Fantasy RPG Rant

[sbarron]

I've been playing in a D&D3 game for about 3 months now. (Before everyone gets their panties in a bunch, I can't find a Hero game, and this problem isn't directly the fault of D&D3) The game is OK, but the lack of any sort of purpose or design to the game world is really starting to get me down. Magic doesn't make sense, the character classes make less sense, the other players are good guys, but they seem to have zero sense of style or concern with continuity. There is no mystery, no drama...I don't know, something is missing.

I just got copied in on an e-mail between one player and the GM today. I think it really highlights my problem....

"I have been looking at upgrading my mace as discussed on the phone. What needs to be done in order to to enhance a magical item by giving it more magical powers..is there an upper limit?

For instance...I would like to add greater shock (DM's manuel) a +1 improvement to the gloves and maybe disruptor a +2. Brigning the total of improvements to +3. According to the table in the DM's guide this costs for a new item about 18,000 gp (don't quote me on that) Is it the same price or less for adding in the improvement to an already exisitng item?

As it is not creating the item over again is it cheaper or harder? Does it just requier a spell caster.

This is also why I am all whiny about the devaluation of Kurants mithril currency. In effect, my character lost about 250,000 gp that would have made some seriously nice improvements. Especiall since I was going to burn off about 75,000 to upgrade the mace to have incorpreal, shock, and energy blade. Now it would do 1d6+ base and ignore AC.

There is also an item called a packmaster fail in the arms and equipment guide. It is the ultimate gnoll weapon. It proveds a +10 diplomacy and +10 intimidation to gnolls who use it. Also, all gnolls treat me as friendly ( I need to look at the book to confirm this) and I can summon 1d3 fiendish gnolls to assist me once a day for 10 minutes. Cool cool cool!"

Now obviously, this player is psyched about these magic items he's trying to get created, and that is good for any game. But the fact that he is so concerned with the +'s and GP costs of "upgrading or creating" magic items, and the exact effect that they will have the game mechanics, is leaving me cold. There is no story here, no mystery, no in game excitement. There is only, "well, the DM Guide says this, so I'm going to do it."

I realize a big part of the problem is the GM, and the fact that he has not really checked any of this. Having talked to him, in his mind the DM's Guide is gospel. Anything in any of the other "official" published books is as well. But to me, this approach has left us with a campaign world that makes little sense, with characters who have powers and abilities that make little sense, and with tons of magic and magic weapons that have no mystique.

Now I am going to take a shot a D&D, because I think they are part of this problem. But first, let me just say that I have been having fun, and I think they have done an excellent job of improving the core system. But so much of it just makes NO sense.

One of our characters picked up a pestige class from the Fighters handbook called "Ghostwalker" (or something like that). Now it's my understanding that anyone who takes this Prestige class can turn incorporeal 3 times a day. There is other stuff they can do to, but this one just seems absurd! As far as I know, there is no explaination of why they can do this. No "brush with the ethereal plane," no "studying of archaic texts," nothing. Just, "you take this class, you can..." Much in the system seems to be like this. Just some kewl effect with little or no attempt at explanation or continuity. In a way, the lack of continuity is the continuity.

No one else in my group seems to even notice this, much less see it as a problem. And when I have mentioned it, they have given me looks like I was speaking Draconic (another topic that makes no sense to me). Given the fact the D&D does little to address these issues, it's no wonder many players don't ever worry about it making any sense. I guess you don't need to to have a good time, and some people seem to relish in it. I just don't think it's for me.

Am I crazy, or can anyone relate to this?

Thanks for listening

[Talon]

As someone who's running a 3E campaign for the same reason you're playing in one, yeah, I can relate. :)

It's a constant battle to evaluate feats/classes/items that players want to bring from the d20 supplement of the week. Not that I blame the players -- my policy is that I'll potentially accept anything, but it has to be run by me first (with at least a 1 session lead time; no on-the-spot rulings). I combined the PHB gods and races with a homegrown map/history, and so far things are making pretty decent sense. I have specialty weapons (i.e., named items that are growing in power) as well as PC-constructed stuff, various and sundry plot lines, prophecies, etc. However, there's only so far I can take it -- the players have to carry their end as well.

Good thing this is a rant thread so I don't need a point here!

[Monolith]

It is a really fine balance between actually playing within genre and playing within the rules. Over the years (and thanks to the novels) D&D has created its own fantasy genre, unique unto itself. For example, how many non-D&D novels have you read where the primary purpose of the heroes is to acquire wealth and magic? Now too many. :)

Of course HERO has a similar flaw. Ever have the 18 DEX brick decide he wants a 29 DEX because he has managed to save the 33 EXP points? Some players just do not care about genre conventions, they only care about getting the most bang for the buck. All any of us can do is play the game, let the GM deal with the issues, and try to have as much fun as possible (games are sometimes fleeting after all).

[sbarron]

Originally posted by Monolith
For example, how many non-D&D novels have you read where the primary purpose of the heroes is to acquire wealth and magic? Now too many. :)

The DM encouraged me to make an elaborate background in his world (which I knew nothing about). So I did. Now, when everything about my character screams he needs to be avenging his family and finding out what destroyed his villiage, we're getting ready to sail across the ocean to convert our recently won mithril currency into GP, because the local economy can't handle doing it. You can see from above that the rest of the party has big plans for this gold and the magic it can buy. For me...what the hell is the point to that?

I must admit I've been having more fun playing Neverwinter Nights modules off the net than I have been in my P&P. It's because of the story, I just know it. I like my gaming to have one, and my character important in it. Fortune, glory, and power without a good story is...hollow, I guess.

[MarkusDark]

Originally posted by sbarron

One of our characters picked up a pestige class from the Fighters handbook called "Ghostwalker" (or something like that). Now it's my understanding that anyone who takes this Prestige class can turn incorporeal 3 times a day. There is other stuff they can do to, but this one just seems absurd! As far as I know, there is no explaination of why they can do this. No "brush with the ethereal plane," no "studying of archaic texts," nothing. Just, "you take this class, you can..." Much in the system seems to be like this. Just some kewl effect with little or no attempt at explanation or continuity. In a way, the lack of continuity is the continuity.


I do not play 3E, but did partake in a couple of sessions as a break from my Champs game. Someone gave me the Wizard's Handbook and I read about their Prestige classes. I also read some of the Prestige classes in Forgotten Realms. I am not sure of where the Ghostwalker comes from, but the ones I read seemed to have good story backgrounds. The Blood Mage needing to have died and been brought back to life, for example. And most of the abilities they get have a brief sentence or two as to why the person can now do it. I will fully admit that the body teleport with the Blood Mage (it stuck in my head) seems far fetched but they do explain about how the essense of the blood is intertwined and so such.

The trouble will always be with the groups you find. I have players who could care less about points. it is about the game. I want to play in the 3E game again - not because of kickass abilities and powers but because I LOVE watching the Dwarf (another PC) of Int 5 trying to teach his "War Pony" how to charge - it is jut a donkey but someone told him it was a trained war pony and he will get it to charge or will kill it trying.

[Killer Shrike]

Sounds like youve outgrown the maturity level of your group. Its probably time for you to move on to a new group that shares your focus on the story and internal versimilitude.

The system you play in has less to do with this than the DM/GM and the other players.

Good luck!

[AnotherSkip]

part of the fact of the matter is the same problem with some of the styles of the game.
unless you choose FR _and_ have all the books and histories together it's not gonna make sense.
Secondly some people (and i agree with this in some ways) believe that no one except the Gm should have the DMG. if the players know what to ask for and how much then they will want everything to be "by the book".

For example in first edition AD&D most magical items had command words. Sure you could maybe tell how powerful an item was and maybe one of the weaker powers with identify but in the end you needed to do "mage things" and spend time pouring over musty old books and experimenting with the items is question to get even something as simple as a Wand of magic missiles to work.
Part of the mystique of the game was lost in mass merchandising. People becam Gm's without "training" and did what they wanted. People learned from those people and pretty much the game became a series of expediencies. Identify got more or less unoficially house ruled as telling _everything_ about an item "Okies this is a Wand of Fire the command word is 'Flaming Shite', it has 55 charges and needs to absorb charges from a Wall of Fire from a mage 16th or higher Level." When the intent behind identify was "This wand can cast burning hands and contains medium power."

That is the problem with random Charts, you really need to create histories behind each item. Take, Sting and Orcrist for example. These are famous blades with histories, not some random junk.

And Spells and mages? Don't even get me started!!!!

[Enforcer84]

I think this is more a problem with the group you are playing with. I can't think of a game system where a group of gamers all with the same goals or at least the same level of maturity can't make it work. This is everyone's responsibility; GM and players. I know it sounds cliched but you should seek a group with motivations more to your liking.

[Mr Mole]

I think (almost) everyone will agree that the problem stems far more from the group than from the rules.

I'm not the world's biggest WotC/D&D3/d20 fan. I do think, however, that the core rules have shown tremendous improvement over the years. Some parts are looking more and more like Hero all the time.:p For example, lifting capacity in 3E is based on doublings now, unlike previous editions, allowing for a far greater range of effects.

There are "good" and "bad" gamers using every system and in every genre. The proportions aren't all that different, for the most part, from any other game. D&D just tends to have a larger pool of gamers.

It takes a truely advanced, enlightened, and sophisticated game like FREd to bring out the very best , of course.:D

[Derek Hiemforth]

To an extent, this problem is built into D&D. Many of the most interesting monsters (Undead, Demons, Dragons, etc.) require that you have magical weapons to hit them at all, and the more powerful the monster, the more powerful the magic weapon required. This means that -- assuming you want to use these classic monsters -- you must provide magic items for the characters. This in turn builds in an "arms race" mentality, where the stuff a character has is extremely important... perhaps even more important than his abilities. Since almost no fantasy literature works like this, it's little wonder that many D&D players have trouble identifying their characters and environment with the genre conventions of fantasy novels... the D&D world doesn't work like fantasy novels (other than D&D novels, of course).

[sbarron]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth
...where the stuff a character has is extremely important... perhaps even more important than his abilities.

That's so true. When I am playing FH and my character gets into a tight jam, I immediately start going through my skill list, trying to figure out what my character should do next. When I play D&D and get into a jam, I start looking over my magic items. D&D has gotten better about this with Feats and Skills, but magic items still tend to define character capabilities. It's a small difference, but I think highlights one of the reasons I like Hero better.

[sbarron]

Since a few posters mentioned that my complaints are more the group's fault than the system's, I want to reiterate that I agree with them. The right group of gamers can make any system work. I just think that many of the conventions in D&D, as Derek pointed out, tend to steer players toward a style of play that is not typical of the genre and not really what I'm into anymore. And because many of them have never played any fantasy RPG other than D&D, they don't realize what (I think) they are missing. This is the root of my frustration. I can't even talk to them about changing things up. To them, there is only one way to play a fantasy RPG, and it's what we're doing.

I don't like my chances of trying to ween these guys off the teat of D&D, so maybe I can at least begin to shape their gaming away from the accumulation of wealth and magic and more towards the rewards of a good story. But in the slightly altered words of our favorite starship doctor..."dammit Jim, I'm a Hero gamer, not a miracle worker."

[misterdeath]

Mainly because you get so few feats and skills, and so much cash that it's easier to come up with magic items than to give your character the abilities he needs.

My Cleric just took a level of Barbarian, because it was easier to get the Movement abilties and Weapon Proficiencies that he needed than to try to wait for feats. He spent his cash on stuff to augment his spell casting, so he's not giving up much. I even role played the change last level (all of which spent in the wilderness fighting things), so it's not completely out of the blue why a NE cleric of the god of seduction, manipulation, and control took a level of barbarian.

I was talking to my wife about this last night (she's the 3E GM). She thinks that it might be fundamental to D&D. I'll try to reproduce her logic.

D&D is derived from a wargame, through many permutations, and based on the Attacks of Opportunity rules, it still seems to hold quite a bit of wargame feel.

D&D was designed to be simpler, and to appeal to a broader market. This market was mainly supposed to come from computer gamers. Hence the rapid level ups, the "Kewl" feats and magic items, the lots of abilities at each level.

And at each level, you have to step out of game play, and metagame to determine what you get for a level/what you can spend your money on/what spells you can take.

Now, it comes into play differently in Hero. Most of the math permutations happens during character creation. Once you're playing, since the jumps in XP are much smaller, you tend to spend them during play, and so, don't spend a session metagaming trying to get your character up to speed.

