tesuji

Re: I'll Try The Quote Function This Time. I do just want to highlight something here... I am not pretending. I assume that the GM is RESPONSIBLE for what happens in his game. I do not make allowances for outs for him like "they were all stupid." While the "players were used to something else" is to some an excuse or an out for the Gm on the responsibility side, it isn't for me. It is the job of the GM to know his players and plan accordingly. In this case He DID already know their style and preference... he had the last game session with the other game thingy to show him. yet he ran another game, this time with HERO, and did not account for it. heck it almost sounds like he designed a second episode to "show them". If a Gm starts a game with lack of knowledge of his players so that the scenario leads them to ALL ***100% not on person got it*** figurte out the scenario and end up with ALL ***100% not one of them liked it*** end up not having fun, then i see that as the GMs fault for not being prepared, for not recognizing it during play, and letting it go so far as to wreck the scenario and even drive them to not enjoy the game at all. But thats not what we have here. Here we have a Gm who already tried this, who already knew this and who went ahead again and repreated the failure a second time. Thats not lack of prepa, thats not inexperience, thats most definitely WILLFUL determination. Thats a GM error. Thats one of the first order. The players were a known quantity to him when he ran this second session. The players were not relevent to the problem recurring. I was not pretending to think they weren't relevent, i actually believe that... might have been different for the first game session where he tried this but not the second. The results in the second IMO are all shadowraptors.

Re: I'll Try The Quote Function This Time. [/b] Lucius, I am honestly perplexed as to why you contiue to act like your opinion of "me" is relevent? Can we perhaps start a thread titled 'what we think about tesuji" so that those who want to rant about me can do so and the ones who want to discuss gaming can avoid this? So i shouldn't have just taken raptors assessment at face value? So I shouldn't have taken raptor's post at face value? So i shouldn't have taken raptors post at face value? i should not have just thrown my brain in the trash can and said "well he was there so i better not QUESTION his account and conclusion? Actually, it is an example of trying to break thru a wall of bias. When questioning the one sided account which puts the blame soley on the players and soley on the other games they have played and ignores completely the posters role at near complete creation of the encounter in the results at all. Look at the followups that were posted to him before mine... first a blame it on diablo, then a post disputing whether its modern or goes all the way back to early dnd, then a couple humor posts follwed by the wonderful "not brain surgeons" post which on the basis of the one sided all-their-fault initial rant starts talking about close minded playera and tosses around words like inflexible and unimaginative before dropping back into calling them dumb beasts... althoug he did toss in a smiley on dumb beasts. Then comes my response which offers a HYPOTHESIS... i even used that word... that the description could support a different conclusion. I asked him to consider the role HERo's complexity had to play and the role he himself as GM played. Some people think thats rude. Some people think and posted that questioning his conclusion is rude and insulting and lets see... "calling ShadowRaptor's assessment of his game session and his players into doubt so strongly with no evidence to support your position and no in-depth or firsthand knowledge of the parties involved or their activites seems like so much arrogant tilting at windmills to me." This of course comes after shadow raptor himself acknowledged that he should consider his own role in the results. And people seem to think i should take other people's opinions of my rudeness or insulting seriously?!? Look, if shadowraptor had reached a different conclusion, if he had instead eneded with "its HERo system's fault" then the rudeness in responses would have dwarfed mine by a landslide. Actually, the only support is a DESCRIPTION and JUDGEMENT or maybe an ASSESSMENT of their choices. We were not given examples of the choices. We were not given examples of their options. The sum of their choices was CHARACTERIZED by him. "Despite the variety involved in their powers, they got wasted by 4 175 point robots because they used their typical ways of fighting bred from playing D&D for ten years," Thats not fact but judgement, assessment and conclusion. The facts we were given were that they were playing characters generated by him, in a scenario generated by him, against adversaries generated by him and that the point totals were 175 x 300, and that they lost. ("wasted" is still a judgement of his) Those facts do NOT support a conclusion of its their fault or that its the DND games fault. What in the post do you see as support for his conclusion that is not a judgement of his? What in that post do you see as support that is not a conclusion of his? Do you really believe at face value that after getting "wasted" in this game, in this second try under him that the players leterally said to him they told him it was "too hard?" Do you think that is a factual recount or his spin on it? Do you suspect that they may have said the fight was too hard... bringing into question the scenario and not the game and that raptor's account in his rant is a little skewed maybe? look, even if they were the DND-fed "dumb beasts" people around here seem fine at tossing onto them based on a one-sided "no fault for the poster at all" rant my experience does not say they would get up from a game and admit its too hard for them after a failure. "Those people" would, somewhat like shadowraptor did here, look for any reason other than their own lacks to explain t... "the system is stupid" "your scenario was screwed from the get go", "that game is totally whacked and out of balance" etc etc etc... even down to "you just screwed us" are the sorts of comments i would expect from DND-fed dumb beasts who just got "wasted." At least, in my experience non-thinking hack-n-0slashers are one of the last people to immediately jump to the STATEMENT that the game is too hard... because that puts the slight onto them... Is your experience different? Do you see "the game's too hard" as something you would expect to have been said by the players? Do you not suspect that they might have been talking about the scenario or the Gm setup? If not, ask yourself why? If his post had been critical of HERo instead of DND, would you have been as accepting? The facts given did not support the conclusion. The juedgement and assessments could have but those were not support... they were just interim conclusions. Simply put, if the scenario WAS not skewed by GM inexperience and the various other notions i and other have raised, then brute force SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ANSWER. 300 vs 175, if we assume that this metric means relatively the same power balance, then BRUTE FORCE STRAIGHT AHEAD is the right answer for the bigger side. RAW POWER is their advantage. The fact that he thinks they should have used non-brute force, the fact that he concludes that is why it was that they got wasted and the fact that they did lose is an argument that this scenario was not as straightforward as he makes it appear. It sounds VERY much like he built a puzzle box scenario where brute force is a trap and non-brute force in a certain way is the key to victory. If thats the case then like all puzzle box scenarios the win/loss comes NOT from tactics but from whether they figure out the puzzle... which comes directly from how well the GM presents the relevent info. he skipped all that. He just gave us total points and character archtypes and he then jumped to the assessment stage and the conclusion stage which is recieved apparently unquestioningly and uncritically by the gang here and i speculate that it would have been questioned more or critically analyzed or even just frankly examined more if it was not an anti-dnd conclusion. Didn't you get that? Why not? Not dsure where i was gratuitously insulting, but its certainly possible. I really do have little tolerance for Gms who come away from total wrecks of runs and who take away from that experience "its all their fault, not mine". I thought i did a fine job of posting to raptor in a not insulting and not inflamatory way that he should look at his role and the game systems role in play more than looking at the players and the last game they ran. I really think that i was less insulting to him than calling the players involved "dumb beasts" was to them. But if you dont think so and think that my rudeness was so over the top yahhdee yahhdee... Then by all means stop reading my posts. If you want to keep reading them and responding, then please, if i can get antyhing from you, put the "why i dont like tesuji" stuff in its own thread and put any comments relative to the discussion in this one. I am pretty much in the same boat as you... i like to read your posts looking for info, but the drivel of "why i dont like tesuji" really just makes me want to skip ahead to the next poster. Wonder isf we can get steve to put up a "why i dont like tesuji this time" thread of maybe an entire forum so that you and mono and the gang can vent your frustrations there?

