Protectable Roles

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:32 am

I think the point was to make them unique not duplicatable. No one else can telport through a given wall. They may be able to make a whole in the wall but that's significantly different than teleportation. A barrier might not be breakable, breaking through it might take too long, and number of other complications may arise that teleportation can defeat. Like being grappled. Other characters would have to fight off binding or grapples while only one can port out of it without giving up any major action to do so.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:43 am

well, yeah, I think that's what I meant...

like I said, I see shtick protection as a gentlemen's agreement.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:07 am

Manxome wrote:I'm sorry, was this supposed to prevent spotlight-hogging? I wasn't aware that was a goal.

I thought the goal was just to ensure that everyone got to be unique, and able to make contributions that couldn't be duplicated by anyone else.

And how is this is supposed to prevent spotlight-hogging. If Bob has a situation where only he's good at AND is also good at Alice's thing, then there's a problem. I'm sure you recognize this. But if you have a thing where anyone's power is generically good in any situation then you end up with something like this:

Alice: "I use my diplomancing power to convince the racist elven general to help their dwarven allies in their time of need!"

Bob: "Uh, no need for that. I used my forgery powers to convince the king that the elven general is a spy. After being replaced by someone more tolerant he's getting executed this Tuesday. Thanks anyway, Alice."

Alice:

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:34 am

ok so the result should be duplicatable, but the method unique then....

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:25 am

Honestly Lago, you're coming off as totally unreasonable. Your objections literally make no sense.

"This is a method you could have role protection in a TTRPG, allowing characters made with the engine to have distinct game mechanical effects, allowing them to feel different in play."

Lago: I want to steal other peoples schticks!
Lago: Why are you limiting flavor skins on powers!?

Seriously Lago, stop posting twenty million times and just fucking think for a moment before you start typing. Obviously if you want to just have every player have any combination of powers they want and then leave it up to inter-player diplomacy to divide up the group's abilities, you'd play a game with no role protection at all. And then any discussion of how you could institute role protection into the rule would be completely irrelevant to your game. Similarly, the fact that there is an infinite number of different ways you could divide up abilities into "protected" and "everyman" categories is not an argument against any one of them. It's like bitching about a sci-fi system because you want to play Cowboys and Indians. Maybe it means that the game being discussed is not for you, but it doesn't say anything about whether the game under discussion is good or bad.

In conclusion, Lago I will call you something you obviously need:

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:43 am

That's adorable, Frank. You can put that tired old graphic away along with that tired old strawman.

What I am asking you is how can you have role protection if you divide the schticks up by any metric other than how they can be used.

If I understand you right, you're saying that powers should be divided up by schtick and not by role. I'm now asking you how can you do that since some powers will naturally assist towards certain roles--and will shoehorn people into doing those roles. The only refutation of this outcome I got is from Manxome which tells me that the guy with Teleportation and X-Ray vision might not always be the best scout.

Which then makes me wonder how are you going to prevent someone with super-speed and/or shapeshifting from deciding that they're going to be the best scout AND they're going to be the best lookout AND they're going to be the best researcher.

I'm not arguing against role protection. I'm arguing that organizing it by any other function than what you can use in your roles is bunk because you either get that division anyway or you don't get role protection at all.

God_of_Awesome · Post by **God_of_Awesome** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:49 am

I like role protection not being mechanical but by Honor System alone.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:55 am

In other words, I am basically arguing for MMORPG roles. Only under the new system you can get by without staples like Healer or Tank. What matters under the new system is people finding inter-role synergy and leveraging that into power. IOW, throw out the paradigm of 'Leader/Striker/Striker/Defender/Controller'--put in 'it's okay to have five strikers, you're just going to have to play differently than the previous party'.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:17 am

Lago wrote:In other words, I am basically arguing for MMORPG roles.

I realize that, which is why I think you should stop cluttering this thread with irrelevancies and go play one.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:20 am

FT wrote: I realize that, which is why I think you should stop cluttering this thread with irrelevancies and go play one.

And what's so bad about it other than Hitler eating sugar it being something the MMORPG boogeyman happens to do? If the answer will derail this thread, can... can I get a new thread then?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:35 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
FT wrote: I realize that, which is why I think you should stop cluttering this thread with irrelevancies and go play one.
And what's so bad about it other than Hitler eating sugar it being something the MMORPG boogeyman happens to do? If the answer will derail this thread, can... can I get a new thread then?

Because people varying tactics and exploring different solutions to problems is the entire point of having a tactical mini-game in your Role Playing. If your character is constrained to waiting for the tank to build up a lot of hate and then doing burst damage until you nearly steal the targeting reticule and then waiting to do it again, and again, and again until your team eventually wins, that fucking sucks. That's not an interesting game. It's not interesting to play, and the stories it generates are not interesting to hear afterward.

