tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8372129876318762512.post4183962140478835680..comments2023-10-17T07:31:05.890-07:00Comments on Clean Hands, Dirty Keyboard: Helmsman's RPG PreferencesHelmsmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05248835491973291242noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8372129876318762512.post-11614439247423220582009-09-22T09:06:47.899-07:002009-09-22T09:06:47.899-07:00Hey Thoth, nice to see you over here. With comment...Hey Thoth, nice to see you over here. With commenters like you I might actually pay more attention to this blog. I'm glad the fencepost thing inspired you. <br /><br />As for narrative mechanics, personally I don't see that much of a conceptual difference in "this stat means I have the money" and "this stat means I have just the item for this situation" the ubiquitous bat-belt'esque advantage from DC heroes was an example of the the 2nd ("Quick Robin! Fetch my Bat-Shark Repellent").<br /><br />I will say that as far as implementation goes I much prefer narrative style mechanics that only influence the boring elements of everyday life rather than ones that interfere in actual gameplay. This eliminates grind for resources and other things and lets the PC's get to the interesting stuff where they have to think. Keeping cheat-based narrative rules out of things keeps everyone honest and makes the victories and defeats feel more legitimate in my opinion.Helmsmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05248835491973291242noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8372129876318762512.post-10782231925380159082009-09-22T00:10:49.333-07:002009-09-22T00:10:49.333-07:00Hm. The bit on fenceposts reminds me of something,...Hm. The bit on fenceposts reminds me of something, which I may turn into a short article. <br /><br />I must agree that Exalted is on the high end of the power curve - although there are some games (Aberrant, TORG, Amber, and others) where the characters can reach the point where they can casually create and destroy universes full of galaxies. In fact, if you want to start out as emperor of a hundred universes as large or larger than the real one, and with the ability to recreate universes on a whim, you can have it as a starting character in Amber. Oddly enough, in that setting, that sort of thing really doesn't matter much.<br /><br />I suspect that characters having sources of money, or contacts, or other background details isn't the kind of narrative mechanic that most of the gamers have in mind for that particular 1-10 scale though. For a lot of gamers, and in a lot of games, those are just simulation mechanics that haven't come up in play yet. In games like Champions they usually get purchased as a part of your characters background. <br /><br />For "Narrative Mechanics" quite a few games have options that allow the players to simply announce that the characters are now escaping from a situation, that a villain's henchman suddenly has an attack of conscience and helps them out, that this is a climactic battle and so their abilities are suddenly more effective, or that they just happen to have the item they need on them. Such things are almost invariably limited-use, but they usually have no "in the game" mechanism whatsoever; the game master simply has to justify them on the spot if he or she wants to bother doing so.Thothhttp://ruscumag.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com