cyst13

Re: Gaming Historical Zeitgeists Shelly, Extremely so, yes. I have a friend that I usually game with who's also into the historical games and is a political science major to boot. I've been intending for a while to run a late-period Victorian campaign that would deal with the Scramble for Africa. If you have any more info on what you're doing with Regency Hero, please let me know. You can email me direct at Cyst13@hotmail.com.

Re: Plot device or by the rules Madstone: You should try springing one of these traps on your PCs. After they finish whining, bitching, and moaning, show them the post where the others players responded maturely and see if they are shamed into compliance. Of course, you then have to follow said trap with some really cool drama in order to make it worthwhile.

Re: Plot device or by the rules One of the interesting strands I've noticed in this discussion is the reference to nukes. I agree that you generally shouldn't have to figure out the d6's of damage a 100 megaton warhead would do; everybody in the area should just die. (I liked the guy who suggested this only applied to wimpy people with less than 350pts. I'd like to see how he stats out a metermaid) The aspect of building a nuke that seems to be overlooked, though, are the limitations. Limitations such as focus, timer device, difficulty of defusing (assuming it's not missile delivered), speed of the missile (if it is), and others make the nuke more of a concrete object and allow the PCs to interect with it in a meaningful way, hopefully avoiding the KA d6 altogether. This example is one of the reasons why I'm always hesitant to just plot device away a given object/event. What if the PCs come up with some ingenious plan for circumventing said plot device? If you haven't already figured out the limitations of the plot device, it would be that much more difficult for you to intelligently and CONSISTENTLY answer your players' questions and deal with their strategies. While the GM has access to unlimited points, which makes building things/people seem superfluous, the rigor involved in actually statting out a bad guy or an object or phenomenon requires you to think deeply about it. This is generally a good thing for the campaign as a whole.

I've noticed on many boards that when people ask how to model an exotic effect some one will inevitably reply "Don't worry about it; it's just a plot device". Logically, you could extend that reasoning to everything in the game and then it would no longer be a game, you'd just be telling a story to an audience. Opinion solicitation: How do GMs decide when to build a given effect in game terms and when to just say it happens? What criteria do you use for making this decision?

I recently read the first 7 collections of Iron Wok Jan and now I'm stoked to run a mini-campaign based on a cooking competition. (For those not in the know, IWJ is a manga about apprentice chefs who compete against each other to devise the most creative, delicious recipes) What I'm wondering is, how should I go about modeling the cooking skills of the comic in game terms. I think this question has far greater relavence than just cooking. To wit, all of the skills but martial arts are just a single skill. You make your roll and either succeed or fail. With martial arts, however, there is a wide array of options available so you can think strategically while employing the skill. I would like to do something like this for cooking (and later, perhaps for other skills also). I thought the PCs might purchase recipes the way that martial arts allows you to purchase maneuvers. Though I haven't figures out how the recipes would work against each other. Perhaps they could modify the cooking skill in a skill vs. skill roll. This is all embryonic right now, so I'd much appreciate any input.

Re: How do you get players to role play in genre? It sounds a lot like you're stuck in a bad marriage. Ask any marriage counselor how realistic it is to expect another person to conform to your desires. You need to find new players, absolutely! If your city has a website to meet other players, use it. And be specific about the types of players you are looking for. Also, don't be shy about trying to recruit new players to the hobby. If you meet some guys who are into all the same comics as you and seem intelligent and mature, invite them into your game. If they have no RPG experience, all the better. They don't have any bad habits yet and you can teach them to play your way. Seriously, I can not emphasize enough how futile it is to try to change really bad players into good ones. You're just in for a whole world of frustration. Give it up. Move on. You'll definitely thank me later.

Re: Gaming Historical Zeitgeists Austen, You are a very devious GM. I respect that. I really like two of your suggestions. Having a charismatic NPC represent the incorrect paradigm and using the players' personality preferences against them. I think I'm going to work both of these aspects into my campaign. Thanks for the tips.

