Quote from: lukeCan anyone quote the text from Nobilis?

Certainly.

Quote from: Nobilis, page 22The Monarda Law: "Never Say 'No'"
If you wish to make sure that you do not slip and accidentally place your established story over the fun of the players in the game, a strict adherence to the Monarda Law shall save your soul from peril. Its application is simple. When a player asks you, "Can I do X?" -- where "I" means their character and "X" is some course of action -- use one of the four useful answers below.

"Yes", if their course of action seems innocuous or interesting.
"How?" if you don't see any way that they can do it.
"You can try!" if it seems possible but unlikely.
"Yes, but there's a catch", if you can think of a good catch.

Each of these adds enjoyment and possibilities to your game. Saying "no" rarely does.

Awesome! Thanks Grim Gent. I stand corrected. Though I think that this text could stand to be a bit more clear. The whole idea behind "Roll the dice or say yes" is that we're playing a game. And to get anything done in that game we've got to engage with the system. Hence, the "roll dice" part being first: "There's a system there, use it!"

The quoted text could serve its reader a bit better by saying, "don't just say 'No,' make a challenge out of it." (I don't know Nobilis' system well enough to use its game terminology.

-Luke

Never read Nobilis, but the Mondara Law seems more palatable to my personal gaming philosophy than the more cut and dried "roll dice or say yes."

But really, I can think of several good reasons to say no. Above, "killing the situation dead" is spoken of as a bad thing. It may not necessarily be. If one player is going of on a tangent that is going to bore the rest of the players and is pretty much a dead end, perhaps no is the best thing you can say. (Or a quick description of the actions and results that can be summed up as "no")

As for moving the game along, and perhaps this shows how comfortably I live near the G/S crossroads, but rules like the Take 10/20 rule in d20 provides me with a quick rule of thumb for the un-diced resolution when I don't feel things are worth a full-blown session of perilous conflict resolution.

Quote from: lukeThe quoted text could serve its reader a bit better by saying, "don't just say 'No,' make a challenge out of it." (I don't know Nobilis' system well enough to use its game terminology.

Well, as JamesV mentioned earlier, the PCs in Nob are assumed to be demigods: unless some power that is either miraculous in nature or from outside Creation altogether intervenes, they will never fail in any mundane task. There's an entire chapter dedicated to possible challenges, but those are not of the sort that common mortals face.

(A player can temporarily relinquish the perfection of her character and effectively ask for a GM fiat on the consequences. There's generally little reason to do so, though.)

QuoteAs you said, Settem, the second is one of the fundamentals of a functional roleplaying game. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the fundamentals!

That's absolutely true. But the realities of internet debate are a little bit different: People with half baked understanding run around, threadcrapping other peoples posts with this line, citing it, as if it was Vincent who invented it, and that they own the one and only key to functional by virtue of having read one and a half forge essays. This is obnoxious behaviour, and has not so much to do with what the phrase actually meant, but what was made out of it. At least to yourself you have to admit that these people exist, and thrive in the internet.

Hm. I read it differently. I thought it applied to situations like this:

GM: "There's an earthquake caused by the Evil Chancel dudes. Lois's car gets sucked under!"

Luke: "I want to fly around the earth and reverse its spin and turn back time and save my girl."

GM: "No."

Luke: "Whaddya mean, no?! I'm the thingie of Girlfriends and Time!"

You know, situation and conflict rather than, "I'd like to get suited up, have breakfast and hit the rooftops."

"No."

One's just cockblocking and bad GMing skills. The other's just stupid.
-Luke

Quote from: lukeGM: "There's an earthquake caused by the Evil Chancel dudes. Lois's car gets sucked under!"

Luke: "I want to fly around the earth and reverse its spin and turn back time and save my girl."

GM: "No."

Luke: "Whaddya mean, no?! I'm the thingie of Girlfriends and Time!"

That would simply be clumsy GMing: changing the course of history is something that the Power of Time could very well do, even without any flashy Superman tricks. In one of my games, an Excrucian turned the past hour in a small town into dust, resetting it for everyone except himself and the PCs.

Really, there's no good justification why the usual answer shouldn't always be "you can try".

"Can I flap my arms so hard that I'll rise into the air?"
"Sure, you can try. But it will just look silly, you know."

@Luke, BTW: Take a look here,

QuoteWow.
Big Let-down. I really had hoped for a highly political, strategic level Empire building/destruction game, all not in boardgame, but roleplay format, with plausibilities and "Grand Captainship" flying all over the table. I'd kill for such a game...

Thanks Judd! I think I have got an impression.

The subsystems still look very neat, maybe I can salvage them for my Traveller Campaigns.
       

from this thread
http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1591


 and tell me if I should buy Burning Empires;)

Hey Guys,

I'm happy to keep up the discussion, but I'm off to a Burning Empires BBQ. I'll try to get back to this tonight or tomorrow.

Plus, I have another thread I want to start.

thanks!
-L

The fact that something is old news, doesn't mean it is old news to everyone.