[/b] Thanks! i have been avoiding the speculation, figuring it brings more into questionable ground. From my experience tho, the enemies being robots immediately started my spidey sense a tinglin'. OK first off, before i saw robots i saw characters set as comparatives based on total points. NO experienced HERo guy thinks total points means all that much in terms of combat capability, right? Sure, it might on a gross scale but i guarantee you with me designing both sides even 300 vs 175 is not going to make total cp a valid measure of tactical ability. However, that was the metric raptor chose to gibe us... the only metric he chose to give us. Second, robots... the automaton rules are cute but again, they are extremely open for abuse. The vast majority of Kos in hero are done by stun damage and robots can reasonably cheaply be bought immune to stun and with enough defenses to stop the average body damage. Imagine very simply a quartet of heroes with 10d6 attacks facing robots with 10 defense. Now, an even remotely experienced group could handle this, by pushing, by using maneuvers to gain extra dice, or maybe even by looking for environmental weaknesses. Now put these heroes in the hands of inexperienced players who may not know a thing about pushing and who certainly do not know how to milk the speed chart to make that haymaker actually have a prayer of landing. Then, remember, its all DnDs fault. After all, what else could it possibly be other than DnDs fault? HERo provides NO safety nets. That in itself is not a bad thing at all. Some might desribe that as like driving a high performance sports car... a great thing when handled right. But when the high precision sports car gets wrapped around a tree by a 16 year old on his first real drive, don't nlame the Chevette he drove in driver's ed last month. Maybe you, thru inexperience, thought total points was a valid metric for tactical balance in HERO. There are plent of other speculations possible, but we have only the fact that raptor chose to describe his opposing sides by total points and robots to tell us what little we know of what he saw as important. A more experienced Gm might have cited cv,s powers and defenses and speed when trying to convey to the room the power level, because he would have known those to be more valuable measures of combat ability. i don't think its unreasonable for someone new to hero to think total points is a valid measure of tactical ability... after all chargen is all about meeting the point total. he may have just learned his most important lesson in GMing whether in hero or otherwise... that balance does not come from the points. Of course, he wont learn that lesson at all if all he takes away from the two encounters is that his players are dolts. he only learns that lesson if he questions his own decisions and roles. like a certain apparently annoying someone asked him to do. I tend to agree. Barring design skews or scenareio skews, 300 pointers vs 175 pointers with matching design doctrines should indeed be a slugfest the heroes would win. While all these kindly people just want to deride the players for the purported sluggyfist mentality, they choose to ignore the most obvious... sluggyfist is most often the RIGHT choice for the more powerful side. its the underdogs for who sneaky, planning and lateral thinking is the wrong answer. That should have been a warning flag about the recounting and conclusion. I agree. it sounds to me like it was a puzzle scenario, where the answer to beating the bad guys was in say finding a specific weakness perhaps or perhaps exploiting hero rules like pushing and haymakers. However, all this for me delves whole hog into speculation. my experience tells me that someone describing a battle by total cps often shows a lack of understanding of balance... looking for a single gross figure metric. My experience also shows me that constructs are often the subject of puzzle scenario setups, because their tactical differences make them ideal for ""non-routine" solutions. The main issue is that any Gm who walsk away fromnot one but two TPUs with the attitude that its "their fault" or some other games fault, really really needs to look instead at his roles and his choices because he made all the salient decisions that led up to the result and made at least half the decisions within the event that drove to this result.