If you were to drop 30 points on the character every three weeks, then you'd see some metagaming in Hero too.

D

[tesuji]

OK, first off, i applaud your courage and daring.

There are just not too many people who would come to a HERO GAMES board and start complaining about players and GMs being too hung up on points and game mechanics. Thats Daredevil Dan levels of intestinal fortitude right there.

I have been GMing a DND 3e campaign for over two years now, having picked it up at about 2nd level and the 7 PCs are now to 13th level. i expect the game to conclude in about 7 months when our 3 year anniversary comes up with them being about 16th level or so.

DnD provides a wide variety of classes, PRCs and the like for you to use or not for your campaign. The number of PRCs even from the core books, witc products including splatbooks" is large and obviously intended to cover a wide range of character archtypes, some from the lit and some from previous game implementations.

I always too this as an embarrassment of riches... not as a requirement. I figured that each Gm would pick and choose the ones that make sense for his world and allow them. The ones that did not make sense for his world, he would disallow.

It sounds like you and your GM have differing standards, and so the ones he has allowed are not to your taste. Thats an issue you might ought to address with your GM.

In my game, as a for instance, i knew the PRCs were "works in progress", i knew that in many cases to do a PRC you needed to start out with that goal in mind, I knew that the core books for the PRCs (the five splatbooks) were not available at campaign start and would be trickling out slowly... so i said "NO PRCS" from the get go.

In my next campaign, and any after that, at day 1 i will hand my players a list of acceptable classes, including PRCs. Once the game starts, this list will not change, barring some extreme situation.

This way, all the players and myself start with an idea of "what the world looks like."

This is simply to me a case of campaign management in an ongoing development.

But, having classes doesn't mean you as a GM can just turn off your brain and somehow accept everything published as soon as it goes black and white. You still need to vette the material against the story you are telling and the world you want your characters to see.

You may not like the ghostwalker, perhaps your friends do and perhaps others would. WOTC, like every other game company, is trying to appeal to more than just one taste and they, i suspect, understand that some of what they provide will be "way cool" to one person and at the same time "silly" to another.

Thats also why they have customization of classes worked into the game. A ranger with TWF might not fit your world... it didn't mine, so you can tweak it (as i did.) I did leave the original class in, just gave it a "common source of training" to explain why they all got the same combat style... rangers of "that goddess" all learn TWF... makes more sense.

I don't recall the ghostwalker prc specifically but iirc it was an attempt to port the clint eastwaood "mysterious pale rider" once dead character into a fantasy setting. I seem to recall thinking it was "cute" iirc and have considered it for a subset of my game because i treat back from the dead as significant in my game with cults and sects who either find it appealing or find it an abomination and with special feats with prereqs like "been dead but got better" and with "afterlife" scenes whenever a PC dies which make the event a truely "life altering" experience, significant and special.

As such a prc or several which do put into the game potential changes for after-death... doesn't seem bad to me. (Tho i might have them black-lined on the initial "what classes" handout... so the players know there are more PRCs that they will only know of in play after certain circumstances.)

Anyway, i can see how with any game a GM who defaults on his choices and does not worry about continuity and the like would be bugging to players with differing standards.

Can you imagine if a Gm sat down with HERO in any genre and just said "buy what you want, as long as you total under X"? Now that would be a horrible experience for someone who wanted continuity and reason and such.

[tesuji]

On DND and Xp...

IMO the biggest single difference in DND vs FH is "starting level".

DND allows you to start very low, 1st level being barely more than common folk in abilities. It then expects your power level to drastically increase over time, so that by mid-campaign challenges that were tough early on are inconsequential.

FH, by default, using 100 pt ot 150 pt characters, instead starts you off much more competent, you are aleady past those early stages and ready to jump in. The power level increase is thus not as drastic over time.

A decent example of this is seen in MnM which basically starts your super at 10th level.

Most DND games i have seen starting in 3e have started at higher than 1st. I personally prefer starting between 3rd-5th myself with an eventual goal of 15th or so by game's end.

However, since DND does not require you to start at first any more than FH forbids you from starting at 25... this is still a GM decision about his campaign.

As for spending Xp vs levelling up... the fegree to which these interrupt or follow from the play is entirely a GM thing. In my game, leveling up occurs at the end of one session and the players have until the next session to provide me with a sheet. Since it never happens "in game" it never interrupts the flow. I require them to also submit their "nexts" (whats your next feat, your next attribute, etc) whenever they advance so everything they gain is "something i have been working at for a while." When we played FH years ago, Xp worked much the same way... given out at the end of an adventure and spent between sessions. I don;t know of any game i have played in where it was customary to spend XP for stuff during play. (In my current MnM game the gap between earning XP, spending XP and seeing that Xp in play is likewise a series of stages taking time... it takes an entire episode to earn the 2-3 xp and another entire episode to have the changes kick in... an episode means a month's worth real world gaming... usually 3-4 sessions of play.) Its similar with my dnd game although the leveling up is a bigger thing and occurs much less often.

[AlHazred]

As far as starting out with a "green" character...

If that's what you want, Hero is as capable of serving you as any other game. In D&D, because they use level to determine ability, they have to start out very low to accomodate those who want very unskilled characters. Dark Sun got around this by giving everyone a couple of levels at the very start.

In Hero, you can start at any level of play. The 150 point "standard" allows you to start out as good as most fantasy novel characters. At 100 points, you are "grittier", like one of the main characters in the Black Company series. If you want to be really gritty, you can shove that starting total all the way back to 0 point base + 25 in disads, as one of our group's GMs was thinking of doing. Would have made things challenging...

[misterdeath]

Originally posted by tesuji
As for spending Xp vs levelling up... the fegree to which these interrupt or follow from the play is entirely a GM thing. In my game, leveling up occurs at the end of one session and the players have until the next session to provide me with a sheet. Since it never happens "in game" it never interrupts the flow.

Oh, ours too. You get xp at the end.

Unfortunately, everyone rarely has time to do all the work before hand. Only Joe, who has the next ten levels of his character all worked out has his character done next week. I come close, but there's always something I need to consult with someone else with (we've got two clerics, no need for too much overlap).

Because we all have jobs, families, and lives, it's hard for us to not take time at the beginning of the session to do the work for the game.


I require them to also submit their "nexts" (whats your next feat, your next attribute, etc) whenever they advance so everything they gain is "something i have been working at for a while."

That would work, I think. Do you allow for changes to the plan? When do you require the "nexts" list? If at the beginning of the level you're in the city and the character is planning to take another level of rogue, but then the campaign moves to the wilderness for the forseeable future and the player wants to take a level of ranger instead, when does he have to give you advanced notice?



I don;t know of any game i have played in where it was customary to spend XP for stuff during play. (In my current MnM game the gap between earning XP, spending XP and seeing that Xp in play is likewise a series of stages taking time... it takes an entire episode to earn the 2-3 xp and another entire episode to have the changes kick in... an episode means a month's worth real world gaming... usually 3-4 sessions of play.) Its similar with my dnd game although the leveling up is a bigger thing and occurs much less often.

It's because it's a bigger thing that makes it a "problem". Buying stuff happens more often than that.

How do you handle keeping buying stuff metagame things out of the session?

D

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by misterdeath

Because we all have jobs, families, and lives, it's hard for us to not take time at the beginning of the session to do the work for the game.

We all have lives and families and jobs too... our average age is now somwhere in the mid 40s and the youngest is mid 30s. Two are over 50.

We take a different view... if you dont have time, dont play. Dont expect everyone else who MADE TIME... none of us expect free time really ever exists anymore... to lose out because of you.

My rule is simple... if i dont have your revision by the session start, you just use last weeks stats for this session. Then, between now and next time, try and find the time. if this is not acceptable to you, then perhaps you need to find a different game.

twice in two years we have had people play level down.

never have we spent a session or even really part of a session with everyone who did get their characters done waiting for the others to catch up.

playing 1 level down for one session is not gonna kill you.

Originally posted by misterdeath

That would work, I think. Do you allow for changes to the plan? When do you require the "nexts" list? If at the beginning of the level you're in the city and the character is planning to take another level of rogue, but then the campaign moves to the wilderness for the forseeable future and the player wants to take a level of ranger instead, when does he have to give you advanced notice?

The only changes allowed are when something drastic happens that changes the possibilities. One example would be an after death scene that produces a radical change in the character. Another would be if new material, such as happened with the five splatbooks, is added to the "rules of the campaign" list. (it only happened for those 5 books img.)

Otherwise, your selections are not changeable under normal circumstances.

Originally posted by misterdeath

How do you handle keeping buying stuff metagame things out of the session?


I generally keep the session in character more than not. If two players want to discuss rules or such, they do so while others are playing their scenes. With 7 players, i tend to keep things running more as group activities than solo so there isn't a lot of offline discussion.

of course, it varies, some good, some bad.

Another thing we do is we have a campaign BBS. During the week, players can post messages and hold discussions at their convenience and i can handle out of character stuff like rules questions and buying selling and the like.

We even manage to do some roleplaying there on occasion. This is the place for one-on-one conversations and sidebar roleplaying... stuff which would not serve as well in a 7 people face-toface three hour session.

That helps keep a bit of the bookkeeping down.

The only time we "lose session time" is about three times a year the party typically has to sit down and do a loot run. While they can divvy simpler loot online and out of the way, every once in a while they need to discuss the back and forth and what do we keep what do we sell face-to-face.

When the list of unclaimed items gets too long they spend about a half hour divvying up and selling off their loot... in character mind you... i cannot count the times i have seen the player wince as his character gave up something the player wanted.

but the combination of offline bbs, email and basically a zero tolerance for not getting things done... means most of our sessions are sessions of roleplaying, not accounting.

[ShadowRaptor]

oooooooo.....I wanna rant about D&D/fantasy rpg also. *waves hand in air to get attention* :D

To me D&D is one of those love it/hate it games. I like it for the options (in 3e), and yet at the same time I hate it for that exact same reason. There is soooooo much for it now that a person could drown in the material, and sifting through it all can cause more of a migraine than getting hit in the head with a hammer.

I have noticed a trend with steady D&D players, in my own experience, and that is many players that have only played D&D, or just play it more than other games, really have a set mentality about how they look at the games as far as combat goes, and that's why I say D&D breeds Hack-N-Slash mentality and tactics in both character creation and metagame thinking. I have tried taking a group of D&D regulars into other games, we did a one shot Exalted with four Exalted and they got their butts handed to them by a group of four Dragon-Blooded because they were so used to fighting everything in both a system manner and metagame thinking that they got hosed. Once that happened, they put the game away and said that it was too hard and that D&D is better.

Last month I also tried doing a Champions one shot. I made the characters because I am the only one that knew the system, but I did make sure I got the jist of what they wanted to know. Basically the group was a spiderman clone, cyclops clone, wolverine clone and iron man clone, and all were made with 300 points. Despite the variety involved in their powers, they got wasted by 4 175 point robots because they used their typical ways of fighting bred from playing D&D for ten years, and after the game they said they would only play D&D from now on because this game was also too hard for them, and they weren't used to it.

I don't know if this sounds familiar to any of you, but if it does relate to something you have epxerienced then you know what I am getting at.

It is for these reasons that I no longer play D&D.

[Spyritwind]

Part of the problem is that there is so much Diablo (arcade game) mentality in 'roleplaying' these days. Many people have been playing hack & slash, kill the monster, get the treasure & go up in level mentality and have never really learned how to roleplay. Many people don't even realize that they are not role playing, but are roll playing instead. It's just an arcade game on paper.

Now this doesn't make the game bad ... for some people. Much of the mass market is completely happy with the ease of this type of game play, but for others it can be quite frustrating and even boring.

It can be very hard to find a group that fits your persnal style of play and maturity level ... unless your 15 - 22 with a Diablo mindset. :)

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by Spyritwind
Part of the problem is that there is so much Diablo (arcade game) mentality in 'roleplaying' these days. Many people have been playing hack & slash, kill the monster, get the treasure & go up in level mentality and have never really learned how to roleplay.While I don't disagree at all with your conclusion, I do disagree about it being a phenomenon of "these days." Have you ever read some of those old Gygax modules? Room after room with no personality, plot, or motivation information at all... just what kind of monster, trap, or dungeon dressing is in it, and what kind of booty you can find if you're thorough enough. :)

[Jeff T.]

