Quote from: Ghost Whistler;371836What I'm trying to get at, and struggling with (which is partly why I post), is the notion of what are now commonly known as Aspects (Thanks to the ubiquity of Fate I guess). By that I mean elements that can be created or utilised primarily to change the environment or the conflict (ie the characters) through hitherto unforeseen and unknown elements and knwoeldges. For instance, spending a point to decide the Villain is 'vain' and thus use that against him. Or to try and manipulate the environment so that the fight against the Great Big Dragon is made easier (perhaps the grate he's standing on is loose). This seems to me what Aspects are about - as opposed to some fortune point system that simply gets you a reroll or some extra dice when things go strange.

Why on earth would anyone do this? Its like how roleplaying is supposed to work, absolutely backward. Its like Bizarro Roleplaying.

You look/ask to see if there's anything on the bridge that might be useful, and THEN you use a fate point to give it an aspect, or something like that. You figure out in the course of the game and THEN you use your fate point to take advantage of his vanity, along with a description of exactly how you plan to go about doing that.  You don't just use a fucking abstract mechanic to change the motherfucking universe at your whim. That way lies lots of things, including probably madness, but certainly not an actual Roleplaying Game.

RPGPundit

So, in a bar room brawl in an action movie style setting (ie feng shui), there are no baseball bats that could conceivably be found by a pc after he gets thrown over the bar (for instance) unless the GM explicitly says there are. If the players suggest there might be, or even ask if there is one he can grab, then there can't be because that would mean altering the universe.

Maybe if they'd asked for a magic cyborg dragon, perhaps.

I happened across this gem in the SotC SRD this morning:

QuoteUsually, the player's expectations are more minor, and usually come in the form of "Is there a ladder here?" The answer to a question like that depends on your response. If you feel the answer is "yes", or even "no, but there should have been, why didn't I think of that?" then say yes. If you feel the answer is "no, but while that's not very likely, it's not unreasonable" then the answer to give is "I don't know, is there?" while looking meaningfully at the player's fate points. It is only if you feel that the request is entirely out of line that your answer should be "No ."

By this guideline, the dragon standing on the grate is probably unreasonable and shouldn't be allowed. But if you discovered that the villain has a "vanity" aspect, then it's not unreasonable for their to be numerous mirrors around his house.

I think that, ultimately, it's a matter of play-style. If you want to use your own wits to solve problems, then you want the "reality" of the adventure to be fixed, so you can find a solution from the materials at hand. If you want your character to do cool things, then you want some flexibility from the environment so you can make up things (like a baseball bat behind the bar) that you can exploit to do cool stuff.

One isn't better than the other. They're just different. But if you're designing a game, you should probably have a clear idea of which play-style is appropriate for your game.

Is this all a shorthand to save GM's the embarassment and awkwardness of not describing everything within the environment, no matter how inoccuous.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;371991So, in a bar room brawl in an action movie style setting (ie feng shui), there are no baseball bats that could conceivably be found by a pc after he gets thrown over the bar (for instance) unless the GM explicitly says there are. If the players suggest there might be, or even ask if there is one he can grab, then there can't be because that would mean altering the universe.

Maybe if they'd asked for a magic cyborg dragon, perhaps.

WTF, GW? Are you one of those guys who only allows what is explicitly granted? The RAW to the max? In most games, if I were GM, the player would say "Is there a baseball bat behind this bar?" and I would say "Yes" if I had expressly put one there or thought it was too likely to be worth rolling for, "No" if I expressly did not want to allow one, and "I don't know - what's likely? Roll X and there is one."

This is *exactly* cognate to the point phil.gs makes from the SoTC SRD below. "Yes" and "No" are exactly the same, and "Maybe" differs only in being Random vs. Resource allocation. Same thing functionally.

-clash

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;371871Fair enough; it was the first game I played where such player narrative control was explicit. As people have said they have done it in all kinds of games since the year dot on their own.

But the problem that occurs to me with a point based 'buy narrative control' set up is that if you don't have points, your ideas get ignored since you can't institute them. Either that or the points then become meaningless.

Pundit's given good advice here, although even so, if you were playing a game with a good GM and you wanted a more "in-character" thought process, then the GM should simply give you a bonus for coming up with a good plan based on the environment, without your having to spend a "point". As long as you still have to roll dice for success, the task resolution roll is going to tell you whether that environmental element is really significant enough to affect the outcome.

In Mythic RPG/Mythic GM emulator, any time the GM doesn't feel certain about some element of the situation, s/he can roll on a probability chart to see if it's one way or the other. The contributing factors are (a) a guesstimate of the likelihood in plain English terms, and (b) a "situation status" gauge that can go up or down depending on how the scenario's developing and how exactly you want to use the gauge. (In other words the base game says the gauge goes one way whenever the situation becomes more out of control, and the other when it's more under control, but there are options to change how it works.)

On top of that, Mythic lets players spend points to modify a roll.

The point of this example, though, is that Mythic's approach is that you only roll dice if the GM is truly unsure of whether something is there or how something will turn out. The players can (and in some ways of using the game, are encouraged to) make suggestions, but the GM isn't forced to accept them if they aren't plausible. The points given to players then let them affect the likelihood of these plausible-but-uncertain events.

So the points aren't meaningless unless the GM chooses to decide everything based on preconceived notions or deterministic spot judgments from personal vision. If on the other hand the GM is willing to accept that there are elements of the situation that he didn't plan, but which could be there, then the players' use of points is quite meaningful.

