Unpopular opinions go here

[Autumnal]

I’m about the same age as both of you. I assume the players doing this are significantly younger.

I’m 57 and committed some of this myself and saw more of it from others in my mid-teens, 1977-1980 or so. (@Whizbang Dustyboots take note, this was long before LiveJournal and even word processing for most of us. We typed.)

Grant Morrison is overrated.

And some of their best work is underrated, and other pieces misrated. A multi-decade career when one has both a lot of talent and a lot of self-indulgence is like that, as witness Morrison’s nemesis Alan Moore, or Americans like Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. It apparently takes women like Wendy Pini and Colleen Doran for more consistency.

 

[Celebrim]

A more specific example of what I'm talking about is the way "Luck" works in Monster of the Week; characters have a limited number of points to turn any roll into a success or reduce all harm from a single source to 0, effectively letting you say "no" to being killed, at least until your Luck runs out.

Star Wars D6 let you use Force Points to similar effect, though Force Points are more plentiful in that sense.

Ok, gotcha.

Yeah, for my homebrew version of D&D 3e, I introduced 'Destiny Points'. They are basically intended as a limited resource to mitigate against bad luck. You start with Destiny Points equal to your Charisma bonus (though Humans and Half-Elves get an extra one) and you reload a Destiny Point whenever you gain a level or in the opinion of the GM you accomplish something important related to your character's primary goal in adventuring - saving innocents, converting new people to your cult, scoring a big treasure, defeating a major villain, etc. Whatever it is that makes your PC tick.

They can do all sorts of things including temporarily giving you skill points or a feat or give you bonus dice on a roll, but the two most common things they end up doing is they can negate a critical hit on you or an ally, and they can allow you to reroll any failed roll. There are also feats that give you more of them or let you use them in even more powerful ways. What they don't do is give you a 'win button'. As I conceived them they were mostly there to prevent a player who had done everything right from losing a PC to dumb luck, and that's generally how they are used.

Force Points are very similar conceptually but even more powerful. They are really almost too powerful, as doubling your dice pools in Star Wars is the equivalent of like getting eight or ten times more powerful. If a player uses one offensively they are like a nuclear bomb. You can take so many actions in Star Wars and doubling your dice pool is like stacking Haste 3.0e on yourself like 6 times. The first time I saw one used in Star Wars it worked exactly like I think the designer intended to allow a player to perform a heroic stunt. But I've unfortunately rarely seen one used that way since then. I'm like two years into the present Star Wars campaign and the only correct usage I've seen was to dive atop a fallen NPC to shield them from an explosion, while simultaneously operating an emergency med-kit to stabilize said NPC who had been mortally wounded the prior round. Mostly they are used to either go Nova on an NPC and take them down in one round, or to conversely absorb the NPC's attack when they are going to go off on them.

 

[Celebrim]

With respect to backstories, as a GM I like them a lot. A good backstory usually fits on a single page and answers some or all of the following questions:

a) What's your motivation for adventuring?
b) How do you know the other PC's?
c) What NPC's do you know that can be relied on to hook you?
d) What's the source of your angst?
e) What NPC's are in your background who will hold a grudge against you?
f) How did you acquire your present skills?
g) What things might you just be especially likely to know about given your background?

I'm all for mysterious parentages and childhoods. Bring it on. Is there a prophesy about you? Cool.

All these things help prep for the story you are telling me you want to have as well as give me hooks for either pulling the party into trouble or giving me an excuse to give you a hint or something when the party seems stuck and doesn't know what to do or where to go. They also give a player an opportunity to inject things into the setting at a time when it's convenient for me and so I'm much more open to big setting injections - NPCs, cults, deities, organizations, etc. - can all get introduced in ways that won't contradict anything. They also let me find out how much the player wants to be yanked around and give me some ideas about what sort of agency the player wants to build their own story, and what aesthetics they are bringing to the table.

 

[Autumnal]

@Celebrim I am in complete agreement about good backstory. All these things point to the present and future, drawing the character forward. That’s what good backstory should do.

 

[Fifinjir]

Assuming libertarian free will makes people less interesting, not more. Both for real life people and fantasy folk and entities.

Yes, I am more comfortable with my hypothetical child seeing violent imagery earlier than sexual imagery, in fact. Explaining why would probably take this into places beyond the scope of this forum.

“Doing what our characters would do” has lead our group to some of the best sessions we’ve had. Admittedly it was a challenge for use to figure out how to pick up the pieces, but it seemed like we though it was worth it.

 

[MGibster]

I believe it is the player's responsibility to make a good faith effort to engage with the adventure.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Good point. I'll add to my previous statement:
Us being consistent with the rest of the world is superior to forcing the entire world to be consistent with us.

When it comes to measurement systems, there's the one used by the nation that put a man on the Moon, or the one that Stalin and and Al Q preferred....

 

[Jd Smith1]

Being the GM should be at least as enjoyable as being a player.

It is not the GM's job to entertain.

 

[innerdude]

-The RPG hobby generally would be better off if everything White Wolf ever published instantly vanished from existence and no one could remember that it had ever existed. (Except for that one guy in the movie Yesterday who was also the only one who could remember the Beatles)

-As above, only substitute "White Wolf" with "Palladium Games".

-There is absolutely, 100% guaranteed a better system out there to accomplish what you want with your gaming than the system you're using now.

 

[Autumnal]

-The RPG hobby generally would be better off if everything White Wolf ever published instantly vanished from existence and no one could remember that it had ever existed.

That’s the bulk of what I wrote as a professional freelancer, and includes a bunch of work I’m still proud of and that has given a fair amount of pleasure to a goodly number of people. Not just no, but hell no.