Current events

This page is for discussion of stuff related to the game coming up this week, no matter when that actually is. For instance, we can all assume Nate isnt coming for some lame reason and that Ed is sick of pizza and is bringing teriyaki or some other crap. They can post something here if that happens to be untrue.

Location

Date...........game.........Location
1/5/07......PA............BEN'S
1/12/07......WHFRP............Jason's
1/19/07......WHFRP............Bens
1/26/07......WHFRP..........Jason's (heather is post call, so my place is out)
2/2/07.......Jin Dynasty......Ben's
2/9/07.......Jin Dynasty......Gabe's Bungalow
2/16/07......Jin Dynasty.........Jason's
2/23/07......Nephron One Shot..........ben's
3/2/07.......Toonball and random shit......Ben's
3/9/07.......Jin Dynasty......Gabe's Bungalow
3/16/07......Jin Dynasty......Gabe's house of gaming
3/23/07......Jin Dynasty......Matt's House of Tyranny
3/30/07......Exemplars........Gabe's
4/6/07.......Gemini Character Creation...Ben's Condo
4/13/07......?????????........???????
4/20/07......Exemplars/one shot...?????

Attendance and Food preference

04/06/07

--BenofZongo 13:57, 1 April 2007 (MST)Present. My sister will also be here. Both of us will be having pizza. The pizza will be "on the house" this week: ie I will pay for it. If no one objects, I think I'll get it from Pudge Bros.

--Dieter the Bold 01:47, 2 April 2007 (MST) I'll be there. And I love frakking Pudge Bros. Please count me in.

--Edmiao 08:09, 2 April 2007 (MST) I'll be there and it would be rude to turn down free pizza..... And I'd hate to be rude. .... So I won't be rude....... Which means I'll eat the pizza.

Cleaned this up, since it was totally me misunderstanind what was being said!

Ranting an raving

--BenofZongo 02:59, 31 March 2007 (MST)Also, just so it's up here, I will be gone 4/20/07. No, I will not be smokin' the dooby.

--Gdaze 13:04, 31 March 2007 (MST) Also, next time we play could we please cut back on playing other games during the actual RP? It was very distracting and resulted in nobody following the story really.

--BenofZongo 13:32, 31 March 2007 (MST)Yeah, sorry about that, guilty as charged. It's definitely something we need to limit.

--BenofZongo 13:56, 1 April 2007 (MST)Everyone can post potential character concepts, as many as they like, on the gemini characters if they feel like it. Also, if you have an opinion about what sort of missions you want to see the crew engage in, post that to the appropriate talk page as well. If there are secret details you'd like to ask about, you can email them to me.

--Jason 15:58, 2 April 2007 (MST)Again I have probably failed to express my initial point well. In the past games have been an overall success even though they have had weaknesses that can be pinpointed (success in spite of things we can improve). The problem is that we do not try to improve. We point back to the past and say that was ok even though we didnt do x, and then we end up with functionally the same game as before. With this kind of thinking we never progress; we never innovate and move on to an even better level of gaming. Yeah, sure we had fun with previous games. But shouldnt we try to achieve something more? The general consensus is 'No'. Yet that goes against everything I believe.

--Matts 16:17, 2 April 2007 (MST)Cleaned up the endless debate except for this one point, which I consider exceedingly valuable.

--Gdaze OMG U NOB MAT! MY VLUE SYSSTEM > MAT'S VALLUE SYSTEM WICH IZ N0)B SYSTEM!

