Heroic Narratives, Or I Love Champions But...

[Ninja-Bear]

On 2/18/2020 at 11:46 PM, Greywind said:

 

GM's control issue or the player's control issue having to exert agency above a player's chair?

GMs control. Who is the narrative really for? One person or the group? When Scott said about control the narrative, I asked myself whose narrative? I’m not saying the GM shouldn’t have fun either. If we said one player makes the game all about him we would all agree that that’s no fun so why is the GM getting special priority?  More specifically though no one here suggested that HAP is an insta win nor used without GM permission/discretion. Yet the chorus against is that it takes away from the GM purview.  As I’ve maintained this whole thread, if YOU don’t like/want it fine it’s your game but to say that somehow using it makes that group less role players? Then there is a problem. 
 

Let me paraphrase Changing the Game per 3rd edition. It’s your game. Change it to make it more fun because you paid for it.

[zslane]

7 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

If you want a game to be just based on dice rolls

 

This is a reductionist argument that doesn't remotely describe what I want in a TTRPG.

[KA.]

This is slightly off topic, and not addressed at anyone involved in this thread, but reading some of the comments has brought something to mind that I have been thinking about for some time.

 

Also, if the tone seems a bit heated, I apologize in advance, but this is a topic that has been bothering me for a while, again, none of this is addressed to those posting in this thread.

 

Over the many years of my sporadic RPG career, I have done a roughly equal amount of time as a GM and as a Player.

I enjoyed both.

I enjoyed playing because all I had to do was show up with a well-prepared character, or some good ideas if we were creating characters from scratch, and enjoy playing the game.

I enjoyed GM'ing, because it gave me the chance to try my hand at creating an adventure that the players would enjoy, find challenging, and want to continue into a campaign.

 

That is not the only difference.

 

GM'ing is a metric buttload of work.

 

I started out DM'ing AD&D.

You had to create a plot, maps, monsters, treasures, traps, NPC's, atmosphere, background information, interesting things for each character to potentially do (traps and locks for the thief, appropriate stuff for the fighters to fight, people for the cleric to convert or heal, interesting magic stuff for the magic user to find, etc.).

It might take a day of work for each hour the players were going to spend at the table.

 

Champions is a little different, not as much "treasure" but way more NPC's and combat and plot.

 

And I admit that I did enjoy the work I put into creating an adventure, mostly, but it was still work and took up a lot of time, which all of us seem to have less of as the years go by.

 

I also enjoy cooking, and from time to time I invite people over for dinner.

If I invite someone who does not like spicy food, I have no problem accomodating that.

If I invite someone who loves baked beans, I will do my best to work them into the menu.

However, since I am the one buying the ingredients, playing the host, and doing all the work preparing the food, I expect to get a certain amount of apprectiation for going to all the trouble.

After all, there are plenty of restaurants that will cook the food you want, pretty much the way you want it, you just have to pay for it, and the more demanding you are, the more you usually have to pay.

 

There are times when players, and I hope it is mainly players who have never GM'ed, give off a vibe like:

"I want you to go out and buy every possible ingredient for every possible dish.

Clean them, prep them, and have them waiting for my arrival.

When I get there, I expect you to produce exactly the dish I am in the mood for, even though I may not know myself what I want.

You think that you have to right to have some input into what you cook?

How dare you!

You can't bully me into accepting something that you enjoy too, this is all about me!"

 

That example may be a little extreme, but I find the concept that the GM is just another player, with no more right to have the game suit him than anyone else, to be ridiculous.

Maybe everyone else lives in a world that is crowded with GM's begging players to enter their games, but that has never been my experience.

I always felt lucky that someone else was willing to put in all that effort so I didn't have to.

That doesn't mean I would put up with a GM that was rude or abusive, but other than that, I was happy enough to be in a game to cut the GM some slack.

 

I am not saying that the players are just there to act out the GM's play so he can sit back and watch it.

But as much as the word "railroad" has been maligned in the RPG world, it is a great way to get a group of people to the same place at the same time!

Perhaps the concept of "carpool" is more appropriate.

Everyone is trying to get to the same basic place, at around the same time.

If one of the group wants to stop off to pick up some drycleaning, or drop something in the mailbox, that is fine too, as long as everyone gets where they are going in time.

But, if people are saying that if the guy who owns the car, buys the gas, and does all the driving, likes to stop off for a doughnut every morning, he doesn't have that right unless all the passengers want one too, that sounds like B.S. to me.

