Duke Bushido

Talking about quotes, this one has to be in it.
 
"..." - Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name, take your pick of the three movies folks, he is laconic in most of them.

It has to do with a misunderstanding of the duel.  That's all the showdowns in the streets were, the old fashioned duel.  You know, pistols at dawn, seconds setting up the conditions, etc.  That's what the showdown was, and the whole "don't draw first, etc" thing came from confusion about how that worked.  And by the classic wild west period, the Code Duello was kind of over with, although the concepts of honor and how to deal with each other were real.
 
I mean, there were still real psychos out there who'd do anything without any rules but most people were pretty lawful and were disliked or shunned if they broke the unwritten codes.  One of the biggest mistakes of modern man is to impose our worldview on the past.

Actually it is, 1950's/60's/70's modern legalisms maybe.  I grew up on the old westerns when they were prime time shows.  And while Gunsmoke did have a tendency to make Dodge City "modern", it was a minority among the many western TV series and movies.  When the White Hat Sheriff (or Marshall or Hero Drifter or etc.) gunned down the Black Hat gunslinger (or evil banker or evil etc.), it was celebrated and in a lot of them the closing scene had them wearing the badge.  Yes, Gunsmoke did add in some modern (at the time) sensibilities.  But many more simply went with good verses evil unless they wanted the threat of Jail/Prison/Hanging to be the dramatic theme that week.  But, taking one series as the end all "how westerns are done" only ignores all the others.
 
For the non-TV side of things, the real world law didn't actually impose a lot of that in the 1880's-1910's outside of the "heavily" populated cities of the coasts.  And even there, not as much as you would think. 
 
In Gunsmoke, Marshall Dillon didn't always wait for the other guy to draw first because of the "law".  The show had the character wait and then win with his blazing speed because it was more dramatic and presented the good guys in the best light.  But it was a TV show made in the 50's/60's/early 70's and just like F.B.I. and Dragnet it portrayed them as squeaky clean to a version 50's/60's TV moral standards where the law are Good Guys with capitol letters.  Were there movies made then that were not flattering to law enforcement?  Yes, but to air on network TV in prime time you had better not.  In the 50's and 60's most TV shows had TV couples in separate beds on the set because the networks wanted to avoid issues with the various "morality in TV" laws/rules.  Were there TV shows in the time that showed a couple in the same bed?  Yes.  But they were outliers and risked or received backlash that the studios preferred to avoid.
 
But whether a lawman has to wait or not will in no way alter whether you are adding in drama and roleplay or just rolling dice.  A PC that plays a principled lawman that would never draw first and risks the Badguy Brothers gunning him down is just as viable as a PC lawman that give a warning to them but draws first because he is outnumbered or the PC lawman that ambushes the dreaded Hole in the Wall gang because it is only him and his trusty deputy and ten of them. 
 
Whether the encounter is played out in heroic drama or just a die rolling exercise has nothing to do with the imposing more modern legal rules as much as the people playing it out. 
 
But you can do what ever you wish and I will not tell you otherwise. 

Personal experience here, and a great deal of it:
 
This idea of Chris's isn't too terribly far from how we play.  Summed up, we play "screw active points."  We have a total cost limit (250, using the 2e 100 + Disadvantages model).  Spend as many or as few as you want, anywhere you want.As I mentioned to Chris in a discussion some time back, I suspect that this is because way back when we were learning to play 1e, we had too many people who just couldn't get wrapped around the division of costs, so we let it slide "until we get more familiar with the rules," but we just never went back.  We use AP today for building and costing and that's about it.  Campaign limits, etc, are all built on real points, period. 
 
Yes:  Everyone has done four or five characters over the years with a MegaBuster (I also really enjoyed the Guyver, way back when, even though the later parts of the series didn't hold up well).  They get bored very quickly.   You will have a mix of cardboard cannons and paintball Tanks for a bit, but after three, sometimes four sessions of firing off  The Big Gun and then spending the rest of the battle recovering or actively running away, seeking cover, etc, and watching everyone else do stuff and roll dice, the players start to fume about not having fun doing anything, and their fellow players start to grumble and complain _loudly_ about how quickly the team's firepower is dwindling.  The Paintball Tanks, effectively invulnerable but unable to really make a dent in the opposition, wander around sheltering the Cardboard Cannons until they themselves are restrained, out of END, or the bad guys merrily skip away, singing cheerful taunts the whole time.   The Cardboard Cannons are usually the first to Abort to Recrimination; that's always fun to listen to.
 
 
Short version:
 
This is one of those problems that everyone gags on when they read it, but actually _doing_ it proves that the problem--- I won't lie: it _does_ exist, in as much as players _will_ try it-- is one-hundred-percent self-solving:  Everyone tries it, realizes just how much actual "Game" they have cheated themselves out of, then begs to make new characters.  These new characters are typically much more suited to the game at hand.  Like a lot of the grumbling during discussion about the evils of this idea or the abuse of that idea, or the remake of Poltergeist,  the Hype of Horror is far, far greater than what you actually end up seeing.
 
 
Now I will one-hundred percent say that groups who prefer the tactics / wargaming approach like our friend Scott will likely get much, _much_ more use out of this, because they will most likely be far more able to keep their personalities in check long enough to cooperate and launch a coordinated attack, cannons behind tanks, firing and recovering in turn, etc., with an eye more toward _the team_ achieving a goal.   Most of the people I've ever played with enjoy the map; they enjoy the scenario, but they also enjoy the "this is what _my guy_ would do" and running with it.  It works beautifully with a balanced team of balanced characters, but it _sucks_ for unbalanced characters that need to use more militaristic unit tactics.   
 
 
 
 
 
You are making the assumption that the game will start with X points.  The problem of 'still having lots of powers left' can be solved simply by lowering the starting points.  Depending on the group, this may affect the entire build, as players wanting characters with numerous powers will be less inclined to dump two hundred points into MegaBuster.
 
