An Essay skeleton: "The Horrible Radius or Why Conan Loses"

[RandomCasualty]

I don't like multiple tracks. It's just too much to keep track of. I mean that stuff is fine for PCs, but for mooks, you probably don't want to know 4 different status levels for each goblin in a group of 25.

[Draco_Argentum]

1193071107[/unixtime]]At some point in history, someone has probably said "I need to be able to set people on fire from a distance." And thus, the flamethrower was made.

Technological advancement occurs when the human race is bored of existent means of slaughter. Thats a fairly bleak world view.



Magic breaks the rules because historically magic is either "do as I say or I'll turn you into a newt" or "she can turn us into newts, lets kick her ass first". In the first its about being able to do something your subjects can't. The second is about creating fear of the unnatural.

Magic would be fine breaking physics if it had its own rules that had to be followed and these rules were as restrictive as physics. AFAIK D&D magic can do whatever the hell the person who writes the spell feels like.

[Koumei]

Not so much boredom, more the necessity during a war. There could be all sorts of really good reasons for wanting to set other people on fire from a distance.

And yes, I'm aware that they had means of doing so before the flamethrower (fire arrows, burning ships that were crashed into enemy ships, catapults launching jars of napalm, molotov cocktails etc)

Not boredom. Sure, there are probably some who delighted in coming up with new ways of killing people. Let's call those people Gary Gygax. For the most part, I'd like to think it was necessity.

Anyway, I like the idea of magic giving physics the finger but following some other arbitrary rules. I mean, the laws of physics are pretty arbitrary, if usually consistent (gravity doesn't just stop working for no reason, the speed of light is always the same... I assume... and whenever something "impossible" happens, we realise it was possible, we just didn't understand the rules before), so as long as the laws of magic are done similarly, there could be no problem.

But from a novel-writing perspective, what would you make those laws? Likewise, from a game-writing perspective, how would you translate those laws into game mechanics? What would the big things be?

[Judging__Eagle]

1193207116[/unixtime]]I don't like multiple tracks. It's just too much to keep track of. I mean that stuff is fine for PCs, but for mooks, you probably don't want to know 4 different status levels for each goblin in a group of 25.

Yup, that's why I also stated:

Only real characters get Body, Energy and Mind, everything else gets HP and dies to SoDs.

So, the BBeG Blackguard gets 4 tracks, if you don't want him to die to a single spell SoD or weapon SoD.

The Blackguard's Ogre bodyguards die like ants to the fighter's sword swings (and since he's a fighter, he chooses to deal Will-Save SoDs, since those will fvck over the poor will-saves that the ogres have).

[tzor]

1193223225[/unixtime]]And yes, I'm aware that they had means of doing so before the flamethrower (fire arrows, burning ships that were crashed into enemy ships, catapults launching jars of napalm, molotov cocktails etc)

Actually, the flame thrower is exceptionally old in terms of history, "Flamethrowers date from the Byzantines, who used hand-pumped flamethrowers on board their naval ships."

But getting back on to the subject, as cute as the flame thrower is, the flame thrower is a "ray" weapon, the fire is thrown in a linear direction and generally hits one victim at a time. The big magic is in the "area of effect" spells that can take out a whole number of people at the same time. It is compounded by the remote nature of the same magic in that the caster is not in the immediate area of that damage.

It's not really about "breaking physics." Qantum mechanics does that quite nicely to the physics of Aristotle, for example but we still use it for the most part because it's "good enough for government work" most of the time. You just need a good consistant handwave, whether it is for a fireball or a Star Trek transporter.

So the question really is ... if some hero of some level of awsome can take out a bunch of people in a single round like BAM, then some other hero of the same level of awsome should be able to do likewise even if it is through a different awsome mechanic. To let casters get away with area of effect mechanics while forcing the sword people to be limited to their weapon reach is, in the end, simplu unfair and not fun.

[Koumei]

1193235146[/unixtime]]
the flame thrower is a "ray" weapon, the fire is thrown in a linear direction and generally hits one victim at a time.

I didn't actually know that. Having never seen a real flamethrower in use, I figured they worked like in Warhammer 40K, or like breath weapons, expanding out in a cone of fiery doom. So, precision fiery burning doom. Neat.

