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Random Numbers
Commander
Joined: 12 Jan 2010
Posts: 454
Location: Gladsheim
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 Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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I think you should go for it. Me? I would never participate in such a game. For me it's the roleplaying that's the most fun. And what you are trying to do is too close to a board game for me. So what if we sometimes fail to role play our characters perfectly? It's part of the game to try to get it right. The most fun I have when I play is when the group succeeds in a good role play session and we do crazy and comical stuff together. Taking away my free choice would ruin my experience.
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14034
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | We do not require our players to know how to repair droids or starships or be doctors for their characters to have high skill levels on those requisite technical skills. We do not require our players to be crack shots for their characters to have high Dexterity. We do not require our players to actually be Force Sensitive if they play Force Sensitive characters. Why is it then such a stretch to make a decision about the character's emotional state entirely dependent on the character's personal self control, as opposed to simply leaving it in the hands of the player and depending on the nebulous concept of "good roleplaying." Good roleplaying, in my experience, is also code for "slipping in OOC information", "loading the action in favor of my character's survival", and "taking my character as close to danger as I can get without actually being in danger, so that he can accumulate more loot and XP."
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Me and you see eye to eye on this, as why it is ok to let the Stats speak for the character (say for adnd) in str, dex, or con, but let the PLAYER's intellect take over for the characters knowledge, or his common sense for willpower, or his verboseness for the characters charisma...
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Random Numbers
Commander
Joined: 12 Jan 2010
Posts: 454
Location: Gladsheim
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 8:03 pm Post subject: |
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What are you guys talking about?
A higher intelligence lets you know stuff you normally wouldn't And if it is knowledge that the GM doesn't MAKE you roll for you PLAY stupid if your character has low intelligence. That's what roleplaying is all about. The same goes for charisma and persuasion.
If you have such big problem with this I suggest that you have a serious discussions with your players.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Random Numbers wrote: | What are you guys talking about?
A higher intelligence lets you know stuff you normally wouldn't And if it is knowledge that the GM doesn't MAKE you roll for you PLAY stupid if your character has low intelligence. That's what roleplaying is all about. The same goes for charisma and persuasion.
If you have such big problem with this I suggest that you have a serious discussions with your players. |
My problem is not with my players; my problem is with a very apparent double standard. You are correct in that a character with a high Knowledge may know things that you, the player, did not. You are also correct in that a character with low Knowledge may not know things that you, the player, do. We use the dice to represent the unknown factors, the things about our characters that make them different from ourselves. That being said, why do we not provide for dice rolls to represent the ways that our characters are emotionally different from ourselves, not just physically and mentally? Why do we use the dice to decide so many unknowns, and yet leave a critical story factor like an emotional reaction at a pivotal plot moment in the hands of the player's mental faculties, as opposed to the in-game faculties of the character, who is actually the one in the emotionally charged situation?
I have heard that introducing the rule would take away from the roleplaying experience. Horse$hit. It is no less a roleplaying experience to have to accurately roleplay the result of a random roll of the dice than it is to try to come up with an appropriate action for an emotional crisis that you are not actually experiencing. In fact, roleplaying in reaction to a random roll of the dice would be more in keeping with the style of the game than less. Existing character templates offer almost no guidelines as to how a character might react in such a situation apart from whatever stuff the player may have decided to write down as his background, so there is no way to verify that the action the character takes is what the character would have done, as opposed to what the player would have done. Unknowns like that are the entire reason we have dice.
Being worried about losing control of your character is a sham excuse, because you lose control of your character every time you throw the dice. Being worried about it affecting roleplaying is a sham, because you are still required to roleplay the results of the roll; the decision is merely arrived at more honestly (i.e. without direct human intervention and bias).
As I alluded to in a very sarcastic note earlier, if you are so concerned about losing control of your characters and having the dice roll constrict your roleplaying style, then perhaps you should get rid of dice and difficulties and skills altogether and just sit around a table eating Cheetos while you discuss what you think should happen to your character tonight. The GM can serve as a glorified secretary and hand out CPs, FPs and loot at the end of the evening for all the stuff you thought up for your character to do. Seems fair; we wouldn't want you to have anything less than absolute control over your character and his life. That just wouldn't be realistic at all. 
