Breadth instead of depth

[nexus]

Has anyone ever tried a campaign with a relatively high starting point total, for example 500+ but low AP caps along with a Rule of X (or other method) to keep everyone from going for the maximum in everything? The idea being to allow for characters to get more skills, perks, power tricks and other things to flesh out the character's background and abilities but keep the "power level" moderate to start.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I have. I personally liked it, but one potential "gotcha" to look out for is that the characters can end up looking pretty similar... especially in the skill sets. It's worth encouraging the players to work together on setting up ways in which each character can be unique and shine, without other characters stepping on his or her specialty's toes...

[teh bunneh]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

That's pretty much how the Bunnyverse games are set up. 600-point characters with a soft cap of 75 active points. We have folks with a broad range of powers, talents, and skills. Part of me thinks I should've set stricter benchmarks at the beginning (Dex, CV, Defenses, etc -- essentially used the Rule of X a bit better), but it seems to work OK.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I'll be honest, as much as I love playing in the bunnyverse, the character point construction is a bit of a sticking point for me. I'd prefer staying at 400 or so with these characters, or going all out no limits at 600.

 

Like I said though, the games are a blast, which goes to show again that the character construction is not the most important part of gaming

[Opal]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

The idea being to allow for characters to get more skills' date=' perks, power tricks and other things to flesh out the character's background and abilities but keep the "power level" moderate to start.[/quote']My experience is that characters naturally evolve towards that state - more skills, perks, and 'interesting' powers than raw power - as they gain exp in a campaign. Just don't raise the caps as the game progresses. It also mirrors the way recurring characters tend to develop in fiction. A character starts out with just the high points, the basic 'cool' parts of the concept, and then gets fleshed out if it becomes popular.

[nexus]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

Of course character grow during the campaign but

 

Mainly, I'm thinking about having points for the little things. The perks, the neat (but maybe not all that useful) power tricks and other things you end having to shave to fit in under the points caps. The stuff your character "should have had" but sometimes you don't have the points for. Even I understand the frustration of having to save up for several sessions for relatively minor things and PBEM can aggravates the situation due to the slower pace.

[nexus]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I have. I personally liked it' date=' but one potential "gotcha" to look out for is that the characters can end up looking pretty similar... especially in the skill sets. It's worth encouraging the players to work together on setting up ways in which each character can be unique and shine, without other characters stepping on his or her specialty's toes...[/quote']

 

That's good a point. It would might be best not start TO high above regular starting levels.

 

Or maybe let everyone build their characters on the base points and give out a lump sum of points to flesh them out afterward.

[JmOz]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

That's good a point. It would might be best not start TO high above regular starting levels.

 

Or maybe let everyone build their characters on the base points and give out a lump sum of points to flesh them out afterward.

 

One thing I did in my last fantacy game was to "accelerate" xp, gave out on average 5 xp per session but I had started the character at 50+50

[Narratio]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I tried the 'lump of points' ploy once. Unfortunately all 6 players used the points the same way. They generated a team of players with no secret ID's, no money worries, astonishing area knowledge skills and having amazing contacts in government, military, the media and science R&D. All without talking to each other.

 

It started odd and became wierd. If they didn't know something, they could call a friend who would know it. I'd recommend laying down some heavy guidelines here.

[assault]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I've been tempted to do this. It seems like a good way of simulating a lot of characters.

 

However, it's clear that there are issues with schtick preservation, which suggests that it would be necessary to talk to the players about what they were going to play. But that's not unique to this kind of game.

 

Characters built this way are likely to be admirably suited to operating solo.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

The groups I've been part of tend to like characters with a fairly broad range of Skills and non-combat "flavor" Powers. I've rarely needed to impose strict Active Point caps. We all just seem to keep within familiar standards, and balance/trade off character abilities as an organic process; although everyone shoots for more power if that's the kind of game we want to play.

 

I find that the NPC supers I design follow that same pattern. Certainly the ones I wrote for Digital Hero did, without my even trying. Several were in the 700+ point range, but pretty diverse in their abilities, and quite distinct from each other.

[McManus]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

One thing I try to do when building a team is apportion not only the power archetypes but the skill sets and personality types as well.

