Doc Democracy

Ha! I feel for you Gnome. 🙂 It is often the way that the players do not have the same investment as the GM.🙂 There is indeed a challenge at the start and for groups that do not game together regularly.

I notice a query from Zarthose to Steve that I think will come over here. Might be worth getting a head start on the issue but I thought I would broaden it out. How do you handle PC complications? Hunteds and other things have a chance of turning up. I frontload all of this. When I create a scenario, my first action is to roll for all of the complications of the characters likely to play. I then try to weave those things into the scenario from the ground up - I dont want things bolted on or causing a distraction from the main action. It also makes it easier to build in the disadvantages related to powers not working in certain circumstances. If a hero has "only in Hero ID" on his powers then I will, every now and again be building scenes where this is going to become an issue. Where DNPCs feature, it is easier to involve them when the scenario is created with the explicit knowledge they will be involved. So. My system is to roll the dice for all complications (sometimes simply based on the fact that a complication or disadvantage should impair 1/4 of the time or more). Once I have all those details I can begin to weave a story around them (sometimes the way the complications fall down, the implied story is better than the one I was thinking of!!). How do other people manage it? Doc

A quote about the old House of Lords was: "Individual peers are born independent, independently take their seats in the Lords and independently vote Conservative". 🙂

well, good news on treatment here... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53061281

We have no Jedi - the Edge of Empire setting is distant from the rebellion stuff and focussed more on "normal" action heroes. 🙂 It is more like a Han Solo RPG than a Luke Skywalker RPG. I have not intorduced the Force in any way but future games might feature something of it. I do have a wookie but the player there is closest to the playing style I want anyway, it is the others that need encouragement.

The shame of that is the infection was introduced by visitors from the UK. Watch our Brexiteers outrage as 'clean' southern European countries ban visitors from 'dirty' Britain....

Yeah, the most frustrating thing is that we all know the stuff well, are steeped in the material. We even know the system, having played FFG Warhammer which was a more complex implementation but made us familiar with the dice basics. I have used the destiny pool to good effect. I just want to come up with a charter to free their minds and drive the feel of the game. As I said to Ninja Bear, I think we have fossilised as a group and I need a tool to smash them into a different play style.

To be honest, that is my role in the group. If I am not running the game I am usually driving the play, I think they have let me do it so long they have forgotten how to do it for themselves. 🙂

Or you have a multipower, one slot pops out a globe, the other fills it with life support. 🙂

I still think some extra DEF (to talk Old Skool) for the physical manifestation is the simplest solution...

All the characters (and indeed most of the NPCs) in one short-lived campaign had 4D6 Telepathy (only within caste) (only for communication). It was to represent a kind of hive mind where it was possible for two members of the same caste to communicate with each other and exclude all those of other castes. That worked pretty well and it is amazing how such a small power could have dramatic effects on how the game worked, how the characters interacted and how it encouraged players to produce characters from a single caste. Doc

There was, but this is a positive way around the issue - if the players can be sure that capture is essentially a doorway to adventure rather than an existential threat to their alter ego, then we may have a different dynamic in the game. 🙂 It was probably that thread that brought that up as my starter for ten...

I have just run three sessions of FFG Edge of Empire. It was great fun, it has a definite Star Wars feel and some cool bits that helped the action along. My concern is that the players did not trust me enough to run through the scenario rather than edging their way along feeling out the walls and floors for secret traps. We are a long standing group and pretty open to trying new things but a chunk of the players are cautious by nature which slows the game down. I want to draw up a charter for a Star Wars game - something that makes it clear what I want as GM and for the players to hold me to when playing (in the event that I show recidivist behaviour, sliding back to my 14 year old D&D GMing style). 🙂 The question is, what should the charter contain? What are the key tropes to fast-paced Star Wars gaming? My first thought is to remove concerns about capture: 1 - If you are captured, there will be obvious and ready ways to escape. What else? Doc

Dont see Duke in this thread, so why dont I throw a Duke-ism out. If you buy LS-usable by others, then the bubble itself is simply the SFX of that power - you see a bubble of force surround the person. How do you pop the bubble - define that. If it is not for imprisoning people, then is there a huge need for defences? You can give it a reasonable defence as part of the SFX. We do fall into the trap of trying to cost everything, even when it is not entirely necessary.... Doc

The big element in HERO that is missing in other systems is the ability of the GM to make the physics and metaphysics of a campaign world work exactly as desired. The cost of that is a lot of upfront work and thinking time. If you want all poisons to be affected by a Cure Poison spell, then you need either to make all poisons use the same mechanic OR ensure that all poisons have a common limitation (effects mitigated by use of Cure Poison). You can then define Cure Poison as Healing, only versus poison. Once that is in place then it does not matter whether the poison is a SPD drain, an entangle, a Killing attack or anything else, you can pro-rate the Healing as 1D6 = 1 DC of effect on whatever the poison is. Doc

Well, as GM, I would be content with someone presenting with area affect life support, usable by others, physical manifestation with some resistant defence only for the physical manifestation. I would be asking how it works, how it moves, END requirements but I would generally be facilitative. Doc

You say this as if we should expect more than three. I am appalled at the killing of one unarmed man...

I do it to the satisfaction of my wife I’ll have you know, and she enjoys driving on the right side of the road....

And that is despite the monuments and memorials....

I am not convinced that removing the statues will do that much damage, to quote a tweet I saw this week “After WWII Germany took down and removed all of the statues and monuments associated with the Nazi regime. That is why, today, no one knows who Hitler was.” I think we have plenty of things that tell us what we need to know and I struggle to understand what part of history those statues will enlighten us about. People are problematic, it is rare to have someone you can immortalise in marble that people will not have issues with, because humans are flawed creatures. I prefer my public works of art to be more abstract and anonymous. Doc

Such an alternative lifestyle and yet still against the SJWs who would fight for his right to live that way...

I think you'll find, Brian, that the phrase is BadWrongFun and has NO dashes..... 😄 Doc

The article concludes that cameras should still be used both by the police and by everyone else. Where it is falling down on changing behaviour is that the police do not believe that the video evidence will make a substantive difference in how they will be held accountable. If the courts begin to utilise it to the detriment of police officers career and independent existence then the filming will have the desired influence on behaviour.

Interesting piece in the MIT Review....https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/03/1002587/sousveillance-george-floyd-police-body-cams/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I forgot to mention the adding stuff together - this is hand-wavium to me. You might ask the player to make a KS roll (-1 per 10 points of all the effects together) to get them all to affect the opponent as a single attack rather than a bunch of separate ones. Doc