What do you do without balance?

[RyvenCedrylle]

No Balance balance....

Hey y'all,

Without balance you fall over! You fall over because you need balance to stand up. Because it's a bad game.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, I have run or participated in 4 RIFTS campaigns that lasted at least 9 months of weekly sessions.

The 2 I ran, I used all of the sourcebooks at my disposal, plus Heroes Unlimited and other Palladium sources that worked with the Conversion manual. I did excise a couple of OCCs and RCCS- mostly because of redundancy, plus confusing or truly awful mechanics. Nothing was excised due to power discrepancy.

My players chose things from Atlantis, the Basic book, Britain and a few others. Some were inherently MDC PCs, some had MDC armor, and some didn't start off in either condition.

When it came to combat, I used standard modern mixed-force tactics. Sure a tank can directly attack infantry, but it makes more sense for a tank to concentrate fire on the opposing armor units before they take it out, and leave the infantry to engage infantry...until one side is overmatched. THEN infantry can start attacking armor directly, or armor can afford to target infantry as a primary target.

Translated to RIFTS, that means the SAMAS guys are going after the obvious threats first- the Glitterboy, the captured and converted SAMAS, the 15' tall guy who is taking on the "Walkers" by himself... The little guys had to deal with small arms fire and AP rounds, but were rarely directly targeted by things like Boom Guns...until they proved to be a threat worth targeting with one.

And little guys learned not to stand next to the big, shiny, "lightning rod" of the PC whom everyone knew was going to get lit up.

I didn't use over-the-horizon missiles or anything like that...not unless the PCs had some kind of resource that meant that they 1) warranted such targeting and 2) had some kind of potential defense.

But combat happened...at least 1 every other session.

An interesting post, and I think it is ultimately the answer to the question.

If the game system isn't balanced, you balance it in your game.

Lack of Game Balance means it's hard to run an adventure "out of the box" - you have to tailor it to the party at hand.
It also means you can have all the "thematically appropriate" power levels you want in your game. Jedi/Wizards/Superman can be as powerful as you want and can run alongside Smuggler/Thief/Aquaman.

You're not running adventure paths for the generic party, but you are running a campaign tailored for the party.


I prefer "balanced" games, simply because I like being able to run adventure paths written for the generic party, published modules, and write adventures independent of the specific party setup. It means less work for me, and it also means more surprises during the game, since I didn't plan for any specific character ability come into play (unless I did ).

But that doesn't mean one can't have a lot of fun with imbalanced games. On the contrary - especially if it "forces" the DM to tailor the adventures and the campaign to the PCs, it can help motivating the players, since they recognize certain elements as perfectly suitable for them.

 

[Hussar]

Let's move away a second from comic books, because that never seems to work in balance discussions. Let's move over for a second to the Harry Potter universe.

Here is a universe where things are absolutely not balanced. A wizard is incredibly more powerful than any muggle and capable of pretty much wiping out the world of muggles if they set their mind to it. There is nothing a muggle could do that a wizard could not do faster/better/easier.

So, if you were to make a Harry Potter 'verse game, would you bother including Muggle as a PC character concept? Perhaps Squib? Or would you limit that to NPC's and all PC's are wizards?

Or, look at Battletech. The entire concept of the game is that you will play a Mechwarrior. In the RPG, you cannot really play anything other than a Mechwarrior - a pilot of a giant fighting robot.

Would the game be enhanced by adding in these much weaker options? Playing a merchant in Mechwarrior might be interesting, I suppose, but, it would be very difficult. You'd be relagated to the sidelines an awful lot, same as the Muggle.

So, yeah, you could write your campaign so that the Muggle or the merchant has something to do, but, it's going to be an uphill battle that the game does not help you with.

 

[billd91]

You're not running adventure paths for the generic party, but you are running a campaign tailored for the party.


I prefer "balanced" games, simply because I like being able to run adventure paths written for the generic party, published modules, and write adventures independent of the specific party setup. It means less work for me, and it also means more surprises during the game, since I didn't plan for any specific character ability come into play (unless I did ).

But that doesn't mean one can't have a lot of fun with imbalanced games. On the contrary - especially if it "forces" the DM to tailor the adventures and the campaign to the PCs, it can help motivating the players, since they recognize certain elements as perfectly suitable for them.

I play a lot of modules as well but could care less about "balanced" games when it comes to pure mechanical balance. And, yes, I do a lot of tailoring of plot hooks and bridges between published modules to keep as much spotlight balance as I can. But then, I have always seen spotlight balance as the most important type of balance a role playing game should have.

