Quote from: Mistwell;722884Who do you do this? How do people determine talking order, and action order?

I have done group initiative in games before. It has it's advantages, but some players prefer it the other way. Basically let the players go as a group and they hash out who goes first, second, third, etc. It becomes more of a coordinated effort i find it also seems to speed things up. But it isn't for everyone.

Belated response to estar:

Yes, introducing things to kids naturalistically like that works well, and you're right a few people try to back out of dangerous situations. What I've done sometimes is bloat up the potential rewards (your weight in gold!) as putting Monty Haul into a one shot doesn't have any real negative repercussions.

As for skill systems, you're right in that one is really needed if you want to focus on playing certain types of characters. I just find that having certain things printed on their character sheet tends to strangle the creativity of newbie kids so what I've done is use the skill system and ability checks but just not tell them how it works. It's a blunt solution but it works, at least in the short term, but I'm working on thinking up something that would work better for me.

"After playing and referee multiple system my opinion that anytime you stop focusing on being a character in a setting that when the problems results."

I agree with this very strongly. That's really the heart of the appeal of Old School RPGs to me. In a lot of other games the world can be twisted in order to serve the needs of the story, or play balance or whatever which makes the world seem like a flimsy sound stage. The single biggest thing I took from playing in Piestro's 1ed game was the attitude of "this is the world, it is what it is and doesn't care about you, make your effort to make your place in it or leave it kicking and screaming" which I've tried to carry over to my own DMing.

I agree that the most important thing is to just keep on focus on making the world primary. For example my good friend told me an episode from his Burning Wheel campaign. In that one the PCs received a letter about the results of a goblin siege of a human city. When a PC read it the contents (did the goblins succeed or not, due to Burning Wheel stakes-setting mechanics) hinged on the player's reading skill and he rolled high at reading so the goblins failed to take the city. He considered it the highlight of the session but it really made me cringe since he was basically saying that the fate of a huge chunk of the world was less important than the ability of a PC to read a letter.

So basically I agree utterly with what you're saying here and have been doing some thinking exactly along the lines you suggest: what sort of ways to play the game does the best job of making the players think in terms of the world first and foremost.

Quote from: Old Geezer;721582Great article, especially the part about "fast play."

And I think skills are one of the worst things to happen to D&D.  I assume my players' characters are as competent at general medieval living stuff as anybody living in the time... things like how to use a rope to tie up a horse, etc.  And if you want to do something, just say so.  If it seems unlikely, I may ask you why your character knows how to do that.  On the other hand, if you say "I'm a 4th level fighter, I've been fighting from horseback since I was a boy, I'm going to jump off my horse and onto his," go for it!

I agree with you that I've never seen a skill system for D&D that quite hit the right spot, although thief skills and NWPs do OK if you get the players into the right mental state they can be hit or miss, which is why I didn't tell the kids any of the rules after a while. However, I'm not sure that a system that wouldn't do the things that annoy you about the ones you seen can't exist. The Call of Cthulhu one for example does OK in play...

Quote from: Soylent Green;721612I agree, I'm a big fan of team based initiative. Better still if it is rolled each turn, so that quite often you find on side acting twice in a row. I admit that makes things very unpredictable and the fortunes of the battle can swing wildly.

One proviso, this works best with your other condition: Small Groups Are Best. Team initiative with large groups can make concentrated fire overwhelming.

Yes, adding more unpredictability to combat is always good.

Quote from: Opaopajr;721755I am pleased to read this. It reaffirms my faith that kids, and people in general, like a bit of fun in that "spacious realm of choices"-imagination land. Sociable, less structured play is catchy, which is good for RPGs, especially if a lot of the system mastery is off screen.

That and now I know a few more people to call upon for Japan and Korean music imports, mwa ha ha ha!

If you remember our old discussion from a year ago about thief skills from a year ago: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=25364 your excellent posts helped shape my thinking and make these games a success. Many thanks.

Quote from: Eisenmann;721785Outstanding post. I've had a similar experience while running Swords & Wizardry and Wushu for kids. For me, it gave some good insight into how I run games in general.

http://platonicsolid.blogspot.com/search/label/With%20Kids

For larger groups using side initiative, I'll often break it out by rough weapon length: Winning side spears go first. Losing side spears go next. Then winner swords, etc.

