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[6WE] Edwin the Exotic Weapons Specialist

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FastJack

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« Reply #15 on: <08-19-19/1612:42> »
Technically there's nothing in the Impaired entry to stop you from having an Impairment with Magic or Resonance.  It's just "Attribute".
That is true. But as a GM, I wouldn't allow it unless they chose magic/resonance to start with.

In regards to Hephaestus, remember that not all role-playing systems are supposed to be black and white rules. Many rules are in place to allow players and their GMs to see if something works for their group or not. Saying a quality or another part of the rules is a hard stop at X can limit the creativity of some gamers, pushing them away from the game instead of putting rules out there that are more "gray" and saying it's up to the individual groups/GMs to decide if this works in their games.

Iron Serpent Prince

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« Reply #16 on: <08-19-19/1759:24> »
Saying a quality or another part of the rules is a hard stop at X can limit the creativity of some gamers, pushing them away from the game instead of putting rules out there that are more "gray" and saying it's up to the individual groups/GMs to decide if this works in their games.

"They gotta leave things vague, so that individual tables know they can adjust the rules to suit their table...  It isn't like they (individual tables) could do that if they (CGL) made solid rules in the first place."

Uh-huh.

Even if that was an acceptable response, it falls flat for any game that is actively supporting a Living Game (such as Missions).
As long as Missions exists as a thing that CGL isn't divorcing themselves from, they at least need to pay lip service to the endeavor and try to make rules clear and concise.

Typhus

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« Reply #17 on: <08-19-19/1914:44> »
Quote
That is true. But as a GM, I wouldn't allow it unless they chose magic/resonance to start with.

Oh of course.  No reasonable GM would.  Just saying, it could use clarification.  Incompetent, right below it, does have such a notation.  Consistency is good.  Players love to argue that omission is permission.

Hephaestus

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« Reply #18 on: <08-19-19/1948:03> »
Quote
That is true. But as a GM, I wouldn't allow it unless they chose magic/resonance to start with.

Oh of course.  No reasonable GM would.  Just saying, it could use clarification.  Incompetent, right below it, does have such a notation.  Consistency is good.  Players love to argue that omission is permission.

+1 to that

In regards to Hephaestus, remember that not all role-playing systems are supposed to be black and white rules. Many rules are in place to allow players and their GMs to see if something works for their group or not. Saying a quality or another part of the rules is a hard stop at X can limit the creativity of some gamers, pushing them away from the game instead of putting rules out there that are more "gray" and saying it's up to the individual groups/GMs to decide if this works in their games.

Limiting an exploitable ability does not stifle creativity. Allowing players to game the system with exploits absolutely kills creativity, as that allows for "the one build to rule them all" to develop. Riggers are rare in 5th because their rules are sub-par compared to other archetypes, and because the setting doesn't really support car/boat chases or aerial dog fights. MysAds in 5th are power-gamed to all hell, because there are specific power builds that just outclass everyone else.

And the argument of letting a GM have grey areas is moot. A GM can make grey areas wherever they want, or just throw rules out entirely. The issue is how much additional bookkeeping they have to do to manage a campaign. A tight, balanced ruleset means for the most part, they don't have to house-rule much of anything. It also means that the GM can more easily scale encounters to be (roughly) an equal challenge for all players at the table.

On the other hand, a vague, unbalanced, exploitable ruleset means they have to keep track of more and more issues throughout a campaign, and managing it just becomes a chore. And once a game is a chore, its not really a game anymore. And providing a sufficient threat to the cracked out power player usually means the rest of the team ends up as paste.

FastJack

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« Reply #19 on: <08-19-19/2037:18> »
Even if that was an acceptable response, it falls flat for any game that is actively supporting a Living Game (such as Missions).
As long as Missions exists as a thing that CGL isn't divorcing themselves from, they at least need to pay lip service to the endeavor and try to make rules clear and concise.
Missions (or, in the case of other systems, PF Society or D&D Adventurer's League) ALWAYS publish their own restrictions outside of the published rules. Because the gaming companies aren't stupid and know rules lawyers would break the system in an effort to "win" the game.

