Have you ever given players the stats for enemies they'll be facing?

[archer]

8 minutes ago, TranquiloUno said:

 

I mean I'd prefer separate folders for my own convenience but I can sort by file type if needed.

 

 

I have a feeling this is how Stripperella started.

[TranquiloUno]

On 4/8/2019 at 3:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

There's obviously not a definite answer to your question, as in "No! You can't do that!" I'm actually interested to see what you find out with your experiment. But I'll just throw in a couple of observations, for whatever they're worth. 

 

Thanks!

 

On 4/8/2019 at 3:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

In D&D there's a bit of transparency, mostly because everyone has the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook, so they already know what the numbers are, even if they aren't supposed to peek. But from the side of someone who was in a 5e game where I didn't have any of the books, I know I was frustrated no knowing how a witches' coven worked. Our group's challenge seemed insurmountable, and we spent two weeks in abject angst trying to find a way to beat them. We eventually did! If we had known the rules ahead of time, we probably could have beaten them a lot sooner without any bit of worry. But also no sense of accomplishment either. Not knowing actually did increase the dramatic tension, at least in this particular situation.

 

Sure. And for sure I'm not against the standard way of doing things. It's worked fine for all my prior years of gaming. I was just thinking about it and how it's never been suggested (that I've seen) and what the dynamics of changing that might involve.

 

I think, as you're saying, beating challenges feels good as players (or, just, anybody in life) and figuring out the challenge is sometimes part of the challenge. But also sometimes we can be pretty aware of the specifics of a challenge and still find it rewarding to finish it. Like...I dunno, a college degree, you can plan out exactly which courses you'll take, look up the syllabi for them and know the content, and it would still be pretty cool getting your degree. 

 

Just as an example of what I mean by knowing the challenge ahead of time. Probably not a perfect mapping for RPG monster stats and fights tho.

 

On 4/8/2019 at 3:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

There is a certain value in being able to fudge numbers when you need to, especially with new players. Again, in the situation above, my buddy was running the 5e encounter and fudged some of numbers so we didn't get our rear ends handed to us.

 

Part of my initial reasons for thinking it might be fun to give the players the stats is kinda along these lines. Instead of fudging stuff to get a result what if I told them what to expect so I wouldn't have to? (Was my line of inquiry to myself)

 

 

On 4/8/2019 at 3:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

It might make sense for players to have Knowledge Skills about certain types of enemies, such as orcs or whatever, and have "standard" stats for them to refer to. But for rare encounters, or special enemies, it seems like a player wouldn't know the specifics of what's coming. Giving them stats for a 1000 point dragon ahead of time may give them an advantage, but if they're not ready for the challenge, then it's probably not time to give them that kind of challenge yet. I guess the key is to decide how much of the world the players should know without having to learn about it. Heck, if they go to Ye Olde Fantasy Librarie to look in the encyclopedia of dragons, then they have justification to have the stats. But if they are encountering their first dragon ever, why take the fun of uncertainty away from them? Make them earn their knowledge of the dragon, perhaps through several encounters. They may have to run away the first few times, which only makes the final encounter feel like a real success. But again, that's just a narrative concern, and doesn't necessarily apply to your campaign.

 

Yah, for sure. The in-game fiction justifications for the reasons the *players* have the stats could be varied and supported by the rules themselves for sure.

In this instance it's a specific demon\soul harvester that one of the recurring NPCs has access to info on. So the NPC can provide some of the in-game stats of the critter.

Which was actually kinda what started me down the path in the first place.

 

It seemed like it might be more work, and less effective in both respects (in-game and outta-game), to have to do double conversions on a set of stats.

Like...

 

"This demon is stronger than a horse!" = "Ok, so a horse has a 30 Str, so then thing probably has at least a 35..."

"His hide is nearly impenetrable to normal weapons!" = "Hmm, so Armor (only versus non-enchanted weapons) maybe? And maybe 12 rDef so a standard guy with a standard sword will almost always bounce?"

"He's twice the speed of a normal man!" = "Hmm...so...Speed 4 then? Or twice the max speed of a human? So 8 Speed? Or does he just mean he runs fast?"

"He's vulnerable to god magics!" = "So probably a Vulnerability? But just to specific gods? Or all divine magic? If it's 2x and we can look at his armor we can figure what we'd expect the effect to be.."