As noted above, in my own experience, firing off the Big Guns early results in not being able to fire them off for very long, and missing becomes a serious problem with regard to END costs, collateral damage, and not having that shot later (Charges, for example), and the player boredom / frustration that results from sitting around "taking a few recoveries" while everyone else moves tokens and rolls dice.  The knee jerk reaction is to "save it for the best use," which actually has far more tactical effects: if they've used it before, the bad guys know it's still out there, and tend to act accordingly.   Though your high-tech bad guy Doctor Clockwork can send an army of cheap wind-up decoys to goad the characters into using it to exhaustion, as can your mentalist Doctor Illusion.
 
Either way, it's going to depend far, _far_ more on your group (as I mentioned: I'm pretty sure Scott's friends would clobber my friends in a friendly match, simply because the idea of specialized high-powered one-trick ponies works best for players who prefer methodical tactics, and sucks for drama majors) and how many points you actually let them use.
 
 

@Grailknight, so I’m looking at your suggestion of developing benchmarks. So to start somewhere, my characters that were originally created for me I’m not going to mess with and use those as Benchmarks to compare my own characters with.

Ah; well then: my apologies for the confusion; let me see if I can make a bit more sense out of it:
 
The idea that the "good guy" can't draw first because he is the good guy is a romantic fictionalization: that is to say, it's a fond remembrance of a time that never was.  It doesn't even hold up to scrutiny: in even a legal duel (those few places that actually allowed them, mind you), _someone_ is going to draw first, whether it's the good guy or the bad guy.  The rules even state that when X thing happens, you fire / turn and fire / whatever the rules for that duel happen to be.
 
Moving outside of duels, a bad guy looking to get the jump on someone will have his weapon out first.  We except that.  But a good guy looking to get the drop on someone will have his gun out first, lawman, hero, or no.  In general, we accept that, too, but for some reason, there was an era in our fiction where "that just wasn't done."   Fortunately, it was not pervasive in our fiction-- even for those genres where it was periodically done.
 
How many times in Gunsmoke did Matt Dillon stiff-walk out into the open to meet a bad guy, or to stall a bad guy, yet someone else was covering him with a rifle?  That is to say, aiming at the bad guy.  We never once thought "why, that dirty Matt Dillon!  And he calls himself a lawman!"   We knew that it made sense, and that it was solid plan to give himself every advantage he could.   For what it's worth, I was never a big Gunsmoke fan, in spite of being a huge fan of westerns.
 
I will say I won't judge the way your play your games.  Seriously: have fun the way you want; that's why you bought it, right?  It makes no nevermind to me if someone absolutely _mandates_ that whoever shot first is the bad guy (in fact, you might come up with some interesting mechanic for sliding reputation up and down from "hero" to "scoundrel" based on who shot who and when.  If so, I'd actually kind of like to hear about it).
 
Defining a genre by one TV show and two movies is a bit bold though  (Particularly considering that someone else doing the same thing may have picked Wagon Train, and that was....   well, it's not one I'd pick myself).  As far as what does that leave?  Well, all the other Clint Eastwood movies, including those where he shoot pretty much _everyone_ by drawing first or walking around with his guns already drawn.  Is he the good guy?  Yes; in most of them, he is.  Is he a good _person_?  No; not at all.  Still, the town is glad he has cleaned out the villains, thanks him, asks him to move on because he might be worse in the long run, and he rides off into what ever quaint Italian villa is just over the next rise.
 
What does removing any three examples of the genre leave?   American history, fairly-well documented, and biased in almost any direction you want, depending on what does or doesn't get included, thirty years of television, fifty years of movies, an untold number of dime adventures, pulps, editorials, wild west shows, comic book series, real tales of real heroes (few) and real outlaws (who tended to found in both camps) that lived and died in places we can still visit, and novels that started printing during the era and continued to be published until this day (though to be fair, about half the newer ones are borderline pornography).  Louis L'Amor is not the only person to have built his writing career around the western genre.
 
As painful as this is to say, Little House on the Prairie was a Western, and, while I haven't thought deeply about it, I can't remember a single gunfight.
 
White Hattery _did_ happen in westerns, and predominantly in westerns of a particular production period, and targeted for a particular audience (television usually, but not always).  But it did not define the genre.   Well, actually, it pretty much defined the entire Singing Cowboy sub-genre, which started with white hats (and clothes festooned with rhinestone wagon wheels) and just sort of stayed there.  The Lone Ranger (not that thing with Johnny Depp; the old novels and movie serials, and even the 70s Saturday Morning Cartoon) was _definitely_ White Hat stuff, and while it was part of the fiction and thus part of the culture, it didn't define the entire genre anymore than did Gunsmoke, Fistful of Dollars, and True Grit (frankly, I liked Rooster Cogburn better), but even in True Grit, there was not White Hattery.  Remember the final showdown?  Ned makes Rooster lose his temper and he charges into the outlaws, killing the Parmalee (sp?) brothers and a couple of others?  Rooster shot first.  Remember that LeBeouf had Ned covered with a rifle the entire fight?  When Ned drew down on Rooster, pinned under his own horse, was it noble White Hat Rooster Cogburn that saved the day, with his own incredible skills and his True Grit?
 
No.  It was LeBeof, a sniper stationed in the hills above.  A sniper, and a U.S. Marshall, if I recall correctly.  For what it's worth, even as crotchety a curmudgeon as Cogburn was in the movie, he was still a much higher-caliber human being than he was presented as in the novel upon which it was based.  So who is the "right Rooster?"
 
 
Anyway-- the point I was making was that one or two tropes cannot define _any_ genre, and in particular, three examples from what was, for decades, the single largest genre of fiction in this nation, cannot hope to fare any better as being defining pieces of what the genre is all about, and should or should not contain.
 
 
Christopher's got his hands full with this project-- not because of everything that this book "should contain," but in just making sure he can present it without a poison bias in any particular direction.  That's not going to be easy.  If I wore a hat more often, I'd take it off to him. 
 
Same with my hair.
 
