theinfn8

In the Norse myths, giants are portrayed as elemental beings of chaos and change. The Norse gods themselves are a representation of order, kind of forcing themselves onto the universe. There's not a lot of "rampaging giants" in Midgard, it is mostly gods seeking out trouble with the giants. Taking items of power, looking for a fight. In fact, on numerous occasions, the powers of the giants are a match for the gods.

Taking the previous idea of a race in decline, humans would represent that same ordering force as the gods in the sagas. And yeah, the giants might very well be hell bent on tearing down that order (in general) due to that slow advance. But, being chaotic beings by nature, they don't really play nice in groups. Which is a societal weakness that might be contributing to their decline.

You might find them in places that are strong in elemental energies. Places not so hospitable to (human) life. Tops of mountains, the desert, maybe even some parts of the inland sea you mentioned. It could be they lose some power when ranging too far from those places because humans have supplanted them in places of power elsewhere. The chaotic elemental energies were "tamed" by humans, as it were.

Just some rambly thoughts way too early in the morning when I can't get back to sleep.

First an observation. There are many players that do not enjoy failing at something that is supposed to be their characters schtick. When shooting a fireball at an enemy, they want to know that they can rely on that ability, and wouldn't even take RSR if it wasn't required by the game rules. To them, failing that roll is "Not Fun". This same thing happens with people who don't want to miss in combat. To that player, missing in combat makes the game "Not Fun". There is nothing necessarily wrong with this mindset. It is simply a different way to play.

I posit, that if this is an issue in your game, then you might need to sit down with the players and have a discussion about tone, genre conventions, and what everyone expects out of the game.

Now, that being said, there are a couple things you can do system-wise to reinforce this. You could enforce all, some or none of these suggestions as fits your particular magic build.

I will echo from above, enforce your Skill Maxima. If the player wants to run the skill up, well, that's how they want to play.

Remove RSR as a limitation (a -0 mandatory limitation). It is just "how magic works" and there is no expectation of getting points back.

Set magic ranks that ramp up the skill cost more aggressively as the AP goes up. AP 1-20 gets -1/20, 21-40 gets -1/10, 41-50 -1/5, etc.

If you want to tax the mage a little more, make them pay for access to each rank.

And probably more options. This is getting kinda long.

28 minutes ago, Opal said:

WoD, the way the monsters were kept out of the limelight was front and center of each game:  Masquerade, Delirium, Paradox....

Yeah, even a Mage game with the dominant paradigm suffered from Paradox. They did well in that regard.

I dare say, D&D at this stage is trying to emulate itself!

On 4/15/2021 at 10:05 PM, Opal said:

Well, I did it, I used the 'b' word, mea culpa...

...but, what I was trying to say was that character concepts could be, downright unplayable in and of themselves, irrespective of system.  "Unplayable" being worse than merely imbalanced.  For a simplistic example, your character concept could be "can do everything every other PC can do, but 10 times as good" it doesn't matter the system, the DM, the long-suffering nobility of the other players, it's an imbalanced concept, in itself.  But even worse, you can have a concept that simply can't be played in the context of a multi-player game - any game.

 

Unfortunately I opened up the old Pandora's Jar of worms:  Perfect balance is impossible, so we should revel in utterly imbalanced games.  Yeah, no, not what I was getting at, at all.

 

 

 

 

Balance is a quality that games have to varying degrees.  It may not be readily quantifiable, but qualitatively, it's objectively real.  And, ceteris paribus (though, like 'perfect balance is impossible' ceteris never is quite paribus), a better-balanced game is a better game than a more-poorly balanced one.  That some character concepts, by there very nature, are unplayable or at least imbalanced in and of themselves, doesn't change the relative qualities of the various systems that you'd better not try to play those concepts in, because the concepts are that way even before system comes into the picture.

 

I also brought up the Fellowship, sorry, my fault again, which gets brought up a lot because D&D is conventionally considered derivative of Tolkien, yet can't begin to model the Fellowship in a way that, in play, has any chance of resulting in anything even faintly resembling LotR.  I think that really implies something else:  that D&D isn't nearly as Tolkien-derivative as it's given demerits for, but owes a lot more to Lieber, Moorcock, Howard, even Lovecraft - and, especially, though you may never have heard of him, to Karl Edward Wagner.  It just lifted a few prominent bits - Ents, wights, wargs, orcs, balrogs, Mithril shirts, glowing blades, invisibility rings, elfin cloaks, Hold Portal, pyrotechnics, fire seeds.  But as far as the sorts of adventures you actually did, D&D PCs were a lot more like Karl Edward Wagner's Kane (a completely amoral, immortal, mercenary, fighter/magic-user - the original murder hobo) than Gandalf, Aragorn, Leggo Lass,* Gimlet, and those other short dudes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Leggo Lass so needs to show up as some Joker-clone's sidekick someday.

