Open Sheets?
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Did anyone mention +sheet mechanical items that would reveal a secret, like having a power that only a certain faction has, or skills you keep hidden ICly, as well as anyone trying to be undercover or under the radar?
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I am, generally, in favour of open +sheets but many years ago I played a character on an Exalted game who was a spy.
She was an Air Aspected Dragon Blooded but pretended to be a normal human and to facilitate that staff set her up with 'Air Aspected' as 'Secretly Air Aspected' so that various commands did not pick up her demigod status, I was then very careful to avoid giving it away even as she reluctantly 'revealed' her mere mortal supernatural martial artist status.
One of the more fun characters I have played.
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I love open stats on non PvP games.
I love the sheet system on FS3 (yay faraday!), because it's fun for me as a player to see background skills, and get a little sense of the PC beyond the (usually) almost the same #s everyone else has.
Would I want that on a pvp game? Maybe if it was so small as to be almost tabletop, and I knew that the majority of folks were good peeps. I could see that working very well for storytelling between players or for more experienced players giving tips on how to build to less experienced ones.
Would I want it on a huge impersonal ten alts for every player pvp disconnected/uninvolved staff game, no.
I will say that I think games where there's a culture of open stats seem to (in my observance) have a more consistently high quality of rp/player on them; but I think that's largely due to self selection. The players who want to win against other players at any cost and cant help themselves are going to self select out.
By no means do open stat games mean no asshole players, as like almost any Battlestar player can attest.
it does kind of lead to no more pub channel/ooc room weird bragging about stats and how the player bragging could kill anyone who looked at him sideways but chooses not to. Which is very very nice. -
@mietze said in Open Sheets?:
I will say that I think games where there's a culture of open stats seem to (in my observance) have a more consistently high quality of rp/player on them; but I think that's largely due to self selection. The players who want to win against other players at any cost and cant help themselves are going to self select out.
I think you get different kinds of assholes and bad behavior. It certainly cuts down on the nakedly-obvious system workers/manipulators, but I'm not sure how much of a problem they are in pure PvE games anyway, whether sheets are open or not. I still feel like I see plenty of pouting and dick measuring over skills, it just manifests in different ways.
The main things in favor or open sheets for me are the ease of PrP running and the ease of chargen for newbies it promotes (since you can just point to a character type and basically say 'copy that'). So I do agree it has positive cultural elements, even though I don't think it impacts RP quality as much as the PvE versus PvP split does.
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@mietze said in Open Sheets?:
it does kind of lead to no more pub channel/ooc room weird bragging about stats and how the player bragging could kill anyone who looked at him sideways but chooses not to. Which is very very nice.
I do love that about open sheets. That it stops the
Bob +proves his EPEEN stat to the room
Bob +proves his LACK OF MASCULINITY stat to the room
Bob +proves his LACK OF RL to the roomspam
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@mietze said in Open Sheets?:
I will say that I think games where there's a culture of open stats seem to (in my observance) have a more consistently high quality of rp/player on them; but I think that's largely due to self selection. The players who want to win against other players at any cost and cant help themselves are going to self select out.
I think this is why a PvP game would be better with open sheets that show basic stats, but not have open, full information available.
Snowflakes usually melt in the sun.
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Just full transparancy. TBH even in a PVP game there is no reason there should be an OOC Masq. The only times it really matters is assholes who metagame, guess what, you're not going to stop them from metagaming even if you try and hide every piece of info.
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I don't like open sheets. A shocker, I know. I just prefer it if people have to wonder just what my character's deal is. What are his merits, his flaws? Can he breathe fire? Is he dangerous or bluffing?
I like mystery. It's why on games with open +sheets I tend to not check other people's +sheets unless the game is pure PvE, and even then not in all cases. Hell I'd love to see game wikis with a masquerade. Going through wiki pages and wondering 'Ooooh, I wonder what this person is!' is really a lot of fun.
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@admiral You can still play this way with an open +sheet system. You might enjoy the mystery and if other players are good players, they will play along with the mystery IC. But there are some players that really don't like masquerades and mystery ad getting hit out of no where with information regarding a character because then you're caught broadsided with no idea how your character might react and now you've got to try and seperate your own feelings from the character's feelings and try and suss out who's thoughts are whos oh and it's your turn to pose btw so THINK FAST. I hate that shit, drives me nuts.
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@magee101 I'd rather players didn't have access to all the OOC stuff about me. React to me ICly based on what you know, not what you know OOCly.
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@admiral That's what separates (to me) a good player from a bad one. I may know everything about your character as a player, but my character is still going to react to your character befitting the IC situation, HOWEVER, because I as the player know what to reasonably expect I can think ahead of time what my characters reactions might be and I'm not sitting there going OMFG, wait whut? Okay so, am I just flustered becase now I as a player don't know what to do, because my character has amazing stats in composure and there's no way they'd be caut off guard but now I have no idea what I am doing as a player so that's going to translate over into my character not knowing wtf to do and now I'm just pissed and wanna walk away from the scene entirely.
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I also dislike open sheets, which surprises nobody. Much the same as I dislike a GM or Storyteller rolling my dice for me. Probably irrational, but there we are.
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@magee101 I'd argue that what separates a good player from a bad one is solely their ability to create fun for those they interact with.
