The Gaming Den

This thread is dedicated to the horrible roleplaying advice and related mechanics in the RPG books.

I'll start with Warhammer 40k: Black Crusade and Unknown Armies, since the crimes are similar.

BC incentives the characters alligned with Khorne to act like Leeroy Jenkins. Every time you do something ridiculously stupid and dangerous screaming your own name - you get a bonus. Unknown Armies has the Entropomancer, who does the same thing: risk TPK, get a bonus.

There are a few systems that give you immediate and unlimited bonus character resource points for roleplaying your "disadvantages," which is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen. Oh, you're inconveniencing your entire group by picking a character flaw that grinds play to a halt, like being mute or blind or something? Here's a giant pile of additional points to buy superpowers with!

Seriously, who the hell thought that was a good idea? It might be good to make sure characters in a book have flaws that inhibit them, but in a cooperative game that shit just punishes everyone else.

D&D 4E had some sort of extensive waste of space in the DMG that was along the lines of "Offensive Inaccurate Gamer Stereotypes, how to inaccurately categorize your friends, how to mistreat them appropriately, and what names to call them when it causes your game to fall apart!"

But actually I still prefer an example from the old WOTC boards.

The standing advice there for every problem a GM ever faced was "Hit trouble player in the head with a brick/hammer!". This advice had several flaws.

1) Even as a joke it was a horrible attitude, and utterly unhelpful.

2) A lot of dumb fucks decided it wasn't a joke and declared they loved it and did it for realz.

3) "Grievous Bodily Assault your players!" was the main, and often only advice for ALL DM problems/questions. Ranging from "PLayer 1 is a bit mean" to "Player 3 beat my favorite monster, waaah!!" to "my players are being unpredictable and I can't deal with it!" and "I'm running out of ideas that interest my players" and so on...

PhoneLobster wrote:D&D 4E had some sort of extensive waste of space in the DMG that was along the lines of "Offensive Inaccurate Gamer Stereotypes, how to inaccurately categorize your friends, how to mistreat them appropriately, and what names to call them when it causes your game to fall apart!"

This seems to be a pretty common thing. 3.5 has something similar in the DMG II and Pathfinder has its version in its Gamemastery Guide.

How about the fact that RPGs in general have a 40-year history of trying to tell people that all personality/game style conflicts can be mitigated, and that any group of people can be molded in to a coherent play group.

This aspect is single-handedly responsible for more headaches and heartaches than all other things combined.

V:tM 2E used to say players should roll self-insertion characters and that Masquerade was some sort of therapy session where the ST was obviously some mentally and emotionally superior being(fortunately, Wraith came to spit in the face of that shitty advice).

spongeknight wrote:There are a few systems that give you immediate and unlimited bonus character resource points for roleplaying your "disadvantages," which is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen. Oh, you're inconveniencing your entire group by picking a character flaw that grinds play to a halt, like being mute or blind or something? Here's a giant pile of additional points to buy superpowers with!

Seriously, who the hell thought that was a good idea? It might be good to make sure characters in a book have flaws that inhibit them, but in a cooperative game that shit just punishes everyone else.

Yeah, this.

There's a general rule that should exist in point buy games, especially of the superhero genre, which comes from my friend's own ruling- A character who is "blind" but can "see" their surroundings through whatever method, is not blind, and thus does not get the points for such. At best, they should maybe get a small discount on the power that is allowing them to "see."

Also, Exalted and its thespiocracy where people got bigger bonuses the longer, lamer, and more game-stopping their actions' descriptions.

Perhaps I should stop poking holes at White Wolf, there's no merit in making firewood of a fallen log.

Longes wrote: BC incentives the characters alligned with Khorne to act like Leeroy Jenkins. Every time you do something ridiculously stupid and dangerous screaming your own name - you get a bonus.

To be fair, that absolutely fits the setting. If your Khornite character isn't in the Blood Pact and reliably remembers guns can be used as ranged weapons, you are officially doing it wrong. There are three other Chaos Gods and Chaos Undivided for that.

spongeknight wrote:There are a few systems that give you immediate and unlimited bonus character resource points for roleplaying your "disadvantages," which is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen. Oh, you're inconveniencing your entire group by picking a character flaw that grinds play to a halt, like being mute or blind or something? Here's a giant pile of additional points to buy superpowers with!

Seriously, who the hell thought that was a good idea? It might be good to make sure characters in a book have flaws that inhibit them, but in a cooperative game that shit just punishes everyone else.

I don't agree with this at all. At least in Champions/HERO (is that where the mechanic came from? It certainly is one of the earliest examples) the point of disads/complications is to enforce genre conventions and create plot hooks. In that game everyone is expected to have the max number of complication points so it doesn't create balance problems.

Prak_Anima wrote:There's a general rule that should exist in point buy games, especially of the superhero genre, which comes from my friend's own ruling- A character who is "blind" but can "see" their surroundings through whatever method, is not blind, and thus does not get the points for such. At best, they should maybe get a small discount on the power that is allowing them to "see."

I'm not sure what system you are using but HERO at least is sufficiently crunchy that it matters that you see with your ears and not your eyes, and depending on how good your enhanced senses are that setup may not actually save you points.

Mutants and Masterminds, but it stands. Because it always comes up with "I want to be daredevil, so I'll be blind, but my super special senses completely compensate for it, so I get bonus points, but can still see!" type characters.

Palladium, nuff said.

Prak_Anima wrote:Mutants and Masterminds, but it stands. Because it always comes up with "I want to be daredevil, so I'll be blind, but my super special senses completely compensate for it, so I get bonus points, but can still see!" type characters.

