Quote from: SettembriniI pity all those who think so.
I really pity you.

You are such a dork at times, 'bucky'.

What does "bucky" even mean?

I tink it means when he don't like you and want to mount you buttocks in display of superiority.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityI find this approach terrible.

A spaceship is not "color." A spaceship is a spaceship. If push came to shove, it's far more durable than a PC.

No Potemkin Villages. No hierarchy according to which the world revolves around the PCs like the sun around the earth. The world is a priori, the PCs are secondary (but are part of it). This existential parity must be expressed by mechanical equity. In a light game it will be light, in a heavy game (Gurps, MT), heavy.

Without the PCs, there wouldn't be a game, much less a world in which the game was played.

The spaceship in infinitesimally flimsy compared even to the least played PC.

I can see why one wouldn't want to play this way (and a lot of my current players interact better with a more concrete body of mechanical objects outside of themselves) but it's certainly very serviceable, and is very handy for formalizing and utilizing that fuzzy area of gaming that often comes down to some manner of fiat.

sometimes you just have to show him your belly...

Anyway...

I think, and I could be wrong, that it's like those things the game says you can set out but don't provide hard and fast rules.

For example, in D&D, there's nothing in the rules that say you can be this height or that height (within racial bounds) or that you have to have brown hair.  However, if your height or hair color become an issue, then you can assign values that relate to the rules. Though I can't think of a value for hair color...so height makes more sense...

So it sounds to me like they've moved the line of what constitutes color.  I'm assuming you could treat swords, for example, the same way in D&D if you so chose - particularly if you wanted to play, say, a game of intrigue amongst nobles where the sword may only come into play in rare instances, if at all...

I think...at least, that's my reading of it.  I could be way off here...

It sounds a bit lame to me. Usually the reason to do everything mechanically is that you know that it'll become important at some time or other. You don't wait for that time before you set it out. Otherwise, why not begin play with a blank character sheet? "Oh, when we get into a wrestle or lifting a gate, I'll find out my strength then!"

I've tried that sort of thing, and it leads to very bland characters. Nowadays when I ask for a character background, it's only because I want the player to be able to use it to shape their character's stats. Because I've never seen a player bring something out of their character's background later in play. They never say, "oh, I said I had this uncle who I was close to, can I buy him as an Ally now?" or anything like that. If it's not on their character sheet in words and numbers they forget about it.

And characters who start off blank grow up to be blank, I've found. "Oh I'll just figure it out in play" means, "I'll forget about it until six sessions from now you remind me."

Create the character, then play them. Sure, they change over time - but it seems as though in play it's easier to have something already built then change it, than it is to have something blank then draw it in.

Spike's described it enthusiastically - how's it come out in play, Spike? A gamer I know talks about how good Burning Wheel looks, but when we say, "run it for us" then he says, "oh but I haven't read the GM book." I've looked around for BW and BE stuff online, and it seems to me it's one of those games which is much praised but rarely played. So this "colour later becomes mechanics, maybe" idea sounds lame to me - but really, how does it turn out in play?

Quote from: James JSo it sounds to me like they've moved the line of what constitutes color. I'm assuming you could treat swords, for example, the same way in D&D if you so chose - particularly if you wanted to play, say, a game of intrigue amongst nobles where the sword may only come into play in rare instances, if at all...

Very much on the money. The follow up question is if the sword most likely will never come up, why should you as player have to spen a limited amount of character generation resources to include something that will have as much game effect as your characters haircolour?

Lets just say you have a sword and get on with the game.

But then a situation comes up and your character needs to use this sword.
I as the GM either give it to you (fiat) or I can make you "buy" it from a different set of resources. Two different approaches, and both work.
They give different types of games though.

What I personally like about this approach is that I can make a character that fits within the concept I have imagined without having to agonize over having to spend my D4x100 credits on the sword I will use, or the foppish hat that I need to fit my character concept.

If you want to see how BWr or BE plays. Here is the AP forum on Burningwheel.com.

Quote from: Kyle AaronOtherwise, why not begin play with a blank character sheet? "Oh, when we get into a wrestle or lifting a gate, I'll find out my strength then!"

If memory serves, that is an option in Fudge.  Never tried it personally.

