Games that didn't survive first contact. . .

[Greg K]

Villains & Vigilantes – why is making a decent superhero game difficult? I wish I knew!

I could never get into the first edition or revised despite actually liking to read the rules and wanting to play. However, Jeff Dees's Advanced V&V which is free I could get into if someone wanted to run. It uses a point based generation and gets rid of the elements that I found problematic (e.g, the to hit table)

Top Secret – Never worked as a spy game, I could never figure out why until I played James Bond 007, which works.

Yeah, I agree with regards to the original Top Secret boxed set although I always wanted to check out the Companion to see if the alternate rules fixed the problems I had with the game.

Top Secret SI, however, I liked once I discovered the eratta and two articles in Dragon.

 

[Greg K]

Silver Age Sentinels didn't survive very long with my group of players. As soon as someone discovered the Damage Absorption/Damage Conversion plus some Armor ranks loop things went to hell. Also, one player made himself invisible to every human sense except smell and then gave himself the Reincarnation power that allowed him to return to life in a day. Bah.

I have some issues with SAS. However what you described is not a problem with the game. What you described are:
a. Abusive payers going out of their way to break the game
b. The failure to understand that point based systems like SAS, Champions/ Hero, GURPS and Masterminds are toolboxes. It's the DMs's job to ensure that the tools are used properly. The tools have to be used responsibly and when they are not the GMs needs to step in to set limits and say no to game breaking concepts.

Or to quote GOO, themselves, "Min/Maxing and munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the players. --The Role-Playing Game Manifesto by Guardians of Order ."

 

[Angrydad]

I have some issues with SAS. However what you described is not a problem with the game. What you described are:
a. Abusive payers going out of their way to break the game
b. The failure to understand that point based systems like SAS, Champions/ Hero, GURPS and Masterminds are toolboxes. It's the DMs's job to ensure that the tools are used properly. The tools have to be used responsibly and when they are not the GMs needs to step in to set limits and say no to game breaking concepts.

Or to quote GOO, themselves, "Min/Maxing and munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the players. --The Role-Playing Game Manifesto by Guardians of Order ."

While those may have been examples of Munchkinism on the part of players, I find that it is too easy to create such loopholes with the system and too difficult for the GM to referee all possible character concepts as they're created. You never know when a certain combo of powers is going to turn out to be impossible to stop/kill or whatever. The Dynamic Power attribute itself is easily a game breaker and requires way too much GM discretion for my taste. If every other power at the PCs' disposal requires me to adjudicate whether they can use it as written or not then the system is broken.

 

[Obryn]

Or to quote GOO, themselves, "Min/Maxing and munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the players. --The Role-Playing Game Manifesto by Guardians of Order ."

While I'm sure a group can influence min/maxing, wouldn't it also be fair to say that players can only min/max to the degree a system allows?

It seems kind of like an excuse for bad design to me.

-O

 

[Angrydad]

While I'm sure a group can influence min/maxing, wouldn't it also be fair to say that players can only min/max to the degree a system allows?

It seems kind of like an excuse for bad design to me.

-O

I think just about any system can be abused by players who are familiar with it, but SAS just presented these loopholes from the get go. Even when we restricted the number of ranks they could take in most attributes at first level we still had broken abilities. My other major gripe with the system is that there is no easy way for me, the GM to create quick villains or henchmen with lower power levels but who aren't just normal thugs. Either the party mows through hordes of normal guards or I spend an hour designing some super powered monstrosity who turns out to be not immune to one of the player's special attacks or powers and thus is dead in two rounds anyway. Yes, there were some pre-generated characters and villains in the core book, but not enough to really use. If there was an entire book full of such characters I might have a look at it and use some of them, but I prefer to use my own imagination for SAS characters, and that equals way too much prep time for a two round combat.
Another thing that made me laugh about SAS was the Level equivalency table in one of the first chapters. It says that a character built with 150 Power Points should be the equivalent of an 11th level character in another d20 system. I'm pretty sure any character I built with 150 Power Points would mop up any adventuring crew of 6 11th level characters from D&D, unless the D&D guys somehow ambushed him and had some insane tactics planned out. Not likely.

 

[Greg K]

While I'm sure a group can influence min/maxing, wouldn't it also be fair to say that players can only min/max to the degree a system allows?

It seems kind of like an excuse for bad design to me.

-O

No, it needs to be cover all possiblities, because the game it is designed to recreate a diversity of concepts and power levels found. To do that it trusts the GM set the style and limits of their own campaign and players to be repsonsible with the tools.

Granted, some GMs don't want or can't handle the responsibility of setting limts and telling their players no. That's not a problem with the system.