Re: More Cut and Paste [/b] So this somehow should mean i don't question his conclusions? I wonder, had he concluded that it was the HERO system's complexity that was at fault, would all you guys be lining up to say "yup, he has it right, cuz he was there and we weren't." Its like suddenly as long as its anti-DnD then suddenly the critical thinking shuts down. Sudedenly, a one sided bash of his own players blaming them for the failure of his runs is no longer one sided opinion but "factual." Amazing. Why did you need to put your own experiences in? Don't we have his statements. You were not there. Why would you be so impertinent as to actuall cross reference his "HE WAS THERE REMEMBER!!!" conclusions against your own thoughts. geesh. next thing you know you will maybe even be thinking that its possible that a one sided "other side is all at fault" description of a scene might possibly not necessarily be automatically totally accurate. You can leap to that conclusion, or you could leap to the conclusion that it was simply the most polite response i could come up with at the time for his IMO unwarranted insults. He shared his feelings with us all. That doesn't mean I need to give them any significant weight. So, as a more general question... should we take it for granted that when we see posts on this forum where one side of an event blames the failure on the other side we should take it for granted that this is an accurate and factual recount and that the conclusions made by the poster are to be taken without question? Or is it ok to question that unless it is slamming dnd in some way? If he had concluded it was HERo system's fault... would you all be lining up against people who even ask him to look at his own role? Would the suggestion that the GM might be partly responsible for a gaming failure while running hero be met with such clear dismissal? Well, actually, i got the answers to that a long time ago on multiple other threads... The two basic axioms... "if you use hero and it fails, its your fault and you did something wrong. Its not HEROs fault that you screwed up." "If you used HERO and it went well, thats because the system is good and its the HERO system that deserves the credit." Invert these for "other games" particularly DND. Hey guys, last time i made pancakes, i burned the first one. I think Rolemaster was to blame as well as my long dead dog shep. Since you weren't there whn i burned the pancake, or when i played rollmaster and never met my dog. you gonna accept that as a reasonable conclusion? Anyone interested in buying bridges, contact me! and before anyone gets all bent out of shape, i am not saying SR was deliberately misleading anyone. I believe he honestly recounted his opinions.

the lowest dex i used for a super in a full fledged supers game was 13. She was a shrinking mentalist... so OCV came from EGo and DCV came from shrinking. Sure, she always went last but that was OK. She was also a villain so the relative inefficiency of the points... dex is sooooo good... did not really matter. For my PCs, i tend to play the lower dex guys in the group. My guys are frequently 20 dex or 23 in a world of 26-33's. I often describe it as my "force everyone else to find trouble first" power. :-)

[/b] Thanks. As i have stated before, i know what his CONCLUSION was. A CONCLUSION does not support itself. Actually, i rasie the question. Tyhe logic is quite simple... their characters were given to them by the GM. Their adversaries were given to them by the GM. The scenario was setup and presented to them by the GM. It is unknown whether they had ANY information about the setup or the system that wasn't provided to the by the GM. The scenario was ran by the GM. The result was apparently not what the GM intended. After all this is said and done, the GM reaches a conclusion thats its his players and the last game they happened to play's fault and not his, not the new system, etc. That conclusion seems extremely odd to me and so i question it. If he had concluded it was due to them having had burgers and not pizza, i would have questioned it too. That does not mean i dislike burgers or pizza. Since i do not know shadow raptor, nor his players, i cannot just blindly accept a one sided account as being the unfettered truth. Do you often just assume when you only hear one side that its totally accurate and truthful? if so, i got a bridge for you... I am NOT saying Shadowraptor is deliberately misleading us. I fully believe he does blame the dnd system and his players for the screw up. I just never can get over GMs who do not take responsibility for the things that happen in their games, especially when it goes so far as to dissapoint ALL their players. he did not just fail to satisfy one malcontent troublemaker... he lost AFAIK all of them. That does not tell me to blame the players or last week's system. Does it you? Lets put it another way... lets roleplay for a moment... you are standing at your FLGS ans holding in your hands the hottest new HERo release, say Cyber HERO, and this guy walks up and sees you holding it and says "HERO, yeah, i tried hero. I got my gaming buddies together and i ran a scenario with my four robots against their four heroes. i designed all the characters and they had 300 points and i just had 175 point robots and man I cleaned their clock, wiped the floor with them. They were so stupid. They thought HERO was too hard. " Is your first thought that this is an example of a bad start, a poorly run scenario, a GM being overcompetitive, etc? or is the first thing in your mind "must be dnd players." Anything can be said. Ok let me explain it to you. If shadowraptor continues to take from this experience that he has stupid players and blame DnD... then he leaves with nothing more than a feeling of self-superioirity. If he instead looks at his own role, his own choices, the HERO system, and examines what part his actions and decisions played in this, he can perhaps start finding things he can do differently and reach a means of solving the problem. i learn more from my mistakes than from my successes, every time. In part that is because my first look is at what I did wrong, what i could have done better, etc. I have encountered many a GM who felt any problems were not theirown making, who loved to blame players not getting it or bad dice and so forth for the unpleasant outcomes. here, he is blaming amoung other things the game they used to play. Am i saying he was totally wrong? Well, though its certainly tempting to say that given two consecutiveTPUs (total party unhappies), no i am not saying he was totally wrong. However, with two consecutive TPUs, I also cannot see this as just a blame it on the players and absolutely cannot blame it on the game they played last before i ask him to look at his role. Frankly, whenever i see a post about a breakdown in game on these or any boards where we have one side blaming it entirely on the other side, I always take that with a lot of salt, being a one sided perspective and all.

