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Author Topic: Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?  (Read 6565 times)

AsenRG

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« on: February 07, 2016, 07:21:46 AM »
In the Godbound thread, this came up. So I decided to make it a thread and a poll.

Quote from: SineNomine;877277
I don't think the system, per se, is necessarily the most robust. I think the genre is intrinsically a robust one. When you're playing a classic 1st level dirt farmer, a high degree of competence just doesn't fit that style of game. If that dirt farmer uses some combination of abilities and game mechanics to start regularly offing a half-dozen thugs without taking a scratch, the group is going to get irritated, because that's not the experience they signed on for. Even at higher levels, there's a lot of implicit concern that the PCs not be able to do certain things trivially. This dates back to the very beginnings of the game, with the "angry peasant mob" rules in the LBBs.


My reply to this.
Interesting. I've never, ever bothered with guaranteeing that people can't do something.

I mean, to me it's a problem-solving exercise, much like life. You have these abilities, both covered and not covered by the system. You have goals. You have current situation, including rules from the rulebook and the setting book.
How do you use what you have to get as close as possible to what you want?
In my book, a former dirt farmer that learned to use a sword proficiently and has killed people, is a veteran. OD&D seems to agree with me.
A veteran slaying dirt farmers happens all the time. I mean, look at medieval armies against most peasant uprisings. Look at what bandits, former soldiers, did in history, and still do to people in the Third World - both in countries with lots of firearms, and countries without those.
Actually, screw that. I know civilians who have bested multiple opponents. That's not part of the "narrative" for games like Call of Chthulhu...but it very well might happen.

Yeah, right, PCs are different. Even Unknown Armies would tell you this - normal people scatter when someone shoots at them, or even pulls a knife. PCs, as a general rule, have enough hardened Violence notches to decide whether to leg it, or to try and kill you before you can use that weapon.

And, you know, this approach has never failed me when Refereeing. Do you feel you need to constrain the PCs?

And if yes, why?


Sine Nomine's comment was, I want to emphasize that, just the thing that prompted me to think about that particulat matter. It's my question, and I'm asking about your personal opinion and Refereeing habits.
I'm not in discussion with Kevin Crawford on that point,
especially since I kinda agree -  many GMs seem to be doing that. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing to do, even if I'm not doing it.
Of course, I wouldn't be asking the forum to mediate in this discussion even if there was one. But I just want to repeat that there isn't a discussion. I asked about Godbound, Mr. Crawford replied, and I even liked his answer - in a "I know what you mean (but it sounds weird to me)" way.
The only reason I've quoted it is because it did prompt me to think about that. And I believe in giving credit where credit is due.
« Last Edit: February 08, 2016, 12:13:19 PM by AsenRG »
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AsenRG

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2016, 07:26:53 AM »
Well, so far everyone that voted agrees with me:D!
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Opaopajr

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2016, 08:52:24 AM »
It's an issue of expectations about scale.

The original topic points to SineNomine exploring how nigh-demigods start with a level of expected scale above and beyond non-nigh-demigods. Their range of passibly plausible things — and thus variety of potential challenges — is intrinsically larger due to genre expectations. The 1st lvl dirt farmer comes with a far narrower range of plausible challenges because the genre expectations anticipate a much reduced scale in comparison.

So a "beginner dirt farmer kills everyone, all the time!" (as in the example of 1 v. 6 and routinely winning without a scratch) is outside of expected scale, regardless the widgets the system allows. It would be as unreasonable as to expect them to straddle their pigs and fly, regardless of the pig farming widgets the system provides. Genre brings conceits, and part of those conceits concern scale as well as coherence.

PS: I like to think of myself as special... snowflakes not included.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2016, 08:55:57 AM by Opaopajr »
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Old One Eye

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2016, 09:00:17 AM »
If I run a Star Wars game, it will be much easier for the party to break into a military base and steal a prototype than it would be if I was running a modern day paramilitary campaign even if I choose to run both games under the same rule system.

I am not sure if that is genre affecting my different postures, or if that is simply different campaign setting affecting my different postures.

Skarg

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2016, 11:01:02 AM »
I now really enjoy it when players do and achieve unexpected things, as long as they achieve it within the game rules and the setting.

For the first few years I was a GM,  I would run into some challenges though because I was running a setting (generally Cidri from The Fantasy Trip's In the Labyrinth) where I had not considered (of course, as a new GM) all of the implications of the various skills and talents and magic abilities in the game system. I had a few very creative players who would look at those abilities and the setting, and come up with creative ways to take advantage of whatever they could. So I was frequently being challenged to either allow them to take advantage, or to figure out what was off about their logic, or what the risk or counter-reactions would be, given that I wanted to be fair but I also wanted my world to keep making sense. That was tricky but also some of the most interesting and best GM-teaching experience I've had.

Like, realizing that although yes there is a Wizard's Guild that sometimes sells magic items and takes commissions, that even if you pool all your loot and have the theoretical amount needed to commission someone to enchant a a cloak of TROLOLOL (invisibility or insubstatiality or unnoticeability or invulnerability or long-range teleportation or whatever), it doesn't mean that there is a wizard who could do that who will choose to, and who doesn't already have a prince or duke or guild master or all of them who would also like him to do make them things, and/or other power politics and underhanded dealings aren't likely to intervene. And even if they do get an item that lets them get into a vault and fill a backpack with gold and flee with it, it's liable to inspire someone to come tracking them down using magic. But I should have an idea of at least the general nature and number and resources of such people, not just as a way to deny players accomplishing something, but so that the world isn't just rendered nonsense in either direction, so they really can do things, but without breaking the world's consistency.

