@il-volpe said:
@crusader said:
@Arkandel
Honestly, what you have described sounds less like a Consent-based game (which I find boring) and more like an ICA=ICC game, which I approve of.
Indeed. I would not describe GoB as consent-based. When I hear that, I think "diceless" and I don't want a diceless game. Dice are fun. Not knowing what will happen is fun. Having a non-human system of arbitration is fun. Having different skills and different levels in those skills is fun. Having things go unexpectedly well or unexpectedly badly is fun. The sense of tension and risk created by dice is fun.
That's what I was thinking, yes, if for different reasons (which is as intended since we it's natural to value other things even in the same systems).
For instance when I played on Shang there were several things that bugged me and it wasn't the lack of dice per se, it was the lack of a common framework; people had abilities and powers often made up on the spot, there was absolutely no way to compare two characters' skill levels at any task or, for that matter, even the same power - two telepaths would use entirely different approaches to how reading minds work. Furthermore there wasn't even a guideline to progression, which is one of the things I enjoy the most in any RPG, i.e. starting as a lowbie and becoming better at things.
So see, I don't like dice... per se. I roll them rarely unless I have to, but I do like having mechanics even if only to provide objective frames of reference. How does <X> work? Oh, that's how, okay. I guess I see sandbox (in this context) limiting the gameplay's potential rather than doing something for it, and I say that although I always liked the idea of just rolling whatever you well damn pleased through CG without having to wait for approval or go through bottlenecks and jump through hoops. The latter, to me, is a price worth paying for the former.
On the other hand...
The non-fun part is losing a character you don't want to lose, because of a series of bad rolls. So I did away with that.
Yes. I remember when I first started playing on HM (I hadn't had the character for more than a month, but being completely new I knew no one, and creating the PC took a while then I had invested a lot of time in meeting the few folks I did end up knowing, getting a ghoul, etc.
So there was this offer for a PrP thrown by Kohl which I took - my first pWoD PrP ever! So he took us through this 5-minute setup and threw something like five NPCs with fire-axes at the party, which was consisted of three PCs two of whom were extremely non-combaty. I didn't want to lose the character - it would have been for nothing.
So to me, the meaning of consent is to ensure emphasis is placed on simple sanity checks like that. Actions can - and should - have consequences but players should have a definite say in defining how far things go.
It's not meant to be a dramatic departure from traditional games since even then communication is supposed to be key and wasting the other guy's PC for little reason (be it as a Storyteller or otherwise) should be avoided - we're supposed to offer the courtesy of discussing it first, and perhaps making sure alternatives are on the table if they exist.
Well, that's what this is about the way I see it - systematizing the offer.