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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 1648791" data-attributes="member: 14140"></blockquote>This keeps being repeated but everytime i read it i keep seeing "the villain after you has a weakness, his obsession with you." giving the guy who is after you a weakness, this level of irrational obsession, doesn't seem like its worth points for YOU. After all, a more rational adversary, able to weigh the benefits of "revenge now" vs "success now" seems more dangerous overall.But thats just me.Well, not everything is a plot device, many things are objects or characters.What I liked about MnM, using HERo as a contrast, was that MnM took a lot of the nonsense that boil down to "story" and left it to "story" and not a part of character points and accounting.Whether you "bought" friends or just wrote them down, the odds are they will from time to time be involved. Why? because it makes for a better story if the stakes are personal. Whether you "bought" a villain whi is interested in you or not, its likely as not going to occur. Why? Because its a better story if the bad guy behind the arc is not some new guy no one knows but a tie  in to a previous adventure... again... its personal to you and not just your cape running up against another cape.In HERO, these are part of the accounting and as such their appearance, their powers, their scope etc were all "by the book" ran by the prefabbed, prefiged numbers. As such, IMX, the pcs tended to be similar... all having as much psyche lim as possible then hunted then etc. Heck, look over the hero builds, from either local PCs or from the published ones. How many names were mentioned in backgrounds that did not appear on the sheet as points? But you know what happens? The guy who did not take hunted, fights a new villain, one he has to try and figure out what he does. The guy who tooks hunted, fights an old villain, who he know but who also knows him. The "hunted" did not make the hero have to fight more guys than the other hero... it simply flavored the fight a little differently. Sure, on occasion the villain's specialized knowledge would make for a interesting scenario, but just as often the new villain's surprises would too.MnM basically leaves the story elements to be story elements and not about points. Players will write in 'and this guy is after me" and "i have this sister who" and all that because they want to. If they don't want to, they dont get urged to in order to remain competitive. Now, IMX, i got better, more richly detailed, more consistent and built for better stories characters when this whole "backstory" was not a part of "accounting, about the points and an excuse for MO' POWER!" When it was all "just for fun" and did not play a role in the "MO'POWER", i got longer writeups with more details and moreover the details were things the players wanted to explore, not things they tacked on for more points to spend. (I saw the exact same people buiuld hero characters many times so i have a pretty good basis for comparison.)YMMV but i wont again make backstory elements a part of the MO'POWER accounting in any game under any system. It takes the most creative aspects of character design ansd grinds it under the heel of accounting.Never again.Like i said, either i will fight an old foe in an interesting scenario or a new foe in an interesting scenario.I would not ever read the MNM quirk as being a lisp or a nervous twitch, at least, not once i took a moment to read the description instead of just stopping at the title.Then again, for my second MnM game, i have moved all weaknesses and flaws off the accounting system altogether. No more "loan shark" points up front. Instead, they all pay back in bonus hero points whenever they actually hurt you in play. With this system, i don't have to worry about foresight guessing how bad a flaw will be or even making sure its "big enough". The player can define a weakness or flaw however he likes, and WHEN it comes up and bites him, however often that will be for however serious that is, he will get "paid back" with bonus HERo points.So if one guy wants to play a character who has half resistance to fire while another has no resistance to silver, I do not need to fret over how much those are worth in comparison. After they occur, after i see "what they did" then i give hero points at session end in payback.Hindsight, much more accurate than foresight.[/QUOTE]

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