Shoug

This is also a funny coincidence with my setting. "Elf" is just the term for "Man Fae". "Fae" in the setting means "Is a Lens and is a living thing." They are usually animals but with distinctive "Fae" features. An Elf is just a man with distinctive Fae features (long wispy eyebrows, pointed ears, eyes with glowing pupils and no distinct iris/whites, fine/straight hair, etc.)

In my setting, Dragons are basically the ultimate incarnation of a Demon. A Demon is a kind of spirit that infects mortals and perverts their nature. They're extremely common, and not conscious, intelligent actors either (they don't think or decide things, they are just... spirits, abstractly). If a person happens to become infected with a demon, they'll feel driven to indulge it. The thing is, by indulging a demon, it becomes possible to exercise their power. But the more of a demon's power a person exercises, the more they embody the demon. At the lowest level of embodiment, a person may take on normal physical features that somewhat make sense given the demon they're indulging. Indulging Gluttony would make you fat, Fear would make you gaunt maybe, Wrath would give you a viscous looking furrowed brow, Greed would give you... I don't know, a glint in your eye. Eventually a person crosses over and becomes a Ghoul or Fiend, and if they're powerful enough and can handle the demands the transformation makes on their body, and if they survive, they can become a Dragon. So Dragons couldn't give a rat's ass if you wear another Dragon's skin. They're way to evil for that.

I wish the videos were longer. And I almost wish that they'd look at more than video evidence, because comic books can be quite detailed in their descriptions and explanations of a character's power. But I appreciate the distinction, it keeps the power levels down at a manageable level.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to across the board boycott evil creeps. I mean, a lot of times their wage is payed with taxpayer dollars. Good on you for putting your foot down somewhere, though.

This is funny. I get where you're coming from and, depending on the world we'd be talking about, I would tend to agree with you. But as it so happens, I have inadvertently build my own world in such a way that Elves are so varied that they cannot even be considered a race. "Elf" is a loose category of beings, virtually none of which are similar enough that you'd call them the same "denomination" of Elf. In my setting, an "Elf" is a Lensecrafter who has made himself into a Lens (a Lens is a kind metaphysical object related to the magic system (to massively simplify, they let you "see" magic, and therefore use it)). So Elves aren't born, they're made. And they're more like superheroes than mages, capable of powerful magic, but limited by what type of Lens they are (Lens of Fear, Light, Sky, Form, whatever). I could go on, but one must learn to reign it in when it comes to rambling about one's own fantasy setting on internet forums.

I think many talents would be perfect for simulating integration with a computer system. Danger sense, combat sense, absolute range sense, absolute time sense, etc. These are *fantastic* candidates for being skinned as having 24/7 supercomputer integration. Personally, if it were my character, I would like the computer integration to be so seamless that I don't need the Follower mechanics. That would be cooler, to me.

I think I need to see some more examples of building this thing as a follower being advantageous or significantly different then just making the computer an SFX. Like, what are some contexts where your character is doing one thing and the computer is doing another and you need them to be separate? He's been knocked out but the computer is still online, so he's just partially resistant to unconsciousness? What does he want to happen while he's asleep or knocked out? Hack something, acquire some kind information, communicate with teammates?

I think of neutrality between these things as being the most optimal, "divine" state. In fact, I have toyed with a "Big Three" racial system where each race is biased towards a different aspect of chaos and order. Dwarves are cursed with an affinity for order, and so stay holed up in their halls, hold on to even their most ancient of traditions, and hoard treasure. Elves are cursed with an affinity for chaos, and so live by hunting and gathering in the woods, can never settle physically nor spiritually (these elves are obviously not like tolkein elves - instead they are modeled more like Wood Elves from TES). Humans are the most successful and prevalent race, because of their ability to find balance in chaos and order. They can settle down, but also reach out and explore. They hold onto old ideas, but can let them go when they get in the way of progress.