 
D
 
 

That, and honestly:
 
It's perfectly _normal_ -- today or any other time-- for an officer to approach a dangerous situation or a known criminal with his gun _already drawn_.  I'm not talking about "well, guess I'd better walk inside, draw my gun, and tell him he's under arrest," but draw the weapon while getting out of the car, walk ten yards of sidewalk, turn up to the bar, go inside and yell "Police!  Johnny Villain, you're under arrest!"
 
It was no different then.  The whole idea of "well the good guy can't draw until the bad guys" isn't just some strange of modern white-hattery, it's asininely out of step with the sensibilities of _any_ era.
 
As Spence suggested, the biggest reason it existed in the TV shows was simply "Good Lord!  Look at his blazing draw speed!"   This "look how fast he can draw" nonsense reached its zenith, I think, with the short-lived Butch and Sundance, where the camera would cut-- well, the film was cut-- from Sundance kicked back in a booth at a restaurant then "click" laid back, feet on the table, eighteen-inch competition pistol, arm at full extension---    
 
But that's really off track.  Point is:  never happened, anywhere, period, with regard to a lawman, or even a private citizen investigating trouble.  
 
Two guys arguing in a bar?  Well then, _that_ may matter who drew first, but the lawman thing?  Nonsense.
 
 

Because there are multiple courses.  Each driver will have a unique course, concealed from him until he picks up his car for the race.  The mysterious organizers of the event spend weeks determining alternate routes of equal length and approximately the same number of turns, traffic, and other difficulties, and they ensure that there is plenty of path-crossing, periodic points of paralleling (Wow!  I could have written for Marvel! ) and things like that, just to ensure that driver rivalries have an opportunity to express themselves, and of course, for the mayhem two rival drivers may involve themselves in.
 
More than "X" amount of variation from the predetermined course results in disqualifications, which, of course, can have its own mob-related consequences.  Exceptions have to be made for sections that are genuinely impassable (perhaps some construction has ripped open a road that, three months ago, was perfectly fine) simply because failure to finish the race for any reason but mechanical failure, crashing out, or getting apprehended also have mob-related consequences.
 
Courses are put into envelopes, selected randomly, and distributed by courier in the wee hours of the morning of the race, along with times and the starting and finish points of that particular course.
 
Not only does this keep the actual date of the race a secret until the day it happens, it ensures that there is too much action in too many places for police-- car or helicopter-- to realistically stop all of it.  This has the fortunate side effect of making the police into part of the traffic hazard, as cars will stop for the sirens, and road blocks will be thrown up based purely on guesswork and hope.  Roadblocks will be poorly manned and likely even highly-passable, as the police will be spread too thin to reinforce one another.  As to the choppers-- well, there are only so many choppers to being with, the participants are required to keep their cars painted as typical civilian vehicles, and the tunnels, parking garages, and canyons between the skyscrapers provide great places to shake things up, making it difficult to track just who went where.
 
 
 
 
 
How's that work?

I'm more comfortable with a 4 color superhero world. If you miss your target with your energy blast, it's going to dissipate into nothing (regardless of RAW) or hit random nearby scenery rather than bystanders unless I tell your that by making the shot you're going to be shooting into a crowd.
 
I expect players to not take Killing Attacks (without significant limitations) unless they want to kill people and have their hero character written out of the team campaign. There's a reason why the Punisher is a loner who kills drug dealers rather than a founding member of the Fantastic Four.
 
Mostly I look over character sheets before starting and make adjustments. If there's not enough defenses or resistant defenses, they have to bump them up. If their attacks are too powerful or too efficient, they'll have to be dialed back. I let people know if I screw up by letting a character in which causes problems, I might make the player do a rewrite or play a different character.
 
I don't really have a problem with the archer who has the never-ending quiver of arrows playing with Superman and Thor. The bow is just an attack delivery device which could be renamed a ping pong ball gun and be equally valid. 

Something I liked about the old books?
"Just the facts ma'am"
What killed me.over a lot of the 6th ed (and strike force) is it had so much sidebar commentary text. 
 
I don't need every quote from lord of the rings or star wars to get what your talking about and if I don't get it well that's what the source material section is for. Some is nice, some is pleasent even. 
 
If Christopher gives us the meat of the Western genre, what it takes to make a game and run characters I'm happy. You don't need to bloat a book or over-explain to make it good. I still look at Boot Hill [TSR] and enjoyed it for what it was.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

@Duke Bushido, I wish I could be more off the cuff of a GM but I ain’t. I need (and want) the consistency that this project should bring. Plus it’s fun writing Heroes too!

Ah; well then: my apologies for the confusion; let me see if I can make a bit more sense out of it:
 
The idea that the "good guy" can't draw first because he is the good guy is a romantic fictionalization: that is to say, it's a fond remembrance of a time that never was.  It doesn't even hold up to scrutiny: in even a legal duel (those few places that actually allowed them, mind you), _someone_ is going to draw first, whether it's the good guy or the bad guy.  The rules even state that when X thing happens, you fire / turn and fire / whatever the rules for that duel happen to be.
 
Moving outside of duels, a bad guy looking to get the jump on someone will have his weapon out first.  We except that.  But a good guy looking to get the drop on someone will have his gun out first, lawman, hero, or no.  In general, we accept that, too, but for some reason, there was an era in our fiction where "that just wasn't done."   Fortunately, it was not pervasive in our fiction-- even for those genres where it was periodically done.
 
How many times in Gunsmoke did Matt Dillon stiff-walk out into the open to meet a bad guy, or to stall a bad guy, yet someone else was covering him with a rifle?  That is to say, aiming at the bad guy.  We never once thought "why, that dirty Matt Dillon!  And he calls himself a lawman!"   We knew that it made sense, and that it was solid plan to give himself every advantage he could.   For what it's worth, I was never a big Gunsmoke fan, in spite of being a huge fan of westerns.
 
I will say I won't judge the way your play your games.  Seriously: have fun the way you want; that's why you bought it, right?  It makes no nevermind to me if someone absolutely _mandates_ that whoever shot first is the bad guy (in fact, you might come up with some interesting mechanic for sliding reputation up and down from "hero" to "scoundrel" based on who shot who and when.  If so, I'd actually kind of like to hear about it).
 
