anyway.

Anything on your character sheet that doesn't contribute to your participation, now or over time, is pointless.

Oh lord yes.  Why do we roll up height and weight stats in D&D?  With 3.0+, why are we keeping track of the attribute scores instead of just using the modifiers?

After my most recent fiasco with D&D, I began writing a heartbreaker to distill the "essence" of D&D and toss away the dried husk of bad design.  Lord knows how much crapola cruft I've been having to re-examine and toss.

Chris: With 3.0+, why are we keeping track of the attribute scores instead of just using the modifiers?

Min-Maxing Gamist reasons, really. It allows those who know the system and calculate that by level 20, they get 5 attribute points, to create their characters accordingly and be better off than people who didn't pay as much attention.

Of course, that's the case with all crappily created systems, so don't think I consider it a great design feature =)

Vincent: But let me suggest: you should understand Ron to be talking about character creation from the point of view of player-as-author as well. See what that does to your game design!

I'd love to hear some elaboration on this :)

- Christian

Hi Christian-

I have no problem with D&D being a min/max gaming fest- but ultimately the only reason they kept the attribute scores was to A) keep a sacred cow of D&D and B) hide the fact that its really Talistlanta's core resolution system...

Chris

I find it interesting that historians in the RPG line regularly credit Traveller with the idea of playing out a portion of character generation (with the "unique" chance of death during the process).  From this perspective (which I think is completely correct) taken just a bit toward its extreme, all of play can be seen as little more than but the extended process of character creation, the structured evolution of character from raw concept thru several "draft" states to "finished" (if because we stop adding to it) state, and death (or other radical change) being possible mid-stream is the norm.

I will admit that I once worked on a character with a GM, became so interested in a point in her background that we went back and started playing that point out and, after three years of online play, never actually caught up with the initial "starting point", having gotten completely caught up in the process rather than the destination.  The fact that we both knew that destination all the way didn't really change a thing with regards to making play any less enjoyable and fulfilling; in fact, it may well have enhanced things.

Hi Vincent,

I too would like clarification. Specifically, what do you see as being the difference between "player-as-participant" and "player-as-author?"

Ethan, Christian:

Here on the one hand, you have: the rules are about your participation in the game, as a participant. They structure who gets to say what about what, when. What should I contribute, and how should I treat others' contributions?

That's true of all rules everywhere. Even, y'know, Storyteller's.

This understanding, that the rules are social in nature, structuring your participation in a social process - it's the essential minimum understanding you need to have in order to make informed design decisions. It's a big step up from "the rules are the physics of the game world, and the GM is its God," yes, but it only seems like an important insight because the conventional wisdom is so very, very stupid.

It's the position from which you begin to learn to design, not the position from which you design well.

Here on the other hand, you have: the rules are about your participation in the fiction, as an author. They structure who creates meaning, and how.

It's easy to see that writing "I've learned how to shoot people" on your character sheet changes how you participate in creating the events of the game, as a participant. "Oh!" you can say. "Now when events are such that me shooting people is at issue, I participate this way instead of that way."

But when you see how writing "I've learned how to shoot people" on your character sheet changes what the game can mean in the lives of you and your friends, that's a whole different matter. That's not fooling around any more, that's strong stuff. Storyteller doesn't do that.

and B) hide the fact that its really Talistlanta's core resolution system...

Preach it, brother!

But when I look at Tal4 these days, I just cringe. Which is good, I suppose. It means I'm actually learning something.

"But when you see how writing 'I've learned how to shoot people' on your character sheet changes what the game can mean in the lives of you and your friends, that's a whole different matter. That's not fooling around any more, that's strong stuff. Storyteller doesn't do that."

Perhaps I'm reading too much into the example, but how is writing "I've learned how to shoot people" on your character sheet any different than filling in 3-5 dots next to the line that says "Firearms" on your character sheet?

Hello Sailor: Uh, it's not. It's what surrounds the act that matters.

I can't really tell what you're talking about.

What sort of thing could I have on my character sheet that doesn't contribute to my participation—i.e. the things you say are pointless?  Do you mean purely descriptive stuff like name, appearance, and background?  Or are you just talking about coffee stains?

On the other side, what are you saying is the strong stuff that Storyteller doesn't do?  Say I've got "Firearms ****" on my sheet—which you admit is equivalent to "I've learned how to shoot people".  Both of these could be meaningful, right?  It's what surrounds it—i.e. the content of the game—that matters.  Right?

Oops.  The anonymous comment above was me.

"What sort of thing could I have on my character sheet that doesn't contribute to my participation—i.e. the things you say are pointless?"

I dunno. Look at what's on your character sheet, and think back to the last time you rolled on it or got a modifier for it. Is there anything you've never used?

