Doc Democracy

Re: Partially limited Multipower

Re: Partially limited Multipower I can understand the problem. I think I would make the power based on two multipowers. In the first multipower you would have a 40 point reserve which would have your base level powers within it. In the second you would have a 40 point reserve based on the focus (as would all the slots). The slots would also be limited to adding to powers in the first multipower. Doc

Re: Social effects

Re: Ideas for powers for child heroes... I like to think of Baby X as having weirdness magnet, scads of unluck, invulnerability and teleportation (takes time and needs lots of incidental foci). I see the baby as the reason they get into trouble - trying to save it while it miraculously avoids damage and gets to where it wants to go - usually either its mom or the baby store - by a variety of improbably means (plane drops out of the sky onto the other end of the see-saw catapulting baby X towards the house Mom is visiting....) Doc

Re: Social effects Tom Baker was MY doctor. I have a huge gap in knowledge from early Peter Davidson to Christopher Ecclestone and David Tennant. (my son is a fanatic and watches these endlessly on YouTube and DVD. Doc

Re: Social effects

Re: Social System Pretty cool Sean and like I said, I get nervous when you disappear for a while - tension builds up... You might also want to think about a quick resolution as well for when you dont want to run throughthe whole system. Might also be worth thinking closely about the effects of long term preparation. If you work hard on a seduction then you prepare in advance - good first and second dates make a big difference to a seduction attempt on the third date. Maybe that ties in with the context idea where early rolls are about changing context rather than achieving the main end. Obviously trying to rush changes of context might work against you so perhaps you set time scales for base - quicker intervals give penalties, longer ones give bonuses.

Re: Social effects Please believe me that I am not trying to trip you up but these two comments confused me. One that it is not the place of the rules to prevent bad play: The next that the rules made the GM bad:

Re: Social effects Can a character be persuaded of something if the player is not? A blunt instrument that may allow you to make someone hesitate. So a high EGO is the key to not being persuaded, seduced, conversed or any other social skill? Not sure how this works but again - high EGO is the way forward? Hrrm. So everything is a power - any attempt to change someone's mind requires powers rather than skills? Why have the skills then? A coherent set of mechanics that relate to each other and make sense next to each other.... Doc

Re: Any house rules on a different dice system?

Re: Social effects And what about those situations where the GM thinks that you not allowing a skill roll to succeed ruins his visualisation of his character, or where the GM decides not to allow your skill roll to succeed because it ruins his visualisation of his character when not succeeding ruins the visualisation of your character? And you have to trust the GM not to bring in characters where such levels do indeed mean that the character is a shrewd operator or would have told you at the beginning of the character creation that you needed more than that to be effective. Trust issue - just like he'd have told you that you'd need more than 10D6 if you wanted to be point man in dealing damage. This is actually how I got into the whole social combat thing on the 6th edition boards... The way the contest system for the current system is set out means that you either have to leave holes in your defences or spend a lot of points to be completely defended. However, in this instance I think a lot of points are already spent on social skills - they just aren't applied in a coherent fashion... As opposed to the current situation for PCs who can never be talked out of an action that they are set on doing because they will simply beat you up until you stop talking... I haven't actually seen any proponents of social conflict resolution argue that this would not be an acceptable end point for such things...just that the breadth of responses is widened from that provided by PRE attack. Didn't that happen in the comic? I'm sure Luthor was president and Superman worked on his behalf (so supporting him in that office, even if he did not campaign for him to get there) I think Hugh answered this but this does mean that the GM is not good at using such systems. Doesn't mean they become a bad GM but if what they are doing is annoying the players then they are doing a bad job. Good use of the system should be similar to resolving any conflict in the game... Doc

Re: Social effects You seem to think you are either Hector the Hero or Craven the Coward. If you gave your character 20+ PRE then you have built bravery into him - he will be braver than most. Doesn't mean he is always brave (no absolutes in HERO). But you have said that interaction skills cannot persuade or seduce if the player decides they are inappropriate actions, so they are not in place to impose even temporary changes to character behaviour. I cannot remember anyone proposing permanent changes to character behaviour through social conflict resolution...except for those opposed to such things. Doc

Re: How-to build a Defibrillator effect I hadn't presumed this would be something for a player character to have in a superhero game - if so, then I agree with you. For a heroic campaign with a defribillator on the wall, what would you build it as? For me it is another of those powers that depend on the victim. For someone who's heart is arrythmic then it is skill levels on someone's first aid (OAF) to make them better. For a healthy person it is quite a jolt - STUN only? Does BODY triggered by poor heart disad on victim? Doc EDIT - Yup I see it - the OP did specify that it was for a character's power....