Defining a genre by one TV show and two movies is a bit bold though  (Particularly considering that someone else doing the same thing may have picked Wagon Train, and that was....   well, it's not one I'd pick myself).  As far as what does that leave?  Well, all the other Clint Eastwood movies, including those where he shoot pretty much _everyone_ by drawing first or walking around with his guns already drawn.  Is he the good guy?  Yes; in most of them, he is.  Is he a good _person_?  No; not at all.  Still, the town is glad he has cleaned out the villains, thanks him, asks him to move on because he might be worse in the long run, and he rides off into what ever quaint Italian villa is just over the next rise.
 
What does removing any three examples of the genre leave?   American history, fairly-well documented, and biased in almost any direction you want, depending on what does or doesn't get included, thirty years of television, fifty years of movies, an untold number of dime adventures, pulps, editorials, wild west shows, comic book series, real tales of real heroes (few) and real outlaws (who tended to found in both camps) that lived and died in places we can still visit, and novels that started printing during the era and continued to be published until this day (though to be fair, about half the newer ones are borderline pornography).  Louis L'Amor is not the only person to have built his writing career around the western genre.
 
As painful as this is to say, Little House on the Prairie was a Western, and, while I haven't thought deeply about it, I can't remember a single gunfight.
 
White Hattery _did_ happen in westerns, and predominantly in westerns of a particular production period, and targeted for a particular audience (television usually, but not always).  But it did not define the genre.   Well, actually, it pretty much defined the entire Singing Cowboy sub-genre, which started with white hats (and clothes festooned with rhinestone wagon wheels) and just sort of stayed there.  The Lone Ranger (not that thing with Johnny Depp; the old novels and movie serials, and even the 70s Saturday Morning Cartoon) was _definitely_ White Hat stuff, and while it was part of the fiction and thus part of the culture, it didn't define the entire genre anymore than did Gunsmoke, Fistful of Dollars, and True Grit (frankly, I liked Rooster Cogburn better), but even in True Grit, there was not White Hattery.  Remember the final showdown?  Ned makes Rooster lose his temper and he charges into the outlaws, killing the Parmalee (sp?) brothers and a couple of others?  Rooster shot first.  Remember that LeBeouf had Ned covered with a rifle the entire fight?  When Ned drew down on Rooster, pinned under his own horse, was it noble White Hat Rooster Cogburn that saved the day, with his own incredible skills and his True Grit?
 
No.  It was LeBeof, a sniper stationed in the hills above.  A sniper, and a U.S. Marshall, if I recall correctly.  For what it's worth, even as crotchety a curmudgeon as Cogburn was in the movie, he was still a much higher-caliber human being than he was presented as in the novel upon which it was based.  So who is the "right Rooster?"
 
 
Anyway-- the point I was making was that one or two tropes cannot define _any_ genre, and in particular, three examples from what was, for decades, the single largest genre of fiction in this nation, cannot hope to fare any better as being defining pieces of what the genre is all about, and should or should not contain.
 
 
Christopher's got his hands full with this project-- not because of everything that this book "should contain," but in just making sure he can present it without a poison bias in any particular direction.  That's not going to be easy.  If I wore a hat more often, I'd take it off to him. 
 
Same with my hair.
 
 
D
 
 

I am quite possibly the worst person to ask this of, but in the spirit of getting things rolling, I'll take a shot.
 
I look at the players character sheets.  If I already have plans for an adventure, I adjust them (if needed) based on what I see on the sheet.  As the first couple of adventures go on, I make adjustments on the fly as needed, taking copious notes of who and what where changed and why.  This gives me valuable assistance for planning the next session.  The second  session usually requires fewer adjustments, and by the third, I've pretty well got it dialed in.
 
That's it.
 
My campaign guidelines are "make the characters you're interested in playing."  I'll work around everything else.
 
 
Again: I was totally up-front and admitted I'd be the worst person to ask this of.  If you were wondering why:
 
Except for the youth group, I've been playing with the same couple of groups for years.  We all know each other well; we all trust each other to not go out of our way to cause problems.  Of course, the other side of that statement is the part that says "for years."  I've got a lot of practice at seeing problems as soon as they start to arise, and getting them ironed out before they actually become full-fledged problems.
 
Other things that are important:
 
Most of my games take place in the same universe.  That's not to say that it's like the official time line with the rise and fall of magic, fantasy, supers, sci-fi-- each setting is unique to itself, but for the most part, I have _one_ supers setting, and we've been using it since 1e.   Honestly, if Stan Lee can put a few hundred supers on Long Island and they never run into each other, then I can do the same thing.
 
I have two western settings (the occult one and a more "normal" one), and all our westerns take place there.  I have two sci-fi settings-- well, three at the moment, because we're playing with a short-term Atomic Rockets / retrofuture sort of thing (yes; I had to take a trip to Atlanta, and yes; I finally got all my old X Minus One off the open reel and into my phone, and yes; that probably had a _lot_ to do with it   ).   I have a few fantasy settings (weird, for a guy who really doesn't dig fantasy), but only a couple that we hit regularly.
 
So there's not a lot of work to do so far as creating a setting; we are all familiar with it.  Honestly, there was never a lot of work: we built them all as we went, during play (yeah...  lots of notes in those early days...   ).  But today, all I really need is to come up with is a plot: whole cloth, or a few twist to an old one.
 
As far as limits on the characters, I'm not much help to you there, either: the players are comfortable making what they want to play, and I am comfortable letting them do it.  If one guy has a 34d6 Energy Blast and another guy throws tennis balls, I can still make each one important to the plot, and find plenty of challenges appropriate to both.  I really hate the analogy (mostly because I really dislike both characters), how many decades have writers been finding ways to justify Superman and Batman being on the same team?
 
For that matter, a team full of superheroes and _any_ archer?
 