 

And I thought maybe I could skip the (standard, normal, totally cool) song and dance of having an NPC summarize things that are game stats so that I could communicate to the players...basically the game stats so they could then make plans based on the description of the game stats that I gave them.

 

Normally all gamers do it the other way and I was curious....why? And what happens if we circumlocute that standard method?

 

 

On 4/8/2019 at 3:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

So, on this, I had this specific kind of encounter a few days ago in my gaming group. It was Betrayal at House on the Hill, not a role playing game, but the similarities are close enough. The players uncovered a dragon as their haunting, and had to run around trying to find certain mystical items to help them fight the dragon. This was all they knew. They needed the items, and didn't know anything about the dragon. I was the dragon, and chased them down one at a time and killed them. At one point, one of the players pretty much summed up everyone's frustration when she exclaimed, "Damn! How much damage can this thing take?!" I cornered the last player, and after a couple of tries, she actually was able to kill the dragon. It was a sense of accomplishment for everyone, even though most of them died. I tell this story for this reason: if I had told them ahead of time everything about the dragon, they would have been a lot less worried. It had a number of hit points equal to the number of players, and reduced every attack's damage by two. They didn't know any of this, although they easily figured out how much damage it could deal. This is obviously not the same as an RPG like Fantasy HERO, but it does seem instructive: not knowing made the encounter more frightening and challenging, as well as more rewarding.  YMMV

 

Totes. This is what I'd consider the standard method and it for sure works in some\most cases. No real disagreement there. I've done it, I've played for GMs that have done it, etc.

 

But...what about the opposite? It seems very heretical and most of the objections folks have offered have been ones I considered myself. Would it be boring? Would it break immersion for the players? How much is hiding stats really immersing them anyway?

That last one in particular because like you're saying with the Monster Manual and D&D 5e even if most players have the stats they aren't likely to actually be tracking them during fights and stuff. But then also if I had a player that was actually tracking what spells and NPC creature has and what spells it has used and what it's initial HP were and what they are not based on reported damage at the table...I would be super-impressed with that player and wonder if tracking all of that improves their experience in some way.

 

 

 

 

On 4/8/2019 at 3:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

Regardless, let us know how your experiment goes. I'd love to hear precisely because it's not standard RPG form. Good luck!

 

Looks like it'll be a couple weeks. Boo. Stupid players and their adult responsibilities!

 

But I'll def let you know.

 

[massey]

The JLA example shows how a lot of players will react.  I would think a lot of that comes down to the fact that you are offering the players a choice -- do you do X and win, or do you do Y and lose?  Most players are going to go with X every time.

 

Suppose your average fantasy team faces off against Alan Scott.  He's a high powered wizard, as far as they can tell, and he can beat them senseless.  In a stand up fight, they have no shot.  The players don't want to lose, they want to win.  Winning the game is fun.  Then one of the players recognizes who this character is.  "Oh wow, it's the old Green Lantern!  I know this guy, he's weak against wood!"  The players are now in a rough predicament.  Now it's theoretically possible that they could have figured out the wood vulnerability on their own, without anyone telling them.  It might have come up naturally during the fight, somebody could put two and two together, and then they defeat the villain.  But when they start off the game knowing the weakness exists, the temptation is extremely tough to resist.  After all, if they play it straight, they probably lose.

 

At that point, they can't really discover the vulnerability in the normal course of play.  It's like trying to solve a mystery when you've already seen the movie/read the book.  You know the answer already.  The best you can hope for is that your players will be skilled enough that they can act like they discovered it organically.  Maybe they can "sell" the fake discovery really well.  But that's all it will be.

 

Now, things like Dex, Speed, and DCV aren't all that important to keep secret.  You can, but often it's a lot easier to just say "he's DCV 8, and he's got 30 PD and ED" and let your players do the math.

[TranquiloUno]

On 4/8/2019 at 5:27 PM, Spence said:

 

 

 

For me as a player the unknown was the big pull. 

In the games I run I inject a lot of mystery and the unknown and my players enjoy it, though now it is mostly one-shots. 

I will be running a regular 5th edition campaign soon for some RPG gamers I know.  RPG as opposed to roll-player/murder hobo's. 

