HERO master

[Killer Shrike]

11 hours ago, Mister E said:

Yes.

 

I played in a game where we could only advance if we succeeded.

 

Call Of Chthulu.

 

Just surviving to the next scene was advancement enough for us. And we liked it!

 

Kids these days with their participation awards and "un-games" where everyone's the winner don't know what their missing!

[Killer Shrike]

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Often, the issue is not that the player is violating character concept, but that he is violating the GM's vision of what his character concept is, or should be.  It's the player's character - their vision for the character should always govern.

 

I agree with this in spirit; player agency must be protected.

 

However, roleplaying and participating in an ongoing story with others is meant to be a collaborative effort, which also must be protected.

 

I like to remember the old saying "your right to swing your fist ends where another person's nose begins".

 

If a player wants things for their character or the setting or the emerging campaign, and those things aren't in conflict with what other players (including the GM) want and don't do harm to the setting or the campaign story, then it's on the table. If not, some negotiation or compromise is possible, but ultimately if a player wants to do something that runs counter to the rest of the group's interests, its a judgement call to allow it or not. The social contract vs the agency of the individual is a constant balancing act.

 

 

I'm actually a very permissive GM; my general stance has always been "Yes" or "Yes, but lets figure out a way to bend that idea to make it fit the game". I want players to have fun and love their characters; for me the biggest pay off in rpgs is not the game itself but the fond memories of the awesome moments that can be revisited for years. When gamers get together again and start swapping stories about half recalled adventures and characters, that's the tie that binds.  However, as the GM it is also my job to protect the fun of the other players. So sometimes, when a player's desire for something that they think would be fun for them is manifestly unfun or problematic for the other people involved, and they aren't willing to work with me to adapt the broad strokes of what they want into something that "works" in situ, then I have to say No. If I don't, I'm not doing my job. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but when it does then the GM veto should get busted out and exercised a bit.

[dsatow]

There seems to be a underlying current that skill usage xp and normal xp are exclusionary to each other.  I don't think that is necessarily so.  

 

Say in a normal game people would normal receive 3 xp per session.  In a skill usage based system, the 3 XP could be dropped to one or two XP per session with an additional 1 or 2 xp based on rolls the player has made.  In this type of scenario, the player can suddenly still know "Japanese" a la Wolverine by spending their normal XP, while they can also slowly get better by skill use such as training in the danger room.

 

One last comment to interject, just because a player bought off a disadvantage doesn't mean they can't get new ones for more points.  Maybe they bought off the hunted.  A few game sessions later, they acquire a dnpc.  The new DNPC should give them back the points used when they bought off the hunted.

 

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, zslane said:

it is how role playing games have been played since the 70s.

1

 

In the 70's, RPGs were an extension of wargaming. Personality development was only beginning.

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, zslane said:

it is how role playing games have been played since the 70s.

1

 

In the 70's, RPGs were an extension of wargaming. Personality development was only beginning.

[zslane]

2 hours ago, dsatow said:

One last comment to interject, just because a player bought off a disadvantage doesn't mean they can't get new ones for more points.  Maybe they bought off the hunted.  A few game sessions later, they acquire a dnpc.  The new DNPC should give them back the points used when they bought off the hunted.

 

Changing out one Disadvantage/Complication for another of equal value, to reflect in-game events, is generally permissible. But adding new ones entirely, while allowed and maybe even encouraged for dramatic purposes, does not award any Character Points. Awarding CP for Complications added during a campaign would be a house rule.

[dsatow]

25 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

Changing out one Disadvantage/Complication for another of equal value, to reflect in-game events, is generally permissible. But adding new ones entirely, while allowed and maybe even encouraged for dramatic purposes, does not award any Character Points. Awarding CP for Complications added during a campaign would be a house rule.

 

That is true, but I would say why not, so long as the maximum amount of complication points per character generation is not violated.  This prevents something like a hero buying off Hunted by Viper since his personal grudge has been removed with their own XP and then the GM going out and giving him for "free" Hunted by Viper.  And yes, I have seen this done.

[zslane]

2 hours ago, dsatow said:

That is true, but I would say why not, so long as the maximum amount of complication points per character generation is not violated.

