@GreenFlashlight said in Good or New Movies Review:
In the first place, I do not care about a person's intentions when compared to the outcomes of their actions. If you only accidentally hit me in the nose, does my nose stop bleeding once I know it wasn't your intention?
I think you are taking this a bit too personally.
I don't mean Frozen. I mean this thread's comments.
So do you think there is a consensus here regarding what the 'ideal' power distribution ought to be on a game?
I think it was successfully argued by multiple people a high-level concept could work in the right MU* but it simply isn't for a number of reasons - the narrative changes, it's more (and different) work for the GMs, etc.
One question I was curious to see your answers was whether a varied distribution was actually helpful - i.e. if the mere presence of some characters who are more advanced than others is better overall for a game or not.
Please keep me honest if I misinterpreted but I think although we focused on how that should be implemented there was no generally agreed on take for what it does to a game if this is the case or if it's not.
For example would you prefer to play on a MU* where mechanical power uniformity is enforced ("all characters fall within levels 4-6")? Or one where the majority might be levels 4-6 but some (regardless of the method they're chosen) are 8-10?
I know this question is based on a abstract model made in a vacuum, and that in fact several excellent points were made in this very thread about how 'levels' or even attributes on a +sheet don't mean the same thing in every system or game, but I think we can still get some interesting answers about the concept itself of how to distribute power to a playerbase.
@eye8urcake That's one of the reasons having detailed policies isn't worth it.
Ultimately if staff is good and involved they are not needed, but if they are themselves part of the problem the policies themselves don't protect the players they're intended to.
Likewise reasonable players are only going to be inconvenienced by draconic rules while the few bad seeds are going to try to go around them anyway.
Policies are good for only one thing: Informing the playerbase of what staff's official intention for the overall tone and culture is. But past that, a MU*'s culture is shaped way, way, way more by what is actually practiced rather than what is written down in some help file.
@Derp said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:
And yet that still fuels the biggest complaint of the last several years, in that omg every game is just a cookie cutter, no originality, etc.
My big peeve, on the other hand, is that even if you give people a ton of original lore and details on the world, they just ignore most of it because of that same idea of "I don't have time to learn something new," and just do generic whatever system in whatever city, fantasy or otherwise that they usually do, which leads to a lack of cohesion.
Yeah, I think it's been shown very clearly that it's the execution and not the concept that matters.
Arx is a completely new property and incredibly convoluted (in fact it's a genuine complaint people often seem to have that there's so much going on and they're so lost). Yet it's undeniably very popular and successful.
As for the World of Darkness it's perhaps the most well known IP in our circles but some games are completely forgettable or literal clones of each other, so they die a quick and quiet death soon after launching since players log on, create characters, get bored and leave.
It's all in the execution. There's no recipe of some system you pick and your game succeeds or fails. If only.
@Ghost Although this lingers close to being out of topic, if you think of "the IP" as "common ground recognizable by players" then it becomes easier to see.
I might not have the time or inclination to invest in a new fantasy game - whether that means learning the lore or the mechanics. However if I know it's D&D set in the Forgotten Realms there's an instant association in my head with what it entails; it might be the d20 system or that there's a city called Waterdeep somewhere, there are sorcerers and bards and paladins, but the familiarity itself is informative and I get to make an easier, more informed choice of whether to play there.
@Ganymede What bugs me specifically is how easy it is for markets to be cornered illegally through price fixing these days, to the detriment of consumers.
The same thing applies to ISPs. Underbid everyone until competition is basically extinct then price fix with other major corporations still in the market at will. What are the sheep going to do, go elsewhere?
@GreenFlashlight I'm not big on Frozen but to be honest I hadn't noticed any of those things or knew about them until your post.
However pigs will fly probably fly before Disney (of all studios) makes an major animated movie aimed at kids whose protagonist is gay. I don't even think they have the guts to make any of the supporting cast, either.
@Ominous said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:
The latter option for me; though, I would have it tied to age. I have for a few years now supported the idea that xp should be awarded as an equal amount to everyone every in-game month. When you roll up a character and decide on an age that determines the starting xp you have to invest in your starting skills. If you want to play a character who has top of the line skills, he/she can't be a smooth-faced youth who just left the farm yesterday to seek adventure. He/she is going to be the grizzled badass, 40-something veteran of two wars, a coup attempt by the royal vizier, the attempted ending of the world by a chaos cult, and that one time a dragon attacked his/her unit, killing all but 10 soldiers.
