Paragon

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

I'm getting some far far stronger views than that by reading your earlier posts. maybe we aren't communicating but given the title of the thread I think I'm understanding you. Your last two actually seem to be more moderate than your earlier position to me.

I tend to present this strongly because I think its an aspect of the overly reverent attitude this hobby has to the power of the GM, and I think that meme is fundamentally a mistake. However its possible some people have also conflated my views with Warp9's, and we aren't writing on the same page even if we're using the same pen.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

That's a much more competative atmosphere than I'm interested in for an RPG. The Ref and Players aren't on opposite sides. They are working together to create an enjoyable game. The rules don't exist to force the Ref to be "fair". If I don't trust a Ref to be fair, I just don't play in their game.

 

I trust the GM to try and be fair. What I don't assume is that they'll succeed. The issue is, I don't think all GMs are equally good at this, and even the best ones fail on occasion. People can go through their entire driving lives without an auto accident; I don't see that as a good reason not to have seat belts.

There is a huge chasm between "tweak the rules where needed to get them to fit your campaign" and "may as well just throw out the rules entirely".

I don't disagree. I just think that people who find an intrinsic virtue in ignoring the rules when not strictly necessary are making as much a mistake as those who cling to them when they clearly aren't working, and I think there's a clear attempt in some people to project the former as superior.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

No system can have a rule for every situation. And even if it could it would not be a game to play. You'd be playing real life instead. That would not be half as much fun.

 

I'm done here, Paragon cannot or will not see reason. Case closed. Next!

Apparently since I don't share your view of how frequently the situations a decent set of rules can handle come up I'm unreasonable? Charming.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

 

For those who can't, or won't, or don't want to deviate... I'm glad as H- you're not at my table.

When I'm convinced it actually makes for a better game, I'll deviate. I just don't happen to think that's anywhere near as soon as others on this thread do, and I think with a competently written set of rules it should come up rarely for anyone who has reasonable expectations.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

and both cases aren't problems with the rules systems' date=' but with the players and their GM. No book can force a GM to use the rules, [/quote']

 

That can be argued about any benefit to rules whatsoever. If everyone is on the same page and is good with cooperating, no rules at all are necessary. The only difference between my view and some others in this thread is where I place the point where they're serving the game better.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

All anecdotal but the best GMs that I have experienced have regularly abandoned the rules when it made sense for the game to do so. The worst GMs have often ruthlessly applied the rules whether or not it made the game worse.

 

 

Doc

Whereas the worst I've ever seen have been those who were casual with the rules; it lead them to using that casualness to solve any GMing problem they had, often at the expense of their players.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Then that is indeed where we part company....anything that adds to the fun of the game is not (and cannot be) evil.

 

 

Doc

But you see, in the long run I'm of the opinion that's a habit that does more harm to the fun of a game than good; it leads to lazy GMing, and lazy GMing leads to a lot of negative experiences.

So essentially, I don't buy the premise that this really _does_ add to the fun of the game. At most the limits of process sometimes make it a necessity, but like most such things its not a virtue in and of itself.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Or since this was for dramatic effect and not for player use a build wasn't needed.

I've never been fond of effects the GM simply pulls out of thin air that can't otherwise be approximated by a player, barring issues of degree that are simply not practical in-scale to the campaign. While I agree they're sometimes a necessary evil, I still consider them an evil.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

I didn't want to change the metal illusion rules I just didn't want to use them at that point in the game...

 

 

Doc

And to me, the latter is intrinsically undesirable, both as a GM and a player. Its either the sign of inconsistency in the world, or that the rules aren't versatile enough to serve the purposes needed.

If mental illusions don't work the way you want them to once (especially with a build and modify system like Hero) to me, they probably just don't work. To me that's a sign they should be fixed, not ignored.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

As a GM, I want a system that allows me to make a ruling when I need it. When I am telling a story I dont want the rules to be telling me that the drama needs to stop because the rules dont allow for it.

 

There's a fundamental divide here though; to me, being a GM is not about telling stories; its about setting up situations that let stories occur. If the rules don't let the stories I want to occur do so, that's a sign I need to change the rules, not that I want to ignore them.

There was one case that didn't seem entirely clear from your reply.

There are a number of martial arts that have maneuvers that are, in one fashion or another, improved Dodge; Martial Dodge and Flying Dodge come to mind. I can see an argument that levels with those specific martial arts are analogous to the levels with specific manuevers, and thus should add to missile DCV _only_ when using the Dodge.

What's your feeling on that one?