 

I think the general idea is that Complications acquired during the course of an adventure tend to be temporary due to being so closely tied to the plot of that particular adventure. You wouldn't want to give the character CP to "temporarily" spend, only to have them pay it back when the Complication goes away due to the natural course of that adventure's events. Allowing the character to take compensating CP effectively states that the Complication is permanent until the player makes a priority out of doing something to remove it, which isn't typical for superhero campaigns run by the game's author(s).

 

But, like I said, any GM is free to House Rule this however they like.

[Duke Bushido]

6 hours ago, dsatow said:

There seems to be a underlying current that skill usage xp and normal xp are exclusionary to each other.  I don't think that is necessarily so.  

 

 

 I don't _think_ (and I could be way wrong; I can say with certainty that _I_ wasn't, or at least I wasn't intending to sound that way) that anyone is implying that.

 

It is simply that the idea of augmenting such progression with "skill usage xp" has spawned a rather interesting discussion.

 

[Brian Stanfield]

On 10/30/2018 at 8:27 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

Tony Stark knows martial arts now - he was trained by Captain America.

 

Dr. Strange has also demonstrated martial arts training.

 

In neither case did we see them training in martial arts in the comics.  It just came out of nowhere - completely out of their core character concept.

 

Wolverine's fluency in Japanese came as a complete surprise to the X-Men.  Should that XP spend have been rejected?

 

I think that Wolverine’s knowledge of Japanese is driven by his back story, having been married to a Japanese woman. His “sudden” revelation of knowing Japanese makes sense in terms of writing new skills into one’s character based on their story (not merely their core concept). It fits, it opens up new areas of growth for the character, and it promotes good role playing. 

 

Tony Stark learning martial arts from Captain America could make some sense, given the campaign, etc. Perhaps knowing some moves has become more urgently needed. If it can be made sense of in the story, it fits. But it’s toeing the line of having martial arts skills just to make the movies more interesting, or to make the character more “useful” in a game.

 

Dr. Strange suddenly knowing martial arts is downright ridiculous without some sort of explanation. Again, players should be able to do whatever they want with their characters, but it behooves them to have a good reason why the changes occur. Otherwise, given enough time and XP, all characters will begin to look alike as they add on more and more random abilities with little or no rationalization. 

 

Character concept should include a character story, so that growth and development make sense over time. The brilliance of the HERO System is that it includes storytelling in the character building process once you get to the Complications. They should fit into the conception, not just in terms of the archetype selected, but also in terms of the character’s back story.

[Greywind]

Wolverine didn't have much of a backstory when Claremont decided Logan could read Japanese.

 

Tony asked Cap to teach him during the Armor Wars, as I recall, so he wasn't completely inept without his armor.

 

Dr. Strange also learned at least one martial art while he was studying under the Ancient One. A need for the unification of mind, body, and spirit.

[massey]

On 10/29/2018 at 7:18 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

I don't disagree with you. 

 

Seriously: I don't. 

 

But the player and the GM both have to be careful.  That's how you get Superman.  The infallible, has every plot device power ever needed for any weird turn of events.  It's how you go from a transplanted heavy worlder who is incredibly strong and can leap vast distances (or over a barn!) and who's incredibly dense muscles are impenetrable to small arms fire to being able to do warp 12 through the cosmos while yawning as the enemy pelts you with nuclear missiles. 

 

Some of my favorite superman powers over the years have included the super nerve pinch, super ventriloquism, super typing, time travel, and super hypnosis that is so powerful it sticks to and emenates from photographs of him.  The list goes on, but those are my favorites. That, and his knowledge of everything: a knowledge pool so deep and so fast it makes Doc Savage look like he was doing little more than rubbing his brain with a sponge he found in a mud puddle. 

 

There are other characters who are little more plot devices, as they are little less that perfect, but that's not why I'm here; I just came to say "be careful." 

 

 

You're still limited by points, and the agreed power level of the campaign.  The discussion here is about a justification within the story for why somebody has a particular skill or ability.  I'm simply saying that a character sheet can grow to fit the concept.  "Always having been able to do it" doesn't mean that you're going to become outrageously powerful.  In fact I think it helps prevent the scenario you're describing, because my XP expenditures are already mostly plotted out.  I basically know how the character is going to grow.

