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[coyote6]

Originally Posted by ragboy

My experience with the game has been completely different. If you start your character at the Novice level, then you're a...novice... not sure what else to say about it. If you want to play a high-level campaign, then you play a game where you start your character at a higher rank. Fairly simple.

Most of the fiction I'd want to use SW to emulate doesn't feature novice protagonists, so it sets off a bit of cognitive dissonance with me that the default starting PCs aren't of equivalent competence (and apparently ValhallaGH). That's just my personal reaction, though.

(FWIW, my experience with actual play of SW has been entirely one shots with pregens -- all of which were significantly better than Novice characters.)

Originally Posted by ragboy

The gameplay concept is completely different from an M&M or other d20/T20 based games. Encounters with mooks don't matter, and shouldn't. They go fast but maintain an element of danger. They sap your resources without killing you.

Sap what resources? Bennies?

I have to disagree with your comments, though, regarding M&M or True20. These things:

Encounters with the big bad guys are memorable, difficult and require ingenuity to win rather than a doctorate degree in an arcane ruleset and access to the approved library/website/consultative expert.

Characters are built on a concept rather than a stack of stats, shortcut equipment bonuses, and poorly defined archetypes. [...]

Character progression is constant and meaningful and doesn't take three different books of Powers and Stuff to accomplish. [...]

So, essentially, you're not gaming for more bonuses (stuff, powers, rule breakers),

... don't apply to M&M, in my gaming experience, or True20, from what I've read. They may apply to D&D of various editions, but True20 and M&M are not D&D (any more than SW is, say, Deadlands or Brave New World or any of the other similar systems).

Don't get me wrong -- SW is awesome. I wouldn't have bought stuff for it (Deadlands, 50 Fathoms, and one other setting) if I didn't like it. It's one of the three or four game systems I'd really like to use for my next campaign, depending on what that campaign ends up being. I will probably house rule some bits, and I don't know if I'll dig it for extended campaigns; but for short games & one shots, it has been great fun.

I played a SW game at DunDraCon this year where the 8 PCs were squad leaders in the Space Marines -- we were decked out in heavy armor, each commanding a squad of goons. It was a blast trying to maneuver to get shots on the heavily armored enemies, toss monofilament & plasma grenades at 'em, and otherwise try to avoid being completely obliterated. I'm not sure there's another system that would've handled it as well, just using the basic rules.