Originally posted by Derek Hiemforth
While I don't disagree at all with your conclusion, I do disagree about it being a phenomenon of "these days." Have you ever read some of those old Gygax modules? Room after room with no personality, plot, or motivation information at all... just what kind of monster, trap, or dungeon dressing is in it, and what kind of booty you can find if you're thorough enough. :)


:( :(

...but I LIKED those old modules.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Starlord
:( :(

...but I LIKED those old modules. Yeah, you can never have too many Stirges hiding in the rafters or magic swords buried under flagstones, or farmer's barrels full of gold and random treasure! :rolleyes:

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor
....and after the game they said they would only play D&D from now on because this game was also too hard for them, and they weren't used to it.

:rolleyes:

I take it you dont play with a group of brain surgeons? :p


Small minds concern themselves with small things. --folk saying

Well, 20 sided dice are small.....

Seriously though, ANY game can be fun. Its the players and the GM that matter. If the players are heavily limited and, more importantly, close minded and stuck in a rut Id bail. Unimaginative and inflexible people have no business playing a game that is completely visualized VIA IMAGINATION!

Raptor, dump those dead beats and get in with a new group as soon as possible :)

[tesuji]

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

I don't know if this sounds familiar to any of you, but if it does relate to something you have epxerienced then you know what I am getting at.


Juts as an aside, the exact same results you gave could be used as evidence for a different conclusion than you reached.

Instead of using it to reach a conclusion about your players... doesn't it also lend itself to support the following conclusion?

Hypothesis: HERO system has such a steep learning curve and its system and knowledge of how to use the system is so ingrained and inbred that novices vs veterans in terms of player skill level in terms of system familiarity will be a more determining factor than the system's own purported balance.

I mean, maybe its not a PLUS that hero throws its own sense of balance (300 beaten solidly by 175) totally out the window when non-veterans try and play. Maybe thats a bad thing, not a good thing.

You ran two different games to try and show your players different alternatives and managed in two out of two to convince them it was a bad idea.

Maybe that should not be taken as a example of **their** faults.

Why wouldn't it be a better thing for a game for it to be so intuitive and straightforward that even in a one-off a novice player could have fun, "get it", and be at least competitive if against a veteran although unlikely to win?

If i had run the exact same session you did and gotten the exact same results you did the first thing i would look at critically was MYSELF because clearly i did not create a scenario that accomplished my goals and then i would look critically at the game system i tried. After all, after i set all the pieces, even built their characters, set the terrain and such, and gave them all the info they have of the system, blaming a really lopsided result on THEM and not ME or not the SYSTEM seems really off.

[Yamo]

Why wouldn't it be a better thing for a game for it to be so intuitive and straightforward that even in a one-off a novice player could have fun, "get it", and be at least competitive if against a veteran although unlikely to win?

Competitive? Win?

Silly me. I thought I was playing a roleplaying game and not a Magic: the Gathering match. :rolleyes:

And in answer to your hypothesis, I would give a big fat NO. The day that what you get out of HERO isn't a factor of what you put into learning it is the day that is loses all charm for me.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by Starlord
...but I LIKED those old modules. I liked them too. 'Course I was 12 at the time... ;)

Seriously, they do have their charm. I dug 'em when I was young because that was all I thought RPGs were at the time, and I dig 'em now for nostalgia's sake. But c'mon... The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief has a room where over 9000 GP in gems are stuffed into a straw mattress in an otherwise ordinary room. This kind of thing totally encourages a hack-n-slash, sack-n-pillage, style of play that's just not normally seen in fantasy literature. The characters are supposed to be putting a stop to the giant raids on surrounding human communities. Instead, they're encouraged to take time out to ransack a bedroom on the off chance they might find 9000 GP in gems in the straw. :rolleyes:

[AnotherSkip]

And definately after finding out about that "little miss" post game discussion you immediately kick yourself and "try" to remember to be more hack and slashish.

really even "modern day" 3E modules are not realy that different.

I was in a Low level adventure and not only does the module _not_ follow the rules-as-written(a Sepia's Snake Sigil that does not radiate magic), has many areas of hidden "hack and slash loot" that is so inconsequential to the main story that actually fiding out about the information that leads to the next part of the adventure (like important story details) only nets you 1/10th of the xp needed to go from 1st to second. Enough that if you only found the story hooks and never encountered any monsters you would have to hit 10 flippin story pointers to gain a level, and that would only get you second level. Needless to say we actually go _out_ of our way in order to risk life and limb(what story characters ever do that anyways? "Hi, I need a battle so i can level!") for the benefit of leveling.

Complete reverse of the story characters paradgrim(advances plotline in order to do more things).

The main problem is that if you have too much of a set value for all monsters whether or not they are true obstacles or incidentals. Hero has Xp based upon the ends, 3E has it based upon the means. And sadly dont even really consider things like Tuckers Kobolds in their Xp allotment.

if I ever wanted to really really mean in 3E I would have a Tuckers Kobolds dungeon and only allow charactes of 10 levels or higher for the players. Net result 0 XP for the whole adventure of making thier lives miserable.

In Hero is not allowed by the rules.

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by Yamo

Competitive? Win?

Silly me. I thought I was playing a roleplaying game and not a Magic: the Gathering match. :rolleyes:

because i suspect that in fact, in spite of this response, you actually did get the context of the post, i wont bother explaining it to you or how out of context this reply of yours is.

Originally posted by Yamo

And in answer to your hypothesis, I would give a big fat NO. The day that what you get out of HERO isn't a factor of what you put into learning it is the day that is loses all charm for me.


I have encountered much the same sentiment from HERo players other than you. They believe that skill at "the system" is a commodity or trait that should be rewarded in favorable odds of success. most often its to excuse various means of milking the system as producing more powerful characters and that this is "fair" sort of a valid compensation for their years of experience.

I would however pass on a different consideration... in that once the game becomes some inbred, so much of its "tactics" being actually system foibles and so much of its play being controlled by knowledge of system specifics ... that once you reach the point as described above where novices cannot get fun out of a one off when the Gm is trying to show them the game because the innate system balance falls apart due to veteran/novice incompatability... that the notion of rewarding player knowledge of system has gone too far and is actually serving as an impediment to players enjoyment.

I have seen the same type of thing happen in other games. gradual complexity and evolution from tactics being a focus to "rulesics" being a focus and a gradual transition from a game where, perhaps unintentionally, you move from an "open" format to a "closed" house where only those who know what the system does are welcome.

In DND, as a game, I know that if i take their basic balance methodology, classes, and if i pair four 9th level guys against 4 5th level guys then i will, barring scenario specific terrain and circumstance, see the higher level guys win. This would be the vase even with relative novices. (If i thru even on even or perhaps even a level or two off, i would expect player experience and system knowledge to determine the outcome.)

From this guys description, that same thing does NOT hold true for HERO. From his test, even at grossly different character levels, its knowledg of the system that holds sway and determines the outcome.

In HERo, playing the system seems much more important to balance.

I just don't think that something that should fall solidly in the PRO column.

The day you don't get paid back by the system for the work you put in may be the day HERO no longer interests you.

The day my players inexperience with the HERo system means they dont get enjoyment from my game is the day HERO system lost its appeal to me.

different strokes.

[Jeff T.]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
Yeah, you can never have too many Stirges hiding in the rafters or magic swords buried under flagstones, or farmer's barrels full of gold and random treasure! :rolleyes:

Just waxing nostalgic.

Yeesh.

[ShadowRaptor]

Yeah, but I only had the Hero game for a month before trying it and I didn't know everything about it. It's not my fault, its never my fault. No way, It's their fault, not mine. :D ;)

Rant aside, I do understand what your getting at and that could be the way it was, but even with their vast versatility with options common sense should dictate that with their powers and superiority, and believe me they had superiority over the robots, they just ran at them and hacked away like it was Diablo/D&D. I told them for the two weeks before this that this is not D&D, use tactics, use common sense. Pretend this is not D&D. They didn't listen to me. Heck, I didn't even know what all I could do with them. And these guys have roleplayed for much longer than myself (I've only been gaming since d20 system came out).

They simply used D&D actions and Diablo mentality, and they got crushed, and they got mad because they lost when they felt that they should have won, and they should have won but they didn't, and they gave up before they could even learn the system better.

When I say won and lost, I mean the battle between the robots. These players are so used to winning in D&D because its become so normal for the players to win against almost everything they come across that they didn't think they could lose using their typical tactics in combat, and they did.

But, I will also look at myself and consider how I could do things differently.

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor
When I say won and lost, I mean the battle between the robots. These players are so used to winning in D&D because its become so normal for the players to win against almost everything they come across that they didn't think they could lose using their typical tactics in combat, and they did.

But, I will also look at myself and consider how I could do things differently.

If I may wax nostalgic for a moment.

Years ago, my very first escapade outside of D&D was Marvel Super Heros, which wasn't all that far.

My second foray was an old superspy game called Top Secret/SI by TSR. This game simulated James Bond style gaming over Tom Clancy, but it was still a level of lethality we had never before seen in combat. Everyone made charcters and it was agreed that we would play a sample combat that would not "count". The players found themselves in a gunfight with thugs in a hotel bar. One player, who was still very much in D&D mode ran out of ammo and decided he didn't want to take a round to reload. His character was sort of a good guy mix of Odd Job and Rambo and so he pulled his knife and charged. He promptly took a shotgun to the torso and dropped. He would live, but it would take months of time to recover (no healing potions or clerics ya know).

It was truely a beautyful moment as the other players looked at their sheets and contemplated the fact that that would have killed any of them.

After that everyone focused on finding cover and bought up their stealth over their Karate. It was alot of fun.

[Lucius]

Cutting and pasting to respond to several people.

Mister Death

"I was talking to my wife about this last night (she's the 3E GM). She thinks that it might be fundamental to D&D. I'll try to reproduce her logic.

D&D is derived from a wargame, through many permutations, and based on the Attacks of Opportunity rules, it still seems to hold quite a bit of wargame feel.

D&D was designed to be simpler, and to appeal to a broader market. This market was mainly supposed to come from computer gamers."

Yes, D&D is very much derived from wargames. And the original audience was wargamers. But as far as a "market mainly supposed to come from computer gamers" I have to interject that D&D actually PREDATES and was an influence on the kind of computer gaming you are talking about. When D&D first came out, video gaming meant "Pong." Of course, I’m sure that since then there has been a lot of influence in both directions.


Tesuji

"You ran two different games to try and show your players different alternatives and managed in two out of two to convince them it was a bad idea.

Why wouldn't it be a better thing for a game for it to be so intuitive and straightforward that even in a one-off a novice player could have fun, "get it", and be at least competitive if against a veteran although unlikely to win?"

This is assuming D&D is somehow more "intuitive and straightforward" than Hero, which it’s not. (try explaining the Attack of Opportunity rules to me…better yet, DON’T) But the problem here is not that he was introducing a group of novices to Hero - the problem is that he had a bunch of people who were accustomed to D&D. He would have been BETTER OFF with players who had no RPG experience whatsoever, or maybe even with people who had experienced something else, like White Wolf maybe.

If I understood him correctly, Shadow Raptor had only had the game about a month himself - so saying the problem was about "veterans vs novices" doesn’t seem to make sense. The problem, if I may quote Shadow Raptor himself, was

"they just ran at them and hacked away like it was Diablo/D&D. I told them for the two weeks before this that this is not D&D, use tactics, use common sense. Pretend this is not D&D. They didn't listen to me. "

Granted, Hero has a "steep learning curve" and you are even right that it is a challenge to get a new player up to speed - although I have had little trouble in the past introducing inexperienced players. The complexity of Hero does not get in the way of new players having fun, provided the players are reasonably intelligent, provided they get plenty of help at first - maybe even having characters created for them based on concepts or outlines they submit - and provided the players don’t have a concept of "fun" that is too heavily influenced by D&D, Diablo, or some other game where they learned to expect to fight all the time, and to expect to win fights without having to think. Hell, they could even have fun then, if you design your scenarios that way and cater to that style of play.


Jhamin


"My second foray was an old superspy game called Top Secret/SI by TSR. This game simulated James Bond style gaming over Tom Clancy, but it was still a level of lethality we had never before seen in combat. Everyone made charcters and it was agreed that we would play a sample combat that would not "count". The players found themselves in a gunfight with thugs in a hotel bar. One player, who was still very much in D&D mode ran out of ammo and decided he didn't want to take a round to reload. His character was sort of a good guy mix of Odd Job and Rambo and so he pulled his knife and charged. He promptly took a shotgun to the torso and dropped. He would live, but it would take months of time to recover (no healing potions or clerics ya know).