Re: Cut and Paste [/b] Actually, its not. Its asking the question of a game which on its first try out in a session intended by the Gm to expose his players to a game which i think he preferred he managed to turn them off the game due to very lopsided and I would guess unexpected results. This can be taken as a fault of some other game not used in the test, or it can be considered as a fault of the game actually played. This can be seen as a fault of the players, or a fault of the Gm who determined the scenario, the challenge AND their characters. he and i, and perhaps i and you, are simply choosing different likely answers for those two "can be considereds." When i used to whomp all over newbies in star fleet battles, i did not blame them or blame the fact that they used to play silent death. I figured it was a 500 page rulebook and that the "tactics" were mostly "rulesics" and the 3 year learning curve. When an opponent's defense lapses, a shot that would have normally been parried gets a chance to get thru. There is a list of things which commonly constitute lapses in defense serious enough to enable this. Now, I myself have quibbles with their selections for what constitutes a lapse in defense, but i imagine each Gm has his own foibles. I have my own house rules for AoO for use in my next campaign, cuz i am not thrilled with their modelling of the lapse of defense. That was certainly his conclusion. I am of course offering a different conclusion that seems more likely to me from the facts presented. I think the difference is perhaps the learning curve of HERO. I think perhaps that, and this is based on my experience, a novice in hero cannot get much at all out of their character because its play is so system heavy. I think botched balance issues on first runs are more likely not the blane of the game you played last week but instead the blame of the game you are playing when the botch occurs. That doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch. Thats not what my experience has shown me. Now that he has clarified that, you still remain with the case of him knowing both sides, knowing both weaknesses, and them being unfamiliar with the system. We could just as easily be blaming the imbalanced scenario result on the fact that they had pizza instead of burgers. The GM provided the scenario, the characters, the enemies and the info the players had to go on across the board. If the players had no fun, the battle the Gm thought was going to be lopsided one way turned out to be lopsided the other, and the final result was the lack of interest in more of the game... it just seems silly and counter intuitive to say that everthing else except the GM and the HERO system was to blame... its the players and its the system they played a while back thats at fault? Thats not a conclusion i would reach. FUN = FUN and the definition of it varies from person to person. i have no idea what the players expected coming into the game in question or what their definition of fun was. I do know that the Gm who set every single piece of the puzzle up and who is the sole source of info for them clealry misjudged the scenario. How do i know this? he expected it to be lopsided against him and he slaughtered them instead. Why this happened, is to me up for grabs. He has certainly given his own conclusion.,.. its the players fault and its the system they used to plays fault. Thats his conclusion. Thats not mine. Thats my point. A young girl can conclude that she is pregnant because of swimming in a pond and getting fertilized by faeries or golden showers from the gods, and that its absolutely not the unprotected sex she had with the chariot team. That doesn't mean i ought to take her conclusion as gospel. other than his clear bias, nothing that he says leads me to conclude the blame for the events he describes lies with DND at all or lies with the players in toto. The most responsible party to me seems to be the GM and secondary the HERo system's complexity... although its the GMs job to handle that complexity hurdle. Having run HERo and FH for novices, i know the extents to which i went in streamlining the game, removing some of its "in the way" complexities and the time I spent with the newbies.

[/b] because i suspect that in fact, in spite of this response, you actually did get the context of the post, i wont bother explaining it to you or how out of context this reply of yours is. I have encountered much the same sentiment from HERo players other than you. They believe that skill at "the system" is a commodity or trait that should be rewarded in favorable odds of success. most often its to excuse various means of milking the system as producing more powerful characters and that this is "fair" sort of a valid compensation for their years of experience. I would however pass on a different consideration... in that once the game becomes some inbred, so much of its "tactics" being actually system foibles and so much of its play being controlled by knowledge of system specifics ... that once you reach the point as described above where novices cannot get fun out of a one off when the Gm is trying to show them the game because the innate system balance falls apart due to veteran/novice incompatability... that the notion of rewarding player knowledge of system has gone too far and is actually serving as an impediment to players enjoyment. I have seen the same type of thing happen in other games. gradual complexity and evolution from tactics being a focus to "rulesics" being a focus and a gradual transition from a game where, perhaps unintentionally, you move from an "open" format to a "closed" house where only those who know what the system does are welcome. In DND, as a game, I know that if i take their basic balance methodology, classes, and if i pair four 9th level guys against 4 5th level guys then i will, barring scenario specific terrain and circumstance, see the higher level guys win. This would be the vase even with relative novices. (If i thru even on even or perhaps even a level or two off, i would expect player experience and system knowledge to determine the outcome.) From this guys description, that same thing does NOT hold true for HERO. From his test, even at grossly different character levels, its knowledg of the system that holds sway and determines the outcome. In HERo, playing the system seems much more important to balance. I just don't think that something that should fall solidly in the PRO column. The day you don't get paid back by the system for the work you put in may be the day HERO no longer interests you. The day my players inexperience with the HERo system means they dont get enjoyment from my game is the day HERO system lost its appeal to me. different strokes.

Juts as an aside, the exact same results you gave could be used as evidence for a different conclusion than you reached. Instead of using it to reach a conclusion about your players... doesn't it also lend itself to support the following conclusion? Hypothesis: HERO system has such a steep learning curve and its system and knowledge of how to use the system is so ingrained and inbred that novices vs veterans in terms of player skill level in terms of system familiarity will be a more determining factor than the system's own purported balance. I mean, maybe its not a PLUS that hero throws its own sense of balance (300 beaten solidly by 175) totally out the window when non-veterans try and play. Maybe thats a bad thing, not a good thing. You ran two different games to try and show your players different alternatives and managed in two out of two to convince them it was a bad idea. Maybe that should not be taken as a example of **their** faults. Why wouldn't it be a better thing for a game for it to be so intuitive and straightforward that even in a one-off a novice player could have fun, "get it", and be at least competitive if against a veteran although unlikely to win? If i had run the exact same session you did and gotten the exact same results you did the first thing i would look at critically was MYSELF because clearly i did not create a scenario that accomplished my goals and then i would look critically at the game system i tried. After all, after i set all the pieces, even built their characters, set the terrain and such, and gave them all the info they have of the system, blaming a really lopsided result on THEM and not ME or not the SYSTEM seems really off.

