Quote from: S'mon;1101197Yeah, I agree strongly with this.

Tolkien's theme of Divine Grace as written isn't going to work in an RPG when it will just come over as "player spends plot coupons" or "GM takes pity on loser PCs".
I might be able to do something with "mercy is good" but it would have to be a lot more obvious, like a spared NPC helps the PC survive the final challenge. What Tolkien did would come over terribly cheesy if it were a GM-fiated moment, and likely hilariously bathetic if it were the organic outcome of play through dice rolls and critical fumbles.

Yep. RPG strengths are not the same as static narrative ones. Chasing after static narrative tropes without keeping that in mind can lead to horrible game sessions where failure is not an option, and the players become passive agents, instead of active ones.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1101200Yeah, Role-playing games have their own limitations as a medium. However, the context of my last post was the question of how to represent the protagonist obviously failing the pivotal test but still the world not ending. My reply was that Frodo was saved by heroic luck (or just dumb luck), so if you want to emulate that you might need to represent fortune (and , btw, metacurrency isn't the only way to do that). One problem here is that being saved by luck should feel earned too.

Frodo was not saved by luck, heroic or otherwise.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1101225Don't wanna sidetrack this, so I'll try to be brief:
We agree that players may use Destiny to compel the GM to make them find a computer system access code scribbled down somewhere.
Do the rules need to state explicitly that they still can after a failed cracking attempt to make the player action legal? Or do they need to explicitly restrict such usage if it's not allowed?

Players can't compel narrative uses of Destiny points, making the GM accept their desires. A GM can veto any narrative use of a Destiny point. A player asking to find a password after failing to slice is not a thing the GM should or must accept.

FWIW, I'm not trying to bust chops or play "Gotcha!", I simply found the example unfairly represented Destiny points.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1101233Frodo was not saved by luck, heroic or otherwise.

Well, prove it.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1101249Players can't compel narrative uses of Destiny points, making the GM accept their desires. A GM can veto any narrative use of a Destiny point. A player asking to find a password after failing to slice is not a thing the GM should or must accept.

FWIW, I'm not trying to bust chops or play "Gotcha!", I simply found the example unfairly represented Destiny points.

Remember that my original assertion was: "If the players fail in Star Wars, one way for them to bail themselves out is by spending Destiny". And I still think they can by RAW, unless the GM vetoes it.
BTW, the significance of the GM veto regarding such uses of metacurrency is one discussion we had a while back - and you're right regarding that. If there's a GM veto in play, ultimately all the players can do is suggest some dumb luck that might help them out.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1101324Well, prove it.

Quote from: JRR TolkienFrodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.

... The most important point was that of Frodo's "moral failure". Only one other correspondent has referred to it; and he abused F. as a scoundrel, and me -- for holding him up to admiration ... Frodo failed as a 'hero' conceived in abstract ideal terms: he succumbed to the pressure of the Ring, which at that instant reached its maximum, when starved, utterly exhausted, and after months of increasing fear and torment. But we are all finite creatures, having absolute limits to our powers of soul, mind, and body ... Frodo took the Ring in complete humility, and his motive was entirely selfless ... By his sufferings he provided a situation in which the quest could be achieved, and by his pity (for Gollum) he made the means for this available. We, the readers, and within the book the Great can, I think have no doubt whatever in our praise ...
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_to_Eileen_Elgar_(September_1963)

....

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1101324Well, prove it.



Remember that my original assertion was: "If the players fail in Star Wars, one way for them to bail themselves out is by spending Destiny". And I still think they can by RAW, unless the GM vetoes it.
BTW, the significance of the GM veto regarding such uses of metacurrency is one discussion we had a while back - and you're right regarding that. If there's a GM veto in play, ultimately all the players can do is suggest some dumb luck that might help them out.

No, they can't but I applaud the attempt at trying to wriggle through. By your assertion, any game can work that way. A DM can allow a player to use Inspiration to find the key to a chest in a drawer. You could spend hit points to add to your roll as if it was Effort, such as in Cypher. And so on. None of these are RAW and GM fiat. They don't follow the ethos of the D&D, nor does allowing a player to flip a Destiny point to undo a failed roll.