Well, it's an option - expressed in the rules or not - in any point-buy game, really.

I've tried it. Never works. It's the same as that thing in GURPS, "oh if you like, you can just set aside 5 quirks and define them in play." Always ends up, about the fourth session, "hey, isn't it time you...?" "Oh but I'm not quite ready yet..." Pffft.

Define your character in detail, and then they can grow and change in play. Characters who start blank go on blank.

I dunno, maybe these game designers all get to play with budding novelists or something, and everybody's super-creative if only the rules would let them be. Most people need something to work with. And they need it on their character sheet, or it'll be forgotten.

Quote from: Kyle AaronI dunno, maybe these game designers all get to play with budding novelists or something, and everybody's super-creative if only the rules would let them be. Most people need something to work with. And they need it on their character sheet, or it'll be forgotten

I always wondered about this assumption. As a GM you improvise all the time. As a player you improvise all the time. Yet it seems that there is an unspoken concensus that once you are in the player-seat that this imporvisation is somehow absent or lacking. That you need some special creativity to able to do this.

I can empathise with the fact that it is easier to improvise from a set of ... well... hooks on the character sheet (my character is so and so stong), and in my groups preferred playstyle this is a recurring argument. They want more detail to flesh out the characters.

Which is ironic considering that the GM seat is rotatet among us, and that the ones who voice this opinion the loudest are some of the most creative GMs in our group.

I very often end up running games from a blank sheet of paper. Jamming of what the players do. I really see no big difference between this and playing a character and discovering him/her during play.

There are degrees of improvisation, though. There's making things up from the whole cloth, and then there's tweaking here and there.

Sure, GMs and players improvise all the time. But just as the GM should be the one with the best knowledge of the game rules, so too they should be the most creative one there. The game won't be a disaster if they're not, but it'll be better if they are.

Creativity varies a lot in people. Just in GMing, you see

• those who have a set-out series of plots, and players have to follow along those paths like a multiple choice Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy thing, and
  
• GMs who put lots of ingredients in the pot and see what the players pick out and expand on those, and
• GMs who make it all up as they go

and of course combinations of these, and other types as well.

Also, there's the creativity you have when you've got plenty of time to think of things - like preparing before the session, or thinking about it afterwards - and then there's beign on the spot and having to come up with something in seconds.

It seems to me that these sorts of games we're talking about demand high levels of creativity, and quick creativity, too. And only a minority of people are like that, so getting several together for a game group - that's hard.

I think a game system should bring out the best in players and GMs - their creativity, intelligence, tactical sense, humour, whatever - rather than demand the best from them.

Quote from: K BergI very often end up running games from a blank sheet of paper. Jamming of what the players do. I really see no big difference between this and playing a character and discovering him/her during play.

The difference is, as I said, the GM is supposed to be creative, part of the job description. Also, with your example, you're responding to the players' creativity. Their sheets aren't blank, only yours is. But if everybody's sheet is blank, what then? You can take someone else's ideas and expand and change them, but to make up something from nothing is hard. That's why we usually have the GM create the campaign world - perhaps in consultation with the players - and the players create their characters, and then go from there, work on and expand all that.

You gotta have some seed of useful stuff, at least. If everyone starts with fallow ground you only get weeds.

Quote from: Kyle AaronSpike's described it enthusiastically - how's it come out in play, Spike? A gamer I know talks about how good Burning Wheel looks, but when we say, "run it for us" then he says, "oh but I haven't read the GM book." I've looked around for BW and BE stuff online, and it seems to me it's one of those games which is much praised but rarely played. So this "colour later becomes mechanics, maybe" idea sounds lame to me - but really, how does it turn out in play?

Well, I assume that I'm the gamer Kyle is refering to.  And I don't recall ever saying that Burning Wheel was that good... just that I really liked the life path character generation.  One of my favourite games, Cyberpunk, used life paths but they had little impact on the actual details of chargen.  So I was intrigued by Burning Wheel.  But not intrigued enough to wade through it all.  So roleplaying books are like good fiction... they drag you in and demand you keep turning the pages.  Burning Wheel ain't one of those games.
 