Having your character feel unique is good. Having your character do the same thing over and over again is bad. Being the only character on the team with the Magic of Light (as defined by your game system and campaign world) is cool, but being the healbot every round is not. The abilities your Light Mage has should not be radically duplicated by the other players, but the actual actions you take in any situation should vary considerably.

Sometimes Cheshire is going to teleport into archer boxes and start murdering kobold crossbowmen. Sometimes he's going to grab an enemy minotaur and phase out while the rest of the team mops up the little guys. Those are radically different MMO "roles" (Crowd Control and Main Tank), which is why MMO roles are so unacceptable. MMO roles limit creativity in the place it actually matters: actually playing the game. The roles I am talking about limit creativity in a place that it doesn't hurt the storytelling: creating a character.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:42 am

FrankTrollman wrote: Sometimes Cheshire is going to teleport into archer boxes and start murdering kobold crossbowmen. Sometimes he's going to grab an enemy minotaur and phase out while the rest of the team mops up the little guys.

So my question for you is, what's preventing Titus from stopping time and planting bombs or alchemist fire or whatever into the archer boxes as he takes his sweet time climbing from post to post? Or Titus grabbing the enemy minotaur and putting themselves into a temporal loop until the party mops up the rest of the little guys?

Yes, Titus can't literally teleport from box to box to do his thing but that's not the metric by which I'm judging his character or Cheshire's--I'm judging him by whether he can safely take out the kobold archers are not. When presented by the same challenges their actions are different but the outcome is ultimately the same. So that said, where's the distinction?

Manxome · Post by **Manxome** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:03 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Manxome wrote:I'm sorry, was this supposed to prevent spotlight-hogging? I wasn't aware that was a goal.
And how is this is supposed to prevent spotlight-hogging.

Um...you are complaining that this particular game subsystem doesn't accomplish a goal that it was never designed to accomplish. And apparently ignoring the arguments that that goal can be accomplished by a different subsystem, and that trying to accomplish it with this subsystem has all sorts of bad side effects.

And you are quite blatantly talking in circles.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: But if you have a thing where anyone's power is generically good in any situation then you end up with something like this:

Alice: "I use my diplomancing power to convince the racist elven general to help their dwarven allies in their time of need!"

Bob: "Uh, no need for that. I used my forgery powers to convince the king that the elven general is a spy. After being replaced by someone more tolerant he's getting executed this Tuesday. Thanks anyway, Alice."

Alice:

Alice: "I use my fire to kill any foes we encounter."
Bob: "Uh, no need for that. I use my swording to kill any foes we encounter."
Alice:

We've had quite a few threads on this forum specifically devoted to finding ways to ensure that everyone can contribute in all parts of the game. Your argument now that all of a sudden that will ruin everything is stupid.

The fact that everyone can contribute doesn't inherently mean that one person does everything.

First of all, if the other players want to participate, they will presumably do stuff whether another player is capable of handling it or not.

But more importantly, just because you can contribute to all the problems the party faces doesn't mean that you can do everything perfectly, instantly, ad infinitum, or all at once. Having a second person who can also help whittle down the monster's HP is useful; the fact that Bob is capable of inflicting damage doesn't mean that Alice's ability to inflict damage somehow becomes totally worthless. Good combat encounters are sized appropriately to the party, not to one character. Similarly, if the adventure is designed for a larger party than one, an important diplomatic encounter will be set up so that it requires several people working together to sway events, or it will be one of several important things going on at once so that the party has to split up and no one person can possibly handle everything personally. Either Bob needs Alice's diplomacy to ensure that the correct replacement general is appointed, or Alice is busy convincing the dwarves to accept help once Bob gets the elves to offer it, or something.

Yes, Cheshire and Titus both have tactics available to them that are reasonably effective at fighting a group of kobold archers. No one but you thinks this is a problem.

Put another way, we're not arguing that this system guarantees every player their own turn in the limelight. We're arguing that it doesn't need to do that. You continuing to argue that it doesn't do that is a complete waste of everyone's time.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:44 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
FT wrote: I realize that, which is why I think you should stop cluttering this thread with irrelevancies and go play one.
And what's so bad about it other than Hitler eating sugar it being something the MMORPG boogeyman happens to do? If the answer will derail this thread, can... can I get a new thread then?

here you go.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:01 pm

The main thing I'm not really seeing is how you'd arrange this using the rules. Games don't really work the way Frank's example does. A game doesn't protect a character's role, it protects a classes' role. Another player can seriously go and create a Cheshire or a Titus.