"On the other side, what are you saying is the strong stuff that Storyteller doesn't do? Say I've got 'Firearms ****' on my sheet—which you admit is equivalent to 'I've learned how to shoot people'. Both of these could be meaningful, right? It's what surrounds it—i.e. the content of the game—that matters. Right?"

No, no, not the content of the game. What surrounds "I've learned to shoot people" or "Firearms ****" is the social dynamics that the rules create.

The strong stuff is meaning.

"Firearms ****" could be meaningful, but Storyteller's rules provide no way for you and your group to make it so.

What's your name, by the way?

Oh, hey John. I assumed the anonymous post was by Hello Sailor.

V: Okay, so the important bit wasn't the writing, it was the changing of what the game can mean. That's a lot of room for change, since conventional wisdom says that players are generally free to develop their characters as they wish. Are you saying that the game mechanics should limit that scope, in order to keep the game within a certain range of meaning? If so, that's a big sacred cow to slaughter.

Oh, and everything I've said in this thread presumes that you've read my previous post, here, so anyone who hasn't, should.

Oddly enough, my name is also John. Probably just easier to call me HS.

Okie dokie, HS. Do you get what I'm talking about when I say meaning?

Hi John (Kim),

I've been using the term "markers" to refer to mechanics that allow players to indicate to the GM what they want play to be about(Sorcerer's Kickers, TROS's SAs, PTA's Issues, Dust Devil's Devils, HQ's ratings, Dog's Traits, etc.).  On a larger scale, everything serves as "markers" to the group as a whole of what play is about.

Consider soap opera D&D vs. soap opera Riddle of Steel.  D&D gives you nothing really to inspire personal conflict and emotional drama, other than the rather flat and unshifting alignment system.  For all intents and purposes, the group that gets that going on with D&D, is "freeforming".  They're flying without guidance or help to focus conflict or keep it going.  Riddle of Steel on the other hand, already sets everyone up with different goals, ideals, and relationships from SAs alone.

Likewise, Storyteller sets up a lot of politic heavy setting, but nothing structurally to assure that folks are going to really hit the political issues, interpersonal issues("Hi mom, I'm a vampire"), or even internal issues, aside from a perfunctory Good/Bad stat for each game(Arete/Paradox, Quantum/Taint, etc.).

And people wonder why we keep hitting the issues of "power players" in supposed drama games?  What we're really looking at is that most games have supported combat and kewl powers, and claimed that they support more, when in fact its been pretty words and freeforming/unstructured work on the part of groups to make it happen this whole time.

Aiyah.

I rather suspect I don't. My best guess is that "meaning" is a theme of the game. A strong theme in Dogs, for instance, is judgement.

Vincent: I dunno. Look at what's on your character sheet, and think back to the last time you rolled on it or got a modifier for it. Is there anything you've never used?
Well, my original question was about "participation"—but now you seem to have reduced this to only die rolls.  Given that, yes, there is plenty I haven't used for the purpose of die rolls.  My Buffy RPG character sheet has Dot's name on it and some description.  These have contributed to my participation in the game, but I haven't rolled on her name or gotten a die roll modifier for it.  I also have some drawbacks like "Honorable to Friends" and "Adversary: Vampires".  The same applies to them.

But by this you're implying that the only way to participate in the game is through die rolls or modifiers to die rolls.  For example, if I am at physically a game but don't make die rolls, then by definition I have contributed nothing.  I don't agree with that.

A character sheet is a piece within an artistic work.  It can and should have color.  The color may include fancy borders or a character portrait.  It can also include descriptive words—whether these are freeform prose or structured labels according to the game.  A good example from My Life With Master:  The master has a number of attributes (Aspect, Need, Want, Type) which have no bearing on the mechanics of the game, but add plenty of color to it.

The same thing applies to plenty of other mechanics.  Here's a good example: in one of my Champions games, a character ("Farslayer") was a telepath who among other powers had the power to kill virtually anyone in the world by remote mental attack.  I don't have the character sheet anymore, but it was statted out.  He never actually used it.  So by your view it was pointless.  But I contend that it was FAR from meaningless.  Quite the opposite.  That he was constantly not using it was extremely meaningful.

This is exactly the problem that I have with your approach to meaning.  It seems to me that your approach reduces "meaning" to some kind of numeric counter.  i.e. Unless there is a "meaning bonus" or "meaning rolls", then you dismiss it as just simulation which has no meaning.  I don't find that at all.  I find that extremely meaningful stuff happens even if (especially if) a player is just doing what she thinks her character would, and the group decides what happens based on what they think should logically happen.

Chris: I've been using the term "markers" to refer to mechanics that allow players to indicate to the GM what they want play to be about...