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

 

 

 

 

Even though the GM can step in and deal with the issue of the rapier vs the heavy door, it seems to me that we can still fix the mechanics so that he does not have to do so. Instead of dealing with this point, people have just re-itereated the idea that the GM has the power to use his own judgement to fix things, and tried to make this into an argument about whether or not the GM has that power or not.

In my personal case, I'd say you do start to get to some issues of diminishing returns; in particular, the matter at hand turns on how the mechanics of damaging objects or barriers is done, and I don't think that works very well for conventional weapons in almost any game. While theoretically you could set up rules for the specifics of the problem you're looking at, I'd have to question whether the system overhead justifies the process, honestly.

This is another one of those things that may have changed with editions or may not, and I couldn't find anything authoritative in the book or the FAQ.

Dodge manuever is an unusual one in that its' DCV modifier applies to both ranged and melee. But what about level applicable to Dodge? Overall Combat or DCV specific levels clearly apply to both, but what about other kinds of levels? I'd always assumed since the dedicated point of the manuever was general defense, that if levels were relevant at all to Dodge, they'd apply to both (even if they normally didn't on other manuevers, just because of the nature of Dodge) but I can't really find an indicator one way or the other.

The only thing I could find was a comment about not being able to do this with 2 point levels, but that doesn't address 3 point levels with three maneuvers or martial arts, or 5 point hand to hand levels used with a Dodge.

Re: Fighting against more speed

 

As to how often have I seen Hero Combats last 10+ Turns? Few, very few, and that is the way I want it. Given how long it can take to resolve a short combat, having one that last 15 minutes of game time would just end up taking to long in real time for my tastes. Even if it is extended passes of people saying "I recover," or "I hold." On the other hand in the situations you are describing, I'm betting some rolling is going to happen.

That's really my point; what you want in this situation is something that generically "wastes time" occasionally, not things that have to micromanage phases anyway. I'm not sure there's any easy way to do that, but the lack of it means there's situations that occur in both reality and fiction that, effectively, just can't happen, and in heroic settings, they aren't even that rare a situation.

Re: Or just fly into orbit and use your laser vision on the entire continent

The great thing about superpowered combats is that you can just rearrange the local cover if you think the fight is going too slowly.

Well, I wasn't primarily talking about superheroic; this is much less an issue there because you rarely see signs of fights in those settings taking long.

Re: Earthquake and Move Earth

This is very similar to the subject of this old Fantasy Hero thread:

 

Explosion Array!!

Thanks for the pointer, but the big issue is that this isn't normally supposed to do damage to people (it might do a little if they fall, but that's no more severe than any other fall) directly, and since its in a game that uses Knockdown, its not easy to move it upwards. In the end, the instant Change Enviroment was probably as close as I was going to get for that part (and that was the cheap part--the damage to structures was far more expensive, since the way Earthquakes damage structure is more or less NND).

Re: Fighting against more speed

Adding on to what Hugh says' date=' also reducing available END and STUN and/or eliminating Post Segment 12 Recoveries will also encourage/require players to spend actions on Recoveries. Allowing builds that encourage this kind of thing helps. 1D6 Aid (Dex) Reduced Fade Rate 1 minute; Increased Maximum; Only to improve OCV against one subject; All points Fade immediately after next Attack launched at subject[/quote']

 

The problem is that as soon as you do that you distort other things; people start running out END doing relatively normal, long duration tasks.

Re: Fighting against more speed

In game, this would be simulated by characters using a lot of defensive maneuvers and other DCV bonuses. In your first example, the characters will typically have a minimum +4 DCV bonus from cover, and an OCV penalty for the snap back (name forgotten) maneuver, and often will not be visible to target at all.

 

In your second, the characters are waiting for an opening, so if targeted, they would logically use their phase to Dodge and move levels to DCV (or abort, if need be).

 

Both cases have one thing in common in-game: lots of rolling to hit and very little rolling for damage. This tends to frustrate players, who want their characters to have an impact consistently and therefore buy their OCV up or buy other abilities to negate those cover bonuses.

 

A long firefight with both sides taking full advantage of cover, and very little injury being done because hits are rare, may be realistic, but it makes for a game many players find frustrating, and it's not very cinematic either. If I have to choose between a cinematic game that's fun for the players and realism, it's a pretty easy choice, isn't it?

Even if they were doing all of that, its unlikely any battle would last longer than a minute or two just because of the probabilities involved. And the issue is sometimes you want that sort of duration for plot purposes, but there's essentially no way its actually going to come up in the game. The classic is buying time to finish something where a couple of minutes are needed. Honestly, how often has anyone ever seen a hero fight that lasted 10 full turns? I don't know that I've ever seen one. Even on Heroic scale games, that's 30-40 phases.