Hobbes

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« Reply #20 on: <08-19-19/2220:09> »
Even if that was an acceptable response, it falls flat for any game that is actively supporting a Living Game (such as Missions).
As long as Missions exists as a thing that CGL isn't divorcing themselves from, they at least need to pay lip service to the endeavor and try to make rules clear and concise.
Missions (or, in the case of other systems, PF Society or D&D Adventurer's League) ALWAYS publish their own restrictions outside of the published rules. Because the gaming companies aren't stupid and know rules lawyers would break the system in an effort to "win" the game.

You misunderstand the motivation.  You can't "Win" at a role playing game.  You can have really cool moments where your character does really cool make believe things.  Like Batman.  Don't you want your make believe self to be like Batman? 

markelphoenix

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« Reply #21 on: <08-19-19/2227:53> »
Even if that was an acceptable response, it falls flat for any game that is actively supporting a Living Game (such as Missions).
As long as Missions exists as a thing that CGL isn't divorcing themselves from, they at least need to pay lip service to the endeavor and try to make rules clear and concise.
Missions (or, in the case of other systems, PF Society or D&D Adventurer's League) ALWAYS publish their own restrictions outside of the published rules. Because the gaming companies aren't stupid and know rules lawyers would break the system in an effort to "win" the game.

You misunderstand the motivation.  You can't "Win" at a role playing game.  You can have really cool moments where your character does really cool make believe things.  Like Batman.  Don't you want your make believe self to be like Batman?

I think most people would agree about cool moments, but there are some personality types that will munchkin for the purposes of making it almost impossible for them to fail, or for others to be left behind in the dust if they don't equally munchkin. In effect, they see themselves as 'winning' by making such an uber powerful character that makes any challenge that would be thrown at the team trivial to themselves.

FastJack

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« Reply #22 on: <08-20-19/0908:45> »
The "winning" is making sure the story is focused on their character, to the detriment of other PCs (and even the GM's planned story at times).

Hobbes

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« Reply #23 on: <08-20-19/0944:56> »
The "winning" is making sure the story is focused on their character, to the detriment of other PCs (and even the GM's planned story at times).

Hogging the spotlight has nothing to do with character optimization.  I've played at plenty of tables where the person doing much of the talking isn't a mechanically adept character.  That's a "Play Nice with Others" thing, not a min/max thing.  Please don't lump character optimization in with poor table manners.  Anyone can build a mechanically good character, and anyone can be a jerk.

Moonrunner

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« Reply #24 on: <08-20-19/0955:25> »
This is a great discussion.  I'm learning so much in this forum!

Iron Serpent Prince

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« Reply #25 on: <08-20-19/1147:45> »
Even if that was an acceptable response, it falls flat for any game that is actively supporting a Living Game (such as Missions).
As long as Missions exists as a thing that CGL isn't divorcing themselves from, they at least need to pay lip service to the endeavor and try to make rules clear and concise.
Missions (or, in the case of other systems, PF Society or D&D Adventurer's League) ALWAYS publish their own restrictions outside of the published rules. Because the gaming companies aren't stupid and know rules lawyers would break the system in an effort to "win" the game.

And?

That doesn't counter anything I posted at all.

In fact, it glosses over that the Living Game organizers ALSO write the restrictions to do their damnedest to ensure a consistent play experience from table to table.  If you play at Table A and Table B and both tables happen to have the same (or similar enough) Play Scenario C, they should be handled the same way (or very, very, similarly.)

Now, I don't loathe Missions players as much as you clearly do, but I'd like to think that the consistent play experience is the primary motivation, and the merciless crushing of rules lawyers you take so much joy in is secondary.

YMMV, of course.

