Open Sheets?
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What do you think? Should +sheets be open for people to look at? All of it? Or just the public stuff like how on @arx you can +sheet a person and it'll pop out some of the publicly available social knowledge of them, but you won't see their stats or their secrets.
ETA: Why are there two of the poll up???
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Clarify for what type of game, maybe? My answer is not one size fits all.
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@sunny
Yeah my answer is pretty heavily 'it depends', though I'm more pro open sheet than not. They work well on PvE games and I've enjoyed the ease they give PrP runners in environments like Fara's FS3 games. There are obvious issues in any kind of environment where you're supporting PvP though. -
@sunny said in Open Sheets?:
Clarify for what type of game, maybe? My answer is not one size fits all.
Well, for games in general, I suppose? But for me-- specifically for Sacred Seed (Fantasy Lords & Ladies / Intrigue).
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@cobaltasaurus
How much PVP do you intend for there to be?
I literally have no answer for 'games in general' beyond 'it depends'. Specifically for Sacred Seed, if you're planning on discouraging PVP completely, then I think Open Sheets are the best. If you're going to allow any PVP at all (including allowing for political action against one another for rank/reputation) then semi-open.
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Yeah I answered based on the idea of Sacred Seed having a lot of political L&L stuff. I also don't have an answer for "games in general" because it really depends on the type of game.
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I would go with completely open for most games, but leave that to the mechanical bits on public knowledge stuff on the characters.
But have it so things like IC secrets etc could be kept from public view, i really like having the mechanical bits open to view because it makes running PRPs so much easier, the big down side is how this impacts PVP though so I can see some reluctance in some genres.
For example every superhero game I have been on has had completely open sheets but are also consent based so PVP is not an issue. -
@sunny said in Open Sheets?:
@cobaltasaurus
How much PVP do you intend for there to be?
I literally have no answer for 'games in general' beyond 'it depends'. Specifically for Sacred Seed, if you're planning on discouraging PVP completely, then I think Open Sheets are the best. If you're going to allow any PVP at all (including allowing for political action against one another for rank/reputation) then semi-open.
I think full transparency is a great thing for PvP games as well - as it removes any appearance of wrongdoing, favoritism ("staff like X so they gave him more stuff"), etc.
To put it a different way, a bad player will figure out a way to deduce information using OOC means one way or the other. They'll analyze someone's dice in PrPs, ask innocent sounding questions and file the answers away, etc.
Open sheets ought to flatten the field and remove a vector I always thought was ineffective - the OOC masquerade - from the equation completely.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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My issue would be more tied to IC secrets and full backgrounds than mechanics. There's stuff I think is just more fun to reveal in play. I've had generally good experiences on open sheet games and think they solve a lot of problems, but I haven't become a blanket 'these are the best in every situation' person.
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@arkandel said in Open Sheets?:
@sunny said in Open Sheets?:
@cobaltasaurus
How much PVP do you intend for there to be?
I literally have no answer for 'games in general' beyond 'it depends'. Specifically for Sacred Seed, if you're planning on discouraging PVP completely, then I think Open Sheets are the best. If you're going to allow any PVP at all (including allowing for political action against one another for rank/reputation) then semi-open.
I think full transparency is a great thing for PvP games as well - as it removes any appearance of wrongdoing, favoritism ("staff like X so they gave him more stuff"), etc.
To put it a different way, a bad player will figure out a way to deduce information using OOC means one way or the other. They'll analyze someone's dice in PrPs, ask innocent sounding questions and file the answers away, etc.
Open sheets ought to flatten the field and remove a vector I always thought was ineffective - the OOC masquerade - from the equation completely.
That's nice. I prefer not to spend hours adjudicating whether or not so and so came by the knowledge of a secret IC, or if they read it off of somebody's secrets part. There's no reason a couple of key factors cannot be hidden (perhaps with a /share command) to prevent many hours of stress, drama, and headache on staff's part. If you are including PVP in a game, you are already requiring a lot of trust and cooperation on the part of the players. I think it's an absolutely terrible idea to give them access to one anothers' story secrets in a PVP environment, because now not only do you have to add an extra thing for staff to police (and it sounds like such fun, doesn't it?), but your players now have to be absolutely SURE they came to the 'right' conclusion, because they had OOC knowledge of the situation, rather than legitimately being able to put information together.
Completely open sheets in a PVP environment adds an enormous staff overhead.
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I am a fan of open sheets.
Not necessarily a fan of open secrets; that's more a 'per game' basis.
I think open sheets -- the stats and numbers bit -- are on the whole good for a game.
Depending on the system and setup, however, this could expose character secrets fairly easily. (Only Group B can get that stat, and Character is supposedly Group D, etc.)
I am not incredibly worried about the secrets aspect for any game I would potentially run. This is mostly because I think most people in the hobby these days will tend to use this 'to the good' more often than 'to cheat' -- to create good story rather than cutting someone else's story off at the knees. I admit I may be a horrible idealist on this point, but I would rather boot the bad actors and keep as much information (this includes theme/setting/world 'secrets' generally only known to staff) available for people to use as tools to collaboratively build stories.