However, back on the topic of open sheets... why do you need to see my sheet? What do you gain from knowing so much that your character doesn't? Do you like to read wikipedia entries about a movie's plot before you go see it to prime yourself? Do you enjoy it when staffers who run scenes tell you all the backstory of what's going on up front? I'd assume not. You don't need to see every little detail about my character. Maybe I want to reveal my character's abilities, aptitudes, and motivations through my RP. Open sheets take that away entirely.
The argument that 'Well people who don't want to see it will just not check it' doesn't solve the problem of players like me who genuinely don't want other players to see their stuff. Not for gamey reasons such as wanting to keep people from knowing what powers I have at what levels but because I have a lot of fun in my RP with slow-revealing my character's quirks and motivations over time and giving people access to my sheet would give away far too much information about them.
There's no reason for open sheets in any circumstance anyways, aside from staff-lite games that require players to police each other.
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@admiral I'm probably in the same boat as you. I don't want to know anything about another character that my character doesn't know, and I want the same in return.
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@admiral You'd assume incorrectly, and you don't have to be a "player" to "create fun for those they interact with". You could be a metagaming fuckwad but if you still created fun you could be considered a "good player" under those criteria, also it's not another player's prerogative to create fun for others, it is a player's prerogative to create fun for themselves with the tools provided in the scene they find themselves in. There are so many different qualifications of a good player that stepping outside the bounds of the direct comparison between the subject and the qualification makes the whole argument mute.
Basically what it comes down to is from what I have found it is much much more enjoyable to not get sideswiped with sudden information. Of course things you are talking about, secrets, quirks, etc. That's all shit that is not normally going to be on a +sheet, that's normally going to be on a +bg or something similar. +sheets primarily only contain statstical information, which some might be spoilery (Allies: Mafia for instance) but they don't tend to give it all away and you can definately still slow release all you like and as my original point was, a GOOD player can go into a scene knowing all your dirty secrets but still react appropritely as if their character had not known these things because of course their character does not know these things until your character reveleas them.
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I get the argument for open sheets, and I can understand where people are coming from.
I just do not like them Sam I Am. If that's the way the game is played it's not a dealbreaker for me, if there's something else that the game has to offer. But that's my preference.
Frankly, I really like the way Arx handles it. To whit: everything you have OOC access to, you either have found out or can find out IC. I don't like having to keep what I IC know from what I OOC know separate beyond what I have to and I really don't like trying to second-guess whether my PC could have figured out what I already know to be the case OOC. I don't like e-peen wagging about whose stats are most badass but I really don't like the answer to "can I take 'em" to be visible if there's any PVP going on at all.
Just my take.
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I definitely dislike the idea that liking open sheets versus liking to be surprised is a representation of player quality. I've played in both environments (though not in PvP-heavy ones, I play primarily PvE games) and had good and bad RP (and great experiences and awful experiences with asshole dice-monger players) in each. I think viewing it as an environmental cure-all is wrong-headed and will end in disappointment (also I like to be surprised sometimes and consider it sometimes better RP, which certainly doesn't make me a better or worse player), and I instinctively hate-on the idea that being pro a mechanical choice denotes superiority. But there are other arguments for doing it that've previously been espoused in this thread, like transparency for newbs or ease of GMing without full staff powers, etc.
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Complete transparency of expecting people to roll with ooc knowledge in a way that doesn't effect their play works pretty much the same as pure consent games, and it's a very similar argument- 'we don't need systems to decide outcomes or arbitrate things since good roleplayers will be reasonable adults'. Keep in mind, I enjoy pure consent games, but they have a very different feel, and I think the same is true for transparency vs hidden.
I consider good players going too far and handicapping themselves as a more consistent but less noticeable problem than bad actors. The chill, reasonable people will take falls all the time to not make a fuss even when they would never need to do that if they didn't oocly know information in advance, or if dice rolls would have declared them a victor.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
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@admiral said in Open Sheets?:
slow-revealing my character's quirks and motivations over time and giving people access to my sheet would give away far too much information about them.
Others have mentioned not wanting to reveal their powers for PvP or secret reasons (you're a secret Jedi ZOMG!) which I can understand even though I lean the other way. Your comment here though strikes me as more system-specific. In WoD or Cortex where there are codified Merits/Flaws/Advantages/whatever that can give away plot secrets (he has a dark past / addiction / whatever ... ooooo) it's more of a concern than in something like FS3 or Shadowrun where the most you're going to learn about somebody is that they have an hobby of reading Detective Novels. Most of the time, it really doesn't prevent you from doling out your character's "quirks and motivations" over time.
@admiral said in Open Sheets?:
There's no reason for open sheets in any circumstance anyways
Except of course for all of the reasons a half-dozen people have given in this thread.
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@apos said in Open Sheets?:
I consider good players going too far and handicapping themselves as a more consistent but less noticeable problem than bad actors.
I came up on pure consent games and I confess this, along with the attitude of implied superiority "roleplay not ROLLplay" you got sometimes, was one of my frustrations with them. It's part of why I actively want some kind of arbitration mechanism so much now, even if it's just a coin-flip tool players can voluntarily run among themselves. They aren't good or bad, they're just different, and I think players who've been in environments with heavy OOC secrecy where everything has mechanical arbitration tend to over-correct and assume they're a utopia.