 

But I will be running C&C's 5th Ed conversion of Beneath the Canopy Green.   Some "standard" threats, but different enough to have regained a bit of the unknown. 

 

This is actually another subpoint I'd been considering: How to imply certain mysteries in the game that would probably only be obvious to players if I pointed them out mechanically.

 

Now this is very specific to my particular game and use case (and should probably go in the Fantasy Hero sub) but in particular how to get players to figure out that a particular demon-summoning evil turd is wandering around with demons that are more powerful than he should be able to control (to say nothing of summoning in the first place)?

 

Like if they know a guy has a 30pt VPP or a "Summon Evil" slot in a MP then they can know he'll be summoning 150pt things and that if he's got a couple 300pt things working for him then...something is weird.

 

Like I was saying in another reply I figured I could try to do this the normal way. Show don't tell the demon. Find other ways from Magesight Per rolls, to KS rolls, to talking to NPCs, to raiding haunted libraries to retrieve ancient texts. Provide in-game guidelines for his stat ranges.

But...what about just giving them the stats and letting them figure that out and then use that to help them along with figuring out the mystery of how the chump summoner is pulling greater demons down to do his bidding?

 

Because that's more the mystery that interests me and more the mystery that I'm interested in presenting my players.

Not so much, "Can you figure the stats\weaknesses of an unknown in combat while I wail on you?", but more, "Can you figure out why somebody with these stats is summoning somebody with *these* stats?"

 

And similarly present with a different puzzle (I wouldn't call it a mystery) in: How can you beat a creature with unbeatable stats? If getting in to a fight with it and blowing all our best spells will never, ever, work then how do we solve this challenge?

 

That is, basically, to use the stats as a form of mystery\puzzle in the game. But...not the usual way where figuring out the stats is the goal but more in an inverted fashion where figuring out what to DO about those stats is the thing.

 

Plus to encourage explicitly tactical play. For this particular critter for my particular campaign.

 

[TranquiloUno]

29 minutes ago, massey said:

The JLA example shows how a lot of players will react.  I would think a lot of that comes down to the fact that you are offering the players a choice -- do you do X and win, or do you do Y and lose?  Most players are going to go with X every time.

 

Suppose your average fantasy team faces off against Alan Scott.  He's a high powered wizard, as far as they can tell, and he can beat them senseless.  In a stand up fight, they have no shot.  The players don't want to lose, they want to win.  Winning the game is fun.  Then one of the players recognizes who this character is.  "Oh wow, it's the old Green Lantern!  I know this guy, he's weak against wood!"  The players are now in a rough predicament.  Now it's theoretically possible that they could have figured out the wood vulnerability on their own, without anyone telling them.  It might have come up naturally during the fight, somebody could put two and two together, and then they defeat the villain.  But when they start off the game knowing the weakness exists, the temptation is extremely tough to resist.  After all, if they play it straight, they probably lose.

 

At that point, they can't really discover the vulnerability in the normal course of play.  It's like trying to solve a mystery when you've already seen the movie/read the book.  You know the answer already.  The best you can hope for is that your players will be skilled enough that they can act like they discovered it organically.  Maybe they can "sell" the fake discovery really well.  But that's all it will be.

 

Now, things like Dex, Speed, and DCV aren't all that important to keep secret.  You can, but often it's a lot easier to just say "he's DCV 8, and he's got 30 PD and ED" and let your players do the math.

 

 

Hey! That was MY example!

 

Subpoint here regarding players already having certain metagame knowledge that I was thinking about is.....I mean, the players already have certain forms of perfect statistical references in games. Specifically their own stats.

SOME games do try to abstract away that sort of thing, but generally we accept that players will possess and use a TON of meta-gamey data in play and it never seems to be an issue.

 

Like if I the player am in a scenario and notice the Fire Orcs don't see to be effected by fire damage...does my character have an explicit understanding of damage types and elemental magic and stuff? Or do I as the player instead provoke my in-game character in to thinking, "Oh, this damage type isn't working, we should try switching attacks!"

Or when the hydra starts regrowing heads or the troll starts regenerating.

Or when a creature is stunned.

 

Or if I can run over there in a "half move".

Or knowing that Set will be more useful than Brace in this case.

