What pervents it? Common courtesy. Atleast, it should.

I used to roleplay quite a lot a few years back. Rarely have I had problems of people giving themselves too much power. However, it does happen. God-modding, as we call it. Though, it usually came from n00bs that didn't have the slightest idea what they were doing and/or put no effort what so ever in reading what others posted. Not to mention not checking their own post for nonsense and typos. Considering the inteligence of all the members here, I doubt there will be any problems. If someone makes the mistake due to being new to the online roleplay world, it's not a problem to politely inform the person, so they could change their post. We learn on our mistakes.

There are a lot of game systems out there that vary in their dice-rolling levels (a lot of people talk about role-playing vs. roll-playing).  For instance, the Amber game is one of the best-known diceless game systems, though there are others.  On the other extreme, there's Champions and RoleMaster, which have some of the most nightmarish character generation and gameplay mechanics around.  The current trend in the industry appears to be toward more role-playing and simpler mechanics.

In online play, I've noticed a heavy trend toward cooperative storytelling vs. roleplaying per se.  (I have my theories about the gender dynamics that play into this trend that I won't go into here.)  Participating in a game that has no mechanic/stats and more limited game-mastering ("moderating" seems to be the term of choice) is like entering into a contract of maintaining good manners toward other characters.   There are whole games based around player consent and that sort of thing, though I've seen this more explicitly discussed in rules for MUSH/MUCK/MOO games, rather than forum or blog-based games.

By playing, you're agreeing to play nice, essentially, and only play your character.  If your character's actions are going to affect another character, there's usually some sort of agreed-upon method for resolving it, eg:

Saionji:  Why you -- *goes to slap Anthy*

OOCSaionji:  So, I'm taking a swing at you.

OOCAnthy:  Well, I'm not standing still for a change.  I'm trying to step aside and grab your arm.

OOCSaionji:  I guess this would surprise me.  Sure!

OOCAnthy:  Could I flip you?

OOCSaionji:  Can you *do* that?  I don't think Anthy's got a lot of martial arts training...

OOCAnthy:  Yeah, but I'm actually Juri stuck in Anthy's body!

OOCSaionji:  O.O

OOCAnthy:  I'll take that as a yes then?

OOCSaionji:  ... sure.  eep!

Anthy:  *steps aside, seizes Saionji by the arm, and flips him easily onto his back*  Keep it to yourself... Saionji-/sempai/.

I think a D20 Utena thread would be a lot of fun, but then there's the question of what do the people who don't own dice with more than six sides would do. Perhaps if there's a dice-rolling app out there (which there doubtless is) that would solve that problem...

Screencap it. Safest way to do it, though you'd always have the issue of 'well, what if that's an old cap....'

Which could be fixed by making sure people have their mouse on the time so the date shows up and not cutting it off...

But, hosting..... *dies*

I don't think dice would be especially useful or welcome on a regular basis in this online RP, especially with all the attendant complications with screencapping and so on.  Here's why.

Much of the tension in a good RPG rests on the knowledge that your character is only human (or elven, or whatever), not immortal or omnipotent.  You can fail.  Most players will not voluntarily have their characters fail, at least not very often.  So a good RPG needs a way to make characters fail in spite of their players' best efforts to make them infallible.  Different RPGs take different approaches to this problem.

* Omnipotent GM.  Here, the GM is the first, last, and only arbiter of what is possible and what is not.  Most games, including D&D, fall back on the omnipotent GM when necessary, but few use this method exclusively.  The reasoning is that the players feel disenfranchised, like they've lost their hand in telling the story.  If the GM's decisions fall against a particular player too often, that player may (rightly or wrongly) become hostile and take it personally.  If they fall in favor of a player too often, that player is perceived as being the GM's chosen son and resented.  The power imbalance inherent between GM and player makes this way of maintaining characters' fallibility a poor choice in most cases.

* Dice.  By far the most popular approach, and for good reason.  Dice inject randomness into success and failure, which means that the GM is absolved of direct responsibility for everything good or bad that happens to the characters.  Yet the dice rolls are modified based on the choices players have made about their characters, which means that the players retain some power over the outcome and therefore remain enfranchised.  Usually the GM maintains the power to overrule die rolls -- a necessary evil, because it really sucks to have your beloved character do everything right and yet die because of an unlucky roll -- but overall dice are great for determining success and failure.  They do have one major weakness, however: occasionally the randomness of the roll causes results that make no sense and/or are not fun.

* Player consensus.  The hardest way to arrive at decisions about success and failure, but also the most rewarding if you can make it work.  You have almost full discretion over what your character can do.  The only limits on your discretion occur when what you want conflicts with what other players want their characters to do, or with what the GM deems is possible.  If players disagree, they sit down and hash it out.  With immature players this approach is doomed to failure.  When much of the game hinges on the characters' success or failure (D&D), this approach likewise gets poor results.  But when mature players play a game whose focus is on RPing and doesn't need to call on success and failure every other post, player consensus can be an immensely rewarding mode of conflict resolution.  I think an Utena RP played among members of this message board is a good candidate for a game whose decisions are made primarily by player consensus -- with the GM retaining the privilege of making important choices, of course.  I don't see duels being decided by player consensus, but the Saionji-Anthy encounter above is a really good example about how players with humility can make a game like this fun.

So my vote is no dice, except maybe as a backup mechanism.

Last edited by satyreyes (12-18-2006 08:27:43 PM)

I've seen dice work before. To be honest, the only reason I'm a big proponent of dice rollers is that I've seen what can happen without them, and it's pretty nasty. I trust the people on this forum to work well without them, but still...

...the horror, the horror...