It's the same thing: I put in a lot of behind the scenes time to ensure that there is something for the archer to do, and that he's not going to run into....   crap.  Who's someone against whom an archer is ridiculous? I don't know enough comic books...   Galactus?  Is he still a thing?  Yep.  Google says he's still a thing.  Google also says that the Avengers have fought him, and according to the roster, there was an archer on the team.  Yeah, I know.  But again-- they made it work.   The biggest adjustments are usually reviewing the character sheets and prepping the players:
 
Oh.  You made an archer.  Okay, that's cool; I can keep you busy, but you understand that you're not going to survive pretty much _any_ powerful villain single-handedly, right?
 
Oh.  You made a moon-splitter.  You understand excessive force and a trail of bodies is going to cause you no end of grief, right?
 
Okay.  We good?  Let's roll dice.
 
I know: it sounds ugly, telling the archer's player that he's going to get splattered by the big-big bads as they enter the story, but is it?  Is it uglier than letting him try to go it alone against Galactus because his teammates are starting to fall?  Or is it better that he be prepared to _assist_ in that situation, and maybe help gather fallen friends and get them to safety?
 
Is it worse for the story that Nuclear Bomb man get reminded that the power he built-- which I _will_ find occasion for him to use-- is not something he should keep ready for anything?  Or is it worse to let him one-shot murder every villain he runs into, becoming a villain in his own right, and forcing his teammates to turn on him (and him to kill the archer)?
 
I work with what they give me.
 
That's my "campaign guideline."
 
 
I know it's not really what you were looking for, but I was just trying to get the ball rolling.   😕
 
 

That, and honestly:
 
It's perfectly _normal_ -- today or any other time-- for an officer to approach a dangerous situation or a known criminal with his gun _already drawn_.  I'm not talking about "well, guess I'd better walk inside, draw my gun, and tell him he's under arrest," but draw the weapon while getting out of the car, walk ten yards of sidewalk, turn up to the bar, go inside and yell "Police!  Johnny Villain, you're under arrest!"
 
It was no different then.  The whole idea of "well the good guy can't draw until the bad guys" isn't just some strange of modern white-hattery, it's asininely out of step with the sensibilities of _any_ era.
 
As Spence suggested, the biggest reason it existed in the TV shows was simply "Good Lord!  Look at his blazing draw speed!"   This "look how fast he can draw" nonsense reached its zenith, I think, with the short-lived Butch and Sundance, where the camera would cut-- well, the film was cut-- from Sundance kicked back in a booth at a restaurant then "click" laid back, feet on the table, eighteen-inch competition pistol, arm at full extension---    
 
But that's really off track.  Point is:  never happened, anywhere, period, with regard to a lawman, or even a private citizen investigating trouble.  
 
Two guys arguing in a bar?  Well then, _that_ may matter who drew first, but the lawman thing?  Nonsense.
 
 

Duke Bushido! Oh how I was I could rep the bejezzus  outta ya for your complaint of Modern Sensibilties! I read some reviews of Pulp games on Drive Thru RPG and the pretentious complain about how the new work was marred because the authors kept something pulpish (and in their minds cringeworthy) instead of being with modern sensibilities. Gag me with a spoon! 

That.  That right there.
People tend to forget that fiction = escapism.
 
We can argue all day long that fiction can be used to "explore x" or "visualize y," but at the end of the day, the _story_ is what sells it, and too much emphasis on any given aspect of the setting will ultimately _detract_ from that story.
 
 
 
Not just legalisms, but modern sensibilities of any kind.  Honestly, this is probably why it's _so difficult_ for me to appreciate the bulk of Urban Fantasy.  If I want to read about Ogres slapping the crap out of elves, I don't want to read about the huge social outcry of the blatant ethnism, racism, etc this represents.  No; I'm not a horrible person: if I am reading a modern thriller or action story, then I _demand_ people be mad as Hell about it, but it doesn't belong in certain places.  Tolkien, for example:  there was an evil race that was just evil because it was evil, and it was okay to hate them for their evil.  Not really my bag, but I am much cooler with that than public outcry begging for support and understanding of the orcs, who were good from their point of view, and we should all struggle to understand and accept it.
 
Gad; that's a lousy example, because I am not a big fan of "evil because they are evil," nor of Tolkien, but it was the most high-profile thing that came to mind.
 
Let's go with Conan wenching his way across the continent.  Not cool with modern ethics-- at least in fits, since we have a strange cycle of "sexuality is something to keep under wraps" to "sexuality is the whole purpose of society" and spins round and every every couple of decades, so again-- bad example.  But I trust you folks are getting the idea: if something is part and parcel of the setting, the fastest way to kill that game is to bring in a modern sensibility that beats it into the shape of things today.  I am reading this book or playing this game to get take a few hours to _get away_ from things today!
 
I want my escapism-- not necessarily dumbed down, but simpler, and a bit more clear-cut between good guys and bad guys; right action and wrong action, than what exists right now.
 
I don't want to play the accounting part of life; I don't want to play the courtroom part of life; I don't want to play the insurance agent part of life.  I want to play the adventure, and stop the bad guys, and have fun with some friends.  
 
 
 
 
 
There are a lot of things over the years I have seen that people feel are "must haves" for a game to "feel a certain way."  The most baffling example of this to me is complex politics in fantasy.  Way to kill fantasy, guys.   Make it _boring_.....   I mean, politics is one of the things I am DEFINITELY TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM FOR A BIT when I decide I want to play a game or read a book.
 
Politics in fantasy?  Frankly, "we've been enemies for years" is good enough, period.  I don't care why; I don't care what has transpired for the last two centuries; I don't care what sneaky subterfuge is currently in play from either side.  For me, it adds absolutely _no_ interest, can actively _disinterest_ me from the setting and the game, and worst of all: someone put a lot of work into alienating me.
 
Anyone else remember that tiny pamphlet that was the original Greyhawk setting?
 
