This is very interesting, could you please elaborate why would you feel that way?



Some would argue that in a world that a rodent of unusual size rodent can kill a grown man, adventuring is the realm of the insane :) but seriously, why in your opinion such a world would be different from the PC perspective than a world where you the player have full access to their stats?

In reply to csroy (msg # 12):

Because you're telling me it'll help my immersion, not asking me (hypothetically) whether that's the case, for starters. It has been presented here as though I can't be relied on to behave believably with any differences between player and character knowledge, on top of that. So it feels both presumptuousand accusatory. And honestly, the idea of doing it as just a fun novelty challenge just gamifies the experience for me. That could be a fine, entertaining goal, but it's actually going to undermine any immersion, not enhance it. As engine said, ours is not a universal position. But perhaps take this as a reminder that you'll be polarizing your potential player base. And I think you'll find quite a few really good improvisational writers in the group it pressures out.

Caveat the second: there are almost certainly ways to degranularize stats that don't come across this way. I don't see the advantage of doing so except as a descriptive aid, but it needn't necessarily be as off-putting as I'm describing. And caveat the third:I don't tend to delineate the player/gm divide very strongly. I think of the hobby as a particularly collaborative venture, and while some information mismatch is good for fun surprises, and while the referee is tasked with extra labor that means they should very rarely be the ones with less information, I don't assign them some greater right to it. We're all equal here.

I think there's a saying that fits well here:-

You can't please all of the people all of the time.

There are going to be some players that like freeform and hate systems.

There are going to be some players that like systems and will only play in system based games.

Some will be offended by having rules hidden, some will like it.

Its purely a matter of taste. So I guess you need to know your audience.

Me, for example - I prefer free form but don't mind a system based games so long as it doesn't restrict my creativity or play style. Generally, that means character generation where I can have as much freedom as I like in terms of stats and skills and aren't limited to a certain skill set or at the mercy of random die rolls.

I agree with Starchaser assessment.

My initial inquiry more how can one maintain a black box game and keep the GM burden to minimal.

I respect peoples views that such a game would not be fun for them. Frankly I am not convinced that it would be fun for me and I fear the sheer book keeping would be overwhelming unless I'll be using very simple system.

Because there's no set definition of "the PC perspective" and because metagaming isn't inherently detrimental to the game when the game is about anything more than the players figuring out what is worth trying to do.

If I indicate to the players that there is an evil wizard in a tower and they set out to face him immediately rather than spending hours figuring out whether doing so would be even remotely feasible, then I get to engage in a game about taking on an evil wizard in a tower, instead of a game about discussing whether taking on an evil wizard in a tower is a good idea or not.

If for some reason I happened to want the latter, I can probably still have it without having to hide the rules from anyone, if I just ask nicely for it.

I'm not really addressing your initial question. To address that, I'd say that the easiest way would be to run a game based entirely in reality, rather than, say, a game in which people are intended to react to fantastic or even unusual situations in a "realistic" way. If anyone tries to do something other than the kinds of things normal people do on a daily basis, then they fail, because that's usually what would happen.

I could not put to words before, how repulsive the idea was, but this almost sums it up. I pointedly didn't include the caveat in his next post, because I feel stronger about it than he does. For me, a black box game is a freeform game because it feels like one, and a freeform game is an instant deal breaker. I don't care if you have the best story in the world. I don't care if you actually want to run my Discworld sentient ferret idea that's actually on my bucket list. If you run it in freeform, or anything that feels like freeform, I'm out.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the user at 15:30, Thu 16 Nov 2017.

So hey, I'm sorry for the derail. My actual interaction with the starting question is that running both sides of any system detailed enough to make obfuscating it have real consequences is always going to be a really big GM burden, because it involves doing all the expected work, plus taking on considerable amounts that are usually the other players'^* responsibility. It'd make an interesting project if I had a lot of spare time and the right group, but I can't see any way it doesn't outright multiply the workload.

^*-the GM is a player also

I don't think you derailed anything, I just think that using a system, and then hiding it defeats the purpose (to me) of using a system which is (to me) that all the players should get to feel the crunch of the system. Not getting to feel the crunch of a system (to me) is another immersion breaker.

The issue that I see isn't that a black box game is freeform.  Your actions are governed and referee'd according to rules that you're not supposed to infer or understand.

This leads to two types of undesirable behavior.

