Quote from: RosenMcStern;871813Indeed. You have just created another of those "Geezer sez this - your argument is invalid" quotes that we will waive around like clubs.

You can't expect other people's immersion to work that way just because yours apparently does. Rolling to hit gives a result outside your control, just like swinging a sword yields a result outside your character's control; your thought processes are analogous to your character's ("I'm attacking, maybe I'll hit"). Choosing to spend a Fate point in complete certainty as to the outcome is something with no parallel in your character's mind. First, your character has no influence over the Fates. Second, your character will never have complete certainty of immunity to an attack (even at a cost in terms of a limited resource). So, it's perfectly reasonable to expect some people to find spending Fate-points more irritating than rolling to hit.

Quote from: Bren;871791Aren't you?

The other people at the table range from 40 to 55.

Quote from: Jimbojack;871159...

One of the things we aim for in our games is making the combat feel real and the violence feel dangerous. To that end we have some of the most realistic and punishing damage tables out there, both for swords and such (SoS) and for boolets (CotV)

Hooray!

Quote from: Jimbojack;871159The problem is, bullets mess people up big-time. I'm a bit of a gun-nut myself, and I've shot a lot of rounds at a lot of things, and we really tried to represent the power of firearms of different calibers in-game.

That's a feature. Games where "getting shot only once can't kill a PC" are not even about guns, I would say, and I try to avoid playing such games. It does lead to design and GM considerations, of course, but that too I see as an opportunity, not a problem per se.

Quote from: Jimbojack;871159The snag is, it's too easy for players to die relative to NPCs. Obviously X guy's meat isn't more bulletproof than Y guy's, that'd be dumb.

Hooray! Yes!

Quote from: Jimbojack;871159My solution for this was to give players "Luck Points" where they would be able to cause attacks to miss them that would otherwise have hit them, either moving the attack to an NPC nearby, having the bullet wing an obstacle, or the gun jam, etc.

The question is--is this a design sin? Is giving the player an "out" when the dice turn against him a knife in the back of immersion? Will it crack that sense of tension when the player realize that the space nazi is aiming at him, to know that he can just spend a luck point and shrug it off?

As Bren wrote, it's not a design sin but a choice.

To me, it's just like the choice to make guns do realistic damage. That is, anything you or the GM includes in the rules or uses to decide what happens in any way, becomes how your game universe works. Problems are when you or the GM don't understand what you're doing, or deceive yourselves about it, or don't think enough about it, or deceive the players, or do things in ways that the players won't like once they do know and think about it.

So, in the case of luck points, you're explicitly making your games about (realistic guns and) artificial luck points. You might next want to ask yourself if they represent something explicit in the world, or not.

For example, in the first Star Wars movie (forget the others), one might think that the Force is an active explicit thing causing people to miss or hit. In fact, it's pretty explicit about that. "The Force is strong with this one!" (Vader fails to hit Luke's fighter) ... "Use the Force, Luke" (the Force guides Luke's shot to take out the Death Star). So, if you find that model for the Force interesting, then you could represent that explicitly, either with Luck Points, or with Force points that maybe add/remove dice or modifiers to the chances to do things or be hit.

So I would think about what the reasons are that you want gun adventure to be survivable, and how you want that to play out, and then make explicit mechanics for that.

If I were making a gun combat game, it would emphasize the things that can actually make a huge difference and keep you alive, so for example:

* Having better awareness of what's going on that your foes, through stealth, disguise, acting, maneuver, cover, camouflage, experience, darkness, night vision goggles, surprise, ambush, etc.

* Having better speed, via reflexes, training, more agile equipment.

* Avoiding getting hit, by using cover, crouching or lying down, running or jumping to cover, taking out enemies first, using smoke or flash (or explosive) grenades, using dust and darkness, using flashless/smokeless powder, silencers, suppression & covering fire, etc.

* Having not everything be a fight to the death. In particular, getting the drop on people (being ready to shoot them first) can happen and generally result in the targets giving up, and their friends even standing down. If this is expected and shooting people in this situation is not generally done, then it can work both ways and the players can be captured (perhaps often just temporarily) rather than killed.

* Having a context where all characters want to avoid gun combat except where necessary, like in real life. Own survival is one reason directly, but also indirectly - the police or soldiers tend to respond to gun combat, there may be a need to avoid arrest or detection, etc.

* Morale, bravery, and panic rules.

* Similarly, emphasize all actions that avoid getting shot before it happens, rather than "charge in, guns blazing - it'll work out". Recon, running away, hiding, disengagement,

* Use a tactical map and have rules such that terrain and tactical maneuvering usually greatly reduces the chances of being hit, and gives PCs advantages if they use their skills and move cleverly.