I absolutely love the concepts Chaos and Order, and I absolutely hate DnD alignments. I have never used them, and will never use them. But I don't eliminate ethics from my games. I don't need DnD alignments to have Orcs that are only evil. Evil orcs aren't about cosmic alignment, it's about nature, and empirical observations. All orcs are evil not because they're forced by the cosmos to be that way, but because they *just are.* In the same way that all mountains are tall, and all oceans are deep, all orcs are evil. It's just part of the nature of reality (in a setting with evil orcs that are done well). I'm not even saying orcs *should* be evil. All I'm saying is that there's nothing to be ashamed of in using evil orcs for slaughter in your games. If your orcs are evil and only for slaughter, that's cool to me. If you orcs are the misunderstood savage trope, that's fine by me as well. It's a worldbuilding choice that I appreciate, I don't think it's vapid or shallow or for low-brow pulp fantasy reading plebeians who don't have sophisticated tastes or whatever. I don't think it's for *racists* either. I think it's just for people who have enough imagination to appreciate something as simple as imminent material danger. I also don't think it's any more of an "illogical" worldbuilding choice than any of the other thousands of ultimately arbitrary changes that we make to our worlds so that they differ from Reality Prime. In fact, the less I know about why orcs are evil, the eviler and scarier they become for me. Because that would actually make them eviler and scarier to the denizens of the world. I hope I never have to play with somebody who's gonna roll their eyes when they hear a village has been completely razed and nobody knows why.

I totally understand, which is why I posted the disclaimer. I used to balk at these type of games too, games with absurd learning curves, games with toxic communities. Then I found my self sucked into 4 of them over the course of a few years. Quantum Redshift and Windlands, which are both racing games (Windlands is also an exploration game, however) where the beginner can't avoid smashing his face into walls none stop the whole time they're playing, and the master can achieve unbelievable heights of speed and fluidity. In Natural Selection 2, if you don't know the "hidden" movement controls of Skulk, the baseline alien unit, you won't be able to kill even a single marine. On top of that, to be effective strategically and tactically, you have to know the maps inside and out (literally you have to know about the air duct systems which skulks can use to quickly bypass certain parts of the map), and you have to know all the rooms of the map by name. It's a game that simply cannot be played without voice chat. It's absurd. That being said, it has produced some of the most intense and rewarding gaming experiences that I've ever had. Things like having your back against the wall for an hour before turning everything around and winning the match. Things like calling clutch shots for your team and they actually listen and the stratagem actually works and you're just sitting there feeling like a fucking genius. Great game.

You have literally just listed a bunch of complications, which are only in game penalties, penalties which you can eschew if you don't want those last 50 points, thereby using points instead of taking in game penalties. I never said "In game penalties aren't Hero." I said, "Not being allowed to use points to avoid in game penalties isn't Hero." There are very little "in game penalties" in Hero that you can't get out of with a single downpayment of character points. There are loads of ways you can spend points to just bypass certain game effects, Hero comes with built in hard counters to everything, things like NND, Affects Desolid, Killing Damage, etc. I mean, this philosophy manifests itself all the way to the core of the system. In most games, you are only allowed a very specific amount of action economy. Because action economy is pretty much the best thing to optimize in almost any game, it is usually tightly controlled, one cannot simply get more. In Hero? 10 points per extra phase you want to have. You can just pay for any amount that you want. Now, I understand that it's up to the GM to set the constraints on these things, choose the maxima and stuff, but even the way the maxima rules are written don't stop people from being able to pay points to get what they want. They just have to pay more. If the GM really wants control over the action economy of the game, he has to house-rule hard caps. At the ground floor of Hero's design is a philosophy of unlimited freedom to spend character points for the mechanical effects that you want. If you want to spend all your points to have no complications and 1 or 2 abilities which are virtually limitless in their application, you can. It's one of the things I love about the system. You can make a single ability so powerful that it is the whole concept of your character. Imagine the fun that could be had with a character who has nothing but 20 strength of TK, no endurance, increased range, fine control. Imagine if he was always invisible too. You could build that guy on 175 points, play him as a ghost in a low fantasy game. In any other game, this would be impossible or require tremendous house ruling. DnD has no TK that isn't some kind of spectral ghost thing like a hand or servant or some stupid garbage, there's no way to have unlimited invisibility without a magic item that just gives it to you, there's nothing.

The part about in game penalties vs cost penalties. The game is set up so that you can make your abilities arbitrarily powerful and all you must do is pay the cost. You can just keep buying more d6 of effect, you can buy NND and just completely ignore defenses, you can buy autofire with penalty skill levels to just attack more times than one at once, you can make it cost no endurance to use, you can make it take almost no time to use. You can just keep piling on bonuses at as long as you've got the character points for them you are allowed to have the power (unless the GM says no, but the books provide no guidance for GMs on what to say no to, they just have to bump into overpowered and powergamed things and make notes about them through pure experience).

