Quote from: TristramEvans;725551Thats an extreme example of what I would call the "common sense factor" in Immersion. If a player is in a kitchen, and they say "I grab a knife put of the drawer", that doesnt break the immersion because I as GM didnt describe the drawer having a set of cutlery in it. And there's no "mother may I?" necessary on the player's part to wait for that specific bit of info before taking that action. Its just a shared assumption about what it means for that character to be in that place, in that situation. The assumption is actually because of and maintains immersion, rather  than suddenly becoming a storygame moment, or something.

Quote from: robiswrong;725556there's a lot of stuff in the middle.  "Is there a wrench in here?"  Well... maybe.  Maybe someone left one there.  It's not *automatic*, but it doesn't strain credulity.  That's the kind of thing that the GM might roll for - and that's where I see use of metagame resources - to shift that "maybe" into a "yes".

I agree that "common sense" director stance doesn't have any general tendency to be immersion breaking.

I also agree that there are "middle" cases.

An example from 4e that I have found to be quite controversial, at least on ENworld, is Come and Get It. This hasn't been immersion breaking in my game - it is generally just an expressin of the polearm fighter's ability to dominate the battlefield and to wrongfoot his enemies through deft polearm handling - but a lot of other posters insist that it must be immersion breaking because it requires dictating NPCs' choices.

I see the encounter power aspect of CaGI as analgous to a metagame token for rationing the power. Because the token is so intimately built into the player-side mechanics, though, I actually think it is less of a threat to immersion than a mechanic would be that requires going via the GM. (I see this as relating to the point that some techniques - like looking up tables or rule books - can be immersion breaking even if they don't raise stance issues).

Another way I ration "middle" cases is via checks (a bit like Burning Wheel wises). One common case of this in my 4e game involves the deva Sage of Ages - successful knowledge checks by this character can include both learning stuff that was already established (eg monster knowledge) via retconning in past experience that the PC recalls from his 1000 prior lifetimes, and also, but less often, having the player stipulate, on a successful check, some bit of backstory that fits with what has gone before, and with the overall established situation/concerns of the character. Generally this stuff doesn't seem to break immersion either, at least for my group.

Quote from: jhkim;725539Hi, pemerton, and welcome.

Thanks!

Quote from: jhkim;725539Regarding (ii) - your wanting focus to be directed by players, I think that is a common preference in RPGs. A key follow-on question is how players should express control over the focus of play.

A) One way for players to express control is through character action. i.e. The players want to meet some farmers, so they have their characters travel out to the countryside. This sort of control is a part of some kinds of sandbox play. The GM sets up the map - but the map allows the PCs to choose where they go and who they meet.

B) Another way for players to express control is through metagame action. So, the players might spend a token and say that they are framing a scene where the PCs talk to some farmers.

One argument I frequently had with others at the Forge was that they consistently refused to acknowledge that in-character action could have any power. My question for you would be - given your interest in player control, do you have any feelings about these different types of player control.

I prefer GM authority over scene-framing, so that players aren't tempted to prioritise easy opportunities for their PCs over genuine challenges.

But in exercising that authority, I follow the cues set by the players (via PC build, play and out-of-character comments). That means no predetermined set of events, and a pretty flexible backstory that can be adapted as play evolves. The second of these is somewhat at odds with a traditional sandbox, where content is set (mostly by the GM) at the start, rather than evolved flexibly and on the fly. (I don't play fully no myth, but I think I'm closer to no myth than to a traditional sandbox.)

Coming at the same point from a slightly different angle, for me player choice is more important than PC choice (so eg I don't see anything wrong with framing the PCs into a prison scene, provided this speaks to the known concerns of the player for the game - whereas I know some people regard it as a railroad becaus the PCs have no choice to avoid the prison). Whereas at least the very traditional sandbox emphasises PC choice ("What do you do?") but tends to constrain that within a fictional context determined mostly, if not exclusively, by the GM.

