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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 11:52 am 
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I always thought that high looks is a liability if you're captured by orcs. People with low looks score should have a chance at getting along with orcs, assuming that you are human...


http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2015021 ... -beautiful



I think you should have vast differences, a looks 18 person should have 180% or more of the starting money. Maybe they take experience points penalities... heh... and looks 18 should get 80% off on all purchases... shopkeepers should welcome them, unless the shop keepers wife runs into a female player....

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https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:32 pm 
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Kharille wrote:
I think you should have vast differences, a looks 18 person should have 180% or more of the starting money. Maybe they take experience points penalities... heh... and looks 18 should get 80% off on all purchases... shopkeepers should welcome them, unless the shop keepers wife runs into a female player....


I remember this conversation from the Yahoo Groups. Looks is very subjective, especially if you have fantasy races running around the place like ants - an elf or an orc wouldn't consider a human Looks score to be the same as an elf or orc Looks score. And different humans will react to the same person differently based on how they look - for example, some people resent beauty in others, some people admire beautiful people, some people fawn over beautiful people, and some people don't care. We could make generalisations, but that doesn't take into account PCs and NPCs' personalities, which is surely the point of a tabletop RPG (and what differentiates it from computer-based RPGs).

Also consider fantasy races - would an elf consider the appearance of another elf (or human or orc, etc.) in their dealings? Other races are, by definition, not human, and whilst D&D and Star Trek might have us believe that other races are just humans with a bit of make-up on, if you're going to use them in your games, you should make them truly unhuman (yes, I know the word is 'inhuman', but that means something other than what I want to say).

Which is why I've got rid of the Looks score altogether. What someone looks like is entirely the province of the player to decide - there are as many (but different) consequences for looking beautiful as ugly. I've found 'Presence' to be a better measure:

http://cobwebbedforest.co.uk/library/ab ... p?qs=looks

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 7:22 pm 
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Obviously, when DW was first published in the eighties it relied exclusively on in-character acting as the sole method for social dynamics. The Looks attribute, as-written, is in essence a dump stat without much practical use.

The absence of rules for Looks is not surprising given DW's lineage. These days, however, some form of social mechanics has become an "expected" part of an RPG even if it is not actually necessary within a moderated format.

It is interesting to note that there remains an extremely wide disparity of views as regards the necessity for social mechanics. The tension between "acting" versus "rules" for social encounters is a conundrum without any clear answer.

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 7:56 pm 
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Jiminy wrote:
It is interesting to note that there remains an extremely wide disparity of views as regards the necessity for social mechanics. The tension between "acting" versus "rules" for social encounters is a conundrum without any clear answer.


For me, it depends on your players. For those players with the acting skills to represent their characters fairly in social encounters, such mechanics are not necessary but, just as we have combat mechanics for players unable (or unwilling) to use their own combat skills as a substitute for their character's, social mechanics help facilitate the flow of play. A player without the confidence of a con-man character they are playing should not be penalised for choosing to play that type of character. One of the benefits of RPGs is the escapism - playing a role you do not get an opportunity to, or do not have the skills to, play.

BUT

Also only in my opinion, social encounters should not simply be resolved on the roll of a die - the roll should either inform the narrative, or the narrative should inform the roll. In the former scenario, the GM rolls the outcome secretly and then the players play out the encounter, with the GM sticking to whatever outcome was rolled (the GM adjusting the narrative to reflect by how much (or little) the roll was made or failed). And in the latter instance, play out the encounter and, based on the arguments used or other elements of the player's narrative, apply modifiers to the final roll. In each case there is value in the narrative and, unlike combat, becomes more than just about the rolling of dice.

If you want to make social encounters more like combat, you would add a new attribute (let's call it "Social Resistance") that work like Health Points and social encounters are played out in rounds - create a few social skills, a few 'special manoeuvres' and create an Attack & Defence equivalent (Guile & Conviction, anyone?) Social encounters then also start to get the same table time as combats, which might start reclaiming the RPG homeground from the murder-hobo. Of course, I'm more in favour of combat working more like social encounters - fewer dice; faster resolution; more narrative - but that's not for everyone either...