Re: How-to build a Defibrillator effect I think this is simply skill levels to first aid (only where defibrillation will have a beneficial effect). Doc

Re: Social effects So the problem is poorly drawn characters. In fiction the reader sees poorly drawn characters as idiots. In an RPG poorly drawn characters are subject to attacks that make them look like idiots (see glass-jawed ninjas as well as those who are persuaded to do stupid things). If you build your character appropriately then there is nothing to fear from a social conflict resolution system. Doc

Re: Social System Hmm. You want us to talk mechanics? Fantastic! Beyond skills both COM and EGO could be core to the system as would social disads. How would you envisage the use of added characteristics and disads? Modifiers as appropriate? And why PRE/5+9? Why not PRE/3?? I quite like the idea of 10 as a target number, just like physical combat. If you roll over 10 on 3D6 you succeed. Everything else modifies. If modifiers take the target number to 18 or above then there is no chance of succeeding; if they take it to 3 or below then it is an automatic success. The question may be degrees of success - I think there has to be degrees of success but I don't like the 'damage' system. I would prefer it was either co-option of another mechanic - like adding disads through an aid/drain style mechanic or degrees of success guidance as in PRE attacks. Doc

Re: Social effects

Re: Social effects A good part of this argument is how GM and player come to agreement on what is appropriate... Doc

Re: Social effects And yet we quantify and notarise some contests and not others. Even in play pretend we look to the rules when GM and player disagree on outcomes. If we wanted to simply play pretend we would need no rules or dice at all. If there is nothing on the character sheet or something quantifiable the the game becomes nothing more than "Is!", "Is not!". There would be similar disagreements about the effects of physical combat if the rules were not there to out players an GMs on the same page. And while I reckon that social resolution systems should be able to colour perceptions and beliefs (temporarily mostly) they would never dictate actions. It would be for GM and player to state intents and interpret results. I think we disagree more on the philosophy and stuff than on the mechanical application of stuff in game... Doc

Re: Social effects See. I think it is machismo to think that our choices and decisions (despite our best intentions and skills) are not influenced by others. In a game situation the factors that would influence a character are unlikely to have the same influence on the player of that character and the system as it stands gives little guidance to the player on how much those influences have accomplished. The player can say - I see through it all - I refuse to submit. How would the game provide for the (admittedly extreme) example of Saruman in the Lord of the Rings or the influence of Sauron over Saruman and Denethor through the palantir - an influence resisted heroically by Aragorn. Right now if Denethor was a PC he could simply say - "nonsense! I don't listen to him..." The boy in your parable was brave. His bravery could have been innate, tempered through indifference to pain after long experience or inspired by desperation. Whatever, he was brave. There are a lot of women out there who make the other choice, stay down and dont tell anyone. How do you know which category your character comes into. The Ultimates backstory with Wasp is excellent here in that a very brave superhero is abused by her husband in a way she would never allow a villain to. Where does the system allow for that. Good GMs and players can achieve beyond what the system facilitates but I would like my system of choice to facilitate where it currently does not. The balance between codifying old mechanics, introducing new ones and providing extensive guidance on their use is what I was hoping to discuss - not whether it is an abomination. Doc

Re: Social effects Will rep when able. I was about to quote Pendragon as my first introduction to rules for social interaction. I found that it better defined the role I was to play as my job in the game. I could see better what might be defined for me in that role and what I might want to change about the character and look for ways to accomplish that. One of my characters had a very low Brave characteristic. That was not what I wanted to play initially but it led to me making lots of actions that reflected that - avoiding places where the GM might require Bravery rolls and functioning on a very different plane - the plane of the character in front of me rather than the idealised version in my head. I also went out of my way to enhance that characteristic when I could - when he died he was honoured by Arthur who erected a monument to his brave actions in the battle where he met his doom. A proud moment and one better savoured because he had to work to achieve that bravery. Now in HERO you start from a different place - if you want a brave character then you would build that. If you didn't build it into the character then why should you expect him to be brave? It should allow (not demand) another level of detail to be played. The system has many basic mechanisms that could be used - Markdoc has in many places indicated where and how he has used them and Vondy has indicated that with experience comes the ability to use them more effectively. Why not have a better designed set of mechanics instead and some detailed guidance on how to use those for new players and GMs? Doc

Re: Social effects It is amazing considering how many words we have spent on arguing about this that we are probably not that far away in practice. I don't think I would like such a chart either - it could never be comprehensive enough or, if it was, would be too long to use. I think there are too many disparate ways to influence actions and beliefs - I would like it better codified with respect to the mechanics available in this and then a really good few pages spent on how to run social conflict. I haven't counted but I'll bet there is a lot more space devoted to physical conflicts than to social ones. What does that say about the system? Doc

Re: Social effects It is the current situation with things like persuasion. I am pretty much dead against this. If the player is the ultimate arbiter of what the PC can or cannot be persuaded to do (regardless of skills and abilities) then the GM has to be the ultimate arbiter of what the NPC can or cannot be persuaded to do. Doc

Re: Social effects In my original post I was positing that we might come up with a system that would achieve something like adding psychological disads or other social limitations. I said that these might make later mind control stuff easier - lay the groundwork. I never at any point indicated that the system would make characters take specific actions contrary to the players' desires. It might make them have to go about things differently - or it might indeed provoke the player into more extravagant concessions than you imagined. What I would like is a more coherent coming together of all the social interaction material already within the system to provide a better framework for players and GMs to work through the places where they disagree on things related to social interactions between PCs and NPCs. Not social interactions between players and GMs - no rules help that. Doc

Re: Social effects Yup. This is something that has been discussed both here and in the 6th edition boards. Doc