 

After all, if someone just wants to come up with a story where their character, and all the faceless drones that follow it around, does exactly what he wants in a world made to accomodate him, they can do that.

They call it writing a story.

But to expect someone else to spend their time writing one for you, that exactly matches your desires, with little to no input from them, seems a little selfish.

 

For one thing, if the GM is not the guiding the plot, who is?

 

I always see comments about "the players", but if you think about it, would all the players want exactly the same thing?

I mean obviously, if you start out with a bank being robbed, and one player wants to kill off the robbers by beheading them with her power sword, and one player wants to use his negotiation skills to talk the robbers out of a life of crime, and one player wants to go to the library across the street and research the history of the Federal Reserve, and the final player wants to have their character strike up a romance with one of the "rough-edged but dangerously attractive" bank robbers, you can't pursue all of those threads at the same moment, especially since the bank robbery is only being staged as a distraction while Viper is stealing the McGuffin across town and the players probably need to figure that out, if not now, at least soon.

 

So, do you stop for a vote after each turn so see which direction the players want to jump?

 

I believe that the problem is often not "The Players are not able to have Their characters do the things They want to."

but instead,

"I am not able to have My character do exactly what I want to, (and have all the other players and the rest of the game world go along with me)!"

 

I have never seen someone suggest that the players should take some sort of vote, or express their opinions on which direction the game should go, it always seems to be assumed that if that power-mad GM would just get out of the way of the person who is talking, everyone else could follow them to the promised land.

 

After all, if you are going to only please one person at the table, it might as well be the person who does all the work, not the person who does nothing but complain about the work that has been done, without actually contributing anything that would also make the other players happy.

 

For some reason, many players seem to think that if the game was just run the way they want it to be, every thing would be great.

 

And that's fine, if someone thinks they can do a better job than the GM, they should give it a try.

 

Do the work.

Spend the time.

Come up with the kind of plot you like.

Guide the game in the direction you see fit . . .

 

Oh, but wait, isn't that railroading?  

😁

 

ka.

[zslane]

1 hour ago, KA. said:

Guide the game in the direction you see fit . . .

 

Oh, but wait, isn't that railroading?

 

I feel that it depends on how the GM is "guiding" the game.

 

I think the key is to give plenty of incentives for following the plot so that players will naturally choose to do so, of their own accord. It won't feel like (or even be) railroading if the players are always choosing what to do next on their own. If you're doing your job as GM, they won't notice or realize that you've simply constructed events such that the thing they'll want to do most is also exactly what you want them to do (in terms of "staying on track").

 

Of course, this requires you know your players well, what motivates them (and their characters), and what they like to do in the game, and that you construct your adventures for them accordingly.

[Duke Bushido]

Well great. 

 

Now I've got to track down nine more of KA's posts, because I canly rep this one once.   

 

[KA.]

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Well great. 

 

Now I've got to track down nine more of KA's posts, because I canly rep this one once.   

 

Thank you!

[Duke Bushido]

You're quite welcome.

 

made it to five before I ran out, though.  I'll have to come back to it tomorrow.

 

[Scott Ruggels]

On 2/25/2020 at 10:46 AM, KA. said:

This is slightly off topic, and not addressed at anyone involved in this thread, but reading some of the comments has brought something to mind that I have been thinking about for some time.

 

[Edit]

 

Do the work.

Spend the time.

Come up with the kind of plot you like.

Guide the game in the direction you see fit . . .

 

Oh, but wait, isn't that railroading?  

😁

 

ka.

Like Zslane, I am a Sandbox GM. 

 

But like any scientific experiment, initial starting conditions are critical for success.  So, first explain to the players what you may be running (it pays to have a couple of options). This is where you set expectations.  Next, the GM Will vet the characters and see if they all fit (no asshole loaners, no extreme eccentrics, no one NOT danger  worthy).  Finally go over their backgrounds and find hooks you can lead them along with, but allow them to discuss in character what they want to do.  and from there start filling in the background and lore in the direction they are moving towards.  The players will find their own tasks, and you just build the scenery a day ahead of them. XD. But always set your starting conditions firmly, and don't be put off , if you lose one or two players because they arent fans of the campaign.

 

[Greywind]

9 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Like Zslane, I am a Sandbox GM. 

