Talk:Ben's Gaming Maniphilosophesto

--Gdaze 15:10, 28 October 2009 (MST) You are very trusting of players.

Edmiao in that you think the players will try to deliberately derail the game, or inadventently will derail the game?

BEN: since tone of voice is not transmitted on the wiki, I'm assuming Gabe is being sarcastic...? And that Ed is seconding that opinion...?
I would hope players wouldn't deliberately derail the game...it's essentially impossible to prevent and you might as well just play a series of one shots or switch games if they do do it. as far as inadvertently...I guess I would answer that as long as everyone has the story as their central concern, a derail should be largely impossible, since if the players are acting consistently then they are just making their contribution to the story.
I would say that in champions I was not trusting of players at all. I was very controlling. I would also say, however, that I have been very trusting of players in OAAAA: but perhaps you disagree?

--Gdaze 16:33, 28 October 2009 (MST) No. I just think characters actually do like to try to upset the game. And on the page you said that the GM should trust the players. Too much control is bad, but is also needed. Not all players of course, but sometimes, some people are just like fuck this, lets blow everything up. Or, lets see how I can make things harder.

Which I guess could add to story. GM to me could mean Guide Master.

BEN: oh, I agree completely. I would argue that I have been, in fact, TOO trusting of players in OAAAA. But I'm not going to wax (in)eloquent about that right now, since I'm trying to avoid specifics. But yes, you are totally right, and that's why I say that player trust of the GM is the most important thing: if the GM doesn't get buy in for some authority (and some resultant authoritarianism), he/she can't do his/her job of stewarding the story.

JASON: Characters never upset or try to upset the game. Only players can do that. A character by its very nature does not know it is part of a game. Players on the other hand are humans pretending, and therefore can be petty, whiny, jokey or any of a million other eys that can be very disruptive.

--Gdaze 23:34, 28 October 2009 (MST) [1] Now I do hope the sarcasim is coming through in that.

I don't think you've been too trusting of players in OAAAA. You tend to like to have NPCs that shine more then the players. In OAAAA we are suppose to become EPIC, right? And we haven't actually done too much to derail anything. Least far as I can tell. I mean we meta trying to influence the world, but that was kinda the point. OAAA does have a lot of power though for the players. I'm actually pleased it has gone so well with all the power. Like take my guy, yeah he does a shit ton of damage, but he can be taken out pretty easily. Heck, Dieter even got head shot'd! And like you even told me "This orc won't learn magic" so I was like, okay, but might as well train him for something else. I do like the "Just so you know" info bits, they help move the game along.

BEN: hmmm, the NPC observation is interesting, and probably valid...but then again, do players prefer every NPC to be a mook? I guess when I play I like to meet NPCs that impress me, or even ones that I love to hate. Also, I like to have NPCs that challenge me. But I certainly agree that I like to make exciting, and occassionally powerful, NPCs.

Edmiao are we still playing OAAAAAAAA, by the way? the last session was august 7th, about three months ago.

--Gdaze 09:51, 29 October 2009 (MST) No, of course not everyone should be a mook. And NPCs like Cloud are fine, maybe just not at the end of the night! Besides, even AS powerful as he was, it was a close fight. And meeting a cool/powerful one here or there is fine. But if you meet one every few adventures, and spend time watching an NPC do something, while still a story it becomes one that doesn't invovle the players as much. So again, not everyone should be a mook, but also there shouldn't be tons of amazing NPCs.

And yeah, whats up with OAAAAAAAAAA, I thought it was cuz Ben was on rotation? Or whatever that is called. I know I was suppose to do MA to help fill in, but too much shit happened in my personal life.

BEN: we can go back to OAAAA whenever. I assumed that we would play kingmakers for a while, since OAAAA was at a good stopping point, with the second "book" being finished. If people are hankering for it, we can run one/some sessions again.

