Horrible roleplaying advice and mechanics

[hogarth]

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

For a four-colour superhero game it doesn't matter much since death isn't the usual failure condition; instead, the villain gets away or the heroes get stuck in some easily escapable deathtrap or the story continues in some other relatively harmless way.

[Pedantic]

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.

That is precisely the opposite of the meme. The "advice" was "Your DM shot be shot. In the face. With a hammer." The joke grew out of a gaming story about someone holding a hammer backwards, pointing the handle at someone else during a bad joke and miming a shooting gesture.

It was an admonishment wielded primarily at power-tripping DMs or DMs who made terrible house-rules. Plus I'm pretty sure it inspired a ridiculous crossbow inside a hammer weapon that was featured in a late 3.5 book with some particular weird art.

[Cyberzombie]

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.

The M&M 3E way of handling flaws is definitely on the right track as for how drawbacks should be handled. It could use a bit of refinement or guidelines as to how severe the penalty should be before it gives you a point, but it's still way better than other flaw systems which purely encourage you to game the system to find the most meaningless disadvantages.

[Aryxbez]

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.

If anything, Silva should support this, as for REALIZARM games that he likes, it supports the PC's being flawed beings. Though it does have the issue that even with a pt limit, you're encouraged to max that limit, but it does help build more personality into the character, such context that some players (myself included) wouldn't have otherwise without it to aid them. Of course, if ye want that system, ye could just force a "minimum' flaw(s) choice that characters must choose. Obviously crap like "paraplegic, blind +deaf, immediate cranial bomb" are things that shouldn't be combined with other defects on their own merit (could be refined to work of course, so brain bombs is like Cranked situation).

[ACOS]

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.

That is precisely the opposite of the meme. The "advice" was "Your DM shot be shot. In the face. With a hammer." The joke grew out of a gaming story about someone holding a hammer backwards, pointing the handle at someone else during a bad joke and miming a shooting gesture.

It was an admonishment wielded primarily at power-tripping DMs or DMs who made terrible house-rules. Plus I'm pretty sure it inspired a ridiculous crossbow inside a hammer weapon that was featured in a late 3.5 book with some particular weird art.

Actually, "throw something at his head" is aimed at anyone who wants to be a douchebag at the table. Player being a douche? Throw the DMG at his head. DM being a douche? Throw a brick at his head.
The item to be thrown is random and suited to taste.
I mean, it's completely useless advice. Which, other than wasting time and thread space, is fine, because such advice is always given facetiously (at least, I would assume so - otherwise, the advice-giver is severely maladjusted and not fit for civilized society).
Sure, there may have been a running joke created that was built upon the "throw something at his head" idea; but the generic "throwing something at his head" was the originating concept.

[talozin]

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.

For those curious, the essay "The Monster as a Player Character" from the 1E DMG can be found here. Some parts of Frank's criticism are accurate, others are ... off base, IMO. But read for yourself and find out.

[Aryxbez]

For those curious, the essay "The Monster as a Player Character" from the 1E DMG can be found here.

This is a pretty rich quote from it:

The considered opinion of this writer is that such characters are not beneficial to the game and should be excluded. Note that exclusion is best handled by restriction and not by refusal.
..Be good to yourself as well as them, and everyone concerned will benefit for a well-conceived, well-ordered, fairly-judged campaign built upon the best of imaginative and creative thinking.”

Other than this, only other bad DMing "advice" or such I can think of, was in Fantasycraft saying how it can't be expected to "balance everything" (I.E. the monster system), despite it being a product you made money for to do EXACTLY that crap over 3.5.

[erik]

This

[Cyberzombie]

only other bad DMing "advice" or such I can think of, was in Fantasycraft saying how it can't be expected to "balance everything" (I.E. the monster system), despite it being a product you made money for to do EXACTLY that crap over 3.5.

Considering every RPG has been broken in some way, it's good to let the DM know that crazy combos and unexpected loopholes are to be expected, and that it's the DM's job to stop them from ruining his game. Sure, in a perfect world, the RPG rules would cover everything and stop that sort of thing, but this isn't a perfect world, and the DM advice should reflect that and have the DM be ready to step in to prevent rules exploits.

[OgreBattle]

BC incentives the characters alligned with Khorne to act like Leeroy Jenkins.

Well, that's what they do on the tabletop, and Kharne even hits his own allies 1 out of 6 times

[Neon Sequitur]

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'd like to know which RPG gives you "unlimited" bonus character points for taking a disadvantage. I've played a metric fuckload of RPGs that used chargen systems with disads, and every single one of them granted a fixed number of points for each available disad (or flaw/hindrance/etc) on their list.

So what's this mythical RPG with this mythical disad that grants an "unlimited" number of points to a character who takes it? I'd really like to know.

Does it actually exist?

No?

Didn't think so.