Perhaps brevity worked against me. It would be more accurate to say "objective balance is a myth". Each play group (or GM) will pick the system that matches best with the play goal they are looking for. There are obviously a ton of people that find the setup and genre assumptions inherent in D&D to be to their liking. I pick the system I run my games in based on the goal of the game (and the comfort level of my players, who are incredibly patient with me and phenomenal roleplayers). Each system is balanced differently and does things with different assumptions.

To get back towards the character concept issue, I typically pitch my game to the players, usually with a system or two in mind, and we figure out how they want to play it. Basic character conception. Then we use the system that best emulates our desired ends. Usually one of the systems I had in mind, but I've been surprised on occasion. It has never been D&D 5e, but it has been 4e, oddly enough.

Agreed on the concepts 5e (any "e") fails on is more complex magic users. Never been a huge fan of "vancian" magic.

I concede the LotR argument. I meant simply to illustrate that such a construct could be viable, and you confirmed one potential means of doing it. Even Hero taken straight up doesn't really lay down a hard and fast attempt at balance and doesn't do the best indicating that it is something the players need to work out (GM being a player as well).

LotR is like playing with all the lethality options running. Good, till you mess up, then the character gets their name in the dead book. It does make sense given the nature of combat/war, particularly in the age of swords. In the middle of a battlefield taking a hit to an arm could likely mean your death. Plus the whole story as allegory makes that perspective take on a little more meaning.

That's fair. Everything I heard about Awakening made me avoid acquiring anything from it, even the fluff. I've heard Mage 20th was the best of both worlds, but that was the only day I missed when WW gave away a pdf a day for a week. Damn my luck.

I guess that means I would tend to prefer/run a hidden world style urban fantasy. With the exception of a monster of the week style game. Love Supernatural, don't know that I would want to play in it.

On 4/6/2021 at 1:30 PM, Opal said:

I know this is the opposite of what LoneWolf just said, but it's not really disagreement.

 

There are really very few character concepts that /can/ be done in any game system, in a way that's playable, let alone grasps that elusive holy grail of balance.  You won't be able to get all the abilities the concept should have, those you can get will likely come packaged with others you don't, foundational abilities it should have always had end up waiting to later, or abilities that should be rarely-used at a high price are just always there, and on and on.  

 

D&D, especially 5e - or 1e or 2e - is egregious, of course, combining limited choice with profound imbalance - though it's notoriously Tolkien-inspired, the Fellowship isn't a viable party, for instance.  Aragorn, not yet a lord or ranger-lord at the start, can't be more than 8th, Boromir, likewise, Gimli & Legolas face single-digit level limits, while Gandalf is an angelic god-being arch-mage, and Merry, Pippin, Samwise & Frodo are just regular folks who've never adventured before.  It doesn't even really work in LotR without profound author force, for that matter, so I guess that's a tad unfair.

But even in Hero you'll find campaign guidelines that hamper a concept, and system necessities that tempt you to compromise it for the sake of playability.

 

Finally, virtually all RPGs, are designed around or team or party - the player:GM ratio is just too high, and the players double as audience - so the 'lone wolf' and 'reluctant hero' archetypes are non-starters, regardless of powers, abilities, or more specific concepts, and other archetypes - the Jimmy Olsen or Steve Trevor in constant need of rescue, but still having meaning in the story - are necessarily relegated to NPCs.

 

 

Well, there's a couple of things that I feel need some adressing.

First, as gamers, there's a tendancy to search for that idea of "game balance". But it's kind of a myth. In a class-based system, there will always be unbalancing class structure. In a points-based system, who's to say that a skill is worth Xd6 damage? Ultimately, we choose a system that reflects the personal goal that we are looking for.

Secondly, since balance is a myth, we must accept that there will be unbalance and allow choices by players that serve the fiction. The party in LotR is totally viable. If the hobbit players choose to start the game with 8 levels in Peasant (to match the 8 levels of Ranger, or Fighter of the other characters) because they want to play the story arc of that development, why stop them? The players going in should know that there is a good chance the characters will die. If given the framework of the adventure the players should know what their choices mean. The much maligned Rifts is a system that accepts this lack of balance and designs classes based on what they conceptually do, not some idea of balance. The players and GM decide what to allow or not based on the needs of the fiction they are trying to create.

Third, (and last, cause this is getting long) a lot of the strife with character concept is the failure to conceive at appropriate scale. Level using systems inherently imply a nobody to somebody progression. If the players want to play at a higher scale, then starting level should be higher. That failure to scale appropriately is where a lot of failure to meet concept comes from.