I see what you're saying, but I disagree that the games you cite are empty of markers.  D&D is actually a fairly focussed game, in my opinion.  It makes no claim to be Soap Opera—that's why it doesn't have any Soap Opera traits and its dumb to judge it as such.  It's designed as a tactical system.  On the other hand, other systems certainly do have drama markers.  In 1981, Champions brought in the idea of having the player mechanically specify enemies to fight (via the "Hunted" disadvantage), what his attachments for subplots are (via the "Dependent NPC" disad), and what his other weaknesses are.  The rules encourage pushing these.  i.e. So if I take "Code vs Killing", then the GM is encouraged to have situations where it would really help to kill someone but I can't.

I'm not saying that Champions is perfect by any means, but it certainly has markers.  I think Champions is at least as structured and focused as The Riddle of Steel is.  That is, if I just have my players put together a bunch of Champions characters—and I also have them make a bunch of TROS characters—I think it is much clearer how to create an adventure for the Champions PCs.  Roll on the Hunteds and DNPCs, mix it up a little, and the adventure is straightforward.  There are other focused games, like D&D, My Life With Master, and Dogs in the Vineyard.

I've only played Storyteller a few times, and they haven't been great, so I hesitate a little to defend it.  But from my readings, it seems like they have plenty of markers for politics.  Each character is required to choose a clan or such—and often several other choices—which places her on a side in the political game.  There are many well-defined positions (i.e. Whip, Sheriff, Harpy, Seneschal, etc.) within the hierarchy.  On the personal side, there is Nature and Demeanor.  As I recall Vampire, there are three moral traits in addition to Humanity.

Hi John,

It's what surrounds it—i.e. the content of the game—that matters. Right?

When we speak about focus in games, its about how consistantly the game hits a type of content on a regular basis.  The character sheet and the mechanic bits remind everyone at the table what focus is supposed to be about, the markers in any game(and yes, I recognize D&D has its own form of markers), tell the GM what the player's are about, etc.  These things help people hit consistant things in play.

When you don't have that, you don't get consistant "content of the game"... and that is what matters, as you say.  If you had a game that was about fighting monsters, and included zero rules for combat, and simply chalked it up to, "Well, its up to the group to make it happen..." that'd be pretty lame game design right?  If the content is what matters, you'd kind of want that to be focused, I'd hope.

When we're talking about ST, in its various games, almost always speaks of two themes- self discovery/exploration and a game specific theme ("Evil", "Ecological destruction", "Freedom of thought", etc.).  In actual mechanics, and advice given on how to structure a game- we got nothing.  Making a personal statement on anything is neither supported by picking a 2 dimensional philosophy/nature/demeanor to stick to, nor by having a prewritten plot handed to you on a plate.

My point is not that only some games have markers- I believe all games have markers, and as Vincent points out, the stuff on the character sheet is "markers" from the designer to the group about what play is about.  Just by putting relationships as a resolution factor in Dogs, Trollbabe, and HQ, it instantly makes a part of play focused on the interactions of relationships.  Having a *** Contact in WW means what?  It means "I hope the GM let's me have a NPC I can interact with... let's cross our fingers"

It has no mechanical back up(nor, in ST, much GMs advice on how to use it either), it's a prayer in the wind that the GM will use it.  In the end, might as well not be there, except as a reminder that I poured points into an empty factor on my character sheet.

So D&D, focused game?  Yes indeed.  It never claims to do Soap Opera.  ST?  It does claim it and falls short big time.  The point I'm making is pretty obvious- System matters.  All that this blog-thread right here has been is just a call to the fact that Character is a part of System.

John: I love character integrity and causality with all my heart. I'd never do anything to hurt them.

I think that the idea of a "meaning bonus" is a monstrosity; I can't imagine playing or designing a game with one.

I'm not surprised that you're still over there hitting straw men, but I'm disappointed.

If you want to have this conversation with me, you're going to have to stop shoving "seem to be implying" onto me. You're going to have to stop getting outraged over things I haven't said. You're going to have to stop treating the groundwork as the conclusions. You're going to have to stop being defensive about your play; when I say that some of your play has been less than it could have been, you're going to have to understand that I may be totally wrong, and I'm really talking about my own play, and I may be coincidentally talking about your play too.

On the other hand, there's no good reason for you to want to have this conversation with me. You enjoy your roleplaying, right? So what are you hoping to get out of this?

HS: "I rather suspect I don't. My best guess is that "meaning" is a theme of the game. A strong theme in Dogs, for instance, is judgement."

Cool!

It'll take some work and time on my part to say what I need to say, from here. Have patience!

John said,

a character ("Farslayer") was a telepath who among other powers had the power to kill virtually anyone in the world by remote mental attack. I don't have the character sheet anymore, but it was statted out. He never actually used it. So by your view it was pointless. But I contend that it was FAR from meaningless. Quite the opposite. That he was constantly not using it was extremely meaningful.

The system didn't support that. If your pointed nonuse of that power didn't give you resources, it was just a point sink. You might as well have written it down as a character note on the back of the sheet and taken the points in Aikido.

