Powerful characters, rules, roles, narration

From: Benedict Adamson <yahoo_at_...>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 01:41:19 +0000


BECOMING A GOD IS GOOD
In the thread about powerful characters, some people object to the possibility of player characters advancing to the the stage where they can 'beat up Orlanth'-- that is, become gods themselves.

I think this possibility is meant to be there in the game: the game is called Hero Wars, it's explicitly said that your character can be Argrath, and Argrath is a man who 'became a god' (it says so on the cover of King of Sartar).

BEATING UP GODS IS HARD
Consider the simple case of advancing from a basic character (let's call him Bryon), with Close Combat (Sword) 5W, to the stage where he can duel with Humakt, with Close Combat (Sword) 10W8. Because of the extra cost of advancing more rapidly than +1/session, that increase requires 165 sessions. Even at 50 sessions per year, which seems to be uncommonly many, that's three years of solid play.

So, after three years of play, Bryon challenges Humakt to a duel. Unfortunately, Humakt is not just the God of Sword Combat. What defence does Bryon have against Sever Spirit 10W8? OK, let's be generous and assume you spent your other hero points on a Defence affinity, and you averaged 4 HP/ session on improving abilities, so Bryon also has Defence Affinity 10W8. But Humakt is also the God of Honour. 'It is a sacred thing to duel with me, only those untouched by cowardice may face me.'. Oh dear, Bryon did once retreat from a combat (in 165 game sessions -- it must have happened). What defence does he have against Honour (Shame Coward) 10W8? Proud 17? Bryon is facing a Complete Defeat (kills himself in shame). And so on. And Humakt is a one dimensional god; think of the breadth of abilities the greater gods have. To face a god takes more than 10W8 in an ability; you must be 10W8 in several abilities, which means not 165 sessions, but several hundred: more than enough for anyone.

POWER FANTASY
Fantasy RPGs are power fantasies. Part of their psychological appeal is the idea that your character is becoming ever more powerful, although we perhaps don't like to admit it. A modification to the rules that makes this advance seem slower therefore undermines part of the appeal of the game.

HOW POWERFUL IS AN ABILITY RATING?
Are bigger ability ratings more powerful? Do they allow your character to do things more easily?

Because of the way the contest rules work, how easy the contest is does not depend on the ability rating, it depends on the size of the ability rating relative to the resistance. OK, but the size of a particular resistance should be roughly constant (pace Ian) throughout the course of the game: the 10W2 clan champion will be impossibly difficult for your 5W pimply youth, but a push over for your 15W3 grizzled veteran. So, obviously, the larger ability rating allows you to you can more easily defeat the Champion. Case closed?

But, an ability rating is useful only if the Narrator decides to have a contest. She decides what contests will happen, and what the resistances will be. And she has other concerns than providing measurements of your character's abilities. The only purpose of a contest is to create drama through the uncertain risk of defeat, with the risk (the probability of defeat) neither too large or too small. This means that she will always be choosing contests with a resistance about the same as the ability rating you are likely to apply in the contest. As your character's abilities become larger, so do the abilities of the opponents you face. In a sense, then, a large ability rating does not make your character more powerful (in rules terms).

Big ability ratings are not as powerful as they may seem.

(Yes, I know there is some contradiction with the previous section.)

PLAYING A ROLE
The narrator will choose the ratings of opponents based on the average ratings of all the characters (more of this below). Choices about which abilities to improve using HPs are therefore choices about what role your character will play in the playing group, because what matters is your rate of advance in a particular ability relative to the rate of advance of the other characters' ratings in that ability. For example, continue as the combat specialist, or become a second-rate all rounder?

Because what matters is relative ability, not absolute ability, the choice of whether to increase an ability by +1 when the rating is 5W has the same effect, in changing or maintaining your character's role, as increasing it by +1 when the rating is 15W4. Non-linear advancement-costs undermine the choices that the players have made about the role they want their character to play.

NOT ANOTHER BLOODY COMBAT
The narrator will try to make the contests interesting, by making them different from each other. This means choosing contests for which different abilities are applicable. This in turn gives an incentive for the players to spend HPs on those different abilities (so NEXT time, they will know enough Durulz Customs, or whatever, to win).

As characters become more powerful, they interact with people just as specialized as them, but with different specialities. From a simulationist PoV, highly specialized characters are unrealistic; the Clan Champion must interact with the Law speaker, so although the Clan Champion will not have Heortling Laws 10W2, he will require more than a basic 13. This gives the narrator an easy justification for pressuring players to diversify their HP spending, and so slow down a rate of advance perceived to be too fast. Indeed, if the narrator wants the campaign to explore a particular 'power level' in detail (in the manner of a classic farmer's campaign), she is naturally going to produce a bigger range of challenges in that setting, and thus slower advancement.

(But see below)

EVERYONE A HERO
To appear heroic, and appeal to the players' egos, each hero must have a chance in the limelight: an opportunity to be the one person who saved the day, who excels when others failed (or were merely so-so), and so gets to be the star. In a typical group, the characters will assume different roles, specializing somewhat. A character can usually save the day only when their specialism is the key ability needed in an extended contest (a finale). Sensitive to this, the narrator will naturally produce episodes that have finales that require different abilities. When such a finale takes place, the other characters will have to use similar abilities to the star (they must be unable to use their own specialism, otherwise the star cannot excel). This naturally encourages players to spend some points on abilities similar to those held by the other player characters, and thus reduces the rate of advancement.

(But see below)

WHEN NOT EVERYONE IS A HERO, AND ITS ALWAYS ANOTHER BLOODY COMBAT In the previous two sections, I assumed that the players had to choose various abilities in the contests. An alternative strategy is to specialize in a broad ability, accepting a reduction due to improvisational modifiers. This second strategy is worthwhile only if the narrator allows the broad ability or the improvisational modifiers are small. A narrator can therefore inadvertently encourage players to concentrate HPs in a small number of abilities, and thus advance too quickly, by being lax with improvisational modifiers.

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