[silva]

Neon,

I think spongeknight is not criticizing the amount of points a system gives for each disadvantage. He is criticizing the existence of the concept of disadvantage in the first place. And I tend to agree, in special in systems that are math-intensive like Gurps.

On the other hand I dont see a problem in games like Castle Falkenstein, where you assign a couple good trait and 1 bad trait at character creation, and can pick another good trait at the cost of picking another bad trait (or something like that, I dont remember exactly). THIS is a such a simple, fast and non-math "disadvantages system" that I even like it.

[rampaging-poet]

Some systems offer open, catch-all disadvantages such as BESM's "Involuntary Transformation" that make taking the same disadvantage twice meaningful. In that case one could get an arbitrarily large number of points by having many copies of a single disadvantage. It's a ticket to DM Veto Land, but it's still possible.

The alternative - not granting extra points for additional distinct curses or transformations - allows players to create arbitrarily gimped characters at any point value by piling more and more bullshit into the one disadvantage they have. It's less likely to be an issue in actual play, but it does reduce the correlation between point value and character power.

[spongeknight]

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'd like to know which RPG gives you "unlimited" bonus character points for taking a disadvantage. I've played a metric fuckload of RPGs that used chargen systems with disads, and every single one of them granted a fixed number of points for each available disad (or flaw/hindrance/etc) on their list.

So what's this mythical RPG with this mythical disad that grants an "unlimited" number of points to a character who takes it? I'd really like to know.

Does it actually exist?

No?

Didn't think so.

Fuck you, asshole. It does exist, and you are just being an ignorant asshole by trying to call me out on it.

Weapons of the Gods page 46: "Disadvantages are the ways in which your character is handicapped or inconvenienced by flaws, personal attributes or mishaps. Disadvantages, when they come into play (and make your life difficult), gain you an additional point of Destiny."

Destiny is the name of XP in the system.

The disads you can take include: Cowardly (gain points for not letting the party fight), Narcolepsy (force the party to deal with you being unconscious), Temperamental (you fly into a rage on a failed check, may attack your friends), Unwholesome (make NPCs instantly dislike you and therefore the party you represent), and you can make your own if these options don't fuck your party enough. Remember, you gain 1 XP every time these things inhibit you, and you get like 3 XP per session, so your goal is to somehow have a functioning character with as many of these as you can acquire.

I like Weapons of the Gods for a few things but fucking obviously all disadvantages are banned in any game I run, and I wouldn't play in any game that allowed them.

[Neon Sequitur]

"Unlimited."

You use that word a lot. It doesn't mean what you think it means....

Feel free to continue re-writing the dictionary on my ignore list.

[silva]

Interesting. Didnt know how disads worked in Weapons of the Gods. I like it more than in Gurps like implementations, because it actually incentives players (through XP) to act out their disadvantages.

Also on the matter of Disads that actually give players bonus, its Dogs in the Vineyards, where flaws actually help the players (but for gaining them you have to actually take fallout / lose conflicts).

[DragonChild]

"Whenever it comes up" seems essentially the same as "Unlimited" to me, but then, I'm not a complete fucking moron apparently.

[Koumei]

Depends. If it says "in any session in which it comes up" (regardless of how often, so Temperamental will give you 1xp per session no matter how often you go mental) then you're inflating how bad it is. If every single flip-out gives you 1xp then yeah, it's not an actual infinite value but it's arbitrarily high as the limit to its use is basically "the entire fucking game session, every game session" for "as much XP as you should need".

[spongeknight]

"Unlimited."

You use that word a lot. It doesn't mean what you think it means....

Feel free to continue re-writing the dictionary on my ignore list.

You get a point every time a situation in which your disadvantage comes into play and makes your life difficult. That is a rule which has unlimited points you can gain, especially if you pick the most obnoxious disadvantages possible that always come up, like being fucking cowardly in a game based around kung-fu combat. Are you fucking crying now, putting me on your ignore list because you're a goddamn baby who throws his hands in the air whenever he loses an argument? You asked for an example, I gave you one, then you declared that you won anyway because reasons and made a point to stop the conversation.

Go fuck yourself. I have never seen such a dishonest dickbag on this entire website, and that is almost a compliment based solely on who you're competing with.

@silva: It actually encourages people to pick the most obnoxious disadvantages to screw the entire party so they get permanent, I-become-better-than-other-players bonuses that accrue additively through the entire campaign. A much better implementation would have them receive temporary bonuses, like getting a +5 to running away or an extra attempt to diplomancy people instead of fighting if you're cowardly, but you receive a penalty to fear effects or something. Unlimited character bonuses that other characters don't get tend to destabilize the game quite quickly, especially when you're buying literal super powers (in this case kung-fu).