Sorceror had the whole relationship maps thing, which to some people was very big news indeed and really helped their gaming.  Some other people had been doing stuff like that for years, and so didn't find it so exciting.  In that instance, I was in the latter group, I had already been using similar techniques so it didn't add much to my life but other stuff in the book did.

Let it ride, a piece of frankly rather obvious advice from Burning Wheel, for some odd reason hadn't occurred to me.  I guess we all miss stuff from time to time.  Once pointed out, it was obvious, and now I use it.  So, thanks Luke for helping me out there.  Much appreciated.

And that's the thing, just because something is obvious doesn't mean everyone knows it.  Just because something is old news to one group of people, doesn't mean it can't be new and exciting to another group.

I'm not convinced the indie crowd are seeking to convert me to anything.  I think they're really buzzed with what they're doing and want to share that, which is cool.  A few of them go overboard, which is not cool but it's not really fair to lay that on all of them because it's not all of them.

I don't think people are saying Roll Dice or Say Yes is the rpg answer to E=MC2.  I think they're just saying they've found it really good advice, if one doesn't find it so useful oneself then it doesn't seem to me too hard to say "thanks, but I already know that one" or "thanks, but I don't think that one's that applicable to how I game".  If an individual then carries on trying to beat you with it, then it's fair enough to get annoyed as it is with anyone banging away about anything, but I don't see why we need to carry out preemptive strikes.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadAs for moving the game along, and perhaps this shows how comfortably I live near the G/S crossroads,

Meaningless statement. There's no such thing as either "G" or "S"; its based on a flawed theory that we don't take as dogma on these boards.

Why don't you pick a different way to describe yourself, that says what you were meaning to say without trying to jam yourself into a fake set of descriptors from a flawed theory?  Especially given that, as GNS posits, there's no such thing as a "G/S crossroad" because those are two distinct playstyles that can never possibly meet.  So let's make up new terminology instead, based on reality rather than on meaningless theories that have been demonstrated to be wrong time and again.

RPGPundit

@Balbinus: This is the spirit, we are on the same side of the argument. You do realize, that there is a bunch of threadcrappers on teh internets, who`ll bring it up in the E=MC-squaredmanner. And that's what gets my flaming fingers twitching.

And the problem is not with any specific citation of this "Law"; but with the overall issue that there is a bloc of people who are convinced that this should be a "Law"; and want to apply it to strip control of games from GMs, and try to argue viciously that this is somehow obviously a superior way to play for everyone.

Its iteration in Nobilis is, I'll admit, vastly more fucked up than in DiTV, since there its taken as a LAW, rather than just the very very strongly worded GM-advice of DiTV.

In either case, the Landmarks make it plain that people vastly prefer the conventional GM-Player balance of power, and that therefore these kinds of arguments are pointless.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Settembrini@Balbinus: This is the spirit, we are on the same side of the argument. You do realize, that there is a bunch of threadcrappers on teh internets, who`ll bring it up in the E=MC-squaredmanner. And that's what gets my flaming fingers twitching.

Of course there are, there are always folk who think that because something was great for them it is necessarily great for everyone.  The kind of people who on discovering they like liquorice will constantly try to persuade me that I will like it too if I just give it a proper try without prejudice.

However, I am an adult and I understand perfectly well that I don't like liquorice and feel no need to keep trying it to see if that's changed.  

Some posters don't know that and innocently ask if I might like liquorice, that's fair enough and really I'm to blame if I then bite their heads off for it.  Some however keep pushing liquorice at me, at which point the only sensible response is to kill them and shame them by not even taking their stuff (which is probably liquorice scented anyway).

Quote from: RPGPunditMeaningless statement. There's no such thing as either "G" or "S"; its based on a flawed theory that we don't take as dogma on these boards.

Why don't you pick a different way to describe yourself, that says what you were meaning to say without trying to jam yourself into a fake set of descriptors from a flawed theory? Especially given that, as GNS posits, there's no such thing as a "G/S crossroad" because those are two distinct playstyles that can never possibly meet.

What makes you think I am talking about GNS? I'm a disciple of the old "threefold model", and am comfortable using those terms despite that they have been inherited and jimmied around into GNS theory.

I don't accept that the playstyles are necessarily exclusive, either, and have argued to point vocifously on other forums. So it's a bit ironic that someone's picking a fight with me on the exclusivity of the poles.

I could explain more precisely what my "gaming philosophy" is, but I think that for most forumites, that was useful shorthand. Do you really not understand what I mean, or are you trying to make a point about GNS with which I don't necessarily disagree?

Here's my fundamental thought about GNS/GDS. The idea that different gamers strive for different things, and different games fulfill specific different needs, is an important observation and all game designers and GMs who hope to be worth a shit should pay attention to this. Any notion of universal exlusivity of the "poles" of GNS is largely manufactered. There are specific instances in which these goals can conflict, but in other instances they can overlap (I often use what is termed simulationism to what some would call narrative effect.)