[/b] We all have lives and families and jobs too... our average age is now somwhere in the mid 40s and the youngest is mid 30s. Two are over 50. We take a different view... if you dont have time, dont play. Dont expect everyone else who MADE TIME... none of us expect free time really ever exists anymore... to lose out because of you. My rule is simple... if i dont have your revision by the session start, you just use last weeks stats for this session. Then, between now and next time, try and find the time. if this is not acceptable to you, then perhaps you need to find a different game. twice in two years we have had people play level down. never have we spent a session or even really part of a session with everyone who did get their characters done waiting for the others to catch up. playing 1 level down for one session is not gonna kill you. The only changes allowed are when something drastic happens that changes the possibilities. One example would be an after death scene that produces a radical change in the character. Another would be if new material, such as happened with the five splatbooks, is added to the "rules of the campaign" list. (it only happened for those 5 books img.) Otherwise, your selections are not changeable under normal circumstances. I generally keep the session in character more than not. If two players want to discuss rules or such, they do so while others are playing their scenes. With 7 players, i tend to keep things running more as group activities than solo so there isn't a lot of offline discussion. of course, it varies, some good, some bad. Another thing we do is we have a campaign BBS. During the week, players can post messages and hold discussions at their convenience and i can handle out of character stuff like rules questions and buying selling and the like. We even manage to do some roleplaying there on occasion. This is the place for one-on-one conversations and sidebar roleplaying... stuff which would not serve as well in a 7 people face-toface three hour session. That helps keep a bit of the bookkeeping down. The only time we "lose session time" is about three times a year the party typically has to sit down and do a loot run. While they can divvy simpler loot online and out of the way, every once in a while they need to discuss the back and forth and what do we keep what do we sell face-to-face. When the list of unclaimed items gets too long they spend about a half hour divvying up and selling off their loot... in character mind you... i cannot count the times i have seen the player wince as his character gave up something the player wanted. but the combination of offline bbs, email and basically a zero tolerance for not getting things done... means most of our sessions are sessions of roleplaying, not accounting.

Since you gave such a wonderful observation, let me toss my 2 cents in... First, in between "whiners" and "the", i hope you realize you changed subjects. "To(o) much math" is not a commentary on the LEVEL of the math, the complexity. It is a statement about the QUANTITY. In spite of many herotistaspropoganda pieces to the contrary, its not about algebra, its not about calculus, its not about differential equations or square roots... its about too much math... not too hard math. I have no problem doing simple addition and subtraction... however i do not want to do a whole lot of it for simple things. Do you shop at a grocery store where they make you add up your items at the register? Would you shop routninely at a grocery store that did make YOU add up your totals? Whats the problem? its not any HARDER than hero math. Why wouldn't you want to spend your time doing dozens of simple add and subtract in order to get your groceries? You should have learned the math you need by sixth grade, geesh, whats the problem? Now, the answer is that you would not shop at such a store unless they offered something you wanted that the other stores did not. Like say they did not charge sales tax or gave you a discount. So, for those who see the math in hero working for them, who think the greater number of calculations produces some meaningful result, gives better balance say, produces better characters or more fun games... then they might be inclined to endure the greater QUANTITY of math to get the bennies. However, to those who do NOT see the results as better, they just scratch their heads and wonder why you do all that work for "no gain." HERo makes the character creation system in many ways a part of the "gaming." People expect and treat, some more openly than others, skill at "chargen" as a rewardable trait which entitles you to more potent characters. I have seen "why shouldn't my experience get me more out of the character." more than a few times. For me thats the exact opposite approach i want. I want your experience with the character in play to give you the ability to make better choices, not your accounting skills in chargen to give you more plusses. To those who think hero math works and produces bettwe results... all i got to say is... official, published and confirmed as "preferred" by steve long "fighting array" allows for 24 CP you to spend actions to gain from 1-6 dex for CV purposes only which only work when you are within a certain distance of your buddy partner. 1-6 dex for 24 cp after a whole lotta math. +6 dex (not 1-6 dex, +6 dex) costs 18 cp, works all the time for a lot more than just cv and requires no hulking up actions or no buddy. Admittedly, i am often dense, but, i fail to see that my math efforts their added to my gaming experience there at all. HERo math does not reach outside the book to some mystical "balance" source, maybe in a tibetan monastary, and find balance. It simulates balance when you dont look too closely because the comparative characters are both built using the same system. you dont need a lotta math to pretend to get balance. you dont need a lotta math to get better characters. you dont need a lotta math to get good gaming experiences. you dont need a lotta math. or, at least, I don't. YMMV.

On DND and Xp... IMO the biggest single difference in DND vs FH is "starting level". DND allows you to start very low, 1st level being barely more than common folk in abilities. It then expects your power level to drastically increase over time, so that by mid-campaign challenges that were tough early on are inconsequential. FH, by default, using 100 pt ot 150 pt characters, instead starts you off much more competent, you are aleady past those early stages and ready to jump in. The power level increase is thus not as drastic over time. A decent example of this is seen in MnM which basically starts your super at 10th level. Most DND games i have seen starting in 3e have started at higher than 1st. I personally prefer starting between 3rd-5th myself with an eventual goal of 15th or so by game's end. However, since DND does not require you to start at first any more than FH forbids you from starting at 25... this is still a GM decision about his campaign. As for spending Xp vs levelling up... the fegree to which these interrupt or follow from the play is entirely a GM thing. In my game, leveling up occurs at the end of one session and the players have until the next session to provide me with a sheet. Since it never happens "in game" it never interrupts the flow. I require them to also submit their "nexts" (whats your next feat, your next attribute, etc) whenever they advance so everything they gain is "something i have been working at for a while." When we played FH years ago, Xp worked much the same way... given out at the end of an adventure and spent between sessions. I don;t know of any game i have played in where it was customary to spend XP for stuff during play. (In my current MnM game the gap between earning XP, spending XP and seeing that Xp in play is likewise a series of stages taking time... it takes an entire episode to earn the 2-3 xp and another entire episode to have the changes kick in... an episode means a month's worth real world gaming... usually 3-4 sessions of play.) Its similar with my dnd game although the leveling up is a bigger thing and occurs much less often.