[spongeknight]

Depends. If it says "in any session in which it comes up" (regardless of how often, so Temperamental will give you 1xp per session no matter how often you go mental) then you're inflating how bad it is. If every single flip-out gives you 1xp then yeah, it's not an actual infinite value but it's arbitrarily high as the limit to its use is basically "the entire fucking game session, every game session" for "as much XP as you should need".

The examples it shows quite specifically state it is indeed every single time the problem comes up- it straight-up says that being blind is a problem every second of your life so you have to work with the GM how that's gonna go. Otherwise you can literally take the Tempermental disad, have your friend taunt you every few minutes and gain a hundred times the XP of anyone else in your party. It's awful.

[NineInchNall]

The disads you can take include: Cowardly (gain points for not letting the party fight), Narcolepsy (force the party to deal with you being unconscious), Temperamental (you fly into a rage on a failed check, may attack your friends), Unwholesome (make NPCs instantly dislike you and therefore the party you represent), and you can make your own if these options don't fuck your party enough. Remember, you gain 1 XP every time these things inhibit you, and you get like 3 XP per session, so your goal is to somehow have a functioning character with as many of these as you can acquire.

You misrepresent the extremity of some of these. Narcolepsy, for instance, is explicitly a non-combat, non-stressful situation thing. It's roughly as inconveniencing to the party as the fact that D&D characters have spells/day.

In any case, considering the whole point of the system is to generate the situations typified in the comics, and those are driven by character flaws like being extremely temperamental, it seems that the design choice meets the design goal. And ...

Depends. If it says "in any session in which it comes up" (regardless of how often, so Temperamental will give you 1xp per session no matter how often you go mental) then you're inflating how bad it is. If every single flip-out gives you 1xp then yeah, it's not an actual infinite value but it's arbitrarily high as the limit to its use is basically "the entire fucking game session, every game session" for "as much XP as you should need".

It's any session. And it's not even once per session per disadvantage. It's "any session in which any disadvantage comes up".

Disadvantages: The Gods like a story with some struggle to it; it's boring if things are too easy for the heroes. As described under "Disadvantages" on page 50, you can get 1 Destiny for any session in which one of your troubles messes with you or makes your life difficult in some way.

EDIT: Note that I don't blame spongeknight for not knowing this. The WotG book is probably the worst organized RPG book I've ever read.

[spongeknight]

Disadvantages: The Gods like a story with some struggle to it; it's boring if things are too easy for the heroes. As described under "Disadvantages" on page 50, you can get 1 Destiny for any session in which one of your troubles messes with you or makes your life difficult in some way.

EDIT: Note that I don't blame spongeknight for not knowing this. The WotG book is probably the worst organized RPG book I've ever read.

Yeah, but that ruling is countered by some of the other rules in the disad section. Black-Hearted, Page 50- "Every time you must be restrained by your fellow players from plunging into some pointless duel or something overtly egotistical, ill-advised or rage-driven, your player gains an additional Destiny point. If you try to invoke this Disadvanatge too often, your friends are less likely to restrain you, with predictable results."

Plus the previous quote that states it's every time the disad comes up.

But basically yes, the rules are sometimes completely contradictory, so either ruling could be correct. The game is horrible at consistency.

[Prak]

"Unlimited."

You use that word a lot. It doesn't mean what you think it means....

Feel free to continue re-writing the dictionary on my ignore list.

You get a point every time a situation in which your disadvantage comes into play and makes your life difficult. That is a rule which has unlimited points you can gain, especially if you pick the most obnoxious disadvantages possible that always come up, like being fucking cowardly in a game based around kung-fu combat. Are you fucking crying now, putting me on your ignore list because you're a goddamn baby who throws his hands in the air whenever he loses an argument? You asked for an example, I gave you one, then you declared that you won anyway because reasons and made a point to stop the conversation.

To be fair, he may just be trying to get xp.

[Neon Sequitur]

"Whenever a disad comes up" is entirely up to the GM. So no, it's not "unlimited" unless the GM is drooling retard who bends over to every whim of every munchkin, power gamer and rules lawyer at his table.

This is beyond arguing a worst case, it's an outright fabrication, and I'm not buying it.

[Prak]

The problem is that disadvantages will grind the game to a fucking halt. If they don't do so by forcing your party to deal with you being unconscious/unwilling to fight/unable to sense the world in the same way as everyone else/whatever, they do so by inviting the player with 30 disads to argue that he should get points every fucking time they roleplay them.

And even if the DM is vaguely sane and limits them to 1 dp/session, they still give effectively unlimited points, unless the game has a set expiration date.

If I set up a machine that creates 1 gold coin ex nihilo every time I press a button, I think it's fair to say I've created a machine that gives me unlimited gold.

If I make that same machine, but instead it just creates a gold coin once per day all on it's own with no interaction from me, then I've still created an unlimited gold machine because there is no limit to the number of days it can make gold.