So the question really is ... if some hero of some level of awsome can take out a bunch of people in a single round like BAM, then some other hero of the same level of awsome should be able to do likewise even if it is through a different awsome mechanic. To let casters get away with area of effect mechanics while forcing the sword people to be limited to their weapon reach is, in the end, simplu unfair and not fun.

I agree with you fully on this point. People need to be equally important and awesome. And seeing as the sword-user and magic-user essentially have the same job, which is killing people, they should be equally good at it. One launches a ball of flame, the other leaps out and swings his blade around so that it seriously does hit everyone in a 20' radius. One points and says "Die", the other charges and decapitates them.

Or in some game systems, stabs them in a lung while missing everything surrounding, including the ribs.

[RandomCasualty]

1193235146[/unixtime]]

So the question really is ... if some hero of some level of awsome can take out a bunch of people in a single round like BAM, then some other hero of the same level of awsome should be able to do likewise even if it is through a different awsome mechanic. To let casters get away with area of effect mechanics while forcing the sword people to be limited to their weapon reach is, in the end, simplu unfair and not fun.

I dunno about that. I mean it's okay to have different classes have different concepts.

A swordsman can be the short range attack theme, so he's great at close range, but lacks long range attacks. I mean I don't see the problem with that.

[Crissa]

RC, that's not the problem, the problem is when (as in D&D) the swordsman gets n other schtick, and always loses to a magic user after a certain point.

Heck, part of the problem is that we're saying 'archer' and 'swordsman' vs 'magic-user'. We aren't saying 'Fighter' vs 'Fire-baller' or 'Abjurist'.

-Crissa

[tzor]

1193250361[/unixtime]]A swordsman can be the short range attack theme, so he's great at close range, but lacks long range attacks. I mean I don't see the problem with that.

I'm not really comparing close range to long range but rather to the range of attack that casters get compared to fighters. Let's suppose that a fighter, for example, with the proper pre-requisites wastes his feats on Combat Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack and gets Whirlwind Attack. Let's then assume that he has a two handed sword and takes a full turn to use the feat. This means that he has the potential to throw 2d6+2xStr to everyone one in a 5' radius, or at max 9 creatures if he is being fully attacked. (And all of his attackers are getting flanking bonuses by the way.) Standard attack is all or nothing depending on the roll and the AC.

Now a typical 5th level wizard can throw a fireball that does not 2d6 but 5d6 and not on 9 opponents but in a 20' radius that could in theory hit (5x4x4) or 80 opponents! This is save for half, so there is a guarenteed minimum damage.

Now constracting this is the fact that the wizard is supposed to have a limited number of these attacks and the fighter an unlimited number, but that has always been a poor mechanic for game balance. More over it only gets worse as the levels increase, exponentially so in fact.

It can be possible to balance the hare of the wizard with the tortoise of the fighter, but few people want the hare to fall asleep after he made his short dash which got him to the half way point faster but failed to carry him to the finish line. So they pump the hare up and the poor tortiose is still left as slow as ever. They want their characters to be equally awesome every round of the combat, not with one shot wonders and then hiding the rest of the battle.

[Judging__Eagle]

Okay, so my essay leads in with the following:

“The Horrible [****] Radius” or “Why Conan Loses (and shouldn’t)”



Co-operative storytelling is a pastime that has less purview than traditional storytelling, but in some ways is much more compelling to those involved. The real reason for this is that each and every member of such an experience has events that they will recall because they often helped invent one of the characters involved in the story. As humans are story-telling creatures, the activity of creating stories that are your own is a very compelling reason to engage in these games.

Of course, nothing made by man is perfect and often in various forms of games whether in tabletop, video game console or computer game, situations and conversations much like the following occur, much to the chagrin of some:

Referee: “All right, the five of you see an other squad of monsters. They’re all nine feet tall like the rest of the monsters in this fortress, but these ones are covered in thick white fur, they have thick translucent blue claws and the blue-bottle coloured insect eyes on their face give off faint clouds fog

Sneaky-Person: “I one of them snipe with my weapon and shoot them in the eyes. Take that monster!”

Referee: “Well, that’s one six-armed ice-breathing monster down and blinded. Four left to go.”

