>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've just looked through the archive, and I haven't seen anyone say this. Trotsky mentions preferring low level games, but is happy that others have a different view. I can't see anyone mention 'beating up Orlanth' as a problem.
>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).
Duh.
>BEATING UP GODS IS HARD
Duh.
Personally, I see the becoming a god bit as the end point of the campaign. Once someone seriously starts thinking about beating up Humakt or whatever, I reckon thats time to quit. Actually stating gods smacks too much of bad D&D for my taste.
>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.
Which, of course, explains why D&D is the least popular game in the world. What with every level costing more points than the one before... Ah, but D&D rewards more points for beating up harder baddies, so this is a poor analogy. HW introduces an even more powerful way to improve skills - the quest challenge. Once you can comfortably operate on the hero plane, there are few limits to your potential for advancement.
>HOW POWERFUL IS AN ABILITY RATING?
>
>Big ability ratings are not as powerful as they may seem.
>
>(Yes, I know there is some contradiction with the previous section.)
Yes, big ability ratings are as powerful as they seem. The rest of the world is relatively static. Once you can beat the clan champion level, you need to face the heroic opponent. Once you can beat them, what next?
>PLAYING A ROLE
>The narrator will choose the ratings of opponents based on the average
>ratings of all the characters (more of this below).
Not if he has any respect for campaign consistency. This would effect the contests I bothered rolling for, but when I've said "a typical clan champion has skill level 10W2" I am stuck with that choice. If I turn round and say "you're fighting a typical clan champion, close combat 10W4" I am cheating the players.
(And as a side note, I did a check and only one of my PCs has his best skill in close combat - this is just a useful shorthand.)
> 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.
Given that the rest of the world *DOES* matter, this becomes a moot point, but...
If the rest of the party is choosing to be non-specialised, the combat munchkin becomes a destablising factor. If I have a group of three reasonably balanced characters (say 10W2) and one munchkin (say 10W4, and nothing else above 17) how do I run a combat? Sure, I can keep seperating the munchkin from the group and his followers, and force him to use his worst skills, but that quickly (and rightly!) starts to look like I'm picking on him.
>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.
Define "lax". Is a one mastery penalty enough? Two? Should I penalise "Kill Things With Anything to Hand" but not "Close Combat (Sword)" (when the character always carries a sword anyway)? Eventually, the player who spends his HP on a sufficiently broad ability will win out regardless of the penalty assigned. I'll agree that the received wisdom of "learn to say yes" is dangerous. At high levels that could lead to losing control of the game. Assigning penalties needs to be consistent, otherwise it smacks of cheating. Even at the W1 level, you need to think about how big a penalty you would apply to someone with W4 or more in the skill to seem reasonable. Personally, I have always assigned penalties of up to a mastery. If that doesn't seem big enough, I say no...
Basically, though Benedict's thinking has three problems from my perspective.
(1) Benedict sees ratings as a way of keeping track within a group. I see
them as a way of keeping track against a consistent world.
(2) I have stories that my players and I wish to tell. They do not involve
the wonders of being a god, divorced from the world. They concern the
struggle to reach the point where becoming a god is a possibility. One
comment I've seen is that high level characters should be wandering the
outer worlds, not the middle world. Sorry, I'm not interested in that.
Heroquesting is important, but I want to concentrate on the events of the
center. For me that's the fun bit. I want them to be competing with JarEel,
not Humakt.
(3) Benedict views many problems as something to be fixed by "good GMing"
or caused by "bad GMing". I view them partly as rules artifacts. HW is a
system that is very easy to munchkin in, and some quality of GMing is
necessary. But too many times I've seen advice on this list (or another
one) where rules problems are dismissed with "run this sort of game to fix
it". Sorry, a rules problem ain't fixed by a storyline hack. A simple rules
fix can sometimes be more appropriate. Certainly, some of Benedict's ideas
amount (to me) of punishing players for spending their HPs on skills they
are interested in. Now, that's probably not how he means it, but it is what
it comes down to. Players in HW have almost no control. The GM decides
which contests to run, how to resolve them, and the challenge of their
opponents. How the players spend their HPs is about their only control. If
the GM starts punishing them for it, or changing the world to make their
increase meaningless, they have no control at all.
At the end of the day, I doubt we'll ever agree. The rules fix I suggest is aimed at those who want to run a long, long campaign, with a world similar in power to that suggested in the HW books so far, where the end point is reaching god like powers. (In other words, the sort of game I want to run.) If that isn't you, fix the rules that need fixed for you.
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson graham_at_... Albion Software Engineering Ltd.
Powered by hypermail