Re: Alignments Phil, It sounds like you already know how all of these guys would react to your PCs. Why do you need a superfluous descriptor?

I primarily run historical games and one of the most interesting aspects of history for me is the transformation of zeitgeists, paradigms, world-views, or whatever you wish to call them. For example, I'm currently reading a book "The Soul Made Flesh" by Carl Zimmer, which is about an English physician in the mid seventeenth century who dissected human bodies in order to understand the function of the brain. The book posits that up until this time, human personality, intelligence, and even basic life processes were believed to be the doings of an immaterial and immortal soul. Willis, the physician under discussion, was among the first people to shift this idea toward the notion that thought is a physical process carried out by the 'flesh' of the brain. Now, my question. What would be a good way of working an essentially intellectual issue like this into an RPG? I want to present the PCs with a story that involves them with one of these worldview changing ideas. (heliocentric astronomy, infectious disease theory, evolution, and relativity/quantum physics would be other examples of such ideas) I thought about having an investigation of some sort that would involve the PCs interacting with Willis and his colleagues at the Royal Society. I don't want to just have them ask questions like, "So, doctor, what are you working on these days?" in order to have the good doctor launch into an extended monologue on the nature of the brain. Rather, I would like the idea-shift itself to be central to the plot. There's the rub. The standard RPG plots don't accomodate this sort of idea very well. Also, I would appreciate suggestions on how best to intsill in players the sense of the old paradigm. So many people today take it for granted that our brains do our thinking (myself included) that the players would may not understand why this seems so revolutionary to all the NPCs. How to school the players in the old zeitgeist (thought is an action of the immortal soul) without making them feel that they are back in school?

Re: What about the warriors If your fighters no longer have anything to spend points on, perhaps you can stop giving them experience points. Nobody continues to improve their physical abilites forever. Quick! how many 70 year old pro boxers can you name who've got a good shot at a title? Wizards continue to improve throughtout their lives (for the most part) because their abilities are not as dependent on physical health. Dealing with this requires a certain maturity on your players' part and the ability to find role-playing pleasure in areas other than combat-dominance. Hopefully, though, any player who has run a character long enough to run out of XP options will have reached that level of maturity. (I don't offer money-back guarantees on that last claim)

Re: Transforming the NYSE? Of all the above suggestions, I think I prefer the invisible stock fairie. The xtra-dim transport and 10d6 luck just seem like weak cop-outs to me. Why not just spend all your character pts. on luck or xtra-dim and then always succeed in all challenges or transport your self to a dimension in which you never lose. Whoopeee! The fairie idea meets my specifications of the power acting as magic without the character actively intervening, yet because it is an actual something going around doing stuff, it would be possible for opposed characters to stop the thing. Good job guys, you ever-creative Herophiles.

Re: New Disadvantage: Control Override Codes I think Archer has a good idea with making this a new disadvantage. It needs a bit of work yet before it's accepted as a final form, but I welcome the idea of new disads. Whenever I sit down with players to make a character, they always get hung up on the lack of range in disads. While it's true that this could probably be built using current disads, none of the options suggested above are intuitive and some one new to the game would probably not consider it. It would be nice to have this one spelled out as its own disad. And with all the character posibilities of robots, androids, golems, bound monsters, etc. I think it'll see a good deal of use.

Re: Dust Raven Dust Raven wanted to know what exactly I would be manipulating. Good question. Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer. The guys in charge of Enron essentially used this power on a small scale (Enron stock). There are a bunch of professional economists who look at the books of the various corps on the NYSE. Based on their evaluations of the corps' profitability, their stock either goes up or down. That's an extremely simplified explanantion, but there you go. The Enron execs in cahoots with their accountants lied to the economists about the company's profitability and net worth which caused the economists to vastly overvalue Enron's stock. When the scam eventually became public, the bubble burst. Now, I want my guy to be able to manipulate either individual stocks, complete sectors (e.g. tech, heavy industry, services, etc.) or even the entire exchange. I want this to have real world effects. For instance, I'd like to be able to drop the whole thing in the dumper the way that it fell after 9-11. Alternately, I'd like to be able to make a smallish company become fantastically successful overnight. That's basically what happened with Enron, but they were faking. I want to make the stocks actually increase/decrease in real value. Mind controlling the influential economists or even the bulk of American investors may seem like a good idea, but overinflated stocks always crash eventually. That's why the internet bubble burst. I would like to make a company become solidly successful in a superhumanly short time period (think Microsoft). How would I do this?