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Random Numbers
Commander
Joined: 12 Jan 2010
Posts: 454
Location: Gladsheim
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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TTFN
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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Here's another reason why this rule works: it's fair. Maybe your group is composed of skilled and gifted roleplayers who can accurately roleplay situations like Con or Persuasion, or who can accurately and honestly roleplay their characters in Dark Side risk situation. Not every roleplayer is so gifted. As with Con, Persuasion, Control, Sense, Alter, Blaster, Starship Piloting, and all the other skills, making this subject to a Willpower roll would level the playing field for those gamers who are not quite as gifted as you and your friends, but still want to achieve a realistic roleplaying experience. It allows the character's attributes and skills to serve as a guidebook for directing the character down the path of the story, based on how the character reacts to a situation, and not the player.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Esoomian
High Admiral
Joined: 29 Oct 2003
Posts: 6207
Location: Auckland, New Zealand
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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| crmcneill wrote: | | GM: Ok, your loss of control means you burned a Force Point this round, but you only get a Dark Side point if you succeed in killing him before you can bring yourself under control. |
I can see both sides of the issue here, on one hand a player could very well refuse to say he loses control in any circumstances. On the other hand the GM can stack the deck in favour of the player losing control by applying situational modifiers and designing NPCs specifically to aggrivate the character. In both extremes there is some pretty poor roleplaying going on so meeting somewhere in the middle is probably the answer.
Personally I tend to favour letting the player have control over his own character's emotional state and if it seems he's roleplaying poorly then point it out and perhaps award less character points for a less immersive game. This however is my own opinion and I can see the place for a mechanic involving contested dice rolls.
What did shock me is that a GM would consider essentially stealing a Force Point. In my experience Force Points are rare, really really rare if you spend a Force Point in just the right way you may get it back but it's almost impossible to earn additional points. To have the GM just up and use one because of a bad dice roll seems way out of line. Similar to a GM spending a characters character points on the development of a skill without consulting with the player because the player used that skill a lot.
[tangent] Jedi characters with a fiancee are just waiting for a Dark Side lure. the Jedi are meant to avoid emotional attachments so that it's harder to tempt them to respond with anything less than a calm mind. [/tangent]
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Esoomian wrote: | | What did shock me is that a GM would consider essentially stealing a Force Point. In my experience Force Points are rare, really really rare if you spend a Force Point in just the right way you may get it back but it's almost impossible to earn additional points. To have the GM just up and use one because of a bad dice roll seems way out of line. Similar to a GM spending a characters character points on the development of a skill without consulting with the player because the player used that skill a lot. |
Well, I'm trying to work on a mechanic that covers both Force Sensitive and non-Force Sensitive for this Willpower roll. In the RAW, a non-FS character only earns a DSP if he spends a FP while committing an evil act. Ethical and moral discussion aside, I generally picture evil acts deserving of a DSP to be things like rape, murder, and other extreme forms of violence. I have yet to see a situation where a character who wasn't Force Sensitive would willingly commit such an act (after all, the GM is supposed to provide him with an ejection seat by reminding him that he will get a DSP if he goes through with it). As such, I decided to incorporate the RAW and say that, as part of his desire to kill or injure his target / taunter / tormentor/ whatever, he gives in to the Dark Side and calls on the Force, in the form of a Force Point. He gets the full attendant bonus from the Force Point, but because he lost control, he has to spend it.
The way I picture this Willpower roll is, in specific situations of sufficient provocation (likely no more than once in a campaign, and none at all for others), the character is faced with a situation where he is absolutely on the verge of boiling over and going berserk. In this situation, depending on his self-control, he can reign those emotions in, choke them down, and continue to behave in a relatively logical fashion, or he can give in and take out his fury on a target, appropriate or otherwise (the wife-beater syndrome). He may regret it and apologize later, but at that moment of release, nothing in the world feels better or more cathartic than giving in to that blind rage. In this situation, the degree of control the character has over himself is represented by his Willpower skill.
EDIT: Of course then I'd probably institute something like ZzaphodD's Will of the Dark Side rule, to represent the fact that, now that the character has let the Dark Side in just a little bit, "forever will it dominate your destiny."
| Quote: | | [tangent] Jedi characters with a fiancee are just waiting for a Dark Side lure. the Jedi are meant to avoid emotional attachments so that it's harder to tempt them to respond with anything less than a calm mind. [/tangent] |
And yet it is more common than not in the SWU. In fact, the only place we really see Jedi living a monastic lifestyle, devoid of detachment, is in the prequels. In the Republic era and on, the Jedi are essentially rebuilding their order from the ground up, so having parents, spouses and children would be the norm, not the exception. It does create attachment, but that is not strictly a bad thing.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14034
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| Random Numbers wrote: | What are you guys talking about?
A higher intelligence lets you know stuff you normally wouldn't And if it is knowledge that the GM doesn't MAKE you roll for you PLAY stupid if your character has low intelligence. That's what roleplaying is all about. The same goes for charisma and persuasion.
If you have such big problem with this I suggest that you have a serious discussions with your players. |
YES that is what we are on about.
Such as the guy playing (Again keeping it adnd) the 7 int/7 wis fighter like he is napolian in tactics..
Or for SW, the guy with barely any dice in con, persuasion and/or fast talking, but who's player is smooth as silk chatting up a storm so well, the GM's let his speach take over for the dice.
| Quote: | | (after all, the GM is supposed to provide him with an ejection seat by reminding him that he will get a DSP if he goes through with it) |
IIRC for overtly evil things the GM can skip the warning.. Same with experienced players...
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