That's also just not the kind of game everybody necessarily wants. Some people want a puzzle to solve in the world that they, as players, are solving along with their characters. Which is also cool, and would make the above solution much less viable. It's just ultimately a different style; some players will enjoy both, some will prefer one or the other, and provided the game in question makes their policy/staff decisions in line with the kind of environment they want to create, they'll be fine. (Both of these approaches are something I see as neutral; neither is inherently or objectively good or bad or better or worse.)
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I'm a fan of open sheets for anything that's a system mechanic. Story secret wise stuff can remain story secret.. but sheet building should be the same for everyone.
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Yeah I think that we're talking apples and oranges a bit here.
"Open sheets" to many people means open stats.
Stats are generally not secret... unless of course your mild-mannered reporter is moonlighting as a superhero and trying to keep that OOCly under wraps.
Even then, though, I think openness is the best policy. It keeps players honest more often than it's abused.
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@faraday That's what I mean. Sheets, to me, mean numbers and not backgrounds.
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When I last played on a non-FS3 game that had open sheet they were an invaluable tool for running/planning PRPs too.
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Well I think @faraday is right in that there's some apple/oranges going on because people think of very different things with sheets and they are used in really different ways. I mean they can be used in narrative games to have secrets where reveals and discovery is part of the fun, and the pacing of stories, and in those games there's a lot of necessary concealment just for fun. It would no more sense in those games to reveal a sheet than it would be to tell everyone the ending of movies or books.
In other places that are PRP driven it's necessary for players to communicate oocly about information in order to effectively run things. And in other places again with a more competitive vibe then it can become vital to have clear distinctions between what is ICly justifiable and what's not. I don't think there's a one size fits all, but I do think it's important for games to kind of customize what's accessible based on the mood they want to have and what behavior they expect from players.
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Open sheets are glorious for player STs. They allow those of us who do the opportunity to customize plot to players. To call for rolls that lend to a player's strength.
Isn't it more fun when you get plot and actions in a plot that are custom made to what fits your character rather than just cookie cutter bullshit?
Open sheets make it easier for players to run PRPs and take weight off of Staff.
And like others have said: just because sheets (raw system stuff) are open doesn't mean you can't have PC secrets kept hidden. That still lends to a lot of mystique. I also don't think open sheets takes away from potential PVP (if you want it) at all and in fact helps keep everything above board. How often have people been banned from games because in PVP they tried to lie about their sheet and multiple staffers had to get involved to deal with the fallout?
An open sheet would fix that.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@auspice said in Open Sheets?:
How often have people been banned from games because in PVP they tried to lie about their sheet and multiple staffers had to get involved to deal with the fallout?
Exactly - open sheets came about as a direct reaction to those sorts of shenanigans. It's not a magic bullet; it comes with some down-sides of its own (the mystique, etc.), but it's hardly an untenable solution. As with most game development decisions, it's a matter of understanding the pros/cons of each solution and deciding which one works best for the game you're trying to run. If there were a one-size no-brainer solution, everyone would already be doing it.
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I would always come to a game I was working on with the default expectation of open sheets. Only then would I ask the design team if they thought we should hide sheet information, and I would ask a lot of pointed questions to find out why, because in my mind, there should be a really, really good reason to hide sheets (and "CvC is going to be prevalent" is not a good reason in my mind).
That being said, I agree with @faraday and others that this applies only to sheets. Don't get me wrong, it can be nice for a player ST to be able to read someone's BG to provide hooks, but I generally feel that "open sheets/closed BG and secrets" is the way to go.
Besides, even if the mild-mannered reporter is hiding a crime fighter (or a criminal), isn't it nice to know that so you can arrange RP with them about it?
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I can't vote on this poll because the options aren't comprehensive enough.
Basic character information and stats should always be fully visible. This not only helps prevent problematic builds but in the case of character versus character interactions allows better "pairing" of folks who are at similar combat proficiency levels to ensure nobody gets taken out after one round of throwing dice. It also helps you spot people who might be sitting on five years of XP and who exclusively target weaker characters for combat. I've seen that happen often enough, even on games without XP systems where "power levels" were fixed. If I play a combat-focused guy I'd prefer to fight another combat-focused character, because odds are the social manipulator won't make for a very fun fight. Not for him, not for me. By the same logic if I play a scientist who happens to have a gun but isn't great at using it, I'd prefer as much as possible to engage other similarly-skilled characters unless on that particular day I'm up for being chased through hallways by Pyramid Head.
What should be hidden is stuff people should find out in-game. Secret contacts, backstory, plot hooks and the like. Characters shouldn't be open books because then there's no sense of discovery and mystery. Their capabilities and what they can bring to any given scene or event, however, should be fully revealed.