These are real suggestions, but I still can't help but balk at, "They will always be able to look closely enough at you to find out that you're really just a 6'2" white guy." I think this is fair, you shouldn't be able to just abandon your identity at no cost. Oh, I turn into a fly. Now, because I look like a fly, literally nobody will ever look twice at me. Nobody will be able to tell that I am a dangerous shapeshifting ninja, and all I had to do was declare that I am a fly. I buy all my normal characteristics with "only in appropriate form" and now I can turn into a fly for free *and* all my characteristics are cheaper, because they only work when I'm a fly. It just doesn't make any sense to me. It only seems logical that there would be some kind of rigorous cost structure to the obfuscation of your identity. Logically speaking, one could look at Distinctive Features as an example of the game acknowledging the importance of your identity, by saying that "Having one which is extra memorable is actually so bad it's worth points."

This seems to go against the whole concept of the Hero System. In Hero, you can put together almost any mechanical effect that you want to. A "fireball" could be a wide variety of things, it all depends on who's building it and for what purpose do they want a fireball. If you want a super awesome fireball with AoE, DoT, no endurance cost, etc. all you must do is get it passed by the GM and then Hero just lets you build it.

Prey is one of the best science fiction shooters I've ever played. It's single player and story driven. Mordhau is basically a Medeival FPS. It's a first person melee fighting system and it's incredibly fun, but with a steep learning curve and a high skill ceiling. If you like team shooters, I have to suggest my all time favorite one: Natural Selection 2. It's an asymmetrical team shooter built with the skeleton of an RTS. The map is riddled with resource nodes and base locations, just like your basic RTS like Starcraft, and teams wrestle for control of the map. It's a massive bout of minmaxing: You want to minimize your opponent's information, control of tactical positions, and resource income, all whilst maximizing your own. Then it has fairly tradition RTS tech trees, but the difference is that you actually get to play with the tech that your team researches as one of the units. You see, 1 player on either team has stepped into the Command Chair. They get a top down overlook on the map, and their vision is limited to what can be seen by their units, most of which are controlled by actual players. The Marine team plays much like counter strike. Tradition shooter controls, you start with an assault rifle and tech into things like shotguns (which offer the best burst damage but are difficult to hit with), flamethrowers (which disable structures and are easy to aim), and eventually massive railgun wielding exosuits. The other team, the *aliens*, are almost entirely melee. They have extreme mobility options and can deal massive amounts of damage at close range. It's really hard to get the whole concept across in a single post, I highly recommend giving it a try. It's by far my favorite game in existence, I consider it a masterpiece. Disclaimer: NS2 is also a brutally difficult game with one of the steepest learning curves and highest skill caps I've ever seen in any game before. The community is very active, but it's a lot of diehard fans who haven't stopped playing since 2013, and they can be so extremely skilled that new players have virtually 0 chance of ever killing them. They can also at times be quit toxic, because they have settled into their smaller end-of-life community for the game, and so frequently expect excellence. If they say "concede, people" probably concede (at least early on before you've got a sense of the game and can see the hail marry plays that might be possible, then play to the bitter end all you want).

If a horde of orcs rescued a group of starving children, they would do it in a way that you would look at it and say, "That was an evil act." For example, rescue them to plump them for consumption, or to break their minds to make them into slaves and inexpensive soldiers. The only reasons they do evil are the same reasons that normal people do evil! Calling them "team evil" is like calling a hurricane on "team evil" and the unsuspecting villagers "team good." Yes, they are only evil, but that doesn't mean humans aren't evil either. Everything about the world is the same, except there is a type of person who only does evil, and they are in fact identifiable from the outside. They're orcs! It is in fact racism, but it is *founded on the legitimate premise that, in the alternative nature of our fantasy reality, it is possible for an entire species of sentient beings to be evil by nature.* And it can be very interesting to slaughter them. I don't understand why everything you slaughter must for some reason have had enough freedom of destiny that they're rampant, wanton disregard for goodness could be described as "evil." What about a horde of rampaging boars about to completely level a village? Is it not interesting to stave off imminent destruction? I couldn't imagine a more interesting Man vs. Environment situation than Man vs. *Environment as Man*. You can't do anything about a hurricane, but orcs? Orcs have societies, organized forces, machinations and stratagems. A wildfire burns whatever's nearest to it, but orcs can burn whole nations at once. Orcs can visit a variety of evils, ranging from enslavement to destruction to demoralization to cruelty, all with pinpoint precision. *And, unlike the earthquake, they can be fought.* A natural disaster that you can fight with swords and spells, I just don't see how that is somehow too pedestrian and low brow for tabletop miniature gaming.

