Doc Democracy

On 6/10/2020 at 4:34 PM, Brian Stanfield said:

you'll never hear me telling anyone they're having wrong-bad-fun

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

😄

Doc

51 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Another blow to theories of deterrence.   But if the only use for cameras is to hold police who use excessive force accountable, IMO that's still worth the expense.

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

Quote

If police officers know they’re being watched both by their body cameras and by civilians with cell phones, they will discipline themselves and refrain from engaging in unnecessary violence. It’s a good theory, but in practice, it hasn’t worked. A large study in 2017 by the Washington, DC, mayor’s office assigned more than a thousand police officers in the District to wear body cameras and more than a thousand to go camera-free. The researchers hoped to find evidence that wearing cameras correlated with better policing, less use of force, and fewer civilian complaints. They found none: the difference in behavior between the officers who knew they were being watched and the officers who knew they were not was statistically insignificant. Another study, which analyzed the results of 10 randomized controlled trials of body camera use in different nations, was helpfully titled “Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use of force.”

Just now, Doc Democracy said:

So.  When the player finds this stuff (and the availability is in the GMs hands) he gets to roll and spend some time carving.  I would say that he makes an KS to see how powerful the crystal is and that the carving roll is modified by the active points (-1 per 10 is the usual) of the effect being sought.  If it is carved correctly the player has a one use magic item.  If he has five and throws them, he may win this encounter but will have none for later encounters.

 

Doc

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

I am wondering just how much of this needs to be thought through.

19 hours ago, vindcara said:

My campaign has magic crystals that one of my players wants to be able to buy and carve into magic runes that produce various effects, being consumed in the process, and I was looking for a good way to represent which types of magic runes he knows/has the skill to make

This sounds like stuff you buy/find.  Essentially the GM can decide how many bits of this stuff can be found, or are found.  The player gets to use some skills to make this stuff into one use magical items. 

I think that the key bit of the character sheet is a bunch of Knowledge Skills to represent the magic runes known.  I would also give him a Carve Rune skill possibly based on Dex Int or EGO depending on whether the carving is more about knowledge of the rune, manual dexterity or force of will.

So.  When the player finds this stuff (and the availability is in the GMs hands) he gets to roll and spend some time carving.  I would say that he makes an KS to see how powerful the crystal is and that the carving roll is modified by the active points (-1 per 10 is the usual) of the effect being sought.  If it is carved correctly the player has a one use magic item.  If he has five and throws them, he may win this encounter but will have none for later encounters.

Doc

My take on it was that the character would be a speed 4 character but that one of those four actions would have to be abort or nothing at all.  So if the character attacked on segments 3, 6 and 9 then they would not be able to act on segment 12....not even to recover.

A generous GM might allow the character to act on 4 8 and 12 and, if necessary allow an abort on any other segment.

Doc

I am astounded with what is happening in the USA for the past week. 

Growing up in the 1970's I looked at the US with envious eyes.  It had all of the things that I admired and wanted.  It was shining beacon of hope and optimism (even amidst the whole vietnam thing).  America was the bastion of the free west and Russia was an omni-present threat.  Obviously I was growing up in a white privileged world where I was oblivious to why the Cold War was not cold and many people (not white) were dying all over the Southern Hemisphere.

Still - modern, wealthy, optimistic with access to all of the good things in life.  People there seemed to get on with life better, produce better things and better tv programmes.  The US also seemed to have a better outlook on life and to be aiming higher when the UK was aiming and failing just to stay the same.  America in the late 70s seemed to be heading for the stars while we were sinking into potential for urban decay and uprising.  Obviously I was growing up in Scotland during the Thatcher years where immediate relative poverty was omnipresent and there was nothing new or shiny in my life. I could only dream of growing up to move to move to America where my cousins in Long Island seemed to live an idyllic life.

Over the years it is amazing how that changed.  I still admired the core American Dream - I even came over and worked and lived in the US for a few years but my life, my awareness and my priorities were changing.  I came back from the US because, after growing up within the security of a national health service, America seemed a dangerous place to be sick and too many people seemed to get caught in the financial nets of the health insurance people.  I also watched as the number of school shootings became more and more commonplace until they were not worthy of top billing on news programmes and did not think I wanted to send my children to school in place where they were in danger of being shot.

Even after all that I still saw America as a much better place to be, it was just my lack of robustness that led me to want to stick to the health safety of the UK. 