If, on the other hand, you didn't use it and got bonus points for not using it, for instance in the form of Great Responsibility dice, that would be a different thing. If, furthermore, using it would give you Great Power dice, then you have an interesting choice to make about the character on a decision-to-decision basis.

What you were doing with your character was really neat. It's something I've done: the character concept is, 'I have a tremendous power I'll never use.' For that reason, I wanted to play a dragon on the run in D&D at one point. The idea was, he'd shapeshifted into a human to get away from other dragons. He had all this awesome dragon stuff, but couldn't use it. I couldn't play that character. The system only supports balls-to-the-wall power use and increase thereof. Holding back for your own reasons doesn't do anything for you at all. You're reliant on the GM totally sharing your vision, which goes along with the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast in most systems.

John Kim wrote:
So by your view it was pointless. But I contend that it was FAR from meaningless. Quite the opposite. That he was constantly not using it was extremely meaningful.
I don't think any of us think it was meaningless, but the system of the game sure did, for the reasons Ninja J outlined.

And like Chris pointed out, if it did end up mattering in your game it was because you & your play group were enlightened enough to make it so, not because the mechanics per se helped you do so. Unless I'm missing something about Champions!

Chris: Love the term markers! I think of all the real world deely-bobs (dice, character sheets, etc) as cues. The big important ones like kickers, SA et al. are cues with big neon highlighter put on them so the gm & g_d & everybody notices that that's what the player wants to jam on. Markers, right on.

Emily is, I think, right on. It squares with Vincent's answer to me in his previous post. And it squares with the whole point of System Does Matter. It all comes down to this:

a) When the System does not support theme/meaning/premise/whatever you want from it, you can still have it—but you have to LEARN to do it yourself, and so do your fellow players, and in the end you can only get it reliably if your group is trained for it and works in perfect sync.

b) However, when the System FACILITATES, REWARDS and/or ENFORCES theme/meaning/premise/your game goals, you will get that out of it much more reliably, even with untrained/unsynchronized players and new groups.

So, John Kim, you're a highly trained and sophisticated player, judging from your web site and your relayed experiences. You know what you want and you play it, whether the System mechanically supports it or not. That's great. Many of us are not as trained or skilled, however, and we'd like our games to help us out a little more.

- Christian

First of all—to all four of the prior posters—I am absolutely 100% down with "System Matters".  I have seen it in action again and again.  Lousy or inappropriate systems don't completely doom a game, but they sure do drag it down.  By and large, I'm fine with Storytelling system bashing.  I have limited experience but what I have seen is largely sucky.  On the other hand, bashing (say) Champions or Ars Magica or James Bond 007 will get me to object.

Ninja Hunter J wrote: The system didn't support that. If your pointed nonuse of that power didn't give you resources, it was just a point sink
...
If, on the other hand, you didn't use it and got bonus points for not using it, for instance in the form of Great Responsibility dice, that would be a different thing.

OK, here is where I completely disagree.  This is exactly my objection to Vincent of reducing meaning to bonus dice.  Meaning comes out of the narrative, not from the labels which are attached by the system.  In my opinion, the system did support my example.  Champions has a hideous learning curve as well as some other faults, but once you can get players creating their own powers, it is excellent at supporting meaningful narrative within its niche.  (Obviously, in my opinion.)

Once again, in case anyone is reading me wrong—I am not saying that any system is good for this.  There are tons of systems which are terrible at this.  And I don't inherently reject the idea of Great Responsibility dice.  But the proof is in the pudding.  Just having Great Responsibility dice doesn't mean that the system supports meaningful narrative.  Nor does lack of them mean that the system does not support meaningful narrative.

Emily Care wrote: I don't think any of us think it was meaningless, but the system of the game sure did, for the reasons Ninja J outlined.

Of course the system of the game thought it was meaningless.  Meaning comes from humans, not from system labels.  The question is, did the system support creating a narrative which has meaning to the humans?  My answer is yes, it absolutely did.

Superheroics is a great genre because everything is so richly symbolic.  By creating a superhero with a name, costume, and powers, you are engaging in the creation of meaning.  So, say, when Ron made Farslayer, or Joe made Archetype (who channeled ideals of social roles), or Craig made Statuemaker (who teleported by making bodies out of material that was there), or Ingrid made Nicole (a girl with an invisible friend), they were all rich with meaning.  This was driven by the Champions system.  They also got to engage by defining who their subplots were and who their enemies were.  That's from the system.

Vincent wrote: On the other hand, there's no good reason for you to want to have this conversation with me. You enjoy your roleplaying, right? So what are you hoping to get out of this?

Well, I'm here because I'm interested in what you say.  For example, I've got a copy of Dogs in the Vineyard beside me, and I've been trying to organize a game of it.  I enjoy much of my role-playing—but I nevertheless want to try out new varieties and hear other points of view.  That's why I went to Knutepunkt in Norway, for example.  I'm at least hoping not to be closed to new ideas.

