@faraday said in FS3:
- Die results (perplexing, but maybe they just haven't played on other dice-using MU*s to realize that you fail just as often/more often there?)
Thinking about this: It is so easy to manipulate the advantages in World of Darkness games that it's probably us WoDers.
- [..] But even the guidance I did provide was often ignored.
This is more what I was aiming at. It's been a while, so drawing out that your toolkit is a toolkit and not meant to be a completed RPG system means that you don't have an ultimate control over how people experience the game, yet things that aren't about the dice roller, as interesting as they are, are not under much your control.
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@Seraphim73 said in FS3:
@faraday said in FS3:
I hate starting off at level 1 when my friends twist my arm into playing D20.
Well they're just doing it wrong, unless they like playing schlubs. I've always found level 1-3 to be pretty dang boring, you generally have one "trick," and everything hangs on a knife's edge because you have relatively tiny amounts of HP.
I fucking love 1-3, but I love low fantasy. I love games where "how can I eat?" is an honest question, because it builds my perception of the character, and when they survive to level 16 I feel like I've done something epic.
My last D&D character, many many years ago, started as a completely green schlub who lived in the part of the country where many world-famous adventurers came from (Forgotten Realms, The Dales). But he wanted to go out and Be An Adventurer And Do Good For The World!!!! Worse, his family was a very well-off middle-class merchant family, so his entire story was about him learning the hardships of choosing to be essentially lower-class and spurning his father's trade was challenging. Sure you can do that starting at level 3, too, but I don't see D&D as a wargame simulation, even though that's how it was designed, but as a toolkit to tell stories in a particular setting.
This isn't relevant, but I loved that character. Our adventuring party had done a crap-ton of Good(tm) by the end of the campaign. I like to think that my Generic Fighter character retired after a scant five years of adventuring a mature and stable man, and husband, to help expand his father's business. I may never know. (Though he probably got into politics, to be honest. By the time we were done, running a successful horse breeding merchant business probably was too small a world to him. His wife, on the other hand, probably would've done while her husband was out playing Hero. Neutral Good. It was fucking awesome.)
(another edit):
His wife was one of a pair of Damsels In Distress that our group rescued in a situation so cliche that I was fully expecting them to be polymorphed demons or something -- thus breaking cliche by following a different cliche! They were practically strong-armed into getting married by a crazy hermit dude who worshiped the absentee First God, Ao. During an adventure. She was an NPC who the DM thought it would be interesting to make her the daughter of a somewhat powerful merchant trader, too. I think this was one of the ways that our DM rewarded us instead of yet another boring "you discover 100 gold pieces". 500gp for returning the man's eldest daughter? Nice. Introducing a reoccurring character? Priceless.
Oh yeah, and she was wicked practical. Pairing up with a kind of ditzy goodie-goodie Adventurer was a funny and meaningful balance.
I like getting XP, but things like this are why I RP. You can't make a stat or rewards system that does this.