Recurring comment about Marvel Heroic RP that seems wrong to me

[Old Fezziwig]

I really do feel that many storygame proponents are, almost willfully, not understanding the point of view of folks who don't share their perspective, and are instead inclined to take disagreement personally.

You know, we could flip this statement around.

Do you know how exhausting it is to have to constantly genuflect to trad/neotrad players and their tastes when (1) I genuinely love some trad/neotrad games, (2) most of my play has been in trad/neotrad spaces, and (3) this would be rank insanity in any other conversation? Like, if we were talking about vacations in coastal New England and someone said how much they liked Cape Ann, I'd be an absolute muppet if I insisted that they acknowledge the beauty of Bar Harbor, before they could talk about their weekend in Rockport. Yet, I feel like every time there's a conversation about games like BW, PbTA et al folks have to acknowledge their trad/neotrad bonafides.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You know, we could flip this statement around.

Do you know how exhausting it is to have to constantly genuflect to trad/neotrad players and their tastes when (1) I genuinely love some trad/neotrad games, (2) most of my play has been in trad/neotrad spaces, and (3) this would be rank insanity in any other conversation? Like, if we were talking about vacations in coastal New England and someone said how much they liked Cape Ann, I'd be an absolute muppet if I insisted that they acknowledge the beauty of Bar Harbor, before they could talk about their weekend in Rockport. Yet, I feel like every time there's a conversation about games like BW, PbTA et al folks have to acknowledge their trad/neotrad bonafides.

Genuflect? Hyperbole much? I'm asking for people with differing points of view to respect each other's preferences. I don't like storygames for many, many reasons, but I respect the point of view of those that do, and try not to take the way in which my rhetorical opponents express their feelings personally, unless in my opinion they are clearly intended to be taken so.

I also ask that popularity not be taken as a metric of validity in any argument not about how many people a game, or about money. It has no place anywhere else. Of course, that metric is more likely to be in my favor than against it in this specific case, so fairness as well as logic demands it be disregarded.

All I'm asking for is equal courtesy.

 

[pemerton]

The fact that MHR fans didn't recognize that modelling was not a useful creation method for people did not change that; it still added up to "write down what you think is appropriate" which wasn't any more satisfying there than it would be in any other game to them.

How did "useful" as a general predicate, and "didn't satisfy X" where X is some particular person (or group of people) become synonyms?

And for that matter, how did "I don't find this game's rule for this satisfying" become synonymous with "This game has no rule for this"?

I mean, I'm a MHRP fan. The game has a system for creating characters, that it steps through with a worked example. And it is useful: I have used that system to create multiple characters. And I'm a person. So no wonder I have not "recognised that it is not a useful creation method for people!".

the game system did not care much about anything resembling inter-character balance (helped a bit by the fact the differences had to be fairly pronounced before they were strongly noticeable because of the mechanical compression in Cortex), modelling was not viewed by a lot of people as a satisfactory character generation method for original characters.

If you want to build characters with similarly sized dice, it's trivial to do so.

And the system is not one that "doesn't care much about anything resembling inter-character balance". It has a lot of mechanical elements that push towards exactly this, in play.

A perfectly reasonable opinion from the perspective of many, and hardly a "silly" one. I really do feel that many storygame proponents are, almost willfully, not understanding the point of view of folks who don't share their perspective, and are instead inclined to take disagreement personally.

If I posted a thread saying that OD&D has no PC creation rules, I would be wrong. Possibly also silly.

I don't like these rules for PC creation doesn't entail that there aren't any, that they don't work, that they are not useful, etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How did "useful" as a general predicate, and "didn't satisfy X" where X is some particular person (or group of people) become synonyms?

And for that matter, how did "I don't find this game's rule for this satisfying" become synonymous with "This game has no rule for this"?

I mean, I'm a MHRP fan. The game has a system for creating characters, that it steps through with a worked example. And it is useful: I have used that system to create multiple characters. And I'm a person. So no wonder I have not "recognised that it is not a useful creation method for people!".

If you want to build characters with similarly sized dice, it's trivial to do so.

And the system is not one that "doesn't care much about anything resembling inter-character balance". It has a lot of mechanical elements that push towards exactly this, in play.

If I posted a thread saying that OD&D has no PC creation rules, I would be wrong. Possibly also silly.

I don't like these rules for PC creation doesn't entail that there aren't any, that they don't work, that they are not useful, etc.

Sure, and it would be more accurate to say what you just did. But if you don't recognize modeling as a legitimate character creation method based on your experience (and that experience is shared by a lot of people, so don't be surprised if you hear it a lot) than you can't really the claim as silly (a belittling and judgmental term), just inaccurate.

 

[pemerton]

Sure, and it would be more accurate to say what you just did. But if you don't recognize modeling as a legitimate character creation method based on your experience (and that experience is shared by a lot of people, so don't be surprised if you hear it a lot) than you can't really the claim as silly (a belittling and judgmental term), just inaccurate.

