Heroic Narratives, Or I Love Champions But...

[pawsplay]

You said that you don't want to use HAPs. You said they complicate the GM's job of balancing encounters. You said it was the GM's job to manage the numbers so the challenge is appropriate. If the good guys are to consistently win, that necessarily implies the bad guys are weaker or played worse.

[Ninja-Bear]

5 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

When did throwing someone become against the rules?

Throwing someone to hit another in the same phase is now against the rule. (Should have been more clear) If you want to do that you have to hold a phase or (and I did ask about this) a GM can allow you to multiattack. 

[Ninja-Bear]

3 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

It is exactly the same problem.  If "you are going to have dead heroes a lot of the time" then the GM has made the enemy too strong.  HAPs won't prevent that.  HAPs just make that worse, since they're another variable for the GM to consider. 

And worse, they're a variable that's going to shift wildly based on player usage and the dice.  I've seen people blow their entire stack of per-session metacurrency halfway through a session on a roll to woo the barmaid.  I've seen people blow their entire stack of per-arc metacurrency the instant the first fight starts because they're not willing to let the bad guy escape (he did anyways).  I've seen people sit on a stack of per-session metacurrency with half an hour left in the session during a tense fight.  I've seen people start with full health and a full stack and be low on health and metacurrency at the end of a fight nobody else took damage or spent metacurrency in. 

And the problem? They had a choice and they used it unwisely. That doesn’t mean HAPs are bad it means those people used them poorly. I’ve made many a ineffective character (250  4e). That doesn’t mean the Point System was bad. It meant that some of my decisions were.

[Ninja-Bear]

Duke I ain’t going to sort through your one post but surmise the one part about dickin your game. No body here is trying to tell you you should have HAP in your game. I know I ain’t.  Now perhaps I’m misreading your texts do to length but I get the feeling, though could be wrong, that you are telling people that you are role playing wrong if said people choose to use HAPs. And if I’m right, I’m surprised.

[Ninja-Bear]

Scott Ruggels and others have brought up valid points on how HAPs can be misused. So I would look into those concerns before implementing HAPs. But I don’t see it as any worse than allowing Mindlock in a game where no one else has any mental defense either.

[Ninja-Bear]

And Duke I don’t know if this will blow your mind but we also play that 3 1’s is max damage or something good and 3 6’s something bad happens too.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

34 minutes ago, pawsplay said:

You said that you don't want to use HAPs. You said they complicate the GM's job of balancing encounters. You said it was the GM's job to manage the numbers so the challenge is appropriate. If the good guys are to consistently win, that necessarily implies the bad guys are weaker or played worse.

The Justice League was brought up as context.  Dead heroes were brought up as context.  Now, I'm not the biggest JL fan but so far as I'm aware the Justice League has basically no fatalities.  So, to me, the concept of JL heroes dying suggested the game had gone wildly off the rails and the GM had accidentally made his villain far too lethal but not realized until somebody died.  So I was conversing with that as my foundation.  Was that incorrect? 

 

Edit: I'm still confused RE villain strength.  Why do HAPs matter? 

 

25 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

And the problem? They had a choice and they used it unwisely. That doesn’t mean HAPs are bad it means those people used them poorly. I’ve made many a ineffective character (250  4e). That doesn’t mean the Point System was bad. It meant that some of my decisions were.

It makes the GM's life harder.  That's the problem. 

And it's a problem common to almost all* metacurrency implementations I've seen, so I don't hold it against HAPs. 

 

*: PARANOIA's Perversity Points are a beautiful piece of mechanics that cause near-zero GM headaches.  They have never done me wrong. 

[Duke Bushido]

11 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Duke I ain’t going to sort through your one post but surmise the one part about dickin your game. No body here is trying to tell you you should have HAP in your game. I know I ain’t.  Now perhaps I’m misreading your texts do to length but I get the feeling, though could be wrong, that you are telling people that you are role playing wrong if said people choose to use HAPs. And if I’m right, I’m surprised.

 

 

 

Man, I am not laughing at you; seriously.  When I read where you quoted me, I noticed a typo-- what I would call "a really bad one" in my original post.

 

Then you repeated it in your post, and I just fell apart.      I think I've been awake too long, but before I turn in (or attempt to absorb any of this while unable to give it the attention it deserves, I am going to go correct my typo:

 

it should read "dickering with"  not .... what it actually reads.  

 

I've really got to stop posting from a touch screen, but for the majority of my day, that's what I have access to.