--Jason 16:22, 2 April 2007 (MST)Gabe=Me+1

--BenofZongo 16:28, 2 April 2007 (MST)A "better" level of gaming? what does that mean? The point of gaming, as with any hobby, is to have fun. So you mean have "better" fun? That's fine, I suppose, but I already consider Friday nights the highlight of my week, so I'm not really sure how much better it can get. Not only that, but the times where gaming has not been fun, and even stressful, is when we've gotten into big arguments about how to make things "better". Not only that, but there is no clear indication what might lead to more or better fun, because the beauty of gaming is that unlike video games, there aren't any formulas about what works and what doesn't. Lots of us talk nostalgically about the iliadic game and think of it as a great experience, and that game was the first campaign I ran: I didn't know the rules well, I didn't go for any sort of balance, the characters were tremendously overpowered in certain circumstances, but it was still one of the best games I've ever run. Frankly, Gemini is my attempt to go back to a lot of the principles of that game, but that's just a "trial and error" method, ie, try wacky shit, when it's good, keep using it. But we do that all the time. Matt ran the DitV system. We implemented x, y, and z. I'm going to try this prologue dealy. All of that, in my opinion, is trying stuff. Furthermore, what is a problem for one person may be what is fun for another person. My principle is that I try to let each player "get away" with the stuff that they like to get away with, and that's what the imbalance in Gemini is based on. You want to be super uber in combat? fine with me, if that's what's fun for you? You want to be able to make stuff up off the cuff and invent the story without rolling lots of dice? fine, etc. It's silly to suppose that by making every player's experience in a given situation identical, you will maximize enjoyment: you will minimize jealousy, since everyone is being treated exactly the same, but the given treatment may be fun for one player and retarded for another.

--Jason 16:54, 2 April 2007 (MST)Thats right, all fun is equal. Sudoku=gaming. In a game with 6 players the game is 86% about the players, yet with no clear system of whats gonna happen, its really 95% about the GM. The story goes on no matter who shows up, and events happen no matter what the players do. Thats what you keep missing here. You want the game to run your way, and the input from the players is really not important to you (as perceived in what you write here). We arent trying to make everyones experience identical. What is important is trying to reduce the things that are sub-optimal.

--BenofZongo 17:19, 2 April 2007 (MST)But system only influences a tiny portion of the game. "what happens" can't be determined by dice rolling, and therefore, it can't be written into a system. And why shouldn't the story go on? What you're implying is exactly what you accuse me of: if the story can only proceed with specific players, then the story is preset and completely linear. If, on the other hand, a suitably "good" solution comes up based on the tools available to the players that show, that seems to me to be much more open ended and player-driven. Also, I said "better" fun was a legitimate reason, but based on what parameters? And in who's opinion? If you are determined to bring greater definition to gaming, you shouldn't start at the specifics (ie individual rules) but at the most general: what actually contributes to enjoyment by the players of a given game? That's what Matt's linked essay, in a sense, was about. But we all agree that that's just one person's take on it. But even given that you got everyone to agree on what those elements are, you'd still have to figure out a way to turn them into practical effects on a game. It's like when we put up the questionnaire about "what parts of gaming do you like? (story, fighting, etc.) People ranked them differently, which is fine, but the question for me remained: how do you translate people's answers into an improved gaming experience. And in the end I decided it wasn't worth getting a headache over, because whatever benefit I could glean from it a.) might be completely off the mark (as so often things that really excite one person don't do anything for others, ie DitV) and b.) I was putting myself through more misery than the benefit that might be derived from it.
SUMMARY: more system/balance does not equal more player influence. the idea of better fun is meaningless unless you have parameters by which to judge it and methods by which to manipulate it, two things which I argue are not possible to develop.

--Jason 17:48, 2 April 2007 (MST)First, Im a terrible Buddhist. I cant accept that suffering is a part of life. I cant accept 'that was good, lets do it again'. I have to have 'that was good, lets try to do better'. Second, Im not accusing you of doing anything. That has a connotation that is not my intention. I contend that your Roman dictator (your words) way of running the game is not conducive to a collaborative story. The players should write the story (they are 86% of the game). The GM should facilitate this. Saying that the game is going to be how you say, like it or not, is the antithesis of collaboration. Saying you cant break my story also fits into this category. Two players have expressed that they find the lack of balance between players as an issue to be addressed, yet you are unwilling to consider it.

