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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6414566" data-attributes="member: 87792">Welp.  This is a long thread, and my replies reach quite far back.  John Wick is self-contradictory, and any time you define D&D as not an RPG you need to check your definitions.  Now getting into the meat of this thread (far more than in the John Wick article):To me this is symptomatic of bad GMing for multiple reasons.1: It's patronizing to Jimmy Olsen's player.  Negative play experience.2: It's very very railroady in all the worst ways.  The DM literally has to plot in advance what Superman and Olsen are going to do.3: It requires either Superman to be carrying an idiot ball or mind control.  Because Superman could negligently deal with the minion with a simple breath before turning back to Zod.  Or Zod could try to zap Olsen in a textbook villain move.The way you are proposing the adventure design to work is an adventure design that dictates the actions of the PCs.  So yes, you can write an adventure that batters the players into submission and forces them to take their assigned roles rather than to try to solve things at any other level.  But this means that the imbalance is forcing you to write really bad railroading adventures.  So how is this a good thing?1e is actually fairly well balanced but that's because it's an adventure about dungeon crawling with a time limit in which everyone is expected to take a pack of hirelings with them, and the wizard will be hiding behind the hireling wall at low level.  2e ... isn't.  Because it largely removes the hirelings, the dungeon walls, the wandering monster checks, and a lot of other factors.There is a lot of subtle balance in 1e - the wizard may be weak at 1st level, but the most powerful thing on your character sheet isn't your abilities but your war dogs (and fighters need armour).  By 5th level when the wizard is catching up, the minion wall is no longer other than cannon fodder making naked physical power much more useful.  7th level?  The wizard should pull ahead - but that's when the fighter gets an extra attack, turning into that much more of a blender.  9th level the wizard actually does pull ahead - for one level before you enter the endgame and the fighter gets a castle and army.Move into 2e and all this goes away.  The Hirelings are rare, meaning the wizard goes splat easily and has no melee power at all at low levels - and the frequent absence of dungeon walls makes them even more vulnerable.  Wandering monsters almost go away meaning that 8 hour rests without schlepping back to town are practical.  I could go on.Then mix up your point buy choices.  No one is forcing you to always pick the same.I wish people would stop quoting that cartoon supervillain.Not all stats are equal for all characters.  More highs and more lows normally means more power where you need it.If we look at Ron Edwards on <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/" target="_blank">Fantasy Heartbreakers</a> (homebrew D&D house rules professionally published - this was written in the 2e era) we notice "All of them except one have randomized attribute systems, but also an extensive set of secondary attributes which serve to homogenize the actual Effective values (i.e., those used in play)."Because otherwise you end up with a game like Rifts?One thing I'd point out here is that ENWorld is literally the only forum I know of where GNS is still taken seriously.  It was an interesting idea but even Ron Edwards gave up on it.  Story-games certainly has en masse.A much better system - and one that maps pretty well to <a href="http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/robinslaws.html" target="_blank">Robin Laws' player types</a>.Absolutely correct.To expand slightly, a Story Game was originally an RPGwith a defined end point because a whole lot of people said that this was one reason Paul Czege's My Life With Master couldn't possibly be an RPG and those who liked it were more interested in the game than the name.  4e and 5e are both open ended leveling up games.   Currently there is a tendency for it to be a tribal banner.</blockquote>

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