Anyway, I have run a game of Fudge from scratch and it went pretty well.  Like so many things, it really depends on the players.  Two of the players were really good, but one of them was difficult.  Everyone was asked to describe their characters in general, and provide a brief background.  Then, as the game progressed, they filled out the character sheet.  The good players used the opportunity to slowly flesh out their characters... the bad player tended to give himself maximum stats in whatever he was asked to roll.  He quickly ran out of points and was left with a rather ecclectic mix of abilities.  But then, he probably would have done exactly the same using conventional character generation.
 
IIRC, everyone was asked to have their attributes purchased by the end of the first session, a quarter of their skills purchased by the second session, half of their skills by the third session and so forth.  This definitely helped push people along.
 
One of the guys in the group tried something similar using GURPS 3e and it didn't go nearly as well.  GURPS is just too fiddly for that sort of thing.

Its my bad for not stating some assumptions I make. I assume that before we begin play we as a group find out what we want to play, be it a space opera or a dirty western. It doesn't matter, what matters is that we all get on the same page (pun not intended). The moment we have done this we are no longer improvising from a purely white page anymore.

because I whole heartedly agree that improvising from a white sheet of paper without nothing to refer tp is hard. Its hard for anyone. All artist I read interviews with say that the worst thing is that white canvas. And these guys are artist.

So we agree there.

Where we don't agree is where I think, in my humble opinion, you underestimate the creativity that this hobby of ours engender. It just needs nurturing. Think of it. A GM describes a classic ten by ten room. Now I assume (which may be my downfall) that the players are picturing this in their mind. Whether it is to find the best tactical options for dealing with the invetable orc, or whether it is to achive a sense of being there doesn't matter. They are using their imagination. they are being creative. And they are being creative quickly, on the spot.

By providing a solid frame of refrence, like Tyberious Funk refer to (name and background), you facilitate this creativity. Within this you can then let them build their characters as they go along. It may take you a few sessions to get a feel for these characters, but from my limited experience you need that anyways.

This is why I am I do not agree that you need super-creative and budding novelists to play this way. You need players willing to commit and contribute more than "I hit Him"s, and you need to facilitate this.

It might not be to everyones taste, which is ok. That is another issue. But I sincerely belive it is in everyones capacity and ability.

Well, perhaps we're saying basically the same thing, then.

I'm saying that people need something to work with. In a roleplaying game, they need a setting, a culture, some sort of structure in the form of game rules they can use to describe their character. Creativity in a game group is a positive feedback loop - I say something and someone else adds to or changes it, and a third adds to or changes it again.

I find that players are most often comfortable with adding to or changing things through their characters. They don't want to change the game world by having the player say, "oh, I think this should happen", they want to change it by having their character make that happen. With that view, a fully-fleshed-out character at the beginning of the first session is needed.

This kind of idea of gradually learning entirely new things about your characters, of colour into mechanics, like an episode of Lost - I just can't imagine it working with most players.  That's the way novelists do it. But the novelist, really, is just tricking us. The novelist knows everything about the character when they write the novel, it's just that they choose to reveal it gradually. Whereas this sort of idea we're talking about is that the player begins by not knowing, and discovers it in play. So really we're demanding more creativity and spontaneity than a novelist can manage. Which is setting the bar pretty high, if you ask me.

Certainly people are more intelligent and creative than we often give them credit for. But there's a difference, as I said, between encouraging that and demanding that. That's a difference in both game rules and game groups. I think it's a failure as a system or a group if it demands things like this. I think it's an excellent system or group if it encourages it.

About Burning Wheel, Tyberious Funk, I simply meant that someone who praised it couldn't even bring themselves to read it all. If it's not readable, it doesn't sound very playable. And that's why I noted there wasn't much talk of how it came out in play around. As much as people complain about D&D or GURPS or Exalted, it's plain that heaps of people are playing them, there are many accounts of how things come out in play.

Burning Wheel, HeroQuest and so on - not so much*. These games are widely-praised but rarely-played. There's got to be a reason for that. I say that one of the reasons may be that they demand player creativity and spontaneity, rather than simply encouraging it.