I never said that more system does not equal more player influence. I did say that lack of balance will destroy a game faster and more assuredly than anything else. The assertion that balance is not necessary because a previous game lacked it is inherently flawed. Nothing is absolutely necessary except warm bodies. Yet, we can improve the experience of everyone by including everyone more, and balance facilitates that. Why do people screw around during game? One reason and one reason alone: they are not engaged.

Why might players become disengaged? They could feel superfluous (which can be caused by lack of balance). They could be away from the action (though I contend that even when a player is away from the action they should never do anything like reading, it just destroys the ability to become part of the setting). They could be less assertive than other players (which becomes more of a problem with more players).

I am sure there are more reasons, but what cannot be argued is that the more invested the players are into the game and the situation at hand, the less likely they are to become disengaged, and therefore to screw around. Game balance cannot make this problem worse, yet it may help to alleviate at least one possible reason for an issue we have all admitted to having. Dismissing this outright seems to be a miscalculation at the very least.

My final point is this. Ben, I consider you to be one of my best friends ever. I really appreciate the time I spend talking with you, in and out of game. We dont agree on everything, AND THATS GREAT. I respect you a lot. I really do not want you to think Im pointing down at you, or dismissing your opinion or saying you cant GM. Its nothing like that. My only real point is this: we can improve, so why not try?

--BenofZongo 18:14, 2 April 2007 (MST)I agree with everything you said in the last paragraph. My point is, you suggest that there is only one road to improvement, namely by focusing on system, and I disagree. My experience tells me that system is largely irrelevant, as long as it meets a certain threshold. As for your point that basing my opinions on past games is flawed: what should I base it on then, if not on easily observable evidence? If we are trying to make a game good for the people in our group, we should use stuff that works for our group. And how do we know what works for us? because it's worked in the past, that's the only way to know. As far as the roman dictator thing goes: you're wrong that it doesn't allow player input: it simply states that the GM has veto powers, like a president. I try to let players do whatever the hell they want in a given setting: I try to provide so many options of obvious story stuff, and lots of options completely unrelated or character driven, that there is no way that I can predict what the players will do next. Why? because linear story smacks of video game to me, and I can't compete with that. I want the players to drive the story. But does that mean that they can just say what happens? Well, that's what matt would like to try out, but it's not my style. My only consistent thing is "do what you want, just run it by me first". The funny thing is, in the end every GM resorts to this in every game. In playtests for Exemplars, I can think of at least 3 situations where we had to change the rules (as in, change the rules from the printed rulebook) in order to make the combat test work. According to my logic, that's fine, as long as the GM afterwards considers how that situation should be run in the future. But according to you, that shouldn't be allowed. But disallowing it will never work, practically. So being a dictator just means that I want the power to say: look, we're not going to get a clean break here, so I'm going to make the call. That is, after all, the point of the GM: to make slightly more "objective" calls than the players in the interests of the story (although I, like Matt, and interested in experimenting with giving players more hand in this). Also, I don't mean to say break MY story, I say break THE story: the GM is the guardian of the story, and mostly what I mean by that is that there will be interesting plot developments no matter what kind of character you make.
now back to balance. It's not that I won't consider it: I've considered it and decided that for this next game that I run, I am going to deliberately introduce imbalance and see what happens. Is it possible people will hate it? you betcha, and I'm willing to admit defeat if it doesn't work. But from my experience, I'm looking at the games I've run, and to be honest, the ones that ran the best were the ones where I didn't worry TOO much about balance. Gemini does have some balance considerations in it, just not many, by our standards. And I'll tell you: I'm excited for it and I think it's gonna run really well. Not because the system is the best, but because I think that it's the kind of system that fits with my style of GMing, and will therefore allow me to provide the best experience to the players. As for players wanting balance: then make balanced characters. Like I said, anybody can break the system: I've had lots of characters who I realized at some point were ridiculous for one reason or another: Hrulfgarr, ZhiZhi...and I can think of a bunch that have been in my games: Stephanie, Senju, Ed's champions character by about the third iteration, Matt's cyberpunk second character, Dieter's first cyberpunk character, etc, etc, etc. But many of those were made in an attempt to build the character at the ceiling of some arbitrary "balanced" system: I would go so far as to argue that creating complex character creation models to promote "balance" almost always backfires and leads to more high powered, ridiculous characters than otherwise. Not only that, but it leads to cookie-cutter characters: lots of characters end up having very similar profiles to max out each balanced component. You get unbalanced characters in any game, is my point. But oddly enough, I've found when I, personally, don't try to enforce specific limits on PCs, they end up picking their niche and making the character they want to make and being the most engaged. So, I disagree that "balance" between PCs combat capabilities, or even some abstract of the power of the character is particularly important: what is important is that each player's character can do what they want and that that thing contributes to the group (ie not superfluous). Will Gemini produce that? I don't know, but I'll bet anybody a gaming night pizza run that it won't do any worse than our other games.