Or that aborting to a dodge might boost my DVC juuuuust enough.

 

And so on.

 

Players already have tons of stats and meta-game info which they keep track of in great detail, while playing, and without it doing much (generally) to impair their ability to enjoy the game, have mysteries, and all the rest of it.

 

Is giving them more stats really going to be the thing that breaks the in-game\meta-game\stats suspension of disbelief?

 

Even existing in-game\meta-game stuff like: Is that real weapon capable of burst fire? Can my character infer things about his in-game flak vest going up against "the most powerful handgun in the world" consistently? Can a character tell the difference from a 10d EB and a 12d EB? How about a 14d EB?

 

And if they CAN do I really want to make them spend time making Per rolls so I can say, "Hmm, yes, that one blast *does* seem more powerful than that other one, and using your own blast as a reference you'd say it's 16% more powerful than the other EB."?

 

Like you're saying about Spd, CV, and def values. Why not just let the players do the math?

 

 

[massey]

My general thoughts on things like that are that the PCs have a general understanding of how things work in the game.  A character may not know what a "half move" is, or what phases are, but they basically know how to fight.  They know if they can reach the enemy in time to throw a punch before the enemy can react.  Characters don't necessarily think in terms of game stats, but they have an understanding of what those stats represent.  A Speed 4 guy sees a Speed 5 guy, and he thinks "that guy has faster reflexes than I do".  Effectively, as long as the character generally knows how to fight, the player can use his knowledge of the game system without being accused of being a poor roleplayer.

 

For your "crappy wizard with a strong summon", perhaps you can communicate it to the players in other ways.  Have the guy mispronounce certain obvious magic words.  Make it clear he got half his knowledge from some TV show, and it's wrong.  Perhaps have him quote extensively from a couple of movies that the players have seen, and will recognize (that's assuming this was in the modern day, of course).  If he says "bibbity bobbity boo!" when he's casting a spell and waving a wand, that should clue people in that something is amiss. 

 

Alternatively you could have him throw some low powered magic out of his VPP, and let the players put two and two together when it doesn't do much.  "Now you will die!!!" followed by a 2D6 RKA or 6D6 Energy Blast.  Or have him haymaker it (so they know he's really going all out) and then it's only 3D6+1 or 10D6.  "Alright, he blasts you with his death spell.  11 Body, 36 Stun.  No, it's not NND."  Then you have the big bad demon actually be really dangerous, and maybe somebody can make a Perception roll when the wizard gives the demon orders.  "You see the demon roll its eyes, and then sort of smirk, before it carries out his orders".

 

If somebody has the appropriate knowledge skills, you could just tell them.  You might just feed that guy the hints, and when he picks up on it, have him make a KS roll.  Then you say "yeah, you estimate that his magic VPP isn't large enough to summon that thing" and leave it at that.

[TranquiloUno]

1 hour ago, massey said:

My general thoughts on things like that are that the PCs have a general understanding of how things work in the game.  A character may not know what a "half move" is, or what phases are, but they basically know how to fight.  They know if they can reach the enemy in time to throw a punch before the enemy can react.  Characters don't necessarily think in terms of game stats, but they have an understanding of what those stats represent.  A Speed 4 guy sees a Speed 5 guy, and he thinks "that guy has faster reflexes than I do".  Effectively, as long as the character generally knows how to fight, the player can use his knowledge of the game system without being accused of being a poor roleplayer.

 

Sure, that's one approach. The normal one, I guess, is my feeling on it. 

 

Personally I prefer a slightly stronger relationship between in-game reality and rules reality.

While it isn't the standard idea for most games (and probably not interesting to most players and GMs) I feel like the rules should reflect an essential in-game truth where possible. 

 

A character might not know he's got "40 End" but he would know that at Speed 2 using a power\spell\thingie that costs 10 End that he's got about 4 uses of that before he'll be exhausted. 

That kind of stuff. 

 

But I certainly agree that rules should equate to an observable in-game reality for the players\characters in some way. 

 

 

 

Quote

 

For your "crappy wizard with a strong summon", perhaps you can communicate it to the players in other ways.  Have the guy mispronounce certain obvious magic words.  Make it clear he got half his knowledge from some TV show, and it's wrong.  Perhaps have him quote extensively from a couple of movies that the players have seen, and will recognize (that's assuming this was in the modern day, of course).  If he says "bibbity bobbity boo!" when he's casting a spell and waving a wand, that should clue people in that something is amiss. 

