Quote from: Itachi;1009239I agree, Fearsomepirate. I also never saw much actual dead-ends while playing other games. What I constantly saw, though, were failed rolls not leading anywhere except "Try again?". This was particularly bad in perception rolls, where the GM had something prepped that he wanted players to detect, but then players succeeded each other rolling until someone rolled a success (or he gave up and give the info anyway).

This is painfully bad GMing. Unfortunately, I agree, it's common. I think it's an artifact of 3rd edition where rolls seemed pretty hard-coded into the rules, so GMs got used to always calling them. 5e, by contrast, is clear up front that the GM should only call for rolls when he (meaning myself) wants a random result. If I know what result I want, I won't have the players roll. End of story. Do I need to have the thief pick the lock on the wardrobe, revealing that the baron has stashed his dead wife in there? Then when the thief attempts to pick the lock, I merely say, "The lock is of fairly simple workmanship, and you deftly pick it without much effort."

I typically allow one check at my table (exception is Open Doors, in which case monsters are on alert if you fail the first roll), but I don't ever do the "roll to advance" stuff that can kill the game.

Fearsomepirate, I don't think it's an artifact of a particular game so much as an artifact of the gaming culture around that time. The first time I saw this "problem" was on Shadowrun 2nd edition from 1992, where the rules suggest you to try again any skill test you fail (as long as you add +1 to the target number) and incentivize playing "gotcha" with players through repeated perception tests. That was almost a decade before 3rd ed D&D. And Shadowrun was not alone in this, I'm sure if I re-read my copies of pupular games of the time, like Gurps and Vampire, I will find similar things.

The irony is that OD&D already had this solved, among other things, by instructing the GM to change the dungeon "state" with each failed roll (so a failed pick could mean an enemy guard shows up in the corridor). If I had to guess, I would say the problem appeared when gaming "got out of the dungeon", with authors attempting new genres/premises and something getting lost in translation. Only recently, in the last decade or so, gaming culture re-learned, or just came to appreciate again, this "fail forward/avoid letting the game state stagnate" feature, as it's been showing up in more and more popular games. At least that's my impression.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1009222And this is why White Wolf's system is bad, it provides nothing but arguments because it's not concisely explained to allow for people to make consistently clear judgements.  Making it unplayable without a lot of help, but it's not incomprehensible.

Perhaps what is incomprehensible is why people willingly play any game with it.

Oh, yeah, another game I don't get Wraith: The Oblivion.  What's the point if it's all meaningless anyway?

I've already spoken about Wraith further up. It is a good example of a game that is difficult to get, but I like it. It's a good candidate for the thread question. The key aspect of gameplay is that it is about playing souls who have to ask the question about "so what are we supposed to do now?". It's an existential crisis - which is certainly not going to be for everyone - making it ironic when players also ask "so what are we supposed to do now?" as a criticism.

In the case of the WW system criticism, I never had any problem with it. I wasn't fixated with 'rules-as-written', however, and was happy to follow the 'golden rule' of interpreting them to suit our group's needs to tell the story we wanted, which is somewhat out of fashion. However, this whole tack of arguing these rules produce narrative dead-ends, but 'fail forward' opens up great vistas of opportunity, when they both do the same thing, to me, just highlights issues with the GM rather than the game system.

Sounds like a weak-GM-crutch that's been re-branded as good game design. Heaven forbid a PC fail to fix a car engine yet not make noise summoning guards. Don't include that possibility... ugh. Better not have a system for seeing if PCs spot something, because they might make a situation where they "need" the PCs to spot it, yet roll for it... argh.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1009079DCC I don't get the appeal of running of overly fragile PC's through a deathtrap, like a bunch of sheep through Tomb of Horrors (a friend of mine bought in game a flock of sheep and ran them through the ToH in front of the party...  Was a funny story) and playing the survivor.

I wish I could tell you that "this is not how you play DCC", but it does seem to be how a lot of people play DCC. It's a really stupid way to play DCC though, in that you never get to really enjoy all the other much more sophisticated stuff that DCC can do.

QuoteAmber what's the point of stats if you can bullshit the GM into letting you win.