OK, first off, i applaud your courage and daring. There are just not too many people who would come to a HERO GAMES board and start complaining about players and GMs being too hung up on points and game mechanics. Thats Daredevil Dan levels of intestinal fortitude right there. I have been GMing a DND 3e campaign for over two years now, having picked it up at about 2nd level and the 7 PCs are now to 13th level. i expect the game to conclude in about 7 months when our 3 year anniversary comes up with them being about 16th level or so. DnD provides a wide variety of classes, PRCs and the like for you to use or not for your campaign. The number of PRCs even from the core books, witc products including splatbooks" is large and obviously intended to cover a wide range of character archtypes, some from the lit and some from previous game implementations. I always too this as an embarrassment of riches... not as a requirement. I figured that each Gm would pick and choose the ones that make sense for his world and allow them. The ones that did not make sense for his world, he would disallow. It sounds like you and your GM have differing standards, and so the ones he has allowed are not to your taste. Thats an issue you might ought to address with your GM. In my game, as a for instance, i knew the PRCs were "works in progress", i knew that in many cases to do a PRC you needed to start out with that goal in mind, I knew that the core books for the PRCs (the five splatbooks) were not available at campaign start and would be trickling out slowly... so i said "NO PRCS" from the get go. In my next campaign, and any after that, at day 1 i will hand my players a list of acceptable classes, including PRCs. Once the game starts, this list will not change, barring some extreme situation. This way, all the players and myself start with an idea of "what the world looks like." This is simply to me a case of campaign management in an ongoing development. But, having classes doesn't mean you as a GM can just turn off your brain and somehow accept everything published as soon as it goes black and white. You still need to vette the material against the story you are telling and the world you want your characters to see. You may not like the ghostwalker, perhaps your friends do and perhaps others would. WOTC, like every other game company, is trying to appeal to more than just one taste and they, i suspect, understand that some of what they provide will be "way cool" to one person and at the same time "silly" to another. Thats also why they have customization of classes worked into the game. A ranger with TWF might not fit your world... it didn't mine, so you can tweak it (as i did.) I did leave the original class in, just gave it a "common source of training" to explain why they all got the same combat style... rangers of "that goddess" all learn TWF... makes more sense. I don't recall the ghostwalker prc specifically but iirc it was an attempt to port the clint eastwaood "mysterious pale rider" once dead character into a fantasy setting. I seem to recall thinking it was "cute" iirc and have considered it for a subset of my game because i treat back from the dead as significant in my game with cults and sects who either find it appealing or find it an abomination and with special feats with prereqs like "been dead but got better" and with "afterlife" scenes whenever a PC dies which make the event a truely "life altering" experience, significant and special. As such a prc or several which do put into the game potential changes for after-death... doesn't seem bad to me. (Tho i might have them black-lined on the initial "what classes" handout... so the players know there are more PRCs that they will only know of in play after certain circumstances.) Anyway, i can see how with any game a GM who defaults on his choices and does not worry about continuity and the like would be bugging to players with differing standards. Can you imagine if a Gm sat down with HERO in any genre and just said "buy what you want, as long as you total under X"? Now that would be a horrible experience for someone who wanted continuity and reason and such.

Ok just a few points to wrap this up and move back on topic... What would a Gm do with a "totally me" case where a player wanted the gme to do one thing he likes all the time... well that would hopefully have come out in the early campaign prep, when he talked to that player or if not, in the first few sessions, a warm up period in my games, where the GM throws the variety of things at them to gauge their reactions. Whether it comes out pre-game ir in warm-up, this goes right back to what I have already said... if the good gm feels he cannot satisfy this player in this game, which he obviously wont be unless all the other players are also total types, then you tell him "sorry its not gonna work. my gming is not good enough to handle this maybe this other Gm would be a possibly more in line with you so sorry but ..." direct the player if possible to another game but do not bring him in. ************************** Now, i am much more clear on your initial post. When you were referring to the differences in those who take 17s for character and those who take 18s for points and which one would be having more fun under a good GM, you were actually ONLY referring to the small percentage of "entreme total me" types and not your typical gamer whether he be a take 17 for fun or take 18 for points. Would it be safe to say then that for the majority of those who do efficient out their characters and who are likely to be choosing an 18 over a 17 or a 23 over a 22, that they are not being disucssed at all by your srgument about the various issues of characteristics? You were just lumping the small percentage of total me cases in, right? If so, thats great but I figure way too much space has been spent on this relatively small percentage of players. Perhaps we should return to the discussion of characteristics and scaling and such and try to keep in mind the majority of gamers who do not fit within that "extreme" category.