 

So let's stick with the Batman example.  I'm going to build my knock-off character, the Rat-Man.  He's basically intended to be Batman in every way, but with a rat theme, and of course limited by the fact that I don't have enough points to build my vision of the complete character from the beginning.  So I spend my 350 points (or whatever the total for that rules edition and that campaign) and build my character.  Now I can do a basic, bare-bones version of Batman on 350, but he's not going to have everything.  Good physical stats, martial arts, utility belt, some amount of detective skills.  He'll be a recognizable Batman-like character, but I'm going to have to cut a lot of corners.

 

So in this example, let's say I don't give him any Knowledge skills, or Science skills, or Languages.  I don't give him any vehicles, or a base, or even any wealth.  He's supposed to have them, he might even be described as having them.  They just aren't written down yet.  "Rat-Man, aren't you an expert on DNA analysis?"  To steal a quote from Bart Simpson, "As long as you have absolutely no follow up questions, yes.  Yes I am."

 

This gives the character a path forward.  The early sessions of the game may never touch on Rat-Man's personal life.  The other characters may never visit his home.  Sure, he's "fabulously wealthy", but only in the sense that it is briefly mentioned, and never appears in the game  Once I buy it, then people can come see my giant mansion.  It doesn't require an explanation for where it came from -- the character was always rich.  He just couldn't make use of it before that point.  It does require a little bit of cooperation between the GM and the player.  The GM tacitly agrees not to focus on aspects of the character that haven't been purchased yet, to not call attention to the fact he doesn't have it.  There's no "the bad guys attack your mansion" scenario before he actually buys his mansion (or they immediately attack it and burn it down, which explains why he doesn't have it for the next few months in the game).  The player, meanwhile, attempts to purchase core abilities as quickly as possible, and doesn't try to justify using abilities he's "supposed to" have before he's actually bought them.

[zslane]

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

Tony asked Cap to teach him during the Armor Wars, as I recall, so he wasn't completely inept without his armor.

 

I don't have any problem with this. It makes total sense to me and is not so far outside the bounds of the character concept that I would balk at allowing it. I mean, Iron Man is part brick, which means slugging it out with foes as well as blasting them with repulsor beams. Gaining some degree of HTH fighting skill is quite reasonable in my view.

 

However, I feel there needs to be boundaries placed on what XP can be spent on, and a character's core concept is a useful guide for mapping out those boundaries. For example, one of the core tenets of Iron Man's character concept is that he is a technology-based hero, and as such I would not want to see XP spent on adding mental powers or abilities with a "magic" SFX.

[Duke Bushido]

Like I said earlier,.Massey: I don't disagree with you. 

[Killer Shrike]

 

Hulk sees dead people, everywhere...

 

Perhaps this is a power that the Hulk will never show off in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s nonetheless an interesting one that is hidden among the curiosities of the Hulk comic books. It all started when Bruce Banner accidentally killed his father, and fearing that he would come back to settle the score, Bruce gave the Hulk the ability to see ghosts. Because in the comics that's just a thing you can do...

 

With the Hulk’s unique ghost-seeing ability, he is one of the only beings that is able to see Dr. Strange when he is in his astral form.

[Killer Shrike]

I agree with zslane that character growth should, ideally, make some kind of sense. However, one must also take into account the genre in effect, as well as the tone and powerlevel of the campaign in general. In some cases, it's close enough to anything goes to make little difference, in others the bolts might be double tightened and character choices are very constrained to allowable parameters of "possible"; if that's what the players agreed to when the campaign started then it's part of the shared agreement as to what is and is not allowed within the campaign. Context is king.

[zslane]

41 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

However, one must also take into account the genre in effect, as well as the tone and powerlevel of the campaign in general.

 

Most definitely.

 

All the Champions campaigns I played in over the years took a very "let's keep all the fun superhero tropes and ditch the dumb stuff only bad writers under terribly tight deadlines come up with" approach to the genre. Tone was roughly Early Bronze Age, and power level was your typical 4e 250-300 point range. It isn't that tough to find the sweet spot between fun, four-color superhero action and stuff only an 8-year old would think is cool.

