Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827639What are the differences, in your opinion?

To be perfectly honest, the only answer I can give to that question is, "I'll know it when I see it."

Quote from: trechriron;827516Good point.



That's cool. The first post here was a quote from you taken partly out of context.

I am not familiar with NBA. Most of the meta-game mechanics I'm familiar with involve points (fate, action, drama, conviction...) and rate from less intrusive (re-roll, avoid damage) to more intrusive (edit the plot, introduce something, take over GMing...). Also various "traits" that offer bonuses when you do something related to that trait - like having a lover, and any actions related to them giving you a bonus (or penalty). Also, the relationship mechanics in The Mountain Witch. After my stint with various games using these, I felt like they interfered with the experience.

I think it goes along with a fundamental concept (personal philosophy?): playing the game should be MOST rewarding. If the only awards that excite players are improvement, bonuses and cheats - then the game side takes center stage. If the experience is the paramount award, then involving yourself in shenanigans outside the basic things on your character sheet are likely to have more gravitas.

Sure, you can turn that stuff INTO a game. But in the end you are gaming something that really should have an emotional or internal impact. "I collected more relationships than you" may give a player a sense of accomplishment, but lacks any emotional context. Hell, it could cheapen any emotional context that may have been there to begin with.

I feel like a player who pursues such things of their own volition, based on the character's beliefs, motivations or desires to be more... substantive than a player motivated by a game mechanic. I generally come away from games with these mechanics with a sense that something was missing.

Of course, just my two cents, YMMV, and all that jazz. :-)

I can dig that.  I'm really interested in talking about rules because they fascinate me, but I'm also from a background where I ran a Beyond the Supernatural game and the reason why it was so damned fun is because of exactly the kind of phenomenon you're talking about.  We threw out all the rules regarding fear and sanity or whatever, because the players were so down with their characters that they knew when to act scared, when to change behavior and act like they were losing their heads.  That kind of play is fantastic; but I also thing it's unreliable, because it's a product of players at the table and the right group.  If you've got the right group, that kind of play is easy; but I don't know that everybody always has the right kind of group for that, and rules sometimes help ameliorate that issue.

Quote from: The_Shadow;827531Do RPG's "model" anything? I thought they were their own thing. Give us some rules, we do some stuff, there are some genre trappings from other media.

Skip the idea of modeling, and let's just talk about rules -- rules define how you do things in the game.  They funnel player action.  

A game, as other people have discussed, where you get experience points for gold piece acquisition and expenditure on whores and mead is qualitatively different than a game where you only get experience points for rolling skills.  Now, it might be that the former game is trying to model sword and sorcery, or it might just be that the game designer didn't want people to hold onto their gold and wanted them to blow it.  

So you've got three levels happening: you've got what the game designer intended the purpose of a rule to be.  You've got the rule as its written, the plain text, which may or may not communicate its purpose.  And you've got how people at tables all around the world take that rule and make it work, and what they use it for.

So my original post, which is partly quoted in the first post in this thread, was about how there's drift between those three steps.

Take Vampire.  Vampire: The Masquerade is ostensibly a game about vampires fighting to keep hold of their humanity in the face of temptations to boil it away in their nightly existence.  You've got a Humanity stat, you've got Virtues, all the quotes in the book are about "Beast I am Lest Beast I Become."  But the majority of players chose to make the game about Godfather with fangs.  It was about vampires being parasites on the face of the world, corrosive elements that corrupt via creating ghouls and amassing power.

That rift, between all the rules and support for what the designers intended, and what people actually played, and the dynamic that creates, that's what fascinates me.  You could say the rules were intended to model the Long Dark Night of the Soul that a vampire experiences, but what people actually used them for was quite different.  And eventually, the play happening at tables affected the direction of the whole line, and by the time you get to Vampire Second edition, the game supported much more of the way people were actually playing it.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;827648Take Vampire.  Vampire: The Masquerade is ostensibly a game about vampires fighting to keep hold of their humanity in the face of temptations to boil it away in their nightly existence.  You've got a Humanity stat, you've got Virtues, all the quotes in the book are about "Beast I am Lest Beast I Become."  But the majority of players chose to make the game about Godfather with fangs.  It was about vampires being parasites on the face of the world, corrosive elements that corrupt via creating ghouls and amassing power.