Faith-Person: “I say a prayer and beat them up with divine power. A twelve-foot tall iron-skinned person can kill one in three seconds, right? Of course, all in the ethos of my own made up religion, the one of “Being Totally Sweet and Kicking Ass’?”

Referee: “Yeah, you turn the monster into a pulp in the name of … your characters particular religious beliefs.”

Nature-Person: “Well, I’m still a giant fanged animal. I charge one of them and then slash at the monster with my claws, and bite it with my poisoned teeth.”

Referee: “The monster dies, covered in poisoned wounds.”

Magic-Person: “I frighten to death by making them imagine their worst fear; heart-nosed puppies.”

Referee: “Yes, heart-nosed puppies, the monster dies of apoplexy.”

Sword-Person: “I charge the last one and take a swing at them with my giant sword. Oh, I missed.”

Referee: “Hmm, well, that’s too bad. The monster breathes ice on you. Can you dodge it?”

Sword-Person: “Uhm… no. I’m frozen, aren’t I?”

Referee: “How’d you guess?”

Sword-Person: “Every other acid-breathing monster has sprayed me, every fire-breathing monster has singed me and every lighting-monster has shocked me. I figured it was a safe bet.”

Game designers often ignore the way that the players will interact with the game. A common result is that certain player options (play style, character options, colour of your hat) were not designed to be viable at certain stages of play.

As a result of failing to keep this in mind, many games suffer from having players that play ‘simple’ characters, such as people that use swords, end up having either less or simply no effective options to bring to a co-operative story-telling environment. Often these facts are brushed aside saying that either having powerful characters who use strength of arms and skill with weapons are ‘unthematic’ to be able to defy the laws of logic the way a person with a book full of scribbles and a long beard is able to. At other times an unwritten assumption that the person holding the sword is inherently less important than the person who can call upon mysterious secrets to quell their foes. A final reason is that [......]

I'm having a bit of trouble writing a third 'reason' that fighters should suck ass hats claim....


Oh, I'm an idiot. They keep claiming that they're "fine." What useless tripe that is. Like saying that a Carburator is "fine", when we have computer controlled fuel-ignition systems.

[Captain_Bleach]

As I HATE how the non-full-casters in my party do not have as much fun, I was considering a house-rule; everybody's a full caster or nobody is. I'm simply tired of seeing some characters be out of the limelight, and I don't care what the "Coastal Wizards" say.

[Judging__Eagle]

Okay, here's the last bit again, plus the thesis.

A final reason is that many proponents of keeping ‘simple’ characters from being useful are those that believe that a ‘simple’ character shouldn’t be as useful to a group of people telling a co-operative story as a ‘complex’ character is.

Of course, these arguments fail when compared to the very stories that these games try to emulate, the basic tenets of equality that a game labeled as ‘co-operative’ should hold and the fact that in a game that everyone is trying to tell as a group, no single person should be told to tell parts that they might not want to tell.

[Captain_Bleach]

1193275024[/unixtime]]Okay, here's the last bit again, plus the thesis.

A final reason is that many proponents of keeping ‘simple’ characters from being useful are those that believe that a ‘simple’ character shouldn’t be as useful to a group of people telling a co-operative story as a ‘complex’ character is.

Of course, these arguments fail when compared to the very stories that these games try to emulate, the basic tenets of equality that a game labeled as ‘co-operative’ should hold and the fact that in a game that everyone is trying to tell as a group, no single person should be told to tell parts that they might not want to tell.

Amen to that!

[Judging__Eagle]

I'm gonna keep posting this tonight as I get more done. I have a friend whose helping me edit take a look here.

Hopefully I'll have ti all done tonight and edit tomorrow or friday before class.

I'm seriously consdiering using this thread as 'reasearch' for my essay. XD

[Judging__Eagle]

Since the beginning of recorded history man has told tales of powerful members of their society striking out from their communities and achieving memorable accomplishments. In what is possibly the very first recorded story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Warrior-king and self-proclaimed demi-god (one third god in fact) Gilgamesh leaves his home city and defeats what is recorded as ‘monsters’ and then brings the stolen treasure home to his coffers. While the story of Gilgamesh is far too long to be properly discussed in this paper, it is a poignant example of what a ‘simple’ man can do. Gilgamesh used only the force of his arm and wit to carve out his own personal kingdom, befriend a wild man from the desert to be his personal bodyguard (Ekindu) and eventually seek the ‘flower of life’ from the bottom of the sea.