[Hugh Neilson]

On 10/30/2018 at 11:20 AM, zslane said:

I'd tell players to build whatever characters they want as long as they can convincingly role play them. For me, role playing by definition means taking on the personality of the character and using your own brain to make decisions and formulate plans, theories, and solutions to all in-game problems yourself. I might, under certain circumstances, give hints or subtle bits of help in the event players are really stuck and they make successful dice rolls. But the heavy lifting for intellectual and social activity must come from role playing not dice rolling. To the extent that things like INT or PRE are set to beyond-human levels, I would merely require a comic-book interpretation of those abilities to be role played out, and then let the dice pick up where human limits leave off.

 

For example, a player playing a superhero with a 50 PRE (way beyond human limits) might say, "I jump into the middle of the crowd, and with my commanding voice say, 'Everyone leave this area NOW!'", at which point the Presence Attack is resolved with dice normally. But if the player doesn't make any effort to try and sound commanding and tell me what they are saying in order to sway the crowd, then they won't be allowed to even make the Presence Attack. Role playing tells me what you are trying to do and how, and the stats on your sheet then help me determine how effective/successful you were. This is not rocket science; it is how role playing games have been played since the 70s.

 

So I have to spend points on PRE, skills, etc., then role play to your satisfaction.  I assume you are also OK if I ask you to give me a convincing effort at showing how you do that Kirk Shoulder Roll, springing to your feet before you get to make your Acrobatics roll, and make a reasonable effort to show me that martial arts move your character wishes to use.  Sauce for the goose - don't build that character unless you can "convincingly role play" it.

 

7 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

I think that Wolverine’s knowledge of Japanese is driven by his back story, having been married to a Japanese woman. His “sudden” revelation of knowing Japanese makes sense in terms of writing new skills into one’s character based on their story (not merely their core concept). It fits, it opens up new areas of growth for the character, and it promotes good role playing. 

 

Tony Stark learning martial arts from Captain America could make some sense, given the campaign, etc. Perhaps knowing some moves has become more urgently needed. If it can be made sense of in the story, it fits. But it’s toeing the line of having martial arts skills just to make the movies more interesting, or to make the character more “useful” in a game.

 

Dr. Strange suddenly knowing martial arts is downright ridiculous without some sort of explanation. Again, players should be able to do whatever they want with their characters, but it behooves them to have a good reason why the changes occur. Otherwise, given enough time and XP, all characters will begin to look alike as they add on more and more random abilities with little or no rationalization. 

 

Character concept should include a character story, so that growth and development make sense over time. The brilliance of the HERO System is that it includes storytelling in the character building process once you get to the Complications. They should fit into the conception, not just in terms of the archetype selected, but also in terms of the character’s back story.

 

Wolverine's Roy Thomas backstory was a teenage Canadian mutant who bounced back from damage and had gloves with adamantium claws in them.  Not exactly the way he developed spending his xp in play, at least in my opinion.

 

Not sure Stark ever used his martial arts in armor - he just surprised some thugs, noting that he has, after all, been trained by Captain America.

 

Doc Strange?  He had martial arts because he had trained in them at the same time he trained in the Mystic Arts - but it had never come up before.  Your dismissal of his xp spend as "downright ridiculous" feels like you deciding for the player what his character's backstory really is.  Funny... you were OK letting Wolverine away with his "sudden" addition of some Japanese connections in his backstory.

[Hugh Neilson]

7 hours ago, Greywind said:

Tony asked Cap to teach him during the Armor Wars, as I recall, so he wasn't completely inept without his armor.

 

7 hours ago, zslane said:

 

I don't have any problem with this. It makes total sense to me and is not so far outside the bounds of the character concept that I would balk at allowing it. I mean, Iron Man is part brick, which means slugging it out with foes as well as blasting them with repulsor beams. Gaining some degree of HTH fighting skill is quite reasonable in my view.