The reach idea sounds good for breaking things down, I think I just am going to go with the solution of "run away screaming from the prospect of DMing a large group."

As for your blog posts, I'm not familiar at all with Wushu so hard to commend on that, for the White Box post, it makes me jealous as you are able to do a lot of stuff that I just can't because of time constraints. I want to see kids faces light up when they roll high on strength in character creation and exult in that but I just don't have time with my students. My sons are just barely five and two and a half now and I really look forward to being able to do what you did with your niece and nephew with them. Right now my older son is massively obsessed with DungeonQuest which seems to be old school dungeoneering with everything fun about doing that surgically excised and I'm really looking forward to his English vocabulary getting a bit broader so we can shift over to D&D and see the whole world open up beyond the cramped confines that DungeonQuest provides.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;722857Adults only. They don't get FATE.

The "This" relates to doing stuff because the character would, or the situation suggests it rather than the numbers. People coming from places that use numbers to squeeze any and every opportunity out of a game session do this with FATE too. I think that's not the point of aspects, ladders, tags and compels per se. Or at least not that explicitly.

Yeah, I think more than any other game FATE works well if you focus on the world and gets utterly ruined if you focus on the mechanics. The best thing about FATE is that all of the little details that are just color in a lot of games actually do stuff so a lot more of the world matters and does thing which can really bring the world into beautiful focus. But if you peer down too closely at how the sausage gets made things can start feeling very samey as every single conflict boils down to exactly the same thing mechanics-wise. I think there's a lot of be said for old school non-unified systems. They may be inelegant but making things that are different in the game world use completely different mechanics can make them feel different and make a big difference psychologically even if, say, critters making a saving throw when you shoot magic at them and you making an attack roll when you shoot arrows at them doesn't make much of a difference when you drill down to the actual probabilities at stake.

Quote from: Old Geezer;721582I think skills are one of the worst things to happen to D&D.

I agree; I think skills are a terrible addition to D&D's class/level approach.  

(FWIW, I do enjoy some skill-based RPGs;  I think an RPG that's designed around skills can work fine.  But D&D isn't designed that way, and I find that it works better without grafted on skill systems.)

Thanks for the compliment!

It sounds like you upped your game and learned a lot from these kids.

Just ran another session today, the first in a while, with three boys who were playing for the first time.

They enjoyed the hell out of it and were talking about it excitedly while waiting for the elevator after leaving class.

No especially exciting war stories, they approached it in a pretty kick down the door way but really got involved in the setting. It's really just a joy to have kids get honestly scared by simple things like monsters whispering threats at them in the darkness. What this really makes me think is treating the setting as a real thing is far more important than treating your character as a real person.

The thief was probably the MVP doing all kinds of tricks with the rope I gave him, although he did accidentally kill another PC while trying to shoot a giant spider off his head.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;723182I agree; I think skills are a terrible addition to D&D's class/level approach.  

(FWIW, I do enjoy some skill-based RPGs;  I think an RPG that's designed around skills can work fine.  But D&D isn't designed that way, and I find that it works better without grafted on skill systems.)

Here's my current thinking on the issue:

Skill rolls are kind of like attack rolls. They're rules that provide a simple way of resolving something complicated. D&D combat is boring as all hell if all that happens if a back and forth slug fest of I roll to hit/I roll for damage/repeat and dealing with the environment is incredibly boring if it relies on a bunch of skill rolls (roll to find trap/roll to disarm trap/repeat/zzzzz).

What makes old school D&D combat fun (aside from the speed that keeps it from bogging down) is that you can't rely on your attack roll to make you win fights. If you just charge in and roll attack rolls against everything you meet you'll DIE and the game does a good job of communicating that to you ("oh crap, I only have two hit points left! we need to come up with a plan here..."). Basically combat rolls give you an even playing field against the monsters more or less, but an even playing field will get your character killed so you have to cheat at combat, and the cheating is the real fun part.

