Comments on: I WAS A GOBLIN: But I Wasn’t A Hobbit

By: DV

DV — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 23:20:09 +0000

I always liked the idea of Hero Points, which were basically “blimey, here’s a garbage chute!” style get of jail free cards.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:07:38 +0000

I didn’t have any direct experience of games with storytelling mechanics - I went straight from rules-based tabletop to near-complete freeform under the evangelical influence of Aslan in the early 90s! But I never really liked the idea of them - it felt like extending the mechanistic parts of the game into areas good players wouldn’t need. Maybe I was just being a snob though!

By: James_Nostack

James_Nostack — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:34:22 +0000

Incidentally, several recent “independent” RPG designs have solved the Sam/Boromir/Gandalf power disparity: the trick is to give all players the same number of story-affecting tokens (or other resource), and exactly how these tokens are implemented depend on the character’s particular style. Thus, although Sam and Frodo can’t fight very well, their plucky-little-hobbit-ness ends up having as much of an effect on the flow of the story as the bad-ass characters.

The good effect is that you can have wildly different characters all having an effect on the story. The downside is that players are creating a story, where things happen for story-reasons, rather than realistic-reasons. That’s a turn-off for some people (though not for me).

I’d recommend checking out “Capes” by Tony LowerBasch, and “With Great Power,” by Michael Miller, for examples of this in practice: I’ve played them both, they’re a lot of fun.

By: amuletts

amuletts — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 06:46:52 +0000

You weren’t a hobbit but were you a halfling? ;)

By: Admin

Admin — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 14:07:51 +0000

Hope the new sidebar list helps

By: p^nk s

p^nk s — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 20:25:46 +0000

alternatively (and slightly brilliantly) you can follow the link called “i wasn’t a goblin” in the “related article” box, and when you arrive look at ITS “related article” box [slightly sadly, this no longer applies :(]

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:57:10 +0000

You could type “i was a goblin” (no quotes) in the search box

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 10:54:33 +0000

Is there an index of the TE D&D/rollplaying posts anywhere? I reckon I must have missed a bunch, and they seem really terrific.

By: Magnus Anderson

Magnus Anderson — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 21:50:53 +0000

Corporate training days are now more honest I think - in the nineties they never called it roll-playing, even when the team was fabricated with potentially conflicting objectives and motivations allocated to the members on CVs very similar to character sheets.

Now, if there’s a facilitator and a theme, there’s a roll-play, with no embarrassment or tongue in cheek. So all those childhood hours not wasted? How I wish. What it showed was how imbecilic we must have been by the criteria of roll-plays, sketching out interactions and negotiating objectives, amongst the gang as well as facing it. Instead we would argue and blunder, with the gamesmaster occasionally relenting and progressing to another encounter, often because a fight had broken out between the characters, the players, or both. I’ve not seen that happen in corporate training. Yet.