Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

[Sketchpad]

Hiya Gang,

I was looking at Strikeforce Morituri and was wondering about their "Powers Burning Them Out" sort of idea. Would this be better served as a plot point? Or should there be hard rules for this? Ideas?

[Burrito Boy]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

I love Strikeforce Morituri.

 

At first I was going to say the power burnout should be a plot point. But it might be hard to find players willing to put that kind of trust in the GM, assuming they're okay with the idea of power burnout at all. Even if you find a few, some players might think they were getting shafted if you take their powers away when they seem to need them the most - which would be the most dramatic time to take them away. So I would go with some kind of random dice roll. Start with a 8- roll and add a level every time they use X amount of power. Say that a character has a 25 AP power. If you set the level of X at 100, the character could use that power four times before the roll goes to 9-. Whatever you decide to base the roll on (if you go that route), you still need to decide when the players have to make the roll. In the comic, characters die at the oddest times - not always at overtly dramatic moments. I think one of them died at a party. I don't know how you can recreate the randomness of that except by demanding a roll whenever the whim strikes you. So I guess a combination of plot point and rules is the way to go.

[Utech]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

Have players randomly determine their character's lifespan at character creation. Have them roll a number of months, weeks, and days. If you wish for this to be a secret, create and use a simple substitution cipher. Start the countdown clock and when it's a character's time...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

Have players randomly determine their character's lifespan at character creation. Have them roll a number of months' date=' weeks, and days. If you wish for this to be a secret, create and use a simple substitution cipher. Start the countdown clock and when it's a character's time...[/quote']

 

This still requires faith in the GM. He sets the timeline of action in game, so he can time any adventure to occur well before, well after or at the same time as a character's burnout.

 

I'd say the first step is considering how you want this to work in game. How long do you want characters to last, on average? Do you want them to burn out at a specific time (leading to an "accomplish all you can now - tomorrow may be too late" mentality), or after an extended use of powers (meaning players will likely be very careful in using their powers to extend the characters' lifespans). Should the bnurnout timing be fixed or random? Presumably, the players will not know the lifespan of the characters - if the GM is to be on the same footing, a random roll system is probably the only option.

[Utech]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

This still requires faith in the GM.

Doesn't everything? Your GM can add or subtract at will from die rolls, defenses, attacks, number of villains, traps, nuns in the line of fire, explosive poodles, clues, red herrings, helpful NPCs, time required to complete a task, the contents of a drawer, the contents of someone's drawers, etc.

 

Of course the players also have input. They decide if they will or will not play, what their characters will do, how their characters go about doing what they do, if they will give up on something (or someone), what attacks to throw, what defenses to raise, where to move, if they give a fig about nuns, if the explosive poodles make them cringe or smile, etc.

 

The original SM material made it clear that each person who went through the process would definitely die within a year. It could be a minute after the process or a minute till the one-year mark. One of the original comics showed the writers tossing darts at a dartboard covered with character names to decide who would die that issue. I doubt that's exactly how they decided who died, but it was very much in fitting with the idea that death due to the process was entirely random. Having players randomly determine their lifespan by rolling dice at the beginning certainly fits SM.

 

Another option that occurs to me right now, however, would be to simply allow players to draw straws at the beginning of each game session. Short straw dies. If you want it secret, have them draw cards numbered 1-6, then make a show of rolling a die behind a screen, looking at the die, and then covering it with a cloth so that no one can see it and the GM cannot disturb it.

[Vondy]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

The answer to this question is highly dependent on the level of collective maturity and trust your group has. If you're all good at communicating expectations, have mutual trust, and enjoy a more negotiated or plot driven style of play then I'd say treat it like a plot point but: 1) make sure the situation gives the player some room to improvise an alternate solution or escape, and 2) maybe give them a hero point (or a few) or extra experience for being a good sport and good roleplaying. If that level of communication and trust are not present in your group I'd recommend a mechanical method of determining power burnout.

[casualplayer]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

A lot of people croaked in Strikeforce Morituri at some inopportune times. Poor Snapdragon combusted at the coming out party! Some didn't make it out of training.

 

The GM always has the power and resources to snuff out a PC. If your players don't trust and communicate with you well enough to make this a non-issue, this might not be the right genre. You're pretty much hiring them on for the show but saying their character isn't going to make it to next season.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

It's an area I'd discuss with my players up front. Often, "winning" in an RPG is equated with character survival and growth through XP. A defined mortality rate, where characters are guaranteed to die regardless of the skill of the player, tosses a lot of conventional RPG assumptions out. I note that even the source material eventually provided an out for the characters which enabled the process to be stabilized and extend the characters' lifespans indefinitely (although the series' life was pretty limited after that time...).

[torchwolf]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

I suspect that in a campaign, this might work out similarly to how in horror games like Call of Cthulhu, your character is likely to eventually buy the farm in one way or another, but having a 1-year limit is definitely a tombstone image hovering at the horizon. Having players design several characters each, for replacement when one dies, might mitigate the issue, but player-GM trust and dramatic sense is obviously central to doing the campaign at all.

 

An optional way of determining when PCs die would be to play it harshly by the rules (randomizing a death date in advance), and have the character's powers increase slightly would hint to the player that the PC expiration date was coming up, but allowing the player to postpone it slightly by using some mechanism (like using Heroic Action Points or Experience Points) to postpone character death by some predefined time period, say a day or a week at a time. It would slightly sidestep the potentially arbitrarily-feeling decision by the GM that "your character dies now", if a player (as opposed to the character) has a chance to postpone the exact moment to a dramatically suitable one.

[Utech]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

I think many people are overthinking this. Any players who agree to play in a SM campaign are well aware that their character will die within a year and shouldn't want any control over it! Using Hero Points (or any other mechanism) to put off your character's death is horribly out of place in a SM campaign.

[dmjalund]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

One possibility - allow characters to spend hero points, but at the cost of lifespan (of course tell them that is what you are doing)

[Beast]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

your players will need to be making new characters once the old ones die

some may not like that kind of game world/universe

you may have some that would want to go out in a blaze of glory when the time came

 

it is really going to depend on your players not minding having a character with a limited amount of time that they are viable or may even explode among their friends and family

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Plot vs. Rules - Species Burnout

 

I think many people are overthinking this. Any players who agree to play in a SM campaign are well aware that their character will die within a year and shouldn't want any control over it! Using Hero Points (or any other mechanism) to put off your character's death is horribly out of place in a SM campaign.

 

your players will need to be making new characters once the old ones die

some may not like that kind of game world/universe

you may have some that would want to go out in a blaze of glory when the time came

 

it is really going to depend on your players not minding having a character with a limited amount of time that they are viable or may even explode among their friends and family

 

I think it all depends on the type of game the group wants to play. Clearly, someone who doesn't want character death to be a key component of the game won't play in this game. The ground rules also need to be set - do the players get some guarantee of time to play their characters, or is it possible the player will spend a few hours designing his character only to have the character burn out at the first mission briefing? How long before a new character comes into play? Would that player then face sitting out the scenario?

 

As to some means of delaying/exercising control over the burnout, in the source material, you could go for a pure random result. Alternatively, some limited control might go to the player as part of the writer's ability, in the source material, to have any character death occur at a dramatically appropriate time, rather than during down time. What percetage of SM characters died on a mission? Of that, what percentage were in battle, or otherwise at a dramatically appropriate time for their death to occur? What percentage died off panel during down time, or during a non-dramatic time in the mission? What percentage died in their sleep? I suggest the proportion that died at dramatic times significantly exceeds the proportion of time the characters likely spent on-mission. Providing some limited control over timing assists in simulating that writer's control in game.