Now, as I watch the videos rolling out of the US every day with a sick fascination I am beginning to think that I was lucky not to have stayed.  People getting huge bills for getting sick during a pandemic, police on the streets seemingly relishing spraying people with pepper spray and groups beating individuals with batons.  I look at a population no longer scared of being killed by the police but accepting that this is the risk they live with every day and they might as well face it while shouting that it is not right than hoping it happens to someone else with the same colour of skin as they have. 

My experience of prejudice is anti-Irish, anti-catholic prejudice in the UK in the 70's and 80's.  That lead to bombs and underground armies.  I then look at the proliferation of weapons in the US and while the looting is bad, I cannot help but wonder how long it will be before a small group of people so sick of the disparity between armed police and unarmed protestors decide to switch it around.  How many men with automatic weapons would it take to cause an atrocity?  What would happen then?  Are there enough cool heads to stop police and armed forces going out and killing many more?  Enough to stop white folks going out with their own guns and killing more?? 

It really scares me.  It is the first time in my 55 years on this planet where I would absolutely prefer to be in the UK than in the US (and that is in the context of Boris and Brexit which makes it even more poignant for me).

I hope this current issue fades away but I do not see any hope that the underlying causes will be addressed and that the deployment of men with guns only deals with the immediate symptoms and that the next time, or the one after because there will be more, will be the one where the country goes up in flames.

I mourn for the American Dream I admired so much when I was young...I miss it and I think the world does too  😞

Doc

9 hours ago, Tech said:

That is highly subjective depending on the campaign and players. My players don't mind at all recurring villains. In fact, they like it.

Pot meet kettle. 🙂

Of course it is subjective, it is my experience.

needs more context, it is one of those cases where the value might vary.

In a SPD 4 game, if I was to buy SPD 3 and buy a fourth point with "only to abort" then I think I might be quite generous, possibly even to saying +1 or more.

In a SPD 4 game, if I was to buy SPD 4 and buy a fifth point with "only to abort" then I think I might be quite stingy, possibly even to saying +1/4 or less.

So what matters is how often that comes into play.  If I have the same number of actions to burn as everyone else and I have an extra one as long as one of those actions is an abort, then I am not particularly inconvenienced by that. 

5 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

I disagree.

You disagree that you could drop manoeuvres?? 😄

5 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

Many of the standard maneuvers are fairly straightforward, both in concept and mechanic (Block, Dodge, Grab, Throw, etc). I expect players will ask how to do them at some point in the demonstration, even if you don't mention them.

Absolutely they are, and they will add to a combat and players may absolutely ask about dodging or throwing.

It might be better to have players asking and being given than to be overwhelmed with everything upfront.

However, the OP asked what could be dropped in the interest of making combats faster.  Manoeuvres do not make combat faster, choices don't make combat faster.

Doc

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Also stay away from Martial maneuvers until you’re more comfortable with the Standard Maneuvers. That being said, I would encourage you to play mock battles when not gaming and go-let’s try this! I still do that.

I think you have had some goo advice already.  It depends on how simple you want to get.

You could ignore all manouevres.  You lose some elements of complexity such as blocking an attack or dodging but it gets right down to the hit and record damage.  You should be explicit with the group that you would like to do that for a session and then begin introducing manouevres as everything else becomes second nature.  HERO does have the complexity of multiple forms of damage and it bears remembering (for us old timers) that it can be difficult for folk to get their head round that in the midst of all the rest of the numbers...

Do not worry about breaking the system, it is designed to be modular and for things to be used or not used.  There is no absolute 'ideal' way for the system to be used in a game.

My big thing is looking very closely at the attacks and defences used.  I use lots of the complexity to justify that I set the attacks and defences to mean that most folk will not be able to take more than a few hits before being taken out of a fight - I hate fights of attrition where folk have to whittle down opponents STUN scores.  I much prefer a lot of manouevering and looking for advantage before going toe to toe.  If a fight only lasts a couple of rounds of combat then it will indeed be swift but if you have no access to manouevres then it might seem a bit arbitrary as a few lucky dice rolls might swing it. 

That would be fine if everyone was aware that it was basic stuff to get used to hitting and damage. 

There are a lot of moving parts and so it is worth moving slowly to ensure that you are al comfortable with them.

4 hours ago, Badger said:

Even before this, grocery shopping was dangerous

Is that a commentary on dystopia America?

Or am I just reading it that way in the light of current news?

