GMs: How cinematic are you? (versus realistic)

[Ninja-Bear]

I'm definately in the cinematic side of things. Oh I don't mind if the heroes get pooched now and then but this ain't a wargame nor a "classic" DnD where the DM is out to hose you.

[Ninja-Bear]

And for lethality I would say Rolemaster is the most realistic and brutal that I can remeber.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah those early D&D games.  Just the description of their sample dungeon in the DM guide for AD&D was outrageous.  Three ghouls against a level 1 group, and he just has one chewed up and killed with a shrug.  Shouldn't have climbed up, no clues like a nasty rotting smell or sounds.  Who's next into the meat grinder?  Isn't this fun?

[CaptnStrawberry]

I think Mr. Gygax just wanted to end the example of play on a dramatic cliffhanger.   Earlier they encountered a mama giant spider and her baby spiderlings, a much more 'level-appropriate' encounter.  Always felt sorry for those little baby spiders. . . .

[Zephrosyne]

I think GURPS is about the most realistic game that I have ever played.  In both character creation and game play it seems to be about as realistic as you can get while remaining playable.  As a gm, I have a tendency to have realistic and cinematic aspects in my games.  I like Hero System because it does default a bit on the cinematic side while allowing you to dial up the realism a bit if you need to.  I like that in Hero I don't have to worry as much about pulling punches because it is much easier to incapacitate players than it is to kill them outright.  Of course, this can vary depending on the genre and power level of the game.  I also prepare encounters to where I have a rough idea of how they are going to play out.  Granted players can be unpredictable but I still have a general idea of how things are going to go.  The main reason I like 3d6 more than 1d20 is that the dice--and therefore luck--are a lot less of a factor, which to me is more realistic. 

 

While I am ok with combat being a bit on the cinematic side, most of my games are fairly realistic when it comes to the actual game world in that actions have real consequences.  If superheroes flatten a city during a battle, it is not going to be repaired in 30 days just before the next issue and the general public is not going to be happy with superheroes who just carelessly toss energy blast about and trash real estate just because destruction looks cool like it does in comics.  I'm ok with reading four color comics but I absolutely refuse to gm them.  I'm not going to tell a player, "No, your character can't kill this guy because this is a Silver Age game," to me that is stupid. I will tell the player the potential consequences that his character may be aware of and then let the cards fall where they may.  Like I said, actions have consequences and that is the case for me as a gm regardless of the game or genre.

 

I do think the cinematic versus realism thing is heavily influenced by the game engine that you use. It seems the more rules lite and heavily narrative based games to have a tendency to be a bit cinematic.  I think the lack of mechanics almost force a more cinematic approach, at least as far as combat is concerned as well as things like skill use.  You almost have to hand wave a lot more in those instances.  I've gmed a lot of them, sometimes I just go with the flow, sometimes I add house rules to include things that I feel are necessary. I really just depends on the game, specifically my willingness to suffer the absence of certain elements and if the game is worth going through the trouble to add what I want included.  In the worst cases (e.g. Fate Core) I just don't play the game.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well I dunno if a bell curve is more realistic than a single die, but I know its a lot more welcome in my games.

[Scott Baker]

And for lethality I would say Rolemaster is the most realistic and brutal that I can remeber.

CritMaster was brutal, but I still give the winning nod to the original Arduin Grimoire. There were just so many ways to die every time you played....

[Zephrosyne]

I never got to play much of it and Rolemaster is a fine game, but man, they love their charts.  I remember briefly gming it.  Looking up and down charts for several minutes (we were new) just to tell the player "dude, you ain't gone make it; yo face done got burnt off." 

[Ninja-Bear]

Zephrosyne I rolled the worst mive seen in ages-foe stunned laughing for two rounds. I was not luckey in that game system!

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think the last time I played Rolemaster my archer sliced his own eye with the fletching of an arrow and blinded himself on a fumble.

[Scott Baker]

I think the last time I played Rolemaster my archer sliced his own eye with the fletching of an arrow and blinded himself on a fumble.

You got lucky!

[Mister E]

"Trip over invisible dead turtle; lose initiative next round regaining your footing."

[Ninja-Bear]

I too lost an eye with one character and pulled a groin with another.

[Jazzidemus]

4 hours to create a 6th level character played that night, died 15 minutes into the game to some crit, lol never played again. Then again had a Traveller character die while I was making the damn thing LOL!

[assault]

Death during character generation was a feature of Traveller, not a bug. At least until the crybabies got rid of it.

