Doc Democracy

Re: Social effects And thus the main misunderstanding as far as I can see. People believe that social combat should be able to compel beliefs and perceptions, the actions that derive from those beliefs and perceptions are under control of theh player and mixed up with whatever other beliefs and perceptions they also have. THAT is the roleplaying challenge. Doc

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool

Re: The Distinctive, The Special, The Cool This is pretty difficult. When you have played the game for twenty years, the whole time thinking about how you'd make it better it is difficult to go back and really 'see' what it is that you love about the system. For me, it is the customisability (not a real word I think!). The power system is a lovely beast - a set of base game effects that you can tweak a multitude of ways to get what you want. Lots of other things are nice but it is this thing at the core that makes HERO for me... Doc

Re: Social effects

Re: Campaign Limits personally I allow flavour stuff for free. In a superhero game I do not tend to play skill heavy scenarios - much more social and physical combat. So bought skills tend to be limited to a couple Area Knowledges, Professional Skills, contacts and favours. Other skills would be flavour in this case so PS: Cop would have flavour skills underneath it - buy PS 14- and I'd ask for (14-9) 5 flavour skills to be listed just to give a broad idea of what the PS should allow. That gives the players the idea that the skills (in this kind of game will accomplish far less then talking to people and punching them). yes I do run very four colour type games.... Doc

Re: Social System Telling tales out of school now!

Re: Social effects

Re: Social System Ya big sook, Waters!! You never say that to me, all I get is abuse!! Doc

Re: Social System The problem with with persuasion, rules as written, is that it is not binding on characters OR players, just the GM. Believe the character or the player? Who decides whether the target is suspicious and by how much? This begins to get to the kind of thing I was looking at but you will notice that the first two modify much more than this - a suspicious character can be almost twice the modifier than a very strong psychological limitation. That seems skewed to me. And here you begin to get some coherence between skill use and PRE attacks - I would like to see the linkages stronger than they are... As I've said, I'm not looking (necessarily) to introduce swathes of new rules if the current ones could be tightened up and made to work together more coherently. Doc

Re: Social System Our games have become increasingly heavy on the social interaction side - we feel a lack as we hit points where we'd like to resolve something but are not slick enough to do it without the crutch of a dice based system. We have tried rolling the skills as they exist but they lack something and it is never quite clear if the player or the PC has won or lost. A good system would make sure that it was the PC who won or lost and the player could guide the approach made and the style (the actions in getting the PC to the point of the contest). I would equate it to the player choosing the battlefield and how the troops are deployed but the actual battle is fought by the PC. Doc

Re: Social effects Shows Gandalf's player judged the modifiers correctly. He gambled on getting one less obvious weapon through by giving up other more obvious weapons. That made the contest one where he did not go head to head with opposing directives but slightly to the side. The hallmarks of a good system would be that it allowed for such subtlety on the part of the players. Doc

Re: Social effects As I said in response to Mark earlier - it is flabby roleplaying to allow a single fact to determine PC actions. He may be convinced that Lilly will kill the unicorn. If the player is also convinced then the action is likely to be an attack on Lilly. If the player is not convinced then the drama comes from how they ensure the unicorn's survival without killing Lilly... It is not the dice who make the decision. The player could decide not to kill Lilly but save the unicorn by diving between the killing stroke and the unicorn - sacrificing himself rather than attack someone that he cannot bring himself to harm...there could be any number of actions that could be taken, but if you insist on going for the most unsatisfactory one, it is not the fault of the system or the GM.... Doc

Re: Social effects You reduce one aspect to yes or no. Same way one successful hit in a physical combat does not decide ultimate victory, one social victory does not decide the whole of the interaction. Doc

Re: How Long Does It Take To Fall?

Re: Campaign Limits I think it was Trebuchet. There are a number of other such systems that have been mooted on the boards. I have never played with that but have at times constructed straw men opponents against which I tested the PCs to see what kind of damage they dished out on average rolls, on rolls of 8 and on rolls of 14. That helped me to get an eyeball on whether the character was underpowered, overpowered or about right (in relation to each other if not across the campaign as a whole). Doc

Re: Social effects

Re: Social effects You are confusing the player and the character again. The player never does anything heroic - they get their characters to do heroic things. So rolling the dice is a player thing (thus never heroic). Deciding to shoot someone is not in essence a heroic thing either, it is making the shot that makes someone heroic. Doofus might see the villain, draw his uzi and let loose. When he misses the villain and takes out three innocent bystanders, the choice to shoot was not heroic... What the player knows is that the GM has employed an NPC to persuade him that Lilly will do it. The player may interpret that as the GM leading him to do something wrong, he might also interpret it as the GM providing the character with an in-game clue that something has led Lilly to the point of an evil act. This comes down to the level of trust between players and GM, not trust in the system. After the fact, that is the point. If the hero had no chance of believing it then there is no drama, and thus no point in the scene... Another false dichotomy. The PC must act as if he believes Lilly is about to off the unicorn - the player may decide to treat that as Lilly is now evil. He may also choose to interpret it as Lilly about to do an evil act (probably with reasoning the hero is not privy to). It is all about the choices made with those beliefs in play. You seem to treat every roll as if it collapses all choice into black and white situations where the players is forced to follow the whim of the dice. Instead, I believe that it puts the player into a different perspective where, if he wants to play a role, then has to discover the heroic path even when it deviates from where the player might want it to be. Doc

Re: Social effects

Re: Manouevre and combat bonuses You trying to derail my thread Waters?!

Re: Manouevre and combat bonuses

Re: Social effects Looks like D20 to me! Burn the heretic! Actually, looking like D20 is not a bad thing - I have tricked HERO character sheets up to look like D20 for some groups and it has gone down a storm... Doc

Re: Manouevre and combat bonuses Yeah, but have you ever thought of proving a surprise bonus of 2x STUN?

I was thinking when looking at the damage class thread about the relationship HERO has with defences and damage. There is a common trend among GMs to award bonuses to hit when people come up with interesting manoeuvres or situational advantages rather than bonuses to damage. What are thoughts on offering players +2 to hit OR +2D6 to damage for an interesting manouevre (damage limited to original maximum - so a 10D6 attack will not do more than 60 STUN or 20 BODY under such bonuses)?? Often a bit extra damage will make more difference in combat than an extra +2 to hit... Doc

Re: Partially limited Multipower As long as the GM is willing to give you a bigger cost break than you asked for - the reserve will be (for an 80 point multipower) seven points cheaper and each slot will cost 5 points rather than 6. Doc

Re: Social effects