There are other powerful and well-known examples of users of ‘simple’ means being able to accomplish the near-impossible. Thesues with his defeating of three powerful bandits and eventually killing the Minotaur of Crete with his bare hands. Heracles, who not only completed twelve separate labours of but has been one of the only recorded heroes to wrestle to a standstill the aspect of death itself. Achilles the Homeric Greek hero able to run faster than others and able to fight as no other man who he faced (his invulnerability being a creation of later retellings of his story). Cucullain, the ‘Hound of Cullain’, who, as a young man of seventeen was stop an entire army on his own as told in the epic Táin Bó Cúailng. Beowulf, the Danish hero whose strength was so great that he could out-wrestle Grendel and fight a dragon to the death. The concept of the powerful warrior-hero is a far-reaching one and also existsin nearly every cultures, including the Book of Judges in the Old Testament in the guise of Samson. With his God-given strength he had the ability to single-handedly embarrass the oppressors of his deity’s people for years. This idea continued well into more recent of the middle stories with Charlemagne’s paladin Roland and even in modern literature with characters such as Ron. E Howard’s Conan the Cimmerain.

All of this vast body of stories created, collected and told by humanity only serve to disprove any claims that there is no ‘thematic’ warrior-hero with strange or great powers.

I'm gonna hit the sack and write more tomorrow. Night guys and girls.

[Manxome]

the Warrior-king and self-proclaimed demi-god (one third god in fact) Gilgamesh

I'm not familiar with the story of Gilgamesh, but I was intrigued by the concept of being one-third anything, so I did some research (read: "looked him up on Wikipedia"). Having not immediately found anything helpful, can anyone more familiar with the story tell me how exactly one acquires a lineage that is one-third something, or do they hand-wave past that?

Wikipedia claims he's described as being two-thirds god, by the way.


I don't know if you want editing help at this stage (or from this forum), but if you do:
(Warning: Nit-picky)

The real reason for this is that each and every member of such an experience has events that they will recall...

You haven't discussed any other reasons (in what you've posted), so specifying that this is the real reason seems odd. Simply "the reason" is probably sufficient.

Of course, nothing made by man is perfect and often in various forms of games whether in tabletop, video game console or computer game, situations and conversations much like the following occur, much to the chagrin of some:

I suggest you break that into two sentences, and maybe put parentheses around "much to the chagrin of some". I believe you also need a comma after "various forms of games".

the five of you see an other squad of monsters

"Another" should be one word.

They’re all nine feet tall like the rest of the monsters in this fortress...

Need a comma before "like".

they have thick translucent blue claws and the blue-bottle coloured insect eyes on their face give off faint clouds fog

I believe there should be a comma between "thick" and "translucent," and the end of your sentence needs another word or two and some punctuation.

Sneaky-Person: “I one of them snipe with my weapon...

No idea what you meant there.

all in the ethos of my own made up religion, the one of “Being Totally Sweet and Kicking Ass’?

Opening quote should be single instead of double.

your characters particular religious beliefs

Needs an apostrophe in "character's".

Magic-Person: “I frighten to death by making them imagine their worst fear;...

Sentence needs an object (e.g. "them" between "frighten" and "to death").

As a result of failing to keep this in mind...

The previous paragraph describes a failure, not a principle, so this should probably say something like "as a result of this failure...".

many games suffer from having players that play ‘simple’ characters, such as people that use swords, end up having either less or simply no effective options to bring to a co-operative story-telling environment.

Awkward wording. Maybe use something like "many games provide few or no effective ways for players controlling 'simple' characters...to contribute to a cooperative story-telling environment."

Also, "less" should be "fewer."

Often these facts are brushed aside saying that either having powerful characters who use strength of arms and skill with weapons are ‘unthematic’ to be able to defy the laws of logic the way a person with a book full of scribbles and a long beard is able to.

The word "either" implies that you're going to list two reasons in this sentence, but you only give one (the next isn't given until the next sentence).

The first part of your sentence is phrased as if you're saying that the warriors are unthematic, while the second part is phrased as if it's actually the act of the warriors defying logic that is unthematic (pick one).