 

And why does my autocorrect assume I'm being crude?  Well, I work 12 to 13 hours a day with truck drivers and equipment operators.  That crap rubs off after a while, and you start replying to texts the way they were composed.  :/

 

 

Good night, all.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

Gb(!) my experience and that if the group is that HAPs don’t make the GMs job harder.

[Ninja-Bear]

No problem Duke

[Ninja-Bear]

Btw I work third so my posts can be.....interesting.

[pawsplay]

14 minutes ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

The Justice League was brought up as context.  Dead heroes were brought up as context.  Now, I'm not the biggest JL fan but so far as I'm aware the Justice League has basically no fatalities.  So, to me, the concept of JL heroes dying suggested the game had gone wildly off the rails and the GM had accidentally made his villain far too lethal but not realized until somebody died.  So I was conversing with that as my foundation.  Was that incorrect? 

 

Edit: I'm still confused RE villain strength.  Why do HAPs matter?

I'm working from a fundamental assumption that the fight against Darkseid is winnable. So either the heroes need to be able to "beat the odds," or the odds need to actually be in their favor.

Let's say you wanted to put your PCs up against Mechanon. However, after squinting at the numbers, you see he will make short work of them. So, now you have to sit there and shave numbers off his attacks and defenses until you get where you need to be.

[Scott Ruggels]

8 hours ago, pawsplay said:

I'm not against randomness in the game. The question I have is how the Justice League go up against Darkseid and have a chance. Champions is challenging because the math doesn't always work in such a scenario.

I would say smarter players because I have seen it and often, but it takes planning, and an deep familiarity with the rules

(any rules), and it happens. At the con I was at, the players were in a Traveller game that was heavily stacked against them. Because the players were smart and planned a game that was supposed to finish at 2:00 am instead finished at 10:30 pm with few shots fired. No this is a traveler game, so it was more of a heist, but a a few of the players were old first generation Champions players. But any time you get two or more ofnThe Guardians (the Hero Games in House super team) in anyone’s game, bad things happen to the villains schemes, because timing, teamwork and planning  are second nature to them. They are also absolutely open to bringing any noobs at the table into the plan to participate if they have an aptitude for listening to instructions and following the timing   The results can be spectacular and truly heroic. 

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Throwing someone to hit another in the same phase is now against the rule. (Should have been more clear) If you want to do that you have to hold a phase or (and I did ask about this) a GM can allow you to multiattack. 

This is one of the reasyIntake a dim view of 6e, that and 5 points gets you one DC but 1’point of barrier gets you more that what a DC can punch through. 

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

23 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Gb(!) my experience and that if the group is that HAPs don’t make the GMs job harder.

I'm glad to hear metacurrency works better for your group than it does mine! 

 

29 minutes ago, pawsplay said:

I'm working from a fundamental assumption that the fight against Darkseid is winnable. So either the heroes need to be able to "beat the odds," or the odds need to actually be in their favor.

Let's say you wanted to put your PCs up against Mechanon. However, after squinting at the numbers, you see he will make short work of them. So, now you have to sit there and shave numbers off his attacks and defenses until you get where you need to be.

But isn't giving the heroes metacurrency making the odds actually be in their favor?  I'm having trouble seeing the difference between that and shaving numbers off. 

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

This is one of the reasyIntake a dim view of 6e, that and 5 points gets you one DC but 1’point of barrier gets you more that what a DC can punch through. 

I honesty don’t know when the to hit two people same phase became illegal. I’m guessing more in 5th. So I won’t blame the edition until I know for sure.  And I’ll have to check about the barrier cause I’m at work but I do know that you have to buy barriers dimensions and body separate, I think you need to spend more points than 1 to get more to stop one DC.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I'm glad to hear metacurrency works better for your group than it does mine! 

 

But isn't giving the heroes metacurrency making the odds actually be in their favor?  I'm having trouble seeing the difference between that and shaving numbers off. 

You make a good point though indirectly. I feel that a player group is really the key to a good game. As a player I try my best to help the GM. 
 

In some ways shaving the points and meta currency are the same.  But shaving points won’t help your character bend rules like the throw example.

 

P.S. I’ve been lately looking at nooks and shaved them. Dropping one Speed does wonders to making Supers more Super.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

21 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I honesty don’t know when the to hit two people same phase became illegal. I’m guessing more in 5th. So I won’t blame the edition until I know for sure.  And I’ll have to check about the barrier cause I’m at work but I do know that you have to buy barriers dimensions and body separate, I think you need to spend more points than 1 to get more to stop one DC.

