Well, it's settled.

[thebitterguy]

I'm a Gamist. Or Simulationist. Whatever. I ain't no fuckin' Narrativist.

To put things in reverse, pyat and I both had Wife Free evenings. So, being rather made monkeys, we decided it was the perfect time to get the gaming group together to game.

Of course, one member's in New Jersey, one member's moving, and one member's studying. So I figured the remnants (pyat, nottheterritory and myself) would try something different. So I said, let's play octaNe!

After staying up until 1 on Thursday printing it out (had to pick up Snra. Bitter from work, and she was finishing up report cards, so that delayed it a bit). That day, since there were no calls coming in, I elected to come in and work (as opposed to taking an unpaid day, or using one of my precious holidays). I ended up doing filing, which we did poorly because we stood up for teh first couple hours which strained my back a little.

So I'm tired, a little sore. Eager to run octaNe, though. So I'm reading through it at work. Wow, I think to myself again, this sure is a great setting. Neato. Cool. Hey, where's the system? Oh, here it is. "Roll 3d6, if the highest number rolled is 5 or 6, the player has control of the scene, if it's 1 or 2, the Moderator has control, otherwise they share control."

I'm sorry. I can't fucking run that. Call me names if you will, but that's not an RPG. That's a round robin writing exercise where you were all too cheap to buy paper.

So we ended up playing Halo (in anticipation of Halo for the Holidays; nottheterritory is better than he lets on) & Chez Geek.

I will run octaNe, don't get me wrong. I'll just use Savage Worlds or BESM.

End of transmission. Please don't hate me because I like rules.

Comments

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Please don't hate me because I like rules.

I hate you because you are beautiful.

No, man.

[mark-argent.livejournal.com]

I *totally* understand. That's not a system, that's a capstone. But I think you could get some mileage out of putting something like that mechanic *on top of* another system, eg at the beginning of every scene roll 3d6: 5-6 bonus to PCs, 1-2 bonus to GMCs, 3-4 no bonus, with expectation that the increased successes and failures will inspire the players and GM to increased levels of description and thus immersion. You could also do something where you reroll for "scene control" after a certain number of (exceptional?) successes or failures from the dominant side, to represent the favors of fortune tending toward one side or another. You could even tweak the range a bit depending on the nature of the scene, like Torg's division between Standard and Dramatic scenes. I happen to love little capstone systems like that; I guess that makes me a Narrative Gamist.

don't hate me because I like rules

[eddyfate.livejournal.com]

Some of the people I chat with are really into shared narrative responsibility. I can't say it's good or bad - I can say that I haven't experienced it, and I know my group would not be as interested in it (the one time I ran a playtest for a system like that, they ended up letting me as the GM just narrate everything more "traditionally"). If I get time at a con at some point, I want to give it a try, but as a designer I would agree that I tend to prefer rules (although my personal preference is a bit towards rules-light and/or rules-flexible). I will experiment with more "player power" at some point, but I think shared narrative responsibility is like sushi - some people absolutely love it, and some absolutely hate it. I don't think any one style is superior to any other.

Of course, RPG.net seems to feel differently. :-)

[ross-winn.livejournal.com]

Dude, try Wushu! (http://www.bayn.org/wushu/) You can easily learn the system in twenty minutes, and run damn near anything!

[maliszew.livejournal.com]

I do not know you.

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

rentaghurka will back me up about Chris - our mutual HALO dominating friend who has convinced me that I suck at all FPS's - although as I recall, my moment of true glory only occured against pyat as he was dealing with an usual controller, a new interface, a game he'd never played before and overwhelming grief at his forced seperation from the Hudsucker proxy...

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Sorry that should have been "_un_usual" controller. Also, I cannot spell ghurka/gurkha/gurhka to save my goddamn life.

[thebitterguy]

Actually, I remember the last game came out to 25/24 between us.

Which means you're better than you give yourself credit for, or I gotta practice.

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

There's actually more to the system than than -- check out the Hazard system.

I find OctaNe more Sim than Nar, really. It's just very focused on color. Narrative-sharing isn't always Narrativist.

But it certainly isn't for everyone, GNS aside. So it's good that you realized that style of play isn't good for you, so you won't be tempted to try it again. All the trumpeting of indie games aside, no amount of innovation or attitude can get through the fact that if you don't like a particular style of play, all the praise in the world amounts to more bread on a shit sandwich. This is muddied by the fact that a lot of people have no idea what they actually want out of a game...

[thebitterguy]

What hurts is that the setting is so cool. In that case, it's good, because it's driven me to try another game.

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

Well, I will note that the system worked fine for me when I ran it, but then my preferences lean in that direction (http://ivanhoeunbound.com/pretender.html) anyway.

[thebitterguy]

Pervert.