Quote from: rgrove0172;926153That's about par for the course around here. If you concede even a little, in the interest of calming down the shit storm and move things back toward helpful discussion its viewed as weakness and you are instantly shit on. If you do read through this trainwreck thread youll see it like 20 times.

So stop trying to convince everyone the way you GM things is the industry accepted standard going back to 1970 and instead post about all the cool stuff you're doing with Symbaroum.

People who post on TheRPGSite who are offensive: No, is take to long.

Instead.
People posting on TheRPGSite who are not offensive:

Quote from: CRKrueger;926155So stop trying to convince everyone the way you GM things is the industry accepted standard going back to 1970 and instead post about all the cool stuff you're doing with Symbaroum.

Sadly Symbaroum has a very small following apparently and I doubt a thread on it would get much attention here.

Im driving them crazy on Reddit and Google+ though. I really hope it takes off here in the U.S. It has its limitations but is very unique and can make a hell of a campaign.

Quote from: DavetheLost;926168People who post on TheRPGSite who are offensive: No, is take to long.

Instead.
People posting on TheRPGSite who are not offensive:

After all the politically correct hack crap on the purple site, the open warfare here is still refreshing. I really like that - at least a majority of the time - you can go head to head in a outright brawl on one thread with a member and wind up on the same side as buddies on another. Most don't seem to take this bullshoy too seriously and just have fun, even if fun means insulting the shit out of each other sometimes!

That being said it is kind of annoying when someone will drag an insult in from another thread into a new one. Bad form in my opinion.

Quote from: rgrove0172;926171Im driving them crazy on Reddit and Google+ though. I really hope it takes off here in the U.S. It has its limitations but is very unique and can make a hell of a campaign.

Bah, throw a link to it then.

Well ok, Ill start a thread with a few links.

Quote from: DavetheLost;926143If evrything that happens in your game is not the result of a random dice roll on a table, you are railroading. Unless you are storygaming swine. The only acceptable alternative is to prepare an extensive map and key with timetable ahead of time and not shift anything ever, or make anything up. If it's not on the key it doesn't exist.

In any case if you and your players are having fun you are doing it wrong.

You just won therpgsite.

Quote from: DavetheLost;926168People who post on TheRPGSite who are offensive: No, is take to long.

Instead.
People posting on TheRPGSite who are not offensive:

"Let me explain.  No, there is no time.  Let me sum up."

Quote from: rgrove0172;926172After all the politically correct hack crap on the purple site, the open warfare here is still refreshing. I really like that - at least a majority of the time - you can go head to head in a outright brawl on one thread with a member and wind up on the same side as buddies on another. Most don't seem to take this bullshoy too seriously and just have fun, even if fun means insulting the shit out of each other sometimes!

In my family, "you're full of shit" is perfectly acceptable.  Apparently some people don't feel that way.

And yes, it is possible to disagree with a person on one topic yet agree with them on another.  Inconceivable!

Quote from: Omega;925179To be fair. I know at least two high prep DMs who really cant DM well without the prep. They run pretty good sessions.

One of the bonuses I think of a high prep style is that you tend to have everything really hammered down and so the chance, and urge to "cheat" and move encounters is probably a-lot less since everything is plotted out and you cant do that sort of prep without knowing full well some, or several, elements are never going to see use. (unless the DM is really leading the players by the nose)

Not to mention that the best part for me as DM is the element of surprise.  No matter what I think of, the players will surprise me.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;926262Not to mention that the best part for me as DM is the element of surprise.  No matter what I think of, the players will surprise me.

Have you tried GMing sober?

Quote from: CRKrueger;926399Have you tried GMing sober?

GMing sober is like fishing sober.

Quote from: rgrove0172;925916And yet, all the while you are being sucked by or in to that drama you are watching you know there is a script, a pre determined order of scenes, a finite outcome. This doesn't ruin the show for you of course because despite knowing the above, you aren't familiar with the specifics.