1 point will get you +1 BODY.  So sink, say, 28 points into BODY, 9 into 3 PD/ED and 3 into a big-enough-to-englobe-me barrier and throw on One-Way Transparent (To Your SFX) +1/2 and turn a Half-Phase Action and 6 END into three totally negated 12DC attacks.  And you can still shoot out! 

[Greywind]

3 hours ago, pawsplay said:

You said that you don't want to use HAPs. You said they complicate the GM's job of balancing encounters. You said it was the GM's job to manage the numbers so the challenge is appropriate. If the good guys are to consistently win, that necessarily implies the bad guys are weaker or played worse.

 

Why do the good guys consistently have to win? And by what metric does losing inherently mean dead?

[pawsplay]

4 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

Why do the good guys consistently have to win? And by what metric does losing inherently mean dead?

In superhero stories, the good guys do consistently win.

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, pawsplay said:

I'm working from a fundamental assumption that the fight against Darkseid is winnable. So either the heroes need to be able to "beat the odds," or the odds need to actually be in their favor.

Let's say you wanted to put your PCs up against Mechanon. However, after squinting at the numbers, you see he will make short work of them. So, now you have to sit there and shave numbers off his attacks and defenses until you get where you need to be.

 

Superman can (and has) gone 1-on-1 with Darkseid and won. There was a tendency in DC Heroes to dilute the value of Superman when he was working with the League. The argument was that his attention was divided between the bad guys and the other Leaguers to make sure they didn't get killed/seriously injured. When no one else was around his full attention was on the villain and therefore able to bring all his powers to bear on that one objective.

[Greywind]

Just now, pawsplay said:

In superhero stories, the good guys do consistently win.

 

No, they don't. They get their clocks cleaned. The villain gets away. The heroes have to deal with their injuries, whether physical or to their egos, figure out what they did wrong and what they can do in the rematch to make sure they do win.

[Doc Democracy]

It is amazing the threads that get us agitated enough to post!  Who knew that HAPs would be one of them.  I woke up to 26 new posts, almost like the old days....

 

Anyway, my 2 cents. 

 

As a player, I hate games where I need to burn experience to stay competitive.  In those sorts of games both players and GM can burn points on the same contest.  Hate it.  TORG, WEG star wars, Heroquest (the Glorantha one) and a few others, can't remember if Fate and Savage World's do it.

 

That is not to say I don't like idea of players having some narrative control of encounters and games.  I played the FFG star wars recently and their force pool idea really worked for my group. 

 

"You want to sneak across the port to reach the ship you think the maguffin is in?  OK, there are a few patrols, lots of droids and mechanics and one elevated guard post.  You know a few of you are not good at sneaking.  Tell you what, turn one of the white fate points black and we'll say you all make it to the gantry of the ship". 

 

This scene is a minor one.  If they all make their rolls, the same thing happens, if they don't there is a combat.  Players that like combat will refuse the offer.  Players into the strategy of sneaking through the defences will love the chance to do it without risking it. Or I might get a counteroffer, where a player suggests a different narrative way through the scene.  Not a way to win in big battles, instead an incentive to draw the players into telling a great story and deferring rather than avoiding pain.

 

I prefer heroic games.  I allowed them to turn dark points white by doing good deeds and acting heroically.  Those dark points in the pool drove that kind of play from players who would normally kill prisoners and annoying NPCs.

 

It is all about implementation.  Duke?  I have not yet introduced them into any of my HERO games but when I do, I will invite you to come to London to see how it would make a good game great!  🙂

 

Doc

[Ninja-Bear]

Doc I know Savage Worlds has a Bennie system though at the moment I’m sketchy on details. For me with WEG GMing, I never really used character points for the villains. I might have done it once cause I wanted the villain to escape once.

[Doc Democracy]

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Doc I know Savage Worlds has a Bennie system though at the moment I’m sketchy on details. For me with WEG GMing, I never really used character points for the villains. I might have done it once cause I wanted the villain to escape once.

 

I tried not to as GM as it simply became a bidding war and, as GM, my bank balance was infinite.

 

But in WEG there was no evolution of the currency to provide points for good gameplay.  You COULD give dark side points for poor play and you COULD not restore Force points if they were used frivolously.  Both those things caused petted lips and tears, especially if it was the third (I think) dark side point which effectively made the PC a villain NPC with no chance of redemption.

 

It was close to a decent system.  FFG (IMO) made it better.

 

Doc