 

[Angrydad]

No, it needs to be cover all possiblities, because the game it is designed to recreate a diversity of concepts and power levels found. To do that it trusts the GM set the style and limits of their own campaign and players to be repsonsible with the tools.

Granted, some GMs don't want or can't handle the responsibility of setting limts and telling their players no. That's not a problem with the system.

As DM in my own games for the last 15 years or so I like to allow lots of variety for my players to choose from, but I know when to say no (psions, anyone?). I agree that the DM is the one who should set limits, but even when doing that still allows for some crazy powerful PCs to pull off ridiculous stunts or attacks, there's something wrong with the system balance itself. We also discovered that it was very easy to make characters in SAS who could dish out about 100 hp of damage a round, even with a fair amount of restrictions on the powers they could take and how many ranks of those powers. While dishing out tons of damage sounds superheroic and all, the characters themselves only start with a d10, d12, d8, or d6 Hit Die. This means that they stand no chance of surviving an encounter with even a low powered super being who has focused his abilities on offense.
If the DM has to spend too much of his time telling the players no and determining how the characters' powers actually work, it robs the game of fun and pacing. That's the system's fault. If the system was really a decent toolbox, the DM would rarely have to stop play to decide if Joe can really use his power to run up the side of a building while shooting energy beams at the enemy and blah blah blah. All the DM should have to do is create and tell the story for the players, with a little bit of rules determining and judging on the side.

 

[GlaziusF]

No, it needs to be cover all possiblities, because the game it is designed to recreate a diversity of concepts and power levels found. To do that it trusts the GM set the style and limits of their own campaign and players to be repsonsible with the tools.

Granted, some GMs don't want or can't handle the responsibility of setting limts and telling their players no. That's not a problem with the system.

The problem is that people, in general and usually in specific, are actually geniuses in storytelling but absolute pants at math. Quite often the GM can't make a judgment until several sessions have gone by that Minmaxed Character A is not built in a way to allow his player to have any fun -- and neither, obviously, can Minmaxed Character A's player!

It's better for everyone involved if the heavy lifting with numbers is done beforehand, by if-not-highly-then-at-least-paid professionals.

 

[Greg K]

As DM in my own games for the last 15 years or so I like to allow lots of variety for my players to choose from, but I know when to say no (psions, anyone?). I agree that the DM is the one who should set limits, but even when doing that still allows for some crazy powerful PCs to pull off ridiculous stunts or attacks, there's something wrong with the system balance itself.

With regards to things like the examples you gave in your original post or crazy powerful PCs, most of that stuff, in my experience, can be avoided by not letting the players design characters in a vaccum and then suddenly showing up with premade characters. Granted, when you are learning the system some unexpected things might creep up, but that is going to be true of any game.

We also discovered that it was very easy to make characters in SAS who could dish out about 100 hp of damage a round, even with a fair amount of restrictions on the powers they could take and how many ranks of those powers. While dishing out tons of damage sounds superheroic and all, the characters themselves only start with a d10, d12, d8, or d6 Hit Die. This means that they stand no chance of surviving an encounter with even a low powered super being who has focused his abilities on offense.

I thought you were origianlly talking about Tri-stat. I'll have to go back and see if I have the d20SAS previews and d20 Anime SRD stuff on my computer and take a look at it. That sounds like bad design and that can happen in any game not just point buy. However, I want to go back and take a look if I have the stuff availlable.

If the DM has to spend too much of his time telling the players no and determining how the characters' powers actually work, it robs the game of fun and pacing. That's the system's fault. If the system was really a decent toolbox, the DM would rarely have to stop play to decide if Joe can really use his power to run up the side of a building while shooting energy beams at the enemy and blah blah blah. All the DM should have to do is create and tell the story for the players, with a little bit of rules determining and judging on the side.

I agree you shouldn't have to stop all the time. It depends on why are you stopping. Joe running up the building and shooting energy beams does not sound like something for which I would stop the game. That is something the GM. imo, should be familar with (both in terms of mechanics and the chararacter) before the game ever starts.

As for the GM telling the story for the players, I hope you don't have preplanned stories of exactly how things will unravel.

 

[Obryn]

No, it needs to be cover all possiblities, because the game it is designed to recreate a diversity of concepts and power levels found. To do that it trusts the GM set the style and limits of their own campaign and players to be repsonsible with the tools.

I don't see how these are incompatible goals. From what I understand, M&M pulled off the balancing act pretty well.

Granted, some GMs don't want or can't handle the responsibility of setting limts and telling their players no. That's not a problem with the system.

Yeah, I'm not really down with blaming GMs when the design itself should at least help them out a bit.

-O