Well in scripted drama, for me it's not about not knowing the outcome, or not knowing the specifics. It's about the specifics being as if it were actually about the human experience of being in a situation, or not.

After all, in the lazy/apathetic dramas, I also don't know how they will play out - my annoyance there is that the way things happen is blatant bullshit, as if the director decided what happened based on what he wanted, without consideration for actual risks. It's a parallel to a forced game, with a very similar feel, though not the same thing because they are different ways of involving characters, different kinds of players, etc. (For examples, when the GM lets someone's PC do "rule of cool" stunts and changes the die rolls to not have a PC die in un-dramatic fashion, or when the GM decides to narrate a "cool" wordsmithed action intro or interlude that doesn't have any dice or rules behind it, and would likely go very differently if gamed out, such as the example you gave in the "do you really roll dice?" thread you started, where you mentioned narrating a gunfire ambush that dramatically killed some NPCs but had no actual rolls or risks for the PCs.)

And, after all, I do enjoy watching drama where I do already know the specifics, multiple times and/or multiple performances, if it succeeds in conveying something interesting and genuine about the human experience of being in situations, as opposed to the experience of being trapped in a genre convention with forced artificial outcomes and/or strained/forced themes.

(I hesitated to extend what I wrote to that analogy because I thought it might be mis-taken this way, but I thought it was interesting and related.)

QuoteThis character might die, this ploy may fail, the bomb might go off etc.

In the lazy ones, not so much. The main character ain't dyin'. There is no risk their cool moves might get them killed the way it likely ought to, and it's painfully obvious. Moreover, what does happen tends to be surreal and would almost certainly have killed them and turned out very differently if the authors had cared much for logic or timing or actual risks or real human behavior.

QuoteThere is a bit of difference between this and a game where you actually have input but as far as uncertainty, there is no more or no less than if a heavy handed GM is running the show.

Again, even though I brought up drama, I was saying it was a related parallel, but it is quite different in terms of what is going on between scripting a drama and running a game. Quite the opposite of them all being practically the same thing, what I think of as "actual" games are quite distinct from writing/dictating events, even though often in RPGs there are various ways to blur the two together.

In fact, this distinction is pretty close to what I've been writing about throughout this thread, in terms of the value in prep/rules/rolls versus improv (and also versus scripting, which I see as even further from prep/rules/rolls than improv is, though the distance between script and improv is up to the GM) and also versus fudge (another type of contrast to prep/rules/rolls).

QuoteYou really cant enjoy one and not the other.

This would be false even if I were only talking about two things instead of five or six.

Quote from: Sommerjon;926115...There's a middle ground?  Here?  I think not.  You should reread this whole thread there fella.  This whole place lives and breathes hyperbolic statements and OTWisms.

Seems to me like this thread isn't much about One True Way. The parts that aren't making fun of of you in particular have been more about people trying to explain their preference for different ways of playing to people who resist getting that there's a difference.

Quote from: DavetheLost;926143If evrything that happens in your game is not the result of a random dice roll on a table, you are railroading. Unless you are storygaming swine. The only acceptable alternative is to prepare an extensive map and key with timetable ahead of time and not shift anything ever, or make anything up. If it's not on the key it doesn't exist.

In any case if you and your players are having fun you are doing it wrong.

Seems to me that I'm the one closest to advocating for extensive map/prep etc here on the deep tangent of the "quote zero prep" thread, but I've not been saying that. I've been trying to talk about the difference between the modes, and that I think there is interesting value in detailing and mapping and impartially gaming things out. But I've not been OTW'ing, I've made disclaimers to that effect, and I've mentioned that I'm not even saying that's what I do all the time.

There's been discussion about the details of the effects between people that get it, and then various levels of misunderstanding and denial by the people who don't.

Seems to me there is a defensiveness by players who don't want to hear about the difference. And some annoyance and making fun by the people who do.

But it's not hyperbolic OTW wars.