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Merlin and Arthur or Batman and zatana
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8790958" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>Beowulf is a bit of an outlier here because, well, he basically has no faults and never struggles with anything, but that's also because the Anglo-Saxon and Norse sagas weren't exactly....<em>stories</em> as we would understand them in the modern sense. Myths, legends, and folklore tend to need a lot of <em>polish</em> before they become "stories" proper.</p><p></p><p>The other two are pretty clearly "clever underdog" stories though. The knight goes a-slayin' because the dragon is <em>dangerous</em> and difficult to kill. Batman's victory is interesting specifically because it's not the naive expectation, that the incredibly strong opponent will just pulverize him. Bilbo escaping from Smaug with the secret of the hole in the dragon's scales is a guile-hero victory because Bilbo is a mild-mannered country squire with a ring of invisibility, he <em>should lose</em> to the train-sized iguana with ekpyrotic halitosis. The Ragtag Bunch of Misfit Heroes <em>shouldn't</em> be able to take down the Vast And Terrible Empire, but they <em>do</em> and the interest is in finding out <em>how</em>. Etc.</p><p></p><p>Even people like Hercules, Mwindo, and Gilgamesh, people who are basically unstoppable when they put their mind to something, very frequently end up being put into an underdog position of some kind by circumstance, magic, or other difficulty, and have to learn a lesson or use their smarts to work through the problem, rather than just winning all the time forever because they're awesome. (Again, Beowulf is a bit of an exception because...yeah he basically <em>does</em> win all the time simply because he's That Awesome. But the sagas are more about genealogy and cool fight scenes than about clever narrative maneuvering.</p><p></p><p>The problem with translating this structure to a game is....well, a game can't work that way. You can't have "the rules really do say you should just lose most of the time" <em>and</em> "you actually pull out a victory most of the time." The two are logically incompatible. The only way to make the latter happen is for there to be a bunch of tools (of whatever kind) available to the players so they can turn things not only in their favor, but <em>overwhelmingly</em> in their favor, on a consistent basis--because if there's a 10% chance of TPK with every fight, there's more than an 80% chance that characters will die before getting enough encounters under their belt <em>simply between level 4 and 5</em>, and every single level thereafter (noting that you need something like 20 "hard" encounters to grow from level 4 to 5, and that only if the difficulty multipliers aren't heavily skewing things away from the actual XP earned during the fight...which it usually will be.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8790958, member: 6790260"] Beowulf is a bit of an outlier here because, well, he basically has no faults and never struggles with anything, but that's also because the Anglo-Saxon and Norse sagas weren't exactly....[I]stories[/I] as we would understand them in the modern sense. Myths, legends, and folklore tend to need a lot of [I]polish[/I] before they become "stories" proper. The other two are pretty clearly "clever underdog" stories though. The knight goes a-slayin' because the dragon is [I]dangerous[/I] and difficult to kill. Batman's victory is interesting specifically because it's not the naive expectation, that the incredibly strong opponent will just pulverize him. Bilbo escaping from Smaug with the secret of the hole in the dragon's scales is a guile-hero victory because Bilbo is a mild-mannered country squire with a ring of invisibility, he [I]should lose[/I] to the train-sized iguana with ekpyrotic halitosis. The Ragtag Bunch of Misfit Heroes [I]shouldn't[/I] be able to take down the Vast And Terrible Empire, but they [I]do[/I] and the interest is in finding out [I]how[/I]. Etc. Even people like Hercules, Mwindo, and Gilgamesh, people who are basically unstoppable when they put their mind to something, very frequently end up being put into an underdog position of some kind by circumstance, magic, or other difficulty, and have to learn a lesson or use their smarts to work through the problem, rather than just winning all the time forever because they're awesome. (Again, Beowulf is a bit of an exception because...yeah he basically [I]does[/I] win all the time simply because he's That Awesome. But the sagas are more about genealogy and cool fight scenes than about clever narrative maneuvering. The problem with translating this structure to a game is....well, a game can't work that way. You can't have "the rules really do say you should just lose most of the time" [I]and[/I] "you actually pull out a victory most of the time." The two are logically incompatible. The only way to make the latter happen is for there to be a bunch of tools (of whatever kind) available to the players so they can turn things not only in their favor, but [I]overwhelmingly[/I] in their favor, on a consistent basis--because if there's a 10% chance of TPK with every fight, there's more than an 80% chance that characters will die before getting enough encounters under their belt [I]simply between level 4 and 5[/I], and every single level thereafter (noting that you need something like 20 "hard" encounters to grow from level 4 to 5, and that only if the difficulty multipliers aren't heavily skewing things away from the actual XP earned during the fight...which it usually will be.) [/QUOTE]
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