That rift, between all the rules and support for what the designers intended, and what people actually played, and the dynamic that creates, that's what fascinates me.  You could say the rules were intended to model the Long Dark Night of the Soul that a vampire experiences, but what people actually used them for was quite different.  And eventually, the play happening at tables affected the direction of the whole line, and by the time you get to Vampire Second edition, the game supported much more of the way people were actually playing it.

You may want to contrast this with the current World of Darkness post the God Machine Chronicle. Here we see kind of the opposite effect where the designers said, this is not hitting the style of play we want to encourage so lets tweak the rules and provide incentive to push games to capture the feel and tone we want to provide.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;827644I can dig that.  I'm really interested in talking about rules because they fascinate me, but I'm also from a background where I ran a Beyond the Supernatural game and the reason why it was so damned fun is because of exactly the kind of phenomenon you're talking about.  We threw out all the rules regarding fear and sanity or whatever, because the players were so down with their characters that they knew when to act scared, when to change behavior and act like they were losing their heads.  That kind of play is fantastic; but I also thing it's unreliable, because it's a product of players at the table and the right group.  If you've got the right group, that kind of play is easy; but I don't know that everybody always has the right kind of group for that, and rules sometimes help ameliorate that issue.

   This same approach was encouraged by the later 2E Ravenloft products--at several points, they stated "use fear and horror checks only if the players seem to be too disconnected from what their charactrs are experiencing and how they would react. If they react 'in character', don't hit them with the rules."

I don't buy the OP's point.

I think one of the things to be taken with a grain of salt, that's being danced around without completely implicit (though people are kinda pointing it out) is that you can't create an game within a specific genre and expect everyone to understand the conceits of the genre perfectly as the author might.

CP2020 is based on a *lot* of different sources. The 'narrative' of the game is essentially the backdrop of a fairly detailed world gone to shit. Is it believable? In parts. But it conveys its sources pretty well.

the problem of players "misusing" the game and turning it into something it was never intended is, to me, besides the point. As people have said Vampire: The Masquerade devolved in the hands of players that didn't know what the game was "really" about - but made it their own Trenchcoats and Katana fanged-superhero game.

What we're really talking about here is "Does breadth of experience impact game-genre conventions?" And the answer is most certainly yes.

If you read Cyberpunk's rules and ignore the "narrative" and backstory of the game - you'll get exactly what Pondsmith (and various players here) describe: how to maximize your character out with gear in order to not be damaged.

Is that what the game conventions are about? Not really. No more than if we were playing in the modern day real-life and your goal was to own your own nuclear weapon in order to declare your sovereign power.

But from a very high-level view of how nations operate - that's one thing that seems to be real.

And so what's missing is my age-old saw I constantly grind here: context.

CP2020 like any RPG needs to have a lens by which the GM focuses the context of the world. When I run CP2020, if you're walking around with metal-gear armor, and your highly modified FN-RAL with extended heavy-barrel, cyber-porting, hydraulic recoil mounts etc. and you think for a second the cops aren't going to come down on you like flies on greasy shit, well, then your idea of what CP2020 is and mine are different.

Dragon and Dungeons exist in D&D - it doesn't mean the entire world you play in the game only deals with those things.

Many people that play CP2020 in its heyday never read any of the stuff from Rucker, Gibson, Sterling, Barnes, or even Dick. It very much has a noir feel to it. But between them all - it's also Godfather, Lethal Weapon, Road Warrior, Heat, Blade Runner, Easy Rider, California, Apocalypse Now, Blood Sport, and 2010. But it's also Casablanca, and Chinatown with maybe some Fight Club.

With a couple of exceptions - none of those are explicitly "Cyberpunk" but the fact that powerful elements of these stories absolutely are vital for the concept. To what degree depends entirely on the GM's experience and handling of these elements WITH the system.

And that Interlock System works just fine. Love it. Love it to death.