So long as you're appropriating the classic schticks-- wizards, elves, dragons, medieval england-- that little pamphlet is really all I ever needed.  If you're going radically different (Flash Gordon, ancient China, Barsoom, I might need more actual setting detail: races, ethnicities, etc-- but I need damned little politics, hyper-specific legal codes, or absolute moralities, particularly if the exist because that's what we feel right now, and make precious little sense in the setting.  
 
Actually, I don't really need them even if they _aren't_ modern.  It's just that imposing modern sensibilities generally makes pretty much anything _terrible_. 
 
 

Okay I pulled a little rules lawyering for this next ability. For those who don’t know, in 6th now if you do a Multiple Move By, it’s considered a Multiple Attack. A Multiple Attack halves your DCV. So Zenith goes from DCV 8 to DCV 4-Ouch! Previous edition I believe you still only suffer the -2 DCV for Move By. So I bought +4 DCV only with Move Bys (-1). So I should get a total of DCV 6. The same as pre 6th.  I’m not trying to be totally greedy here.

Our critical hits system worked like this:
 
You rolled to hit.  If you rolled natural 3 or hit by double or more the DCV you needed (say, you needed to hit a 5 and hit an 11) then you got a crit.
 
A critical hit was a choice between max damage for your weapon, or choose the location you hit.
 
After a while, players stopped bothering with it, maybe it was just my group but people just didn't care for crits.
 
As for different kinds of attacks, I think it works best to hard wire those into the weapons rather than armor or fancy builds.  For example, in my FH setting, swords have +1 OCV (lots of surface to hit with, easy for beginners), Hammers do +1 stun multiple, Axes do +1 DC damage, Flails have +1 OCV vs shields (reach around) etc.  Doing this helps build in the effect every time the weapon is used, so you don't need a huge chart or list of different effects to use.

That.  That right there.
People tend to forget that fiction = escapism.
 
We can argue all day long that fiction can be used to "explore x" or "visualize y," but at the end of the day, the _story_ is what sells it, and too much emphasis on any given aspect of the setting will ultimately _detract_ from that story.
 
 
 
Not just legalisms, but modern sensibilities of any kind.  Honestly, this is probably why it's _so difficult_ for me to appreciate the bulk of Urban Fantasy.  If I want to read about Ogres slapping the crap out of elves, I don't want to read about the huge social outcry of the blatant ethnism, racism, etc this represents.  No; I'm not a horrible person: if I am reading a modern thriller or action story, then I _demand_ people be mad as Hell about it, but it doesn't belong in certain places.  Tolkien, for example:  there was an evil race that was just evil because it was evil, and it was okay to hate them for their evil.  Not really my bag, but I am much cooler with that than public outcry begging for support and understanding of the orcs, who were good from their point of view, and we should all struggle to understand and accept it.
 
Gad; that's a lousy example, because I am not a big fan of "evil because they are evil," nor of Tolkien, but it was the most high-profile thing that came to mind.
 
Let's go with Conan wenching his way across the continent.  Not cool with modern ethics-- at least in fits, since we have a strange cycle of "sexuality is something to keep under wraps" to "sexuality is the whole purpose of society" and spins round and every every couple of decades, so again-- bad example.  But I trust you folks are getting the idea: if something is part and parcel of the setting, the fastest way to kill that game is to bring in a modern sensibility that beats it into the shape of things today.  I am reading this book or playing this game to get take a few hours to _get away_ from things today!
 
I want my escapism-- not necessarily dumbed down, but simpler, and a bit more clear-cut between good guys and bad guys; right action and wrong action, than what exists right now.
 
I don't want to play the accounting part of life; I don't want to play the courtroom part of life; I don't want to play the insurance agent part of life.  I want to play the adventure, and stop the bad guys, and have fun with some friends.  
 
 
 
 
 
There are a lot of things over the years I have seen that people feel are "must haves" for a game to "feel a certain way."  The most baffling example of this to me is complex politics in fantasy.  Way to kill fantasy, guys.   Make it _boring_.....   I mean, politics is one of the things I am DEFINITELY TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM FOR A BIT when I decide I want to play a game or read a book.
 
Politics in fantasy?  Frankly, "we've been enemies for years" is good enough, period.  I don't care why; I don't care what has transpired for the last two centuries; I don't care what sneaky subterfuge is currently in play from either side.  For me, it adds absolutely _no_ interest, can actively _disinterest_ me from the setting and the game, and worst of all: someone put a lot of work into alienating me.
 
Anyone else remember that tiny pamphlet that was the original Greyhawk setting?
 
So long as you're appropriating the classic schticks-- wizards, elves, dragons, medieval england-- that little pamphlet is really all I ever needed.  If you're going radically different (Flash Gordon, ancient China, Barsoom, I might need more actual setting detail: races, ethnicities, etc-- but I need damned little politics, hyper-specific legal codes, or absolute moralities, particularly if the exist because that's what we feel right now, and make precious little sense in the setting.  
 
Actually, I don't really need them even if they _aren't_ modern.  It's just that imposing modern sensibilities generally makes pretty much anything _terrible_. 
 
 

Yep,  too much realism has killed far more games than it helped.  Especially when someone bleeds modern legalisms into a game world.  
I watched a great supers game dissolve in three sessions when the GM and one player decided that insurance and collateral damage lawsuits were necessary for them to "truly immerse and enjoy the game".   Then they whined when the game went from six regulars + GM to just the GM and one player.  Most gamers play for fun, not to simulate the real world. 

Its being Transformed (minor, 3d6) from a Community Project book into an official Hero book.  I want to say because its so awesome but the reality is because DriveThruRPG will only do POD versions of books if they sell a bajillion copies, so Jason decided to just go with it through Hero.

From a pure "make it abusive" perspective, a huge attack with 1 charge, costs END, 2x END (and no other limitations - we could add plenty) could be 20d6 for 25 points and cost 20 END.  Fire it off in the starting Phase 12 and then get your PS12 recovery.  Then go back to your usual 12d6 attack.  And if you pop both in a Multipower, it has another 40 points left over for other abilities after the opening blast.
 