Lastly, Tyberious Funk noted his success with a Fudge game where people were asked to purchase their characters' traits as they went along, rather than straight up. But I'd ask - how did that campaign go in the long run? Did it keep going for many sessions? As GM, the test I take of how good my GMing is, how good the group is, is simply - "Do they keep coming back? Do they talk enthusiastically about the game between sessions?" And I think we can apply that test to game systems, and approaches to character creation and so on. Did they come back?

Of course, the system's not everything in that regard. In my own group, I've one player who says, "bad gaming is better than no gaming", so he'll keep coming back no matter what, and there's one player who never replies to any emails but attends regularly. So on the attendance I can score it 2/3, and the discussion between sessions, also 2/3. Adding in my own enjoyment gives us 3/4 overall, which is good, I think. And there are people who are just unreliable or not talkative in general, or people who are just taking your own sessions as a break from some other group, and so on.

But in general, you can look at the attendance and the enthusiasm as a guide to the success of your GMing, the game group, and the system and setting. So I ask - why aren't BW and HQ and similar games more widely-played?

* With BW, I'm going on others' accounts of it, as I've not read or played it; with HQ, I'm going on both reading and playing it.

I am going to start of by giving som fan love to BW. English is my second language and I've read and played both BW classic and BW revised, so it is both readable and playable. Our longest single running campaign the last few years was in that game. It is highly recomended.
My advice is to read it and play it before you judge it.

There,  the love fest is over. Back to the topic at hand.

Kyle, like you said we are baiscally talking about the same thing, our difference in opinion is small, yet I think it is significant if we are to understand each other. And I think we can find it here:

Quote from: Kyle AaronThis kind of idea of gradually learning entirely new things about your characters, of colour into mechanics, like an episode of Lost - I just can't imagine it working with most players. That's the way novelists do it. But the novelist, really, is just tricking us. The novelist knows everything about the character when they write the novel, it's just that they choose to reveal it gradually. Whereas this sort of idea we're talking about is that the player begins by not knowing, and discovers it in play. So really we're demanding more creativity and spontaneity than a novelist can manage. Which is setting the bar pretty high, if you ask me

When we we play we learn new details of our characters all the time. Given that we have a mental image of the character before we begin the first session, we will most likely see this grow as we play him or her (or it). Things that were mere footnotes in the backstory might take on world shaking dimensions, while things that we though the character was all about becomes insignificant. Or visa versa. It is this unpredictability and organic growth that is the magic of roleplaying for me. But it is there.

If you accept that we develop the character in this way during play, by jamming and riffing of the other players then the step from this and to the gradual discovery of the character in play by following the same procedure except we don't have much on the char-sheet to begin with isn't that long a step.

Quote from: from the quote aboveThe novelist knows everything about the character when they write the novel, it's just that they choose to reveal it gradually.

This does not confirm with many of the interviews I have read with different authors. Some of them say the characters take on a life of their own. Though this point is tangential, it illustrates why I do not agree to your reasoning right here.

They, just like us, begin with an idea of where they want to go with this. Unlike us they have control over where they are going, organic or not. We don't because we have a group of others around us that contribute to the creation of our character during play. Either through the relationships between them or the events happening to him.

All of this demands creativity and spontaneity. It is the nature of roleplaying. What this means for us when we design games is that we should facilitate and channel this creativity. By creating systems that support it.

QuoteI find that players are most often comfortable with adding to or changing things through their characters. They don't want to change the game world by having the player say, "oh, I think this should happen", they want to change it by having their character make that happen. With that view, a fully-fleshed-out character at the beginning of the first session is needed.

This is one such system.

The color into hard tech through the tech-burner in BE is another.

Another very powerful and effective one is the circle mechanics from BW. We were playing a nordic game of thrones version and one of my players need to get an audition with a queen. So he states he looks for the seneschal, which he knew from old. (We use the rules to roll some dice to see if indeed this senechal exists or is available, he fails the roll opening for me to bring this NPC into play as an enemy of the character). I promptly do so. The ensuing series of disasters led to a memorable duel between a another character and the best swordsman in the realm.

Here the player invented a part of his character that no one knew off on the spot, we rolled with it (literally and figurativly) and we ended up with awesome. We turned a piece of color (character background), into mechanics (an npc to fight).