The emergent gameplay from any game is bound to disappoint a lot old-timers when they watch newbs playing it without any credence to the material. Fuck, how many times do you see us complain about people bitching about fantasy when we're talking about Conan and Fafhrd and the Mouser - and they're talking about Cloud, and Tifa and trying to say they're "better" fantasy than the classic S&S fare? Are they? (the answer is no - but that's a different thread) - the larger point being that when trying to marry a system of mechanics to the narrative of a genre, it will always depend on the GM to make those conceits matter.

TL/DR -  You can't have cyborged-James Bond in CP2020 games where the GM actually understands what they're doing and why. It's not about the mechanics of the game to immerse the players. It's about the GM.

Quote from: tenbones;827715TL/DR -  You can't have cyborged-James Bond in CP2020 games where the GM actually understands what they're doing and why. It's not about the mechanics of the game to immerse the players. It's about the GM.

I certainly can if that's what I want to run.  Fuck "romance."  Give me guns, cash, and chrome.  Never mind the fact that nearly every supplement published back in the day was for "BOOM-BOOM POW: The Game."  How many Chromebooks were there?  Was the "Fourth Corporate War" modules a deep exploration of some literary hullabaloo or were they big nasty death?

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;827745I certainly can if that's what I want to run.  Fuck "romance."  Give me guns, cash, and chrome.  Never mind the fact that nearly every supplement published back in the day was for "BOOM-BOOM POW: The Game."  How many Chromebooks were there?  Was the "Fourth Corporate War" modules a deep exploration of some literary hullabaloo or were they big nasty death?

It was all a test. A test to see if we "got it". We didn't. We were enticed by all the explosions and big guns and kicking ass. Hell, even the hint at hotness and boobies couldn't distract us.

Just like the masses who made it out of high-school and failed Mr. Roddlesticks advanced biology test, we should all be ok.

Besides, a bunch of young punks missing the point and charging head-long into the oblivion of their choice is an important theme in the literature, no? Shit, most players were actually MORE PUNK because they bucked the high-brow establishment's expectations.

THAT'S fucking CHROME Brujahs.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;827745I certainly can if that's what I want to run.  Fuck "romance."  Give me guns, cash, and chrome.  Never mind the fact that nearly every supplement published back in the day was for "BOOM-BOOM POW: The Game."  How many Chromebooks were there?  Was the "Fourth Corporate War" modules a deep exploration of some literary hullabaloo or were they big nasty death?

Sure - but then you wouldn't be the guy complaining about "James Bond with cyber-gear" right? (I probably should have amended that at the end)

That's my point.

It doesn't matter whether or not Maximum Mike thinks "we got it wrong". What's right is "what works at your table".

Having said that, understanding Maximum Mike's POV and the sources he derived the game from might give a GM a bit more nuance to their respective games.

Otherwise it's like playing a Supers game and everyone wants to be Superman-level in power... and no one wants to be Spiderman, which is what the GM really wants to do.

Would you look at a GM any different for handing out +5 Vorpal Frostbrand Defenders to his characters in his group "just because they could" - if that's the kind of game they're playing? Would you say multi-classing by "class dipping" through 5-different classes for perks is "bad gaming" by D&D conceits of 3e? Well that's what various editions of D&D have been played as.

That's the same thing with GM's that let their CP2020 character run around fully borged-out with mil-spec weapons free of context of the world. You *can* play it that way, sure. "Fun" is what you make it... and all that.

Does it happen at my table? Nope. But that's because I run a different kind of game where the conceits of the game-world are understood by me and given context appropriate to my desires to GM those kinds of games. If I'm being snarky by pointing at campaigns that let their players get away with doing silly shit like being decked out an going on killing-binges free of context (regardless if you're playing Vampire, D&D, CP2020 or whatever) - it's probably because I find playing games like that boring. If that works for you - rock on.

Is it implicit in CP2020 to play that way? Only if your view of the rules feeds whatever narratives that drive you to play the game and your GM allows it. But using that reasoning - all games are an excuse to murder-hobo.