In other games, you might give players more narrative control but the points spent would be limited in two ways: first, of course, they need to be used for something plausible, and second, their impact would depend on the points spent. E.g. if I spend a point to say that there's a chandelier hanging over the bad guy's head, then the effect on the overall scene is going to be roughly the same as spending a point to say that the local gendarmerie intervenes. That is, if 1 point = a minor distraction then the bad guy will jump out of the way of the chandelier but you'll be able to escape, OR the police sirens will distract or scare the bad guy with similar consequences. Whereas 10 points would knock out or trap the bad guy with the chandelier, or result in the gendarmes bursting into the room.

Personally I'm not too crazy about this latter approach unless it's accompanied by a degree of chance, such that the points spent are combined with a die roll to determine the final level of effect. And even then, it's more of a story-like stance relative to the situation than an in-character approach.

Quote from: flyingmice;371998This is *exactly* cognate to the point phil.gs makes from the SoTC SRD below. "Yes" and "No" are exactly the same, and "Maybe" differs only in being Random vs. Resource allocation. Same thing functionally.

Indeed, except it's not the same thing cognitively. This is why I'd personally favor something where spending points only makes the possible more probable. You can get this either by saying that certain die rolls are always a failure (and using exploding dice if you want to make this chance extremely small), or, instead of using simple additive points, have a system where spending points grants rerolls...or additional dice in certain dice pool systems.

Quote from: flyingmice;371998WTF, GW? Are you one of those guys who only allows what is explicitly granted? The RAW to the max? In most games, if I were GM, the player would say "Is there a baseball bat behind this bar?" and I would say "Yes" if I had expressly put one there or thought it was too likely to be worth rolling for, "No" if I expressly did not want to allow one, and "I don't know - what's likely? Roll X and there is one."

This is *exactly* cognate to the point phil.gs makes from the SoTC SRD below. "Yes" and "No" are exactly the same, and "Maybe" differs only in being Random vs. Resource allocation. Same thing functionally.

-clash

That quote was supposed to be a question in response to Daniel Day Lewis's post above.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372000Indeed, except it's not the same thing cognitively. This is why I'd personally favor something where spending points only makes the possible more probable. You can get this either by saying that certain die rolls are always a failure (and using exploding dice if you want to make this chance extremely small), or, instead of using simple additive points, have a system where spending points grants rerolls...or additional dice in certain dice pool systems.

I'm not going to argue this point. Fate is not my favorite system, and I would do it differently. OTOH, this is not an alien thing. It's a matter of how you picture it.

-clash

Someone may have already suggested this, but I suppose the way you could do it would be for the GM to first take the suggestion and think "Yes", "No", or "Maybe".

If it's "Maybe" then the player would be free to spend a point and change it into "Yes" or "No", without a doubt.

But if it's "Maybe" and the player doesn't spend a point, that's where I begin to have a problem, because it's implied from this discussion that the GM can, should, and will tell the player "It can be true, but only if you spend a point."

As in GoOrange's example, then the player can feel extorted. "You mean there's no f***ing crowbar in a warehouse full of crates?" GM: "There is, if you spend a point. Otherwise, no." Player: "No way, as GM you should be doing your job of providing a verisimilitudinous world, not a paper doll world where I have to pay for each accessory."

So IMO if the player doesn't spend a point, but the GM has already admitted that the thing is a possibility, then it should still be a possibility.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372020As in GoOrange's example, then the player can feel extorted. "You mean there's no f***ing crowbar in a warehouse full of crates?" GM: "There is, if you spend a point. Otherwise, no." Player: "No way, as GM you should be doing your job of providing a verisimilitudinous world, not a paper doll world where I have to pay for each accessory."

Here's how I would handle this with fate points in my games. The player wants to use a crowbar in the warehouse but doesn't have one. He asks if he sees one. I roll and he doesn't notice one handy. The player decides finding a crowbar right now is important. He asks "If I spend a fate point, can I stumble on one right now?" As stumbling on a crowbar in a warehouse full of crates is fairly likely, I would say "sure." The player spends the fate point and picks up the crowbar his eyes passed right over the first time he looked.

That works, too, it's a matter how much of a "gambling" aspect you want to incorporate in Fate points. Some games even have different ways of using them depending on whether you want to spend them before or after rolling dice. (E.g., Burning Wheel, although it never gives you a 100% chance of success IIRC.)

The main point, though, is that if something might reasonably be there (or something might reasonably happen) then it shouldn't require a Fate point else it doesn't happen. As in both our proposed approaches, if something might reasonably be there, then there ought to be a chance it will be there without the player paying for it.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;371871But the problem that occurs to me with a point based 'buy narrative control' set up is that if you don't have points, your ideas get ignored since you can't institute them. Either that or the points then become meaningless.

Why not allow players to share points, spend points on behalf of each other, or reward each other?

That doesn't really solve anything.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372171That doesn't really solve anything.

Why don't you think so?

I think it does help solve the problem. If the problem is that players who run out of the resource required to add input into the setting get ignored, then allowing players to share that resource or reward each other with it will help solve the problem--as long as the player in need can come up with ideas that the other players like. In my experience this works out well. If players are rewarded for being entertaining and collaborative, then they often make a greater effort to be so.

Of course this means that the players who only makes self-serving contributions may get left out in the cold. It may also create other problems, but no solution is perfect. Any given solution is gonna prioritize some preferences at the expense of others.