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"Solved" worlds

Started by Warthur, August 13, 2015, 10:46:10 AM

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Ravenswing

#60
August 26, 2015, 02:18:35 AM
Quote from: Christopher Brady;850985They both had gaming companies use them as settings.
Look, man, if you're just arguing for the sake of hearing your voice (however metaphorically), why bother?  Do I really need to break down for you why novels and game settings are two completely different animals?

Hrm.  Maybe I do.

A novel is one guy telling a story:

* It is, obviously, a complete railroad: it moves on the plotlines the writer wants, and ONLY on the plotlines the writer wants.  

* The whole rest of the world, and everyone and everything in it, is immaterial except in so far as it informs the plot or the various characterizations.  Neither does it have to make sense: a Minas Tirith can be depicted as the height of civilization, even in a depopulated Gondor without a vestige of industry or international trade.  Travel can work on the speed of plot, and entire subsystems (magic is a usual one) don't have to make any sense whatsoever, internally or otherwise.  

* "Game balance" doesn't exist: not only is there nothing preventing a novelist from teaming up incredibly experienced adventurers with schmuck villagers fresh off the farm, it's a time-honored literary trope going back to the Bronze Age for those schmuck villagers to get face time, and not be sensibly relegated to holding the superheroes' golf bags.  

* Consistency doesn't have to exist: The group wizard can be a colossus in one encounter, and not be able to do much more than light the campfire the rest of the time, and no one blinks an eye at the discrepancy.  The designated beefcake can hold up a portcullis in Chapter 15, and no one questions the several instances that such extreme strength might have been obviously handy in Chapters 3-14.

* The odds don't matter: if it suits the author's plot for a bunch of hobbits who'd never been in a serious fight before to fail to get TPKed by a horde of freaking Nazgul, then they aren't.  The Davids one-shot the Goliaths, seldom the other way around.

* The protagonist gets the facetime, and the other characters fill in the blanks, if at all: except in establishing scenes, our young hero does just as much, if not more, as the vastly more experienced NPCs do.

Obviously -- it should be obvious, anyway -- these elements don't pertain to RPGs.  The players have a say in plot.  The vast majority of groups are on a relative par with one another power-wise.  Most players want elements like magic to be consistent, definable and comprehensible.  The odds do matter: you don't automatically get to take out that Ancient Dragon or that Lich-King just because you think it'd be heroic to do so.  The other party members want face time.  And so on.
This was a cool site, until it became an echo chamber for whiners screeching about how the "Evul SJWs are TAKING OVAH!!!" every time any RPG book included a non-"traditional" NPC or concept, or their MAGA peeners got in a twist. You're in luck, drama queens: the Taliban is hiring.

S'mon

#61
August 26, 2015, 03:17:22 AM
Quote from: Ravenswing;851220Obviously -- it should be obvious, anyway -- these elements don't pertain to RPGs.  The players have a say in plot.  The vast majority of groups are on a relative par with one another power-wise.  Most players want elements like magic to be consistent, definable and comprehensible.  The odds do matter: you don't automatically get to take out that Ancient Dragon or that Lich-King just because you think it'd be heroic to do so.  The other party members want face time.  And so on.[/COLOR]

There are a few RPGs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer which try to give the 'fiction' experience, making Zander as viable a PC as Bufffy, say. And there are heavily Narrativist games like HeroQuest which do the same, but these tend towards being story-creation games rather than true RPGs.

Kaiu Keiichi

#62
August 26, 2015, 10:05:07 AM
Quote from: S'mon;851227There are a few RPGs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer which try to give the 'fiction' experience, making Zander as viable a PC as Bufffy, say. And there are heavily Narrativist games like HeroQuest which do the same, but these tend towards being story-creation games rather than true RPGs.

HeroQuest is a true RPG. I know, because I run it. Storygames are RPGs.
Rules and design matter
The players are in charge
Simulation is narrative
Storygames are RPGs

S'mon

#63
August 26, 2015, 10:24:52 AM
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;851258HeroQuest is a true RPG. I know, because I run it. Storygames are RPGs.

I've played it (though the setting was Midnight, not Glorantha). I'd put it in the grey space between RPG and story-creation game, closer to RPG though. Storygames (which I have also played) are not RPGs, you build a story as the goal and IME any roleplaying is incidental and done without immersion.

Ravenswing

#64
August 26, 2015, 10:32:16 AM
Quote from: S'mon;851227There are a few RPGs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer which try to give the 'fiction' experience, making Zander as viable a PC as Bufffy, say. And there are heavily Narrativist games like HeroQuest which do the same, but these tend towards being story-creation games rather than true RPGs.
Sure.  When, in just about any field of human endeavor, aren't there outliers?

Doesn't mean they're not outliers.
This was a cool site, until it became an echo chamber for whiners screeching about how the "Evul SJWs are TAKING OVAH!!!" every time any RPG book included a non-"traditional" NPC or concept, or their MAGA peeners got in a twist. You're in luck, drama queens: the Taliban is hiring.