As far as how to handle this stuff with classes, I really don't know. I mean does the existence of Cheshire mean that swordsmen are the masters of teleportation and no other class can have that? So you can't play a dimensional magic mage? That seems like your concepts are going to be severely limited.

This seems way too rigid and while it's an excellent piece of advice for groups running GURPS or BESM who want to not hog each other's roles, it's not particularly useful for designing game rules.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:45 pm

RC wrote:The main thing I'm not really seeing is how you'd arrange this using the rules. Games don't really work the way Frank's example does. A game doesn't protect a character's role, it protects a classes' role. Another player can seriously go and create a Cheshire or a Titus.

You aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Yes, no matter what system you use, another player using the same system can make exactly the same choices in chargen (or roll the same chart results if that's how you work things) and get a character who is precisely the same game mechanically. That piece of information is so trivially obvious, and equally trivially obviously unhelpful that I am genuinely insulted that you'd even bring it up.

Yes, games do not effectively intervene in the creation of roles at the character level, they do so at some higher level of character design choice. Class, ability packages, stat assignments, personal elements, or whatever the fuck it is that your system uses to have players make high level function calls to generate their characters. But all of that is essentially gears in a black box as far as it actually matters. What's important is the actual characters that are being generated. And so it comes that deciding what characters you want to support in your game system and what portions of those characters you want to preserve is a prerequisite of actually creating those high-level function calls that will divide one character from another.

It isn't important to the character of Cheshire whether the game mechanical high level function call that determines that he gets teleportation and won't get dominate is a character class called "Warper" or a personal element of "Silver" or an astrological sign of "Tenebrus" or an assignment of starting merit points into "Dimension" out to 3 dots. The character doesn't see any of that, and it generally shouldn't come up in play. What is important is that he gets to teleport and he doesn't get to dominate enemies.

So if you were designing this Dynasty Warriorsesque system with an apparent setting reminiscent of Greek Mythology and Victorian Fantasy, you would keep those intended characters and their intended protected roles in mind when you created the necessary back end. And whether you used classes or personal elements or foundation scripts or whatever, some chargen choice you made would in an ultimate sense mean that you were going to have access to teleportation and would not have access to dominate.

-Username17

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:22 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:
Well, my real experience with what's being talked about here was when I played M&M and it was really "power and flavour" protection. For instance, it was very unlikely that anyone else would be allowed to teleport, because Photon did that. (there was also the matter of finding a way to explain teleportation... being an object mimicking shapeshifter, turning into "light" and pointing at photon's player wasn't enough...) At the same time, being an expy of Clayface wasn't allowed, because that's what Everyman did. On the other hand, just because Major Justice had red white and blue psionic energy that allowed energy blasts, empowered strikes and flight did not mean my character couldn't mimic fire and do the same damn things. Hell, Photon did those things too, but the difference was that Major Justice was a psionic warrior archetype, Photon used light to blast and strike (I'm really not sure how her flight was explained) and my charactered mimicked an appropriate object to do those things. I could also mimic water and kinda sorta pull some of Everyman's tricks, but my real shtick was object mimicry.

This isn't role protection though, it's protecting different characters' shticks so no one feels like they may as well have stayed home.

In the last superhero game I played in, the players created their PCs independently before the game started. In the end, it turned out that 4 out of 7 PCs had Telepathy. (Apparently I wasn't the only one who likes to breeze through the "detective work" part of the game.) It didn't matter too much in practice; everyone had some other unique schtick (e.g. one guy walked through walls, one guy created force fields, one guy created illusions and one guy could possess an enemy's body). So just because a role/schtick/whatever (like telepathy or teleportation) can be protected doesn't mean it has to be protected.

Frank's examples are pretty silly because they each do exactly one thing (+ punch or shoot) as written, like 4E characters with only an "at will" power and nothing else. Who would want to play a game like that?

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:35 pm

hogarth wrote:Frank's examples are pretty silly because they each do exactly one thing (+ punch or shoot) as written, like 4E characters with only an "at will" power and nothing else. Who would want to play a game like that?

FrankTrollman wrote:Cheshire
Cheshire is a swordsman who fades in and out of reality, has a winning smile, and stabs things by always being where he needs to be. Cheshire can teleport to where he needs to be and make favorable melee attacks against them. He can also fade out of reality for short but extended periods, allowing him to avoid being attacked altogether.

In DnD that probably translates to a Warblade / Elocater / Planar Champion and does indeed easily fill 20 levels. Outside a particular system you have a full-featured swordsman (which is an archetype by itself in many games) who can teleport-dodge, set up combos with other characters, backstab people who are aware of him, move through walls, hide in an astral pocket and really mess up anybody who happens to be climbing. And that is just everything I came up with in one minute which also happens to be combat-relevant.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:39 pm

huh? I saw more than just punch or shoot in all that.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:48 pm

People keep saying that I don't know what this system is trying to do; they tell me this even after I think I do, so I probably don't. I now have to admit that I realize that I do not understand what you are talking about.