--BenofZongo 18:30, 2 April 2007 (MST)I think the bottom line for me is the following: 1.) I like having you at gaming Jason, and it makes me sad that while we both say that it's cool for us to have differences of opinion, I'm happy to play in your style of game, but you are not happy to play in mine. 2.) The idea that you are gaming "for our sake" galls me a bit: I want everyone in the group to have fun, and if, as Ed said, you aren't enjoying GMing, or playing for that matter, I would rather that you went with your own desires than with the group's. Hell, you'd even be welcome to come and hang out every friday, or any friday you wanted and not game if that would be more fun for you, or just play NPCs: this group has always been, and will always be as long as I have anything to say about it, a place to have the best fuckin' time with your/my friends, and that's it.

--Edmiao 19:06, 2 April 2007 (MST) HO LEE FUCK ME WITH A FRYING PAN. wow. My turn. On balance: mostly a problem in combat, sometimes my character felt superfluous in combats in some games. On Roman Dictators and Player directed plots: man, Jason must have hated the whole idea of my game, but I had fun, hope others did as well. On my Friday nights: highlight of my week, starting monday at 8am I can't wait until friday night (I love you guys!). On making things better: experiment, try stuff out, I tried to be a GM in Jin (I had fun!), ben is trying freeform gaming out in Gemini (we'll see what happens, I have reservations about game balance, but willing to go along for the ride!), Matt tried stuff out with DitV (and got the thumbs down). On the perfect game: Jason if you want to run the ideal game, Exemplars is your chance, everyone's excited and you have the power to make the game what it will be. If you run exemplars and the players are not driving the plot enough, let us drift until we find our tack or put us on the right boat and we'll find our way to something interesting. On Jason not coming to Gemini: maybe this is your big chance to actually make gaming more fun: it will force you to abandon all hope of the perfect balanced game, just show up and play the most imperfect underpowered character imaginable. In other words "let go". Cus I will cry for missing you at games every friday. and that's won't be a pretty thing.

--Jason 19:12, 2 April 2007 (MST)It isnt that I dont want to play in your style of game. I have been playing in those games for almost 3 years! It is more that I want to try something else now. Its also that my personal life is so fucking fucked up right now that I get emo way too easily. This means when I get frustrated about something, I find it very hard to concentrate on the good and ignore what upset me. I dont think anything is permanent. I also am upset with myself for being so selfish in trying to drive the games into something I wanted when its clear that the rest of you dont agree. Its better for me to chill the fuck out and let you guys do what you do. I have become more of a nuisance than a positive lately, and that hurts me. As previously mentioned, I am actually losing sleep over it.

And now back to my previously written statement.

Seems like you have contradicted yourself here. You introduce a list of characters that were unbalanced and only one of those was created in a game with parameters for generation. I also didnt say focusing on system is the only way to improve. But I did say system is important, and ignoring it by saying it isnt important is silly. Just like saying at least two others say they like balance, so lets throw that out and see what happens is. If players should be able to make any character they want, why draw cards at all? Why not let everyone just pick their card?