Quote from: Itachi;1099046So it's not really like Pundy advocates, right?. Blades in the Dark uses a similar concept called Devils Bargain: the GM can give a bonus to a player roll, or make it automatically succeed, if the player accepts a setback later (like letting evidence leading to you, or losing face with some faction, etc). It's Fail Forward, and it has nothing to do with what Pundy says in the vid.

So, with everything Pundy, he creates a Strawman based on his own misunderstandings about some concept. Then you ask him "But what games do that?" and no one teally knows. Not even Pundy. Lol

Who is making this decision in Blades in the Dark? Is the player playing their character or sitting at the chess board moving pieces?

Quote from: Itachi;1100020Does he? As far as I know his games are all clones (of oD&D and Amber respectively). What original design he did that achieved some measure of success or recognition outside his own backyard?

He has chosen to apply his (considerable) talent to making adventures and settings and rules tweaks for OSR/D20/D&D. Yes, he could have put his efforts into the task of writing an original game but his work is good and seems quite popular, given the lack of corporate backing. "Arrows of Indra" is a great evocation of ancient India and his medieval authentic work for "Dark Albion" is groundbreaking, although set much later in the middle ages than I like.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1101331....

Indeed. Me thinks Alexander has only seen the Peter Jackson film, and we've already discussed in this thread the manner in which Jackson missed the mark because of his own failure to grasp the message of the power of mercy/pity and not courage as what saved everyone in the end.

If the climax of The Lord of The Rings was truly just sheer happenstance it would not have become the classic of literature it has for its ending would ring hollow and crudely designed.

To Alexander; you are aware that J.R.R. Tolkien was a devout Catholic who incorporated his beliefs, however subtly, into his books, yes?

This information about the themes and messages has been known to anyone who's bothered to look for decades. The author himself has written about it. It's not some random interpretation we're pulling out of our hind ends just to thwart you.

Your constant focus on attempting to use meta-currency in reference to duplicating only the gross events in visual media suggests you've probably NOT actually done much of a deep dive on the actual source material and their themes and messages and have only considered replication of the most superficial surface events in your modelling attempts. The pushback you're getting is largely because most of these stories are beloved classics because of all the material you're discounting and trivializing, not the trivialities you're so focused on emulating.

Okay, I don't understand the narrative focus when i said earlier: "Is this superficial? Well, yeah. I'm playing role-playing games primarily for the adventure, not for heavy themes, so that's my focus in this thread."
Maybe I should have been driving this point home more: if we revise the RPGs published for the Middle-Earth setting, we find that they all pretty much center around the adventuring and not around philosophical themes like the power of mercy (yes, I include TOR here). What's particularly confusing is that somebody else already pointed out that there is a difference in medium and P&P RPGs has in many regards the depth of improv theatre. So what's the point?

As a consequence and since I primarily play fantasy for the journey and the adventure (and it seems to me that most fantasy gamers are the same though I guess this is going to prompt a huge discussion of how my attitude is atypical), my focus is on emulating the adventure side of LOTR. To that end (and here's where we connect to fail forward), the question has arisen of how the adventure side of the ending of LOTR -the main protagonist fails his crucial test, the pivotal roll of the game to resist the ring before its impending destruction and STILL the campaign doesn't end in complete desaster as Sauron gets evaporated after all- could work out satisfyingly in a fantasy adventure game. Or if at all!

I suspect there is widespread agreement here that if the PC fails the pivotal check in a campaign and then the GM goes soft and lets the campaign finish with a happy end anyway, as if the test has succeeded, that this is generally seen as unsatisfying. For that would be akin to the "failure not allowed" that the Pundit is characterizing in his video.

So then the question is if there is a path between that and "the pivotal test fails, the world succumbs to darkness" that could still be satisfying, at least for a range of players. And that middle road would probably have to draw on Success-at-a-Cost. Which is in turn where heroic luck could come in (but doesn't have to), just as Gollum slipped in his moment of triumph and then died.

So that's roughly how I see the state of discussion. I'm not sure how exploring the underlying theme of LOTR's climax figures into that.


PS Regarding Destiny: the game explicitly states you can use Destiny to draw on dumb luck and find a scribbled down password. It's clear that this can be veto'd by the GM. But the game does not state: you can't draw on dumb luck after you failed a test and you're stuck. Or does it? I guess what I have been trying to say all along is this: failing to crack a system and then spending a Destiny point in order to be bailed out by dumb luck is a legal move. A legal move that can be denied by GM fiat, of course. But it doesn't have to.