Black boxing it accomplishes the same thing: players can't rely on their skill rolls to save them so they have to cheat to win. But I don't think that's the only way to get to the same goal, maybe something like this:
-Don't roll for basic stuff, just hard stuff.
-Have a catch-all skill system a bit like Blood and Treasure or C&C but skew the default difficulties up high. That way players will think that they can't rely on their skill rolls to save them, just like smart players don't rely on their attack rolls to save them in combat.
-Seed the world with stuff that helps them cheat their way past obstacles.

Maybe something along these lines:

DM: There's an orc.
Player: OK, I sneak past him.
DM: Roll your Dex Save.
Player: Crap, I need to roll a 15 or higher to pass my Dex Save, screw that, now if I set a fire over there to distract the orcs so they're not watching, I should be able to sneak right through...

Same sort of logic as:

DM: There's two orcs.
Player: OK, I attack them...
DM: OK, roll to attack.
Player: Wait a second, crap, they each have the same number of hit dice as me and do the same damage and there's two of them, screw that. Now if I set them both on fire first, I should be able to kill them...

In my game with adults I've been using skill checks a lot and it works OK, but then you get players getting confident about their 15 Dex and basically expecting to beat obstacles down by smacking them with their high Dex and things like that. I can get them straightened out by asking "how?" and whatnot, but I think I can do better and it's more difficult to get adults to go along with black box DMing than is the case with kids.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;723182I agree; I think skills are a terrible addition to D&D's class/level approach.  

(FWIW, I do enjoy some skill-based RPGs;  I think an RPG that's designed around skills can work fine.  But D&D isn't designed that way, and I find that it works better without grafted on skill systems.)

You know, I used to think this was the most batshit insane of OSR/grognard dogmas, but after ditching them in first Drums of War (due to time constraints) and then Hulks and Horrors, I've fallen in love with skill-less systems.

I love that in H&H, everyone is assumed to at least be competent, so everyone can always TRY. It actually leads to MORE teamwork IME, because group role becomes more flexible for players. No one's sitting around waiting for their turn to do 'their class thing'. They're just doing it.

Niche protection is fucking overrated and kinda awful in real social terms.

Quote from: Daztur;723394Here's my current thinking on the issue:

Skill rolls are kind of like attack rolls. They're rules that provide a simple way of resolving something complicated. D&D combat is boring as all hell if all that happens if a back and forth slug fest of I roll to hit/I roll for damage/repeat and dealing with the environment is incredibly boring if it relies on a bunch of skill rolls (roll to find trap/roll to disarm trap/repeat/zzzzz).

What makes old school D&D combat fun (aside from the speed that keeps it from bogging down) is that you can't rely on your attack roll to make you win fights. If you just charge in and roll attack rolls against everything you meet you'll DIE and the game does a good job of communicating that to you ("oh crap, I only have two hit points left! we need to come up with a plan here..."). Basically combat rolls give you an even playing field against the monsters more or less, but an even playing field will get your character killed so you have to cheat at combat, and the cheating is the real fun part.

Black boxing it accomplishes the same thing: players can't rely on their skill rolls to save them so they have to cheat to win. But I don't think that's the only way to get to the same goal, maybe something like this:
-Don't roll for basic stuff, just hard stuff.
-Have a catch-all skill system a bit like Blood and Treasure or C&C but skew the default difficulties up high. That way players will think that they can't rely on their skill rolls to save them, just like smart players don't rely on their attack rolls to save them in combat.
-Seed the world with stuff that helps them cheat their way past obstacles.

Maybe something along these lines:

DM: There's an orc.
Player: OK, I sneak past him.
DM: Roll your Dex Save.
Player: Crap, I need to roll a 15 or higher to pass my Dex Save, screw that, now if I set a fire over there to distract the orcs so they're not watching, I should be able to sneak right through...

Same sort of logic as:

DM: There's two orcs.
Player: OK, I attack them...
DM: OK, roll to attack.
Player: Wait a second, crap, they each have the same number of hit dice as me and do the same damage and there's two of them, screw that. Now if I set them both on fire first, I should be able to kill them...

In my game with adults I've been using skill checks a lot and it works OK, but then you get players getting confident about their 15 Dex and basically expecting to beat obstacles down by smacking them with their high Dex and things like that. I can get them straightened out by asking "how?" and whatnot, but I think I can do better and it's more difficult to get adults to go along with black box DMing than is the case with kids.