That's not how Amber works.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1009637I wish I could tell you that "this is not how you play DCC", but it does seem to be how a lot of people play DCC. It's a really stupid way to play DCC though, in that you never get to really enjoy all the other much more sophisticated stuff that DCC can do.
.

Would you care to elaborate?

Quote from: Nexus;1009638Would you care to elaborate?

In DCC circles there is a good bit of talk of running 'tournament' games and introductory funnels... to where I can see how someone might get the idea that that is the main thrust of the game. It's partially Goodman's fault because of the way they hype DCC... and the collector mentality they push to sell product... but the game really is much more full-bodied than that, PCs get tougher quickly, and in the years I've been playing I've only played in two funnel games and a LOT of our games don't involve dungeons at all.
I'm glad that I bought and read the corebook early on, before some of the sillier company/fanboy stuff that has built up around the game.

DCC makes sense to me, but it's firmly rooted in a gonzo ascetic I just don't enjoy (wacky random tables, silly comic pictures).

I also don't understand the appeal of games that are focused around brutally restricting GM scope and replacing it with "everything the player's encounter they created, most of which is being made up on the spot." I know that you don't *have* to play PBTA games that way, but that's how they're built - there's a proscribed list of GM moves, which you're only allowed to use the strongest ones in limited cases, you're supposed to "leave blanks" and have the players fill in all that stuff. This is part of a larger movement to strip the GM of any authority (see Unknown Armies 3) or an reason to enjoy running games. Just listen to any podcast or ask advice on any site about how you're supposed to run them. I also don't buy that they exist to make the GM's life easier. There's lots of ways to make the GM's life easier that don't have anything to do with shifting the locus of control over to the player's whims at the moment. For example, systems that make dice rolls player-facing, or use different, simple mechanics for describing obstacles and antagonists.

Also, I don't get why so many story-game people are so hostile using concepts to describe game systems. Traditional and Story Game seem like perfectly useful descriptions of game systems - the former tend to have GM's in charge of stuff except for the player's being in charge of their character and what they do.

Like Simlasa said: DCC is awesome and mid and higher levels. It's a fantastic game that has a ton of elements to it that will only be usable in longer-term play. And yet it seems to me like most people use it for 0-level funnels or one-shot type of games and the very notion of getting a player even to 2nd or 3rd level seems unthinkable.

If the creators of the game promotes a certain play style, then that's the play style people assumes the game is built around.  You shouldn't be surprised or disappointed.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1009785If the creators of the game promotes a certain play style, then that's the play style people assumes the game is built around.  You shouldn't be surprised or disappointed.

Yeah, it's odd that they do that. The funnel is fun but the real meats & taters comes after... and I'm guessing that since Goodman Games publishes a number of modules labeled as being for 4th, 5th, and 6th level they must believe some groups are playing beyond the funnel. I know our GM pulls from them sometimes... our group now being a mix of 0-5th.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1009785If the creators of the game promotes a certain play style, then that's the play style people assumes the game is built around.  You shouldn't be surprised or disappointed.

I agree that Goodman themselves have somewhat emphasized zero-level funnels and low-level play. I'm guessing there's some kind of marketing behind that; it's probably a basic fact that most people don't play campaigns as long as mine, for example, and that tend to do far more one-shots or short runs. This is something that allows for the selling of a lot of low-level adventures.

But they created a game that is ALSO awesome at higher levels, and it is a bit disappointing that the majority of the emphasis among the fandom has been for the lower-level stuff alone.

All right, off the topic for this question:  Is there way of playing DCC without having to go through said funnel?  (Honest question, the game does intrigue me, but as I stated, I don't get the appeal of the level funnel.)

Yes, roll up a character and make it level 1 or level 3 or whatever you want. You just lose some possibly entertaining background covering how your crappy gong farmer or radish farmer dealt with the beastmen or whatever.

Edit: One thing I'll add is that back in 1974/5 when I started playing we all took a group of characters along for the ride and rotated them to the front of the party as their friends died and generally came out with one or two level 2 characters so a funnel isn't new it's just not what we called it back then.

We used to do similar, a large party of first level characters, 1 as PC and the rest NPC hirelings. As the PCs died the NPCs got promoted. Eventually one would survive,