Re: New Disadvantage: Control Override Codes You should write this so as to include "off-switch". I'm thinking specifically of Commander Data from Star Trek.

Re: Pain Backlash I would make this much simpler by turning it into an ego attack. From your description, it sounds like the other guy just feels the pain, which would be stun rather than body; ego attack reflects this well. You only need to add certain advs. & lims., i.e. 0 end, only to hit guy who damaged you, only to max. of what you took in stun dam. and maybe some skill levels to reflect the inherent accuracy. This turns it into a combat action rather than an immediate pain transfer, but if you think about what the empath is actually doing, she is inflicting damage on another character. It really should be done as an attack so as not to throw off game balance. It also seems reasonable that a high ECV or ego defense on the other guy's part would protect him from being affected by an empath.

S.O.S. on building an unusual power. I would like to be able to magically manipulate the New York Stock Exchange. (e.g. turn a bear market into a bull, & vice-versa). I initially thought of some kind of AFX transform, but what would I actually be transforming? I don't want to just change the way the reader board looks; I actually want to be able to manipulate the stock prices. Any thoughts?

Re: Campaign Brainstorming: "The New Abbey" Sounds like you've got quite an interesting campaign ahead of you. I've got a number of other suggestions/considerations for you, but I don't wish to backseat your imagination. One final suggestion, though: You should develop, at least in a general sense, what this proof consists of. It seems to me that this will become a crucial point in the campaign, especially since there is going to be room for people (the uneducated) to disbelieve the proof. E.g. evolutionary theory is still considered by many Americans to be controversial or even outright wrong, while most biologists consider it to be established fact. If you were to set a game around the Scopes trial, your players would have every right to expect you to be fluent with the basics of evolution theory. Likewise, I'm confident that the players in your Cathedral Hero campaign will sooner or later demand that you explain to them precisely what this proof of God actually is. Good luck! Nobody else has come up with a foolproof one yet. And players love to argue with GMs.

Re: Campaign Brainstorming: "The New Abbey" You are also going to have to give some serious consideration to the nature of "God". He exists, okay. But what is he? Is a male pronoun even appropriate. Does God have any relation to JudeoChristiamMuslim revelation? Is Man truly created in the image of God? Is he a mere abstraction whic caused the big bang? Does he actively intervene in the universe? Was he proven by theoretical means or did he miraculously reveal himself? If so, why? If he is actually the author of the Bible, why is so much information from the Old Testament at odds with scientific fact? (e.g. dinosaurs) Perhaps it would be best to say that he exists, but all previous religions had got the lowdown wrong. As to the nature of God, you're really not going to be able to take anything for granted.

Re: Using COMliness Just to point out, numerous psych studies have shown that people (employers, co-workers, etc) assume attractive people to be intelligent. This bias may work in a character's favor. I question the plausibility of 30 Com in anyone, though. That means the character if 400% more attractive than the most attractive non-supers on the planet. I can imagine what being four times stronger than the strongest normal would be, but just how attractive can anyone, even a super, be? At some point you would move so far away from the human standard of beauty that you would no longer be attractive. Personally, I don't believe Com should even be a characteristic, but since it is, it should stay within the 20 Com limit. If you want to go beyond that, you should supplement with some kind of 0 end, area of effect, low-power Mind Control.