However, when things which you say clash with my experience of games I enjoyed, then yes, I'm going to express disagreement.  I have a fair intersection with you on many points—I despise the total-GM-control / linear-plot track that role-playing got into, particularly in the 90's.  I think that mainstream tabletop games today are in a rut, and really have been by and large since around 1990.  But I expect I will disagree with you on some other points.

Hi JK,

Wow, that was a very literal interpretation of my words!

Superheroics is a great genre because everything is so richly symbolic. By creating a superhero with a name, costume, and powers, you are engaging in the creation of meaning. So, say, when Ron made Farslayer, or Joe made Archetype (who channeled ideals of social roles), or Craig made Statuemaker (who teleported by making bodies out of material that was there), or Ingrid made Nicole (a girl with an invisible friend), they were all rich with meaning. This was driven by the Champions system. They also got to engage by defining who their subplots were and who their enemies were. That's from the system.
i>
So you were supported by the specific rules & mechanics of the game in creating characters that were engaging and had elements that mattered to you & the other players. ie they were meaningful.

Oh, sad. The whole thing is in italics. Darnit.

Attempt to fix.

It worked. Carry on...

Emily, I agree with you.  My problem was with Ninja's assertion that "the system didn't support that".

Anyhow, to your questions...  I'm sensing you're not familiar with Champions.

The game mechanics support the expression of character by encouraging use of it.  Powers aren't just symbolic color during character creation—they are actively used during the game.  The creation process defines in precise game-mechanical terms how the powers work, and they work reliably.

Like many comics, Champions is violent.  Adventures are set up as fights with various enemies, who are created using the same system as PCs.  It is character-centric.  (Where D&D has dungeon modules with maps and rooms, Champions instead has books of villains.)  However, the game mechanics also specifically encourage commentary during a fight ("soliloquys" in Champions terms).  Now, it is very stylized, which is both a weakness and a strength.

The subplot/relationship mechanics in Champions are the "Hunted" and "Dependent NPC" disadvantages.  The player takes the disad, specifying an NPC with a given frequency (expressed as a roll chance), and the GM then rolls on the frequency at the start of the adventure to see if they are to appear.  So it's not Scene Framing per se—the relations are required to appear at some point during the adventure, but there's no particular requirement as to when or how.

This reminds me of Chris' statement about Storyteller contacts being a "prayer in the wind" that the GM would use them—which seemed odd to me because the same was true of many other games.  For example, as I understand it, in Dogs, there is no mechanical requirement for relations to appear in the game.  i.e. As a player in Dogs, I can create my character with dice in a relationship.  However, I cannot force that relation to be important in the adventure or even to appear at all.  I don't see anything wrong with this, actually.

Champions does provide a concrete method for the Hunted/DNPC to at least appear.  It doesn't modify die rolls with respect to the NPC—but I find that isn't vital.  When a Hunted/DNPC appears, the player is generally happy to interact with it.

But I don't want to completely hijack here.  But getting back to the topic of the thread:  I agree 100% that stuff that doesn't contribute to your participation is pointless.  I disagree that stuff which doesn't get rolled on or provide modifiers is pointless—because stuff can contribute to meaning without being a die roll or die roll modifier.

I agree 100% that stuff that doesn't contribute to your participation is pointless. I disagree that stuff which doesn't get rolled on or provide modifiers is pointless—because stuff can contribute to meaning without being a die roll or die roll modifier.

The problem isn't that things that don't add modifiers or such are totally meaningless.  We can always add meaning to anything.  It's that they're meaningless with reference to the rest of the designed system, and that any meaning that is ascribed to it is effectively arbitrated by the players without any guidelines. I'm having exactly this trouble with something in the game I'm designing, simply because I can't think of how to connect it to the rest of the system.  It's not a problem that the players get to do it - it's just a problem that the system is, essentially, not all one piece.

Does the system have to be all one piece?  I mean, you're right, things like the Master's Aspect, Need, Want, and Type are disconnected from the part of the system which is die rolls.  At least, there is no direct mechanical interaction.  I don't see that as inherently a bad thing.

The fact that these traits don't feed directly into die rolls doesn't make them useless fluff that gives no guidelines.  They are still rules, and when followed they guide play.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that all role-playing systems are going to have non-directly-interacting pieces.  Even if every capitalized term in your rulebook feeds back into die rolls, I think the larger system that is actually played will have parts that are not die rolls and thus non-directly-interacting with the rules which you wrote down.

Hi John,

I've been following this conversation. I don't think we really want to get hung up on whether or not Champions specifically does what Vincent's talking about. I'm going to try to generalize it a little bit.

