If a thread topic's interesting, it's interesting.  I don't think we need to extend  IP rights to individual fora.  Most of us post on several anyway.

I agree with Kyle that this topic doesn't warrant much discussion, and there aren't enough posters at TRPGS to spam up the front page with Mary-Sue-ish threads, so we can just ignore it if we like.

As to the topic, I agree with the handjob comment and all the others in similar vein.

But, hey, how about some edition wars?  Is it fair to say that this type of pathetic wish-fulfillment game philosophy is more prevalent since 4E?

To nobody's great surprise, Hairfoot says yes.

Quote from: Peregrin;343193Haven't been around RPGnet long enough to know how they play Exalted.  Some of them may not like the way I run Exalted, though.

The general expected order of Exalted play there IME was that the player makes the most ridiculously powerful character they can by more or less breaking the system, and then the GM is expected to prop up a series of both social and physical punching bags for the players to knock down and thus be able to demonstrate how brilliantly awesome and wonderful their character is.

Frankly, it kinda makes you want to puke.

Quote from: J Arcane;343204The general expected order of Exalted play there IME was that the player makes the most ridiculously powerful character they can by more or less breaking the system, and then the GM is expected to prop up a series of both social and physical punching bags for the players to knock down and thus be able to demonstrate how brilliantly awesome and wonderful their character is.

Frankly, it kinda makes you want to puke.

Oh...that type of play.

TBH, I originally wasn't too interested in Exalted, thinking it was too weird and too high-powered (I originally wasn't a huge fan of supers/high-power type games), spent months warming up to it and almost loving it, only to become jaded with the rules and the problems they caused from a GMing standpoint.  

I know a lot of people on RPGnet still play it and use the system quite a bit, but with the way some posters come across it's almost like they're a battered wife or something.  Or maybe the only reason they can put up with it is because they handwave everything.

Quote from: J Arcane;343150Wow.  That is so much fucking wank I don't know where to begin.

Agreed.

While I feel story is the important product, the line about "wildest daydreams" is pure bull. A good story comes from a good framework, cooperative players & GM, reasonable levels of simulation, and players having meaningful (and real) risk to their characters.

The coddling of players in the quote from average citizen guarantees a munchkin circle-jerk. It's counter even to most forge games' ethos.

Yeah, AverageCitizen (more like outlier than average) posted another gem in the sister thread to the one Mistwell linked:

Quote from: AverageCitizenTo craft my campaigns to include plot, I've learned that I have to break a few rules.

Specifically the unspoken rules that say "Players have control over their characters" and "DMs have control over everything else."

The best opening to a campaign I have ever run involved me creating roles for the players to play. They made their characters, named them, and then I decided how they all fit together and who they were in the game world. For example, one player rolled a Dedicated Hero (We were playing d20 Modern,) who he said he wanted to be a doctor. Once I had a good idea of how the story would go I told him something like "You are a surgeon in St. Joseph's trauma unit in Chicago. Your wife, Barbara, recently left you and took your 11 year old son Spence and your 3 year old daughter Julie with her. Earlier in the day, there was a streak of gang-related violence as a 3-week drug war  continues, and you've been in surgery with the victims all night long. You have just been relieved and are about to go home. It's about 3 A.M." The other characters followed similar patterns, all building on the one before.

Trusting me with some creative license allowed me to not only connect the players to each other, but to ensure that they had personal stake in the events that were about to unfold. By the time we were rolling everybody was interconnected somehow. Not everybody knew everybody, but they knew someone who knew each character. More importantly, they all had relationships that would prove to be their main motivation in the story. Because they had all been provided with vested interest in the game-world, when things started happening they took it a lot more personally. When things went all Wrong, with a horrifyingly paranormal capital W, their characters had a good reason to care.

This came with some very beneficial side-effects. By pretty much assigning them a role in the story, players who had previously been very timid about role-playing were much less self-conscious. Fulfilling an assigned role is a lot more personally justifiable than spouting a backstory of your own creation to any one who will listen. Not to say that I did all the work for them, once we got rolling we worked together on the fly to flush out the skeletal frame-work I gave them, and then they played their parts to the T. "Why did my wife leave me?" he says. "I dunno," says I, "It'd be more interesting if it were your fault." "How bout I had a stroke a few years back and now she says it's like I'm a different person?" "Thats good, that'll work really well." So when things go all X-Files on him and he starts to wonder if he really IS another person, everything all ties together, and he helped create the story possibilities.See, it all becomes co-operative.

Referring to the rules I mentioned at the beginning, you can see what I mean when I said I broke them. They gave me some of their creative control, and I gave them some of mine, and what we made together was way, way more awesome.

Yeah, not so much for me, bunky.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;343188The original article doesn't need a detailed analysis. It's obviously wrong, because most gamers don't show up to the game session hoping the GM will give them a handjob.

That depends.  Is she going to buy me dinner afterwards?

