offered my summary critique: I like the thought of it and how everyone can influence the goings on, but I just can't see how to make it work at the table. That might be a personal issue based on my own RPG "upbringing," the compels and invocations and PC influence on the story just don't seem to work in practice like they're designed on paper. There seemed general agreement to that. I don't know. Players, in my experience, rarely seem to want to affect the scene beyond what their character can do. And if someone is playing a character according to its design, it feels like either every single action is a valid compel or none of them are.
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