 

But like any scientific experiment, initial starting conditions are critical for success.  So, first explain to the players what you may be running (it pays to have a couple of options). This is where you set expectations.  Next, the GM Will vet the characters and see if they all fit (no asshole loaners, no extreme eccentrics, no one NOT danger  worthy).  Finally go over their backgrounds and find hooks you can lead them along with, but allow them to discuss in character what they want to do.  and from there start filling in the background and lore in the direction they are moving towards.  The players will find their own tasks, and you just build the scenery a day ahead of them. XD. But always set your starting conditions firmly, and don't be put off , if you lose one or two players because they arent fans of the campaign.

 

 

Also known as flying by the seat of your pants.

 

Quote

no asshole loaners

 

Of course not. Pimps want their money.

[Scott Ruggels]

13 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Also known as flying by the seat of your pants.

 

Well I had a method for that.  So a half hour or so before the game I would grab my campaign notebook. and read what I wrote after the last game,   make a few rolls, figure out what was supposed to happen next game, and thart was the extent of my prep.  THe reason this worked was because i had Vast and Extensive writings about the background and the people, and I could, for all intents and purposes, "wing it".

My campaign notes looked like this:

 

So I was able to keep flexible, and if not anticipate the player's desires, I could at least keep the information flow up.

 

 

 

Quote

 

 

Of course not. Pimps want their money.

Typo, But I think you knew what I meant.

 

[Greywind]

58 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Typo, But I think you knew what I meant.

 

 

Typos: the leading cause for humor on the internet.

I did the same. Made things easier in the long run. The best part was that I had hooks in one of the driving players. He just had to figure things out and who was yanking his chain.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 2/25/2020 at 1:46 PM, KA. said:

This is slightly off topic, and not addressed at anyone involved in this thread, but reading some of the comments has brought something to mind that I have been thinking about for some time.

 

Also, if the tone seems a bit heated, I apologize in advance, but this is a topic that has been bothering me for a while, again, none of this is addressed to those posting in this thread.

 

Over the many years of my sporadic RPG career, I have done a roughly equal amount of time as a GM and as a Player.

I enjoyed both.

I enjoyed playing because all I had to do was show up with a well-prepared character, or some good ideas if we were creating characters from scratch, and enjoy playing the game.

I enjoyed GM'ing, because it gave me the chance to try my hand at creating an adventure that the players would enjoy, find challenging, and want to continue into a campaign.

 

That is not the only difference.

 

GM'ing is a metric buttload of work.

 

I started out DM'ing AD&D.

You had to create a plot, maps, monsters, treasures, traps, NPC's, atmosphere, background information, interesting things for each character to potentially do (traps and locks for the thief, appropriate stuff for the fighters to fight, people for the cleric to convert or heal, interesting magic stuff for the magic user to find, etc.).

It might take a day of work for each hour the players were going to spend at the table.

 

Champions is a little different, not as much "treasure" but way more NPC's and combat and plot.

 

And I admit that I did enjoy the work I put into creating an adventure, mostly, but it was still work and took up a lot of time, which all of us seem to have less of as the years go by.

 

I also enjoy cooking, and from time to time I invite people over for dinner.

If I invite someone who does not like spicy food, I have no problem accomodating that.

If I invite someone who loves baked beans, I will do my best to work them into the menu.

However, since I am the one buying the ingredients, playing the host, and doing all the work preparing the food, I expect to get a certain amount of apprectiation for going to all the trouble.

After all, there are plenty of restaurants that will cook the food you want, pretty much the way you want it, you just have to pay for it, and the more demanding you are, the more you usually have to pay.

 

There are times when players, and I hope it is mainly players who have never GM'ed, give off a vibe like:

"I want you to go out and buy every possible ingredient for every possible dish.

Clean them, prep them, and have them waiting for my arrival.

When I get there, I expect you to produce exactly the dish I am in the mood for, even though I may not know myself what I want.

You think that you have to right to have some input into what you cook?

How dare you!

You can't bully me into accepting something that you enjoy too, this is all about me!"

 

That example may be a little extreme, but I find the concept that the GM is just another player, with no more right to have the game suit him than anyone else, to be ridiculous.

Maybe everyone else lives in a world that is crowded with GM's begging players to enter their games, but that has never been my experience.

I always felt lucky that someone else was willing to put in all that effort so I didn't have to.

That doesn't mean I would put up with a GM that was rude or abusive, but other than that, I was happy enough to be in a game to cut the GM some slack.

 

I am not saying that the players are just there to act out the GM's play so he can sit back and watch it.

But as much as the word "railroad" has been maligned in the RPG world, it is a great way to get a group of people to the same place at the same time!

Perhaps the concept of "carpool" is more appropriate.