[/b] I think that if the food is good both will eat what they like. its my job as host to make sure both have what they like and sufficient amounts of it. And thats where we part company. If the GM knows his players preferences, he should be preparing a meal to their tastes, not a meal that is considered 'balanced" by some other groups standards. A good cook would have foods for the omnivore as well as foods for the carnivore that they like and get their fill of. he should NOT as a good GM give them what he considers balanced and ACCEPT your premise... that the picky eater should not be as satisfied as the less picky eater. He should not nod and wink and ask questions like "who do you think will enjoy their meal more?" Sound familiar? Since i do cook and have friends who definitely fit the carnivore role, I have frequently had to take time and effort to make sure their needs were covered... separating out some spaghetti sauce before i add the 'shrooms and peppers, fixing plain hamburgers od the side, and the like. If i wasn't going to bother to take those steps to make sure the meal was AS ENJOYABLE for them as for everyone else, i would be doing them a disservice by inviting them. I am a better host than that. If the question of "which will enjoy the game more?" is acdeptable for this good Gm as showing an inequity he is not serving all his players well. If its interfering with their enjoyment of the game, even if you consider it balanced, then that is not a minor issue. The currency by which a game is measured is the amount of fun, not how "balanced" it is. At the point that you accept the notion given by your question... that it SHOULD BE EXPECTED that a "balanced" game run by a "good" GM WILL produce inequities in his players enjoyment... thats its somehow acceptable for one player to be getting less fun than another in a GOOD game, then you have lost sight of what a good game or even a GOOD GM is, IMO. A good GM by my syandard tries and succeeds at making his game fun for everyone and does not just accept that his game will be "not as much fun" for players he permits to join. "not as much fun" should be the enemy the GM faces off against, not an ally he takes under his wing.

[/b] "Guess which player will have more fun in a game run by a good GM?" Well for all your revision, this question still stands out. The question certainly seems to indicate that you feel that in a game run by a good GM the number cruncher will have less fun. Now, perhaps you can view the amount of fun each player in a game having as some how independent of the GM, somehow define this difference in fun in the game as NOT being the result of the GMs choices, somehow the GM is now not responsible for this outcome... i cannot. Hence the apparent differences in what we call "good GMs". A good GM doesn't foist the blame onto his players for their enjoying his game less than others and IMO doesn't just dismiss this as "their fault" or some other silliness. In other words, when the GM like you seems perfectly fine with thinking enjoyment variances because of the PLAYER are the way things are, as opposed to seeing one player enjoying the game more as a failure on the GMs part to run his game fairly and respectfully towards all the players, then there is a disconnect. So, if a GM had players who were not all that interested in roleplaying but more interested in having a weekly throw down to blow off steam, then he would be a good GM if he still forced on them about an even split between rping and fighting? in my world, the "good" GM does not just define his campaign based on some arbitrary notion of "evening out" a number of different elements in spite of the players. instead he chooses the flavors and environments anf focuses based on the desires of the players. The players are not "the problem." Its not "the players fault" if the enjoyment levels are noticably different. You asked the question about which player would be happier or was it having more fun in a game run by a good Gm and contextually provided the answer to be one of them, not both. That establishes that in your eyes a good GM is not necessarily one who makes sure all his players enjoy the game equally. That raises the question of what you see as a good GM. If you did not want that issue to be raised, then you should not have asked the question. So, its the player's fault? If the GM does not provide situations that make that player as happy as the others, its the player who is to be held accountable? The GM is still doing well, is still a good GM even though he doesn't run games which balance out the fun for the players? Alternative viewpoint... when a GM allows a player into his game, he acdepts a responsibility to make the game enjoyable and fair. Part of fairness means not showing favoritism and that means in part making the game AS FUN for every player he accepts as any other. A "good GM" does this, sets this as his goal, and does not fost the blame off on "its the player, he doesn't get it" when that player's enjoyment is less when dealing with the plots, the scenes, the stories the GM provides him. Well, unless you automatically decide the ROLL player does not like the roleplaying but the ROLE player does like the ROLL playing, then it would seem that in a game with even splits both would be as bored by the oppositie's time in the sun, as the other. You seem to keep perpetuating the notion that its the role player who is better off and passing this benefit for him and flaw for the other as THEIR FAULT or THEIR CREDIT. I keep coming back to the notion that a "good GM" does not run a game with these two mythical guys that produces the result you describe. I submit that running a game in which it is accepted thata SELECT SUBSET of the players "getting bored/not having fun" is expected and is even their own fault and not the GM's is not the trademark of a "good GM".

Ohhh Ohhh, can i try? drum rolls.... "In a game run by a good GM, both would have the same fun, because a good Gm is making sure all of his players have fun and are treated fairly and equally and that he doesn't show favoritism towards any player or bias against another player." Is that right? Did i get it? Do I win a prize? I hope so... i almost checked the box which said... "The player who chose to limit himself to 17 will have more fun because the good Gm will, as a matter of course, show favoritism to him and make sure he has more fun, while he punishes the guy who took the 18 because that "dared to take an 18" player must be a bad person or a bad gamer and deserved it. A good GM would be doing his job just right if the "dared to 18" guy was less happy or having less fun than the "takes a 17" guy." I decided at the last moment that this description might actually fall under the "bad gm" section. I hope i made the right choice as to what you would earmark as a "good GM." I really really do. Waiting anxiously for my score...

so for 2 pts i get X and for four points i get X plus 4 pts of figureds (rec stun ed) and a bonus to con checks... thats the lesson you are trying to teach me? thats the "see, the system works" example you prefer? Instead let me ask you to consider an alternative viewpoint... Why would it be wrong or inferior or not the way things should be if every point spent on con (or every 2 points rather) got you the same amount of benefit? Why would it be wrong for "2 pts spent on con" to have a consistent value in terms of the benefits it provides?