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

I'll say from my recent trips to the ER and hospital for my shoulder issue (old athletic injury caused a cyst which is now crushing one my nerves which both hurts constantly and partially paralyzes my left arm) that the hospital is not anywhere near overwhelmed.  The ER was all but empty both times I was there and wait times for diagnostics and my surgical scheduling were minimal.

 

So I'm going under the knife on Wednesday - wish me luck.  

 

 

If the ER etc is as empty as you have seen it might be safer than going grocery shopping.  Good luck SF...

You say that as if I have never read comics.  🙂  Am running a Golden Age game right now.  I do like a modicum of continuity - that is what a story is after all.  I love the elseworlds stuff - every one a different look at a character, I loved reading in the 70's and 80's.  However, the growing edifice of story made it hard to keep up to date with everything and there was the pressure to pick up other titles to remain current.  I resented it.  I think I would prefer a title, with a creative team writing a great story for a while.  You would then get a new creative team which would have no constraint to be true to the previous creative team - just to the core spirit of the title. 

To show my own inconsistencies - I loved All-Star Squadron where Roy Thomas went all out to re-tell the DC Golden Age introducing an over-arching continuity.  I loved that - it was a massive project that would be consistent within itself. 

So now I simply wait for self-contained graphic novels that catch my interest.  I spend MUCH less money on comics, which annoys me because they were something I loved.  Now the continuity puts up barriers to getting involved in things - I need to go back and learn too much.

It extends to the films.  My 14 year old self would be aghast that I would consider not going to see every superhero movie that came out.  I look at the Marvel ones with weariness more than excitement, I refuse to go back and fill in the gaps which means that the gaps become wider over time until I am not going to see the movies.  Talk about cutting off my nose to spite my face but it is the way my head experiences them...

I think I have now seen about 60% of the Marvel movies and 40% of the DC ones. 

I guess I am not a fan any more...

8 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

there are two audiences for comic-: The fans and the general public. The fans adore the world building and the tight continuity. It’s adds greatly to their enjoyment of the property. The general audiences enjoy a good story, and the comic editor want to turn the general audience into fans. Discussions of the continuity are

often what builds the fan community.
 

So I was general public?  Because I do not adore tight continuity?  There was no other pastime I was spending £30 or £40 a month, every month on, I'd bet HERO would have loved folk spending that every month.

5 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Wow. That’s a take I haven’t heard often. Nor do I agree with it. I find a Lone Superhero fairly implausible and not that interesting. 

Not sure what I said entails a lone superhero.

I absolutely hate the fact that every movie has to carry the weight of everything that went before.  I am less inclined to watch a movie if I need to watch another in the franchise to appreciate it fully.

Comics carry the same problem and there becomes a constraint on writers who cannot write a story because it disagrees with what happened before or makes changes noone is willing to wear for the future of the franchise.

Mega cross-over events/stories are what finally turned a 10-14 title habit into buying the odd graphic novel.

Doc

8 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Heck, we have examples of doing it better right now. Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, took unified, science-based measures at the start of this pandemic, and are now reaping the rewards.

Don't miss Ireland from that, they went into lockdown just over a week earlier than the UK and now have had several days with no COVID-19 related deaths. 

They are probably the most shameful comparison for the UK.

I have learned that players, unlike comic book readers, hate recurring villains.  Players like to “win” and that means when villains are caught, they go to jail and if they are not caught, the players lose.

as such, I am more of a flavour of the week.  I like to have an over-arching villain that is behind a series of scenarios.  I may use the over-arching for two arcs, never more.  The series ends when they players face the big bad.  No one escapes from jail, unless the players do it.... 🙂

Doc

11 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

It's kind of like that old saw about faith in God:  you don't have to believe in God for him to believe on you. 

 

Not including  bestiary or equipment guide, but including 6e1, 2, basic, martial arts apg1, and apg2, we have one-thousand, eight-hundred-and-twenty pages of rules. 

Much of those words are economics.  Hero needs to sell stuff to remain viable, it's best seller has always been rules, so we got them.  However, I do not think I am playing a fundamentally different game than I was in 1983.

I absolutely have more guidelines and I know more detail about how the designer expects all the component parts to work together.  There has been a change of emphasis about the detail on the character sheet which has driven up the number of points spent (if you like that kind of thing).

I would bet that watching folk play 'pure' sixth edition champions would look, sound and feel almost identical to those playing 'pure' second edition. It probably uses ShapeChange to do so.

Doc

On 5/25/2020 at 11:03 AM, lensman said:

Defeat my argument if you can.