I have more to say, but I'll let that stand for a bit.

I've alway been a big fan of the Mage: the Ascension setting. The push and pull on the fight for consensus. The gray of the right and wrong of belief. It's ripe with built in conflict. But the Storyteller system itself, not the biggest fan. I've played around with a Fate based conversion, but it ends up looking very similar to Dresden Files magic. I guess this was kind of my impetus towards running my all-mage Hero game (in which I used the Fate/Dresden world building methods with the group in session 0).

I'm of a mind to agree with the suggestions replacing Wealth with Agriculture or Nature. The "sky" deity is a long enduring mythological archetype and having an earth based deity to balance it out is equally as common.

If I were going religion as a theme, I would just delete the last chaos deity entirely and make a show of there being a missing deity. When the players make that connection (after throwing a truck load of clue-by-fours at them) and ask about it, I would smile and say "Huh, interesting, I wonder why that is." When they damn well know I planned it all out. Then I would let the players do my work for me and figure out what deity it was over the course of the game. Maybe trying to stop someone from unleashing a locked away deity or some such.

There is also a book of petty gods out there. I think it's on drivethru free or pwyw.

Just my thoughts.

I love making my own maps as well. I'm hitting that "little time to make stuff" phase again, so I'm borrowing a lot. I hope you have fun and enjoy yourself!

In a frontier type setting, you actually wouldn't be likely to find much in the way of walls/fortifications surrounding a village. Building that kind of wall with such a small population would be incredibly time and resource heavy. Every bit of time you spend on that is time not spent improving your own lands and home. What's more likely is the town scattered around a fort on a nearby hill, with the populace retreating to the fort when the alarm sounds.

The advantage of this for your case would be using those undefended village maps and then grabbing a separate fort map that is "nearby". Pre-existing maps and a logical reason for it to be that way.

19 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

Will your fief have any impact on the game?  If you are not getting any in game benefit to having a fief then it does not need to be purchased or even written up.  Even if some parts of the game takes place there you may not need to purchase anything besides the wealth perk.  If your fief is just an ordinary village with ordinary buildings you don’t need to write it up as a base.     If your manor has some sort of magical protections or other special abilities then you may need to write it up.  

I agree with this. If it isn't really expected to impact play, there's no need to even pay points for it, let alone write it up. If the fief is where you go when you unwind after an adventure and gear up for the next and move on, why bother with more than naming it, say it's home, and leave it at that? As fans of the system, we tend to think in terms of "how do I write this up in the rules", when the reality is, sometimes you don't.

On 2/12/2021 at 1:11 AM, dmjalund said:

Striking Appearance, Insects find you repellant

This comes back to an EGO roll type situation. But it's brilliantly simple.

On 2/12/2021 at 9:45 AM, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

From my perspective, this is a Side Effect on the spell. If the caster fails his roll, he uses up more of his mana pool. I'd call it a -1/4 Limitation, but the exact value depends on how badly depleted the pool would be by a failed roll.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to make it too complicated either. I love the chart and all the math that went into it though. I think I would be inclined to add a roll of 3 gives 1/2 END cost (cause players love that moment of awesome), chuck the limitation, and say "this is just an effect of how magic operates in this world".

I would have to disagree with the spiked pavise as an ideal shield for delving. The idea that you're going to be able to shove it into the ground for a defensive barricade assumes that you have soft ground to shove it into. I have my doubts about the ground ever being much beyond solid rock. Additionally, if you do find a place to stick it in, your archers/casters will only gain marginal benefit, as they would need to go to a full standing position to fire past your front rank. Better for the shield guy to just use the shield themselves and be the arrow sponge. Better to go with a more traditional kite shield with a sideways strap. You get the top to bottom coverage your back ranks need, it's more difficult for it to be pushed passed, and you could still open slightly to provide more target area to those behind when commanded.

I'll have to think some more about weaponry, but it does beg the question, are you kitting out for solo or building a party to go with?

Yeah, mostly, to me it comes down to, how effective is the ability? If it's just "My character hates mosquitoes and bugs" and is therefore mostly an RP thing, I wouldn't want them to have to spend more than a handful of points (and maybe none at all if I never intend for it to affect play). If I were running some hardcore jungle/swamp game, then not getting stung could mean no diseases and potential side quests related to finding a cure, so they would pay at least pay something for it. If there were going to be a lot of bug type encounters (like a Shadowrun type bug spirits game), then I would definitely make them pay for it, maybe even going with a more expensive route.

The change environment approach is what I would have gone with. Something to discourage them a little.

If it was just a player that wanted something ancillary and not combat related, I might say it's an affect of Life Support, Immune to Normal Insects, with AoE applied. The whole shouldn't cost more than 5 pts.