JASON: I think the problem with a lack of rules is that its a form of arbitrary that is less fun. No one likes to be dismissed out of hand. But, somehow, its ok to get your head ripped off if thats what the dice say. Dice are arbitrary without prejudice, and a GM has prejudice, even if its not always evident. Players do not like to feel powerless. During Champions when we had to spend months chaperoning the super-kids who were inherently better than all of us at everything we wanted to do, that got old. Why were we even necessary? It felt like a side show more than a story about us. While this has nothing to do with rules or dice per se, it is an example of the arbitrary nature of GMing. A lack of rules leaves you in this situation where the system gives you nothing and expects everything in return. You as a player are expected to craft all of these details for a great character and the system has no bias towards anything. One reason I have always liked Hero even after all the times it has wronged me so is that character generation is FUN. There are all these things it has given you ways to do, things I probably would not have considered on my own. A great (or even good) system facilitates ideas. Good source materials are more about the source and less about the mechanics. A system that is too simple doesnt help you when youre stuck, but, conversely, it also doesnt hinder you when youre on a roll.

--Gdaze 12:56, 29 October 2009 (MST) Very interesting points there on dice vs GM prejudice Jason. I had never thought of it like that, and the example about being head shot is very well taken. You know character generation is fun in HERO, but maybe its too in depth?

I'm liking the M&M system from what I've seen, but making a character can be a bit annoying because their are limits on saves, and certain stats up certain saves so without some software it has a lot of going back and forth. At least it is all just addtion and subtraction though.

Edmiao totally agree about making characters in Hero system, it is fun! obviously, look at Viho, a guy, 4 suits, 8 followers and a base. i made 14 characters essentially. hero is inherantly breakable with regards to balance, so fits in with ben's maniphesto as well. its working well for OAAAA.

BEN: I agree with you Jason, and I don't want to turn this into a semantic argument: I think you are basically filling in details on what I believe as well. I don't think there should be NO rules, I just think that they are of secondary importance. The rules help create balance, objectivity in crisis situations, and they can add to the story by taking it in directions nobody had thought of. But you said all of that. And I also like parts of hero...just not all of it. I think it is absolutely the best system for our group, but I would not call it the absolute best system for Ben the GM or Ben the Player. I certainly like it enough to use it again: I'd call it my staple system.

--Gdaze 14:02, 29 October 2009 (MST) Whats weird for me is that I don't like using the Hero system for actual Supers RPGs. I don't think it handles it well. But I like it for stuff like fantasy, sci-fi, stuff like that.

Edmiao really? i think it worked pretty well for supers, albeit a smidge slow in the combat zone, but matt's card thing helped with that.

JASON: I dont love Hero anymore. It can get really slow, for sure, in given situations. I think its workable most of the time. Gabe has a good point that I cant agree with or disagree with. Ben seems to want some very specific things, and that is awesome. Its great to have an understanding of where you want to go. The reason we have rules, I think, is so that when a player does something the other players and the GM have a framework they can use to agree on an outcome. At least that is true during the actual game. Most of the time its just friends talking and listening. But when we need this framework we dont want it to get in the way. Outside of game time we want this nebulous framework to provide us a basis we can use to visualize our characters and where we want them to go. Before the game starts its all about using a common language to quantify stuff so we can create characters that fall within the correct parameters. It seems like to really 'hit' with a system, it needs to do three distinct, very disconnected things, and do them all pretty well, for us as players and GMs to get maximum enjoyment. Its not an easy thing to do.

--Gdaze 15:50, 29 October 2009 (MST) Eh, gone over it before. Have to really keep an eye out for balancing issues. Seems more concerned with what the points do, and not in giving it a comic book feel. Seldom in Hero Supers battle have I fealt like I was in a comic book.

Totally WIKI BLOCKED!

BEN: just agreeing with what Jason has put down, although I don't think what I want is that specific. but maybe it is.

JASON: Gabe, I dont think its the systems responsibility to make the game feel like a comic book. In fact, I dont think its possible for a system to do such. Its the systems job to stay the hell out of the way so the GM and characters can make the game feel like a comic book.

I know you dont think the combats in games are comic book-like, yet that would continue in M&M, which does a whole lot of things poorly. I remember you saying that protagonists dont get knocked out all the time in comics, thats because of the choices they make. If the good guys and bad guys just stood there and slugged it out every combat, they would be KOed all the time. In comics one side or the other is almost always attempting to accomplish a goal, and then when they get it locked up, they split. All the while they are quipping with one another, which is the actual conflict.