You also want a comma after "brushed aside."

At other times an unwritten assumption that the person holding the sword is inherently less important than the person who can call upon mysterious secrets to quell their foes.

This sentence has no predicate. You want to say that at other times there is an unwritten assumption.

what is recorded as ‘monsters’

Should be "are", not "is".

There are other powerful and well-known examples of users of ‘simple’ means being able to accomplish the near-impossible.

Depending on how strict your grader is going to be on your grammar, you may want your examples (following the above quote) to all be part of the same sentence (starting with a colon and separated by semicolons) rather than putting each in a separate sentence (since your examples technically aren't complete sentences).

You're also missing commas after "Theseus" and "Achilles".

not only completed twelve separate labours of but has been

Remove "of", or put another word or phrase after it.

as a young man of seventeen was stop an entire army

Change "was stop" to "stopped".

The concept of the powerful warrior-hero is a far-reaching one and also existsin nearly every cultures, including the Book of Judges in the Old Testament in the guise of Samson.

Missing a space in "exists in", "culture" should be singular, and you seem to be implying that the Book of Judges is, itself, a culture.

With his God-given strength he had

Comma after "strength".

This idea continued well into more recent of the middle stories

Not sure what you intended to say there, but "more recent of the middle stories" needs either more or fewer words (smallest grammatical fix is to put "the" in front of "more").


Looks like your essay's coming along well, looking forward to the final version.

[Neeek]

1193284417[/unixtime]]

the Warrior-king and self-proclaimed demi-god (one third god in fact) Gilgamesh

I'm not familiar with the story of Gilgamesh, but I was intrigued by the concept of being one-third anything, so I did some research (read: "looked him up on Wikipedia"). Having not immediately found anything helpful, can anyone more familiar with the story tell me how exactly one acquires a lineage that is one-third something, or do they hand-wave past that?

They don't even handwave, really, the mathematical impossibility isn't even somewhat addressed.

[CalibronXXX]

Seriously, this isn't that hard to figure out. If one of your parents is half frog and the other is one is one quarter frog then you are born one third frog.

[Manxome]

1193289880[/unixtime]]Seriously, this isn't that hard to figure out. If one of your parents is half frog and the other is one is one quarter frog then you are born one third frog.

If that was serious:

No, you're 3/8 frog, which is more than 1/3. After 1 generation, children are X/2; after 2 generations, X/4; after 3 generations, X/8, etc. Since no power of 2 is divisible by 3, you can't get to 1/3 without an infinite number of generations, no matter who you have interbreeding (assuming that one child is always produced from 2 parents, and not...um...3).

If that was a joke:

No, you are born Giant Frog!

[CalibronXXX]

Twas a joke. I didn't fail basic math.

And when you think about it, 3 parents might not be all that unlikely when you brings gods and such into the mix.

[Manxome]

A surprising number of people have trouble with fractions, or so I hear.

"This is a calculus class! You can't expect us to remember how to use fractions!"


Though I found the issue of a 1/3 inheritence particularly entertaining because it reminded me of John Conway's derivation of the surreal numbers in On Numbers and Games. See, you can generate all the surreal numbers inductively, starting with 0 on the first iteration, 1 and -1 on the second, 2, -2, 1/2, and -1/2 on the third, and...

*crickets*

Ahem...right...

[Judging__Eagle]

Shit, he claimed he was 2/3's god?

I was going by my now hazy memories of reading about his exploits (specifically in Larry Gosnick's a Cartoon History of the Universe Volume 1: Big Bang to Alexander the Great a couple years ago when I was re-reading it).

All I remember was that he claimed he was an impossible fraction of deity and let the sages remain puzzled over how it was possible, instead of trying to refute his claim.

Manxome, thanks for the nit-picks actually. I have a real tendency to fail at realizing that I've made basic grammatical or typographical mistakes on an overly regular basis.

Reading my posts should have probably given you clues about that.

[Bigode]

1193274877[/unixtime]]As I HATE how the non-full-casters in my party do not have as much fun, I was considering a house-rule; everybody's a full caster or nobody is. I'm simply tired of seeing some characters be out of the limelight, and I don't care what the "Coastal Wizards" say.