The reason we had those mock combats was to establish the system we needed to make the game run properly. Making characters in any system assumes that all games are equal, which they arent. So we run some combats and see what happens. Then we find what is broken so we can establish prior to actually starting the game what the rules are. Changing rules in the middle of an ongoing game is terrible. Gabe was upset about how Senju died for months afterwards because of this. The mock combats worked how they should have, we found where our framework would fail, and then found a way to repair it.

If min-maxing a balancing mechanic leads to overpowered characters, the mechanic is flawed.

Now back to a question you asked earlier (indirectly). Would it be possible for any game to be a failure? Probably the worst game we have played was my pulp game. Talk about lack of balance, that game was totally out of whack. Would anybody really say that game was a failure? Probably not, even though it was. We dont want to feel like we have wasted our time.

But if we look back and do the things we did in previous games and make that our model, we become conservative. Next thing you know we think Bush is a great president. One way to keep players engaged is to challenge them. Is there any possible way throwing balance out the window can engage (by challenging) more players?

Of course not.

A more difficult part of GMing is that players often dont know what they want. They think they do. They have this idea. But its just plain flawed.

There are three things that can determine the outcome of an encounter: luck, ingenuity and power. Balance cannot affect either of the first two, only the last. Players cannot count on luck to achieve their goals, so that leaves ingenuity and power. If balanced is enforced, power also should not be the deciding factor. This means if players are to be continually successful they must develop their ingenuity.

This is also very hard on the GM. I know Ed can out-think me 90% of the time by himself, so what are the chances of me coming up with a surprise or plan that the whole group didnt see? Close to zero. I know Im not capable of running a game I would love to play in, though I always try to do so.

When there is no balance everything seems (whether or not it actually is) arbitrary. Enemies swoop in and do things the players could never do. One player does something amazing, leaving another player thinking 'at least Im the only one that can pick locks'. I seem to remember someone being upset at how shotguns were run in PA. Their argument, if they were this good no one would use anything else. What does that mean: they were unbalanced. What would that lack of balance lead to? More min-maxing: this is always better, why do anything else. Balance hopes to achieve differentiation between situations. If you have one attack thats always the best, there is no need for another. With more balance, comes more thinking. If, however, one attack is clearly unbalancing, players will instead try and find a way to use an attack even when it doesnt make sense.

There are always going to be 'but's in any argument. Nothing is perfect. Sure, its possible for something else to exist. What possible reason is there to go backwards and give up something for something that is lesser in any facet?

--Edmiao 19:36, 2 April 2007 (MST) The reason to go back and try something lesser is to experiment and try something new and wildly different, roll with it and see what happens.

On balnce, I have to agree with Jason's comments here, I like the bit on Ingenuity > Luck or Power. Well crafted. I like balance. If a shotgun was by far the best, the players would be tempted to all use shotguns because we are our characters advocates and we want our characters to rock. It's inherrantly difficult to want your character to fail, although that might be interesting. I think ben has actually tried to craft a different balance into gemini with the rerolls/focus/path vs character points, we'll see how it works out, and have fun on the way.

Still, I think balance is not the real issue. Exemplars is the greatest effort to balance a game so far. but I think you are not inclined to run it because of game external stressors, as you have mentioned.

--BenofZongo 20:31, 2 April 2007 (MST)Once again, I agree with everything ed said, especially on the type of balance in Gemini. I also liked the bit about ingenuity.

The Next Step in Exemplars

Shoot the Midget

The Next Step in Gemini

--Dieter the Bold 01:59, 2 April 2007 (MST) Alright gents, since we're going with Gemini, how do we want this Friday to run? Gabe will make it for the Prologue, but can't stay later due to Sakura-con. So, how many times do we want to run the Prologue? Running it at least twice means we can see what everyone is thinking in terms of group set-up and let's us customize the second round. Do we also want to make the ship at the same time and run a quick adventure (rescue the ship)? Anyhoo, just wanted to get some paperwork out of the way.

--Gdaze 14:10, 2 April 2007 (MST) I would perfer we run it once, we have all done it at least once already ya know? So yeah that is my vote. Besides since we get random cards each time, I'd rather not risk loosing a high end card. (Or do we get to keep our character card?)