As to the original post, that guy is the very essence of 'should be in a writer's collective'.  His goofy notions are the exact reason people think GMs are failed novelists.  It's also the logical progression of that 'say yes or roll the dice' idea, especially when you avoid rolling the dice so as to prevent upsetting the railroad plot.

If his style works for he and his crew, more power to him. Other than that, I'm not interested on that style of gaming, and in my experience, players like to face real challenges, with real chances of losing it all. So, there.

Not much need about getting all worked up because some godforsaken guy somewhere likes playing in a different way, though.

Quote from: Imperator;343223players like to face real challenges, with real chances of losing it all.

Seems to be true.

I started running a RuneQuest game recently. One PC died because rather than ambushing it as is traditional, he decided to go toe-to-toe with a great stag - who gored his arm and then he bled to death.

A second PC, the group had slain some foes, and were snooping around the camp of another group... and stood around discussing whether or not or how to attack them, when they hadn't actually got close enough to see their numbers. Four of the foe came out to have a look at what the noise was, the PCs slew them but suffered one injured. Then they saw torches in the woods - more foes coming. They paused to decapitate and loot the four dead, and then limped away with the heads, loot, and injured comrade. One of the PCs decided to create a diversion, lead the foes away.

While running in the darkness, he tripped and fell and a foe came up to him, got a lucky strike and downed him. He's been captured and will probably be horribly tortured to death if the other PCs don't rescue him.

I said afterwards in email, perhaps we should have some kind of "hero points" thing, if you present a picture or short backstory of your character, or bring beer, you get to turn a failed dice roll into a success... or maybe we should just harden up? I left it to the players.

One responded, "I like it better hardcore."

I like it better when PCs live, but hey, if that's what the players want...

Quote from: Mistwell;343147Any thoughts?

Bullshit.

If you want to create a work of narrative excellence...then forgo the rulebooks and dice and just write a damn book.

If you want to create a work of compelling theater...then try out for a stage play.

Both offer potentially more tangible rewards than an RPG...last I checked, they don't give out Pulitzers or Tonys for "best roleplaying game."

We play games for one purpose above all else...to have fun. Some people find the more thespy/talky aspects of the game more fun than the hack n' slash which is perfectly fine...but for the OP to claim that beer n' pretzel gamers are "missing out" because they don't share his/her playstyle is nothing more than pretentious, self-important ass-hattery of the worst order.

"It's not ROLL-playing it's ROLE-playing!"

We see this little rhetorical gem bandied about constantly on gaming forums...but in actuality, neither is correct. It's a roleplaying GAME...and as someone much more eloquent than I has stated:

"Anyone who prioritizes artistic expression over fun in a GAME has their head so far up their own ass, they can tongue their tonsils from behind."

Quote from: Shazbot79;343228"It's not ROLL-playing it's ROLE-playing!"

We see this little rhetorical gem bandied about constantly on gaming forums...but in actuality, neither is correct.

Of course not. It's all about rolling dice and eating snacks while talking shit with your mates

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;343233Of course not. It's all about rolling dice and eating snacks while talking shit with your mates

Natch.

Quote from: Average CitizenBy pretty much assigning them a role in the story, players who had previously been very timid about role-playing were much less self-conscious. Fulfilling an assigned role is a lot more personally justifiable than spouting a backstory of your own creation to any one who will listen. Not to say that I did all the work for them, once we got rolling we worked together on the fly to flush out the skeletal frame-work I gave them, and then they played their parts to the T.

This part alone I'm going to credit.

My partner enjoys conventional RPGs, but tunes out when it comes to combat and game mechanics.  She has, however, been heavily involved in LiveJournal games in the Buffy and Harry Potter universes.

Strangely, to me, the goal of those games is not to create an original character within the setting, but to play an existing character convincingly, so that he or she acts and sounds as though the author was writing the LJ entries.

I think that's mostly a feature of fiction fandom, but also of the way that non-gamers connect primarily to characters and only secondarily to setting.

Providing interesting pre-gen characters for new gamers - without lumping them the burden of building one from scratch – can be a useful introductory technique to RPGs.

Quote from: Hairfoot;343243Providing interesting pre-gen characters for new gamers - without lumping them the burden of building one from scratch – can be a useful introductory technique to RPGs.

Taken out of context, that snippet almost sounds reasonable.

But the way OutlierCitizen claims to do it, once you put the quote back in context, is ridiculous. Roll stats and make a name and then I'll assign you a character is a far cry from choosing from a selection of pregens.

Quote from: The Shaman;343244Taken out of context, that snippet almost sounds reasonable.

But the way OutlierCitizen claims to do it, once you put the quote back in context, is ridiculous. Roll stats and make a name and then I'll assign you a character is a far cry from choosing from a selection of pregens.

If I was going to take that sort of shit in context I'd be posting at ENworld.

Quote from: Hairfoot;343245If I was going to take that sort of shit in context I'd be posting at ENworld.

Good point.