Re: Fighting against more speed

Well, more accurately that is what you want, not something I want.

 

And from the people I know that have actually been in real combat, pretty much universally they have commented on how little time it took. Particularly compared to how long it seemed to take.

Firefights often are very quick, but there are forms of combat that aren't. As an example, when you have two forces, both of which have some cover to work with, you can have fights that take ten or twenty minutes as people pop out or use corners to take shots, drop back and get their bearings, and repeat. You see the same thing in some kinds of melee combat where an awful lot of time is spent circling and assessing people. In the game, there's little reason to do either of these.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

OK, he's human. I just don't see that as such a big deal. I personally won't play long with a GM I didn't trust but that doesn't mean I always expect perfection. If he's a complete jerk about something and blows you off time to find another GM. I normally play with close friends and we're on the same wavelength so maybe I don't see the problem because of that.

I do feel you really should find another GM if you feel you need "protection" from him.

But see, I feel I need that sort of "protection" from every GM. Scott Bennie is a fine GM; he's in fact one of the finest I've ever played under, and ran one of the finest campaigns I ever played in (his Hollywood Knights Gestalt-based campaign). Yet even with Scott, I felt it was good from time to time when he was doing something to be able to go "Scott, you are aware the rules do X here, right? Is this really a good idea? If so, do you want to house rule this so we know its going to work that way from now on?"

And most GMs _aren't_ as good as Scott.

In addition, I honestly think that the less detailed the rules are, the less consistently you can play your characters on the whole, because you simply don't know what sort of difficulty or process the GM is going to use to resolve things. Sometimes if you know your GM very well this is less of an issue, but I'd argue in those cases the people are really working on a pretty detailed rules set, its just that a lot of them are being stored in everyone's head rather than on paper.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

I think there are two ideas getting confused here in the exchange.

 

I think there are two different definitions of "Trusting the GM" being used here.

 

One has to do with the intent of the GM using the rules to force the storyline against the players.

 

The other has to do with the GM making a mistake in rules interpretation or mis-judgment of application of the rules (with no real intent of forcing the storyline against the players).

 

- Christopher Mullilns

Yes. The latter is what I've been trying to refer to as "judgment" problems (though I think its a bit broader than that; deciding that a particular level of difficulty is "appropriate" for something can also turn into a judgment problem. A set of hard rules doesn't prevent that, but it tends to make it more obvious in the first place, and more arguable when its done). As I said, its not intentions where the problems of most GMs run into difficulty; its execution.

Re: Fighting against more speed

I'm not sure. I've played Marvel Superheroes only a few times and that was a very long time ago. This was just something our gaming group came up with on our own; and it's just an informal guideline anyway. Things that have to be timed' date=' such as how far a character can travel in a Phase, use the 1 second per Phase rule. But for general "feel" in a supers game, one "frame" per Phase seems to feel about right.[/quote']

 

That works okay in fairly stylized settings like most superhero games, but I don't think it works as well in more realistic ones; like it or not, in those you sometimes need to know how long a fight is actually taking in real time.

Re: Fighting against more speed

Another thing to consider is the much, much greater ranges that real warfare engagements often take place at. I've been watching a series of programmes on British Marines in Afghanistan and 400-500 yards would be considered close contact with the enemy.

 

Thousands and thousands of large calibre rounds could be fired with no real proof of any kills. I've watched 4 episodes and the only confirmed kill I saw was by a sniper. (apart from one poor young lad killed by a landmine)

 

So with that in mind a phase could represent a minute at that range.

This is all true, but even when battles primarily turned on melee combat, you saw this effect as forces would engage, fight, fall back, engage, fight, and so on. Part of it is that game almost generically ignore the human reaction to combat (which is sometimes lumped in the phrase morale, but there's a lot more to it than just the will to keep fighting--sometimes you simply have to take time to get your focus back).

Re: Fighting against more speed

I never said anything about changing it from combat to combat. Generally changes are from campaign to campaign.

 

Though in general I'd say that I'm pretty unconcerned with how Segments relate to seconds.

I've misunderstood your point then; but if I'm understanding it now, I don't think spreading the phases out over larger time generically really addresses this well; it may produce a result that looks better in gestalt, but you end up back in the situation (which is very noticeable in modern games) where rates of fire start to seem very slow.

What you really want is a mechanic where some phases simply end up wasted, but I don't know of an elegant way to do that.

Re: Trusting Systems vs trusting GM Judgement

Then we'll have to disagree' date=' because I don't see that at all.[/quote']

 

Then we'll have to, because that is, indeed my opinion. As I said, every GM exhibits poor judgement from time to time; the only questions are how frequently, how severely, and how willing he is to address it.