10 by 10 room

What Neil is going to say tonight is “Do NOT put anything down on the sheet that the PLAYER does NOT want to explore.” In other words, while it may be cool that Bounty the Cosmic Head Hunter has a vicious hunted herself… if the player is NOT interested in being pursued relentlessly… don’t put it down.

On the Forge, Storn creates a Character Prompting Cover Sheet and it seems like a fantastic idea. It basically defines a layer above what the “character” is like in the world, and directly addresses what the players want in the game.

“I think if it were printed on cheap paper and spiral-bound, those Forge kids would clamor up and down and call it revolutionary and a step forward in rules for story-telling, even though it’s been around forever.” – Clinton R. Nixon (Forge co-founder) grabs Pendragon 5th ed (by White Wolf)

Folk were talking about possibly adding “roleplaying bonuses” to Dogs in the Vineyard”, but the consensus was that the Social Contract among players was where a problem was really at. DannyK’s interpretation:

The price of a stripped down, narratively driven system like the DitV system is that the system doesn’t provide as much protection against asshats. That’s common to a lot of Forge-baked games. You could narrate your character god-modding and killling everybody n Chicago in hand-to-hand combat in a PTA game, and there’s nothing but the contempt of your fellow players to stop you.

Does that make them bad games? Of course not. It just means you have to be careful who you play them with. “Will allow you to play with asshats” is not a very good design goal for an RPG.

But really, Brand reminds us:

Of course, this is the same with D&D.

GM: “The orc comes swinging his sword at you, what do you do?”

Player: “I tell him I like toast”—player pushes forward a natural 20 and grins.

GM: “The fuck?”

Player: “I like toast with a natural 20. That’s critical toast liking.”

GM: “Right… the orc ignores your toast liking and kills your ass. Go roll up a new character.”

Of course there’s still a need to put more structure onto the rules / pre-existing social contract, rather than straining the ad hoc social contract further. But dude: toast.