It was truely a beautyful moment as the other players looked at their sheets and contemplated the fact that that would have killed any of them.

After that everyone focused on finding cover and bought up their stealth over their Karate. It was alot of fun."

I think it’s instructive to contrast Jhamin’s group’s experience with Shadow Raptor’s. When one of them almost got killed, instead of crying "This is too hard! This is no fun! Go back to D&D" they said "Hmm, this is NOT like D&D, this is DIFFERENT, we better do some things differently" and they were willing to learn.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary wonders why I bother.....

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by Lucius

"Why wouldn't it be a better thing for a game for it to be so intuitive and straightforward that even in a one-off a novice player could have fun, "get it", and be at least competitive if against a veteran although unlikely to win?"

This is assuming D&D is somehow more "intuitive and straightforward" than Hero, which it’s not.

Actually, its not. Its asking the question of a game which on its first try out in a session intended by the Gm to expose his players to a game which i think he preferred he managed to turn them off the game due to very lopsided and I would guess unexpected results.

This can be taken as a fault of some other game not used in the test, or it can be considered as a fault of the game actually played. This can be seen as a fault of the players, or a fault of the Gm who determined the scenario, the challenge AND their characters.

he and i, and perhaps i and you, are simply choosing different likely answers for those two "can be considereds."

When i used to whomp all over newbies in star fleet battles, i did not blame them or blame the fact that they used to play silent death. I figured it was a 500 page rulebook and that the "tactics" were mostly "rulesics" and the 3 year learning curve.


Originally posted by Lucius

(try explaining the Attack of Opportunity rules to me…better yet, DON’T)

When an opponent's defense lapses, a shot that would have normally been parried gets a chance to get thru. There is a list of things which commonly constitute lapses in defense serious enough to enable this.

Now, I myself have quibbles with their selections for what constitutes a lapse in defense, but i imagine each Gm has his own foibles.

I have my own house rules for AoO for use in my next campaign, cuz i am not thrilled with their modelling of the lapse of defense.

Originally posted by Lucius

But the problem here is not that he was introducing a group of novices to Hero - the problem is that he had a bunch of people who were accustomed to D&D.

That was certainly his conclusion. I am of course offering a different conclusion that seems more likely to me from the facts presented.

I think the difference is perhaps the learning curve of HERO. I think perhaps that, and this is based on my experience, a novice in hero cannot get much at all out of their character because its play is so system heavy. I think botched balance issues on first runs are more likely not the blane of the game you played last week but instead the blame of the game you are playing when the botch occurs.

That doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch.

Originally posted by Lucius

He would have been BETTER OFF with players who had no RPG experience whatsoever, or maybe even with people who had experienced something else, like White Wolf maybe.

Thats not what my experience has shown me.

Originally posted by Lucius

If I understood him correctly, Shadow Raptor had only had the game about a month himself - so saying the problem was about "veterans vs novices" doesn’t seem to make sense. The problem, if I may quote Shadow Raptor himself, was

Now that he has clarified that, you still remain with the case of him knowing both sides, knowing both weaknesses, and them being unfamiliar with the system.

We could just as easily be blaming the imbalanced scenario result on the fact that they had pizza instead of burgers.

The GM provided the scenario, the characters, the enemies and the info the players had to go on across the board. If the players had no fun, the battle the Gm thought was going to be lopsided one way turned out to be lopsided the other, and the final result was the lack of interest in more of the game... it just seems silly and counter intuitive to say that everthing else except the GM and the HERO system was to blame... its the players and its the system they played a while back thats at fault?

Thats not a conclusion i would reach.


Originally posted by Lucius

Granted, Hero has a "steep learning curve" and you are even right that it is a challenge to get a new player up to speed - although I have had little trouble in the past introducing inexperienced players. The complexity of Hero does not get in the way of new players having fun, provided the players are reasonably intelligent, provided they get plenty of help at first - maybe even having characters created for them based on concepts or outlines they submit - and provided the players don’t have a concept of "fun" that is too heavily influenced by D&D, Diablo, or some other game where they learned to expect to fight all the time, and to expect to win fights without having to think. Hell, they could even have fun then, if you design your scenarios that way and cater to that style of play.

FUN = FUN and the definition of it varies from person to person.

i have no idea what the players expected coming into the game in question or what their definition of fun was. I do know that the Gm who set every single piece of the puzzle up and who is the sole source of info for them clealry misjudged the scenario. How do i know this? he expected it to be lopsided against him and he slaughtered them instead.

Why this happened, is to me up for grabs. He has certainly given his own conclusion.,.. its the players fault and its the system they used to plays fault. Thats his conclusion. Thats not mine. Thats my point.

A young girl can conclude that she is pregnant because of swimming in a pond and getting fertilized by faeries or golden showers from the gods, and that its absolutely not the unprotected sex she had with the chariot team. That doesn't mean i ought to take her conclusion as gospel.

other than his clear bias, nothing that he says leads me to conclude the blame for the events he describes lies with DND at all or lies with the players in toto. The most responsible party to me seems to be the GM and secondary the HERo system's complexity... although its the GMs job to handle that complexity hurdle.

Having run HERo and FH for novices, i know the extents to which i went in streamlining the game, removing some of its "in the way" complexities and the time I spent with the newbies.

[Yamo]

tesuji,

Frankly, I must say I think you're being a little obtuse and even rude here.

ShadowRaptor has already stated multiple times, and quite convincingly, in my opinion, that it was his players' insistance on fighting unintelligently led to their defeat.

You, on the other hand, continue to insist that this was actually his fault, as well as the fault of the system.

Well, guess what: You don't know ShadowRaptor, you don't know his players and even if you did, you weren't at that gaming session. Given this, I don't hesitate to accept his interpretation of events over yours.

It's clear that you're deeply unsatisfied with HERO System and might even be said to have a serious grudge against certain aspects of it. Fine. I question your decision to hang out here of all places in a abstract sense, but fine. That being said, calling ShadowRaptor's assessment of his game session and his players into doubt so strongly with no evidence to support your position and no in-depth or firsthand knowledge of the parties involved or their activites seems like so much arrogant tilting at windmills to me.

To what end?

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by Yamo

Frankly, I must say I think you're being a little obtuse and even rude here.

Thanks.

Originally posted by Yamo

ShadowRaptor has already stated multiple times, and quite convincingly, in my opinion, that it was his players' insistance on fighting unintelligently led to their defeat.

As i have stated before, i know what his CONCLUSION was.

A CONCLUSION does not support itself.

Originally posted by Yamo

You, on the other hand, continue to insist that this was actually his fault, as well as the fault of the system.

Actually, i rasie the question.

Tyhe logic is quite simple... their characters were given to them by the GM.
Their adversaries were given to them by the GM.
The scenario was setup and presented to them by the GM.
It is unknown whether they had ANY information about the setup or the system that wasn't provided to the by the GM.
The scenario was ran by the GM.
The result was apparently not what the GM intended.

After all this is said and done, the GM reaches a conclusion thats its his players and the last game they happened to play's fault and not his, not the new system, etc.

That conclusion seems extremely odd to me and so i question it.

If he had concluded it was due to them having had burgers and not pizza, i would have questioned it too. That does not mean i dislike burgers or pizza.

Originally posted by Yamo

Well, guess what: You don't know ShadowRaptor, you don't know his players and even if you did, you weren't at that gaming session. Given this, I don't hesitate to accept his interpretation of events over yours.

Since i do not know shadow raptor, nor his players, i cannot just blindly accept a one sided account as being the unfettered truth. Do you often just assume when you only hear one side that its totally accurate and truthful? if so, i got a bridge for you...

I am NOT saying Shadowraptor is deliberately misleading us. I fully believe he does blame the dnd system and his players for the screw up.

I just never can get over GMs who do not take responsibility for the things that happen in their games, especially when it goes so far as to dissapoint ALL their players. he did not just fail to satisfy one malcontent troublemaker... he lost AFAIK all of them.

That does not tell me to blame the players or last week's system.

Does it you?

Lets put it another way... lets roleplay for a moment...

you are standing at your FLGS ans holding in your hands the hottest new HERo release, say Cyber HERO, and this guy walks up and sees you holding it and says "HERO, yeah, i tried hero. I got my gaming buddies together and i ran a scenario with my four robots against their four heroes. i designed all the characters and they had 300 points and i just had 175 point robots and man I cleaned their clock, wiped the floor with them. They were so stupid. They thought HERO was too hard. "

Is your first thought that this is an example of a bad start, a poorly run scenario, a GM being overcompetitive, etc? or is the first thing in your mind "must be dnd players."

Originally posted by Yamo

It's clear that you're deeply unsatisfied with HERO System and might even be said to have a serious grudge against certain aspects of it.

Anything can be said.

Originally posted by Yamo
That being said, calling ShadowRaptor's assessment of his game session and his players into doubt so strongly with no evidence to support your position and no in-depth or firsthand knowledge of the parties involved or their activites seems like so much arrogant tilting at windmills to me.

Ok let me explain it to you.

If shadowraptor continues to take from this experience that he has stupid players and blame DnD... then he leaves with nothing more than a feeling of self-superioirity. If he instead looks at his own role, his own choices, the HERO system, and examines what part his actions and decisions played in this, he can perhaps start finding things he can do differently and reach a means of solving the problem.

i learn more from my mistakes than from my successes, every time. In part that is because my first look is at what I did wrong, what i could have done better, etc.

I have encountered many a GM who felt any problems were not theirown making, who loved to blame players not getting it or bad dice and so forth for the unpleasant outcomes. here, he is blaming amoung other things the game they used to play.

Am i saying he was totally wrong? Well, though its certainly tempting to say that given two consecutiveTPUs (total party unhappies), no i am not saying he was totally wrong. However, with two consecutive TPUs, I also cannot see this as just a blame it on the players and absolutely cannot blame it on the game they played last before i ask him to look at his role.

Frankly, whenever i see a post about a breakdown in game on these or any boards where we have one side blaming it entirely on the other side, I always take that with a lot of salt, being a one sided perspective and all.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Starlord
Just waxing nostalgic.

Yeesh.

Its all good fella I know where you are coming from; about a year ago my group played a version of the classic ToEE under 3e rules for nostalgia frex.

I understand the intent, Im just pointing out that while nostalgia has its place, those old adventures are still examples of bad design for a role playing game.

Much like the Model T was good in its day and its kind of neat to sit in one for a few minutes, it still doesnt hold a candle to a modern car, and you arent going to use one as your primary mode of conveyance.

[MarkusDark]

Originally posted by tesuji

Actually, i rasie the question.

Tyhe logic is quite simple... their characters were given to them by the GM.
Their adversaries were given to them by the GM.
The scenario was setup and presented to them by the GM.
It is unknown whether they had ANY information about the setup or the system that wasn't provided to the by the GM.
The scenario was ran by the GM.
The result was apparently not what the GM intended.

After all this is said and done, the GM reaches a conclusion thats its his players and the last game they happened to play's fault and not his, not the new system, etc.

That conclusion seems extremely odd to me and so i question it.


He seemed to also state that he instructed his players over and over again that it was not hack and slash, charge in and do and mow down whatever is in your way. And that was, apparently, what they did. With all of the above setups and so on, there is nothing stopping a player from taking his PC and having him run in front of a bus and get blottoed.

IMO, it is never the system that is at fault. Having played everything from RoleMaster to Amber Diceless, the systems are just the framework. The players and GM are what make the game and, to me, the rule system is tertiary. If you think Top Secret was deadly, you should have tried Boot Hill. At least in TS, you had a variety of wound factors and locations. In Boot Hill you were either lightly wounded, incapacitated or dead. And yet, I ran a year long campaign in Boot Hill without any difficulties - deaths yes (but not alot), difficulties no.

Now, I just recently played my first 3rdE game and I have to say, that whole Target of Opportunity thing is silly IMO. I can't believe that I need to step back five feet just so that the person doesn't get a second swing in on me before I try again. ;)

[doppelganger]

Tesuji, unlike many of the other posters here, I find your logic and alternative possible conclusions to be quite accurate/likely. Everything that I have read here has lead me to the same conclusions that you have already reached. The mostly likely source of the crushing defeat handed out to the players seems to be the GM. While he claims that the problem was the groups lack of tactics, he does not mention what advice he actually gave the group regarding the tactics. This information could/would arguably have made the difference here.

For what it's worth (nothing, just words) I also do not think that anything you wrote was off a level sufficient to be called rude.