As well as this exercise of GM authority in response to player cues (which I have read Edwards's characterise as the players "hooking" the GM, rather than vice versa), we also have informal contributions to backstory from the players in the course of adjudication - in a technical sense I guess this is an application of "say yes" in context of "common sense" director stance as per the earlier part of this post. And then there are mechanical aspects of player control via "tokens" and skill checks.

One aspect of my game that is closer to the traditional sandbox and is different from the typical adventure path is letting the players, rather than the GM, decide what is worth doing and who should be supported and who should be opposed.

I have been GMing in roughly the above way since 1986 and Oriental Adventures (which for me was a huge break through in my AD&D play), though naturally with some develoment and evolution over close to 30 years. And I don't see my approach as very radical or avant garde (although some of the more avant garde stuff at The Forge has been useful to me in reflecting on and improving my aproach). Nevertheless, on ENworld I frequently find myself on the "radical" rather than "traditional" side of discussions around issues like player entitlement, Schroedinger's X (wounds, backstory, etc), alignment debates, etc.

Quote from: pemerton;725637EDIT: post lost due to some sort of log in error.

Were you on an iPad?

Quote from: pemerton;723348(Kyle, if I've got your identity wrong I apologise, but I'm pretty sure I know who you are.)

Sounds ominous! But you are exactly right.

I'd heard Imeji came to an end when she had an argument with a minotaur, the minotaur felt his axe should be in her head, she disagreed, he won.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;725659Were you on an iPad?

No. But I didn't have the "remember me" box ticked, and I had been auto-logged out by the time I hit "submit" on my post.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;725682I'd heard Imeji came to an end when she had an argument with a minotaur, the minotaur felt his axe should be in her head, she disagreed, he won.

Then you were misinformed!

I don't know if I can remember all the details, but it went something like this:

   * The main PCs at the time were Tab (the mystic), Penn (a firemage), Luv (the elven archer/moon mage), and of course Imeji. (The minotaur by that time had been killed fighting an ice troll - the player had dropped out, but had managed to give his minotaur a bad reputation, and when the combat was on the players were barracking for the minotaur!)

* They had travelled into the Bandit Kingdoms to have some sort of dealings with Ursula the black robe wizard who had a crush on Tab. In the course of that they encountered an NPC bard who led them to a cavern guarded by a dark drake. (The module is an early-90s Greyhawk module called Five Shall Be One - or, at least, the first episode or two in that.)

* They didn't entirely avoid the dark drake, and it breathed on Luv, freezing him solid with its dark breath.

* The group therefore bought a wagon and with Tab using his cold magic to keep Luv on ice they carried him to Rel Astra, where they knew some powerful mages were to be found who owed the group a favour.

* Luv was thawed out and healed, and while resting a new party was built around the core gang to go on some sort of mission for the mages. (This was the start of 1992. The Matt who played Luv was planning on going overseas for a while, and was happy to bring in a new PC - a Noble Warrior - in the meantime, and there were a couple of new players to integrate. The PCs were around level 11.)

* The mission involved raiding an estate in Rel Astra. Imeji got into a fight with the guards which was more than she could handle, so she ran off, and turned left at the first corner, then left, then left, and then left again, bringing her back to where she started and where some of the guards were still waiting. She died, but Tab made sure her body was preserved so it could be taken back to Greyhawk and be buried with Derf. (The affair between Derf and Imeji came about after Derf's original player's timetable changed between semesters, and so he could no longer come along to sessions. So Imeji's new player picked up Derf as well, and Imeji did likewise.)

* Derf had died to an earlier unforced error - the group had raided the Scarlet Brotherhood embassy in Greyhawk, and had an excellent plan for having Imeji infiltrate and perform the required assassination, but they forgot to plan for the extraction, which therefore turned into a free-for-all debacle in which everyone got away but Derf, who was beheaded by the Scarlet Brotherhood guards. His head was never recovered, but Tab was able to use shapechaging to model for a sculptor and painter, and so in his tomb a bust of his head lay above his body, with a portrait hanging on the wall above the sarcophagus.

