:: Zelazny :: [polish] :: sparks that fly from the ironsmith's hammer ::
::. Saturday, February 1 .::
WISH 32: House Rules To what extent do you or your gaming peers use and develop house rules? Are you the kind of player who builds a system from the ground up, the kind of player who endlessly tweaks an existing game system to improve its performance, or the kind of player who uses a system out of the box? How does it affect your playing style? How does it affect the balance between rules mechanics and “pure” role-playing?
I've always jiggered the rules of any system I was using.
Not that I have to, just that I often find odd juxtipositions in any system: places that don't seem to match up properly. So I "fix them" for my games. I will use something out of the box for "common ground", or a one-shot.
Affecting my play style? It just makes me more flexible, and whether as a Player or GM, I'm fine with that. It tends to give me more "role-playing" time, since folks get an understanding that I'll change a mechanic if it doesn't seem to conform to the world-logic we are participating in. No one really wants to drudge around with systems when they can be playing... and since I've got a good track record of "fixing" things so they are workable, no one spends time "correcting my fixes". So we get more Character time and less "mechanics focus."
Perverse Access Memory: WISH 31: Challenge, Feedback, and Addiction I also have always suspected that the real problem some people have with diceless gaming is that they don’t feel like the GM will really challenge them if there isn’t some crutch structure like dice in the way. My experience is that it’s patently not true with diceless; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Without a reasonably certain statistical knowledge that your characters can hit the enemy 75% of the time, you may be a lot more careful about what you can and can’t do.
Agree muchly. I see some really cautious folks who understand that there is a larger margin for unexplained in the universe than "sure thing".
Perverse Access Memory:
WISH 31: Challenge, Feedback, and Addiction Is there any addiction to the feedback gaming provides in the weaving of stories? Unlike traditional tales, gaming allows the input of the players and GM into going “other places,” depending on the interests and desires of those involved… but can that lead to feeding the audience too much of what it likes and not enough challenge? Where in that scale do you measure?
Addiction?
Hmm. OK. Yes. From the Latin: addictus, meaning "given over," one awarded to another as a slave
Performers talk about audience, talk about holding folks "in the groove," or "in the palm of your hand". When a gaming session flies along, you certainly can get a buzz off the sense that something wonderful and unexpected is happening real-time. Like the rush some folks get from going to see their fav artist in concert being a completely different experience from recorded material.
I try not to pander to myself as a GM, or to my Players, as my partners in the game we are creating. Yet I know that every one of us has particular kinds of stories that are more interesting than others. So I often mix things, blending in story styles or plots with odd bits and pieces of other ideas. The challenge becomes addressing the new elements without getting caught in the fav story styles. This is a challenge to both GM and Player, so I think it cuts the "same old, same old" that is the staleness of under-challenging the troupe.
Where does that put me on the scale? I haven't a clue.