I also would point out that 30 days with a copy of the rulebook results in far more knowlege of the HERO system than just sitting down to play with a pregen character sheet.

:)

[AnotherSkip]

look is that Tetsujis doppleganger?


Anyways I have run across scenarios where the Gm Whupped up on 6 160-190 point characters with 30 point NPC's.
Good group tactics+a scenario where the NPC's had the advantage(Ranged monsters vs HTH PC's) PLUS Stupid player tricks made the thing terrible.

However that is not necessarily what happened here.

Given the difficulty of game balance, and a general inexperience on both parties side many different things could have happened.

however i will agree with the possibilty that GEE WILLIKERS they MIGHT be thoughtless hack and slashers. Groups like that happen, as shocking as it may be and unfortuneately most of them do seem to spring from AD&D.

Over the years i have been playing I have heard of _One_ (count them: one) Group that actually was tactically competant enough to force the Gm to use Rolemaster Dragons vs AD&D 14th level characters (yes with firebolt tables results for 'bleeding' results) out of the dozens of groups I have played in and contacted with that is it.

One.

Not very good odds bubba.

Perhaps a post on the comparitve heroes and monsters of the scenario would make a decent difference in opinion.

[sbarron]

Early on in my Gming days, I scolded my 125 point PCs for performing so badly against a group of 65 pt orcs. My savy players were quick to point out, however, that while they were indeed more points than their orc opponents, the orcs were 65 points of combat machine. The PCs were pretty well balanced for a variety of situations, and the points they spent on combat related abilities and skills compared pretty closely to the orcs. It was an eye opening experience for me.

Points systemes can be balanced. But how those points are spent goes a long ways toward determining who is most likely to win a fight. More is not always better.

[ShadowRaptor]

It's all good, I can accept that it might have been my fault in the design of the scenario and the situation, and them being so used to a set mentality, so the entire thing crashed and burned.

It's just a learning experience after all. I now know what kinds of games that group of players likes, and I know mine, and at least I learned that from the whole thing.

As for character creation goes, I made them only because I knew the system for creating characters goes. None of them really knew it, but at least they tried it.

[Killer Shrike]

If you want to salvage the group, try doing a as close as possible conversion from D&D to Hero's, and then wean them onto the new options.

One thing about Hack & Slashers, while they may tend to be rigid in thier 'I hit it' approach, the also tend to discover and attempt to exploit better ways of doing more damage. In HEROs this translates to learning the system better to use the more 'kewl' manuevers.


Also, as a GM tip, though there are some who would dispute this, my experience is that when breaking a group into a new system challenge them just enough to make it plausible, but fix it so that they are sure to win. Its amazing how much more people like something the think they are doing well in.

[Lucius]

tesuji

"Why this happened, is to me up for grabs. He has certainly given his own conclusion.,.. its the players fault and its the system they used to plays fault. Thats his conclusion. Thats not mine. Thats my point."

First off, he was there - neither your nor I were. Therefore, I think he is a better position to judge what happenned than either of us.

Second of all, for YOU it may be "up for grabs." For ME, I think it is more reasonable to draw a conclusion based on A) what he tells me about what happened, and B) my own experience.


quote:

"Originally posted by Yamo

"Frankly, I must say I think you're being a little obtuse and even rude here."


Thanks."

Okay, now we know both the obtuseness and the rudeness are deliberate. It would probably be pointless to ask why.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary asks "Since when has pointlessness ever stopped YOU, Lucius? Pointless is practically your middle name."

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by Lucius

First off, he was there - neither your nor I were. Therefore, I think he is a better position to judge what happenned than either of us.

So this somehow should mean i don't question his conclusions?

I wonder, had he concluded that it was the HERO system's complexity that was at fault, would all you guys be lining up to say "yup, he has it right, cuz he was there and we weren't."

Its like suddenly as long as its anti-DnD then suddenly the critical thinking shuts down. Sudedenly, a one sided bash of his own players blaming them for the failure of his runs is no longer one sided opinion but "factual."

Amazing.

Originally posted by Lucius

Second of all, for YOU it may be "up for grabs." For ME, I think it is more reasonable to draw a conclusion based on A) what he tells me about what happened, and B) my own experience.

Why did you need to put your own experiences in? Don't we have his statements. You were not there. Why would you be so impertinent as to actuall cross reference his "HE WAS THERE REMEMBER!!!" conclusions against your own thoughts.

geesh.

next thing you know you will maybe even be thinking that its possible that a one sided "other side is all at fault" description of a scene might possibly not necessarily be automatically totally accurate.

Originally posted by Lucius

Okay, now we know both the obtuseness and the rudeness are deliberate. It would probably be pointless to ask why.


You can leap to that conclusion, or you could leap to the conclusion that it was simply the most polite response i could come up with at the time for his IMO unwarranted insults. He shared his feelings with us all. That doesn't mean I need to give them any significant weight.

So, as a more general question... should we take it for granted that when we see posts on this forum where one side of an event blames the failure on the other side we should take it for granted that this is an accurate and factual recount and that the conclusions made by the poster are to be taken without question?

Or is it ok to question that unless it is slamming dnd in some way?

If he had concluded it was HERo system's fault... would you all be lining up against people who even ask him to look at his own role?

Would the suggestion that the GM might be partly responsible for a gaming failure while running hero be met with such clear dismissal?

Well, actually, i got the answers to that a long time ago on multiple other threads...

The two basic axioms...

"if you use hero and it fails, its your fault and you did something wrong. Its not HEROs fault that you screwed up."

"If you used HERO and it went well, thats because the system is good and its the HERO system that deserves the credit."

Invert these for "other games" particularly DND.

Hey guys, last time i made pancakes, i burned the first one. I think Rolemaster was to blame as well as my long dead dog shep. Since you weren't there whn i burned the pancake, or when i played rollmaster and never met my dog. you gonna accept that as a reasonable conclusion?

Anyone interested in buying bridges, contact me!

and before anyone gets all bent out of shape, i am not saying SR was deliberately misleading anyone. I believe he honestly recounted his opinions.

[doppelganger]

ShadowRaptor, I think that you should try again. This time, as they go through a sample combat and start to mess up, actually stop and say "Your action is not tactically sound because ..." and explain why the player's activity and reasoning may be unsound in the context of the HERO System where it might be okay in the D&D system. Do the same in non-combat interactions and skills usage too. This may make it easier to get your players to get into the new system.

I think that HERO for fantasy has a great deal more to offer than D&D. If you show it to your players in an easy to understand give-and-take-stop-and-explain manner instead of saying "you guys are idiots" and stomping up and down on their character's corpses, they may begin to believe HERO is worth playing too.

[Pattern Ghost]

You know, sometimes tesuji annoys the heck out of me. Ok, a lot of the time. BUT, he does have a point.

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how even the worst players could get their 300 pt party trashed by 175 pt robots.

I know I can figure out how to build a 175 pt robot, especially with the automaton rules, that can whup a balanced 300 pt PC, but the question in my mind is: Why should I?

I'm thinking that the combat result is probably due more to lopsided character design, or to the GM exploiting more of the combat rules than the players, than it is to the players wanting to just walk in and smash stuff. A 300 point PC should be able to just walk in and smash 175 point stuff.
My 350 pt PCs can very easily smash my 250 pt agents in the game I'm running now, and none of them are really combat monsters or especially complex rules-exploiting designs.

I suspect that what we're talking about here is not so much tactics as scenario design. I would venture to guess that the GM set up a complex, perhaps subtle situation, that required roleplaying, planning, etc. to solve. Tactics has nothing to do with this. (If this is the case.)

Anyway, I think we'd need to see the characters in question, and a blow by blow of the scenario to figure out what didn't work here. (Not who's wrong, but what can be changed to make things work out better. Assigning blame is a pretty petty thing to do in an activity that's supposed to be fun and recreational.)

What I would suggest for new GMs trying to demo the game for their group is to build some pretty vanilla characters for the team -- at least in terms of power constructs -- and then use some generic thugs/agents for the first encounter. Use none of the optional combat rules. If running supers, leave out certain character types such as mentalists, or any other class of character that relies on anything other than vanilla rules.

Next encounter should be a fight against a somewhat weaker group of villains, designed using the same vanilla approach. They can be made weaker in numbers, by slightly lower defenses, or by an average lower SPD, or lower CVs, or some combination of things, just as long as the PCs have an advantage. Then, cut the scenario off at that point and review what happened. Look up any rules questions that weren't immediately resolvable in play, and so on. Make it clear that this is just a warm-up session, not in continuity, and that the players will be able to make any changes they might find handy. As the game progresses -- if everyone is still interested -- slowly add in layers of complexity. Throw a telepath at them, a single tough opponent that can challenge the whole team, add in optional combat stuff, such as knockback, etc.

[Mr Mole]

Pattern Ghost brought up a number of very good points. Helped me see some things from a slightly different perspective.

One thing I always try to do with newcomers is run them through some basic "danger room" scenarios to get in tune with the feel of combat using the Hero System. Sometimes it's sparring against NPCs or with each other. Sometimes it's against holographic simulations. Sometimes it's a solo run and sometimes it's a team session.

The idea is to give the Players an idea of what their PCs can do... without them having to worry overmuch about consequences. There's rarely any sort of stigma attached to losing. No permanent harm to the PCs... and only sometimes the slightest harm to the Players' or PCs' egos.

It's also fun, later down the road, when the enemy gadgeteer breaks into the team's Danger Room and turns off the safey protocols. I know it's cliche, but it's just so darned much fun.:p

[AnotherSkip]

Of course the counter to that is the TEAMS gageteer turning off the safety procols and luring an invading group into the Danger Room.

Staple event in Death Duel with the Destroyers.

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

You know, sometimes tesuji annoys the heck out of me. Ok, a lot of the time. BUT, he does have a point.

Thanks!

Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how even the worst players could get their 300 pt party trashed by 175 pt robots.

i have been avoiding the speculation, figuring it brings more into questionable ground.

From my experience tho, the enemies being robots immediately started my spidey sense a tinglin'.

OK first off, before i saw robots i saw characters set as comparatives based on total points. NO experienced HERo guy thinks total points means all that much in terms of combat capability, right? Sure, it might on a gross scale but i guarantee you with me designing both sides even 300 vs 175 is not going to make total cp a valid measure of tactical ability. However, that was the metric raptor chose to gibe us... the only metric he chose to give us.

Second, robots... the automaton rules are cute but again, they are extremely open for abuse. The vast majority of Kos in hero are done by stun damage and robots can reasonably cheaply be bought immune to stun and with enough defenses to stop the average body damage. Imagine very simply a quartet of heroes with 10d6 attacks facing robots with 10 defense. Now, an even remotely experienced group could handle this, by pushing, by using maneuvers to gain extra dice, or maybe even by looking for environmental weaknesses.

Now put these heroes in the hands of inexperienced players who may not know a thing about pushing and who certainly do not know how to milk the speed chart to make that haymaker actually have a prayer of landing.

Then, remember, its all DnDs fault. After all, what else could it possibly be other than DnDs fault?

HERo provides NO safety nets. That in itself is not a bad thing at all. Some might desribe that as like driving a high performance sports car... a great thing when handled right.

But when the high precision sports car gets wrapped around a tree by a 16 year old on his first real drive, don't nlame the Chevette he drove in driver's ed last month.


Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

I know I can figure out how to build a 175 pt robot, especially with the automaton rules, that can whup a balanced 300 pt PC, but the question in my mind is: Why should I?

Maybe you, thru inexperience, thought total points was a valid metric for tactical balance in HERO.

There are plent of other speculations possible, but we have only the fact that raptor chose to describe his opposing sides by total points and robots to tell us what little we know of what he saw as important.

A more experienced Gm might have cited cv,s powers and defenses and speed when trying to convey to the room the power level, because he would have known those to be more valuable measures of combat ability.

i don't think its unreasonable for someone new to hero to think total points is a valid measure of tactical ability... after all chargen is all about meeting the point total. he may have just learned his most important lesson in GMing whether in hero or otherwise... that balance does not come from the points.

Of course, he wont learn that lesson at all if all he takes away from the two encounters is that his players are dolts. he only learns that lesson if he questions his own decisions and roles.

like a certain apparently annoying someone asked him to do.

Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

I'm thinking that the combat result is probably due more to lopsided character design, or to the GM exploiting more of the combat rules than the players, than it is to the players wanting to just walk in and smash stuff. A 300 point PC should be able to just walk in and smash 175 point stuff.

