Re: Dungeons and dragon
@Haramir, try Drivethru rpg for accessible pdf versions of the books, though some of the tables can go a bit wibly.
In fairness often there are far more rulebooks than you actually need if your a player, usually you just want the player's handbook or similar, and often if you've got good friends going who know the game you can do without that, I didn't get the mutants rules until I'd played for close to a year, and when I played 7th sea earlier I'd not read any of the rules.
While there are some people who are minimaxers, ie, exploiting everything in the rules to have an uba character, or rules lawyers, the best players are ones who just go from character, and the best gms are ones who can use rules on the fly or even wing it.
Frequently in Mutants I'd say something like "my character would like to try this" and our gm would work out what the best rule to apply in that situatio n was and how likely it would be to succeed.
@Pelantas,Haramir is correct, though I'd personally say it's not a matter of the gm (or game master), telling a story and players cooperating so much as it's a matter of everyone in one environment creating a story together with the players choosing what they do and sparking off one another, and the gm playing the npcs, putting obstacles or enemies in the player's path and handling any over all plot, though even this is flexible to change, indeed one of my gm's maxims is "you can't predict players" meaning we will always do something he doesn't expect.
For example, a good gm will say something like
"It's night and your walking down the forest road. What do you do?"
A player might ask
"Do we know anything about the forest?"
And the gm might say "well the ranger knows it's home to some dangerous creatures, the wizard has n o idea, the fighter knows some caravans of travellers have gone missing"
Then the wizard might say "well sinse I think it's safe I'll cast a light spell for us to see better"
whereupon the ranger might jump on the wizard and scream and say "nooo! don't you know that there are goblins in these woods?"
If the players were good and really into their characters, this would generate into a bickering match and an arguement, and the gm might just sit there then at an opportune moment say "Well you hear a lot of stomping in the woods" and see what the players do.
If one of the players wanted to take a doubtful action, for example the ranger might try and sneak up on what is approaching, the gm might ask them to roll stats or skills just like in a gamebook, though a good gm as I said will use the rules as an aid, not make them an end in themselves.
Combat of course is a little more formal, rolling to hit and d
amage and take other actions, but even there things can be very flexible, for example there was one occasion in Mutants where we were fighting a bunch of villains behind a force field. my character (who wore an armoured battle suit rather like Iron man), flew into the air, and crashed down into the ground, then tunneled up under the force field and started using his explosives from below, (a good gm will also reward good ideas too).
This is why I don't rp on muds or online games, because to rp effectively you need a gm who is as human and adaptable as you, and will play the environment, the plot and the npcs to what the characters do. Even the best computer program is hugely limited when compared to the flexibility of an actual human gm who is running an ongoing story.
It also of course helps to have players who click with each other and will really throw themselves into their characters and the setting as well, and of course when the gm knows her/his players, she/
he can even play to their personalities , for example in 7th sea, he introduced my character (a zoro like spanish nobleman), by having him come upon one of the other characters grabbed and man handled by a nasty mercinary after she tried to pick someone's pocket, because he knew I was the sort of player who couldn't resist diving in and doing the hero thing .
I even got to say "unhand! the lady sir!" and challenge said mercinary to a duel complete with glove slaps and lots of twirly spanish sword fighting, particularly amusing sinse the rest of the players (playing rather more synical characters), were sitting around and taking bets on who'd win.
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