Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;817266Would you explain ahead of time what the results of a possible success would be though?

Yeah, or I might wait and see if they succeed (and whether the success is exceptional) before deciding exactly what effect success would have. Slippery surfaces are likely to be so situationally dependant that I'm not too concerned with establishing a replicatable precedent and unless the character is in the habit of greasing surfaces in combat and knows the opponent's foot gear and the surface properties, the character may not have much of a sense of exactly what effect success will actually have.

If I am playing Honor+Intrigue the basic rule for stunts will both me and the player what effect success will have and basically how difficult success is - base difficulty for a stunt vs. 4 Pawns is a 9 on 2d6 (modified for Flair and a Career if they have anything relevant to greasing floors - nothing occurs to me at the moment). If the number of Pawns is N, then the roll is modified by +(4-N) if N is < 4 and -(N-4) if N > 4.

The effect of success is that all N Pawns are taken out of combat in that scene or encounter.

When playing Mekton, in order to keep the emulation of the genre, we had the Cool Move rule. If the Player wanted to do a flashy maneuver and had enough actions to pull it off once it was broken down to its components, the Player would roll for each component, and if the whole chain was successful then they got the maximum possible result.

FREX, a transformable fighter just got four missiles fired at it from two hexes away. The Player wanted to dodge by barrel rolling inside of their flight arc (1), then transform to humanoid (2), and then fire the autocannon at the missiles to detonate them (3). All three skill checks were good, so all missiles were destroyed. Cool Move!

Why in the Hell that kind of improvisation by the Player and the adjucation of it by the GM is difficult just tells me that the people involved need to really start thinking outside of the box. You own the rules, the rules do not own you.

Quote from: Bren;817248However, simple disarms are clearly not what I was talking about. I meant moves such as "yank the axe out of his hand, trip him, and then hit him with his own axe all with the same probability of success as just hitting him."

Yeah, I'd agree that's a bit much, but... that kinda looks like an extreme example. I can't see that request occurring in actual play much.

OTOH, if the only mechanical effect is "an axe's worth of damage", then how it's narrated is kinda irrelevant.

Quote from: jeff37923;817272When playing Mekton, in order to keep the emulation of the genre, we had the Cool Move rule. If the Player wanted to do a flashy maneuver and had enough actions to pull it off once it was broken down to its components, the Player would roll for each component, and if the whole chain was successful then they got the maximum possible result.

FREX, a transformable fighter just got four missiles fired at it from two hexes away. The Player wanted to dodge by barrel rolling inside of their flight arc (1), then transform to humanoid (2), and then fire the autocannon at the missiles to detonate them (3). All three skill checks were good, so all missiles were destroyed. Cool Move!

Figuring out what happens if all components succeed should be easy and shouldn't require any out of the box thinking. If your rules can't accomodate that sort of action you should get a bigger box.

What is more telling as to whether players will want to try stunts or cool moves is what happens if one or more components does not succeed and what happens if one component is an exceptional success.

I tend to deal with actions in succession. So a failure at any point usually halts the chain at that point. So in your example, if the barrel roll fails, the chain is broken and they do something else with their remaining actions. If the barrel roll succeeds and the transform fails, now they have an advantageous position due to the barrel roll, but they aren't in humanoid form (with whatever that means from a possible next action standpoint). If they succeed in the barrel roll and the transform, I would think that would give them a bonus on counter fire vs. the missiles.

If the barrel roll is an exceptional success, they should get some benefit, e.g. they have a bonus on successive rolls or maybe they automatically succeed at the next roll.

Unless the system includes some in game benny to improve success chances for cool stunts, the cumulative probabilities make succeeding at a long chain of actions highly unlikely so there needs to be some intermediate success possible or the cool action is often too risky (i.e. too unlikely to work) for players to bother to attempt it in situations where all rolls must succeed or the whole thing is a total failure.

To be fair, I don't think the demand for rules was due to lazy GMs or whiny entitled special snowflakes.