That tends to fail - consider: do you expect the average player to have the most basic of idea of what to do with a spellcaster? They'll suck anyway if they sit in the same table as someone who does. Considering that you've just made a [Skill] feat, why the hell do you not go all the way and hand out barbarians/knights/samurai to less experienced/commited players (if magic ability is an absolute must, sphere users'll save your bacon)? That, or you make people forget the existance of full spellcasters, and you're likely to have people bailing, according to your previous talk on the issue.

[Judging__Eagle]

All right, edited the intro, re-worked the 1st parapgraph and and I'm working on the 2nd.

“The Horrible [****] Radius” or “Why Conan Loses (and shouldn’t)”



Co-operative storytelling is a pastime that has less purview than traditional storytelling, but in some ways is much more compelling to those involved. The reason for this is that each and every member of such an experience has events that they will recall because they often helped invent one of the characters involved in the story. As humans are story-telling creatures, the activity of creating stories that are your own is a very compelling reason to engage in these games.

Of course, nothing made by man is perfect. Often in various forms of games, whether in tabletop, video game console or computer game, situations and conversations much like the following occur (much to the chagrin of some):

Referee: “All right, the five of you see another squad of monsters. They’re all nine feet tall, like the rest of the monsters in this fortress, but these ones are covered in thick white fur, they have thick, translucent blue claws and the blue-bottle coloured insect eyes on their face give off faint clouds fog

Sneaky-Person: “I pull out some fire bottles and toss them at the face of the nearest one. Take that monster!”

Referee: “Well, that’s one six-armed ice-breathing monster down and blinded. Four left to go.”

Faith-Person: “I say a prayer and beat them up with divine power. A twelve-foot tall iron-skinned person can kill one in three seconds, right? Of course, all in the ethos of my own made up religion, the one of ‘Being Totally Sweet and Kicking Ass’?”

Referee: “Yeah, you turn the monster into a pulp in the name of … your character’s particular religious beliefs.”

Nature-Person: “Well, I’m still a giant fanged animal. I charge one of them and then slash at the monster with my claws, and bite it with my poisoned teeth.”

Referee: “The monster dies, covered in poisoned wounds.”

Magic-Person: “I frighten one of them to death by making them imagine their worst fear; heart-nosed puppies with rainbow fur.”

Referee: “Yes, heart-nosed puppies. The monster dies of apoplexy.”

Sword-Person: “I charge the last one and take a swing at them with my giant sword. Oh, I missed.”

Referee: “Hmm, well, that’s too bad. The monster breathes ice on you. Can you dodge it?”

Sword-Person: “Uhm… no. I’m frozen, aren’t I?”

Referee: “How’d you guess?”

Sword-Person: “Every other acid-breathing monster has sprayed me, every fire-breathing monster has singed me and every lighting-monster has shocked me. I figured it was a safe bet.”

Game designers often ignore the way that the players will interact with the game. A common result is that certain player options (play style, character options, colour of your hat) were not designed to be viable at certain stages of play.

As a result of this failure, end up having either fewer or simply no effective options to bring to a co-operative story-telling environment. Many games provide few or no effective ways for players controlling 'simple' characters, such as people that use swords, to contribute to a cooperative story-telling environment.

Often these facts are brushed aside, saying that is ‘unthematic’ to have characters who use strength of arms and skill with weapons to be able to defy the laws of logic the way a person with a book full of scribbles and a long beard is able to. At other times there is an unwritten assumption that the person holding the sword is inherently less important than the person who can call upon mysterious secrets to quell their foes. A final reason is that many proponents of keeping ‘simple’ characters from being useful are those that believe that a ‘simple’ character shouldn’t be as useful to a group of people telling a co-operative story as a ‘complex’ character is.

Of course, these arguments fail when compared to the very stories that these games try to emulate, the basic tenets of equality that a game labeled as ‘co-operative’ should hold and the fact that in a game that everyone is trying to tell as a group, no single person should be told to tell parts that they might not want to tell.