First, I agree with your assessment of Hunted and DNPC to an extent. It's written right there in the rules that the GM should make that roll, and if it's a certain value, that NPC should show up that session. (I think I remember a caveat that the GM should feel free to not make the roll if it wouldn't fit in the current adventure, though, which makes it a little stronger than the Storyteller Contact example, but not all that different.) But I think it's a little different from player participation, in that the player's not saying "...and then my DNPC shows up." They know it'll happen eventually.

Compare that with the equivalent DNPC "disad" in The Shadow of Yesterday: You get XP every time you're in a scene with the person, and more if protecting them causes your character difficulty. The difference I see here is that the player is the one invoking the mechanic. They're going to actively seek out this person, spend time with them, and protect them.

I'm seeing in your posts in this thread that when other people say System, you're reading that as "the rules plus the social context of the group". I mean, yeah, in one sense I can say "Duh, having empty points on your character sheet is meaningful" (I've played plenty of Champions), but the rules as written aren't giving you anything for that. The rules are giving you and the group a chance to go "Yeah, I see what you're doing there." When I hear you say "stuff can tribute to meaning without being a roll or modifier," this is how I read it. It's meaningful as a data point even though it's not a part of the game mechanics.

I contrast that with the Great Responsibility dice example, where you're taking what you and your group are doing with the rules (the idea that not exercising a capability displays restraint and responsibility) and writing it into the rules themselves. The player's not relying on the group to get what he's doing by inference—he can call upon something in the book to express that he's exercising restraint and responsibility.

(As an aside, we should probably drop Hero system as a reference—I just realized that the construction kit approach encouraged by them, where the group's idea of "how to build" is so entertwined in the rules as written, is making this really confusion.)

Finally, about Dogs. This makes me think you really may be missing something, because this wasn't confusing to me at all. Relationship dice can be incorporated into a conflict whenever they're relevant, whether or not the person is present. (I don't think they even have to be alive.)

So in most games, if I'm consoling a grieving widow, and I tell her "You know, my brother died when I was a child, if you want to talk about it, I think I can relate," that's meaningful, but it's just color—it's up to the people at the table to decide how that's relevant. In Dogs, it was a Raise using the relationship. It was using stuff on your character sheet.

I realize "rules + social context" is hard to separate from "rules alone", because when we're playing there's a social context there. I'm trying to say that your examples are largely being injected into the game by the social context, while in Dogs they're injected by the rules.

Hi John,

What Dogs supports mechanically that doesn't appear in many other games:

1) NPC usefulness
If you want to get useful information out of a character, its all about a conflict roll and it happens.  The rules do not support the GM stonewalling players, whether we're talking friendly or unfriendly ties.  In ST, you could have a contact who never actually is helpful, while here you get a guaranteed chance that your relationship will be useful.

2) Cycling relationships
If the GM decides that an NPC will never show up again, no problem, the resolution system makes it very easy to pick up new relationship traits to any NPCs who are relevant and current to the situation.

3) Thematic statement by way of relationship
Whenever you declare you're making a relationship trait, or changing it, you're saying the table something very meaningful.  "Doesn't think much of Brother John", "Jealous of Sister Truth", all these things say a lot about your character as much as the situation.

Now, when we step to ST, or most other games with contact/relationship type things, they're basically advantages or disadvantages, not a focus of play.  They're also not mechanically backed to be useful, nor easy to change.

If we're looking at superheroes specifically, heroes and villains are very often changing sides, falling in love with the opposition, being redeemed, going evil, breaking teams, forming new ones, etc. etc.  I don't know Champions, but in GURPS the only way to do this is to have the GM fiat the points flowing and shifting back and forth- there are no hard rules for constantly shifting Allies, Enemies, Dependents, and developing new ones on the fly.

If my game group does this, that doesn't mean GURPS facilitated this in any way... it may mean it didn't get in the way, but it didn't help either.  The work of actually getting a focus on relationships was on us, not the system.  I could end up taking my character, the Redeemer, with all of his relationships and such to another GURPS Super game, and it all means nothing.  More than that, all the stuff that my old GM fiated about forming and reforming new relationships doesn't happen here.

Going back to the idea of a game that doesn't have rules for combat- it doesn't get in the way of combat occurring in play either, it just does nothing to help or facilitate it.  The extreme position of this is the argument for freeform ("The rules can't get in the way"), which is true while ignoring the fact that there is nothing to help the focus of play.

Okay, that's enough of me trying to facilitate. I want to talk about the topic as Vincent posted, before we got into a couple of pages of trying to understand it.

Vincent, I totally agree with you. When I read Dogs, I went, "Holy shit, the players only put down stuff that matters to them on the sheet, and then those are the resources they have to solve conflicts—they can't avoid those issues." It tickled my brain the same way HeroQuest did, except it even more to the point, because it was like looking down at your character sheet for augments, except you have to do it.

