Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

[BNakagawa]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

The notion of using linguistic terms in describing game systems always seemed to make sense to me.

 

A game system serves, essentially to translate something that exists only in my imagination (my character concept) into a form that is useful and understandable to my fellow players and the GM. A good game system allows enough flexibility to express subtle and imaginative nuances with enough structure to make even the most exotic or obscure elements quickly understood.

 

Hero does this well enough for me.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

Mine won't be too wordy.

 

I'm very creative, at times so crafty that it scares me. In other game systems, you have a pick and choose system. As GM, you can simply make things up to add in. But with Hero System, it offered a guide and it is the guide that I like. I can be creative and crafty and yet still follow the rules.

[Markdoc]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

I hadn't commented on it so far in this thread, because it had already been done in the "chargen" thread, but no one else has mentioned it, so maybe I should.

 

For me - as a GM and a player - one of the appeals of Hero system is not just the character creation, but the consistency and ease of the play experience, which in turn is due to the consistency of the creation process. I can and do run an entire evenings playwith out needing to access the rules book. There's no table-hunting, no complex cross comparisons, etc. The same is true of players.

 

That could of course be due to my familiarity with the system: but in fact it's not. I'm very familiar with DnD in its various incarnations (more than our GM, it appears) but I cannot do without reference material in that system. The same is true of RQ and for the same reason. There's no metasystem underlying design decisions, so the only way to know effects, duration, range, etc of abilities and spells/powers is to memorise them. That spills over into play, since the interaction of various powers/abilities can yield a rich environment for making conflicting and essentially unverifiable assumptions. That in turn means assessing penalties/bonuses for various actions becomes more difficult - and generates more possibilities for misunderstanding/conflict.

 

Simply put, what I love about Hero is not just the flexibility of the character generation system, but the consistency (what Zornwill called Coherence) of the play experience. As a player, it means I can with some confidence estimate my chances of (for example) bouncing an attack off a roof beam to hit someone and as a GM I can assess the chances of success when a player tries something novel and assign a penalty or bonus without interrupting the game flow.

 

cheers, Mark

[zornwil]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

Markdoc, think we talked about "consistency" and I thnk many people meant this, but nobody hit it on the head like you did, well said.

[DangerousDan]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

I hope I didn't sound offensive.

Some day someone may come up with a real successful formula and I would have egg on my face if I denigrate the concept too much.

 

I really appreciate your comments on consistency and the tinkering aspects, Zorn. I certainly fall into the category of skipping over rules that are too complex for me to want to deal with at the time, then players in our campaign, like Dangerous Dan who likes esoteric builds

It isn't exactly that I like esoteric builds, but that I have character concepts that I often cannot see any simple way to emulate without compromising the character concept into something altogether different that what I started to build. Some characters don't care that they end up very differently than they started, while others are very picky about their abilities, and thus are harder to construct. The fact that I've been able to build some very strange and exotic characters with as little bending of the rules as I've done says quite a bit about the flexibility of the rules. In many games, some of these characters would largely consist of a long list of (often unwritten) exceptions to rules. One such character, when converted over to the Hero system actually fits into the system more smoothly than he did in his previous environment.

 

In many ways, the Modifiers section of the rules on Powers is a system of exceptions to the rules. The simple inclusion of a generic and unspecified Limited limitation (at various specified levels from -0 to -2) makes a lot of things possible that would otherwise not be.

or Blackjack to whom the minutae of legalistic detail is meat and drink come up with these great uses of the "hard" powers and force my hand.

 

Neither do I consider either the tinkerers or the unifiers intrinsically wrong. I guess my approach just one more based on a gaming "chaos theory" which assumes that player decisions and actions, good or bad, will destroy any premise of mathematical balance, predictability, directional flow or any other design assumption made by the GMs. Our team has almost gotten taken out, with only Z'lf sneaking up the rafters to rescue us later, by mediocre enemies and gloriously defeated Eurostar while separated and ambushed. Even the dice didn't account for those random events.

The one thing that is less predictable than the dice is the players rolling them.

[Mentor]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

Exactly what I was trying to get at Markdoc, but you did it better. The mathematical minor glitches in the Hero system are more than compensated for by the playablilty. Nothing is inherently forced on the game that cannot be overcome by roleplaying or GM decision, yet the parameters set by the rules are extremely well balanced and consistent, IMHO.

 

While some players hate the "hand waving" or concept/SFX approach because "it wasn't paid for by the player'' or "the GM didn't stat it out that way up front", it is impossible for any GM to predict the direction or actions the team will take in a game without either stifling the players and characters or just giving them the map, so to speak. Naturally, to repeat mysef;) , the issue of trust between the GM and players, that neither will abuse the system, campaign or concept is crucial to the game working. It is supposed to be fun and challenging.

