"FRPG vs Sci/Fi/Fantasty books/novels (revisited)"

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Llevram (5022 posts) Mar-09-00, 08:31 PM (Pacific) "FRPG vs Sci/Fi/Fantasty books/novels (revisited)" Well, I finished off The Lord Of The Rings the other day. Maybe I was expecting too much, given the build up and reputation it had. Or maybe it seemed lacking because I've read most of it before, in the form of other authors stories (i.e. I think I know where Terry Brooks got his "mold" from ). Don't get me wrong, I really liked it I guess I was just expecting something more/different/???. But, revisiting the original question, I came across one other thing that I originally thought of as a difference, though now I'm not so sure: destiny or pre-ordained events. Not so much "you have to find this key to enter this door" but moreso, the underlying major plot points, like killing (or not killing) a key character. In this light, Gollum was the one that really caught my eye. *somewhat a spoiler for those that haven't read the book* Try as they may, no one could bring themselves to kill him, though many felt he deserved it. And as it turns out, had anyone killed him, the ending would have been quite different. It was as though there he was destined to fulfill a task and some higher power was ensuring it would happen. *end of spoiler* So, making sure all the necessary pieces are still on the board, at the end of the game is easy (well as easy as writing a novel I suppose) for the Fantasy novelist. Every time someone thinks of doing the "wrong" thing, the have an inspiration for why not to, or some other event forces them to do otherwise. I see the real challenge in the FRPG and how you control this w/o making the player feel like they don't have control to make their own decisions. Under this current light, I have more respect for Wiz 7 (and to a slightly lesser extent, Star Trails). Given the ending you are cast into, I never felt constrained as to how I got there. And since it (Wiz 7) is part of a series, we are lucky enough to even have "there" (the ending) not always be the same. Meanwhile my books from Australia have arrived, but I have no time to start reading them Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit   Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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RE: FRPG vs Sci/Fi/Fantasty books/novels (revisite..., DrSlop, 10:06 AM, Mar-10-00, (1) Not how I thought of handling it ..., Llevram, 11:44 AM, Mar-10-00, (2) RE: Not how I thought of handling it ..., DrSlop, 04:36 PM, Mar-10-00, (3)

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DrSlop (297 posts) Mar-10-00, 10:06 AM (Pacific) 1. "RE: FRPG vs Sci/Fi/Fantasty books/novels (revisited)" Yes -- but this is what I've been trying to say all along about the difference between crpgs and table-top games. Table-top games are truly "story-telling" games in the sense that you have a DM that can always come up with creative ways of keeping you from messing up his story -- even to the extreme degree of (if, say, LoTR was pen and paper campaign), when the player playing Frodo decides to attack Frodo, the DM can say something like: "you raise Sting in a flash of rage, but as its cold light bathes Gollum's pathetic figure, you're arms falls to its side, useless." Surely, this has do be done with a lot of care, since you wnat to give the players autonomy, but since i use this "over-riding" technique in my campaigns so sparingly, when I do use it, it creates a great moment, since the player then becomes curious about his own character: what is it about his character that he does know but which keeps him from killing gollum? In other words, the characters become full psychological entities. Now, if the player were to insists that he fights against his instincts and forces himself to cut gollum in half, I'd (probably) allow the action, but have the character suffer deep psychological scars that will impede him and lead to a whole other (unforseen) series of quests. My point is that I can be dynamic, and thus maintain the sense that the characters are "fated" to become what they become while still giving them autonomy. In essence, rather than forcing the characters into a "fated" path, I can constantly change the world/story around in order to make it seem that it was fated for the characters. In a crpg, however, there really is no way to do this well, since the monsters/world can only react TO THE CHARACTERS, and what's more, they have to do it in predetermined ways. In other words, the characters are the only ones that can change the way the world works, there's no DM to change the world for them. This means that, in order to tell a story, there will always be a certian sense in which the characters are forced into a specific path, and this will always, to some degree, feel more like "following rules" than role-playing. Both are fun, but one is fun because its entirely about "playing by the rules" (in essence, beating the system) whereas the other is fun because its all about having no absolute rules, adn just telling a good story together. I think I've done enough rambling for today. OE   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Llevram (5022 posts) Mar-10-00, 11:44 AM (Pacific) 2. "Not how I thought of handling it ..." It's funny how one-tracked my mind is sometimes. When thinking about "what if X wants to kill Y", I thought go ahead and let him. Then I will introduce Z later on, who will now bear the unfullied burden/prophecy/task that Y left unfinished. Of course, I was thinking more in terms of a CRPG than table-top. I do like your idea better, to a point ... that being, as you said, you eventually let X kill Y, but they pay for it. Where you "draw the line" on how many attempts before you let X kill Y though, may sit different with different players (2 attempts, 5, 10). To do it my way would require a heck of a lot of "stock" characters or events to handle the permutations. Of course an alternative is to have Y avoid the attack and get away, but after a while, you would (rightly) suspect that you are not being allowed to do what you want. Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

DrSlop (297 posts) Mar-10-00, 04:36 PM (Pacific) 3. "RE: Not how I thought of handling it ..." The other great thing about table-top rpgs is that you generally know the players and are more or less friends -- I've played with about the same group of people for about 10 years now (though its no longer so much table-top as IRC gaming) -- which lets you really tailor the game to match them. I know just how much I can push each player until they start to feel that the character is no longer theirs -- and for each player its different. Some really enjoy playing a character as a character in a novel, and therefore enjoy it when I take more control over it -- it gives them the feeling that the character has a depth which it is part of the game for them to discover... for them, I often describe their character's internal states. Some of my other players (one in particular) really likes to play his character as if he's playing himself, and so to him I pretty much give free reign without any editorializing about how their character feels. This kind of subtelty is, of course, beyond the realm of a crpg. OE   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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