I dont mind hitpoint escalation per se, but wightbred is right about having to grind it out.

Wizards and clerics get more powerful spells every level - I reckon characters who rely more on hitting things should get more combat power as well, special moves that make them more powerful.

hmm, maybe not the 'word'.  Maybe the vibe.

Personal anecdote.  A guy I knew always GMed 'solve the mystery' style  play with any game he ran.  He knew what was really going on, and apparently, if the characters examined the right things, asked the right questions and the players deducted the right conclusions from information thus acquired, we could solve the mystery!

It was the most tedious fucking process you could imagine.

What about if we try this?  nope.
Does this guy know anything?  nup.
Im going to look at this thing.  Its a thing.
A special thing thing?  No just a thing.

So whatever you end up doing, dont do the above, please !

Stefoid:

Quote from: stefoid on March 02, 2011, 06:21:58 PM

Why have a psychic maelstrom?

I think that's mainly for color reasons and whether it exists or not doesn't have a major/direct effect on resolution or the things I'm currently probing into. So I can't answer your question yet.

Well yeah, the game has 'magic', so my assumption is VB is trying to broaden its appeal by including some stuff which generally appears in mainstream games such as stat advancement and armor and stuff.

Hi, I was just cruising rpg.net and I was thinking about different types of gamers and my own gaming history.  So Im 42 and I started gaming in 1986.

Lets call this stage 1.
Back then, it was totally the setting and the situations it implied that I got excited about,  WOW, broos and stormbulls fighting it out - cyberpunk, etc...  The mechanics didnt really make any kind of difference to me, it was just something to pick up, and there was only one way of roleplaying - the way my friends taught me, so that didnt factor in either.

stage 2
After some years, I became bored with this.  The settings and implied situations were still cool, but we had tapped them in every way we knew how.  Which is not a limitation on the settings/sitches themselves, but on our ability to tap them.   It was just the same old, same old, and maybe it was the mechanics that was to blame?  There was only one way to play, so the mechanics were the only variable we could see.   So lets look at games with different mechanics and see if that fixes the 'sameol' factor.  The endgame for stage 2 (for me) is designing your own heartbreaker which doesnt help either.

stage 3
Maybe we're doing it wrong?   Apparently there is something called 'indie games' that have all these impenetrable theories about different ways to roleplay?  Lets check those out and try a few.  Hmmm, theoretically it sounds good, but in practice its hard to learn different ways to play from a rulebook, and we are older now with much less time and brainspace to spend on our hobbies, and isolated from other gamers who might be able to teach us by example.

stage 4
OK, we get it now.  By a combination of fumbling experimentation, forum tips, narrative heartbreakers, fizzled sessions etc...  we get that there are other styles of play to appreciate and that roleplaying can be offer us new ways to tap the setting/situations that we still love.

Phew, Ok.  So this is obviously autobiographical, but I am assuming it is representative of a significant number of gamers, and that large numbers of gamers 'drop out' at each stage, judging by the hordes that post to RPG.net and the few that post to indie game sites.  Like a reverse exponential curve.

And the point is that I am looking at AW, having not played it yet, but its on the agenda, and Im thinking - everything about it is intrinsicly appealing to the stage 1 player in us all (well in me anyway) - the setting and implied situations, the character archetypes, the big fucking guns, the hitpoints, armor and equipment, the 'lets throw some magic/psi shit in here because we can'

However, what AW doesnt have is the 'there is only one way to roleplay -- you know, the way you already play with your friends' assumption.  It this has a very specific, explicit, no nonsense approach to 'This is how you play this game' - down to the rigid types of 'moves' and the way the moves lead you by the nose into certain types of conflict with open-ended resolutions.

For a start, if you design games for a living, you want to reach the stage 1s because there are so many of them and they spend money, and if youre lucky, you could go viral.  But there is also this explicitness and nose-leading mechanics - designed to help people go from stage 1/2 to stage 3/4 without it taking  5 years and without a huge dropout rate? 

Is that the aim vincent?

So how would you go about stopping a pathalogical character in any game?  I think in-game, someone is going to whack him or he'll end up king of the smoking ruin.

Youre saying the player isnt playing a pathalogical character per se, hes playing with a gamist agenda and thats creating a pathalogical character?

What type of rules could discourage that?

Way to come to a topic late, but its interesting to me -- I never quite agreed with the whole Step on up thing as being the primary for gamist players.

My gut says Step on up is a part of roleplaying in general, regardless of which priority youre playing.  Its the same thing as saying Players want (their character) to be able to make decisions that matter, regardless of the method.  Like it could be a choice of a spell at the right time or making a dramatic decision with ethical consequences or whatever, its still stepping on up to me.

So I agree the rules matter - they support the ability to make choices that matter.  In gamist terms you have the choice you make during character design and ongoing character improvement, which is a huge fun part of play, and also the tactical choices you make when you test that design against adversity. 

Thats why I think Ron dosent get the term character 'balance' as he doesnt get the gamist thing.  If the design tradeoffs are not balanced, then the player isnt making choices that matter -- the nature of the game insists that he take the obviously best performing option, which isnt a choice at all.

The GM of the Wizards Tower did make the adversaries slightly too  difficult, and was apologising for the right reasons (whether he needed to?)   the perfect level of difficulty to present players with is one that if they make the right tactical choices, they win, and if they dont, they loose,otherwise their choices dont matter!

I liked the advice for the AW GM to ask certain types of questions.. Sure: "what do you do?"... but what about "how do you feel?" and "what do you think?"  Cant wait to ask some players that, Im sure I will get some double takes.