Chrome - glitz or dead weight.

[MR TEK]

A lot of people have mentioned chrome recently, mostly to complain about it, as if it some how diminishes a game.

I have played in all sorts of games for 30 years, I have had Game masters that just throw the basic facts, and Game Masters that have created world that almost literally came alive for the players.

In my opinion, there are players and game masters that communicate the bare essentials, and those that want every fine detail.

I would like to know how others feel.

Personally I love a lot of “Chrome” detailed descriptions of objects, buildings and especially characters. This makes the game more enjoyable. Yes the is less time for throwing dice, and making things happen, but then hack-and-slash is an extremely filthy and disparaged style of gaming in the groups I play with.

Rather then picking up a generic auto pistol, lets say, the bowman mk 3 with the scratches on the grip just feels better in my imaginary hand. That detail adds nothing to the mechanics of playing the game, but it can determine if I killed 3 hours with friends or I enjoyed a memorable role playing session.

Finding Game masters with the talent, and the energy to provide all of that decorative material is the difficulty. To me at least, the rewards are HUGE as a player. When I game master I strive to be as descriptive as I can.

As an example, walking through a modern high tech starport, I have described in detail a computerized direction system. Enter your destination, a specific hotel for example and special sensors track your movements. Special screens that focus independently on the face of each person in the concourse give you real time directions to your destination. The same feed may include ads, tourist info, local news, and other items.

Again that detail changes going to the hotel from a simple statement that you arrive at the hotel, into a long description of the journey, but again, once you have established that image, simply stating the players are in an area that it covers and dropping bits of news or other potential hooks and distractions moves the game along but in a more vivid fashion.

Anyone else care to share their thought?

 

[Blue Ghost]

Chrome is good.

Description is half the reason why I played (other than the setting).

A couple months back I ran the old snapshot scenario "They're Loose", where several animals get free from their cages while in transit. The ship was a Marava Class trader. Starship interiors are pretty generic, but I gave a basic rundown; fluorescent lighting; white and cushy in the passenger areas, comfortable but used and worn in the crew area, and dingey and all business in the cargo and engineering spaces.

BUT, when it came to the animals I conjured, I was very detailed; right down to the odor and how they felt.

Too bad we only had three people playing that night (myself included, who ran the thing, and played all the NPCs).

It's also dependent on how pertinent the setting is. One starport hotel lounge is like another, but there's a few tweaks given the planet in question; i.e. open air on a "class M" planet, or underground or sealed on an airless world and so forth. Ditto with other climates; ice worlds, water worlds, molten or Venus like settings, and so forth.

On the other hand sometimes can bog down the story the game's conveying. How important is is that your party comes across a major quarts find while trying to find a lost explorer in some caves? Do you really need to describe the curtain embroidery on that Aslan estate when all the party needs is a place to crash for the night? Does the party really need to know what MegaCorp made the interpreter hanging around that Hivber's neck?

To be basic (and common sensical) I love description. But it should be in proportion to what's going on. I've taken some liberties here and there; i.e. fog covering the starport tarmac and the like, but rarely do I toss in extraneous stuff.

Any other thoughts?

Great topic BTW.

 

[Malenfant]

Chrome is definitely good IMO (though as Blue Ghost said, don't go overboard with it, at most just describe what is obvious to the PCs, not what they'd see if they looked at the labels of every single item in the room ).

I keep going on about planetary realism and verisimilitude and so on, but it really adds a lot to the 'chrome', and makes those alien worlds really feel alien. Describing the pale moon-like glow that illuminates everything at night from the distant secondary star in the system, or how the gas giant the planet orbits turns night into day when it's full, or how the red tinge of the primar star colours everything... that's what makes it all feel otherworldly.

 

[kafka47]

Gah, agreeing with Mal again...something must be wrong or very, very right...

Chrome & polishings are the essence of a good Referee. An exceptional Referee is one that can bring this out in her/his own players to actually help with the trimmings. Game Designers can make this task easier by a whole nest of tricks and one hopes that they are aware of them. So, in the end I see it as partnership between these three elements that make up a great game.

Conveying the wonder of the universe, though, is a much harder task, if you do not have access to a visual catalogue which is where art comes in. Therefore, game mastering is a true art form, some times you have it (and other times, some definitely do not have it), but, even venturing and volunteering to do something more shows that you have the right stuff. What comes next, is like any art: practice, practice, learn new things, practice, learn new things, practice. Avoid burnout by playing once in a while and sharing the responsibility and build up the capacities and confidence of your players.

 

[Merxiless]

Giving the details of the scene helps to set the scene.

I'd much rather have a detailed description of a spaceport hotel lobby, rather than, "As you enter the hotel lobby", etc. 2 guys with guns appear.

Engage the senses via the player's imagination.

 

[GypsyComet]

I'm running a sporadic Rebellion Era game in the line of fire across Daibei sector. Each world the PCs visit gets some attention to make it memorable, from the pugnacious balkanized nations around a pothole ocean on an otherwise bone dry world, to the airless rockball with the city built into a former kilometer wide mining hole (complete with rock plug on top, Spiral Road, and a big park at the bottom under sun-spectrum lights), and the savannah settlement where the bars are all built BIG, because the transplanted sentient elephants like to come in for a drink and a round of poker occasionally.

Chrome is what makes the game more than just a tally of shots fired and hits survived.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

"Chrome" is VITAL, given the genre we're talking about.

One reason why fantasy RPGs are so popular and scifi RPGs are not is that as soon as people hear "Elves and Dwarves" everyone brings roughly the same Tolkienian mental image of the world and its details to the table. Taverns, wenches, innkeeps, roads, merchants, dark forests, portly hobbits, sprightly maiden: as a GM you can take all this for granted.

In a scifi RPG the first question everyone asks (opnely or silently) is: which scifi? And as many CotI discussions have shown, the answer "hardish" won't be enough to get everyone on the same page.

So, yeah... as a Traveller GM you essentially describe nonstop, at least at the start of a campaign--especially one with experienced players in it who have never played Traveller. They're the worst. N00bs are unspoiled and pliable.

 

[Golan2072]

From my experience this depends on the players. Some are quite causual (sp?) and just want a loosely-organized plot and a detail-light setting that allows them to have fun; some want to focus on the action (especially their PCs' actions) rater than on the setting; and others (like my girlfriend) like detailed settings, detailed NPCs and detailed plots (and, in her case, remember every little bit of it better than I do).

As a Referee, I like chrome - creating memorable worlds, ships and NPCs is more than half the fun in Refereeing for me.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

The chrome *is* the game.

 

[Pickles]

Well, let's make it unanimous - no chrome, no game.

 

[Darkhstarr]

Chrome definitely! Most the players in my old regular games tend to like it. But I admit I've learned to cut down on chrome at games I run at cons, because of a lot of con gamers (particularly the younger set) prefer more thud & blunder. You have to run what your players want.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Chrome is essential <nods to above> Minutiae is not.