• Hypercaution
  In the absence of understanding their limits and capabilities (and their varying degrees of plot armor/hit points), players will waffle and prevaricate, tiptoeing around danger and avoiding risk.  Since they can't meaningfully read the risk of a given situation, they will avoid danger.
  This differs significantly from freeform, since a freeform player has much more freedom to write himself out of danger.
• Probing
  In the absence of context, players will seek context.  They will probe their limits, trying to feel out the system.  They will engage in experimental behavior to try and discern the limits of the system.  They will see how fast they can run, how far they can jump, and how many times they can bludgeon themselves in the head before they pass out.
  This will be sometimes ridiculous.  Empirical tests on jumping distance is only the beginning.  Imagine someone trying to discover how hit points work....

Not wishing to play Devil's Advocate here, folks, but if I'm understanding correctly, I do this sort of thing all the time, and it's as easy as pie.

As a couple of people have already said, there is little difference between 'Black Box' and Freeform. All of my games are 'freeformish'. I use a very simple set of rules that are only invoked for combat or high risk situations, and a very simple character generation system on a 5-point scale.

The combat rules are there to prevent any 'bang you're dead, no I'm not, you missed' arguments that might arise in pure freeform, and the chargen rules weed out the Mary Sue Polymaths, whose characters are fluent in fifteen languages and experts in the entire armoury of weapons.

Usually, I don't keep the rules (such as they are) secret from the players, but I could easily do so - and in one game I am doing so. If they're rolling their own dice (you haven't said whether they are or not), they can see how 'lucky' they were, and that can deflect a lot of arguments.

Don't try to use a 500 page rule book for something like this, you'll kill yourself with workload (To put it in perspective, my rules cover two of sides of A4), and don't try it as a novice GM. If you need complex rules as a crutch for your imagination, don't even attempt this.

Simple rules, fly by the seat of your pants. You can have as just as much fun in a Tiger Moth as you can in a Typhoon. :)


IMO, the art of making Black Box or Freeform work is good storytelling:

Fred has told you he's preparing to jump the chasm.

GM: "As Fred eyes the chasm, he's pretty confident that he can make it."
Or: "As Fred eyes the chasm, he feels it's at the edge of his ability. If his footing is just right, he can make it, but one false step..."

If, with or without a set of rules, you're telling a believable story, decent players will go with you. If the story isn't believable, that's when the arguments arise.

If Fred gets killed facing an army of ninjas, he'll probably go quietly. If he's killed by being bitten on the toe by a sewer rat he kicked, his player will throw his toys out of the pram.


Steelsmiter, Freeformy stuff isn't that bad, with the right GM and players. Never say never, mate. :)

If death and/or PVP is impossible, maybe you have an argument. maybe. If it's unlikely but possible, you don't. Period. I will play any game where death/PVP is not going to happen under any circumstances. But if it can, nevermind will, if it can, I'm gone.* I must vehemently go against your suggestion about vocabulary in all instances where death is a possibility. And that Freeform PVP is ever fair under any circumstances, with any GM, or subset of players.

And that's because everything in freeform is subjective. Or at least that's what I've been told by every freeformer I know. With a system, you can at least objectively say how many points/levels/other power discerning mechanic a character was built on. Whether those points were objectively fairly used depends on a combination of the robustness of the system to experimentation, and the intent on the player's part to break it. Still it's better than no objectivity.

And if a system takes that away from me by being black box, then I objectively can't determine its level of subjectivity, and/or the approximate fairness of any character involved, and it isn't worth my time. To the point where if a GM wants me in their game, it isn't worth their time to bother with black boxing it. If anyone doesn't, that's fair enough.

---

^{*Exception: I have played games where the death of a character is a pre-decided plot point the sole purpose of the game. Those don't bother me... but then again, the object of those games is to play a specified story. Not entirely sure I count that a game, but it's a convenient label.}
This message was last edited by the user at 05:55, Fri 17 Nov 2017.

Isocahedron152 - You are not going to convince steelsmiter. He obviously dislikes freform and that's fine. That's up to him

Steelsmiter: I respect your opinion but there a lot of people who prefer freeform and that's ok too. Some players dislike systems and that's fine.

Don't try to stongly convert others to your way of thinking. It only leads to unnecessary conflict.

In answer to the original question the conclusion is that a black box game works best with a rules lite system and where everyone knows there are hidden rules and are happy with that.

It seem people feel very strongly about black box game, I think it is all about control. How much you have control. In most game the GM has almost absolute control, I mean let's face it. Knowing that I play a 6rd level Fighter with Str 15 while may give me illusion of knowing my capabilities since they are always measured against an unknown outside they are pretty meaningless (I have no idea if I am fighting a 1st level or a 20th level opponent). So my conclusions so far are:

1. Black box, like any kind of RP is not universal, some are OK with it some are not (the same could be said for D&D, Sci fi and freeform game). However, if I'll run such a game it would be part of the social contract I'll set with the player so there would be no surprises.