 
This makes the case for upper and lower bounds, if nothing else, to ensure a limit on relative effectiveness.  There's no question, though, that when we set a "campaign maximum" of 10 CV, 6 SPD, 12 DC, and 25 defenses, that tends to quickly become the campaign requirement, since everyone can afford it with 400 points to spend.  Mutants and Masterminds uses a tradeoff model where the standard is 10 for starting characters, but you can trade off the "OCV" and "DC" limits, and the "DCV" and "defenses" limits (to a maximum spread of 8/12).  It would be more challenging to make a Hero equivalent due to the higher level of moving parts, though.  If we trade off DCV and Defenses, we have to figure out how Damage Reduction, high STUN and REC, etc. factor in.
 
 
I think ideally we evaluate characters on a holistic basis.  However, that takes a lot of experience with the system to do well.

I understand what you're saying, but that complexity is already there:
 
The advantage "Reduced Endurance Cost" ups the AP but does not increase the Endurance.

T’Kerkantaii
 
 
        “The Amphii must have grown stagnant,” the Teacher began, her pupils unfocused as she pulled images from her mind; the children-- the Ha’arii children in particular, instantly enraptured-- “ or perhaps had begun to lose the spark that makes life pleasurable.  The growth of cities and spread of culture was so commonplace as to become on the edge of boredom, as looking about at the growing population of the Amphii or the thriving businesses no longer excited the way they once did.  Clearly, the Amphii were in some danger by their own stagnation, and the Goddess sent Lai’ki to assess the state of things for her last Children.  Upon finding that we had begun to toil less and less for survival and upon seeing that we would now cultivate that which once we would spend days gathering, and upon seeing that our fishers now took traps to the rivers instead of spears, Lai’ki decided we had become comfortable with our traditions.  Upon seeing that our scholars maintained the Old Skins faithfully and that our explorers had gone as far into the unknown lands as the goods they carried would allow, and brought back maps and charts and many stories, Lai’ka knew that the Amphii were living as they should, and that they might forever exist in Ta’ La-Kreth scattered to their towns and cities forever.  In Her mischievous way, She sought to restore the spark of excitement to the Amphii, and, being the free-spirited Lai’ka, she came not to the scholars or to the priests but instead to the craftsmen and the builders and the fishers, all of whom were in a way associated with the water trades.  She instilled Change, a change in the understanding of the things they already knew, making some long-known truths present themselves to mind beside newly-understood truths, and in this way did She yet again give new knowledge to the Amphii.  It is fitting to Her whim that the new knowledge be given to common people of the Amphii, and it shows the Wisdom of the Goddess Herself that Lai’ka carefully avoided the priests and the scholars, for such already was the vastness of the knowledge of these people that there was danger of hoarding it, or worse still: arrogance.  It is good and just that the wise should have to learn from the common, for what good is knowledge in the hands of only a few?” 
        Lai’ka had given the Amphii the knowledge to build crafts that could carry them across the largest of the Moving Waters in much the same way that a Priest’s Path will carry the righteous across the still waters of the great swamps to the south.  Within a few generations, a great many kinds of craft were built, and the Amphii were again filled with the spark of wonder.  Many Amphii travelled the rivers, going further and further into the land and eventually to the sea itself, and many things were learned, and many things were taught as new and unknown villages of other Amphii were discovered.  It was during this time that the scholars, upon meeting new Amphii, became inspired by Fa’Zel, God of Peace, Understanding, Community, and Trade when his mood is light, and began to record the languages of these new people, for they were not always like our own.  In working with all they learned, they began to craft a new language-- yet another ripple from the stone of Change cast by Lai’ka into the great still water that the Amphii had become.  This language travelled with these scholars and explorers, for it had been carefully crafted from those elements most common to all the known Amphii.  It did not feel right to us, for we are careful to bring forward all that is of the past, but it began to be used more and more in trade and commerce, as it had been designed for simplicity and ease of learning.  Today we call it “The Shared Speak,” or, more commonly, “The Trader’s Tongue,” and there are a few in every city, town, and village today who know it well, and it has in its own way brought the Amphii closer as a people.
         There came a day when the Amphii of that Age re-learned that they were not alone in the Goddess’s Ta’La-Kreth, and that not all else which roams the world are brutes and animals.  Certainly, the scholars found skins from ancient times that mentioned many others from distant lands, but with the generations of knowing only Amphii, these Skins were rarely studied, and this knowledge had stopped being carried forth.  But even at that, there is a difference between knowing a thing and seeing it with one’s own eyes, and that difference pales to the difference between spreading peaceful trade and fighting pitched battles in the mountains across two months of sea..  A party of eight hands of Amphii had taken to the river leading to the sea, prepared to spend perhaps a year inland and then returning with maps and knowledge for the scholars and perhaps seeds or whelping animals for the tenders and the planters.  Forty-eight Amphii rowing and poling and drafting with skarka the five new boats designed for this trip were gone four years, and returned with only eight Amphii, two boats, and a horrifying tale.
        Beyond the western shores they had travelled the safe and warm shallow waters of the Brilliant Sea and in some weeks had come to one of the many lands told in the Oldest Skins.  The waters at the edge of the land darkened and deepened and cooled, and the land rose in stone above them.  For some days that followed the land, finding at last entry to the land, and a flat land onto which to pull their boats and set their camp, and make anxious and eager plans to explore the dense primal forests spread about them.  In the regions beyond the forests and over the mountains where the Skins tell that brothers Azhum and Kallath had waged deadly war with one another, leaving the lands burned and still half-barren, where the tops of mountains where sheared and the firey blood of Ta’ La-Kreth itself smokes and sometimes still boils with rage, here lived a primitive and uncivilized people.  Like the Amphii, they stand erect and walk astride, and have bones inside.  As the Amphii desire warmth, these great brutes crave it, living so close by the Broken Mountains and the tainted waters there as to make the thought unpleasant to any Amphi, they live and hunt.  Moreover, they feed.  The explorers told tales of beings so large as to be in height twice the tallest among the explorers, and so broad and so thewn of girth as to balance with no less than six or eight Amphii on the most honest of scales.  They travel in clannish fashion, small groups of never more than five or six, and generally alone or in pairs; the larger groups seem to be two and sometimes three grown giants, and any others were always juveniles, still more massive than an adult Amphi.  When two such groups meet, the males will always clash, and watching them reminds all who see it of the Great Clash of the Brothers who first battled and desecrated this land with destruction.  After much study and much prayer, the explorers were given understanding of what they saw, and knew that these were the wretched children of the Amphii who had lived here when Azhum and Kallath first battled, the stain of the evil they committed upon one another had corrupted this land, and its people, perhaps forever, and knowing this, the explorers knew that this twisted race was T’Ker Kan-ta’ii-- the Ruined Beauty-- and recorded them as such.
        The battles of the clans when they meet is fierce.  It is always instigated by the males, but it is joined by all members of the clan, even the youngest among them, and it always results in death.  Males will kill one another, and claim any surviving female he can subdue.  The get of the dead male….    This is not told lightly to children, but told because it is important knowledge, and it should be carried forward.  As I was saying: the get of the dead male are eaten.
        Yes-yes-yes--- today, we know of the many races with whom we share Ta’ La-Kreth, and know that those with shells and no bones also have no compunction about eating other thinking people, but even they….  Even they, save one, do not eat their own.  The giants, it seemed to the early explorers, had been reduced to animals.  Only that they wore crude clothing and used crude weapons-- great spears honed from tree limbs and clubs larger than an Amphi could lift-- let them know that these had once been people.  That, and like all people, the T’Kerkanta’ii used language.  It was simple, direct, and without elegance or manners, but after some months, the scholars-- always hidden, mind you-- were able to learn some small amount, and the priests, after weeks of ritual purification and exhausting themselves in endless prayer to Ampylis that he should lay the foundation for a brotherhood between the Amphii emissary explorers and these twisted giants, in their eagerness to cure these blighted creatures of their curse, waited for the t’lkreth of Ampylis himself to float high in the noon sky, made themselves known.  The Skins tell us that for many days the Amphii and the T’Kerkanta’ii spoke and exchanged stories, and the more the priests learned the more they felt there was a chance for redemption, for these clearly had once been people.  On the advice of the hunters, the bulk of the explorers had remained hidden, waiting for the daily word of what was transpiring.  Alas, the priests, placing the successes of these meetings upon themselves, did not heed the Phases of the First Clutch, and heeded not the eventual waning of Ampylis from the western sky.  Within only a few days did the t’lkreth of Ampylis fade from the sky, and the next day the priests did not come to the camp of the explorers.  The T’kerkanta’ii, they did.  
        The explorers ran while the hunters fought and the scholars pleaded for peace and the priest who had abstained from the talks so that she might tend the souls of the Amphii explorers began to pray and pray even as her kind ran, carrying her from the slaughter being wrought by the horrible giants, and for her dedication she was blessed profoundly by the Goddess Herself, and found herself able to cast powerful magics as well as the best Amphii warrior priest had ever done, but by then, there were fewer than twenty Amphii remaining when the boats were pushed into the water and the Blessed One turned the full might of her Blessing to a storm of winds unlike any before, forcing the Cursed Ones to retreat before the fury of the wind and the debris it carried, and also pushing the boats at terrifying speed down the small bay and into the dark seas around the rocky shore  Once beyond stone’s throw of the shores, the winds subsided and, with so few Amphii available to row the large vessels, they drifted on the tides.
 