If you never give the players the chance to build stuff you will never get to play the game as they will never build up the skills necessary to run the game.  More experienced people are going to spend their time potentially chafing within your vision of how a power is built to concept.

🙂

Otherwise it is a reasonable way to play with inexperienced HERO folk. 

On 5/24/2020 at 2:56 AM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Oh dear God, don't say that!

 

We just tried that in the "push a group of people down" thread and ended up with what-- three different builds to "legally" throw them to the ground?

 

How the frack is 1800 pages of rules _better_, again?

 

 

I actually do not think we have 1800 pages of rules.  I think we have possibly twice as many pages as we had in Champions 2nd edition with a HUGE cloud of advice, guidance and chat around how to use the rules.  Now, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is rules and what is guidance because it all comes together.

I would guarantee that if we removed ALL the guidance and doubled the size of the rules, we might have a better game but I am not 100% sure I would like it better in the long term.

I liken it to management at work.  There is absolutely no need for any rules about working relationships - as long as everyone behaves like a reasonable and responsible person.  People dont, not at work and not at the gaming table.  And so we get guidance, and more guidance and even more - some of it changing or amending previous guidance until it all needs to be re-written and formatted into a different document - often twice the size of the previous one.  Annual performance reports grow in size when they are not usually needed for more than 10% of the workforce who are underperforming and may need to be sacked or to protect a chunk of that same workforce from someone promoted beyond their personal ability to work nicely with others. 

To make sure everyone is aware - I am equating the GM with the boss and the players with the workforce... 😄

Good employees under a good manager can effectively dispense with the HR rulebook.

7 hours ago, massey said:

 

I’ve been thinking about this, and I disagree.

 

it’s difficult to justify putting a superhero style Force Wall special effect in a rogue’s multipower, sure.  But I’ve seen Captain America’s shield built as a Force Wall before.  Surely we have to leave open the possibility that a player might use the Force Wall power construct to describe something rogue-y.

 

What if Fast Eddie the thief can swat arrows and crossbow bolts out of the air with his sword?  He’s so good he can defend himself and those near him.  But he doesn’t build it with Missile Deflection (he doesn’t want the chance of blowing an OCV roll).  So he buys it as a 12 PD Force Wall.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

6 hours ago, Old Man said:

I would have a pretty big problem with that, actually, in a heroic campaign. But I’m sure opinions vary. 

I am presuming we are talking about heroic campaigns as we are talking about fantasy, not fantasy superheroes.  I am therefore quite keen to hear what the big problems with a rogue's player spending points in this way?  It would be pretty big expenditure that would limit other abilities but it would be real defining schtick for that rogue character, one that makes him stand out in a world full of adventurers.

I am asking because I am 100% interested in my players coming to me to ask for just these kinds of things for their characters.  We spend a long time talking through how it is going to work in play and what its limitations are.  However, I have absolutely no problems in principle with this.  It is ALSO the kind o fhting I might see being developed into a multipower for non-mage types.

Doc

6 hours ago, Pariah said:

An example of what I'm talking about: Distance learning. That's been my life for the last 10 weeks. And I hate it. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it takes away the things I love most and leaves me with all the annoying stuff. That's how it affects me.

 

However...it works really well for some of my students. There are some kids who just aren't built to start the day at 7:30 in the morning.

My son is fifteen, his school is delivering a full teaching week and has been since the first week of lockdown.  He loves it, he is actually doing better as he has fewer distractions, has a bit more time between lessons when he grabs a coffee or chats with friends.  He gets ALL his homework in on time.

He is a social kid but I don't think he is looking forward to going back.

Not fit for all, he has the space, tech and interested parents to make it work but it is a completely different model.

I could see a school making it work, small modern office for staff, technology given to children to use, resources developed for that.  Could be a hugely leaner operation than a brick and mortar school.  Works best for wealthier parents who don't both work (and for poorer parents who don't both work).  It lacks the childcare aspect of normal school but even that could be dealt with.  It could also take children from anywhere in the country.

Doc

I notice that all of the 'good' uses are for magic and wizards.

I think that if you are going to allow multipowers then all archetypes should have that access, otherwise you are facilitating some archetypes over others.  I think that this is the point others were making in the other thread.  Are there no multipowers that you might be able to think of for rogues, rangers, paladins, warriors and other types?

Doc

It is detailed and for investigative games, I think anything that breaks down the details aids the gameplay.

I think it looks to math-y and fussy but I think it could be tatted up for the right games.