Since the beginning of recorded history man has told tales of powerful members of their society striking out from their communities and achieving memorable accomplishments. In what is possibly the very first recorded story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Warrior-king and self-proclaimed demi-god (one third god in fact) Gilgamesh leaves his home city and defeats what are recorded as ‘monsters’ and then brings the stolen treasure home to his coffers. While the story of Gilgamesh is far too long to be properly discussed in this paper, it is a poignant example of what a ‘simple’ charcter can do. Gilgamesh used only the force of his arm and wit to carve out his own personal kingdom, befriend a wild man from the desert to be his personal bodyguard (Ekindu) and eventually seek the ‘flower of life’ from the bottom of the sea to attempt to gain immortality.

Other powerful and well-known examples of users of ‘simple’ means being able to accomplish the near-impossible exist in mythology from many cultures and some, such as Greek mythology, even have veritable stables of warrior-heroes. Thesues; a prince of Athens, was known for his defeating of three powerful bandits, and eventual slaying of the Minotaur of Crete with his bare hands. Heracles, who not only completed twelve separate labours so great that it spawned its own phrase (‘a Herculean task’), but has been one of the only recorded heroes to wrestle to a standstill the aspect of death itself. Achilles, the Homeric Greek hero able to run faster than anyother, and able to kill anyone who faced him in combat (his invulnerability being a creation of later retellings of his story).

The Greeks are not alone in their stories of warrior-heroes and the idea of the warrior as being the centre of their own story reaches as far as Ireland, Sweden, Israel, Persia and China .

Cu Chullain, the ‘Hound of Cullain’; the Irish hero, who, as a young man of seventeen was stop an entire army on his own as told in the epic Táin Bó Cúailng. Beowulf, the Swedish prince who travels to Denmark to save their king from the monster, Grendel. Beowulf’s strength was so great that he could out-wrestle Grendel (an ogre) that for years had terrorized the halls of the Danish king. The Book of Judges in the Old Testament has Samson, with his long hair and Phillistine-killing strength. The Persian hero, Rostam, was known for defeating all manners of monster, demon and witch; performing feats of super-human endurance and restoring order to various lands and cities. The Chinese warrior-general-hero, Guan Yu, a red-faced giant of a man known for wielding a massive halberd (estimated to weigh as much as forty pounds) and performing dozens of bouts of personal combat over the span of few days.

This idea has continued well into more recent of the middle stories with Charlemagne’s paladin Roland and into modern literature with characters such as Ron. E Howard’s “Conan the Cimmerain”.

All of this vast body of stories created, collected and told by humanity only serve to disprove any claims that there is no ‘thematic’ warrior-hero with great or strange powers.


At other times there is an unwritten assumption that the person holding the sword is inherently less important than the person who can call upon mysterious secrets to quell their foes.

In a game where everyone participating is meant to be considered an equal, every member should have an equal opportunity to become important in some way to the plot as it unfolds. The fact that if any single member or multiple members in a group are literally sidekicks to another member is all right, but only if this has been agreed to beforehand. Few things are more denigrating to a person than to effectively tell them “you’re not tall enough” when only a short while ago they were equals to everyone else they were working with. Since more complex characters can perform more complex tasks does not mean that they should be more effective overall simply because they have more options.

A character that is able to strike down multiple enemies with a single strike or leap to the top of a wall is not really that much different from a character who creates giant bursts of flame or can fly. Both can kill many enemies at once and get around low-lying obstacles; the description is different, but the effect is the same.
Since having the same effect on a story is important in establishing that every character in a co-operatively told story, every character must be able to perform equally astounding tasks. Be they endure the wounds that accrue after three days worth of fighting or call upon otherworldly beings to do combat for you over those same days are really the same effect; the character was able to personally or by proxy be able to remain involved in the story and still sruvive.


A final reason is that many proponents of keeping ‘simple’ characters from being useful are those that believe that a ‘simple’ character shouldn’t be as useful to a group of people telling a co-operative story as a ‘complex’ character is.

I know that the last couple of paragraphs are either extraneous or need working over. I'm working on trying to pare them donw to essentially say:

fighters being able to kill lots of guys in one swing and jump to the top of walls is no different from a fireball being cast or a wizard being able to fly.

A 'fighter' who can survive 3 days of non-stop combat is not much different from a cleric who calls up a new extraplanar creauture to fight for them for 3 different days.

Gandalf did X; Aragorn was equally awesome and did X...correction, I need the 2nd paragraph to say that.