Ask yourself this. If evil big baddie blows up the support beams on a building so it is sure to collapse soon, what do you do? In a comic, all the good guys run to save them, then the bad guys get away. Moo-hooo-hah-ing all the way. In an RPG where there isnt comic buy in, the players spend 10 minutes discussing who should go save the building in such a way that the remaining characters can still beat the bad guys and collect all the <insert whatever is important here>. No amount of system can cure that.

Edmiao good point, jason. I think gabe might bring in a point about killing attacks in Hero and how non-comic booky they are, but for that, such attacks would not be bought in certain comic book genres. the players would know that if they think about the genre and buy in, and the GM should police that and remind characters that killing attacks are not genre appropriate.

--Matts 17:51, 29 October 2009 (MST)The idea that I've seen in several systems (M&M and Savage Worlds) is to just say "the villain gets away" after he creates a situation for the players to solve, but to comp the players a bit for the letdown of not getting the villain. In Savage Worlds players get an extra Benny, and in M&M they get a Hero Point, both of which greatly impact a player's impact on the story.

But to get on-topic: The use of cleverness in games is something I struggle with. On one side, if the important thing is how creative a player's solution is, it allows for a lot of fun for that player, at the risk of marginalizing players who don't have a creative solution to the problem, and more or less makes story progression a matter of inspiration rather than a matter of one's character. On the other, if a character sheet is the final arbiter of what can and can't be done, the creativity is somewhat superfluous: "I talk him out of stabbing me, I want to roll my Fast Talk." Now, it's all well and good to say that "some mix of the two sides" is necessary, but my dilemna is this: creativity more or less flouts whatever system you've put in front of it, or at least the systems we like to use.

Hero lets you define a character along several axes, in great detail. It does not let you define how your character moves in a story, or what his or her narrative options are, unless your whole story consists of climbing on walls, blasting something, or whatnot. Its systems define some method of domination of the game world, and very little in the way of interaction with the game world.

A system like DitV or With Great Power... basically throws out a comparative rating system in exchange for explicitly defining narrative tools, so that instead of knowing that your blast is X strong, you know the relationships you interact with and the methods you use, but their ratings are more in terms of importance to the story.

I like the second group of systems; how do you reconcile them with the first group? If a player prefers to "hit something with his sword for d8 + strength bonus" instead of "wildly swinging his axe in a jilted rage", what's the middle ground?

JASON: The rewards you speak of sound a lot bigger than they actually are. The bennies in SW are greatly watered down compared to chips from Deadlands, and even chips were only kinda cool in relation to lots of other things. Hero points do let you do some stuff, but they are contradictory when you consider they can be used to stop the exact situation you describe.

DiTV in no way does that. The social interaction mechanic, while cool, has nothing to do with story import. Unless you contend that only social interaction can move the story or that social interaction is somehow inherently more valuable than physical action, the argument is weak.

What systems like Hero (and most others) do with social interaction is break them into larger chunks than DiTV does. Outside of that they are functionally equivalent. In type A you say what you want to say and roll once to determine success. The GM can award bonuses for good roleplaying or good arguments (though this is probably more rare than it should be) but beyond that its simple. Type B makes you break your interactions into an indeterminate number of sub-interactions and continuously spend the handful of dice you rolled to win the decisive last set. No amount of logic or roleplaying before the last set affects anything. When fully examined its not any different except that it takes a lot longer to achieve its effect.

The main truth is there needs to be some way to blend mechanics with story in a way that doesnt favor one over the other. Good description is cool, fun and good for the story, yet rewarding it too highly makes certain kinds of characters much more effective when played by certain types of players. Is this a problem? If your answer is yes, things get a lot harder.

BEN: while insightful comments all, I think that these subtle but important disagreements just solidify my position that the rules are important, but only in so far as they are applied by the GM. They are part of a GMs toolset in crafting a world. There is no one right answer, no one right rule set that works for every game or for even one type of game run by every GM. I like everything that's been said, but it also convinces me that by and large the players have to let the GM do his/her thing, and if they can't enjoy it, can't let go of their own preconceptions enough, then things won't really work out.