When I read Sorcerer at first, I figured it was a nice little rules-light engine. But when we got together to make characters for a campaign, I started realizing that everything on the sheet meant something, not in the sense of properly recording some element of the shared imaginative space, but in terms of the theme. Everything on that sheet addresses how your character's screwed their lives up in the pursuit of power. (Yeah, it sounds like Stamina isn't relevant, but point allocation plus descriptors leave you with things like "Yeah, he's a weak, bookish person, because he stays in all the time and pores over old tomes" or something.)

Also—the back of the Sorcerer character sheet is not optional. It's just a diagram of things in the PC's life, organized roughly by importance and category, so you can certainly generate a PC without it. But I couldn't actually finish constructing the game (Bangs and such) until they were filled out. I had players giving me five pages of backstory that helped far less than that one diagram. And if they update the diagram, moving things to positions of greater or lesser importance, I am supposed to adjust my future Bangs to suit.

So I'm totally on board with what you're talking about, and I'm hoping we can talk less in this thread about what this is and whether it exists, and more about how to do it. Because now that I've done it, I say, screw the other systems, I'm only playing like this from now on.

Vincent, I think I get what you're saying, but with all the varied opinions, it's hard to sort out for sure.

It's not about mechanical interaction, or rolling, or any of that stuff.  It's about how you use the elements of your character to contribute to the game.  If you can't use them to contribute to the game then they're a waste of space and mental energy.

But contributing does not necessarily mean having the character do something.  When you have a "Kill anyone from any distance" power, not using it is doing something to the story.  You, the player, are using that ability to contribute meaning, even though your character is, quite literally, doing nothing.  You're using the ability to make your spectacular restraint more meaningful than the mere laziness of the other guys.

Matt Wagner did a wonderful comic book series called "Mage", wherein he gave a guy immense power, and the guy refused to use it.  But the presence of the power, the opportunities he was passing up, all of that drew other people into an intricate web around him.  To quote a character from the story:  "While others all around you fight the battles and move the stones you belittle their achievements by your own clamorous inactivity."

I have had many, many characters who had combat skills that I used hundreds of times in every session.  And I would argue that for many of them, those combat skills did absolutely nothing to allow me to contribute meaning to the story.  I was participating, but not in any way authoring.

Hi Andrew,

Right, it's not just what's on the sheet, it's what's not on the sheet as well.  What's on the sheet is what matters, what's not on the sheet is what doesn't matter, is what a character sheet conveys.  If you have a column that lists the weight of everything you're carrying, then that means weight and encumberance matter.  If you don't, then that means it doesn't really matter to the focus of the game.

5 pages of backstory?  Who knows!  Small chart to scribble key concepts to character?  Boom- focused and clear.

That's why Dogs traits work better for making a clear idea about a character more than the massive list in HQ.  In HQ, it requires a bit of finangling and experience with the system and your players to know what traits they're calling out as markers, and which ones are just there.  And likewise, that's why other games with less stuff on the sheet can get much more focused play going on, because there is less and less of a chance that the group might think play is about "Drive Auto 73%" instead of "Investigate Nameless Horror 24%"

John Kim: "I agree 100% that stuff that doesn't contribute to your participation is pointless. I disagree that stuff which doesn't get rolled on or provide modifiers is pointless—because stuff can contribute to meaning without being a die roll or die roll modifier."

Cool! We agree. We've agreed all along. I don't understand why you thought otherwise; it's hidden to me inside the "seem to have" part of your "you seem to have reduced this to only die rolls."

How about this, going forward? When I seem to be implying something stupid, assume that I'm not actually implying it, and reread me to figure out what I might really be saying.

Everybody: Player-as-participant is rudimentary, but we have to get it before we can move on to the real stuff. I'll make a post about it; I hope it'll be like "oh, cool, yeah, let's move on." But give me into the week.

Andrew Norris wrote: Relationship dice can be incorporated into a conflict whenever they're relevant, whether or not the person is present. (I don't think they even have to be alive.)

So in most games, if I'm consoling a grieving widow, and I tell her "You know, my brother died when I was a child, if you want to talk about it, I think I can relate," that's meaningful, but it's just color—it's up to the people at the table to decide how that's relevant. In Dogs, it was a Raise using the relationship. It was using stuff on your character sheet.

I find this very strange.  To me, the GOAL is what you call "just color".  That's the meaning of the game.  The meaning is always determined by the people at the table, never by the rules.  Yes, the rules can attach labels to parts of the narrative.  If those helps generate meaningful events, then great—but the labels on the character sheet aren't the meaning.  The meaning is what the real people at the table actually feel.  Real people can and do feel things even if there is no character sheet.

To me, the mechanics are a means to that end.  The stuff on the character sheet is there to help generate that "just color".  I haven't played Dogs yet, but I'll buy that a short list of Dogs-style traits helps create color in the game.

