Current Mood:  groggy
Interesting post in my Roleplaying For Dummies Yahoo Group today: How patient would you be with a player that doesn't seem to grasp the
mechanics of a system in a role playing game? ( Full Post Within )</u></font></a></span> Yes, I had some thoughts: Well, there's a difference between this: How patient would you be with a player that doesn't seem to grasp the
mechanics of a system in a role playing game? And this: Quite honestly, I believe the problem was this girl was more familiar
with Kindred the Embraced than she was with Vampire the Masquerade. The first is a question of mechanical resolution, which, if you were using the Storyteller d10 system, while not the most complicated system on Earth, is in places counter-intuitive, and the latter which is a much more damning problem of thinking Nosferatu just aren't that much more unattractive than bald, pale guys and that the operation of a Vampiric city generally involved posing on rooftops at night looking both pretty and like Heathcliff ... Well, that's an issue. I can deal with folks who have trouble with systemic operations. It helps vastly that my choice of systems is generally so far down on the complexity scale that one would have to be an absolute imbecile not to have the core resolution operation well in hand. Someone can be forgiven for asking, "Say, what's the stat adds for a Rotschreck test again?" but it's harder to justify "Say, what Trait do I roll in combat, again?" when there's only three or four Traits on the sheet and one of them is "Kill Things With Great Efficiency." So, there's that. If she doesn't understand the setting assumptions, though, that's a bigger problem, and it can spur from a couple of places. You might have drifted off "canon" in some ways without noticing it, and she's actually closer to the text than you are, even if you have a perfectly functioning game. You may simply have a different understanding of a multiply-perceptible setting issue (something that happens all the time in White Wolf properties because of their obsession with multi-viewpoint metaplots; they've become better about that). Or, she might just legitimately be a goon-head that needs a beating with the hardback leather-bound VtM release until she starts bruising in the shape of the Clan insignia.
If someone's breaking the dynamic for the players in any setup, for any reason, you effectively have two responses: Feelings don't really come into it. If you think she can be an overall positive addition to the group, and you think investment of time and effort is going to pay off more than you invest, re-educate. Otherwise, why jeopardize the dynamic of a functioning group? And all that's true, as far as it goes, but there's another facet that's important, especially for online games. The system you pick has to be simple enough that at any given decision point, it would be fast and easy to do what you want to do in the system, resolution-wise. That might be through extensive, well-indexed tables and charts being available online for your game ("OK, Frenzy, Rotschreck ... ah ha!") or because the system itself is simple and direct ("I have Good Self-Control, bumped down to Fair because of all the blood around, and I roll my 4dF ... Crap, Terrible! I Frenzy!"). If one or the other of those things are not true, then the game has a built-in explosive device that will take out the whole thing, if not today, tomorrow. Oh, yes, the third option is to have no system at all. While a lot of "forum and chat-based RPG games" take that option, I find it's just about like combining the no system references and a complicated system in one place. You can make it work, but you're surfing on an explosive device that doesn't like you. | 
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