Playtest Questions

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

Agreed, I have used HERO for almost all the styles published (except giant robots), but the only one where it works really well and I continue to use it is superhero.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I'd actually argue that Hero works best for action-heroic games better than it does for supers; its a bit too simulationist in its ethic to really do supers quite as well as it could. That said, it does either better than it handles most gritty or realistic settings.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I'd actually argue that Hero works best for action-heroic games better than it does for supers; its a bit too simulationist in its ethic to really do supers quite as well as it could. That said, it does either better than it handles most gritty or realistic settings.

Good point. I think what HEOR doesn;t handle well, and what no RPG does, for that matter, is using all settings at differernt power levels.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

In my entirely unscientific experience, its probably the second or third most common genre among U.S. gamers. Also, remember that a super powers system has a lot of other uses besides just for comic book supers; if you want something like the White Wolf setting where you play supernatural beings, it gives you a balanced system for doing so.

If this is the second or third common genre in US (maybe after fantasy and after SF) then its definately a cultural thing.

I agree that powers could be interesting for some other uses than comic superheroes. But if they are mixed with other "normal" genres then this should be done in a careful way and not just mixing and crossing like hell.

It seems that the TO wants the system to do this. IMO, he negates the fact that DBRP is a selected compilation of existing OOP stuff and not a new edition called BRP 2.0. And thats why I think that he did not apply the DBRP rules as Jason or Chaosium intended.

But maybe Jason could tell us if he thinks that the power system could be mixed freely with the general character generation system without beeing unbalanced or broken. Thanks in advance.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Anyway, the Duck has raised a number of points here that should probably be dealt with. And there are (hopefully!) too many to sort out before publication. But maybe we could tackle the most important one.


Would anyone care to suggest which that might be? Which one issue do you see as the most important, FotDuck?

I agree. Some points reflect only the opinion of the TO and are not really a system bug. Some of his complaints seem superficially like a system bug, but they arent. But some seem certainly to be worth more discussion.

Before we begin to discuss problematic points he raised we have to know if those points are still existent in the current draft or already edited.

[Atgxtg]

Right now, we all are still in the dark about what is is the rules. Maybe Duck has some valid complaints, maybe it is all explained away in the rules, or had been updaed since. We won't know until we get our copies of BRP.


I can say that er RPG is designed to work with a certain range and has a "sweet-spot". The more you stray from that, the more problems you will have. If you understand the game, it is easy to break. Just imagine running RQ3 with a 100 DEX. Half you skills are going to start off at over 100%!

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

I can say that er RPG is designed to work with a certain range and has a "sweet-spot". The more you stray from that, the more problems you will have. If you understand the game, it is easy to break. Just imagine running RQ3 with a 100 DEX. Half you skills are going to start off at over 100%!

Anyone with 100 DEX would be god-like in nature, or extremely super-human in a supers game, so a starting skill of over 100% wouldn't be out of place.

[Lord Twig]

I think it would be a lot easier to respond to the issues if they weren't spread over fifty posts. One post with fifty posts would have been easier to manage.

As for the trouble with powers. That was admitted by Jason early on I believe. He said that the powers did not work together well and were not intended to. If you really wanted to use them all together, you could, but you would need to use GM discretion to make sure things did not get out of hand.

Since HERO was mentioned a few times. Our GM in 2nd Edition Champions made a villain called Double Star. He bought insane amounts of Density Increase then paid for it all by selling back Con and other stats. Density increase gave you 5 Con per 10 points and Con cost 2 points per point. It paid for itself.

Long story short, Double Star massed twice that of the Sun and had a Str so high it doesn't really matter what it was. He had 30" of flight that he used to push the Earth (and any other planetary objects) away from himself. We quickly realized that even if we did defeat him, when he went unconscious his flight would turn off and destroy the world. We had to negotiate our way out of that predicament, kinda like Silver Surfer.

Reason I bring this story up: The GM made a rule that the players could not use this exploit. Problem solved.

[The Tweaker]

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

Reason I bring this story up: The GM made a rule that the players could not use this exploit. Problem solved.

Do you mean the blaspheme HOUSERULED? I thought rulebooks were like the sacred scriptures of gaming - if you don't follow them verbatim, you have your hands cut or something like that!

Now, seriously, I would classify Fear of the Duck's questions in three groups:

1 - Those that are actually typos and mistakes which can be corrected by careful proofreading. That's what Jason and other proofreaders are supposed to be doing right now.

2 - Those derived from his own esthetic tastes. I actually find the book's layout very attractive, judging from the samples posted by Jason.

3 - Those derived from an incorrect understanding of the purpose of a book which was never intended to be a substitute for HERO or GURPS.

Jason always stated up front that the different power systems are not really compatible. You can probably mix them up to some point, but the differences are deep enough that they should be used separately in most cases.

Also, ANY system will snap if you take it to the extreme and out of its 'confort zone'. GURPS will break. HERO will break. Savage Worlds will break. EABA will break. Heroquest will break. [Insert name system here] will break. Does that make them failed systems? No, not at all, but all of them have their own inbuilt limitations.

Finally, remember we are talking about a pre-release sample here. As such, *any* content is subject to changes until the time it is publically released.

I have read quite a few posts by BRP playtesters in several other forums by now, and all of them had good things to say about Jason's work. Fear of the Duck is the first one to express this kind of questions. I will admit he may be right in some of them, but I am looking forward to read what Jason has to say.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by soltakss

Anyone with 100 DEX would be god-like in nature, or extremely super-human in a supers game, so a starting skill of over 100% wouldn't be out of place.

Yes, exactly. And I wouldn't expect such a character to blend in with, say , your typical group of starting characters in Glorantha, or Fantasy Earth. Not would I try to shoehorn him in. The game wasn't made with the idea that he would be on an equal footing with normal characters.

A lot of Ducks complaints seem to be along the lines of, "I let a overpowering character in with a group of other characters and he overpowered everything! That's not right."

I suspect you could get the same "problems" by letting characters from a futuristic setting show up with "phasers" on Glorantha. But no expected the Crimson Bat to be fighting the crew of the Enterprise.

About the only real "in game" issues of this nature I can see would be the ones created though dimension hopping. A sorcerer who opens a gateway to another plane could end up in a world with Supers, thermonuclear hand grenades, or Death Star level spaceships--assuming the GM allows it.

To me it's like sticking your finger in a light socket and then complaining that the rules for electricity are unbalanced.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by The Tweaker

Also, ANY system will snap if you take it to the extreme and out of its 'confort zone'. GURPS will break. HERO will break. Savage Worlds will break. EABA will break. Heroquest will break. [Insert name system here] will break. Does that make them failed systems? No, not at all, but all of them have their own inbuilt limitations.

Yes. Game designers have some sort of setting that they are trying to make rules for. Go outside of the parameters for that setting and the game system tends to break down. It all depends on how far you push the envelope.