 

Uh. Right. Sure. I  *could* do those various things, but, like I was saying, that's not the approach that interests me in this case because...that's the standard normal way to do that stuff and I've done things that way for a long time and...what about some alternatives, you know? 

 

So I was interested in seeing about doing it the other way. Giving them the stats straight out and letting them work back from there.

 

In this specific case I was interested in this from both a in-game and out of game perspective. 

I was interested in what the in-game effects would be on strategy and tactics.

I was interested what the out of game effects would be on how players would respond.

 

 

Quote

 

Alternatively you could have him throw some low powered magic out of his VPP, and let the players put two and two together when it doesn't do much.  "Now you will die!!!" followed by a 2D6 RKA or 6D6 Energy Blast.  Or have him haymaker it (so they know he's really going all out) and then it's only 3D6+1 or 10D6.  "Alright, he blasts you with his death spell.  11 Body, 36 Stun.  No, it's not NND."  Then you have the big bad demon actually be really dangerous, and maybe somebody can make a Perception roll when the wizard gives the demon orders.  "You see the demon roll its eyes, and then sort of smirk, before it carries out his orders".

 

Sure, also good options. 

 

My initial lines of speculation had revolved around trying to relate demon summoning to sacrificed souls in a mechanical way.

 

Like you gotta sacrifice 3 virgins to get a 300pt demon or whatever. 100pts per virgin.

So if the players kill Xpts of demons and know that Evil Wizard has sacrificed and captured the souls of Y peasants then they can work out how big\how many demons he can summon using them and make decisions based on that info. 

 

But that seemed like, like I think I said elsewhere, a lot of work to double convert game constructs in to in-game constructs specifically for the purposes of trying to get the players to deduce out-of-game rules constructs from that info.

 

I should also say that these players are all new Hero system people. So partly this is a way to get them to look at more stats then their own. Just for general "how does this crazy system work" purposes. 

 

You or I, as experienced Champs\Hero ppl, can probably deduce stuff like, "1d+1 RKA...that's weird", but for players that still have trouble finding OCV on their character sheets, specifically as a method to make them engage with rules concepts AND tactical combats, I don't think that will work. 

 

Without, like above, doing this weird RPG song and dance where I try to give them the stats, but not really give them the stats, but do a bunch of rules stuff ("He *Haymakers* (that's an out of game rules construct that does more damage) and then he only does 6d (that's an out of game concept you can use to compare to your own characters damage to infer power differences) Normal which seems a bit low based on out of game rule constructs") to basically give them the stats.

 

Why not just give them the stats?

Or...what happens if I do?

And...has anybody else ever tried this? Or just the normal methods of giving out partial info and relating relative things to other relative in\out of game stuff.

 

Like if a Spd 4 PC fights a Spd 5 NPC. Sure he'll know he's got faster reflexes (might not be true if he's got low Dex tho, rite? ;D) because I'll say, "He seems faster than you!". But also the PC will know he's faster 'cause the NPC will go on Segment 5.

So I don't need to tell the player, so he can relate it to in-game character stuff. The player will\can figure that out one his own from in\out of game stuff.

That seems fine to me. What I want the player to know is: The NPC is faster (Spd-wise) than you. So either I can tell him the NPC is faster by some unknown (but very predictable in-game) margin or I can tell him he's Spd 5. 

 

And if I give him those stats ahead of time then he can make plans based on it.

 

Anyway. Yah. There are loads of ways to relay rules info using just in-game cues. And that's all fine and normal. 

 

But...what about doing it the other way? 

 

 

Quote

 

If somebody has the appropriate knowledge skills, you could just tell them.  You might just feed that guy the hints, and when he picks up on it, have him make a KS roll.  Then you say "yeah, you estimate that his magic VPP isn't large enough to summon that thing" and leave it at that.

 

Sure. Or an NPC can tell them. Or they find it in a book. Etc.

 

The VPP size is more inline with what I mean though.