On the other hand, I know that other methods work, too.  I spent a lot of time on the character sheets in my Vinland game, and I think they worked pretty well.  They were not a summary of issues, they were part of the grounding—part of what made the events feel real and immediate to the players.  Very deliberately, everything on the main character sheet was physical, practical, or prosaic.  This most certainly helped support the themes of the game.

- John

P.S. Rules quibble: I don't follow your example.  In order to raise using a relationship with a person, you need to have rolled relationship dice.  That requires one of (a) the person is your character's opponent; (b) the person is what's at stake; or (c) the person comes to your character's active aid in a conflict.

Vincent wrote: Cool! We agree. We've agreed all along.

That's cool, Vincent.  But I still have an outstanding question about this rudimentary part—it was my question from before:

What sort of thing could I have on my character sheet that doesn't contribute to my participation—i.e. the things you say are pointless? Do you mean purely descriptive stuff like name, appearance, and background? Or are you just talking about coffee stains?

John,

I think the "Well, what have you not used in a roll recently?" was a poor and confusing answer, but the larger principle is fairly obvious: whatever has not affected the game recently. If your character's eye color has affected play recently, then it matters. If it hasn't, then it is unnecessary to have it written down. Of course, your question is difficult to answer in any detail, since it would require knowing the specifics of a particular game and a particular character.

Personally, though, I'm not sure that "recently" is necessarily relevant. If the game is extremely focused, and doesn't have the possibility of shifting focus over time, then "recently" may equal "ever", but in a game that shifts focus, it may be very important that your character can cause small troops to lose their confidence and flee in terror, even though there has never yet been a need to drive off enemy troops. If, for instance, there are political issues relating to starting a war with a neighboring country going on in the background, what your character knows he could do eventually informs what he does now in the political game.

I think that a more useful way to think about it is not "What is on your character sheet that you don't use?" but instead, "What do you use that isn't on your character sheet?" If your character sheet includes a lot of irrelevant stuff, that probably won't hurt play much. If your character sheet doesn't include a lot of stuff that matters, then the mechanics of character creation (to the extent they are represented by what you end up with on a character sheet) are failing to support the stuff that matters. Even worse is if there is stuff on your character sheet that is wrong, if the game doesn't include mechanics for changing the representation of your character as your character evolves.

I guess the other question is what stuff is there on your character sheet that you use, but that muddies the game by being there. To use someone else's example, if everything your character owns is listed out by weight, then encumberance is likely to come up in play, even if resource allocation issues relating to encumberance aren't actually something the players find particularly interesting to play.

Actually, isn't all of this somewhat of a side-tracking from the central idea (as I took it) that character generation should be strongly tied to change in play: that the character should be created as something changeable rather than something static, and that char gen should fopcus on those things that the game will focus on changing? That play should be viewed as a process of character creation, and character creation as a process of play?

D&D is actually a particularly strong and focused example of this. Except for the core framework of stats, there is very little on a D&D character sheet that is not directly tied to what changes about a character over time. A character at first level and the same character at 10th level will have radically different character sheets. And the core framework of stats is central to what happens in play, which determines what changes.

What it does with a character over time may not be interesting to many of us who don't play D&D anymore, but that is a seperate question.

In my defense, "what haven't you rolled?" was an honest question intended to narrow down the possibilities, it wasn't my answer.

Sorry, I didn't mean my comment as a slap. Your question did come across as an answer rather than a question to me (and it pretty clearly did to John as well), but I'm not quite sure why. The perils of informal written communication, I guess.

John, do you think the question of what should be on my character sheet is a better question than what shouldn't be on my character sheet? My problem with what shouldn't is that almost anything that you could put on a character sheet might be useful at some point, so it is very hard to say that it definitely shouldn't be there.

Just a quick note from reading only the start post.

If you were more hardcore gamist you'd see this more clearly. Your assigned a bunch of resources, which enable you to gain other resources. Any resources that are assigned to you that don't enable this are - a - waste - of - time.

When your in 'explore the character' mode, your not letting yourself stone cold see what's a waste of time. You need to take off the SIS/IS goggles.

It's kind of ironic SIS exploration design advice; that you should stop exploring the game world if you want to have a design that does a better job of exploration.

Hi.  Sorry if I read too much in your reply, Vincent.  It seems like we're in agreement on broad strokes but probably disagree in more of the nitty-gritty.

Charles—I'm interested in your points, but I think this is probably a sidetrack to comments on Vincent's post.  So I've made a Forge thread to continue discussion: "The place of character sheet and die rolls within play".  If you're interested in further discussion that would be a good place to continue.

John, very cool, thanks.

Maybe what we keep bumping into is a difference between a design aesthetic and a play aesthetic. Good advice to a designer can be irrelevant or wrong to a player.