I tend to agree. Barring design skews or scenareio skews, 300 pointers vs 175 pointers with matching design doctrines should indeed be a slugfest the heroes would win.

While all these kindly people just want to deride the players for the purported sluggyfist mentality, they choose to ignore the most obvious... sluggyfist is most often the RIGHT choice for the more powerful side. its the underdogs for who sneaky, planning and lateral thinking is the wrong answer.

That should have been a warning flag about the recounting and conclusion.

Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

I suspect that what we're talking about here is not so much tactics as scenario design. I would venture to guess that the GM set up a complex, perhaps subtle situation, that required roleplaying, planning, etc. to solve. Tactics has nothing to do with this. (If this is the case.)

I agree. it sounds to me like it was a puzzle scenario, where the answer to beating the bad guys was in say finding a specific weakness perhaps or perhaps exploiting hero rules like pushing and haymakers.

However, all this for me delves whole hog into speculation. my experience tells me that someone describing a battle by total cps often shows a lack of understanding of balance... looking for a single gross figure metric. My experience also shows me that constructs are often the subject of puzzle scenario setups, because their tactical differences make them ideal for ""non-routine" solutions.

The main issue is that any Gm who walsk away fromnot one but two TPUs with the attitude that its "their fault" or some other games fault, really really needs to look instead at his roles and his choices because he made all the salient decisions that led up to the result and made at least half the decisions within the event that drove to this result.

[Lucius]

Originally posted by Pattern Ghost
You know, sometimes tesuji annoys the heck out of me. Ok, a lot of the time. .

He annoys almost everyone. He seems to enjoy it.


Originally posted by Pattern Ghost

BUT, he does have a point.


When he says the complexity of Hero is a probable factor in how Shadow Raptor's scenario turned out, he has a point.

When he says Mr. Raptor's own inexperience is a probable factor, he has a point.

When he says robots are misleadingly dangerous opponents he has a BIG point. So do you in your essay about how to introduce people to Hero - and your advice looked to me doubly sound for someone who is almost as new to the game as his players.

When he pretends that obviously relevant factors such as what games the players have experience with are as irrelevent as what they had for lunch, he has no point other than to be annoying.

When he accuses Shadow Raptor of "presenting a conclusion with no support for the conclusion" or however he phrased it, he again has no point but to be annoying. If he knows Shadow Raptor's conclusion he had to have read the post, and if he read the post, he saw the support for that conclusion. Perhaps inadequate support given the circumstances, but hardly "no support."

When he is gratuitously insulting and deliberately exasperating, any points he has to make become moot in any case - who wants to put up with this sh1t? Nothing he has to say is worth the annoyance of reading his posts.

Lucius Alexander

It's enough to give a palindromedary a headache. Both heads.

[Markdoc]

leaving the Tesuji Issue aside ;-) there are a couple of points worth looking at here.

I have been through the "introduce DnD players to Hero" scenario multiple times, and there *are* some issues over translation.

DnD combat basically runs along the lines of hit-it-until-you-can't-anymore-and-then-fall-over.
The idea of blocking, dodging or maneuvering to get an advantage (knock or trip your oponent down, then take a head shot, or something similar) is foreign to the system.

I'm not saying that one approach is better than the other (although I and my players prefer the Hero system, no doubt about it). DnD combat is and always has been highly abstract - that's just the way it is. Personally, I run DnD combat much more fluidly - if players want to try different things, I let them. But many (perhaps most) GM's don't. I have lost count of the number of times I have tried something heroic (sand in the eyes, pulling the rug out from under someone's feet) only to have the action ignored because it doesn't fit within the standard game mechanics.

It does mean that DnD players tend to just hammer away. It also means that they are used to being able to soak up tons of "damage". I have had an ex-DnD player storm away from the table after being one-shotted by a heavy blow to the head, swearing about "what sort of stupid game lets you get taken out in one hit". He later turned into an adult and even a Hero system GM - ya gotta break things to them gently....

So having said all that, if you want to suck players into Hero system from DnD, you need to do it gently. Give them pretty vanilla characters to start with: a fighter, a thief, etc. Give them simple opponents - thugs and bandits, or a big, easy to hit (but tough) opponent that does non-lethal damage (ogre with a club).

Then introduce them to the cool stuff - opponents with a few, really obvious gimmicks - fancy two sword fighting, or funky martial arts. Use a few (but only a few) fancy maneuvers on them, like delaying actions, blocking and then counter-attacking.

Once they start asking "hey, can I..." they are hooked and you can do as you will with them ....BWAHAHAHAHA!

cheers, Mark

[Jeff T.]

Originally posted by Lucius
When he is gratuitously insulting and deliberately exasperating, any points he has to make become moot in any case - who wants to put up with this sh1t? Nothing he has to say is worth the annoyance of reading his posts.

Lucius Alexander

It's enough to give a palindromedary a headache. Both heads.

I've followed many of tesuji's posts here and in the General Roleplaying Forum. I don't see any deliberate harm in his posts. I do believe there is an inadvertant condescension in the way he writes. Basically, he talks down to people. I don't think he knows he does it though. Perhaps that is what you (and others who've responded similar to you) find annoying.

However, the reason I've 'followed his posts' is because I believe they are very insightful, detailed, and well thought out. He has a unique and clever way of viewing things. I think his advice should be heeded.

[Pattern Ghost]

I agree with Lucious and Starlord. That's why I leave it at "annoyed." Some good thoughts there, but the presentation is lacking. At the moment, I'm leaning less toward inadvertant, though. Someone who's obviously as intelligent as tesuji should have gotten a clue on that after so many comments about his percieved attitude.

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by Lucius

He annoys almost everyone. He seems to enjoy it.

Lucius, I am honestly perplexed as to why you contiue to act like your opinion of "me" is relevent?

Can we perhaps start a thread titled 'what we think about tesuji" so that those who want to rant about me can do so and the ones who want to discuss gaming can avoid this?


Originally posted by Lucius

When he says the complexity of Hero is a probable factor in how Shadow Raptor's scenario turned out, he has a point.

So i shouldn't have just taken raptors assessment at face value?

Originally posted by Lucius

When he says Mr. Raptor's own inexperience is a probable factor, he has a point.

So I shouldn't have taken raptor's post at face value?

Originally posted by Lucius

When he says robots are misleadingly dangerous opponents he has a BIG point. So do you in your essay about how to introduce people to Hero - and your advice looked to me doubly sound for someone who is almost as new to the game as his players.

So i shouldn't have taken raptors post at face value? i should not have just thrown my brain in the trash can and said "well he was there so i better not QUESTION his account and conclusion?


Originally posted by Lucius

When he pretends that obviously relevant factors such as what games the players have experience with are as irrelevent as what they had for lunch, he has no point other than to be annoying.

Actually, it is an example of trying to break thru a wall of bias. When questioning the one sided account which puts the blame soley on the players and soley on the other games they have played and ignores completely the posters role at near complete creation of the encounter in the results at all.

Look at the followups that were posted to him before mine...
first a blame it on diablo, then a post disputing whether its modern or goes all the way back to early dnd, then a couple humor posts follwed by the wonderful "not brain surgeons" post which on the basis of the one sided all-their-fault initial rant starts talking about close minded playera and tosses around words like inflexible and unimaginative before dropping back into calling them dumb beasts... althoug he did toss in a smiley on dumb beasts.

Then comes my response which offers a HYPOTHESIS... i even used that word... that the description could support a different conclusion. I asked him to consider the role HERo's complexity had to play and the role he himself as GM played.

Some people think thats rude. Some people think and posted that questioning his conclusion is rude and insulting and lets see...

"calling ShadowRaptor's assessment of his game session and his players into doubt so strongly with no evidence to support your position and no in-depth or firsthand knowledge of the parties involved or their activites seems like so much arrogant tilting at windmills to me."

This of course comes after shadow raptor himself acknowledged that he should consider his own role in the results.

And people seem to think i should take other people's opinions of my rudeness or insulting seriously?!?

Look, if shadowraptor had reached a different conclusion, if he had instead eneded with "its HERo system's fault" then the rudeness in responses would have dwarfed mine by a landslide.


Originally posted by Lucius

When he accuses Shadow Raptor of "presenting a conclusion with no support for the conclusion" or however he phrased it, he again has no point but to be annoying.

Actually, the only support is a DESCRIPTION and JUDGEMENT or maybe an ASSESSMENT of their choices. We were not given examples of the choices. We were not given examples of their options. The sum of their choices was CHARACTERIZED by him.

"Despite the variety involved in their powers, they got wasted by 4 175 point robots because they used their typical ways of fighting bred from playing D&D for ten years,"

Thats not fact but judgement, assessment and conclusion.

The facts we were given were that they were playing characters generated by him, in a scenario generated by him, against adversaries generated by him and that the point totals were 175 x 300, and that they lost. ("wasted" is still a judgement of his)

Those facts do NOT support a conclusion of its their fault or that its the DND games fault.

What in the post do you see as support for his conclusion that is not a judgement of his? What in that post do you see as support that is not a conclusion of his?

Do you really believe at face value that after getting "wasted" in this game, in this second try under him that the players leterally said to him they told him it was "too hard?" Do you think that is a factual recount or his spin on it? Do you suspect that they may have said the fight was too hard... bringing into question the scenario and not the game and that raptor's account in his rant is a little skewed maybe?

look, even if they were the DND-fed "dumb beasts" people around here seem fine at tossing onto them based on a one-sided "no fault for the poster at all" rant my experience does not say they would get up from a game and admit its too hard for them after a failure. "Those people" would, somewhat like shadowraptor did here, look for any reason other than their own lacks to explain t... "the system is stupid" "your scenario was screwed from the get go", "that game is totally whacked and out of balance" etc etc etc... even down to "you just screwed us" are the sorts of comments i would expect from DND-fed dumb beasts who just got "wasted."

At least, in my experience non-thinking hack-n-0slashers are one of the last people to immediately jump to the STATEMENT that the game is too hard... because that puts the slight onto them...

Is your experience different? Do you see "the game's too hard" as something you would expect to have been said by the players? Do you not suspect that they might have been talking about the scenario or the Gm setup?

If not, ask yourself why?

If his post had been critical of HERo instead of DND, would you have been as accepting?


Originally posted by Lucius

If he knows Shadow Raptor's conclusion he had to have read the post, and if he read the post, he saw the support for that conclusion. Perhaps inadequate support given the circumstances, but hardly "no support."

The facts given did not support the conclusion. The juedgement and assessments could have but those were not support... they were just interim conclusions.

Simply put, if the scenario WAS not skewed by GM inexperience and the various other notions i and other have raised, then brute force SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ANSWER. 300 vs 175, if we assume that this metric means relatively the same power balance, then BRUTE FORCE STRAIGHT AHEAD is the right answer for the bigger side. RAW POWER is their advantage.

The fact that he thinks they should have used non-brute force, the fact that he concludes that is why it was that they got wasted and the fact that they did lose is an argument that this scenario was not as straightforward as he makes it appear.

It sounds VERY much like he built a puzzle box scenario where brute force is a trap and non-brute force in a certain way is the key to victory. If thats the case then like all puzzle box scenarios the win/loss comes NOT from tactics but from whether they figure out the puzzle... which comes directly from how well the GM presents the relevent info.

he skipped all that. He just gave us total points and character archtypes and he then jumped to the assessment stage and the conclusion stage which is recieved apparently unquestioningly and uncritically by the gang here and i speculate that it would have been questioned more or critically analyzed or even just frankly examined more if it was not an anti-dnd conclusion.

Didn't you get that?

Why not?

Originally posted by Lucius

When he is gratuitously insulting and deliberately exasperating, any points he has to make become moot in any case - who wants to put up with this sh1t? Nothing he has to say is worth the annoyance of reading his posts.

Not dsure where i was gratuitously insulting, but its certainly possible.

I really do have little tolerance for Gms who come away from total wrecks of runs and who take away from that experience "its all their fault, not mine". I thought i did a fine job of posting to raptor in a not insulting and not inflamatory way that he should look at his role and the game systems role in play more than looking at the players and the last game they ran.

I really think that i was less insulting to him than calling the players involved "dumb beasts" was to them.

But if you dont think so and think that my rudeness was so over the top yahhdee yahhdee...