That is, if I just let a random squire-turned-adventurer accumulate coin and buy a magic item and rob and exterminate the wizard's guild and then replace the king because the player thought of some ways to use magic  I hadn't thought of, then I probably made a mistake saying the world was in such an unstable state that the player was the first one to do that given the opportunity. Since the wizards and king and so probably included some clever people who could think of ways to use magic, too.

And, if I hear the player's plan and then decide my world has powerful magic abilities, but as soon as the players get them and use them for something that I hadn't expected them to do, the Secret Magic Police appear and teleport them into no-magic cells or something, then to me that's even worse. Good luck trying to retcon the existence of a consistent world that includes that and still has room for adventurers.

Well balanced but open-ended situations are still one of the main types of things I find interesting in games. That is, I want there to be a setting that makes sense, and characters (PCs & NPCs, monsters, etc) who make sense in the setting. Then, I want what happens in that setting to make sense as played by the rules. Then the game can be about the players doing interesting things in an interesting and developing situation, and there's no need to limit them from anything.

Shawn Driscoll

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2016, 12:07:39 PM »
I voted: "No, the system and setting take care of this."

S'mon

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #6 on: February 07, 2016, 03:13:03 PM »
While system & setting take care of it, there is the proviso that if I'm running a linear Adventure Path (which I've done exactly once) - "this is the campaign, game ends when it's completed" then there is not total scope to effect change outside the presumed scope of the AP without prematurely ending the campaign. Likewise if I'm running a single adventure (I'm currently running Pathfinder's Shards of Sin as a single large adventure of ca 12 3-hour sessions) then the scope is largely limited to that adventure, game ends if PCs abandon it.

If I'm running an open-world campaign, of which I have 2 currently on the go (Classic & 5e) & a 3rd (4e) that would be open if the players wanted it to be, then anything goes - kill the emperor, become emperor, become gods, change the timeline, destroy the primary campaign world, etc etc.

Phillip
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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2016, 03:21:34 PM »
In almost every case, there are some things that are close enough to impossible by the internal logic of the universe.  In D&D, however, I am inclined to the originally stated ethos that no law should be quite certain.
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rawma

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2016, 04:04:41 PM »
I don't really see much difference among the reasonable choices; genre influences system and setting, doesn't it? If I want something to be impossible, why wouldn't I make or add rules that lead to it being impossible? Isn't saying it's impossible already a system/setting element - my saying it's impossible is part of the system and/or setting? So I didn't vote for anything.

Someone mentioned TFT; I seem to recall that the rules explicitly said something like "if the players figure out how to get experience without risk, congratulate them on their cleverness and ruthlessly disallow the trick" - is this Yes due to genre, Yes due to something else, or No because of the system?

Spinachcat

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2016, 04:37:52 PM »
If I am running a genre game, there are assumptions - most baked into the system and setting, but I am happy to discuss the scope of the campaign with the players before we start.

So I guess I have capped limits beyond the game rules.

For instance, my on-off RIFTS campaign is about the connecting of rifts in Russia, South America and Atlantis. Even though the setting elements in Rifts span the globe and beyond, they probably won't show in my campaign.

My 4e campaign only uses PHB 3 for chargen (and necessary bits of PHB 1 & 2) and its limited to 10th level because the story that campaign concerns itself with is the PCs among islands floating in the Astral Sea approaching a devouring vortex from the Far Realms. The vast amount of 4e D&D will never be accessible to the players. At the start of the campaign, it is believed there is no way to stop their islands from being devoured the vortex, and the PCs have to decide WTF they want to do with that information.

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2016, 09:03:48 PM »
Quote from: Skarg;877439
(snip)
Yeah, I decided to put my money where my mouth was years ago, so to speak: I always thought that magic couldn't possibly make the impact on society many gamers assume, but I never actually tested the assertion.  So ... I took GURPS Fantasy's assumptions about what percentage of the population were capable of magic, and did a bunch of extrapolations to determine how many of what kinds and what power levels of wizards were in which places.  If anything, I turned out to have been too generous.
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Gronan of Simmerya

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2016, 10:54:41 PM »
Does "using XP as originally intended" count?

What exactly do you mean?
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Spinachcat

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2016, 01:49:49 AM »
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877603
Does "using XP as originally intended" count?


I'm confused.  What do you mean?

AsenRG

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #13 on: February 08, 2016, 08:17:29 AM »
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877603
Does "using XP as originally intended" count?

What exactly do you mean?


No, if it's just that, you get to cast the "no, system and setting take care of that" vote.
A restriction would be like "no matter what you might come up with, you can't kill the dragon on 1st level, that's just not what your bunch should be capable of. If you manage to do exactly that, the OD&D system is broken".
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Necrozius

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Referees, do you have limits on what PCs can achieve?
« Reply #14 on: February 08, 2016, 09:19:55 AM »
I let my players TRY anything with their characters (in the nature of a sandbox), but I explain the consequences of failure, if they aren't already obvious.

Level 1 character trying to do Jedi-acrobatics and breaking the limit on # of actions per turn? I break it down into steps so that it's within the rules, but allow them to spend their in-game currency (Inspiration) to bend things a little (being clear that this is a one-off stunt). Usually there's a cost too ("sure you can try to do X, but you'll take a level of Exhaustion after you're done").

Usually works. Sometimes, though, I flat out have to tell the player "no fucking way, sorry" but when it's that bad, other players are usually saying the same thing. At least, that's what happened in real life so far.