2. System - my initial thought was using Twlight 2013, it has many elements I am interest in. However, I agree with the feedback I got that such a heavy crunch system would not fit in such a game as the GM burden would be enormous. So something lite or simple maybe like Omni.

3. Chargen - Concern were made about players not aware how good their characters are. To mitigate this I think I'll adopt the advice of making a very detailed chargen with lots of questions. I also think adding realistic descriptor (You can bench press 200kg) would also help to mitigate any obfuscate players may feel.

4. Player immersion - frankly I think it depends on the player, some would say it boost their immersion not being tied to a set of moves that are system limited other would feel the opposite. Personally after experience PC jumping from a 200' cliff because they had 121 HP I tend to favor the black box approach (or at least the common sense one).

5. Dice rolls - perhaps if players would roll their own actions, I think I am in favor because a)it would lower GM burden and b)it may give the illusion of control and help some players perception of causality. However, the system need to be very simple (roll 1d20, roll 2d6 pick the lowest etc) for this to work.

Starchaser, don’t worry, I’ve gamed with Steelsmiter, we’re OK, him and me, we’re not going to have a flame war here, just a bit of mutual joshing. :)


Steelsmiter, I agree, if the rules are hidden or non-existent, then PvP is probably best avoided. I generally avoid it anyway, it’s often a strain on the game, even with comprehensive rules in plain sight.

Character death is less of an issue, I think - depending how it is done. As I said above, you can expect to go out in a blaze of glory fighting a ninja army, but not facing a sewer rat. I think if a reasonable player has built up a relationship with a reasonable GM, it can work.


In many rule-based games, there is an adversarial arrangement between the players and the GM, and the players' object is to win against the system. In most freeform games it's about mutual storytelling, and telling a good story with your fellow players is more important than your character winning, or even surviving. (I’ve even seen PvP situations in freeform, where two players will decide which kills the other for the betterment of the story, but you need some real stage-troopers to do that).

It's a different mindset, suiting different players, and this is what makes a Black Box game potentially dangerous, because it's neither one thing nor the other, and you have a polarized audience.

If you get a group of competitors who feel disadvantaged and cheated by 'playing blind', you'll have trouble on your hands. If you get a group of storytellers who see the hidden rules as 'additional structure', it may be a breeze. However, the 'hardline' storytellers won't want a set of rules, hidden or not, interfering with their freedom to tell their story.

Let your players know up front exactly what the game is about and whether their characters may die. Most of the hardliners in either camp will exclude themselves from your game, and the ones who RTJ will probably accept all the ramifications of the package you are offering.


Looks like you summed it up pretty well in #25. :)

Well, I know you're in my discussion groups but I've started and lost so many actual games since like '05 I don't know which you're/were in. For me, death is more of an issue, unless it is the game's objective. If it's the point of the game, I'm fine telling that story. But again, game/story, tomatoh/tomahto. And discussing my own character's death is a very uncomfortable thing for me because I had an 11 year old cousin who didn't get any such discussion. So even that is touchy, and I have to be the one who has the idea.

Short of that, I won't be in a freeform with people I've known my entire 18 years of gaming. That last 6 words feels weird to say.


I don't care about winning, or even surviving, I just care about losing being (to a particular level of granularity) objectively fair-ish. For me I solve the rat problem by only giving you diseases if it actively attacks you, not if you attack it.



The notion of negotiating how fights go down is the worst part for me. In real fights, the chips fall where they may, unless you're a boxer who just got paid to throw the fight or something.


I'd do something like that, with a caveat along the lines of +x for any detail demarking obvious superiority that would apply to the task (or in the case of your 2d6 example, keeping the higher one where a detail indicates superiority). Someone earlier cautioned against Fate, but I think Fate actually works out really well because players roll 4df against a descriptive statement about the complexity of the situation "Dude's a Legendary Swordsman" or "That cliff's gonna be a Great climb". Even if you don't use Fate outright, it might be worth looking into putting descriptive words on what numbers players need to tally even if just for behind the scenes.
This message was last edited by the user at 18:02, Fri 17 Nov 2017.

It's not the fighters negotiating the fight, though, it's the players. From the perspective of the fighters, the chips do fall where they may - unless the players negotiate that one of them cheats or something.

It amounts to the same thing, since the outside factor is conscious choice. The perspective of the fighters is inextricably linked at least in part to my own if I'm one of the fighters. Which is to say that while I don't play fighters who are entirely me, I can't play a fighter who is entirely not me either.


No, the chips don't fall where "they may" they fall where "the players decide" and that's unequivocally different to me.