I suppose before I get into this, we have to look at the definition of evil, which is a hairy subject. You're view of things is sophisticated, and reflects the ideas written about in Sam Harris's book, Free Will. The position is that, because the actions of the Orcs are a consequence of their nature over which they have no control (not unlike the cruelty of cats), they cannot be considered evil. Now, whether or not you've read the book or not, it's worth mentioning that I'm using a definition of evil which Sam Harris posits in Free Will as a kind of shift in the semantics of the word so that it doesn't produce any paradox's when looked at through an advanced neurological lens. The idea is that "evil" is a kind of act, and that evil is only possible if one does evil acts. There are no evil thoughts or evil intentions, only thoughts and intentions which produce evil acts. So, yes, Orcs are a kin to a natural force of destruction. One does not consider the hurricane to be an act of evil, but they do consider it to be an act of God. Now I'm not saying that orcs should be considered an act of God, but the ability to make the comparison at all hints at the kind of spiritual relationship that the denizens of our world might have with Orcs. Orcs *represent* evil on a kind of metaphysical level, which reflects itself in their nature. Orcs *do* evil. This doesn't mean that they don't need plausible motivations for their actions, but the things they end up doing are evil. They're motivations can come from love, honor, glory, greed, gluttony, whatever; The key is that they pursue these things in an evil way, and can't be convinced to do otherwise. They're not like lions, which kill to eat and think of nothing else.

What isn't interesting about pure evil? Don't you realize that pure evil is actually real? Did you know that there are people who traffic children children and animals as sex slaves? Did you know that there are people who make their living by selling videos of them brutally torturing and raping children and animals? Did you know that there are people who pay tens of thousands of dollars for those videos? Not only does evil exist, but elementally pure ultimate evil exists, in real life. It doesn't have to be a matter of "cosmic alignment", it can just be a matter of character. So that's not the problem. The problem apparently is that ultimate evil is uninteresting. Now, obviously one could simply say, "That is just my taste." and the discussion would be over, but that's not what we're here for. Why isn't ultimate evil interesting? Morality is often talked about with the terms "black," "white," and "grey." G.R.R.Martin is often described as writing stories with morally grey characters and situations, and it is this grey-ness that makes his writing so excellent. But the truth is, the who spectrum is always present. In the best stories, its a kaleidoscope of shades of grey, ranging all the way from black to white. You've got good characters with small skeletons in their closet, even more righteous characters with even more skeletons in their closet, and you've got bad characters with some redeeming qualities (but not enough), and you've got bad characters with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Pure evil is interesting. The almost biblical death of Ned Stark, one of the few truly Good men, the demented villainy of Joffrey Lannister and Ramsey Bolton, and the tumultuous Theon Greyjoy, they paint a more vibrant picture than a story awash with lukewarm "grey-ness." I don't see why the role of pure evil couldn't be filled by a whole type of creature. In my setting it's ghouls and dragons, but in some, it's orcs. An orc is like The Grinch: Maybe if you made a movie about him, he might be redeemable. But the thing is, the grinch is a children's cartoon, his big crime is ruining christmas by being a sourpuss. In our games, a being of overwhelming evil might cook a whole village alive over ten dozen bonfires and eat them for dinner. Or they might chase prisoners with barbed lashes as a kind of idle entertainment. They're sadistic, cruel, and powerful. They have no reason to give and credence to the wants and desires of the victims of their barbarism because it's usually impossible to resist them. This is a scary concept. If you'd stop balking at "black and white" morality and immerse yourself in the concept and use your imagination, it can be viscerally effective. Imagine the tension and fear of a village with an Orc problem. Imagine the terror your character might have walking through the gore of an orcish dining hall. I just can't see that as anything but appealing from a worldbuilding perspective. On the other hand, you've got Orcs who are basically just stand ins of for some nameless vaguely primitive tribe like Mongols or Native Americans or something. That honestly sounds more racist then "All they do is evil. Why? I don't know, they can."