I agree with that. One of the things that really bugged me on The Reach wasn't that characters were given a lot of XP but that the way the game was set it just didn't make any sense. Neonates had vast powers and Blood Potency a month after their Embrace, fledgling Mages triple-Mastered Arcana in no time, etc.
@Pyrephox said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:
It's a struggle to accommodate them in the typical 'find thing, beat up thing' plot without making it either trivial for them or impossible for anyone who isn't them. I think a game has to be built to give them an arena that really showcases the privileges and perils of power...and most games aren't.
I agree and I like your phrasing. Let me go down that path a bit.
The majority of plots on MU* tend to be one of two things; either combat-oriented "find thing, kill thing" as you call it, or social get-togethers. There is no deep reason for this other than convenience - although it's definitely possible to run different scenes as well these are easier and don't require the ST/GM to know much in advance about the characters who'll be joining.
For example if I create an +event to go kill a Bad Thing up in the mountains the footwork needed in advance is pretty limited. I don't even have to know who's going to join (which might be decided based on who's online at the time, no matter who signs up).
However throw high level characters at this and it's all different. Why does it take two Archwizards and the Lord Captain of the Paladins to down an owlbear? I'd have to turn it into a dragon instead, but then what about the two squires and the fledgling bard who joined as well, what is their role in the party? I'm either going to challenge the highbies by things that would decimate the lowbies, or I'm going to bore the former with the trivial threats I throw at them. Either way that won't be fun for half the participants.
This isn't to say that plot runners are lazy. It's that we all tend to take the path of least resistance, and that includes creating themes for entire MU*.
Now here's the rub: How are these issues best solved? For example is a forced power curve successfully addressing the problem given @Tinuviel's point earlier about mechanical stagnation when effectively there is no longer a progression? Does gameplay suffer in a different area when the carrot of power advancement is no longer present, effectively treating one issue but creating another elsewhere?
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Publishers agreed to the deal. And just like that, everything changed."
@Ominous said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:
I don't think @Arkandel was asking what an ideal power level is. He is looking for how much of a difference a game should allow between characters.
Yes, that, and also where that relative power level ought to be.
Do you prefer high end games where characters have access to the most incredible feats available in the system? Do you prefer them being beginners with access limited to the first few powers? Somewhere in the middle?
Then, equally as importantly, do you think all characters should be in the same range of mechanical power as the rest? How much should they be able to deviate if not? And how do some PCs then get to that point - is it a function of how long they've been active? Do they earn it through some risky means? Do their players just choose or apply ("I'll play a veteran", "I'll play Superman") for those outliers?
@Derp said in What is the 'ideal' power range?:
'Power levels' are kind of a red herring, because a 'power level' is really defined by what a character can do within the world, and whether or not there are more powerful people than them.
To clarify on that point, my intention in the context of this thread is to define 'power' mechanically.
In other words although a skilled, active player can (and arguably should) get to positions of authority or influence, what I'm looking for is stuff that's on the character sheet as attributes and stats bought by some kind of XP system.
If the mechanical gaps are small between IC levels of experience then I'd consider them to not exist. That is if an IC veteran and a beginner have approximately the same stats then they're essentially both on the same part of the mechanical power curve.
Let's try to separate the choice of mechanics or even method of rewarding XP to players for this thread and focus on the ideal power range characters 'should' fall into.
I was inspired by this link which happens to be about D&D: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/12/dd-apparently-theres-no-country-for-high-level-characters.html
In your games what is your preferred distribution? For example:
Please feel free to discuss other points as well but I'd really like to focus less on the methods to accomplish your ideal power ranges on a game and more on why you want that.
@Wizz As you've noticed the rest of us are more shameless.
@Lemon-Fox said in Good or New Movies Review:
@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker Pitch Meeting
Cool link! Still enjoyed the movie.
Oh, it wasn't meant as criticism anyway. All of the Pitch Meeting videos make fun of the material and find plot holes, even for movies the guy who creates them loves. Watch the Endgame one, for example.
Yeah, what the other folks said. Don't try to predict every single thing someone can do, that just leads to rules lawyering and similar silliness.
"Don't be a jerk" should cover it. If anyone has a question about whether something is okay they can ask staff.