Saying that OD&D has not PC creation rules would be silly, in my view. (I also note that you are the one who introduced that word into the thread.) It doesn't become less silly because I don't regard random character creation as a "legitimate" character creation methods, whatever the heck "legitimate" means in this context!

I have more than once read someone assert that MHRP doesn't allow for PC creation. It does, and it has 4 pages of rules stepping one through the process. End of story, and denying those 4 pages exist is wrong, and - since you invite me to apply the label - also silly.

 

[Blue]

Sure, and it would be more accurate to say what you just did. But if you don't recognize modeling as a legitimate character creation method based on your experience (and that experience is shared by a lot of people, so don't be surprised if you hear it a lot) than you can't really the claim as silly (a belittling and judgmental term), just inaccurate.

Just try replacing some words and see if it still makes sense.

"I don't recognize (random number generation) as a legitimate character creation method, so (D&D) has no character creation method."

That's obviously not true.

Some individuals or subgroup deciding that they don't recognize the legitimacy of a type of system does not mean it doesn't exist. As a matter of fact, they have to acknowledge it exists in order to de-legitimize it. There are rules in the book. Reading them and deciding they don't want to play with them inherently means the recognize they are rules that exist.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How did "useful" as a general predicate, and "didn't satisfy X" where X is some particular person (or group of people) become synonyms?

When it applies to enough of them, just like always.

And for that matter, how did "I don't find this game's rule for this satisfying" become synonymous with "This game has no rule for this"?

I've acknowledged that was hyperbole (but noting that modelling being "rules for this" requires approaching it from a particular view).

I mean, I'm a MHRP fan. The game has a system for creating characters, that it steps through with a worked example. And it is useful: I have used that system to create multiple characters. And I'm a person. So no wonder I have not "recognised that it is not a useful creation method for people!".

Because you're not everyone, and you're specifically not the people who objected to it, which as you've noted yourself is no small group.

If you want to build characters with similarly sized dice, it's trivial to do so.

Its also trivial for people to be tempted to push them up past where they should be. The shapelessness of that method doesn't exactly discourage that.

And the system is not one that "doesn't care much about anything resembling inter-character balance". It has a lot of mechanical elements that push towards exactly this, in play.

I ran the game, and I disagree. As I noted, the compression of scale helps some, but there are still clearly winners and losers when it comes to getting what you want done in play.

If I posted a thread saying that OD&D has no PC creation rules, I would be wrong. Possibly also silly.

I don't like these rules for PC creation doesn't entail that there aren't any, that they don't work, that they are not useful, etc.

Given utility can only be seen in the eyes of the user, I think it someone saying "they aren't useful" perfectly legitimate and goes beyond "I don't like them." I don't like random character generation, but I'd never say they weren't useful. In the end, you can't define utility in anything beyond, at best, a collective view of it; the fact some people find it fine doesn't make it useful either. After all, there's no mechanics for any game that "don't work" for someone.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just try replacing some words and see if it still makes sense.

"I don't recognize (random number generation) as a legitimate character creation method, so (D&D) has no character creation method."

That's obviously not true.

Some individuals or subgroup deciding that they don't recognize the legitimacy of a type of system does not mean it doesn't exist. As a matter of fact, they have to acknowledge it exists in order to de-legitimize it. There are rules in the book. Reading them and deciding they don't want to play with them inherently means the recognize they are rules that exist.

As I noted, they can recognize them as rules and still not consider them a system in any meaningful way. Rule Zero is sometimes defined as a rule, but its not a system in any way that matters.

 

[pemerton]

As I noted, they can recognize them as rules and still not consider them a system in any meaningful way.

Oxford Languages, via Google, gives me "system" = a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method. That is consistent with my native speaker intuition.

Four pages of instruction, with a checklist, a resultant sequence of steps, guidelines for each step, and a worked example, is a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done. It is also an organised scheme or method.

I prefer a different system doesn't entail that the thing you don't like isn't a system.

I mean, I prefer the Rolemaster to the AD&D combat resolution rules, in part because in RM, unlike in AD&D, I know what the condition of the combatants is at any given moment of the battle. It doesn't follow that AD&D has no combat resolution system.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Saying that OD&D has not PC creation rules would be silly, in my view. (I also note that you are the one who introduced that word into the thread.) It doesn't become less silly because I don't regard random character creation as a "legitimate" character creation methods, whatever the heck "legitimate" means in this context!

I have more than once read someone assert that MHRP doesn't allow for PC creation. It does, and it has 4 pages of rules stepping one through the process. End of story, and denying those 4 pages exist is wrong, and - since you invite me to apply the label - also silly.

You're right about the word; I was borrowing it from the title of the other thread you started about essentially the same thing: your defense against the misrepresentation of storygames. Sorry about that.

If someone doesn't recognize modeling as a valid method of character generation, then they are not silly to say so, they're just imprecise. What I don't like here is the judgement being leveled against people who don't like what you like, and the words they use to try to express those feelings.