Then by all means stop reading my posts. If you want to keep reading them and responding, then please, if i can get antyhing from you, put the "why i dont like tesuji" stuff in its own thread and put any comments relative to the discussion in this one. I am pretty much in the same boat as you... i like to read your posts looking for info, but the drivel of "why i dont like tesuji" really just makes me want to skip ahead to the next poster.

Wonder isf we can get steve to put up a "why i dont like tesuji this time" thread of maybe an entire forum so that you and mono and the gang can vent your frustrations there?

[tesuji]

Originally posted by Lucius

When he pretends that obviously relevant factors such as what games the players have experience with are as irrelevent as what they had for lunch, he has no point other than to be annoying.


I do just want to highlight something here...

I am not pretending.

I assume that the GM is RESPONSIBLE for what happens in his game. I do not make allowances for outs for him like "they were all stupid."

While the "players were used to something else" is to some an excuse or an out for the Gm on the responsibility side, it isn't for me. It is the job of the GM to know his players and plan accordingly.

In this case He DID already know their style and preference... he had the last game session with the other game thingy to show him.

yet he ran another game, this time with HERO, and did not account for it. heck it almost sounds like he designed a second episode to "show them".

If a Gm starts a game with lack of knowledge of his players so that the scenario leads them to ALL ***100% not on person got it*** figurte out the scenario and end up with ALL ***100% not one of them liked it*** end up not having fun, then i see that as the GMs fault for not being prepared, for not recognizing it during play, and letting it go so far as to wreck the scenario and even drive them to not enjoy the game at all.

But thats not what we have here.

Here we have a Gm who already tried this, who already knew this and who went ahead again and repreated the failure a second time.

Thats not lack of prepa, thats not inexperience, thats most definitely WILLFUL determination.

Thats a GM error. Thats one of the first order.

The players were a known quantity to him when he ran this second session. The players were not relevent to the problem recurring.

I was not pretending to think they weren't relevent, i actually believe that... might have been different for the first game session where he tried this but not the second. The results in the second IMO are all shadowraptors.

[Jeff T.]

Originally posted by tesuji

Lucius, I am honestly perplexed as to why you contiue to act like your opinion of "me" is relevent?

Can we perhaps start a thread titled 'what we think about tesuji" so that those who want to rant about me can do so and the ones who want to discuss gaming can avoid this?

snip..

[/QUOTE]

Well, FWIW, I was trying to play moderator because I want the thread to continue. Certain posters stand out to different people. You are one of a dozen or so that stand out to me because of your insight. Based off of the posts I have read of yours (not just here) I feel you also can be condescending. I did not intend to add to the continuation of a "Let's get tesuji" thread and I could care less if you 'insult' HERO. I have seen others respond with annoyance or anger at your posts. You seem to be convinced that its 'what' you are saying. I feel it is 'how' you are saying it.

You respond with basically 'so what?, the thread isn't about ME'. However, you apparently post here because you want your opinions known. I was merely offering 'advice' on perhaps why some people react badly to your opinions. Basically, your opinions will have less and less meaning if you gain a rep as a 'bad egg'. I've seen it happen twice in the last 6 months over in the Non-gaming forums where brilliant people pissed others off to point where ANYTHING they posted was just scoffed at by many others. One decided to leave altogether over it. I'll offer an example: say I have a brilliant college professor. If said professor constantly screamed his teachings right to my face day after day, then pretty soon I could care less what he said.

I don't know about the others here, but that was the point of my post. I had no intention of attacking, just a friendly reminder that how you say something can be as important as what you say. It is also reason enough to (briefly) go off topic in my opinion.

That probably sounded like a lecture, I just didn't know how else to say it. Feel free to discard at your leisure, I won't disrupt the debate again.

[ShadowRaptor]

Wow, talk about getting hammered in the head on here. ;)

I already admitted that this could have been my error, did anybody see that on page 3? I don't think so. I think my last post got overlooked some.

As for full stats, ocv, dcv, things like that, I won't post them because its not important. I originally posted what I did because of the title of this thread "Fantasy RPG Rant" and that's all I was doing, so all those stats are needless. Yes they were my judgements and conclusions, yes I created the characters to their specifications because I was the only one who knew how to create them. Does that make sense tesuji? Perhaps not.

Was it my senario? Yes cuz they didn't know the system. Did I make a mistake or many? Probably to yes.

Did i use Automaton rules? No. I made them as regular people and labeled them robots. I should have made that point earlier but I did not. I told them that they were going to fight some robots as a exercise, one robot for each of them. 4 on 4.

Did I fully understand the rules? I can admit that I did not, as I already did on page 3 tesuji. Did you read that? Apparently not.

Was the end result my fault? As the GM I can clearly say that it was partly my fault and partly their fault, so in this case it was a total team failure if that is how you want to look at it. Did I explain that tactics would be useful? Yes I did. Did I tell them that they have options? Yes I did. Did I type up a combat maneuver sheet for them listing all the options available to them from the basic list? Yes I did. Did I type up any martial maneuvers for those that had martial maneuvers? Yes I did. Did I explain how they worked as far as I understood it to those that had them so they knew what they had? Yes I did. Did I explain all their powers and skills so they knew what they could do? Yes I did.

I did not go into it blind, I did make sure the players knew what they had, I asked them what they had to make sure. So, after all that, I did assume that they would not use Diablo-DnD-HackNSlash tactics to wade through. I told them that this is more lethal than what they are used to. I explained how damage worked so they knew what and how it worked.

Believe me if you want, I am not lying about any if this. I can understand those that may have difficulties with this tesuji, I can respect those that offer me options, explain how I might have been wrong, things I can work on so I get better.

Yes, tesuji, you do annoy people, and I know you don't care because you seem to be the type of person that doesn't care about any opinions but your own and it seems that you don't really respect others beyond a passing hand, but I have no respect for you. And I am sure you could care less, but thats okay because you have no respect for others.

[tesuji]

[/B][/QUOTE]


Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

I already admitted that this could have been my error, did anybody see that on page 3? I don't think so. I think my last post got overlooked some.

I mentioned it more than once. i didn't overlook it at all.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

Does that make sense tesuji? Perhaps not.

It makes perfect sense for the Gm to design characters, adversaries and scenarios.

i never questioned that.

All i questioned was the same GM deciding to dismiss himself from having any fault in the unpleasant outcome. As far as i was concerned, you and i had settled that a ways back.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

Did I fully understand the rules? I can admit that I did not, as I already did on page 3 tesuji. Did you read that? Apparently not.

Actaually i did. i think perhaps others missed it.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

Was the end result my fault? As the GM I can clearly say that it was partly my fault and partly their fault, so in this case it was a total team failure if that is how you want to look at it.

That is a definite step in the right direction. it is a far superior conclusion to just blaming the players and their other game system.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

Did I...yes I did.

Thanks for the explanations of what all you did.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

I did not go into it blind, I did make sure the players knew what they had, I asked them what they had to make sure. So, after all that, I did assume that they would not use Diablo-DnD-HackNSlash tactics to wade through. I told them that this is more lethal than what they are used to. I explained how damage worked so they knew what and how it worked.

OK, so if i get this straight, you designed the scenario EXPECTING them to wade stright in and they did just that. They played "down" to the expectations you had of them.

So, which is the case... you expected the result, wasted by the robots, when you setup the scenario OR you expected wading straight in to work for them?

It soulds like you prepared all the characters and the players did exactly what you expected... so was the result what you had expected or did you misjudge the balance?


Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

Believe me if you want, I am not lying about any if this.

I think i have said repeatedly that i did not believe you were being dishonest. The only direct element i find myself unable to believe is that the players stated the game, as opposed to your scenario, was too hard for them. Thats way out of character for people as you have characterized them to be saying after a drubbing.

My suspicion is that is more or less what you got out of what they said and not a more or less quote.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

I can understand those that may have difficulties with this tesuji, I can respect those that offer me options, explain how I might have been wrong, things I can work on so I get better.

Until i posted you got none of that. Everyone who responded was perfectly happy to run with the DND bashing and calling your players names and laying it all at their feet.

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor

Yes, tesuji, you do annoy people, and I know you don't care because you seem to be the type of person that doesn't care about any opinions but your own and it seems that you don't really respect others beyond a passing hand, but I have no respect for you. And I am sure you could care less, but thats okay because you have no respect for others.

The auestions i asked of you and the attempts tpo direct you to conisder things other than the players and DnD were serious and i think helpful.

if you no longer feel that way, its your loss, not mine.

Not much more i can say.

Although, i might ask one more thing... have the comments i have made that have inflamed you been worse than the comments you made about your players, or worse than the follow ups you got about your players? have i treated you worse than you did your players when you took the rant to these boards? have i been less fair to you than you were to them?

Did you say one word on these boards in defense of your players when other people based on your comments called them "dumb beasts"?

I mean, no matter how flagrantly over the top abusive you think i am, at least you are getting to respond to my opinions, assessments and judgements. this is all happening right in front of you and you just did a fairly credible job of "confronting your accuser."

Did they get that chance? Did you give them the chance?

Did i do you worse than you did them?

I haven't called you a dumb beast?

YMMV and clearly does.

[ShadowRaptor]

I don't even know what YMMV means.

Can you do me a favor and show me my quote where I called my players 'dumb beasts'? If I did that then I'm stupider than I thought.

I think as a beginner I could have misjudged the balance, I can accept that possibility and even say that all beginners to HERO probably make that kind of mistake. It's a learning experience.

I do apologize for my rude comments in the above post. I was upset.

[tesuji]

you did not. i think it was shrike as i referenced above.

you did your own good job of raking them.

[ShadowRaptor]

Okay, so it wasn't me. I didn't think it was.

[ShadowRaptor]

How did all of your first attempts at running a HERO game go for you? And be honest, I can be honest and say mine royally did not go as I had hoped and blew up in my face.

ON a side note, I did go see Matrix Reloaded today and that movie rocked. :D sorry, couldn't resist.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by tesuji
you did not. i think it was shrike as i referenced above.

you did your own good job of raking them.

I think I used the term dead beats, not dumb beasts.

[Killer Shrike]

YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary

[Grue]

I first started playing Hero with a group of veterans about five years ago (still playing). Even after reading through the ruleset(s) the first thing I noticed was the learning curve was very steep (even in comparison to 1st ed Twilight 2000).... while I picked up the dice conventions within a session, it took me roughly three months to figure out how to use the combat maneuvers and timing out attacks with speeds. Another three months to figure out how to draw up powers effectively (And stop the "...he's a mighty cleric, he has Two spells!" ribbing). While my first Hero character was very memorable from an rping standpoint, he was little more than a damage sponge for the party in combat (and honestly how many successful fantasy games don’t have at least one combat a session?).

I like the fact you can practically do anything with the Hero System (at least until points come into playJ). It’s exacting if a bit clunky (like Russian technology…it’s ugly but functional somehow:-)) but it works and by its nature Hero encourages problem solving other than by combat. It’s not a system I could recommend to a group where less than half of the players are veterans though. And newbies should almost never be the ones to draw up their character concepts.

I’ve run a D&D campaign since 3e came out. In comparison and my experience, Hero works best with in a gritty low magic campaign and is an increasing amount of work as you get to higher magic levels. It’s a lot easier to run magic and a epic storyline (the no built in safety net in Hero can lead to a TPK in a periphery encounter after a series of bad rolls or really good rolls) in D&D. As you start seeing 40-60 AP powers, characters with no magical abilities must begin developing magical defenses. While the group’s magical support can lend some protection their companions, the party generally is nearly always outnumbered or faces too many threats to have a reasonable chance to defend against more than a few possibilities.

Combat in Hero also has a tendency to become an ‘all or nothing’ affair especially at higher point levels. A group of 20 goblins in D&D can be a dink down encounter for even a 7th level party (eating up a healing spell or two, a low level magic item use or combat spell). In Hero, unless one of the goblins gets very lucky (odds of hitting and doing real damage are much less than the 5% chance it is in a stand up fight in D&D), it’s rare to see more than recoverable stun done in damage to a group in my experience. Unless there are a lot of low point creatures, it’s generally not worth running the encounter in the first place (and large fights in Hero are in general a major pain and much slower in comparison to D&D). The tried and true tactic of running away from an opponent that you aren’t prepared for is difficult when one of your companions goes down in the first phase. Or gets grabbed, mind controlled, transformed, flashed, etc.

