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Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.
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<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5928120" data-attributes="member: 21169"><p>This is a crazy idea, but I wonder if, to simulate genre fiction, it helps if a game design is incoherent.</p><p></p><p>With genre fiction there will often be a conflict between the way the world works, the physical reality, which is always at least somewhat similar to the way our own world works, and the demands of the story. Or, in other words, genre fiction is full of coincidence, unbelievable characters and implausible events. The writer is pushing against the supposed rules of his reality, much in the same way that the 2e AD&D DM has to push against the rules to tell his story.</p><p></p><p>I feel that Mutants & Masterminds displays this sort of incoherence. Most of the rules resemble those of 3e - complex, complete, consistent. But all the comic booky elements, such as the PCs all being KO-ed and put in a deathtrap, are done with hero points, which are very dependent on GM-fiat, and look like a rule from another game. One might almost say they're a dissociated mechanic. Not just dissociated from the PCs, but from the other rules.</p><p></p><p>After running a campaign of M&M, I became very ambivalent about hero points. On the one hand, they do at least simulate aspects of superhero comics, such as a hero displaying a new power in one scene (to get the writer out of a jam) and then forgetting about it thereafter, that weren't simulated by Champions. But on the other, it seems wrong that 95% of the rules text should be telling the players that the universe is sane, orderly and predictable while the other 5% is saying, no wait, it isn't.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: Rpgs that simulate genre fiction always have an extra layer of dissociation, because characters in such fiction are genre-blind. For example, not only do the characters in a superhero comic simulating rpg not know they're really characters in an rpg, they don't know they're characters in a comic, that isn't really a comic but just an rpg simulation of a comic. Now *that's* what I call being dissociated!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 5928120, member: 21169"] This is a crazy idea, but I wonder if, to simulate genre fiction, it helps if a game design is incoherent. With genre fiction there will often be a conflict between the way the world works, the physical reality, which is always at least somewhat similar to the way our own world works, and the demands of the story. Or, in other words, genre fiction is full of coincidence, unbelievable characters and implausible events. The writer is pushing against the supposed rules of his reality, much in the same way that the 2e AD&D DM has to push against the rules to tell his story. I feel that Mutants & Masterminds displays this sort of incoherence. Most of the rules resemble those of 3e - complex, complete, consistent. But all the comic booky elements, such as the PCs all being KO-ed and put in a deathtrap, are done with hero points, which are very dependent on GM-fiat, and look like a rule from another game. One might almost say they're a dissociated mechanic. Not just dissociated from the PCs, but from the other rules. After running a campaign of M&M, I became very ambivalent about hero points. On the one hand, they do at least simulate aspects of superhero comics, such as a hero displaying a new power in one scene (to get the writer out of a jam) and then forgetting about it thereafter, that weren't simulated by Champions. But on the other, it seems wrong that 95% of the rules text should be telling the players that the universe is sane, orderly and predictable while the other 5% is saying, no wait, it isn't. EDIT: Rpgs that simulate genre fiction always have an extra layer of dissociation, because characters in such fiction are genre-blind. For example, not only do the characters in a superhero comic simulating rpg not know they're really characters in an rpg, they don't know they're characters in a comic, that isn't really a comic but just an rpg simulation of a comic. Now *that's* what I call being dissociated! [/QUOTE]
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Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.
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