Quote from: tenbones;827766Having said that, understanding Maximum Mike's POV and the sources he derived the game from might give a GM a bit more nuance to their respective games.

Here's my problem: as far as the game itself goes, the sources don't matter.  You can take the sources and apply any rpg system you want with some effort.  Quyite simply, the game books themselves didn't deliver any of the shit he says they wanted to.  It was book after book of gear, bling, and ultraviolent encounters.  It doesn't mean it was a bad game, or that any of us are playing it wrong, but it does mean he shouldn't get on his fucking high horse and gripe about people playing the game as it was presented.

Quote from: Gabriel2;827432Pondsmith has stated this kind of thing for many years (decades even).  If you're looking for a print example, then look at Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads (the GM advice book for Cyberpunk).  He also does a brief aside about it in Cybergeneration, and has posted a few times online about his dissatisfaction with how players made Cyberpunk about "James Bond meets the Six Million Dollar Man" rather than what he envisioned.

Eff him and what he envisioned.  The game is what the players make of it. Eff anyone who says we're playing it wrong.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;827789Here's my problem: as far as the game itself goes, the sources don't matter.  You can take the sources and apply any rpg system you want with some effort.  Quyite simply, the game books themselves didn't deliver any of the shit he says they wanted to.  It was book after book of gear, bling, and ultraviolent encounters.  It doesn't mean it was a bad game, or that any of us are playing it wrong, but it does mean he shouldn't get on his fucking high horse and gripe about people playing the game as it was presented.

Even looking at the intro pages in the core book, it goes on at some length about how style is all important. Yet what is the immediate example? It sure as fuck isnt kissing under the rain or fucking in a coffin hotel. I see talk about leather armor jackets and mirror shades, about walking into a club with your H&K smart gun, etc.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827639What are the differences, in your opinion?

STG mechanics are about narrative control -- either determining who has it or specifying what they can do with it.

Genre emulation mechanics are about bringing some specific element of the source material into the game.

Some genre emulation mechanics are also narrative control mechanics, but not all of them. For example, you might have a rule that guns never have to be reloaded during a firefight. Or you might have an "aim for the bushes" mechanic that prevents a character from taking more than 1d6 falling damage if they spend an action to aim for something soft.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;827635it really does, doesn't it? I tended not to play solos and my enjoyment on the game was very GM dependent.There was exactly one game that I enjoyed in which I wasn't a solo (I was a Corp). The one time I tried to play a Rockerboy, I got creamed right away because all the GM did was throw a cyberpsycho at me on the very first opening scene of the very first session.

Ok. Let's see if I can compose this thought of mine.

There's this paradigm of D&D being a string of combats broken up by talking in bad english accents. Now, the reason I think 4th edition was as popular as it was, is because combat is easy. Kill these monsters before they kill you is pretty freaking easy to do. Clear goals, clear stakes, all that shit.
4th ed put the emphasis on player choices into the combat itself. Now you could twirl over a bad guy or shuffle 3 squares and make an attack, whatever. There was a ton of choice in the tactical presentation.
But those aren't the only kinds of choices. If you make a character who is sub-optimal for combat, but most, if not all, of the interaction with the game is combat, then you're going to have a bad time. So 4th made everyone capable in combat, and that was to the detriment of the game, because now combat was even more emphasised as the way to interact with the game.

Now, I don't think putting in mechanics for kissing under streetlights would make things better. I think putting in choices that matter to the character would. As in, you need to know what the character is about, and then have opportunites for the player to make choices based on that character's... character.
The simplistic way to state it is: Put in more non-combat stuff. But then it's not automatically going to be meaningful stuff unless the player has to make some choices, and those choices should have some amount of conflict (in this case, not meaning combat) to make the choices meaningful to the character.

Am I making sense? I've been working on reducing this idea down to a pithy sentence or two, but not making much headway.

You know the more I think about it the more the OOP reminds me of the time Ryan Dancey flounced in here and proclaimed that what people who liked AD&D really wanted to play was in fact Dogs in the Vineyard as it was so much better at something something Greyhawk then he ran off.