Would you tell it to me like you would a small child. What's the stated purpose of the system/rules, what are the drawbacks, and what are the consequences of not implementing it, please?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:54 pm

virgileso wrote:huh? I saw more than just punch or shoot in all that.

Cheshire = fade out (+ stab)

Soot = who knows (+ shoot fire)

Titus = speed up/slow down + weaken (+ stab)

Asena = dominate (+ chop + throw stuff)

Helene = turn to stone (+ stab + shoot)

Meesha = animal horde (+ jack squat)

I forgot Titus's "weaken" ability (plus control over ocean currents?) and I honestly don't know what Soot is supposed to do besides have some unspecified pets.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 2:56 pm

As I understand it:
You may want to keep people from stepping on other players' toes. If so, you'd better define something unique for every player to do, and no one else is allowed to have this unique ability. This includes both form and function.

If you don't do this, one player can duplicate another player's ability and thus detract from his spotlight time.

Note that you should not protect anything you want multiple players to have and broad categories should not be protected. Hogging "fire" is bad, as is hogging "sword-fighting" in a medieval or fantasy game.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:09 pm

It's not spotlight time that is being protected, but the sense of mechanical uniqueness within the party.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:17 pm

All right, now with that settled, would you name some well-known game systems for which IYO would improve the gameplay, please?

And if it's not a bother, would you do the same for systems or a theoretical system where this would not improve the gameplay or prove to be pointless? If so, why?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:00 pm

hogarth, you're being deliberately obtuse.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:All right, now with that settled, would you name some well-known game systems for which IYO would improve the gameplay, please?

Any class based table top system. When you make a class-based system you are giving players a defined subset of the possible abilities to play with. The entire point of doing that is to distinguish characters who are different classes, so that players who are different classes are going to be able to do different things.

So for example, D&D would be improved if rather than having "Fighters" and "Rangers" and "Barbarians" and shit the designers has actually focus grouped out what abilities they actually wanted to keep in reserve for Tordek and Krusk, making abilities unique and transferable based on that. As is, since neither Tordek nor Krusk seem to actually have anything special to their name, there's no real reason for the Fighter or Barbarian class to exist.

Classes should only exist if there is something they do that you don't do without them. Deciding what those things are is the first step to making your classes work and make sense.

Alternate example: characters in Fantastic! are class based, and being a Blaster is different from being a Cape. To flesh the game out, some iconic characters are going to be written (in words) and some decisions on what their unique qualifications are supposed to be. From that information, actual powers can be written up. So you'd check to see what you left in reserve for Artemis and Dr. Octagon to see what schticks were uniquely Gadgeteer abilities. You'd check what you'd put copyrights on for Ice Princess and Mistletoe to see what went into the Controller pile, what was an exclusive trick for Brushfire and Positron for Blasters, and so on. Heck, if someone wanted to start brainstorming that stuff, design work could go forward on that project.

And if it's not a bother, would you do the same for systems or a theoretical system where this would not improve the gameplay or prove to be pointless? If so, why?

A non-class based system. So for example, consider aWoD. One of the purposes of creating interdisciplinary transparency for that system was to make it so that a Nezumi who turned into a rat did so with the same rules as a witch who learned to transform themselves into a rat. Having the characters grow into duplicating each others' disciplines is the point, and as such you wouldn't hold any of the disciplines in reserve.

The line of synthesis is showable however in aWoD. There are some things that are genuinely supposed to distinguish a Vampire from a Lycanthrope. And whatever those things are want to get pushed to the "class" level rather than the selectable level. So in aWoD, the vast majority of the abilities in the game are to be found in the disciplines that anyone can grab, with just a few things such as the Feeding/Lunar Power Schedule being provided at the class level. The system is actually being used, even though the amount of role protection is decidedly and specifically minuscule. And therefore the system being talked about has a very small effect on the game as a whole.

Similarly, let's consider Black Forest for a moment. In Black Forest you're using the 10KF advancement scheme and you literally have no abilities that are permanently and uniquely yours. When you select new abilities you just take whatever you want (or whatever you have foreshadowed if you advance in the middle of an action sequence). And then your "type" is a dynamic fact that you select on the fly based on what the abilities you happen to have allow you to qualify for. As such, characters are constantly going to be grabbing each others schticks, because being shown something by another character qualifies as foreshadowing. If one kid is sneaky, the entire team can learn to do that and have sneaky adventures together. The thing that is equivalent to your class is actually something that you will almost certainly outgrow completely several times in a long game.

-Username17