Edmiao I totally just wiki blocked myself. i had a whole paragraph typed out, went to open a new tab to spell check a word but hit the "X" instead of the "+" on firefox tabs. so awesome. Lets see if i can remember what i was saying.

One thought i had was that i have found it very difficult to pull an anjou (yes, the wine shop incident never dies). typically when i do something that's really creative but out of the box for my character, it results in failure. I think this is because i'm not nearly as convincing a role player as ben. This encourages me to keep my characters more within their skill sets and not trying to do crazy things. this seems counter to ben's maniphilosiphosmestisimososis, but i would think that gabe would say that it keeps me playing my characters more true to their skillsets.

And i'm not referring to the salt trade encouraged cannibals here. which brings me to another question, i've been playing it a bit more tongue and cheek as of late. I think sometimes this results in awesomeness (Viho's self aggrandizement), and sometimes results in less than awesomeness (salty cannibals). What's your take on in game humor and playing with tongue firmly planted in cheek?

BEN: I agree that for viho tongue IN cheek was awesome...but the key is that it was genre appropriate. Supers, at least classic, non-dark champions style, has a hands-on-hips, erroll-flynn chuckle style humor that is inherent. Viho embodied that. I think that for most games, humor is good, but mostly when it is meta-game or just on the border of in-game and meta-game. An example I can think of was in OAAAA with the bridge incident. In game, it was a chaotic, potentially terrifying (for the characters) event, but for the players it was hilarious. I think that humor in most games (as in, everything that isn't meant to be reasonably silly) needs to have something of this quality or risk disrupting the game world: I agree with you that the cannibals thing was less than awesome simply because it did not fit with the rest of the game world on account of crossing the slightly-too-ridiculous line.
I think aefra is a clear demonstration that you're a fine RPer, Ed: but as the OAAAA GM I'd like to say that Aefra has come a long way. At the beginning she was borderline, but the character has grown up, matured, as the story has progressed, which in retrospect makes her early flightiness awesome. This goes back to my preference for long-form stories, because it gives people an opportunity to really know their characters, which is when good RPing actually goes down.

--Gdaze 09:50, 30 October 2009 (MST) Wow lots have been said since I was last here! Regarding comic book feel, as Matt says the villain can just get away. And I'm not sure which edition of M&M you played Jason, but I was pretty sure you can't spend it to get rid of of the villain escaping. Not only that, but the M&M book has huge amounts of information on how to make the game feel more like a comic, why certain powers work certain ways, and has a built in system to balance powers. Heros do get knocked out in comics a lot, but they at least usually fight for a few panels, least the ones I read do. In Hero, it is usually one attack with a shit-ton of stun and that pretty much takes out people in one hit. Thats why for me anyway, M&M is better for comics because the whole book is really built around that.

I dunno Ed. I mean we all meta game a bit out of our skill set. I've noticed that all of us as players get frustrated when we can't do something or fail a lot. But hey, that is part of the game (and yes, including myself in the last statement). Doing crazy things is fine, but acting way out of line of your stats is another. By the way Ed, do remember your guy's Fellowship in Kingmaker!

I dunno Ben if I agree that the players have to let the Gm do his thing. How a game is ran should have a lot of player input IMO. But then again my games tend to die off prett quickly. But I think that is a from running out of energy.

JASON: Last comment for me. I think you missed the point, Gabe. No system does balance better than Hero. M&M has balancing mechanics and all sorts of stuff, but it wishes it could be Hero in this regard. If characters are consistently getting knocked out in Hero combats there are two possibilities: the GM has allowed attacks too get too large relative to defenses or the player is making bad decisions. I wasnt commenting on the former, but more the latter. The only way to make a game feel like a comic is for the players to make comic book decisions. No amount of rules or adjudication can do that. What Hero really does poorly here is its mentality encourages gaming it, so it attracts the kind of gamers who do that. In comics, when a villain starts attacking innocents the hero goes to protect the innocents. In Hero games, the heroes attack the villains (that oughta stop em!). This isnt inherently a problem with Hero, its a problem with the game and the gamers. If we had the right people and attitude we could play TWERPS and it would be just like a comic book. The big key is it isnt a video game. Most RPGs in this group have a very video game feel, and that just doesnt work for comic style games.