If a magical conduit can estimate the power of another magical conduit (which they can via Magesight as I'm playing it (certain levels of it)) then why play coy and be all, "That VPP is bigger than a breadbox, but smaller than a mini-fridge.", when I can just tell them, "It's 40pts"?

 

I understand the various reasons that folks normally avoid doing that. Or at least the most common reasons for folks to say to avoid that.

But since I've never really seen (or tried) the reverse approach I can't say if it works better\worse, you know?

 

Like...I *want* them to know it's 40pts. I don't want them to know, "More than you and less than the other guy", because that doesn't seem as useful at enabling specific tactical response or in-game choices.

I *want* them to know this thing is a Spd 5. Not, "It's some\much\vastly faster than you". 

 

So to me it's less about finding ways "in the fiction" to support giving players partially obfuscated stats and more about exploring the idea of just giving them the non-obfuscated stats and seeing how they can use them to engage in greater levels of planning and developing tactics or other methods to deal with threats that they *know* ('cause they can see the stats) outclass them on a pure points\combat stats\other basis.

 

And even more specifically it's about exploring the idea that it might be more effective, in some ways, maybe, to create foreshadowing by providing stats instead of constructed game encounters that basically act to do the same thing but in a more elaborate manner that, honestly, involves a lot of table time that I'd rather do other stuff with.

 

If it's a 4 hour session and I have to construct a 30 minute encounter where the players gain a bunch of info that I *actually want them to have* but only present it in in-game terms...while expecting them to deduce rules functions from it....maybe I can just give them the stats and do something else with those 30 minutes.

Like...have them come up with a plan for dealing with the demon rather than spending time getting info so that...they can come up with a plan.

 

I'm sure that's not super clear. But, to be clear, I'm not uncertain about ways to relate rules stuff in-game, or why folks do that, but more interested in exploring the effects of doing it the other way and looking to see if anybody else has ever really tried this and how it went for them.

 

I *think* the most likely issue is that it might take folks "out of the game" but then the more I thought about it the less that seemed reasonable to me.

Because players are constantly switching in-game\out-of-game realities every time they look at their sheet or make a dice roll and nobody seems to feel that is an issue.

 

Would NPC stats really be that much different for them? 

 

Or will it be beneficial to enabling certain kinds of game play that I would like to encourage?

 

Generally, as Devo says, "Nobody knows; so let's find out!"

 

 

 

 

 

[TranquiloUno]

On 4/8/2019 at 4:18 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

Overall, i found that once they knew _precisely_ what they were up against, they tended to play smarter, much more tactically.

 

Which makes sense, really, because what I did was remove the biggest element that separates Role Playing Games from War Games.  The end result was that I turned the whole thing into a war game.  Suddenly everyone was working the meta: while they moved as a much more effective unit, they began calculating average die rolls, who would most likely take out this one or that one while two others coordinated attacks against someone else because they math says this would be "just right" to take that one down---

 

and the only communication was suddenly player to player; the characters might as well have been mobile gun platforms.

 

 

Hope that helps.

 

 

Duke

 

 

It does help! Thank you!

 

Getting them to player smarter and more tactically is partly what I'm after. So that's encouraging.

 

As for the roleplay\wargame divide...this is less of an issue, for me. 

To me one of the nice things about Hero is there's this fairly detailed and mechanically balanced tactical combat game there.

Other roleplaying games have less tactical complexity and are less interesting, in that respect only, to me, because of that.

 

I'd prefer my players (and ALSO their characters) engage in that more (than they do now) for in and out of game reasons.

 

Out of game: Hero has all these interesting combat options that mostly go unused because folks default to default RPG combat. Hit the biggest thing with your biggest thing until that doesn't work. I'd like them to focus more on those options, to gain greater experience with combats, to promote more varied combat solutions.

 

In game: It's a Combat-As-War type game. We discussed this prior to starting the game so it's semi-foundational to the game I'm trying to run. So the characters should be thinking of things in those terms. The characters are then also professionals. Not just some dudes that wandered in to the village with their father's sword or any of a million other possible setups which are more about character arcs and that sort of thing (nothing wrong with that! nor are those things irrelevant in this game!) which I see in more traditional Combat-As-Sport style setups. 

 

Does that make sense? 

 

That I'd rather have them shoot-move-communicate (so to speak) in-game?