 

For instance a group of 5-7 might have:

 

2 Bricks, 2 energy projectors, a metamorph, a mentalist, and a martial artist

 

But they also need skill sets:

Hard Science skills

Engineering/Gadgeteer skills

Social Science skills

Occult skills

Law enforcement/Detective skills

Medical skills

Transportation skills

Business Finance skills

Social skills

Streetwise skills

Spy/Stealth skills

Others?

 

 

And personality types:

Leader

Hothead/Overconfident

Steadfast

Naïve/innocent

Grumpy/Curmudgeon

Cheerful Charlie

Stranger in a Strange Land

Dark and Brooding

Jokester

Romantic

Veteran

Others?

 

Shtick is more than about just powers, it is about feeling individual and (IMHO) superlative.

 

Having the players making sure their skills and personalities are unique is probably more important than their powers, if they are given opportunities to shine outside of combat. The Emo Hothead Brick with Leet Hacker skills is a very different character than the Steadfast Leader Brick with Medical and Military skills. Even if both have the same STR and PD/ED, but the players are not likely to feel the other is horning in on their shtick.

 

I like the idea of giving extra points to build broader characters. I have done similar things in GURPS. Will have to consider it next time I run a Champions campaign (if I ever get that chance again).

[teh bunneh]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

One thing I try to do when building a team is apportion not only the power archetypes but the skill sets and personality types as well.

 

Having the players making sure their skills and personalities are unique is probably more important than their powers, if they are given opportunities to shine outside of combat. The Emo Hothead Brick with Leet Hacker skills is a very different character than the Steadfast Leader Brick with Medical and Military skills. Even if both have the same STR and PD/ED, but the players are not likely to feel the other is horning in on their shtick.

 

McManus is spot-on, and that's how I think when I'm looking at teams. The role you play isn't just your powers, it's your skills and personality, too.

[assault]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

One thing I try to do when building a team is apportion not only the power archetypes but the skill sets and personality types as well.

 

One of the main reasons why the Fantastic Four works so well is that it has a nice set of distinct personalities/roles: Smart Guy, Strong Guy, Young Hothead, and, umm, the Girl. (The latter, of course, was a historical artifact, and current female characters aren't so stereotyped).

 

Other teams don't have such clear distinctions, and still manage to work well, so I suppose it's not compulsory.

 

Getting this kind of idea to work in a PC group might take a bit of effort and planning. A good group should be comfortable with it, hopefully.

[Cardinal]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

One thing I try to do when building a team is apportion not only the power archetypes but the skill sets and personality types as well.

 

For instance a group of 5-7 might have:

 

2 Bricks, 2 energy projectors, a metamorph, a mentalist, and a martial artist

 

But they also need skill sets:

Hard Science skills

Engineering/Gadgeteer skills

Social Science skills

Occult skills

Law enforcement/Detective skills

Medical skills

Transportation skills

Business Finance skills

Social skills

Streetwise skills

Spy/Stealth skills

Others?

 

 

And personality types:

Leader

Hothead/Overconfident

Steadfast

Naïve/innocent

Grumpy/Curmudgeon

Cheerful Charlie

Stranger in a Strange Land

Dark and Brooding

Jokester

Romantic

Veteran

Others?

 

Shtick is more than about just powers, it is about feeling individual and (IMHO) superlative.

 

Having the players making sure their skills and personalities are unique is probably more important than their powers, if they are given opportunities to shine outside of combat. The Emo Hothead Brick with Leet Hacker skills is a very different character than the Steadfast Leader Brick with Medical and Military skills. Even if both have the same STR and PD/ED, but the players are not likely to feel the other is horning in on their shtick.

 

I like the idea of giving extra points to build broader characters. I have done similar things in GURPS. Will have to consider it next time I run a Champions campaign (if I ever get that chance again).

 

Well said.

 

In a couple of the PBEMs I have played in, I have tried to encourage this sort of analysis at the character creation stage. If you can get the other players to cooperate, I think it is a great way to end up with distinct characters and an effective team. Unfortunately, people do not always cooperate.

[Opal]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

Mainly' date=' I'm thinking about having points for the little things. The perks, the neat power tricks and other things you end having to shave to fit in under the points caps. The stuff your character "should have had" but sometimes you don't have the points for.[/quote'] What you could try is to have charaters start out built on standard or even slightly low points, then give each character a pool of points that he can spend - on skill, perks, backgrounds, minor power tricks, and anything else he 'might have forgotten' - durring the game, when they come up. This saves players from 'shotgunning' every skill they think thier character possibly should have, and feeling they've 'wasted the points' when those skills don't come up right away.