I used to be a regular on the White Wolf unmoderated chat years ago, and within that context, I found that the more stringently the rules were adhered to, the better the game. I made friends with the Bitch Queen of that chat (if anyone should recognize her, Battlecry is still a good friend of mine), the one who ran the biggest roleplaying group not affiliated with White Wolf other than their presence on the chat, and I was even a mod for a while, so I got to see the inner workings of the rules. This was with hundreds of players, though, and you need a system like that to make it work.

The things that were applicable to this forum were that first, the rolls weren't allowed to interfere with the gaming. Rolling dice and such was a sidebar to the real action-- the description and character interaction. Second, if you want to deal with experience, you alter the rules to make it fit with what the goals are, and not necessarily what the rules say. It's perfectly fine to go without altogether, and just use character sheets as a rough measure of what your character can and can't do. Third, you don't need the rules and rolls for everything-- when I was modding, I found what worked best was for the GM to make a call whenever he thought a roll was needed, or for a player to ask for one when he thought he might be having a lucky day.

This has been in great contrast to my experience with diceless playing, which was mostly 'omg my character is so pretty' 'omg I start to brood in the corner' 'omg cyber now lolz'. I know you guys aren't like that, but it hasn't exactly given me a good impression of diceless playing.

Dammit, I sound like I'm trying to push, when really, either way is fine by me. Honest!

I personally like diceless roleplay online and dice roleplay in person. But that's because I tend to play more social RP online (such as what would happen in the Utena universe) and more "Hack and Slash" in person. Hack and slash needs dice because of combat and such... social games if people are responsible, I think run better without dice. Just so long as people are good at separating player character knowledge and all that jazz.

As for the original post.... the only reason why some D&D things say that is because they're prewriten scenarios. If you're used to writing stories, just take the basic system and write up all your own bits of story.

I've found the best RPing happens when two things happen: 1), the RP is approached as if it is a story being written, and b., the players form a bonded group capable of getting together and discussing their ideas for their characters and the RP as a whole.

Dice are good in certain situations if they're kept behind the scenes so as not to spoil what might happen for everyone else, but I think it's better for two people, say they're dueling, to talk it over amongst themselves and decide who should win and lose and how it'll affect their characters. If they just can't decide, then dice should come in. But really it shouldn't have to, if you're working with mature people.

I myself don't think D&D style is the best approach to Utena, because I feel that the depth of character that needs to be developed isn't something you can bog down in numbers. But I've played D&D and I didn't like it, so it's really a matter of to each his/her own.

I was part of a really nice diceless Kingdom Hearts RP a little ways back, and it was really fantastic because we were all...well, competant individuals (mature isn't really the right word ). We used to get into chats and come up with ideas for the RP until we hammered down the direction of plot for the next few worlds, basically forming a skeleton of direction and decisions that in our writing we further elaborated on with our characters' developed relationships. The RP never finished because we all lost the time to participate, but it had direction and a clear ending point, and was not filled with complete morons like most other RPs on Gaia Online are populated with.

We had a guy this one time who wanted to play Vincent Valentine, and not only tried to immediately make himself really important to the storyline but also tried to incorporate a pet he "bought" for his signature into his character. We ignored him then told him to fuck off. >.>

I hope I've said something of merit. I'm trying not to sound like a pretentious whore to all of you.

Well, I've not much experience with forum-based roleplaying, but my thread seems to be doing well, despite the fact that one of our players is MIA and the one who is the GM for the Day has serious writer's block at the moment. Establish the rules fairly and quickly, and be sure to answer anybody's questions.

In my Utena RP (The Faceless Masses), I've worked it out so that players can ask questions, write scene data and dialogue using just the boldface and italic edits. Boldface is for human-to-human (forum) interaction, while italics are for describing character actions. The GM (in my thread's case, ME) has ultimate control over when scenes change, from one location to another, time of day, weather and atmosphere, etc. Read the thread a bit and you'll see what I mean. There hasn't been any Godmodding in my roleplay thread (to my knowledge, anyway), and everybody seems happy. Generally, I don't make scene changes unless only one person is left standing alone in the scene. It's quite a delicate system I worked out, but so far everybody seems to be understanding it and respecting it.

Shout-outs to hyacinth_black and Imaginary Bad Bug for keeping my thread nice and squeaky clean! puella_nerdii, where are you...?

As for dice...I try to rely as much on raw data charts as possible, and exclude dice. The factors are simple: I don't have many dice, and for my dice rolling program to work, everybody would have to be staring at the monitor hooked to the computer I'm using. WASTE OF GLORIOUS GAMING TIME, in my opinion. Dice have their importance, but nothing -- not even data charts -- should interfere with what I consider the most important factor in roleplaying: telling the story and interacting with the characters. Because, as a GM, I like to interact with the characters, and will often start out in the same party/group/collective/what-have-you as the other players. If I'm gonna control everybody's fate, then sure as hell I intend for the Hammer of the GM to fall on my character, as well!

I hope this helps anybody with roleplay issues, and thank you all for reading my discourse!

Due to current restraints on the timeline, I am not accepting new characters for my Utena RP. If you read the rules and PM me your character data, though, I will most likely add you in and inform you of what goes on.

Yeesh, I hope not. Especially if Saionji hasn't gotten his hugs lately.

(thinks for a moment...)

GIR! Somebody needs a...HUUUUUUG!!

(Sorry. Non-Utena related comment. Again, I apologise. Damn, I've derailed another thread! W00T!)

EDIT: Hey, Invader ZIM fans, could you imagine a small, lime green puppy with a zipper down his stomach give grumpy ol' Saionji a big, glompattack hug, Wakaba style? If so, then 3 Internets for each of ya!

Last edited by BioKraze (04-13-2007 10:54:14 PM)