Re: Who let the Id out? You guys have all assumed this power to be used strictly by villains or NPCs. You can't wave your hand and call it a plot device if it is a PC power. I think this power would be really interesting if it were an unconscious psionic ability of one of the PCs. As I'm thinking about it, this would be a mind-blowing concept for a campaign. Say you've got a hero group that spends a half-dozen or so games fighting twisted baddies who resemble important personalities in their home city (e.g. mayor, police chief, newscaster, etc) but in a warped way (think Bizarro/Superman). Eventually the PCs come to realize that it is one of their own members who is unconsciously causing these people's ids to manifest and rampage. Now what?

Reply to Galadorn You're right. It was (and still is) an interesting campaign. I may have been rather sloppy in the wording of my post. I was (and still am) the GM of the Cairo campaign. I also built the character for my player because he's got a very busy schedule. As to where I found the resources for it; I went to the library. I've found it's nearly impossible to run a good historical realist campaign based simply upon gaming materials. Even excellent support books (like the GURPS worldbooks) leave out far more info than they put in. Which is unsurprising, seeing as that they are only 96 pages long. I always do at least a month's research prior to running an historical campaign. You have to know all the little details in order to get the flavor right and to answer all of the questions that the players inevitably have. "Daily Life" books are usually the best place to start. As far as your disagreement about power levels, I don't think we are actually disagreeing at all. I wasn't saying that spending points on languages makes one weak. I just wanted to say that you could spend 200+ points on a wide variety of skills and powers which would lend your PC great versatility (which is fun to play) without making him so combat effective that he can kill anyone in his way with a sneeze and a cough.

I want to second the opinion on changing the nomenclature of the powers to fit their actual use. Why not just call energy blast "blast"? Age should be "frail". One that I've always found particularly annoying is the skill "seduction". The first sentence of the description says that this skill usually is not used to seduce. So then don't call it that. Even after I explain to players that it's really more "befriend" than seduction, that never really sinks in and they miss opportunities to use the skill to ingratiate themselves with NPCs simply because they forget what "seduction" actually is. And please don't tell me to just change the name on the character sheet, because then I can never find the durned skill description when I go trying to look-up "befriend". In general, all the skills, powers, disads, etc. should be named for what they actually are.

One of the earlier posters made an excellent point. A high point total does not necessarily mean a high-powered character. I ran a game with a 225 pt. character who blended in well with the local normals in medieval Cairo. Instead of spending all his points on increasing his combat effectiveness, he broadened his range of skills and language abilities and entered the game with a network of contacts. The combat abilities he did have were horizontally broad rather than high CV/damage. He had three different martial arts styles (unarmed, H2H weapon, ranged). He was a lot of fun to play and was able to handle himself well in a wide variety of situations. At the same time, he was not invincible and still had to be afraid of the local authorities and follow the law most of the time. I'm very big on broad competence over increasing CV/damage. Players can never win an arms race with the GM anyhow.

So, essentially just rig it. Is there a good way of doing it that allows the element of chance? I was thinking I might game the fights myself before meeting with my player, record what happens at each phase, and then let the PC enter into the fray whenever he gets clear of his initial opponent(s). Also, how should presence attacks work in a tournament like this. Is it reasonable for a PC to attempt a presence attack to discourage a particular NPC from fighting him. Could the PC use a persuasion-based presence attack (perhaps with appropriate interaction skill) to form temporary alliances within the arena; hoping to stave off fighting a certain NPC till the end?

I'm running a game soon for a single player. His martial artist PC will enter a multi-party kung-fu tournament. In the last round, 8 martial artists are tossed into an arena. Last man standing wins. Question: What is the best way to decide what happens to the NPCs that are not currently fighting the PC. I figure that only one or two of the NPCs will fight the PC to start; the remaining 5-6 NPCs will be fighting each other. But short of actually gaming out fights between NPCs (which would be quite dull for the player), how should I decide which NPCs are still standing (and what their condition is) by the time the PC gets to fight them?