Edmiao agree with above, i think hero system does not have balance built into character point levels, thus players can design characters with huge attacks that are out of line with the power level. it's the gm's job to police this. M&M may have the limits on power levels built into the xp level of the character (i assume, since i have not played it). easier for the GM to police.

BEN: I'm ok with you disagreeing about how much power the GM has, Gabe: this is in my "personal opinion" section and I think different people view it, well, differently. I personally really dislike running a game by committee: and honestly, I think it introduces too much subjectivity and powergaming into decision making. As far as character balance goes: I'd agree with Ed if and only if we agree that players have to give the GM a lot of leeway. If players feel entitled to make rules decisions, the GM is essentially powerless to enforce character limits without people getting upset. Alternatively, and this is the method I prefer regardless, the mature player regulates/balances him/herself. In hero, if characters spend points broadly, on defense, offense, pointless background skills that only flesh out the history of the character, etc, then this problem can be largely avoided: villains must be designed to make a challenging opponent for the group, and if one person has a 40 def and another has 5, the villain only has a chance if he can break the 40. min maxed characters demand opponents that necessarily will be blowouts against those characters that are "minned" in that department.

--Gdaze 13:37, 30 October 2009 (MST) And that is my point about the Hero system. It has no balancing rules in the actual rules, the GM has to do all of this. M&M has it built in. And powers are built around hwo they work in comics. No rules can force a player to play like a comic, but then can help encourge it.

I dunno Jason, that seems like jumping to an assumption there. You've actually never played in a four color supers game with us. Least not as far as I know. In the last supers game we played a bad guy threw a huge piece of street at a police officer and my guy jumped in the way. And in another one while we were fighting a demon, someone else made sure to let go all the hostages. And after a big fight we rushed to a damaged factory to try and pull out everyone. We also tried to talk a villain into stopping his evil ways. All of this was in Hero. Granted we did a lot of UN-heroic things, so we weren't quite four color. (The first game, with the kids, wasn't supers.)

I'm still not sure what you mean by video game feel. But we already know you don't really enjoy RPing with us.

And Ben, I'm not saying ruling by committee, but if the plot of the story doesn't interest the players, or the point of the game, why run it? It isn't JUST the GM's story, the players have invested interest and things they would like to happen too. Yes when it comes to rules the GM might have to make a hard and fast choice. But he should also maybe take a few moments to review it over, look it up, just to make sure.

And in HERO it is very possible to make a totally useless hero. And it is hard to know because unless the GM makes up tables and rules for powers, like Jason did, then the player has NO IDEA how powerful oppents will be, so it is hard for them to make a character that reflects a good background and what they want the character to be able to do.

--Gdaze 15:05, 30 October 2009 (MST) Also Matt, nobody likes DitV. But really I liked these last few postings. Good points were raised by everyone. Now we need to make an RP were people RP out Rpers discussing how to be a better RPer.

BEN: Among the most interesting elements of this whole discussion for me has been the realization about how much player perception shapes things: it doesn't matter if things are fair, as long as the players perceive things to be fair, for instance. Jagha for example, never had a character sheet, and the only real power she had was immortality, which made her very well educated: the PCs could have beaten her into a pulp in the first session. She never actually DID anything, other than send the PCs on missions and congratulate them at the end.
The other thing that is falling out for me here is that just like always, we can agree on the abstract, underlying principles, but very soon we spiral into saying the same thing we always say, which is: "I like these principles, as long as they are interpreted in X way." What I mean is, in the end we all agree that hte players and the GM need to come to some dynamic, individualized agreement/working relationship: but I think in the end everyone wants their minds read about what that really means. I will grant that Gabe hasn't said he wants games run by committee, and i don't think he does: and we obviously agree that players need to be active participants in a game. It's the transition from this agreement to an actual, running game where it seems everyone radically diverges. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: I think we change games so frequently because a large contigent of the group is always feeling disenfranchised/marginalized. I'm not sure if this is inherent to gaming groups, or all groups of people, but I'd like to hope not.