Make and execute specific plans for specific scenarios based on more of a heist-move paradigm than a, "You killed my brother!!!", emotion-and-story-beats kinda paradigm? 

 

Like a showdown between The Pumpkin Prince and the Evil Wizard on the Bridge of Shadows while the Nether Portal opens in the background would be cool and stuff.

And I'm not against it developing that way.

But for this campaign I'd actually happier if the Prince finds out where the Wizard sleeps at night and kills him by filling his room with CO2 by arranging to close the flue on the chimney.

 

A dramatic and standard narrative rising-climax-falling action story would be ok. 

But, specifically for this game, that's not really what I'm trying to make happen.

 

...more Black Company\Dread Empire (mostly Dread Empire I'd say) and less Epic or even Standard Fantasy\D&D\LOTR\"Normal" type stuff.

 

[massey]

Our group started using a lot more combat options when I ran a high powered martial arts game.  This was probably 20 years ago, but it was a great learning experience for us.  Guys were running around with a 12 OCV and throwing 15D6+, with some of them having special moves that went even higher.  Think Street Fighter 2, with lots of crazy super moves.

 

Suddenly dodging, blocking, missile deflect and reflect, those were all really important to know how to do.  We learned the Speed chart backwards and forwards, and people figured out how and when to haymaker for the most effect.  People who came out of that campaign were much more effective in later games with other people.  As the damage values started getting out of control, people started to learn those combat maneuvers.

[TranquiloUno]

14 minutes ago, massey said:

Our group started using a lot more combat options when I ran a high powered martial arts game.  This was probably 20 years ago, but it was a great learning experience for us.  Guys were running around with a 12 OCV and throwing 15D6+, with some of them having special moves that went even higher.  Think Street Fighter 2, with lots of crazy super moves.

 

Suddenly dodging, blocking, missile deflect and reflect, those were all really important to know how to do.  We learned the Speed chart backwards and forwards, and people figured out how and when to haymaker for the most effect.  People who came out of that campaign were much more effective in later games with other people.  As the damage values started getting out of control, people started to learn those combat maneuvers.

 

I ran an actual Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game campaign at one point. 

Entertaining in it's own way but I'd definitely do it in Hero now.

 

That def seems like an effective setup to get folks to learn the combat rules. Nice genre\rules reinforcement!

Depending on point levels I'd think it could be a good setup for getting folks to learn the build rules as well since (I imagine) it'd be more low power and therefore points efficient. 

 

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

 

It does help! Thank you!

 

 

 

You are certainly welcome, Sir ( I assume.  If incorrect, accept my apologies)!

 

 

And as far as your goals:

 

It should certainly do that.

 

 

Duke

 

[archer]

On 4/8/2019 at 5:12 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

 

 

In D&D there's a bit of transparency, mostly because everyone has the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook, so they already know what the numbers are, even if they aren't supposed to peek. But from the side of someone who was in a 5e game where I didn't have any of the books, I know I was frustrated no knowing how a witches' coven worked. Our group's challenge seemed insurmountable, and we spent two weeks in abject angst trying to find a way to beat them. We eventually did! If we had known the rules ahead of time, we probably could have beaten them a lot sooner without any bit of worry. But also no sense of accomplishment either. Not knowing actually did increase the dramatic tension, at least in this particular situation.

 

 

 

I think D&D is better when the DM doesn't tell the players what the monster is if the characters shouldn't recognize what it is.

 

In HERO terms, the players would only get the name of the monster told to them if the players had met that particular kind of monster before or if they made an appropriate knowledge skill roll. Otherwise they'd just get a description of what it looked like and how it acted.

 

In D&D a lot of times we'd cut off horns, scales, and other parts of things we killed and take them back to town with us when we didn't know what the monster was. Sometimes the items would turn out to be valuable as spell components or to build magical devices. Most of the time, we'd try to sell things to several different merchants before one of them would break down and admit that the reason they're not interested in the item is "fill-in-the-blank" with the name of the creature and the information that the creature was useless and that it was "as common around here as dirt". But we'd generally find out the name of the creature eventually and maybe some more information about it than what we'd managed to gather during the fight.

 

When I'd play a less reputable character, I'd on occasion try to pass off pieces of less valuable monsters as something that was more valuable.