"Hey, there's this list method which means I get 10 abilities or this narrative method which means I can screw between 20 and 40 out easily"
without wondering if perhaps, just perhaps, your understanding was a bit skewed?
I'll take your word that the geezer's "story lead", whatever that means, and just mention there's not really a lot there that contributes to the character's story. There's nothing evocative. He's a blank set of attributes. He's a good 4th level rogue/4th level fighter. No questions are asked in the narrative: Why's he so good at all these things (Born on Krypton? Script Immunity? Golden Spoon In Mouth?), where does he fit into the world (singular lack of relationships, is he a "Man With No Name"), what's he like as a person internally (what drives him to be a great overachiever, "Teased at School", "My Father Made Me Feel Small")?
The big problem with a fist full of attribute and skill like abilities is that they're tedious to have to sit through while he spends ages reciting his narrative and totting up oodles of piddly +1 augments. Plus it's a complete balls ache to play as well. I've given up playing HQ at cons*. It takes me too long to assimilate the sheer mass of detail on the average character sheet.
Maybe PBeM is a bit different (not done it for a long while) and these factors might not be so important but it'd drive me to drink fairly quickly round a table top.
On the practical side: Does everyone else in the group share their narratives? If they do then the player should see fairly quickly that there's something a bit different with his technique.
Cheers,
Ash
*The odd game of Char-Un intrigue excluded
>
> >From: "Adrian Smith" <smudge1_at_...>
> >
> >I'm running a PBEM at the moment and a new
> character has just been
> >introduced, the trouble is this is his 100 words;
>
> Rory's got a good point.
>
> By way of disclosure, I'm a player in Adrian's game,
> and so is at least one
> other person on this list.
>
> Further I know the player in question, and I think
> that people are assigning
> some motives to the player that I don't think he
> has. In play he's actually
> a very story-driven player. I think that his
> narrative is simply pushing the
> boundaries, and I'm guessing that he doesn't know
> about the particular rule
> in question from page 20.
>
> Put another way, if presented with the same "rules"
> for creating a character
> (sans the text on p. 20), I'd probably do pretty
> much the same thing. I'm a
> "min-maxer" too, and I think anyone who's not is
> crazy. If a system says you
> can do something, you should. That's not abuse. If
> the system doesn't work
> when min-maxed, then it's a crap system. That's an
> assumption of Von
> Neumann's 600 page Min-max Theorem, which is the
> foundation of the
> mathematical field of Game Theory. Somehow RPGs have
> gotten along for a long
> time with the notion that if the rules are broken,
> that you should just play
> as though they aren't, compensating for the system's
> inadequacies.
>
> HQ isn't broken as written (it's actually rather
> sound). I think with the
> proper rules in hand the player in question will do
> just fine. Or perhaps
> he, like myself, would be more comfortable with the
> list method, as it has
> objective limits (though then you run into the
> problem of comparing between
> people who have used both methods, which they have
> in this case...).
>
> Anyhow, the worst thing to do, in my opinion, is to
> "punish" a player for
> their enthusiasm by twisting the intent of the
> character. That's not to say
> that the player in question might not enjoy some
> sort of Krjalk taint or
> something; be careful what you wish for, lest you
> get it. Lots of players
> are happy to be "saddled" with such a "problem" as
> an excuse to have their
> character behave in all manner of bad ways.
>
> Either way this idea always backfires. Two wrongs,
> you know.
>
> Mike
>
>
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