But then in M&M that stopped applying in 3E with abolition of Drawbacks. In 3E, if you want to be blind, it has to be as a Complication, and so, it only gives you a HP when it actually comes into play to your detriment.

So instead you're just given hero points for inconveniencing the entire party by not being able to help out and walking into things. Glass Jaw type effects where Fire attacks are Super Effective against you are another matter, because then you don't disrupt gameplay, you just personally get boned by Fire attacks and get stuff in exchange for it.

name_here wrote:

Longes wrote: BC incentives the characters alligned with Khorne to act like Leeroy Jenkins. Every time you do something ridiculously stupid and dangerous screaming your own name - you get a bonus.

To be fair, that absolutely fits the setting. If your Khornite character isn't in the Blood Pact and reliably remembers guns can be used as ranged weapons, you are officially doing it wrong. There are three other Chaos Gods and Chaos Undivided for that.

Congratulations, you've read the most recent Chaos crap, and apparently nothing else. Back in the day, before they dumbed it down, Khorne was the god of blood and of warfare. This includes firearms, artillery, tactics, mine fields, honourable duels, and in one case they specified it was about combat with worthy foes, not just indiscriminate killing of "anyone there".

Koumei wrote:Glass Jaw type effects where Fire attacks are Super Effective against you are another matter, because then you don't disrupt gameplay, you just personally get boned by Fire attacks and get stuff in exchange for it.

Aren't you boning the party by not being able to help out as much because you're unconscious from those Fire attacks?

Prak_Anima wrote:Mutants and Masterminds, but it stands. Because it always comes up with "I want to be daredevil, so I'll be blind, but my super special senses completely compensate for it, so I get bonus points, but can still see!" type characters.

Then that is a flaw in Mutants and Masterminds. In HERO enhanced hearing doesn't completely compensate for sight.

virgil wrote:

Koumei wrote:Glass Jaw type effects where Fire attacks are Super Effective against you are another matter, because then you don't disrupt gameplay, you just personally get boned by Fire attacks and get stuff in exchange for it.

Aren't you boning the party by not being able to help out as much because you're unconscious from those Fire attacks?

Yeah, but in theory that is balanced by being able to help more in some other situations. More importantly complications of some sort are necessary in order to enable certain characters. Superman is weak to kryptonite, The Hulk sometimes can't control himself, vampires have a wide variety of weaknesses, werewolves are hurt by silver. If your game is supposed to support those types of characters then it needs some sort of disad system.

spongeknight wrote:There are a few systems that give you immediate and unlimited bonus character resource points for roleplaying your "disadvantages," which is possibly the worst thing I have ever seen. Oh, you're inconveniencing your entire group by picking a character flaw that grinds play to a halt, like being mute or blind or something? Here's a giant pile of additional points to buy superpowers with!

Seriously, who the hell thought that was a good idea? It might be good to make sure characters in a book have flaws that inhibit them, but in a cooperative game that shit just punishes everyone else.

I played a character who was a were-jaguar in a Champions game. He always showed up in jaguar form (Ok, he once showed up in human form, and then the GM freaked out over his absurdly high pistol skill - somehow "national champion police shooter" didn't suggest an OCV of 16 to him, and he'd missed just what pistol he had...) and didn't talk. I mean he could respond, but conveying concepts was hard. I had fun, though I resorted to faxing them stuff occasionally.

Prak_Anima wrote:Mutants and Masterminds, but it stands. Because it always comes up with "I want to be daredevil, so I'll be blind, but my super special senses completely compensate for it, so I get bonus points, but can still see!" type characters.

Really? In 3e this looks like Reduced Trait(Vision [Ranged, Acute, Accurate]) (-5 points) and Senses (accurate hearing) (2 points). You get 3 points, but you can't read or detect many powers. It's probably not worth it.

In 2e, Daredevil would basically have Blindness (5 point Drawback) and Blindsight (4 point Super Sense). You get 1 point and arguments about when your blindness comes into play and doesn't.

Prak_Anima wrote:In 2e, Daredevil would basically have Blindness (5 point Drawback) and Blindsight (4 point Super Sense). You get 1 point and arguments about when your blindness comes into play and doesn't.

In a reasonably run champions game you either get no disadvantage and need to buy extra perception or you get blind (-35 pts) and then buy sonar (15 pts) or spacial awareness (32) and then deal with the issues these have, like you can't read a computer screen with either.

Gygax's AD&D DMG had a fabulously terrible rant about players wanting to play monster characters. It suggests that a good monster for a character to play is a gold fucking dragon, and that players should get all the powers of a monster as a starting character. Then it tells you that the only reason players want to be monsters is so that they can cheat for more power. And apparently the way to handle this is to simply give them all the power and then ramp up the opposition so that their character dies. Over and over again, until they figure out that having more power just gets them (and presumably the entire party) killed and they give up powergaming and roll up elves and dwarves like everyone else.

Every part of it is wrong.

-Username17

I believe the same essay also says that no player could possibly play a female character correctly for the same reason they couldn't play a monster correctly, because it's too alien.

Might be a different essay, though.

name_here wrote:

Longes wrote: BC incentives the characters alligned with Khorne to act like Leeroy Jenkins. Every time you do something ridiculously stupid and dangerous screaming your own name - you get a bonus.

To be fair, that absolutely fits the setting. If your Khornite character isn't in the Blood Pact and reliably remembers guns can be used as ranged weapons, you are officially doing it wrong. There are three other Chaos Gods and Chaos Undivided for that.

Even if it fits the setting, the game still shouldn't advocate the player going for the TPK as often as he can.

Yeah, occasionally, maybe, but not constantly...