Argyle King
Legend
edit: This meandered all over the place. I'm not sure if the end result was something which contains a coherent idea.
If this helps any, part of my "problem" with trying to do this style with D&D/d20 often boils down to how (for a lack of better words) the "world math" of the games work.
I'm pefectly fine with PCs being above and beyond average folk. They're heroes, so they should be. (Likewise, "named" villains should be above the common orc rabble.)
At the same time, it's a bit anticlimactic when scenes such as castle sieges or ship battles are regularly so easily short-circuited by readily available resources and built-in assumptions of how the game is designed. The key word there is "regularly." If the players come up with a cool way to solve a challenge or use a strategy that the GM hadn't considered, that's something I see as good; the fact that the players are that engaged to put that much thought into it should be applauded. However, when it becomes a problem is when the players are so above and beyond the world around them that it doesn't even make sense to buy into the scene from an in-game perspective. The type of narrative I would like to tell is still possible, but it suffers (likely in a similar way that trying to tell a 4-color Supers story is professed to not work for some people in GURPS; the game can do it, but the mechanical strengths of the game likely lend it to something else more readily).
I often compare my rpg tastes to professional wrestling (because I believe it's a good analogy). A pro-wrestling match contains a ton of things which likely would not work in an actual fight. (However, to be fair, some things certainly would.) That being said, when it's done well, I still have an ability to suspend my disbelief and enjoy it. The small details are often more important than the big details.
The idea that the Undertaker is some sort of undead mortician who can call lightning from the sky does not jar me out of enjoying the show. I can even buy that Hulk Hogan is essentially a paladin (or maybe barbarian) who can tap into the power of the fans to "hulk up" and recover from massive damage to come back and win. On the other hand, when someone does something like no-sells (shows no ill effects) from being kicked in testicles, it can be a bit tough to buy into it. If on the next show, if the ante is upped by no-selling a hit in the testicles with a flaming barbed-wire covered baseball bat, something about that isn't going to compute in my brain.
Maybe if it were a one-time thing and explained storywise as a burst of adrenaline or something... yeah, okay, maybe. But if it's happening every encounter? At that point, something isn't making sense... or, you run into the Superman problem: once everybody is at a power level to shrug stuff like that off, the only way to advance the story is by continuing to stack more and more ridiculousness and power onto the situation. That might be fun the first few times, but -for me- it starts to have diminishing returns.
If this helps any, part of my "problem" with trying to do this style with D&D/d20 often boils down to how (for a lack of better words) the "world math" of the games work.
I'm pefectly fine with PCs being above and beyond average folk. They're heroes, so they should be. (Likewise, "named" villains should be above the common orc rabble.)
At the same time, it's a bit anticlimactic when scenes such as castle sieges or ship battles are regularly so easily short-circuited by readily available resources and built-in assumptions of how the game is designed. The key word there is "regularly." If the players come up with a cool way to solve a challenge or use a strategy that the GM hadn't considered, that's something I see as good; the fact that the players are that engaged to put that much thought into it should be applauded. However, when it becomes a problem is when the players are so above and beyond the world around them that it doesn't even make sense to buy into the scene from an in-game perspective. The type of narrative I would like to tell is still possible, but it suffers (likely in a similar way that trying to tell a 4-color Supers story is professed to not work for some people in GURPS; the game can do it, but the mechanical strengths of the game likely lend it to something else more readily).
I often compare my rpg tastes to professional wrestling (because I believe it's a good analogy). A pro-wrestling match contains a ton of things which likely would not work in an actual fight. (However, to be fair, some things certainly would.) That being said, when it's done well, I still have an ability to suspend my disbelief and enjoy it. The small details are often more important than the big details.
The idea that the Undertaker is some sort of undead mortician who can call lightning from the sky does not jar me out of enjoying the show. I can even buy that Hulk Hogan is essentially a paladin (or maybe barbarian) who can tap into the power of the fans to "hulk up" and recover from massive damage to come back and win. On the other hand, when someone does something like no-sells (shows no ill effects) from being kicked in testicles, it can be a bit tough to buy into it. If on the next show, if the ante is upped by no-selling a hit in the testicles with a flaming barbed-wire covered baseball bat, something about that isn't going to compute in my brain.
Maybe if it were a one-time thing and explained storywise as a burst of adrenaline or something... yeah, okay, maybe. But if it's happening every encounter? At that point, something isn't making sense... or, you run into the Superman problem: once everybody is at a power level to shrug stuff like that off, the only way to advance the story is by continuing to stack more and more ridiculousness and power onto the situation. That might be fun the first few times, but -for me- it starts to have diminishing returns.