Let's say that I'm willing to run very abstract, high concept fantasy games where the players are basically free to build whatever they want, vetted only for internal consistency and party cohesion. What horrible pitfalls am I gonna walk into if I decide to completely remove characteristic maxima? Remember, I'm fine with extremely outlandish concepts, so that isn't gonna be a worry for me. Say we're using 175 points. Can character points alone balance things? Like, if a player could buy any amount of SPD, CV, STR, and P/ED that he wants, how would the arms race unfold? What if somebody were to buy an accidentally relatively low DCV and PD, such that he's extremely vulnerable to attacks? Would they feel impotent and fragile and hate life, or would they enjoy (provided I properly GMed things) all the cool stuff they're doing with the points they didn't spend on SPD, CV, STR, and P/ED? What if somebody bought an extremely large RKA? Admittedly, I would have an easier time pressuring them on their character concept with that one, but say they figured something cool out that would let them buy an absurdly large RKA? Let's say 6d6, and almost everything else he spends on OCV. How would this feel in game? Why do we use so many maxima? Shouldn't the point costs of things create an economy which produces rational and balanced charcters?

1. Fantasy. All they provide is fantasy. I feel like the "Anything that could be done with Elves could just as easily be done with Humans," argument is shallow and vapid. It is called "Fantasy", it's about Fantasy. The same stories you tell with knights and wizards could be told with cops and computer programmers, it's all "just a coat of paint." That's a huge portion of what is fun in the first place. The reason people like fantasy settings for games isn't because of the unique stories and characters that can exist in the setting, because stories and characters are pretty much all the same and are always interesting when executed correctly. It is the coat of paint which makes it so magical. It's not just man vs man, it's viscous orcs vs magical elves. It's not "merely" a coat of paint. 2. I prefer 2 to 3 different races. I generally play in a setting where things like orcs and halflings and elves are all just humans with unique morphologies. In my setting, humans vary as much as dogs. That's why they're called "races" and not "species". "Half breeds" in my setting are a fundamentally racist concept, not unlike the term "mulatto." If you want to play a halfling, that would just be a really really short person. If you want to play like a giant or and orc or something, you're just a really really big ugly person. I reserve the terms "Elf" and "Dwarf" for extreme concepts. Like, and Elf in my setting happens not to be unlike a superhero, capable of superhero-tier magical abilities. And the Dwarves are what they eat: Rock. 3. Races that amount to some kind of cliche stereotype, and players who play to that type utterly unfalteringly. Yes, I get it, you're a dwarf, you like to drink and party and say crass things with a scottish accent, I get it. 4. There is no amount that is too many or too few. It depends entirely on taste, and the type of atmosphere you're trying to achieve in your setting. Star wars has arbitrarily many races, and it creates this "melting pot" sense that the universe is too small for these races to do anything but get along normally, so the streets are beautifully colored with freakishness at every level, and it's a cool atmosphere. On the other hand, SoIaF has no specially different races at all, and it has a comfortable atmosphere of historicity that juxtaposes beautifully with the magical elements of the setting. There's no wrong answer. 5. Nothing at all, really. Dwarves and Elves interact with magic fundamentally differently, but that's it. I suppose this view makes sense from the perspective of trying to distance one's self from racism, but, as somebody who grew up with playable "not all bad" orcs, "evil only" orcs have been a breath of fresh air to me. I just prefer races that are actually species, or fundamentally different in nature to humans. Roid monsters dipped in green paint isn't as interesting to me as some kind of degenerate, filthy villain which only resembles a man. They're green because they're ugly, they rape and maraud because they're evil, they're so vile that being exposed to the same air that they breath exposes you to disease. To me, this is evocative, and because I have no relationship to colonial perspectives on non-whites, it doesn't feel like whistle blowing to me. To me, it's just interesting worldbuilding. Might I ask, why? What's wrong with a visual aid? Why not let your brick character manifest himself as something more than "Above average strength and fighting ability human." What's there to hate? As long as you understand that it's just a coat of paint, why does that have to be too little? It seems like it's the perfect solution to your problem. If you don't like when races aren't roleplayed well enough (so you don't want to see them in your games at all), then why would you be upset with a style of storytelling that doesn't require that they be roleplayed differently at all? It eliminates the discordance, as far as I can tell. Sure, he's green and has tusks, whatever? He just wants to imagine his guy as being green and having tusks, because he's a big tough orc, it seems like a perfectly harmless and altogether beneficial bit of slack to give, especially if you don't like poorly roleplayed races. I just don't understand.

