Hmm, good point. I can't see Frodo's player coming up with that complaint if he'd chosen to play a pacifist hobbit, though. What do you think: was the Fellowship a balanced party? Galadriel was an NPC tied to one location, to my mind.
I'd agree that author control helps. The author can fiddle the dice. Mind you, so can the GM: and so can Hero Points. Pippin v Lord of the Nazgul, anyone?
> Party balance, in a storytelling context, says that over
> the course of a campaign, all player characters should be
> at least significant, and preferably crucial, to the story.
(nods)
> It also says that, for those players who care
> about the size of their parts, that the significance of the
> characters to the story should not vary so widely that one
> player feels his or her character is central while another
> player feels his or her character is marginalized.
Also agreed. Though here I wonder about the concept of players who don't care about the size of their parts? Are they playing the same game?
> a) some players don't much care about the size of their
> parts; they're at the game because they want to be with
> the other players.
"At" rather than "in" - nice word! Yes, I've seen that happening in some F2F games. Was that what you meant above, or was there more to it?
> Also, players who fit Robin Law's categories of "butt kickers" and
This seems to move over to the problem we've discussed a lot, of different sorts of game, and the potential clashes when not everyone's aiming at the same sort. My solution would be to move the butt-kickers to their own game. They can enjoy themselves in their way, we can enjoy ourselves in our way.
> b) the significance of a part has no objective measurement.
No. This is probably why I'm getting confused. I can "feel" relative significances, but I'd probably do a better job if my judgement was based on something more concrete.
> It is possible to run a combat oriented
sounds like 20 years ago playing D&D! When the healer started blackmailing the rest of the party, or deciding who got healed on the basis of their expressed ethics, things livened up (and no, it wasn't me playing the healer, I was the thief/illusionist). But the player has to "push" to do this.
> The simplest way to monitor
> "significance of a part" is to watch how the time
> at the game is distributed among the players. If one or
> two players are doing most of the talking, you probably
> have a problem in this area.
(nods some more). Though sometimes this is just because some players are better at talking/writing than others, have more free time, aren't so tired... it's dependent on the player, not the character or the plot. I can never tell which the problem is unless they tell me specifically (so I try to ask specifically).
> Also, imagine how your
hmm... I tend as a GM to aim each "scene" at a specific player, with party agreement, often based on who's got most free time to post during that period.
> c) Because most games contain at least some of the players
> Robin Laws calls "butt-kickers" or "tacticians"
Can we assume for the purposes of discussion that they've moved out? Please?
> Also, combat in RPG's is like chase scenes in
> action movies. When the GM's imagination fails,
> combat becomes a good fall back option.
(wince). I know as a plot device it worked for Raymond Chandler, but surely we can do better?
> Hopefully, this is a start toward generalizing the concept
> of party balance to cover contexts outside of combat.
It's raised some interesting points, thanks.
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