RE: Re: Saga system

From: Mike Holmes <homeydont_at_...>
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:56:25 -0600

>From: ASHLEY MUNDAY <aescleal_at_...>
>
>Here's one way of looking at Jane's "how to get your
>characters from A to B in N years" problem:

I'm going to propose another method - though I think it'll probably not be satisfactory to Jane. But it's what I'd do were I in her shoes (which wouldn't happen since I don't play adventures, but...), and needed to have the characters meet some point in ability for future scenarios.

First, I'd be generally stingy with HP, to ensure that I didn't overshoot. Not terribly, so, just enough that I could be pretty sure that nobody would get overpowered too soon.

Then, before every adventure, I'd ensure that there was some downtime. Next, I'd look at the character sheets, and figure out how many keyword levels they'd need to get their abilities up to where they needed to be for the next adventure, and assign them in a directed manner to get them to that level. Then I'd come up with an explanation of just why they got precisely those levels in the interrim, by describing the downtime action appropriately.

Outside of this method, I think that anything else is prone to failure for several reasons. No matter how many HP you give a player, you can't know how many of them they'll spend on the character, and how many they'll bump with - IME, some players hate to fail, and others only bump when it's absolutely crucial to win. Further, how many HP they spend on bumping depends a lot on how many contests you run per session (or unit of refresh). So you can't be sure how many HP are going to get spent on the character.

Of those they spend on the character, you can't know how many they'll spend on any particular ability. That is, the benchmark for some adventure will be based on combat, but your characters will have spent the points on diplomacy or cooking. If they spend on the right abilities, do they spend enough? That is, do they spread out a bit, or do they stack a bit? Even a little variation in stacking amounts causes a lot of difference in end ability levels.

Actually, I'd avoid all of this by ignoring the sample stats in the book and replacing them with ones that fit the characters inmy gamebut, then I'd never be playing such adventures in the first place, again, so...)

You simply can't know what a character is going to look like if you use HP to advance the character over time. So the world should adjust to fit the characters, not the characters be manipulated into fitting the world. But, again, this'll probably be problematic with the whole sim outlook, so sorry if it's just noise in the channel.

Mike

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