Hear hear!!  

One of the most difficult things to pull off sometimes is to cattle prod adult players into using thier imaginations to problem solve in-game. What comes so easily to children is lost to adults who don't remember to exercise it.

Especially adults who have grown accustomed to everything in the game being overcome by rules constructs. Weaning indoctrinated WOTC victims off of target DC fixation can be hard work.

Rolling to-hit should be something that happens when plans fail.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;723419Hear hear!!  

One of the most difficult things to pull off sometimes is to cattle prod adult players into using thier imaginations to problem solve in-game. What comes so easily to children is lost to adults who don't remember to exercise it.

Especially adults who have grown accustomed to everything in the game being overcome by rules constructs. Weaning indoctrinated WOTC victims off of target DC fixation can be hard work.

Rolling to-hit should be something that happens when plans fail.

Well, attack rolls are often an important part of a plan, usually the "and then we slaughter them like sheep!" part that happens because fair fights are for suckers. But yeah, strongly agree with the basic idea.

OK, let me try to expand my skills idea with the same basis as what Exploderwizard says about attack rolls: skills are what you roll when your plan goes wrong. Also I think that the other thing a skill system should do is give the players a clear idea of what their characters are capable of. The way 3.5ed edition skills always worked out for me in play was assign skill points, apply ability modifier, look up synergies, think about any situational modifiers, apply bonuses from magic items and temporary buffs and, oh yeah, racial modifiers and size-based modifiers and what you ate for breakfast last Tuesday modifiers and then roll again a DC that the DM just pulled out of his ass. All of the complication doesn't serve much purpose unless you have a clear idea what you're rolling against so it's a lot faster just to cut out the middleman and skip straight to the DM pulling something out of his ass. That's why I like stuff like open door rolls in 1ed, you know what your chances are and if you know what your character can do it's easier to make cunning plans based on that.

So let's try to cook up something that's transparent and encourages creative engagement with the world

To start off with the DM assumes that the characters aren't idiots and doesn't make them roll except for truly hard stuff.

Then there's a saving throw that corresponds to each ability score (a bit like the C&C SIEGE system but implemented differently) and which covers everything from "I jump out of the way" to "I sneak past the orc." These saving throws start out intimidatingly high so that smart players try to some up with cunning plans instead of relying on them, just like the number you need to hit with an attack roll starts out pretty high in TSR-D&D so that smart players come up with cunning plans instead of relying on them.

Then steal 5ed's disadvantage/advantage mechanics for situational stuff. Nice and simple, despite 5ed overusing them.

Then give players Proficiencies with the thief class getting big piles of them instead of traditional thief skills. Each would do one very specific thing that there's clear simple rules for. The idea is that they're so specific that they're more tools for players to use to come up with cunning plans rather than things that let you just roll and skip all the fun stuff. Some potential Proficiencies:
-Balance: never lose your balance.
-Light step: be able to walk across snow, mud, etc. like Legolas.
-Smell gold: you have a nose for gold and can smell any within thirty feet of you.
-Clockmaker: you're really good at fiddling with mechanics and can disarm mechanical traps easily, IF you can figure out how to get your hands on the mechanism without setting off the trap first.
-Lots and lots of the more specific 2ed NWP standbys like ventriloquism, lip reading, contortionism, etc.
-Maybe even a few that help out in social situations like Poker Face, but nothing that you can use to beat social situations into submission like a high Diplomacy modifier like in 3ed.

The idea is that most of these would give you an automatic benefit that you can count on but which is so specific that it's going to be an element of a plan rather than something that lets you not need to come up with a plan because you have skills. In cases in which a roll is needed the rules would be very clear about what roll you need to hit to do what (like a lot of Proficiencies in ACKS, that game did a good job of nailing them down for the most part).

The idea is that a high level thief isn't going to have a "stealth" skill but a bunch of little very very specific Proficiencies that he can use when coming up with cunning plans to sneak past stuff. Things like contortionism, ventriloquism, etc. etc. etc.

Sounds workable?