Everyone is trying to get to the same basic place, at around the same time.

If one of the group wants to stop off to pick up some drycleaning, or drop something in the mailbox, that is fine too, as long as everyone gets where they are going in time.

But, if people are saying that if the guy who owns the car, buys the gas, and does all the driving, likes to stop off for a doughnut every morning, he doesn't have that right unless all the passengers want one too, that sounds like B.S. to me.

 

After all, if someone just wants to come up with a story where their character, and all the faceless drones that follow it around, does exactly what he wants in a world made to accomodate him, they can do that.

They call it writing a story.

But to expect someone else to spend their time writing one for you, that exactly matches your desires, with little to no input from them, seems a little selfish.

 

For one thing, if the GM is not the guiding the plot, who is?

 

I always see comments about "the players", but if you think about it, would all the players want exactly the same thing?

I mean obviously, if you start out with a bank being robbed, and one player wants to kill off the robbers by beheading them with her power sword, and one player wants to use his negotiation skills to talk the robbers out of a life of crime, and one player wants to go to the library across the street and research the history of the Federal Reserve, and the final player wants to have their character strike up a romance with one of the "rough-edged but dangerously attractive" bank robbers, you can't pursue all of those threads at the same moment, especially since the bank robbery is only being staged as a distraction while Viper is stealing the McGuffin across town and the players probably need to figure that out, if not now, at least soon.

 

So, do you stop for a vote after each turn so see which direction the players want to jump?

 

I believe that the problem is often not "The Players are not able to have Their characters do the things They want to."

but instead,

"I am not able to have My character do exactly what I want to, (and have all the other players and the rest of the game world go along with me)!"

 

I have never seen someone suggest that the players should take some sort of vote, or express their opinions on which direction the game should go, it always seems to be assumed that if that power-mad GM would just get out of the way of the person who is talking, everyone else could follow them to the promised land.

 

After all, if you are going to only please one person at the table, it might as well be the person who does all the work, not the person who does nothing but complain about the work that has been done, without actually contributing anything that would also make the other players happy.

 

For some reason, many players seem to think that if the game was just run they way they want it to be, every thing would be great.

 

And that's fine, if someone thinks they can do a better job than the GM, they should give it a try.

 

Do the work.

Spend the time.

Come up with the kind of plot you like.

Guide the game in the direction you see fit . . .

 

Oh, but wait, isn't that railroading?  

😁

 

ka.

Oh I get what your saying. However no nobody who said about using (or in my case) have used them suggested what you described.  I gave a specific example of how I allowed my son to bend the rule about throwing one thug into another in the same phase to work. It didn’t affect the overall game and in someways it sped up that scene. This is what is frustrating (no with you) but I said repeatedly how and when to use a HAP but the detractors just ignore what is said and go to extremes as you posted. 

[zslane]

13 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I allowed my son to bend the rule about throwing one thug into another in the same phase to work. It didn’t affect the overall game and in someways it sped up that scene.

 

I see nothing wrong with being flexible enough with the game (and the system) to allow this sort of "combat stunt" if it makes the game more fun for everyone. However, I would stop short of inventing an entirely new game mechanic just to formalize it for regular use. That just leads to all kinds of issues that I think are best avoided, and quite frankly I don't think it is necessary. Just let your son (or whomever) feel really cinematically heroic for a Phase and move on.

[Hugh Neilson]

6 hours ago, zslane said:

I see nothing wrong with being flexible enough with the game (and the system) to allow this sort of "combat stunt" if it makes the game more fun for everyone. However, I would stop short of inventing an entirely new game mechanic just to formalize it for regular use. That just leads to all kinds of issues that I think are best avoided, and quite frankly I don't think it is necessary. Just let your son (or whomever) feel really cinematically heroic for a Phase and move on.

 

Then why do we need rules at all?  Just let your players feel really cinematically heroic for a while, then move on to the next player and talk through their next cinematic, heroic move.

 

This is not a binary switch - there is a continuum between "documented rules" and "allow this cinematic/heroic action".

[zslane]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Then why do we need rules at all?

 

To provide structure and consistency in determining complex and/or unpredictable outcomes. However, I would argue that the rules really only exist to help decide things that the GM can't competently determine on his own. In effect, the HERO System (or any set of RPG rules for that matter) is merely a set of guidelines intended to be interpreted and adjusted as needed during play.

 

After all, I've never seen a set of rules that can cover every possible situation or contingency. Moreover, there are times when what the rules say should happen conflicts with what the GM and the players feel should happen. In such situations, the written rules (or a dice result) may have to take a back seat to whatever fiction the GM and players prefer.