I think it was simply for the rules to match what was happening.  In other words, a heavily armed sword and shield fighter, a savage Conan-like axe-wielder and a highly trained fencing master all "roll to hit".

Sure, that's where imagination comes in, roleplaying vs. rollplaying etc...

But, differentiation helps define the implicit or explicit setting.  Druid vs. Cleric, Fighter vs. Paladin vs. Ranger, Magic-User vs. Illusionist, Thief vs. Assassin, Monk.  That initial spread of classes helped define the quasi-medieval/S&S/pseudo-Tolkienian nature of D&D better than any other edition.

Fast Forward 40 years.

Unfortunately, we're subject to Schrodinger's Game.  If we don't define it, it could be anything.  Once we say it's A, it cannot be B. "Sure it can! You say.", and you're right, but (and I don't want to get into the million reasons why this is) you're more of an analog thinker, where younger gamers are more digital in thought.  Blame whatever you like, or not, but "thinking outside the box" is rewarded less in foundational years then it ever has been.

People don't know what they don't know.  You have to show them.  I wouldn't suggest older D&D, or an OSR game but one of the hip new rules-light games, like Barbarians of Lemuria or something light without the narrative baggage.  

I remember once a game where traveling through an abandoned mine system inhabited by Hobgoblins and Goblins, our group got heavily wounded and was being pursued by the humanoids.  We moved into a more rough area and got into natural caves.  We dropped down into a cave open to the outside that was a den to a pack of hungry wolves.  As we had gone across an underground pool and through a waterfall we were thoroughly drenched and couldn't make enough fire fast enough to keep the wolves at bay.  We were being hemmed in, and my character said to the young porter "Rope" as I motioned putting my left hand back.  Everyone had that "WTF is he doing" look on their face, as the GM said "Ok" and motioned handing me the rope.  I motioned a violent yank and said "I stab the porter in the stomach and throw him to the left side of the cave."  Since I took even the GM by surprise he didn't even make me roll just described the action.  As the wolves went after the porter, we slid along the wall to the right and escaped.  I didn't hear it at the time, but the GM told me when I did that one of the new players we had whispered to one of the other new players (no lie)...

"You can do that?"

I was dumbfounded when I heard that, but the player's mind just wasn't going there.  Now this wasn't a young digital native (it was a while ago) but he was in the mindset of "heroic fiction" and an Evil PC fighter who was a mercenary who made his living as a kind of assassin provoking people into duels and getting away with it (18 charisma best stat) wasn't in his frame of reference - until it got put there.

D&D has had 15 years (more if you count 2.5 Player's Options and late kit-era 2nd) of nothing but rules expansions and character menu lists of powers and abilities.  Combine that with digital natives raised on computer and console games and you get the "Drop-Down Effect" where every action is dealt with by looking down at the sheet to see what switch to throw.

Get them off the sheet, make them think of the option instead of choosing it.  Show them what they don't know.

It's a give and take. I've definitely been in games where I've come up with some wildly inventive idea, the GM saying 'oh, nice!' and then ... ok, here are the fifteen rolls I have to make to get a result that MIGHT be on par with just stabbing the enemy.

Fine, I'll look at my sheet and figure out what switch to pull.

Quote from: CRKrueger;817284"You can do that?"

Of course you can boy. The question is, do ya want to do that? Well do ya, punk?

Nice story. And of course your PC is going to have a much harder time hiring porters in the future though. But at least he's alive to have that problem.

Quote from: Will;817286It's a give and take. I've definitely been in games where I've come up with some wildly inventive idea, the GM saying 'oh, nice!' and then ... ok, here are the fifteen rolls I have to make to get a result that MIGHT be on par with just stabbing the enemy.

Fine, I'll look at my sheet and figure out what switch to pull.

Well, yeah, the GM has to kind of want them off the sheet.  If the GM wants you to just pull the switch, doing anything else is going to be frustrating.  The OP sounds like he's willing, it's the players that are stuck.

It's hard for a player to get a GM to try something else, in the end he can vote via foot if it's really not fun.