It’s generally difficult to buy stats above 20 in our Hero game and nearly impossible to have one above 30. Monsters with 40 strength or more aren’t that uncommon however. Even with contortionist or martial escape (or rarely a strength aid), we’ve had more than our share of characters killed when they were used by the grabbing beastie to block a blow. It has been a work in progress trying to balance out how to do a standard high fantasy campaign in the Hero system without the severe attrition rates or fighters relegated to secondary roles (or the game turning into Fantasy Champions). While rewarding to tinker with the Hero system, d20 is a lot less work to get a mid-to-high magic\point (level) game running.

[AnotherSkip]

Actually my first (and so far only) was a 4th Champions session.

It went far more toward the players end(excessive success) than I thought it would. But then it was a one shot, with group of villians and heroes with no attempt to really "balance" them. I had some decent limits but other than that, I let them go free.

The Villians were prebuilt, the characters were Johnny on the spot and even with a point balance (250 each) me being experienced, and most of the other players newbies, they wiped the floor with me. HEAVEN! after the second Phase I started TRYING to clobber them!
most CV's were 6, DC's were mostly 12 with 1 18max , (the shrinky MArtial Artist had 10 DC attack with a DCV of 12, the "space ship" had a DCV of 4, OCV of 6-8 and could move through to get the 18DC. Poor Vilians had to teleport out of their own base!

[Grue]

Yup. The Hero system is totally dependent on the GM to balance things out. Both towards the PCs and any opposition they may face.

In a good number of other rpgs, play balance is somewhat 'hard wired' (at least in the non-troupe style ones). Powers, npcs, and items are standardized straight out of published materials and hopefully have been somewhat playtested. In Hero it's up to the gm to set the limits. The GM has to be very careful on what powers and abilities are allowed into the campaign and what can be done in context with the group as a whole. And then has to be very careful what sort of obstacles are in a given scenario. It's generally a lot more work and more of an artform.

Balance issues normally aren't too hard to control in champions if the gm has some experience and finesse. Superheroes generally have counters to powers already developed or should be able to buy them with experience after figuring out how to fit the new power in with the characters overall scheme. Fantasy Hero is much easier to keep a handle on at lower point levels than Champions but starts to break down around the 200 point level unless the GM has done his homework (at least in campaigns with a moderate+ amount of magic).

Our group has typically used magic items to give some survivalability to the party, but dependency on 'Ye Olde Magic Shoppe' can stretch a little thin. We're currently toying with the idea that pcs raised in a magical world would either have or be able to develop some magical resistance....even to the extent where everything is magic dependent (ala Earthdawn). Or requiring all spells and similar powers have a limitation that allows it to be fully or partially negated by a successful characteristic roll (adjusted by the AP of the power....but perhaps a bit too D&Dish). I'm looking forward to the upcoming 5e Fantasy Hero supplement to see if it has a simplier solution.

[ShadowRaptor]

Yeah by reading his regular updates as to how the Fantasy HERO book is coming it sounds as if it will really help me out a lot, and I am actually going to wait until that book comes out before I try anything with HERO.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by ShadowRaptor
Yeah by reading his regular updates as to how the Fantasy HERO book is coming it sounds as if it will really help me out a lot, and I am actually going to wait until that book comes out before I try anything with HERO.

I suppose thats one approach, but you might as well start setting up the background of the world now in preperation.

Just earmark areas where crunchy bits go and fill it in later.

Otherwise it will be quite some time until you actually get it up and going, and interest tends to wane over that period of time....

[ShadowRaptor]

That's not much of a problem for me right now since school is getting heftier in the homework department, and finals are coming up so all I will have after that is free time to work on it.

Besidea, and I know this is a sin to say it here, but I got Talislanta for a gift the other day and I have been browsing through that book, and its pretty amazing.

Still, HERO is my favorite game and I doubt that will change.

[Markdoc]

>>>Yup. The Hero system is totally dependent on the GM to balance things out. Both towards the PCs and any opposition they may face.

In a good number of other rpgs, play balance is somewhat 'hard wired' (at least in the non-troupe style ones). Powers, npcs, and items are standardized straight out of published materials and hopefully have been somewhat playtested. In Hero it's up to the gm to set the limits. The GM has to be very careful on what powers and abilities are allowed into the campaign and what can be done in context with the group as a whole. And then has to be very careful what sort of obstacles are in a given scenario. It's generally a lot more work and more of an artform.<<<<

Man, I could not disagree more. While there is plenty of room to spread out in Hero system, my experience - based on many years play and GM'ing - is that FH is generally well balanced.

Not perfect, mind, but generally well balanced.

Balance in many other game systems is very arbitrary. This has been bought home to me in our ongoing Runequest game. One of my characters is a troll. He's actually a fairly average troll - and he'll wipe the floor with almost any of the other characters, despite the fact that they are all far more experienced. Simply because Trolls are mean. The disadvantges suffered in return for grandiose physical stat.s are minimal.

2e DnD suffered from this horribly, even if you were using the "official" rules (Hmm. Lemmesee. Play a Fighter or a Cavalier? Well, duh!). 3e has improved things a lot, but without an underlying metasystem, it is already starting o go the same way as "new" rules are introduced. VtM is the same: some characters, can without any particular effort, slaughter others with the same level of experience (Iron Wind springs to mind...).

To a certain extent that is also true of most "roll your stat.s" systems. It would be nice to think that the hardwired systems were carefully playtested to ensure that everything balanced out, but even that just ain't the case. Given that in many cases, extra rules, items, character classes, powers, etc are introduced by multiple authors over multiple books, it is hard to see how it could be otherwise.

You could argue that combat is not the be-all and end-all of character balance and I'd agree. But it IS the arena in which differences in character power are most starkly contrasted. Likewise, I think we can gree that some degree of GM input is essential to getting a smoothly running game - in any system.

But my experience has been that things go gak gak in Hero mostly when the GM starts to warp the system - taking certain powers out, adding extra things in, setting arbitrary limits. You need to do that sometimes to get the feel you want, but THAT's where the art part comes in: balancing the system with the changes you make.

As a base system, Hero seems to me to pretty balanced - and like I said, I have run Con games, and campaigns that lasted years, games with all veterans, all newbies or a mix of both. I have certainly seen parties get toasted by opponents of lesser power - but that is also true of many other game systems I have run.

cheers, Mark

[Grue]

Originally posted by Markdoc
>>>Man, I could not disagree more. While there is plenty of room to spread out in Hero system, my experience - based on many years play and GM'ing - is that FH is generally well balanced.

Not perfect, mind, but generally well balanced.<<<<


Hero system and the old FH sources only provide a menu of components and a core framework. Some guidelines are suggested, but it's totally up to the GM to set the limits and keep things balanced. It's a positive and a negative, with the negative being overcome if the GM has the time, effort, and most importantly judgement to put into his campaign.

I also didn’t say other systems were better balanced than Hero, just that they were standardized and required less preparation and care as a result. Not that I consider 2nd ed or Runequest paragons of Game Design and Game Balance. Both were designed in the 70’s and somewhat influenced by tabletop wargaming (innovative at the time but both carried certain sacred cows up through their multiple editions). Runequest’s big innovation was monster equality (where monsters could get the same training and receive experience just like PCs could). It also wasn’t “human-centric” like D&D was. You could play a troll…or a duck if the GM allowed. Whether this was fair or not was left up to the GM (as in Hero), but the work of laying out racial packages was already done and the effects on the campaign generally predictable.

I don’t know any DM that was insane enough to use or allow every supplement pushed out TSR’s doors during the era of the second edition. Not to nitpick, but your reference to playing a Cavalier over a Fighter was a 1st edition thing (from Unearthed Arcana which was rushed to publication to get TSR out of some deep financial trouble… while the book itself had some good ideas and interesting crunchy bits it was far from polished). In 2nd ed itself the only ‘standard’ rules were those not outlined in blue in the PHB and DMG, fairly simple and playable. Everything else was optional (including the slew of Complete Whatever books and the awful Players Options books). In 3e the same thing goes… only the core rulebooks (or rather the SRD) are official, everything else is ‘optional’. A point buy system for stats has always been an option throughout all of its editions. Not that most DMs don’t do their own tweaking and adjustments, but if they wanted to play a pickup game on the spur of the moment they could do so with much less prep than it would take with a Fantasy Hero game (assuming of course you don’t have a stack of pregens lying around that you’ve already invested the time in drawing up;-).

VtM and it’s ilk have more in common with improv theater and the early troupe games (like Ars Magica) than other rpgs which fall a little closer to their table-top wargaming roots. Fairness and game balance were totally secondary concerns to their design in favor of storytelling (at least for the initial creators). Life isn’t fair in a game of personal horror, but really in the realm of rpgs the comparison between Hero and VtM is more of and apples and oranges thing.

The greatest strength and weakness of Hero is the freedom it gives within its rules set without being freeform. I didn’t say other systems didn’t require GM input, I said that Hero requires proportionally more input than many systems on a whole menu of items. By way of example in 3e….there are certain assumptions of what a 5th level party can handle (and in most cases these assumptions are reasonably close…. like which monsters are generally a equal fight, traps and encounters within skill levels, and what level of magic items and spells are generally accessible to the PCs). In Hero, judging what a 125 pt. party can do is an artform. While most players don’t create 125 pt. wine tasters, a GM has to know their capabilities intimately. While I suppose you could set up a game without the GM “setting arbitrary limits”, unless your groups have always consisted of roleplaying saints or you are some sort of Hero god, the amount of thought and work you would have to put into keeping a group that was allowed to buy anything they wanted (+8 ocv with great swords, a spell that tunnels, closes behind and is usable as an attack, or the myriad of power suggestions present on these boards) challenged I think would put a serious strain on your time and campaign

[Markdoc]

Me, a hero god? Gosh. <blush> I have in general not been blessed with player-saints, but more usually number-crunching rules-mongers (good players, though, which is what counts)

Seriously, though I HAVE had the powers you describe - if not a player with +8 OCV in Greatsword, at least one with +6 OCV and martial arts. Likewise the "closing tunnel" attack spell (although I prefer the traditional "Forlorn Encystment" name :-)

But that's the point - with all of assembled herodom - and the world of fantasy literature, films and comics - at my command as GM, do you really think I'm going to be challenged by some punk with a sword and 15 OCV?

So yes - hero system characters can vary wildly. And obviously some GM intervention (and preferably more than just "some") is a desirable thing. But I stand by my claim - OVERALL, FH has proved to be a very balanced system (at least for me).

I would make no claims about it being the *most* balanced system - there's far too may games I have never even read. Nor would I claim it is the easiest - for a quickie pickup game, D&D or TFT is far easier (and i use those, when I feel inclined). But "easy" and balanced are two entirely different things.

A good example of balance - and perhaps a formative experience for me - is what we used to do for occasional one-off fun. Give your erstwhile players a certain amount of points (100, 200, whatever). Let them make up a character - anything they like, just no GM-permission-only powers or combos. Drop them into an environment of the GM's choosing and let them fight it out.

At various times, we had the tunneling slug with mental powers, the mega-cannon-toting pixie, the flamethrower-armed robot, and the little old granny with a robotic arsenal in a pram, the psychotic mercenary with dimensional teleport bombs and the California beach babe in fall-apart armor with a jackhammer...

One thing came through: it was impossible to make a character that had all advantages and no weaknesses. Plenty of well honed hero players devised a fiendish character construct that got the toffee whaled out of it. After running a few games with that lot, a samurai wannabe with a two-handed sword is no trouble, believe me....

cheers, Mark

[CleverName]

Originally posted by Grue
Yup. The Hero system is totally dependent on the GM to balance things out. Both towards the PCs and any opposition they may face.



I have read your las three posts and I can't disagree with your major points. And I must say that I like the tone.

I agree that it takes more planning and foresight to run a successful FH campaign than D&D.

While there are always exceptions, play "balance" and power progression _is_ hard wired into D&D assuming you know the rules and pretty much stick to them.

Most popular systems do one or two things very well. I think that if the two points above, plus let' say more support material any other game in existance are important to a gamer, then D20 gets the nod.

I think the main rationale for playing one game over another is based on what you want. I think that FH, especially when it comes to high-magic campaigns offers a hell of a lot to gamers, far more than D&D ever could. Yeah, I know there are 10,000 d20 spells out there. But many are of questionable quality and all classes have tons of restrictions about what they can and cannot cast. Trying to create a spell or magic item in d20 is more art form than anything else.

HERO, OTOH, offers the players a FUNCTIONAL system as its basis -- rather than the vague guidelines of d20. The GM can set a few limits and then the characters can go to town -- making up an _unlimited_ supply of magic for their characters.