 

Of course if the GM makes no effort at all to be consistent when "fudging" things, the game ceases to make any sense, but nobody is advocating throwing the rules out entirely. And nobody is advocating doing anything that might ruin the game for anyone.

 

In any event, nobody should be a slave to a rulebook. Nobody's life or livelihood is at stake here.

[starblaze]

I GM and have occasionally played in two games that use a hero/fate/whatever option.  That is Amazing Adventures and BASH.  AA uses fate points that can keep you from getting hit, effect the plot in a minor way as well as other stuff.  BASH uses hero points and hero dice.  Hero points let you spend dice to help with a success.  Let's say you need just 2 more points to keep that atom bomb from going off, you can do that.  Hero allows you do things like appear somewhere that would not normally appear at, add to a die roll by rolling an extra die, and my favorite, the power stunt that allows to do something unique with your one time in a creative way.  The key to these mechanics contrivances is that they are finite.  You don't have an unlimited number of these so they need to be used judiciously.  You basically save that mechanic for the time you need it.

 

So far it has worked out fine.

[Duke Bushido]

I think I've mentioned this before, but not too terribly long ago, I read a game I don't play-- I don't remember what the name was (it was a western), only that it was "rules lite" and it was terrible.

 

It had one thing that I really did find interesting, because I don't think I've seen such a thing before.  I can't remember the exact task resolution mechanics, so if you will bear with me, I will present what I seem to think it was (I just woke up at the desk and will be turning in after this):

 

You are attempting a  Skill check and grab  a red die and a blue die and roll them both at once.  One is bad luck; one is good luck.

 

Whichever one is higher determines success or failure; the difference between them determines the degree of success or failure.

 

Yeah; that's a pretty wide and highly subjectively interpretive method of resolution, but still, I found it interesting (probably because I have the same reverence for dice that ancient man had for sleight of hand).

 

I had considered possibly adapting that to HERO's 3d6 (so you'd roll 5 dice) -- _not_ to change success or failure, but to determine the degree of either.  Then I remembered that we have a built-in for that, should be decide to use it, and that's "how much did you make / miss it by?"

 

Still, I've wondered if there might be a practical incorporation of the idea out there.  I had considered a possible "critical" system using this idea: "1" on bad luck and "6" on good luck meant some sort of spectacular success.  I liked it because of the problem of "you need a four or less to hit" when using the "roll a natural 3 and it's a critical!" methodology.

 

Then I remembered I don't use critical hits.

 

And this went nowhere.  I'm going to bed.

 

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

14 hours ago, zslane said:

 

To provide structure and consistency in determining complex and/or unpredictable outcomes. However, I would argue that the rules really only exist to help decide things that the GM can't competently determine on his own. In effect, the HERO System (or any set of RPG rules for that matter) is merely a set of guidelines intended to be interpreted and adjusted as needed during play.

 

And that is the continuum we examine.  Does the GM decide this specific complex and unpredictable outcome, or do we have rules in this specific case.  Given the number of "how do I handle this?" questions that all games, not just Hero, tends to attract, it seems like not everyone agrees on the point of the continuum best suited to a great game.

[zslane]

Agreed. Each group is going to have to find their own comfort zone in this regard.

[csyphrett]

On 2/27/2020 at 8:12 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Well I had a method for that.  So a half hour or so before the game I would grab my campaign notebook. and read what I wrote after the last game,   make a few rolls, figure out what was supposed to happen next game, and thart was the extent of my prep.  THe reason this worked was because i had Vast and Extensive writings about the background and the people, and I could, for all intents and purposes, "wing it".

My campaign notes looked like this:

 

So I was able to keep flexible, and if not anticipate the player's desires, I could at least keep the information flow up.

 

 

 

Typo, But I think you knew what I meant.

 

My notes used to look like flow charts

CES

[BNakagawa]

I like the somewhat recent (by Hero Games standards) development of the mook mechanics, where popcorn opponents function on different mechanics than significant or named opponents to allow for some moments of epic posturing and dramatic entrances. Some extension of this treatment to the mechanics of Champions would actually benefit the game IMO. Rather than needing stat and power inflation to define truly powerful endgame villains, simply establishing that the mook rules, which PCs gleefully used to thrash his minions all the way from the front door to the throne room, suddenly apply to THEM vs this guy, is all the dramatic reveal that is necessary to get them to sit up straight and take notice.