Kaiu Keiichi

#65
August 26, 2015, 11:33:38 AM
Quote from: S'mon;851266I've played it (though the setting was Midnight, not Glorantha). I'd put it in the grey space between RPG and story-creation game, closer to RPG though. Storygames (which I have also played) are not RPGs, you build a story as the goal and IME any roleplaying is incidental and done without immersion.

No, they are, my players confirm by their agency every week that story games are RPGs. My experience overrides your ideology. Narrative is immersion.
Rules and design matter
The players are in charge
Simulation is narrative
Storygames are RPGs

soltakss

#66
August 26, 2015, 01:19:28 PM
Quote from: S'mon;851266I've played it (though the setting was Midnight, not Glorantha). I'd put it in the grey space between RPG and story-creation game, closer to RPG though. Storygames (which I have also played) are not RPGs, you build a story as the goal and IME any roleplaying is incidental and done without immersion.

Definitely an RPG - We are a group of hard-core gamers and played HeroQuest as an RPG. The one player who liked storygames and that kind of thing left the group as he didn't think he could go anywhere with HeroQuest.
Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism  since 1982.

http://www.soltakss.com/index.html
Merrie England (Medieval RPG): http://merrieengland.soltakss.com/index.html
Alternate Earth: http://alternateearthrq.soltakss.com/index.html

Kaiu Keiichi

#67
August 26, 2015, 01:59:39 PM
Quote from: soltakss;851307Definitely an RPG - We are a group of hard-core gamers and played HeroQuest as an RPG. The one player who liked storygames and that kind of thing left the group as he didn't think he could go anywhere with HeroQuest.

S'mon, have you ever played HeroQuest?
Rules and design matter
The players are in charge
Simulation is narrative
Storygames are RPGs

S'mon

#68
August 26, 2015, 05:45:44 PM
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;851317S'mon, have you ever played HeroQuest?

? Yeah, like I said above, I played it in the Midnight setting. The GM decided to convert her campaign over from the regular d20/D&D rules to HeroQuest. It was many years ago but I still remember my heart sinking every time an Extended Challenge thingummy was announced.

rawma

#69
August 31, 2015, 09:45:54 PM
Quote from: Ravenswing;851220A novel is one guy telling a story:

* It is, obviously, a complete railroad: it moves on the plotlines the writer wants, and ONLY on the plotlines the writer wants.  

* The whole rest of the world, and everyone and everything in it, is immaterial except in so far as it informs the plot or the various characterizations.  Neither does it have to make sense: a Minas Tirith can be depicted as the height of civilization, even in a depopulated Gondor without a vestige of industry or international trade.  Travel can work on the speed of plot, and entire subsystems (magic is a usual one) don't have to make any sense whatsoever, internally or otherwise.  

* "Game balance" doesn't exist: not only is there nothing preventing a novelist from teaming up incredibly experienced adventurers with schmuck villagers fresh off the farm, it's a time-honored literary trope going back to the Bronze Age for those schmuck villagers to get face time, and not be sensibly relegated to holding the superheroes' golf bags.  

* Consistency doesn't have to exist: The group wizard can be a colossus in one encounter, and not be able to do much more than light the campfire the rest of the time, and no one blinks an eye at the discrepancy.  The designated beefcake can hold up a portcullis in Chapter 15, and no one questions the several instances that such extreme strength might have been obviously handy in Chapters 3-14.

* The odds don't matter: if it suits the author's plot for a bunch of hobbits who'd never been in a serious fight before to fail to get TPKed by a horde of freaking Nazgul, then they aren't.  The Davids one-shot the Goliaths, seldom the other way around.

* The protagonist gets the facetime, and the other characters fill in the blanks, if at all: except in establishing scenes, our young hero does just as much, if not more, as the vastly more experienced NPCs do.

Obviously -- it should be obvious, anyway -- these elements don't pertain to RPGs.

Maybe it should be obvious; but even on this forum, you can find people enjoying pretty much all of these in RPGs. Some of them are even viewed as respectable positions to advocate.

On the original topic, The Worm Ouroboros solved the "solved" world problem, over and over and over again.

James Gillen

#70
August 31, 2015, 10:12:02 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit;850796"solvable" worlds (or their flipside, "unsolveable" worlds; which is to say worlds where one thing is the problem and the PCs are expressly forbidden from ever being able to fix it) tend to be tremendously shallow and largely uninteresting.

The primary example of the latter being Gilligan's Island.

JG
-My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
 -Christopher Hitchens
-Be very very careful with any argument that calls for hurting specific people right now in order to theoretically help abstract people later.
-Daztur

James Gillen

#71
August 31, 2015, 10:16:02 PM
Quote from: soltakss;851073Become the overlord yourself.

After all, someone is going to try and fill the power vacuum and you would be better than someone else who would be as bad as the previous overlord.

And then the next campaign becomes you and your peers trying to hang on to power while suppressing opposition and fighting rivals and each other.

It worked for The Godfather.

JG
-My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
 -Christopher Hitchens
-Be very very careful with any argument that calls for hurting specific people right now in order to theoretically help abstract people later.
-Daztur
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