 

[billd91]

Let's move away a second from comic books, because that never seems to work in balance discussions. Let's move over for a second to the Harry Potter universe.

Here is a universe where things are absolutely not balanced. A wizard is incredibly more powerful than any muggle and capable of pretty much wiping out the world of muggles if they set their mind to it. There is nothing a muggle could do that a wizard could not do faster/better/easier.

So, if you were to make a Harry Potter 'verse game, would you bother including Muggle as a PC character concept? Perhaps Squib? Or would you limit that to NPC's and all PC's are wizards?

<snip>

So, yeah, you could write your campaign so that the Muggle or the merchant has something to do, but, it's going to be an uphill battle that the game does not help you with.

Would I include muggle or squib characters in a Harry Potter game? Sure. Why not? But it would depend on the focus of the game. It wouldn't work out too well at Hogwarts since only wizards are going to attend and the only squib we know about there is Filch. There simply won't be a squib or muggle student there.
But once you're outside Hogwarts, I can see plenty of possibilities for a game involving squibs, muggles, and wizards. But it's important to note that there are plenty of things that a wizard couldn't do and really wouldn't understand that muggles can do. Wizards, for example, are woefully ignorant around technology - usually more ignorant than either squibs or muggles. Jo Rowling simply didn't detail enough of the Harry Potter universe and how the interface between muggles and wizards really works for us to conclude that wizards really can do everything muggles can do faster and better.

 

[Remathilis]

Not play a thief, for sure.

 

[Remathilis]

Ok, pithy opening comment aside...

There is three different types of balance in an RPG.

All Sides Equal: At the end of the day, each character has different means to a goal, but always the same end. A lot of point-buy games try this; you can spend points on magic, combat, skills, or whatever, but you still have the same amount of points and (theoretically) they should all even out in the end (so that a mage can't use his magic to replicate combat or skill-based PCs, for example).

Balance over Time: Some characters begin weak (wizards, clerics, humans), while others start strong (fighters, thieves, demi-humans), but over the course of the game, the two rolls switch. In theory, they are balanced out over the course of the campaign. However, I think BoT has been moved away from as a game-balance design goal because it breaks down on so many levels; games that end before the balance switch, classes that never "weaken" or "strengthen" properly, character death and switching, all can play havoc in balancing an RPG by running the Long Game.

Niche-Protection: Here is the holy-grail of RPG design. All classes (or races, or whatever) fills a unique niche (nuker, tank, skillmonkey, healer) and no other class tramples it (while a skillmonkey can fight, he'll never beat a tank in fighting. A nuker can do great damage, but is a glass-cannon. A healer is a good tank, but no damage output, and no one can replicate the skill choices of a skillmonkey). Sadly, this kind of balance can never be replicated in an open system (something that allows add-ons or supplements) since it requires strict balance and adherence to principles to keep the nuker weak enough, the tank on top in combat, the healer from being a nuker as well, and the casters from overtaking the skillmonkey with cheap magic).

D&D tried all of these. None have worked well for everyone. No one can even agree on which is the best route to pursue.

However, if you look at the industry as a whole, it seems All Side Equal seems to be the most popular (one need only look at GURPS, Storyteller, Saga and 4e to see that trend in action). Personally, I much prefer that to the other tried systems.

 

[billd91]

However, if you look at the industry as a whole, it seems All Side Equal seems to be the most popular (one need only look at GURPS, Storyteller, Saga and 4e to see that trend in action). Personally, I much prefer that to the other tried systems.

GURPS, I think, is not the example you think it is. While point-buy games do have balance as far as the number of points characters get, they also offer the freedom to make characters that are dramatically unbalanced on a wide variety of fronts, necessitating GM guidance and involvement to create balanced characters. Point buy games are the very antithesis of games like 4e in this regard.

 

[AllisterH]

Harry Potter RPG with squibs == Ars Magica.

 

[Remathilis]

GURPS, I think, is not the example you think it is. While point-buy games do have balance as far as the number of points characters get, they also offer the freedom to make characters that are dramatically unbalanced on a wide variety of fronts, necessitating GM guidance and involvement to create balanced characters. Point buy games are the very antithesis of games like 4e in this regard.

Ah yes, the "one-armed, blind, narcoleptic warrior with a +200 to damage" model. The bane of point-buy of course is flaws and truly min-maxed PCs. These kind of mutant-PCs (and their other point-buy cousin, "I spent 1 point on everything so I suck at it" average model) is why I don't like purely point-buy games.

Still, its a fair bit more "balanced" than 3d6, roll in order, roll hp, starting gold, and minimum race/class ability requirements, at least I was trying to define it.