Now this is one interesting guy. Can you say more about "Megaventure"? Me and my brother did something very similar, but to us it wasn't a game. It was just "play". It was pretending. EDIT: Forgot to admire that game concept you just mentioned. It's very similar to a magic system I once dabbled with (but couldn't figure out how to build: I should give it a shot now that I know Hero). In the system, a "magic" was any one of the Patterns of thought that causes magic. Basically, various specific configurations of consciousness have very specific metaphysical consequences. So, the way I set it up was that, "Cantrips" were any Pattern which could be accessed instantaneously at any time under almost any conditions, like Telekinesis, which requires years of training to become proficient in, but is merely a way of thinking that lets you move things by thought alone. Anyway, more advanced magic required more advanced Patterns, such as ones which could only be achieved while experiencing a specific taste (potions), engaging in some specific musical experience, dancing some specific dance, yadayada. The most advanced patterns were Gods and Nephilim. Nephilim are those that are chosen by a people. It is caused by a population scale Pattern, requiring cooperation from many people for extended periods of time. People like super-athletes, shaman/priests/The Pope, high profile criminals, etc. These people become empowered in some way proportionate and reflective of the specific type of attention they receive. Gods are basically these Patterns which protect you against demons (which are spirits that infect you and are bad). They demand highly specific thought patterns related to sacrifice, worship, and general religiosity, and can empower you so much that you are able to conquer demons (thereby transforming them into a kind of supernatural Virtue spirit, and turning you into a Paladin).

We are definitely close kin in this matter. My story is almost identical to yours. I seriously suggest getting a physical copy of the books. I've got 6e1 and 2 and Basic. Basic is really excellent, and after reading that a little bit, everything clicked for me. The game is actually quite elegant.

Than what is the cost of the power to effortlessly obscure your identity and/or commandeer another one? You're saying Mystique's power is all just the special effect of her "being."? Just because her nature is that she changes her appearance into anything she desires, it should be free because it's just special effects?

I couldn't agree more with this. I recently got physical copies of the sixth edition books and, after like 2 years of distant admiration and occasional futile glances at the PDF on my phone, the game finally clicked. At least, the general philosophy of the whole character point system and the very basics of combat started to make sense. I still haven't played nor do I have really any idea how I should actually use this system at the table. It doesn't help that I'm a relatively inexperienced GM when it comes to systems which require preparation, I've been playing Fate and FU all these years, and not very often. Though, seeing as the core books already lack this "Missing Chapter," I think the next best option would be to release a kind of starter kit. I don't mean anything that would have parts or anything similar to Hero Basic, I mean... I'm talking about a magazine, on the thicker side. A magazine containing these micro-adventures with prebuilt characters and stuff. The magazine would contain 3, maybe 4, unique genre studies: Champions, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and maybe something spicy like Weird West or Psionic Zombie Apocalypse. You can copy the character sheets out of the book, but the expectation would really be that you safely tear out the pages you need to use: things like character sheets, maps, and maybe some other stuff. On the one hand, it can be called a kind of stand alone short tales style adventure book made for use with Hero System, but on the other hand, it can be called a collection of educational adventures best used with Hero Basic. I'd buy one the moment I found out such a thing existed. I might not even necessarily run the adventures, just read them and get a feel for what an adventure is supposed to look like, what a character is supposed to look like, what the range of Combat Values ends up looking like, what the range of SPDs is supposed to look like, etc. I would use it like a rosetta stone just to get a basic ballpark of how I am going to put together my game. I really wish such a thing existed.

This tactic reads like a lunatic fantasy from my perspective. It's the same fallacious in the same way as "You need at least 5 year of industry experience to get any jobs in the industry." The only way I can possibly play Hero at all is to learn it and GM it for my friends. It's taken me years of shallow bites into Hero System before I could even comprehend it well enough to say that I understand the basic premises of the system. I am now gearing up to play it with m friends, and I can see all the pitfalls before I even walk into them. I wish I could just tag along in some group somewhere and learn how they handle damage maximums or CVs or SPD.