* Have the players be leaders, not just gunslingers, and/or include the expectation of casualties and having players play multiple characters.

* Other tactics, such as using sound, shadows, mirrors, decoys, scouts, throwing objects, firing a shot to see if jumpy waiting enemies return fire on nothing, shooting through light cover (including doors and some walls), firing at long range, etc.

Quote from: Jimbojack;871159Thanks for humoring me guys.

Thanks for not staying inside the box of hitpoint-heavy combat systems. So many do.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;871817The other people at the table range from 40 to 55.

Well, some of them might be lucky enough to be middle-aged...

Quote from: RosenMcStern;871815Man... seriously???

Are you seriously arguing that breaking the flow of the game in the middle of battle to make secret rolls and then vote on the applicability of fate is less immersion breaking than simply letting the player save his character's arse with 100% chance?

For some of us, sure. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that the way your mind accommodates immersion is a 100% perfect guide to the way the rest of ours' does?

To be clear, yes, the holding of the vote will slow the game down and will be counter-immersive for many. But it reduces your critically counter-immersive confidence that you have a 5 in 6 chance, or even a certainty, of being saved by the Fates.

Also, I personally would just let the ref decide whether it's in the PC's interests to make a Fate roll (that's the system I in fact use - the GM decides if the player rolls, then the player rolls, then the GM decides whether to take the Fate option indicated). But I'm more of a purist in this way than a game-designer with damage tables for bullets is likely to be.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;871813And just as a side note: I have heard lots of experienced WHFRP players argue that it was way too common to run out of Fate Points in a tough battle and be turned to mincemeat. WHFRP is one of the deadliest systems around - 100% guaranteed-save-ass points notwithstanding.

I know WHFRP's rep, but I played a campaign of 2e using 1e Fate rules where the GM used just published adventures, and I don't think I ever felt in that much danger. And I was a crappy spellcaster.

Quote from: Skarg;871819So I would think about what the reasons are that you want gun adventure to be survivable, and how you want that to play out, and then make explicit mechanics for that.

If I were making a gun combat game, it would emphasize the things that can actually make a huge difference and keep you alive, so for example:

* Having better awareness of what's going on that your foes, through stealth, disguise, acting, maneuver, cover, camouflage, experience, darkness, night vision goggles, surprise, ambush, etc.

* Having better speed, via reflexes, training, more agile equipment.

* Avoiding getting hit, by using cover, crouching or lying down, running or jumping to cover, taking out enemies first, using smoke or flash (or explosive) grenades, using dust and darkness, using flashless/smokeless powder, silencers, suppression & covering fire, etc.

* Having not everything be a fight to the death. In particular, getting the drop on people (being ready to shoot them first) can happen and generally result in the targets giving up, and their friends even standing down. If this is expected and shooting people in this situation is not generally done, then it can work both ways and the players can be captured (perhaps often just temporarily) rather than killed.

* Having a context where all characters want to avoid gun combat except where necessary, like in real life. Own survival is one reason directly, but also indirectly - the police or soldiers tend to respond to gun combat, there may be a need to avoid arrest or detection, etc.

* Morale, bravery, and panic rules.

* Similarly, emphasize all actions that avoid getting shot before it happens, rather than "charge in, guns blazing - it'll work out". Recon, running away, hiding, disengagement,

* Use a tactical map and have rules such that terrain and tactical maneuvering usually greatly reduces the chances of being hit, and gives PCs advantages if they use their skills and move cleverly.

* Have the players be leaders, not just gunslingers, and/or include the expectation of casualties and having players play multiple characters.

* Other tactics, such as using sound, shadows, mirrors, decoys, scouts, throwing objects, firing a shot to see if jumpy waiting enemies return fire on nothing, shooting through light cover (including doors and some walls), firing at long range, etc.

All neat ideas, except having players play multiple characters. That should definitely be on the banned list, unless the player's your assistant GM. It's the most counter-immersive thing going!

Quote from: Omnifray;871816So, it's perfectly reasonable to expect some people to find spending Fate-points more irritating than rolling to hit.

Just to be extremely clear here. Two years ago I opened a thread on rpg.net and spent several days discussing (with the amount of mudslinging and personal insults you can expect on rpg.net) exactly this subject of "rules that break suspension of disbelief" with as many real people as possible. It turned out that the experience is extremely subjective, but extremely real: some people cannot use certain rules without being ripped out of their character.

So, what you are reminding me here is a fact that I know very well and that I take carefully into account when writing games. Carefully.