It's easy for the GM to change the rules, he just tries something else, or he handles the game differently.  He may have to do it a certain way based on table dynamics, but in the end, unless he's chained up in someone's basement, he's running the game and if it needs to be with a different group of players, then that's what needs to happen.

Quote from: Will;817286It's a give and take. I've definitely been in games where I've come up with some wildly inventive idea, the GM saying 'oh, nice!' and then ... ok, here are the fifteen rolls I have to make to get a result that MIGHT be on par with just stabbing the enemy.

Fine, I'll look at my sheet and figure out what switch to pull.

Yes, I've experienced that too.

My examples were poor, because I do try to encourage cool stunts from my players.

While I run things in a loose, "Theatre of the Mind" sort of way, I try to manage a sort of coherence with the rules. If a player wants to do something that blatantly breaks the turn structure (move, action, maneuver etc...) it can be a challenge to make them a fun offer (with a promised outcome for success), a drawback (will take x number of ability checks) and coming up consequences for failure that aren't turn offs.

5e is pretty loose already with the turn structure (even more so in my campaign in which I do "side" initiative). So far my players have been happy (3 sessions in) and there's no shortage of cool action scenes. Even when a player screws up a cool stunt, I often give them a success at cost, with a few choices. Yep, that's a bit metagamey, but so far everyone loves it.

Quote from: Necrozius;817214As long as the action "makes sense" (based on the established fantasy-physics, character background, etc), anyone can try anything that they want. All that I request are one or more ability checks to properly set it up. Also, I don't believe in high difficulty scores, but reasonable consequences of failure.

Example: "i want to run up the dragon's tail and stab it in the eye with my knife!" would require several actions (several rolls) each with a different consequence if they fail. The further that they go, the worse that it gets, obviously. I don't care if they don't have skill X or the "Run up dragon tails" Feat.

And, as others have said, if what they do is remarkably effective and useful, well, NPCs can do it too...

That's why I love the one minute combat round of OD&D.  All that stuff is in there, your die roll is merely to give the net effect at the end of a minute of singing and dancing.

Fine, not everybody likes that.  If you really want an excellent system for modeling every stroke of the blade, try Fantasy Hero.  It works far better for that than D&D.

Quote from: Old Geezer;817293That's why I love the one minute combat round of OD&D.  All that stuff is in there, your die roll is merely to give the net effect at the end of a minute of singing and dancing.

Fine, not everybody likes that.  If you really want an excellent system for modeling every stroke of the blade, try Fantasy Hero.  It works far better for that than D&D.

As much as I'm liking 5e, that OD&D style is very appealing.

Quote from: Old Geezer;817293That's why I love the one minute combat round of OD&D.  All that stuff is in there, your die roll is merely to give the net effect at the end of a minute of singing and dancing.

Fine, not everybody likes that.  If you really want an excellent system for modeling every stroke of the blade, try Fantasy Hero.  It works far better for that than D&D.

I prefer something in between the two. Abstracting a few blows into a single roll makes sense to me. Abstracting 5-10 arrow shots into a single attack roll doesn't make much sense. Games with rounds in the 5-12 second range like Runequest, Star Wars D6, and Honor+Intrigue where you have the ability to fire 1-3 arrows in a round seems a more useful increment of time.

Quote from: Old Geezer;817120* does the Naked Old Geezer Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko-Bop Happy Dance *

Not gonna believe it without a video.

Quote from: Lynn;817247Don't you think the Starter Set is good for that?

Do you mean the current 5e Starter Set? Or Starter sets in general?

The current 5e starter box only has replay value based on the free download / free wiki that anyone can access without buying the box. Of course, you could play whole campaigns from those downloads...like most any other free RPG you get online.

But outside of the legendary D&D Red Box, I have not seen a Starter Set which could be played for a long ass time without "graduating" to a stack of college textbooks masquerading as coffee table art books.

The Doctor Who boxset was damn good.

Quote from: Spinachcat;817346Not gonna believe it without a video.

"You can't HANDLE the sight of my fat naked hairy jiggling ass!"