[freeroleplay] Re: Advantages
- From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2003 11:04:50 -0700 (PDT)
On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Samuel Penn wrote:
> Ricardo Gladwell said:
> >> It also prevents the issue of players creating characters which
> >> have too many social problems to work well with the rest of the
> >> group.
> >
> > This sounds like a sound idea rather than allowing players to load up on
> > psychological disadvantages.
>
> It was all heavily influenced by GURPS, which is very bad at allowing
> characters to load up in this way. However, I've recently come across
> a GURPS optional rule which really makes sense, though I'm not going
> to use it in Yags.
>
> Basically, all players always take the maximum number of disadvantages,
> and often end up with broken characters because of it. So, just give players
> the maximum number of disadvantage points for free, and tell them to
> take whatever disads they want, though they won't get extra points for them.
>
> People who have tried it say that players often do take disads, sometimes
> quite a few, but they fit their character concept much better because they're
> not working against the points.
I took a similar approach with my system. It bugged me not only that
the players would select the maximum points for disadvantages but then
would work out ways to ignore or compensate for the, so they'd have
minimal game impact. So they were like 'free points'.
Some players were good at playing them, but others were much more
focused on 'mechanics' than 'character' and just couldn't get into it in
that way.
Leaving them to the player's discretion was effective for the players
who liked roleplaying anyway. I kind of got the feeling that these
players would do this regardless of whether there were any points
involved or not. ;-)
Ultimately, the approach we ended up with, that's kind of half-codified
in Circe, is essentially two separate point systems for character
development. The first is the regular game mechanics stuff; skills,
combat, attributes, etc. The second is a more pure background oriented
system, where the price and benefits are more intangible and discrete
from game effects. For example, military rank, inclusion in powerful
social circles, family connections, etc. He may have become a trusted
advisor to the king, but have a heap of skeletons in his closet. He may
own a profitable trade business, but have made some serious enemies in
the process.
Anyway, by keeping game effects completely abstracted out of this second
system, it prevented it from impacting game balance in general. Players
could use it as much or as little as they wished; those wanting to avoid
all the character roleplaying stuff could ignore it totally. Since it
was purely social in scope, min/maxers could go nuts without really
causing unfair imbalances.
Some flexibility on the point costs may be appropriate. For instance,
what would be the price of having an enemy? Obviously it'd depend on
how strong the enemy is, and how serious an impact he'd have on the
game. A powerful enemy that never shows up in the game is worth less
than a weak one that crops up every other session. So these can be
tricky to judge.
The main downside I found, though, was that we often ended up with these
extremely interesting characters whose quirks and strengths overshadowed
what I'd planned for the campaign. This turned out to be easy to fix
though - I told the players ahead of time what the starting game
environment was going to be, so they had a clue how to fit their
characters in.
For example, "The game's starts with a group of freshly recruited city
guards for a special unit tasked with attending to some of the unusual -
and dangerous - things that the regular guards can't handle." Most
players designed guards, but some got creative. One designed a
brilliant physician shunned by his profession and forced to work in the
seediest part of the city. Another had a character that had deflowered
a nobleman's daughter and had been "given a choice"; he suspected he was
being deliberately being put in harms way to attract an "accident".
This worked out really well because I could spice up the adventures I
already had planned with tidbits related to the characters. The players
also got a lot more invested in the storylines this way, too.
Bryce
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