[DangerousDan]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

And the fact that I can mess with the rules, but don't have to. That's really important - something may be broken for one type of game, but work perfectly for most of the others.

 

oh, and no "classes" or "occ" or whatever ... you make people. How cool it that? really.

No straightjacket "classes", no "Alignments", no problem. Back when I was running D&D, before it became "Advanced", I changed one thing after another. Within a few years, there was no D&D left in my D&D.

The only way to do it better is to write fiction.

As far as I am concerned, if it is done right, playing RPG is interactive fiction.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

No straightjacket "classes"' date=' no "Alignments", no problem. Back when I was running D&D, before it became "Advanced", I changed one thing after another. Within a few years, there was no D&D left in my D&D.[/quote']

aye, there's no D&D in my HERO either.

 

As far as I am concerned' date=' if it is done right, playing RPG [i']is[/i] interactive fiction.

yep. With less single person control over the story.

[archermoo]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

One of the reasons I prefer HERO now is that I've been playing it for more than 2 decades. It is comfortable. There have been several major revisions over the years, but it is still the same basic system it was when I started with it in '81.

 

The reason I stayed with it so long is its flexability. You can squeze anything you can think of into a HERO game. And while it tends to have a bit more up front time to get ready for a game (chargen, world creation, etc) once you are familiar with the basics of the rules, the rules get out of your way and let you just concentrate on telling your part of the story. A bit less true for the Ref than the players, but that is expected.

[Phil]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

Hmm, I'm not really sure - interesting though the thoughts are - that the proposal introducing this thread has got it quite right.

 

I play roleplaying games because I enjoy creating a form of interactive fiction. I enjoy HERO because it comes closer to recreating my particular vision of interactive fiction for certain cases. I enjoy playing TORG because it coems closer to recreating my particular vision of interactive fiction in other cases. (I enjoy playing D&D because its kinda nostalgic and this nostalgia means that it is supremely accurate at recreating one of my favourite genres - the genre of D&D! This self-fulfilling prophecy is the very definition of 'fan-base')

 

On the basis of this premise, every rules set is broken because every rules set doesnt quite manage to fulfil my subjective opinion of how characters and plotlines should interact in story. It is not about mathematical precision or recreating reality, but it *is* about using a mechanism that accurately and consistently reflects fictional archetypes. [Although if the archetype you're trying to create is close to real life, then the goal *is* to have a mechanism which closely reflects it]. I guess this is an amalgam of the narrativist and simulationist viewpoints - the rules are there to simulate a world consistent with the sort of narrative you want to create.

 

In addition, you then add on the gamist element. Having found a system which closely meets my storytelling needs, there is then an overwhelming urge to simplify rationalise and make consistent (consistency here not referring to consistency in reflecting the game world but internal consistency within the rules). It's the same sort of drive, but in a infinitesimally smaller fashion, that encourages physicists to seek the grand unified theory - surely all these numbers, formulae, theories and statements could be reduced into a few simple techniques. A vain hope indeed! The gamist element also has a high degree of compromise, an acceptance that for the smooth running of the game, certain genre elements may have to be hand-waved or flawed, though never ignored. However, I as a gamer may disagree with the designer over which genre elements are fundamental and cannot be hand-waved, and those which are not. For example, I think the flexible use of powers (power-stunts, if you will) and last-ditch heroic efforts are core to the supers genre and under-represented in the HERO core rules. So I house rule them. However, these element are secondary to the overall sim/narr sense that HERO does recreate the genre overall. So if I dont get round to making the changes, I'm still happy to play and talk about the game.

 

So it's not about whether rules are broken, it's more of a tiered consideration that might read like this:

1) Is the overall rule-set fit for purpose

2) Is this specific rule fit for purpose

3) Could this particular rule *better* reflect the genre I am recreating

4) Could this particular rule equally well reflect the genre I am recreating in a manner more consistent with other mechanics within the system.

5) Could this particular rule be made more consistent with other mechanics within the system in a way that would decrease its genre relevance by no more than an acceptable degree.

 

Because I go through this process, I house rule. Others may go through a similar process, but stop at 1). They dont house rule.

 

Phil

[Mentor]

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy

 

Phil, I don't think we disagree nearly so much as you may be thinking. My basic point was that no rules, including house rules, are or can be automatically balanced, predictive or "fixed" permanently. Thus my reference to play driven "chaos theory." Using Hero allows a flexibility within a consistent framework second to none, albeit imperfectly. IMHO, the great thing about Hero is the capability of having individual rules limited, expanded or specifically defined or weighted to a particlular character and campaign requirement.

 

What you may define as a house rule I might consider an individual variation of the existing one as suggested by the rules themselves. Perhaps my view of what is a tweak as opposed to a house rule is broader than someone else's view.