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<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 7442518" data-attributes="member: 6688937"><p>I didn't say it couldn't be done, I said a traditional rpg system wouldn't do it.</p><p></p><p>From here, it sound like your players ("knowingly and blatantly") did the work, not the system. If you're players are all in, then the system isn't as relevant. Which is fine. (Although, certainly, some systems can put up a bigger fight than others.) We've seen people doing things like that with all sorts of traditional systems for years...usually by fudging rolls or making increasingly weird house rules. For example, most traditional rpgs have all sorts of problems with recurring enemies.</p><p></p><p>I would also say that I'm not 100% sure how I categorize Gumshoe games wrt being a <u>traditional</u> rpg. (I'm also not familiar with Ashen Stars, in specific, but have Night's Black Agents and a few others.) The investigative portions and the fairly procedural GMing instructions in the Gumshoe games that I have seem fairly untraditional to my eyes, but the "action" portions seem to go more traditionally. So what is that? Demi-Traditional? </p><p></p><p>Is there something about Ashen Stars that extends the Gumshoe model to specifically create they kind of player buy-in necessary for some of those ST plots, or that obviates it? I have definitely not witnessed anything similar in the Gumshoe sessions that I've run, but I wouldn't be surprised if the basic Gumshoe mechanics could be extended that way. This conversation has already piqued my interest in the game.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>In this case, I'm talking about the semi-regular increases in character ability vs. the opposition. Most of the Star Trek "PCs" do not seem to accumulate loot, they don't even seem to consistently remember their innovations and discoveries from one episode to the next, although DS9 dabbled in it and Voyager and Enterprise seemed to work it into the show's premise a bit more with plotlines that actually extended across multiple episodes and seasons. The movies don't seem to engage in it, and I haven't seen Discovery.</p><p></p><p>Nor does it seem to me that the challenges particularly escalate to compensate for any subtle character improvements. If anything, the reverse happens. The Borg, for example, first show up as an absolutely monstrous threat, but the more we are exposed to them, the more "normal" they become. They gain a "queen", they become vulnerable to "infections" of various sorts, including "individuality"! Their amazing technological adaptability turns out to not be such a bad thing, despite its first appearances.</p><p></p><p>Not that the characters don't advance or improve <em>ever</em>, but when they do its usually a dramatic "thing" not just taking you mid-season level-up. Most of this is just a side-effect of writing for TV shows, AFAICT. However, I contrast it with a show like Grimm (US urban fantasy) and those characters sure do seem to "level up" fairly regularly and as a direct consequence of interacting with the supernatural....and in the process, they keep revealing new supernatural threats that keep pace with their new capacities while taming older ones. Grimm, to me, seems very much more traditional rpg-style advancement oriented.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 7442518, member: 6688937"] I didn't say it couldn't be done, I said a traditional rpg system wouldn't do it. From here, it sound like your players ("knowingly and blatantly") did the work, not the system. If you're players are all in, then the system isn't as relevant. Which is fine. (Although, certainly, some systems can put up a bigger fight than others.) We've seen people doing things like that with all sorts of traditional systems for years...usually by fudging rolls or making increasingly weird house rules. For example, most traditional rpgs have all sorts of problems with recurring enemies. I would also say that I'm not 100% sure how I categorize Gumshoe games wrt being a [U]traditional[/U] rpg. (I'm also not familiar with Ashen Stars, in specific, but have Night's Black Agents and a few others.) The investigative portions and the fairly procedural GMing instructions in the Gumshoe games that I have seem fairly untraditional to my eyes, but the "action" portions seem to go more traditionally. So what is that? Demi-Traditional? Is there something about Ashen Stars that extends the Gumshoe model to specifically create they kind of player buy-in necessary for some of those ST plots, or that obviates it? I have definitely not witnessed anything similar in the Gumshoe sessions that I've run, but I wouldn't be surprised if the basic Gumshoe mechanics could be extended that way. This conversation has already piqued my interest in the game. In this case, I'm talking about the semi-regular increases in character ability vs. the opposition. Most of the Star Trek "PCs" do not seem to accumulate loot, they don't even seem to consistently remember their innovations and discoveries from one episode to the next, although DS9 dabbled in it and Voyager and Enterprise seemed to work it into the show's premise a bit more with plotlines that actually extended across multiple episodes and seasons. The movies don't seem to engage in it, and I haven't seen Discovery. Nor does it seem to me that the challenges particularly escalate to compensate for any subtle character improvements. If anything, the reverse happens. The Borg, for example, first show up as an absolutely monstrous threat, but the more we are exposed to them, the more "normal" they become. They gain a "queen", they become vulnerable to "infections" of various sorts, including "individuality"! Their amazing technological adaptability turns out to not be such a bad thing, despite its first appearances. Not that the characters don't advance or improve [I]ever[/I], but when they do its usually a dramatic "thing" not just taking you mid-season level-up. Most of this is just a side-effect of writing for TV shows, AFAICT. However, I contrast it with a show like Grimm (US urban fantasy) and those characters sure do seem to "level up" fairly regularly and as a direct consequence of interacting with the supernatural....and in the process, they keep revealing new supernatural threats that keep pace with their new capacities while taming older ones. Grimm, to me, seems very much more traditional rpg-style advancement oriented. [/QUOTE]
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