Okay. Unless it's a real fight, though, they'll never fall "where they may." Either the GM is deciding or rules are deciding, and neither of those are the same as "the chips" deciding, but of someone else deciding what makes sense or would be fair or interesting. It's a model of a fight, and the players deciding to agree to abide by that model.

Of course I concede that there's a difference to you, I just find the distinctions players make interesting.

Sure they are. The rules indicate that the random number generators and the character builds are in some combination, "the chips". The same way chips fall off rock being chiseled at, dice fall on different numbers, cards in a deck come up a number of different ways that exceeds the speculated possible duration of this universe under inflationary cosmology, and so on. Things that are a designated stand in for chips fall (often literally) in a way that is not in players control that is literally "where they may".


Yeah, and I find them objectively unfair due to their subjectivity. At least with systems, everyone is subject to a level of similarity in interpretation with regards to what dice rolls mean, and what is fair to spend points or other power determinant resources on. In freeform, all interpretations are entirely subjective. Even when players team up and declare another being a Mary Sue/Marty Stu. There's no accounting for fairness to a given granularity outside opinion, and let's just say that I have the opinion I should never have paid taxes.

The range of ways that they "may" are proscribed, though, by human decision makers. In a real fight, an undiagnosed medical condition or an unfortunate fall could result in death. A particular rule set might include that sort of eventuality, or it might not. An in-game model of a poker game might involve real cards and so involve all of those myriad possibilities, or they might have a much smaller range of outcomes. Chips are still falling, but into an artificial funnel.

A negotiation can also involve chips falling. One doesn't know what the other will propose or agree to. The agreement may precede the outcome, but it still involved uncertainty - quite a lot, in fact if we go deeper into the neurology of decision making, and consider that many of the choices we make are set inexorably in motion before we experience making them.

Most systems don't require dice rolls for everything, and often not even for things that dice rolls are required for in other situations. For example, an attack might require a roll in one circumstance and be deemed automatic in another circumstance, without the rules weighing in specifically on when which is appropriate. Most systems leave it up to the GM's interpretation of when it is appropriate to roll, and even to ignore the outcome of rolls.

Is an acceptable level of fairness possible for you, given such an arrangement?


There's really no accounting for fairness in a given ruleset, either, at least not outside of perfectly symmetric games like chess. Designers have illogical preferences for certain outcomes and they might miscalculate things. It's common for groups to negotiate and decide how to reform the rules to what they decide is fair, and then to play out games based on those decisions. I'm interested to know how that sits with you. If you don't like it, I would understand: I myself prefer to stick to rules as much as possible, even when designers agree that they're unfair or broken. But if I advocate for that as a player or GM, I'm going to have to negotiate it.

Folks. I think a gamist-narrativist-simularionist discussion would be a great topic for a different thread.

Thinking about it, I suppose a rules designer doesn't have a specific intent to advantage or disadvantage a particular person at a particular table, the way an actual player (who is not-very-well-trusted, apparently) might. That seems to be the primary concern.

and that's still not "where they may". That's "to one's whims"


Usually, but where it's not, it isn't the system's fault.


The accounting for fairness is that everyone is subject to most of the same rules, and that most of the rules are codified statements with statistical relevance rather than being outright whim. I don't join games that are "heavily houseruled" if I can avoid it, because I may not know how the math works out. Depends how clearly delineated and how unambiguous the rules changes are. With a freeform game, I always see the "no godmodding" which is as ambiguous or at least subjective as you can get. And says nothing about statistical relevance of characters.

That can occur, yeah. I don't play the 3 games that are most famous for it.


I'm playtesting 3 systems right now actually. I have to like it, or at least accept that some tweaking will need to be made to fix my games in a way that makes them fair to the level of granularity expected by system players. One of my games has 154 posts in the thread designated for system tweaks. About 2/3 of them are dedicated to actual system tweak discussion that have fruitfully lead to system changes.


I aim for a combination of rules and verisimilitude, with rules winning out slightly if only because some rules are specifically required to break verisimilitude to fit the source material. A rule that's good for a criminal sandbox won't necessarily be good for a visual novel or a horror game after all, and several won't fit hyper realistic. Not without already incorporating some level of ambiguity anyway.


No, I'd trust 1shinigami with my actual life. But I won't be in a freeform game if he ever decides to run one :D
Jokes aside, yes it's a relevant distinction. "Is not", and "may not" be are also factors, but the two are different things with regards to trust.


It's the core of my problem with the idea of a black box game if it isn't done right, will ruin it for me. So it is very much not for a different thread. I'm actually somewhere in the simulation assisting narrative camp, and only care about gameism inasmuch as it aids the simulation I need for a fair(ish) narrative.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:50, Fri 17 Nov 2017.

In reply to steelsmiter (msg # 35):

Thanks for your responses.