
Re: Player's Edition Episode 30: Blame Canada
Chad wrote:
North Wind wrote:
I liked the "what motivates this kind of player" discussion. You could maybe explore that more in future episodes.
That's one of my favorite RPG stumps, I could totally do a whole episode about it.
I'd really like to hear that.
That was one of two parts of the episode where I disagreed hardly with you. Not with the idea that we need to help players scratch itches, but you said that the player was doing it "wrong." I don't think there is such a thing as wrong in an RPG. Nor do I think it is power gaming to create a characters 1-20 path. It gives the player an outline for the story he wants his character to have. He and the GM then fill in the details during play.
That btw is not why I want to hear the discussion, I just wanted to bring it up.
The other point was that a book full of combat meant combat was the point of the game. I had a whole argument lined up for this, but by the time I was done I had convinced myself you were right, at least about pathfinder. The point, that I still think might apply, is that combat is the most deserving of a large section. The main reason is that combat has the most immediate and often final consequences. If you fuck up in combat, your dead or at least badly injured. So you want a robust rules system so everyone thinks it's fair.
Something that I think might factor is that combat has discrete actions in a way social conflict might not. For example, A punch, thrust, 3 round burst, and chokehold are all actions that are easy to observe and separate. I feel like conversation has less of that, though it may simply be more obscured. We could define things like, laugh, smile, joke, disagree, shout, gesture, quote, ect as actions, but they aren't as separable as the above physical ones. As such defining their roles discretely may not make much sense.
What besides combat would you like to see fill a book?