 

Essentially, you would roll a character's stats randomly, and put the duds through the low-survivability Scout service until they died. Then you would roll a new character, and repeat the process until you had a character who was Awesome.

 

Of course, there was a chance that your Awesome character might die too, but then you would just do it over again.

 

Obviously you could save time by cheating and roll your characters using the best two out of three dice or whatever, but even there you could use the grinder on characters that weren't quite good enough.

 

Or you could automate character generation.

 

Or use a point-based design system.

[zslane]

The designers of Traveller always viewed the CT character generation system differently than players have. To the designers, it was a "solitaire RPG" game in its own right. It was meant to be a way to play Traveller in the absence of a referee, odd as that may seem.

[assault]

The designers of Traveller always viewed the CT character generation system differently than players have. To the designers, it was a "solitaire RPG" game in its own right. It was meant to be a way to play Traveller in the absence of a referee, odd as that may seem.

 

Not unlike creating Hero system characters...

[sinanju]

The designers of Traveller always viewed the CT character generation system differently than players have. To the designers, it was a "solitaire RPG" game in its own right. It was meant to be a way to play Traveller in the absence of a referee, odd as that may seem.

 

Perhaps that's how they saw it, but I only ever saw it as a waste of time. I'm creating characters to play in the actual game; generating a squad in order to produce one playable PC is a pointless exercise. So we quickly changed it (as many groups apparently did) to "death" equals "mandatory mustering out. We also instituted the "rolling a 2 on your re-enlistment roll means a dishonorable discharge" rule, with the players free to make up reasons why. They ranged from Captain Randath's Last Stand (he lost an entire battalion of TL 10 solders to a bunch of TL 2 primitive screwheads and didn't even have the decency to die in the process) to "I was cleaning my fully automatic weapon in the barracks when it went off...killing my whole platoon."

[zslane]

I think that's how most players saw it.

 

To be honest, the Traveller career system was just the logical extension of the philosophy of randomness that determined core characteristics and other abilities in most RPGs of that era. Once I discovered Champions, I stopped pretending that randomness in any aspect of character generation was acceptible (to me) because I had finally discovered the ultimate refutation of randomness as a character build methodology. So to me, rolling dice to determine if your character dies before campaign play begins is just as silly as rolling dice to determine your character's strength. And I don't do silly.

[sinanju]

I think that's how most players saw it.

 

To be honest, the Traveller career system was just the logical extension of the philosophy of randomness that determined core characteristics and other abilities in most RPGs of that era. Once I discovered Champions, I stopped pretending that randomness in any aspect of character generation was acceptible (to me) because I had finally discovered the ultimate refutation of randomness as a character build methodology. So to me, rolling dice to determine if your character dies before campaign play begins is just as silly as rolling dice to determine your character's strength. And I don't do silly.

 

Yeah, random generation was just How Things Are Done back then. I remember Steamteck (former denizen of these boards) and I creating a superhero game way, way back before Champions. We used random generation for everything, including powers. It produced some really weird but memorable characters, but it was very, very silly as a result. The idea that you could CHOOSE your character's strengths and weaknesses, skills, powers, etc--was one of the early big draws of Champions for me. Nowadays, I really really dislike random generation of characters. Even when we play D&D we tend to use systems where you choose your stats with a pool of points instead of rolling dice.

[rjcurrie]

The thing to remember with Traveller is that character generation took about only took a few minutes, so if you died, it wasn't that big a deal.

[Scott Baker]

Yeah, random generation was just How Things Are Done back then. I remember Steamteck (former denizen of these boards) and I creating a superhero game way, way back before Champions. We used random generation for everything, including powers. It produced some really weird but memorable characters, but it was very, very silly as a result. The idea that you could CHOOSE your character's strengths and weaknesses, skills, powers, etc--was one of the early big draws of Champions for me. Nowadays, I really really dislike random generation of characters. Even when we play D&D we tend to use systems where you choose your stats with a pool of points instead of rolling dice.

Yes, that's it exactly.

 

The thing to remember with Traveller is that character generation took about only took a few minutes, so if you died, it wasn't that big a deal.

 

I agree. Good point.

[zslane]

Or so you would think. Apparently it was such a big deal, everybody house-ruled death away to discharge instead, and the official rules eventually followed suit.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well it was a pointless rule.  People just kept making characters until they got what they wanted anyway, so the death meant nothing.

[assault]

In fact death was usually intentional, until you rolled the character you wanted.

 

It was actually counterproductive to add the compulsory discharge rule unless you also added an alternative to "2D in order" rolling for characteristics. Otherwise you could end up with woefully inadequate characters.