You do you, man. I'm glad you found a route that works for you.

I play using any system that fits best with the genre/style/story of what I want to play. The flexibility inherent in Hero is why I always come back to it. There's always more than one way to do things and none of those answers are wrong.

On 12/26/2020 at 5:12 PM, Duke Bushido said:

How about Barrier?

 

One of the oft-mentioned examples for that is mound of earth, etc.

 

Create a Barrier, lay it flat, and be done.

 

This is the first thing that popped into my head and the route I would probably go.

On 10/21/2020 at 4:07 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Alternatively, why not either let them write their characters up at 175 points, and you add magic items to bring them each up to 400 points?  Or let them write their characters up at 400 points, including magic items of their choice?  

 

If the players and the GM want to play in a game where characters have a bunch of magic items... why not just start out with that?  Why pretend that it's a "standard heroic" power level game?  Why go through the gyrations of placing magic items for them to find?  

 

In a way, this is something like the "resource pool" expanded to include magic items, which seems to be pretty common among Fantasy Hero games.  

This I get behind. But I would dove tail it into metered CP. The major problem with a lot of RPGs is the arms race that takes place between the threats and the PCs. PCs get stronger, bad guys need to scale accordingly. Which ultimately means the PCs haven't really gotten stronger. Start the PCs off at a competent level and stay there. Hell, there's no reason you can't all tell an awesome story *and never hand out a single point of XP*. The players don't need a ton of power bump if they are enjoying telling the story.

I prefer, and my players concur, with giving a chunk of points at the end of a story arc, with nothing inbetween. If you start the PCs out at a competent level to begin with, then (emulating fiction), the PCs will stay relatively the same through out the story and you'll only see permanent changes at the end of the plot line. If they come across a magic item during the plot it will not be a permanent part of the character unless the player wants to spend CP on it to have it show up in the next story. Unless it is plot driving, like an uber powerful yet utterly corrupting ring. Then you can have that nastiness "for free" and we'll see how it plays out...

6 hours ago, zslane said:

Why not start with the game effects of these rings in the original game and translate them roughly into Hero System terms?

I haven't played L5R and my sysyem exposure to it is limited. I just pulled out my 2e book, then gave it and the 5e beta a once over. It does leave me with some initial thoughts.

If all you're aiming for is emulating the magic system, then multipowers with an element skill might be the best way to go. From what I can see, in the older version, the only time rings are used directly is in magic, where it substitutes for a characteristic. That would make this approach the most similar.

If you're more interested in flavouring heavily toward L5R Beta, you could consider dropping the normal Hero characteristics and using the rings instead. That would require a lot of remapping though; 4 rings (and 1 that might be basically ignored), 6 Hero characteristics. I see a lot of downsides to this approach that might not make it worth the time it takes.

The world has an awesome setting though (which is mostly the reason I got the book back when). I don't know that I would want anything more than the magic system above and normal Hero. Most of the strength is in the roleplaying potential, not the mechanics.

I meant more if I were running it Agents of Smash style. But that's a solid plot. That's going in my back pocket for the future.

On 6/7/2020 at 4:52 PM, Sketchpad said:

How about a joint task force between STARS and STRIPES to increase public trust and popularity for the government agencies. Members would take on code names and patriotic costumes to fight crime while also being filmed for public viewing. This could lead to some interesting adventures as they try and maintain public face, while also dealing with marketing craziness, and maybe the eventual villain who might be behind their public rise. While there would be a team leader who leads during missions, all members would be taking orders from liaisons from both agencies who assign them missions. Depending on your players, you could even have public blogs (or written as vlogs) where they write up missions that would be available to their fans. 

This made me think about Agents of Smash, with little robot cameras constantly zooming around the PCs as they go about their business. Constantly in the public eye. I would be tempted to make some kind of reward for short little "reality TV" side monologues. "Yeah, I picked my buddy up and threw him, but I had no idea if his force field was strong enough to handle the impact..." The whole game would have to be very tongue in cheek.

Well, since they are owned by the DoJ, your looking at mostly running stuff in the US proper and fighting crime. I don't really see that much different from a traditional supers campaign. Since they're federal government, I would think more like FBI. They probably have a field office they work out of that covers a certain geographic area. Whenever an event happens that stinks of powers, the local police call them in to investigate (or deal with if it's something ongoing).

I don't know enough about your world and how normals interact, but you could find a lot of mileage from having a known public office they're required to work out of. Politics of being a super. Does the community hate it? Do they love it? Both?

Honestly, I would sit down and ask my players what kind of game they want. If they want a war, push them over to STARS instead. If they want investigation shenanigans, responding to local hotspots, and chasing down villains to bring them to justice, then keep STRIPES and run it like a normal supers game.