Imeji - the gameworld was never to see her like again! (The player brought in a yuan-ti sorcerer as his new PC, who - while on an expedition to the Noble Warrior's ancestral estate - unfortunately died to one of the firemage's elementals that went rogue. He then tried a dwarven ranger for a little while, but ultimately brought in another sorcerer whom he played to the game's conclusion.)

Amazing recall, I can't remember half as much. I would have thought Imeji would stand and fight against the ridiculous odds, I remember the party fleeing from a citadel and her and the paladin guarding the retreat, standing side-by-side in a narrow corridor, cutting down every orc that came, the party getting through, "close the gate, go!"
"But we're killing so many... more killing!"
Luckily the rest stopped us, players always like to push their luck

The paladin's player, he's another person I wronged back then. Ah well, the young are dickheads, it's part of their nature, just some of us more than others.

I do remember Ursula though. A rival party of adventurers, we smacked them over so often they ended up allying with us (sort of).

You see guys? The Forge's ideas are ill-thought-out, self-contradictory and based on wrong and stupid ideas (most people aren't having any fun? maybe in Uncle Ronny's game sessions they're not), but in the end someone inspired by some of those ideas turns out to run campaigns with players and events as glorious, stupid and ridiculous as the most grizzled old-schooler.

Pat, there's another thread here where someone asked what came between Old School and New School, and someone answered it was Excluded Middle School. Which is of course where most of us play...

Quote from: Jacob Marley;725604The poll results often reflect that bias. Storytellers and Tacticians are almost always the two most popular results. (See here.)

I scored Tactician/Specialist/Method Actor which I think is broadly accurate, but it lacks any of the nuance of my own personal style; and I do care about immersion.

I care about immersion a lot and method acting to me is immersion the two things are the same.
And see sig

Quote from: pemerton;725704No. But I didn't have the "remember me" box ticked, and I had been auto-logged out by the time I hit "submit" on my post.

For long posts, you may want to do a select-all copy of the text before hitting submit. This sort if thing occurs on my ipad frequently (never had the problem on a PC) and that seems to be the easiest way of avoiding losing the text. If it becomes a persistent priblem for you, consider opening a thread in the help desk.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;725759For long posts, you may want to do a select-all copy of the text before hitting submit.

I did, but didn't paste it into notepad - where I had the text of a different post to ENworld - and then I got confused and ended up copying the wrong text and pasting it in - hence the edit.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;725716I would have thought Imeji would stand and fight against the ridiculous odds

Maybe she was trying to distract the guards and lure them away with her initial flight, so the others could sneak in?

I remember she did fight in the end, which is where she cut down.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;725716I remember the party fleeing from a citadel and her and the paladin guarding the retreat, standing side-by-side in a narrow corridor, cutting down every orc that came, the party getting through, "close the gate, go!"
"But we're killing so many... more killing!"
Luckily the rest stopped us, players always like to push their luck

That would have been A1, I think. You went on to A2 - Slaver's Stockade - didn't you? It was in the withdrawal from the Pomarj that they met the firemage.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;725716I do remember Ursula though. A rival party of adventurers, we smacked them over so often they ended up allying with us (sort of).

Yep.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;725716there's another thread here where someone asked what came between Old School and New School, and someone answered it was Excluded Middle School. Which is of course where most of us play...

The only thing that makes me feel my game is at all out of the ordinary is when descriptions of my techniques sometimes seem to produce such uproar on ENworld.

In the latest 4e session (Sunday just past) at one stage half the party was stuck in the gullet of the Worm of Ages (an undead purple worm). At one stage the only PC on the outside was the invoker/wizard, solo-ing an undead beholder.

That was pretty funny (for everyone except the player of the paladin - it's a CHA paladin and so sucks at escape checks, and so couldn't get out until the Worm was eventually killed from inside).

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;725716The Forge's ideas are ill-thought-out, self-contradictory and based on wrong and stupid ideas but in the end someone inspired by some of those ideas turns out to run campaigns with players and events as the most grizzled old-schooler.

I can't remember how I found the Forge - someone linked to the System Matters essay, I think (probably around 2004) and I started reading that and the other articles. The review of The Riddle of Steel probably made the most sense to me at first, but reading and re-reading the other stuff, in light of play experiences plus reading others posts about their play and their problems, made the signficance of the other essays clearer to me.

