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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7643152" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Not [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], but I had this thought in response: a lot of RPGers seemed to dislike Marvel Heroic RP because it didn't answer the question "Who is stronger? The Hulk or the Thing?"</p><p></p><p>And because it allowed Emma Frost's player to spend a point to put her d6 strength into a pool, which then gave her player the chance (however modest) to do better than The Hulk's player with d12 strength in the pool, they complained that it let Emma Frost beat The Hulk in an arm wrestle.</p><p></p><p>All of which just showed a failure to understand how the game works. In MHRP, if it's obvious to everyone at the table that Emma Frost can't beat The Hulk in an arm wrestle, then no conflict is framed, no pools built, no dice rolled. Conversely, if Emma's player puts her d6 strength into the pool and also her d10 Telepathy then maybe she <em>can</em> beat The Hulk in an arm wrestle by making him act as if he's no stronger than a 2 year old baby.</p><p></p><p>Moral of the story: if the group's sense of genre and fictional possibility is strong and shared, then that is what guides framing and the boundaries of the possible; and then we only need mechanics to decide who's vision of what <em>is</em> possible prevails. Those mechanics might reflect aspects of the protagonists and/or antagonists in some fashion (qv 4e D&D combat; most MHRP; PbtA though mostly on the protgonist side only) or may not (qv 4e skill challenges; MHRP rolls vs the Doom Pool; quite a bit of Hero Quest revised; etc). Either way they're not <em>models</em> of anything. They're fiction-generation/confirmation devices.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7643152, member: 42582"] Not [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], but I had this thought in response: a lot of RPGers seemed to dislike Marvel Heroic RP because it didn't answer the question "Who is stronger? The Hulk or the Thing?" And because it allowed Emma Frost's player to spend a point to put her d6 strength into a pool, which then gave her player the chance (however modest) to do better than The Hulk's player with d12 strength in the pool, they complained that it let Emma Frost beat The Hulk in an arm wrestle. All of which just showed a failure to understand how the game works. In MHRP, if it's obvious to everyone at the table that Emma Frost can't beat The Hulk in an arm wrestle, then no conflict is framed, no pools built, no dice rolled. Conversely, if Emma's player puts her d6 strength into the pool and also her d10 Telepathy then maybe she [I]can[/I] beat The Hulk in an arm wrestle by making him act as if he's no stronger than a 2 year old baby. Moral of the story: if the group's sense of genre and fictional possibility is strong and shared, then that is what guides framing and the boundaries of the possible; and then we only need mechanics to decide who's vision of what [I]is[/I] possible prevails. Those mechanics might reflect aspects of the protagonists and/or antagonists in some fashion (qv 4e D&D combat; most MHRP; PbtA though mostly on the protgonist side only) or may not (qv 4e skill challenges; MHRP rolls vs the Doom Pool; quite a bit of Hero Quest revised; etc). Either way they're not [I]models[/I] of anything. They're fiction-generation/confirmation devices. [/QUOTE]
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