thread: 2009-06-15 : Lazy Play vs IIEE with Teeth
On 2009-06-16, Guy Srinivasan wrote:
Thanks a lot Vincent, you just made me re-read the play procedures of like 7 games. Some notes:
D&D 4e - non-DM players do not ever call for skill checks. If it looks like they do, it is just the player suggesting something to the person who is DM. "I roll Diplomacy to make the goblin let us through the gate" is a borderline incoherent statement. But if you say it, and roll, and the DM agrees, the game "just chugs along".
Burning Wheel - when a player is about to roll, how do we know which ability she will use? Answer: either it is obvious to everyone involved, or the player must go into more detail about how she plans to have her character accomplish the stated intent until it is obvious to everyone involved. If it's not obvious but (say) the GM ends up deciding, that indicates a disconnect that would be better dealt with, but the game just chugs along anyway.
PTA - what's at stake is not the outcome of a bit that determines which of two possible branches we go down, it is the future of an in-game set of fictional objects or relationships between objects. So a reputation can be at stake. The trajectory and results of a bullet can be at stake ("does your shot hit him?"). The behavior of your family at the dinner table can be at stake. What cannot be at stake is something like whether your bullet hits him or he escapes - it is possible that sometimes it's clear to everyone if your bullet does not hit him, the narrator will narrate his escape, but what's at stake should include only the trajectory and results of bullets, or the escaping of the victim, not both at once. (Unless there are 2+ protagonists of course, but that just means multiple things at stake.)