It was pretty obvious to me from the start that Edwards personally would regard my game as pretty derivative and peurile, but that's fine because we won't be playing together!

Because I'm not part of the RPG design scene, and was never heavily involved in the online scene, I didn't know at the time that The Forge was regarded as especially controversial. In fact, I would have thought someone trying to work out what sorts of techniques and approaches tend to make it hard to avoid railroading would have been helpful!

As for The Forge games themselves - I can't imagine actually playing, say, Nicotine Girls, but reading it nevertheless helped me: it introduced me to the idea of a PC "endgame" as something built into the ultimate consequences of action resolution at the end of the campaign, and I used that to (what I hope was) good effect at the end of the 2nd long RM campaign.

This was particularly helpful to me because a lack of ultimate resolution techniques meant that the first camaign didn't end satisfactorily, but instead collapsed under the weight of its own mechanical and plot complexity - at which point we all agreed to start a new game at 1st level with some of the more problematic spells (especially teleport and divination) removed.

And 4e now builds the absence of such spells, and the idea of PC arc and endgame (ie epic destinies), right into its mechanics. For me, that is an indication of The Forge approach of deliberate design, focusing on at-table aspects of a rule rather than in-fiction aspects and simulation aspects of a rule (which is the approach that dominates Rolemaster design, sometimes to the game's detriment), having a wider effect on the hobby.

Quote from: pemerton;725967This was particularly helpful to me because a lack of ultimate resolution techniques meant that the first camaign didn't end satisfactorily, but instead collapsed under the weight of its own mechanical and plot complexity - at which point we all agreed to start a new game at 1st level with some of the more problematic spells (especially teleport and divination) removed.

This really is a pretty unexamined area of many traditional rpgs, a big omission form the "play advice" chapters.

Most game groups never finish a series of adventures, the group implodes when some key members leave for whatever reason.

The group implosion sometimes comes partly from the normal tension you get within a group over playstyles, how and when to tackle various challenges, plus normal interpersonal stuff like the stinky snacks someone brings. This is made worse by the sheer fact of not seeing an end to it all. People like a beginning, a middle and an end. If they have even the slightest discontent about what's happening at the game table, if it were going to end after X sessions it wouldn't seem as big a deal as if there were no endpoint. Everything is amplified in a small chamber.

A lack of clear goals will also often be a source of discontent. When is it time to stop? When can we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done? I enjoy the sandbox play, but this is a distinct problem with it - if not handled well by the GM. Things can just fizzle.

If they do go on, the high-level play (or high character points or whatever the system has) as you say just gets too much.

I think this is dealt with by things like AD&D1e's "name level" thing. You reach 9th level, either you change to a different type of campaign or you consider the characters retired. Plus a high death rate helped keep things fresh.

What I find is that even with everyone getting along smashingly and playing games they love, most people just can't commit to a years-long campaign. They have kids, change jobs, move house, and so on. Those weekends of binge gaming we had at uni at 19yo we're less likely to have a couple of decades later. I'm sure I had you checking Rolemaster charts at 2am Sunday at some point. Nowadays it's one night a week 6-9.

So the approach I usually use is to have an actual endpoint. Here's an adventure which I expect to take 12-18 sessions to finish. We do that, then we reassess. We could have the same characters do a follow-on adventure, or someone else can GM. And this gives players the chance to cycle out of the game group if they want a break, or to game with different people.

I didn't use this approach in the last campaign I ran and things were sort of fizzling out when luckily there was a TPK just before our holiday break, so it removed that awkwardness for us of figuring out what to do. But I think I'll return to this approach in future as it's worked so well in the past.

This is a bit of a rambling post but I tend not to make a huge effort towards coherence in hydra threads like this. However ill-formed, these are my thoughts.

Quote from: pemerton;725967And 4e now builds the absence of such spells, and the idea of PC arc and endgame (ie epic destinies), right into its mechanics.

