Would anyone else be interested in hearing a podcast of people playing a game of Pathfinder in which you never hear the terms "points of damage", "skill check", "attack roll", or "standard action"? All of the content is completely immersive, without any explicit mention of the game mechanics? The players could stay in character and maintain the 4th wall to further the immersion.
I'm imagining it working like this: A group plays on Roll20, and as much as possible does all of the mechanics silently in the chat window (pre-rolling to keep things quick.) Once the mechanics are resolved, only then does the player speak up and describe in-game what their action was. Or if they need to talk about their actions, then that's edited out in post-production.
I understand it would be an editing nightmare - but would it be worthwhile to create a unique listening experience, in which the players adventure through Golarion, adhering to PFRPG rules but without discussing them?
Besides the story-telling aspect of it, I think it would also be fun for us PF veterans to guess what mechanics they're using (since you wouldn't have any pre-knowledge on what feats, archetypes, and items they are using.) I love when listening to the Glass Cannon Podcast for example when Troy has a monster cast a spell, he doesn't say up front what the spell is but he gives a description of the physical manifestation of the spell, or has the caster say some phrase that hints at what the spell is, at which point it's fun to guess at what is being cast. So this idea kind of cranks that up an order of magnitude, to where none of the mechanics are revealed (unless there are separate behind-the-scenes episodes.)
This might help with my problem. I have never been able to listen to a game podcast for more than 5-10 min. I know the mechanics; I don't need to listen to that. The game play, however, would be kind of fun to listen along to. Though I think game journals are superior to any of the podcast options. YMMV.
I take the other view. Most, if not all game mechanics could be empirically determined, so all it takes is a being with enough resources, time, and ways of being heard (most likely Nethys) for much of the educated population to know about action economy or damage calculation. Sure, they're probably named differently in-universe than they are in the rulebook, but that's true of a lot of things (e.g. there is likely no Greek to form the roots for lycanthrope).
My intention is whether this would be interesting and different, I'm not motivated by any sense of purity. I completely agree with you that in Golarion, standard actions are a law of physics (regardless of how you name them,) and at some point I definitely would love to build a dungeon crawl based on the laboratory of a gnomish quantum physicist who explores those rules. I don't think it's "wrong" or "bad" to include that type of discussion even in-character, but my question is more regarding with respect of what already exists in the actual-play podcast marketplace, would this type of immersive gameplay stand out as being engaging to listen to?
I think it would be different, no doubt, but not interesting. Without the mechanics, all fights are either long periods of silence, or a lot of edited-down-to "I swing and land a solid blow" (also, best to determine whether HP means luck-dodging or if they're meat points, for consistent descriptors). It would be better to eliminate all the combat altogether, and just recap it as "Kaylen fought the the orc for 24 seconds before dispatching it with his flail, sustaining moderate damage in the process."
But if you don't plan on interacting with the rules at all, why podcast a Pathfinder AP?
By nature of how live roleplaying works, your story will never be as good or consistent as actually writing out a script and performing a play (since you're still leaving yourself vulnerable to the mechanical less-than-climatic results of the final boss dragon, built up for 12 sessions, rolling a 1 on his first save and dying).
I don't see that it offers any much benefit over a conventional Actual Play podcast, or that the story without any mechanics offers anything over a scripted play.
I think I'm close to Reverse's camp, but I can see a compromise position.
You could record a session, and then use that as the basis for a scripted dialogue audio drama. It could even be a scripted dialogue drama with a GM Narrator.
Judicious editing could eliminate a lot of dead time. Using the actual events as the basis for writing a script would eliminate the sameness of attacks, and allow for consistently managing what those HP numbers meant.
That? I think I might listen to.
I think it would be different, no doubt, but not interesting. Without the mechanics, all fights are either long periods of silence, or a lot of edited-down-to "I swing and land a solid blow" (also, best to determine whether HP means luck-dodging or if they're meat points, for consistent descriptors). It would be better to eliminate all the combat altogether, and just recap it as "Kaylen fought the the orc for 24 seconds before dispatching it with his flail, sustaining moderate damage in the process."
But if you don't plan on interacting with the rules at all, why podcast a Pathfinder AP?
By nature of how live roleplaying works, your story will never be as good or consistent as actually writing out a script and performing a play (since you're still leaving yourself vulnerable to the mechanical less-than-climatic results of the final boss dragon, built up for 12 sessions, rolling a 1 on his first save and dying).
I don't see that it offers any much benefit over a conventional Actual Play podcast, or that the story without any mechanics offers anything over a scripted play.
To me, the draw over a scripted play would be the unpredictability. The adventure becomes more vivid when you know that no one knows how it's going to turn out. Not only do the players have agency and the ability to alter the story to their own ends, but at the end of the day the dice rule - you just don't hear the dice, in this rendition, but you know that they're there. You still intuit which hits were critical hits from the descriptions.
As far as interacting with the rules, I think you are intimately interacting with the rules. Every action is governed by PFRPG rules... you are just aren't broadcasting the exact numbers.
I disagree that combat would be boring, I think with proper descriptions, it could be very exciting and rich. And I definitely think "meat points" would be the way to go - you hit but only do 2 damage? "Rufus parries the dagger and jabs his rapier through the orc's leather armor, just nicking his side." It would be important I think to build characters with dynamic and varied combat actions, rather than just fighters that full-attack every round.