However, while these people do exist, they are not the majority of roleplayers. The fact that even a player so stuck to the roots of RPG like Gronan says "What's the point?" shows that using Fate in your game is not a capital sin like some other people state. In addition to this, the problem of "no 100% chance" raised by many people is overstated, too. There are techniques to work around these problems, it is just that no single technique works for every kind of game.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;871823However, while these people do exist, they are not the majority of roleplayers. The fact that even a player so stuck to the roots of RPG like Gronan says "What's the point?" shows that using Fate in your game is not a capital sin like some other people state. In addition to this, the problem of "no 100% chance" raised by many people is overstated, too. There are techniques to work around these problems, it is just that no single technique works for every kind of game.

Like you, I also am not totally green or an utter moron, and am a veteran of many (too many) online discussion threads surrounding this sort of thing. Like I said upthread, WHFRP 1e Fate was something I found personally irritating, mainly because of the 100% immediate survival guarantee, but even so, it didn't break the game even for me. For my style of play, I think it's sub-optimal, but I can still enjoy a game despite it, and like almost anything it must have advantages as well as disadvantages. And of course no single technique will be optimal for every kind of game, or there would be two kinds of games in the world - crappy games, and games that are all identical to each other. I came up with an idea I thought might work for someone who wants big damage tables for his bullets, that's all. As you imply, the best choice of mechanics depends on all sorts of subtle things about the sort of game you want, so I really would have wanted to know more than the tiny snapshot we got in the OP, thus my post was a bit of stab in the dark, but as my anyone-can-be-one-shotted principle affirms, a stab in the dark could find the heart!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;871817The other people at the table range from 40 to 55.

Adults made you sit at the kiddie table again, huh? You know, maybe if you cut down on the peener jokes we'd let you sit at the big table.

Quote from: Bren;871835Adults made you sit at the kiddie table again, huh? You know, maybe if you cut down on the peener jokes we'd let you sit at the big table.

You want me to  have the kiddies cut down your peener?  Okay...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;871852You want me to  have the kiddies cut down your peener?  Okay...

Well I did walk into that one.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;871823However, while these people do exist, they are not the majority of roleplayers. The fact that even a player so stuck to the roots of RPG like Gronan says "What's the point?" shows that using Fate in your game is not a capital sin like some other people state.

I would add to this that there is a difference beyond majority vs minority. There's also stated preference vs revealed preference.

Buying an RPG, taking the time to learn it, gathering a group, and then spending 4 hours each week or whatever playing it takes a certain amount of investment. It's certainly a lot less time consuming to register opinions at random on message boards.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;871823It turned out that the experience is extremely subjective, but extremely real: some people cannot use certain rules without being ripped out of their character.

Intellectually, I like FATE as a system. However, in actual play, I can't make tapping aspects work for me. It feels just like clicking buttons in a video game or playing combos in Magic. FATE destroys every bit of immersion for me.

I had a player in my SpyCraft 1e campaign who is a great RPGer and joy to have in any campaign. He *loathes* any kind of mechanic that alters an initial result - bennies, luck, whatever - breaks any immersion for him.

The rest of the SpyCraft table (and I) had no issues.

Oddly, that player enjoys FATE and tapping aspects has no effect on his sense of immersion.

I found FATE depends on how you play it.  The one time I played, instead of saying "I spend a whatever point to tap that player's "Military Experience" aspect so she stops killing that guy and goes to the shuttle"

I just tossed a marker into the middle and said "SOLDIER!  Move out!  NOW!"

Quote from: Omnifray;871821All neat ideas, except having players play multiple characters. That should definitely be on the banned list, unless the player's your assistant GM. It's the most counter-immersive thing going!

Yes playing multiple characters can be immersion-breaking for many players, but not for all.  So it should be an option but not a required part of the design unless you're willing to lose the people that doesn't work for.

It would work for many people I've played with, perhaps because they're all experienced GM's, used to roleplaying multiple characters and separating knowledge, personalities, perspectives and goals.

But also, if you cast it as a tactical combat game, akin to a "squad-based tactical computer role-playing game", it may help.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;871918I found FATE depends on how you play it.  The one time I played, instead of saying "I spend a whatever point to tap that player's "Military Experience" aspect so she stops killing that guy and goes to the shuttle"

I just tossed a marker into the middle and said "SOLDIER!  Move out!  NOW!"

And here we have two perfect examples of things that someone is still trying to sell as "absolutely and objectively immersion breaking". Except that they only are for those who dislike them.

a) author's stance -> the action did not pass through the usual "GM I try to do this, do I succeed?" cycle. Gronan acquired narrative authority in this case.

b) 100% chance -> Gronan did not augment a chance of doing something with a Fate Point, he just "made it happen" with no risk of failure (well, except the other player's will).

Yet he managed to NOT get out of his character while doing so. Of course, this may not be the case for everyone, as there are some for whom this kind of rule really does not work. But this demolishes the myth that "author's stance" and "automatic effects" are automatic immersion breakers. They are subjective immersion breakers, exactly like anything else.