So there's been a lot of naysaying here lately and instead of joining the choir, I'd rather contemplate ways of how a plot like the journey of Frodo and Sam could work out in an RPG - the adventuring side of it primarily, to be clear.

Here's one way I could see it work, though very likely not the only one:

Quote from: me as an Example of PlayFrodo and Sam form a two-man party that go through many trials and tribulations. Lets say Frodo has 1 Fate Point as he begins his journey with Sam. Many times through his journey the Frodo player is tempted to spend that Fate Point to save his PC or Sam but always decides to hold back and with some good wits and some good dice-rolling he manages to struggle through to Mount Doom. As he approaches the chasm, the GM calls for a final test of his resolve to not succumb to the ring. The Frodo player, his PC under heavy penalties from hunger and exhaustion, fails the test. Now the Frodo player invokes the 1 Fate Point he managed to hold on to through many dangers and frustrations and the GM agrees to reward him for his earlier frugality in the face of near doom (especially when previously encountering Shelob and getting ambushed by her!). He adjudicates that Gollum in his moment of triumph starts to slip and must take an Agility test. Gollum fails and the world is saved after all.

Not because of mercy, not because of Frodo's willpower or purity of heart but because of heroic luck. Luck that the Frodo player had earned for himself earlier on for making the dangerous journey all without the help of fortune.

Will some players not like such a campaign finale? Probably, yeah. Is there a different breed of players who wouldn't mind that ending at all and would be thrilled for getting a second chance to prevail based on performance throughout the campaign prior? I'm pretty sure of it.

Now to the power of mercy. A different variant of the above example: when Frodo and Sam encounter and capture Gollum, the GM could have rewarded them for not killing him by granting Frodo a 2nd Fate Point. Later, when they encounter Shelob, the Frodo player spends one of them to not get struck by deadly poison and we're again entering the climax of the adventure with the Frodo PC having 1 Fate Point. It all plays out as before, but this time the world will have been saved only because Frodo earlier on showed mercy to Gollum. And has been clinging to that last Fate Point otherwise.

Quote from: Chris24601;1101359Your constant focus on attempting to use meta-currency in reference to duplicating only the gross events in visual media suggests you've probably NOT actually done much of a deep dive on the actual source material and their themes and messages and have only considered replication of the most superficial surface events in your modelling attempts. The pushback you're getting is largely because most of these stories are beloved classics because of all the material you're discounting and trivializing, not the trivialities you're so focused on emulating.

Definitely agree with this; it seems to be a persistent theme. (1) Emulating the (2) surface patina of the (3) film version of a (4) story via (5) tabletop RPG mechanics. I don't think this either recreates the feel of watching a film, nor the feel of being a character in the story.

Quote from: Chris24601;1101359... and have only considered replication of the most superficial surface events in your modelling attempts..

Makes sense. I think the games that do genre emulation best do it by emulating motivations first, events second. Have characters with genre-coherent drives and a gameplay loop that rewards developing/challenging those... and chances are genre-coherent events will follow in emergent fashion.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1101373PS Regarding Destiny: the game explicitly states you can use Destiny to draw on dumb luck and find a scribbled down password. It's clear that this can be veto'd by the GM. But the game does not state: you can't draw on dumb luck after you failed a test and you're stuck. Or does it? I guess what I have been trying to say all along is this: failing to crack a system and then spending a Destiny point in order to be bailed out by dumb luck is a legal move. A legal move that can be denied by GM fiat, of course. But it doesn't have to.

The same page you referenced earlier, p316, says:

QuoteThe characters should not be allowed to use a Destiny Point to make up for forgotten items or poor planning, or to give them something they purposefully avoided or left behind.

I'd make the argument that not looking around for the password ahead of time would fall under poor planning.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1101331....

You're wasting your time. Instead of trying to figure out a way to make an RPG that emulates heroic fantasy, he's trying to describe heroic fantasy in RPG terms. That's literally impossible unless you're using "roleplaying game" in the loosest interpretation. At this point it sounds like he's advocating for a reality TV show with fantasy characters: scripted improv with a manufactured story arcs and conflict, with a definitive resolution.