Well, I guess that's my colours nailed to the mast. Let the debate begin!

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 8:42 pm 
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Good points. All groups are different, and a middle ground can be broadly defined, but even that has no uniform focus for mechanics.

A recent video from experienced GM Tim Harper touches on this type of general issue from an acting-first perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLpmVxVcfrI

Interestingly, I believe that Tim actually ran DW for a brief time back when the Magnum Opus edition was published.

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:37 pm 
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Jiminy wrote:
A recent video from experienced GM Tim Harper touches on this type of general issue from an acting-first perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLpmVxVcfrI

Whilst I did manage to sit through the video, if he ever has to play a character that has to get to the point quickly, I hope for the sake of his fellow players that there's a mechanic in the game that he can substitute for his own ability to do so :?.

I jest, of course, he spends a mere 8 minutes to make the point that he likes games without social mechanics so players have to play through social situations. If there was anything more insightful than that buried in the video, I must have zoned out for it...

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 10:08 pm 
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Yes, he could indeed have used fewer words. :)

It does highlight the tension between acting and mechanics, though. When designing an RPG, at what point should the mechanics compromise take place - at the level of the lowest common denominator? If so, then how is that threshold determined and what are the minimum player skills that are required?

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 10:27 pm 
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Jiminy wrote:
It does highlight the tension between acting and mechanics, though. When designing an RPG, at what point should the mechanics compromise take place - at the level of the lowest common denominator? If so, then how is that threshold determined and what are the minimum player skills that are required?

You start by deciding what type of game you want the mechanics to inform. The problem with d20 systems is that the style of play is always the same - it might be a different genre, but the mechanics are broadly the same so the players' approach to play is broadly the same. Consider the difference between how earning experience in a d20 system affects your character's development against how earning experience in a Basic Roleplaying system affects your character and you see what I mean. Just as systems with a deadly combat mechanic will result in the players approaching encounters differently from if they were playing a typically cinematic d20 combat system.

Players should find a rule system that supports the style of play they enjoy, whether that's DW or not. I'm not a fan of one-size-fits-all roleplaying games because it's impossible to pull off - if you have a rule for something, you've informed how the players will play their characters, just as if you make a conscious decision not to include a rule for something you change the way the game is played.

The only right or wrong in game design is whether the game you've designed adheres to your design principles and facilitates enjoyable play in the style and genre you want. One of the things that's always prevented Dragon Warriors being a big success is, in my opinion, that the rules do not support the style of play promised in all of the background. The background is classic British folklore, but the rules are high fantasy, with playable elf characters and sorcerers throwing fire at their enemies. I love playing in the low-fantasy pseudo-dark-ages with layers of superstition and susurrations of fear permeating every bleak and grey-toned inch of Legend, but I have to break (or build on) the rules to bring that to the gaming table.

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:05 pm 
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Yes, fairly sound conclusions.

I can also see the high-fantasy issue, particularly as spellcaster rank increases, although I don't make a connection between high-fantasy and social mechanics.

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PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 6:11 am 
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Jiminy wrote:
I can also see the high-fantasy issue, particularly as spellcaster rank increases, although I don't make a connection between high-fantasy and social mechanics.


That's probably because I wasn't making one. I went off on a bit of a tangent (something I do with alarming regularity...).

My point was that game rules inform the style of play so, because of that, players that want to play in a certain genre or in a certain style should find a rules system that encourages that type of play. It wasn't a specific point about social mechanics (for which there is no right or wrong answer, just personal preference).

Then I spiralled away from the topic even further to say that what I see as the biggest thing acting against Dragon Warriors' success is that if a player chooses DW for Legend, then players could be turned off by the DW rules system that doesn't support that style of play (it works both ways, of course - some players will be lured in by the simple rules, but then be turned off by the low fantasy setting).

So... Nothing to do with Looks... :oops:

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