Suppose i am building my character and i am now deciding where to spend those cp to represent my character. i am doing all this math to make sure my character turns out right. I just saved 2 cp from flawing my multipower slot to full phase... what do i do? I weigh the options between +1 OCV with my lightning bolt or +1 con... +1 OCV is a flat out conrete thing. i know what I am getting. So I look at +1 CON... which costs the same. For my 2 pts there i get 1 higher threshold for con stunning, 1 higher value for adjustment effects, and 2 more endurance... (assuming a 21 con before the 2 points) no, wait, i get for my 2 points, 1 higher threshold for con stunning, a higher value for adjustment powers, 2 more endurance AND +1 con checks AND +1 recovery AND +1 ED and +1 stun (if the con was 22 before spending.) frankly, i really prefer the latter value for my 2 cp rather than the former. it sure looks like 2 points buys either a little or a lot and not a consistent amount.

1 pt of power defense is as cheap or cheaper than any characteristic except comeliness and is going to protect every characteristic and power. Buying "bad breaks" levels of characteristics on the basis of "adjustment powers" is a mathematically dubious notion, to say the least.

As a sort of linking of two debates... the strength is too cheap and this one, how about an out of the box, or rather, more in the box in hero terms approach. Get rid of characteristics altogether. make strength not an issue of "i have a 60 vs your 50" and turn it into "i can lift so and so more than you and throw it farther than you." Take all the things that characteristics actually do for you and set them out as individual traits to be purchased. Dexterity would go away and charaxters would buy OCV, DCV, dex skill/check bonuses, actions per round and initiative as individual elements. A character wh had aptitude in lots of these areas would be considered or described as dextrous or agile. Intelligence would go away, and characters would buy per roll bonuses, int skill bonuses, and so on. basically, in HERO speak, you treat the "dex score" as just an FX of the "powers" bought. "+3 with all dex skills 15 pts SFX: dextrous" This seems very HEROesque toi me for two basic reasons: 1. You are buying the effect, the result (OCV DCV etc) on a strictly cost-benefit relationshipwith each effect charged individually and not buying a package which then gives you a variable amount pf benefit per cost. 2. It allows you to buy "what you want" element by element and not as a larger predefined batch of powers... you BUILD your abilities, not select them from a predefined picklist. ********************* Another take on this, a more half-way or hybrid, would be to charge a single flat cost for each characteristic. Strength dex con etc would all cost 2 points per rank say. However, each characteristic would give you only bonuses to skill rolls AND half its rank in "figured characteristics" Example... I buy my dex up to 23 costing me an additional 26 points. I now make all dex skill rolls and checks at +5. i also now have 12 cp to spend on "dex related figured characteristics and traits" which can include initiative, speed, OCV and DCV levels. This puts all characteristics in the same boat as to how much secondary benefits you gain... how much "benefit" you take from it. Its no longer that strength gets a lot more figureds than body... both provide 1/2 their rank in "figureds" and both cost the same.

The biggest problem i have along these lines is that this high spot and low spots characteristics system is one of the most egregious elements of the "learning curve" issue with hero... where a veteran and a novice will build "the same character" but the veterans character with the same total points will be far more potent. A nvice is likely to have a 19 dex or a 22 or not recognize the "many fronts" benefits of 23 vs 18 etc... he is not going to be as adept at milking the round offs and the break points. its going to show and in a big way. granularity is fine as long as it serves a purpose. The basis of the hero system or any point buy system is "the points matter" and if "+1 more constitution" costs 2 irregardless of whether it is being applied to 21 con or 23 con, then it should give the same benefit back.

We are not the same people. I am not me nor is he him. We are absolutely two distinct individuals, no matter whay the shrinks say. What do they know anyway. *************** FWIW... i think the notion that my age is significant to be somehow factored into unacceptable negative numbers is more perturbing to me than the thought that someone has discovered our secret. Its kind of how all those "born in BC" guys must have felt when the younger "AD" crowd looked at them as geezers... "Man you are sooo old they report your age in a negative number!!!" I would make a Logan's Run reference but... the irony is that we are approaching or have passed the point where anyone who saw and remembers Logan's run is probably past 30 years old. sigh...

[/b] Ok, so it wasn't you but someone else, maybe someone else using your sig, that said... "And if the only "objective imbalance" you acknowledge is two characters who are absolutely identical, except that one is better, then a 1st level thief was not "unbalanced" against a 20th level fighter, because the latter can’t pick locks" Do you have any idea who this mystery man posting using your name is? My apologies for thinking that the Lucius" who posted this, bringing 1 vs 20 into the mix was actually you. I thought we were already there, starting sometime around the point where you took the opportunity to interject the obligatory dnd slam into a discussion of how to make hero work. Of course, you have now backed off that statement, effectively changing it from a slam at DND to a reference to old dnd, so there is probably no point in it as discussions about old systems merits serve little benefit to those playing newer systems. Glad to see it all worked out in the end.

i'm sorry, but i really have to ask, cause this sounds as throwback hero as if someone were railing on the nightly news about how everyone knows leeches help draw the evil spirits from the blood of sick people. Somewhere between 3rd-4th-5th i thought HERo did get away from the "quest for a flashlight" stages where your wristwacth had to be purchased and your condoms had to be paid for with cp... "do i buy the IIF/F Immunity to sexually transmitted diseases 1 charge lasting 1 hour or do i add in the ribbed for your pleasure model with +1 to seduction roll or do i go for another +1 ocv with my spear?" and most GMs get beyond the point of "no you cannot go to KMART until you have enough experience saved up to buy the flashlight. Do you want to spend Xp on the condoms or not?" shudder! next thing you know phlogiston will be hailed as the next great power source.