 

 

I thought his original character concept was that he needed his armor chestplate just to survive so that shrapnel would not penetrate his heart.  Seems like him being physically fit enough to engage in martial arts training outside the armor, whether with Cap or anyone else, is well outside that concept.  Again, I don't think the GM, rather than the player, should be deciding which elements of concept are so salient they can never change, and which can evolve over time.

[Hugh Neilson]

7 hours ago, zslane said:

However, I feel there needs to be boundaries placed on what XP can be spent on, and a character's core concept is a useful guide for mapping out those boundaries. For example, one of the core tenets of Iron Man's character concept is that he is a technology-based hero, and as such I would not want to see XP spent on adding mental powers or abilities with a "magic" SFX.

 

Clearly.  That would be as bad as, say, writing magic into Doctor Doom's background a couple of years after his first appearance, or having him learn to transfer his mind to a new body.

 

Only one really stuck, but it has become as core to the concept as his armor, I think.

[zslane]

11 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I thought his original character concept was that he needed his armor chestplate just to survive so that shrapnel would not penetrate his heart.

 

I guess it depends on what you choose to wrap up in the box called "character concept". I treat the character concept as a set of flexible guidelines, not rigid features that never evolve. What you're talking about there I regard as merely part of Tony's backstory, not a boundary-setting element of his character concept (as a superhero). In any event, I'm pretty sure that the whole shrapnel-threatening-his-heart thing was dispensed with after some time, long before the Armor Wars when Cap trained him to fight.

 

15 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Again, I don't think the GM, rather than the player, should be deciding which elements of concept are so salient they can never change, and which can evolve over time.

 

I feel that's a bit of a strawman argument, only because, in my view, no element--salient or otherwise--should be absolutely prohibited from evolving over time. However, elements should evolve logically and plausibly in accordance with the character concept. I'm convinced this is not nearly as complicated and controversial as this thread is making it sound.

[Hugh Neilson]

Let's look to Iron Man - he had heart issues well after Iron Man #100, which is a long time after Tales of Suspense #39, although their nature varied over time (from some quick online research).  The heart issues took a back seat to his alcoholism (funny...before the 120s in the early 1980's Stark was never noted for excessive drinking).

 

As I can only read what you post, not see your game in action, I can't assess how complicated or controversial the issue is outside of extrapolating from comments here.  I've certainly seen games where some players get to override character weaknesses with real-life strengths, especially in the arena of social skills.  To my mind, either one uses the D&D 1e and 2e model (there are no social skills - use role play) or the Hero/D&D 3e model (characters have social skills; player abilities do not govern).  Role playing bonuses and penalties to social skills should be similar to role-playing bonuses and penalties to combat skills.

 

And, I maintain, waxing eloquently as a player while playing an 8 PRE character with no social skills is the opposite of "good role-playing".  I would classify it as several steps below a player whose action is "I attempt to persuade the guard to let us pass", with the expectation of being permitted to roll using his 23- Persuasion skill.  The latter is on a par with "I unleash my FlameBolt against Darkon" and expecting to roll using his 9 OCV, rolling his 12d6 damage if he hits.

[zslane]

7 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

And, I maintain, waxing eloquently as a player while playing an 8 PRE character with no social skills is the opposite of "good role-playing".

 

I agree.

 

7 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

a player whose action is "I attempt to persuade the guard to let us pass", with the expectation of being permitted to roll using his 23- Persuasion skill.  The latter is on a par with "I unleash my FlameBolt against Darkon" and expecting to roll using his 9 OCV, rolling his 12d6 damage if he hits.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree there. Unleashing a flame bolt is impossible to role play out at the table; it can only be represented through dice rolls. A persuasion attempt against a guard, however, can be role played out in its entirety, and therefore the GM has far more latitude to let the player's "role playing performance" influence the dice roll (or obviate it entirely).

[Greywind]

Stark had heart issues stemming from a boobytrap in Vietnam. This led to the magnetic chest plate.

 

Stark also had other medical issues (spine) after being shot by Kathy Dare.

[Killer Shrike]

So, not that anyone particularly cares, but I agree w/ both Hugh and zslane on character skill vs players skill, and attempting to roleplay vs directly stating mechanics. 