 

It also keeps your plots moving along nicely.

[McManus]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

True...but it also makes the first few adventures more difficult to make interesting/challenging. If players are always pulling a new skill, power, or perk out of their ...hat.

 

But if you plan for this and design the first few adventures to reflect the sorts of misisons and themes the characters will be dealing with in the main game, that could work out.

 

 

You just have ot be aware of what is going to happen.

[McManus]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

One of the main reasons why the Fantastic Four works so well is that it has a nice set of distinct personalities/roles: Smart Guy, Strong Guy, Young Hothead, and, umm, the Girl. (The latter, of course, was a historical artifact, and current female characters aren't so stereotyped).

 

Other teams don't have such clear distinctions, and still manage to work well, so I suppose it's not compulsory.

 

Getting this kind of idea to work in a PC group might take a bit of effort and planning. A good group should be comfortable with it, hopefully.

 

I think it is pretty easy to illustrate each of the skill sets and personality types form comics. and i do think that most of the classic teams can be broken down the same way, though perhaps not quite as easily as the FF.

 

Avengers -

Cap America - Leader, Veteran, Military and transport skills

Vision - Stranger in a Strange Land, Cybernetic skills

Scarlet Witch - Emo Chick, Gypsy and occult skills

Thor - Godlike ego/Better than all of thou, Combat, mythical, and historical skills

Iron Man - Rich Playboy Drunkard, Engineering and Business Skills

YellowJacket - Sad Sack, Life And Physical Sciences

Wasp - Socialiate, social and political skills

 

Clairmont X-Men -

Cyclops - Leader, Veteran, cold fish - leadership and tactical skills

Storm - Nature child, Hidden Past- Thief and Nature skills

Colossus - Steadfast/Artistic, art and farming skills

THunderbird - Grumpy Hot head/Chip on the shoulder, outdoors skills

Banshee - Veteran/Steadfast/Everyone's favorite uncle - Spy and folklore skills

Wolverine - Hothead/loner - combat skills

NightCrawler - Romantic Swashbuckler/Emo Outcast - Circus and religion skills

SunSpot - hothead/Better than all - Mysterious oriental...too cool for school

 

It is not perfect. But it gets people thinking about roles as well as rolls.

[OddHat]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

In my OSI campaign, characters effectively got 200 points or so in assorted Perks and equipment after character creation, plus a few 8- skills not normally on the Everyman list.

 

It worked pretty well, though most of the extras were standard issue (Contacts, Bases, Vehicles, the S-Mart Rule, a small pool of points for a personalized base and reputation).

 

I'd be comfortable with a High Power game where every character was built on say 350 points spent as they wished plus a bonus of 200 points only for Perks and background skills; I'd have to talk over what was and wasn't acceptable with my players, depending on the campaign.

[Zed-F]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I always wonder, though, why do we need to spend lots of points on all this background stuff, given that there's limited scope in most GM plotlines to work it all in? Sure you can incorporate one or two things per character into any given story arc, but if you're spending huge wads of points on all kinds of diverse skills and specializations... how much of it is really going to be worth it?

 

I tend to think it would be better to adopt a more minimalist approach to the question of background skills, perks, and other things that may be only occasionally useful. If I see it on your sheet, and spent points on it (or got points in the case of a disad) then I want it to be meaningful to your character and you should have some expectation that I'm going to at least make an attempt to bring it into play somehow. If all it is is background fluff... write it down in the background, and call that good. I would rather have the PCs spend a modest number of points to be good at a few background skills, which I can reasonably manage to work into the story arc, than dozens of skills, which I will never have time to bring into play.

[OddHat]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I always wonder, though, why do we need to spend lots of points on all this background stuff, given that there's limited scope in most GM plotlines to work it all in? Sure you can incorporate one or two things per character into any given story arc, but if you're spending huge wads of points on all kinds of diverse skills and specializations... how much of it is really going to be worth it?