        “Mother.”  Another voice interrupted, this one higher, softer, but just as insistent as the last.  The teacher pulled her focus from her mind’s eye and let the thin pale smoke in which the visions in her mind were being recreated for her students spread thinner and break up, drifting on the breeze up through the chimney-like vent above her.  ‘Truly,’ she thought, ‘the Trance had been profound.’  She did not remember lighting the incense or casting the spell…  She pulled her focus tightly, making sure to first fix a warm smile in her eyes before focusing on the room before her.  She stared lovingly at the children before her, who seemed almost saddened by the loss of the illusion show before them.  She took a moment to again enjoy the scents on the Soft Summer breeze as they brushed across her skin.  She would bathe this afternoon, she decided, in a bath with oils of summer blooms: the incense were drying her skin.  After the child had paid a respectful amount of time in askance, she turned to find the child who wished further clarification.
        As she had suspected, it was another of the Ha’arii children.  This one’s skin was light in color and dusted with speckles; its wild unruly crest was a vivid orange.
        “What can I offer you, Inquisitive One?”
        “Patience, Mother.”  The child looked up, and the teacher could see that its small eyes were nearly as green as those of the Amphii child with whom it shared a table.  “Mother, our Ha’arii priests and nurses have been true to the Amphii teachings; we know of the discovery of the T’Kerkanta’ii and we know of the Great Salvation and we honor it for twelve days every Midsummer, and again every Twin Eyes.  
        “I see.  What is the knowledge you seek from the Skins, Inquisitive One?” she asked, neither her face nor her poise betrayed a hint of her annoyance.
        “I Have heard from my elders many pieces of the story of the Ha’arii, Mother,”  This child, at least, was not so headstrong as to turn away from the Amphii teachings and grasp at a meaningless name applied for no sensible reason.  “Eay yuoh mohhn.”  “Warm without fire.”  What foolishness.  The suns above-- the eyes of the Goddess-- were warm without fire.  Clay structures such as this room, positioned properly, would be warm without fire.  The very rains of Lai’Ka and the shores of the Brilliant Sea were often warm, and within them no fire was possible.  Such children, the Ha’arii.  Left to their own devices, they had demonstrated not only a lack of the wisdom the Amphii spent a thousand years trying to teach them, but absolute foolishness.  She blamed the presence of the Gw’Tharii and the influence of the Gw’Tharii godlessness.  Look how quickly the Ha’arii had adopted the Grickle!  Coins of metal by which to measure the value of a self-- absolutely contemptible!
 

In general yes, but most western media do not concern themselves with that. The good guys can shoot to kill without legal ramifications because they are the law.