 

Since I prefer players to stay in character as much as possible, I encourage players to have "tells" that they communicate or describe from the perspective of what it would be apparent to the characters in the scene, AND THEN state the mechanics being leveraged. 

 

If a player gives a good roleplaying attempt for a social or combat or utility effect, I feel its in my best interests to encourage them to do so as it helps the player experience / makes the campaign more interesting. So, depending on what is going on, I may allow a bonus or a reduced impact of failure (plot consideration), or respond in kind to the player's descriptive contribution with some reciprocal narrative hand-wavium. 

 

Whether the player describes / portrays a fun combat "panel" or action sequence or an elaborate social one is irrelevant. Whether what is going on in the scene parallels real world ideas or is entirely mythical doesn't matter. In a game of make-believe it's ALL make believe.
 

However a character who is mechanically good at things the player is particularly bad at or vice versa can be problematic. Either a player is able to make it work regardless of the disparity, or they cannot...in which case they should consider picking a different character that they are better able to pilot more effectively.

 

When there is a major discrepancy between a player's abilities and their character's abilities, it can suspend disbelief only so far before it just doesn't work and detracts from the game for other players at the table. People usually want to march out the social skills argument here; the character who's got the stats to be a "face" and the player who is socially hopeless. The gamist approach is that the player should be able to just roll dice or exercise their character's abilities to be good at the thing the player is not in the same way that the couch potato player who has never been in a fight in their life can rely on mechanics to play their sword swinging barbarian; this can work if the table is being run in a gamist mode. But in a simulationist or narrative mode it doesn't work very well. In the simulationist scenario, the player probably doesn't even really understand how a socially capable person sees the world or the boundaries of what is and is not attainable by such a person; the dunning-kruger effect as well as general cluelessness...such a player is not 'right' for the role of that character as without constant coaching they are going to struggle to initiate actions and react to situations in a way that more or less simulates how such a person would really act. In the narrative mode, a similar situation can occur wherein the player just can't affect or influence the emerging narrative for similar reasons. It isn't wrong per se; different styles of play value different things. And it can be made to work with enough effort, but it can detract from the overall experience.

 

Putting the old social ability argument aside for a moment, if we change the context to something a little more technical in nature, it can be useful to illustrate the differences. Lets just pick "nuclear physics" out of a hat as the straw man. Our hypothetical player in this case, is not a nuclear physicist or even particularly bright; they know next to nothing about physics in general, much less nuclear physics...they may even pronounce it "nucular". Can this player "roleplay" a character who is a nuclear physicist effectively? It depends. In a purely gamist mode, they absolutely can...the character has the relevant abilities, and whenever necessary the player can rely entirely on that to "cover" any nuclear physics related resolutions, and can just say "my character says nuclear physics stuff" or words to that effect if it becomes necessary to a scene. In narrative mode, it can be made to work without too much issue depending on how loose the system is...particularly if the player is willing to do a little stretching and throw in some in character "I'm not a nuclear scientist but I play one on TV" style mumbo jumbo / tech babble; unless a hard science genre is being portrayed that's probably good enough for the emerging story to make "cinematic sense". In simulation mode however, it can be very problematic. 

 

Of course, it's pretty rare to be pure simulationist; it doesn't work so well. Most "sim" games and groups are a hybrid of gamist or narrative, and depending on where you happen to sit on that spectrum is going to dictate your feelings on whether a character's mechanical stats / abilities should trump a players' ability to bullshit their way through challenges that their character isn't good at or vice versa.

 

I used to be much more strict on enforcing character vs player competence separation...if you didn't pay for it on your character sheet it didn't matter how smooth your patter was at the table. But over the years, particularly as my freetime became less and less, I began to loosen up and favor going with that feels right at the table so that at the end of the session all or most of the players go home feeling good about making the effort to get together to play. This mostly consists of meeting the player half way wherever they happen to be on their skill as a roleplayer and gamer...for some players this means allowing them to lean on the mechanics to succeed, and for others it means finding a way to harness their effective bs'ing skills to keep the scene moving forward while not letting them steal too much thunder from the other players / step on other character's actual paid-for abilities.