Yup - it's certainly made long term play feasible for me in my 4e campaign. I would never try to do 5+ years of fortnightly play in other* versions of D&D. Compared to 3e especially, 4e both feels more stable, and also has a clear charted progression to look forward to. Right now late in 16th level the players are thinking about Epic Tier and Epic Destinies, but even at 21st level they won't be able to scry/buff/teleport any BBEGs.

*Although Mentzer BECM certainly has its temptations, and would be my second choice for a long-term (3+ years) campaign. 3e/PF with its rapid escalation is good for shorter campaigns in the 2-10 level range, my just-started PF campaign is planned to go for around 36 sessions, probably levels 2-10 or so, run fortnightly with a 3-4 month break in the middle.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;726033Most game groups never finish a series of adventures, the group implodes when some key members leave for whatever reason.

My 4e campaign (see sig) started ca April 2011. Of the players, only one original member is still playing. Having her there is very helpful for continuity, but the campaign isn't dependent on any one player or PC, and could continue even if she left. It's an old-school campaign in that it's setting-based, not plot/path based, so PCs can cycle in and out without a problem. Retired PCs often become part of the setting landscape. Old players & their PCs sometimes come back for "special guest star episode" one off re-appearances.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;725559GNS kind of brings these agendas (even ones done in the name of immersion) to the forefront artificially, but most people dont think like that or play like that. You just kind of play naturally.

In the 90s when I first started running LARP events there circulated a document on types of MMORPGs players which was applicable to the larp I was in because the LARP was run as a freeform shared world similar to a server on a MMORPG.

The types were Killer, Social, Achiever, Explorer. We concluded that while it described various behavior accurately the problem is that players are never just "one" thing over time or even during a single event. For example, a lot of what I do puts me into the achiever category, however I liked to fight and I really liked the roleplaying aspect. My friend is mostly a explorer, but like me he cares about his achievements and likes to roleplay.

The only thing that was nailed 100% was the observation that killer players (basically PvP) had a negative effect on the number players interested in the social aspect of the game.

In the end our conclusion is that it still boiled to knowing your players. That trying to put LARPers into neat categories doesn't reflect how they played over the long term.

For tabletop roleplaying publishing the take away is to be explicit about what your goals are for your product. Be up front about you are trying to accomplish and why.

Quote from: robiswrong;725600I think that the "Method Actor" category is intended to include immersive play.  It's a relatively weak fit given the *description* of the type I've seen.  But given that method acting is about the actor immersing themselves into the character, and relying upon their natural emotions and reactions rather than "faking" them, it seems appropriate.  But I do think there's a split between players that see their characters as an outlet of creative energy, and players that truly are primarily interested in immersing in their characters.  I'd actually argue that the former is more related to the "Storyteller" type using Laws' classification, but again, it just shows the weakness of any kind of broad categorization.

Quote from: jibbajibba;725722I care about immersion a lot and method acting to me is immersion the two things are the same.
And see sig

Immersion is clearly the biggest blind spot in the whole GNS mess. Edwards and his cronies don't get it. A lot of people don't get it.

For me and most of my group, it has nothing to do with immersion in character or method acting. It has to do with only seeing the world through the eyes of your character. That limited perspective helps you feel like you're in the game world, immersed in the setting, and facing the kinds of choices the character faces. You don't need to talk in character, or have a deep PC backstory, to enjoy immersion. You can be just as immersed in the game world with a pre-generated character in a one-shot as you can with a PC you've been running for six years.

It's not much different enjoying first-person video games. It's more evocative, creepier, more intense to experience the game-world from the grounds-eye POV of your character than from a zoomed-out top-down perspective. And just as it can be disruptive to that feeling if all the enemies have stat-blocks glowing over their heads and named maneouvers flashing on-screen to indicate mechanics, it can be disruptive in a pen and paper RPG for the rules mechanics to intrude on experiencing the game world.

A couple of my players sketch while we play, and I know we've having a good session when they create detailed depictions of the scenes we're generating in play. It doesn't sound like Robin Laws, Ron Edwards, and most other system-fixated theorists experience RPGs the same way.