 

I tend to think it would be better to adopt a more minimalist approach to the question of background skills, perks, and other things that may be only occasionally useful. If I see it on your sheet, and spent points on it (or got points in the case of a disad) then I want it to be meaningful to your character and you should have some expectation that I'm going to at least make an attempt to bring it into play somehow. If all it is is background fluff... write it down in the background, and call that good. I would rather have the PCs spend a modest number of points to be good at a few background skills, which I can reasonably manage to work into the story arc, than dozens of skills, which I will never have time to bring into play.

 

I've always said that, if I allow the character to spend points on it, or get points for it, I as the GM am agreeing that at some point it will show up in play, and usually with a frequency and level of impact that reflects the points paid or received. Those points are a request from the player, to the GM, to see X happen; if I as a GM intend to ignore that request, I should return the points.

 

So, yup, I'm willing to allow all sorts of background fluff that won't show up in the campaign, for zero points. That fluff still "happened"; it exists under my control as a GM, and under the player's control if he blue books. So, if I want to bring in the character's old college buddy the Miskatonic University professor, the Player doesn't need to pay any points for the contact, and doesn't get any for the DNPC. If, on the other hand, the Player wants to control when, where or how the old buddy shows up, then he will generally be asked to pay (or take) the points.

[nexus]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I've always said that, if I allow the character to spend points on it, or get points for it, I as the GM am agreeing that at some point it will show up in play, and usually with a frequency and level of impact that reflects the points paid or received. Those points are a request from the player, to the GM, to see X happen; if I as a GM intend to ignore that request, I should return the points.

 

So, yup, I'm willing to allow all sorts of background fluff that won't show up in the campaign, for zero points. That fluff still "happened"; it exists under my control as a GM, and under the player's control if he blue books. So, if I want to bring in the character's old college buddy the Miskatonic University professor, the Player doesn't need to pay any points for the contact, and doesn't get any for the DNPC. If, on the other hand, the Player wants to control when, where or how the old buddy shows up, then he will generally be asked to pay (or take) the points.

 

"Me too" posts are kind of banal but I agree entirely with the above.

.

[Mr. R]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

One thing I try to do when building a team is apportion not only the power archetypes but the skill sets and personality types as well.

 

For instance a group of 5-7 might have:

 

2 Bricks, 2 energy projectors, a metamorph, a mentalist, and a martial artist

 

But they also need skill sets:

Hard Science skills

Engineering/Gadgeteer skills

Social Science skills

Occult skills

Law enforcement/Detective skills

Medical skills

Transportation skills

Business Finance skills

Social skills

Streetwise skills

Spy/Stealth skills

Others?

 

 

And personality types:

Leader

Hothead/Overconfident

Steadfast

Naïve/innocent

Grumpy/Curmudgeon

Cheerful Charlie

Stranger in a Strange Land

Dark and Brooding

Jokester

Romantic

Veteran

Others?

 

Shtick is more than about just powers, it is about feeling individual and (IMHO) superlative.

 

Having the players making sure their skills and personalities are unique is probably more important than their powers, if they are given opportunities to shine outside of combat. The Emo Hothead Brick with Leet Hacker skills is a very different character than the Steadfast Leader Brick with Medical and Military skills. Even if both have the same STR and PD/ED, but the players are not likely to feel the other is horning in on their shtick.

 

I like the idea of giving extra points to build broader characters. I have done similar things in GURPS. Will have to consider it next time I run a Champions campaign (if I ever get that chance again).

 

I love this idea. Please consider it borrowed.

 

Jerome

[braincraft]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

Most of the games and characters I've actually run or written up fall into two categories:

 

~500 pts with a soft 12 dc cap, for 'street-level' heroes, or

 

~1000 pts with a soft 20 dc cap, for 'world class' heroes

 

No one ever complains about being short points for stupid stuff, like some extra PSs or KSs for their background, or their communicator, or a perk for having government sanction for the team, or the base/vehicle contribution, or an esoteric multipower slot they'll probably only use twice ever, or just getting their levels bumped to where they're at an appropriate level for the campaign limits.

[MilkmanDan]

Re: Breadth instead of depth

 

I prefer doing relatively high point characters and reasonable active point limits. I'll admit it, I'm a point whore, and it's hard for me to squeeze in a couple more science skills if I know I could get a few more points of DEX instead. Bigger points = more diversity. Don't think I've ever played a character with 360 degree spatial awareness with a few adders in a standard point campaign--it eats up a huge chunk percentage-wise.