Lormyr

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« Reply #26 on: <08-20-19/1313:58> »
Hogging the spotlight has nothing to do with character optimization.  I've played at plenty of tables where the person doing much of the talking isn't a mechanically adept character.  That's a "Play Nice with Others" thing, not a min/max thing.  Please don't lump character optimization in with poor table manners.  Anyone can build a mechanically good character, and anyone can be a jerk.

This.

I also do not believe that gamers who enjoy optimizing or breaking the system are worthy of this stygma. Let's not wrongbadfun people here. Speaking to Missions specifically, I've met a lot of players in Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Origins who were optimizers of one degree or another. You know how many of them turned out to be problem players in addition to that? None.
"TL:DR 6e's reduction of meaningful choices is akin to forcing everyone to wear training wheels. Now it's just becomes a bunch of toddlers riding around on tricycles they can't fall off of." - Adzling

Hephaestus

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« Reply #27 on: <08-20-19/1320:21> »
I don't get the sense that Fastjack loathes Missions players (can't confirm; don't know the guy), but I can see how the concept of Missions-specific rules can be seen as attempts to plug holes in the rules that shouldn't exist in the first place. On the other hand, Missions rules that are setting-specific don't bother me so long as they are equally enforced across all tables.

If the Missions rules say that in the setting, people with obvious augments (or maybe magic) are treated as pariahs, then that is going to be tough for some players. But its something that good players can work with, and it doesn't kill build potential. And then it falls to the GM to make sure affected players are treated accordingly.

But if the Missions rules say "Impaired Attribute can only be taken once, and only to a maximum of 3 ranks" then that looks like an errata change that they just didn't make official.

Shinobi Killfist

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« Reply #28 on: <08-20-19/1336:34> »
Haha my 9 body 1 strength troll joke is even better than I thought. Not only do I get to dump strength but I can get like 64 points in negative qualities and as long as I have 44 points in positive qualities I’m good. I thought the racial system on its own was off to the point of easily broken as is. With this negative quality it’s epic.

Limit it to once per stat. Limit it so it can’t be in your racial stat.  Limit it or clarify that special stats like magic and resonance can’t be taken.

dezmont

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« Reply #29 on: <08-20-19/1359:50> »
The other big flaw of 'let GMs sort it out' is that like... that freaking sucks for players man. Like for real.

A huge huge HUGE draw for many many players is looking over the books and thinking "This looks cool. I want to try this!"

When you put balancing onus onto the GM as POLICY beyond the bare minimum 'trust your GMs to say no to really ridiculous things that clearly never were intended' you do a lot of intensely negative things.

For one, you are priming your GM to do the opposite of what a good GM does, to limit, to quash, to restrict. It violates one of the basic tenants of good GMing in modern RPGs: Being a fan of your players and wanting cool stuff to happen. Ideally, your rules should springboard player imagination, not to be something that is a false start that requires the GM to tell players "No!"

Secondly, its a huge bait and switch killjoy to a player who attached to a cool thing the RPG said to do. Like it isn't a player's fault the RPG book lied to them or said they could do something, a huge appeal of RPG books is perusing them for cool things. That is a massive part of what SR is about, it is why older editions literally framed the books as shopping catologues, because it was fun to look through them and go "Wowe Zowy that is so cool! I am going to use that on my next PC!" By promising a player something and expecting the GM to slap it out of their hands, congrats, you just create a really comically avoidable negative play experience most RPGs these days manage to avoid. How razzed do you think Billy Boardgames, new RPG player, is going to be to make a new PC after their GM tells them they were a naughty boy for doing this cool thing the books tell you to do making a Mystic Adept and tossing the sheet in the bin? Probably not very... Its why pretty much no RPG on the market does this and why no game design course will teach you this is a good idea. Its like... objectively a massive failure?

Finally it basically... surrenders good game design? It isn't a virtue to say "Gms can just balance it themselves so we should make the game extra wacky and let GMs reign it in." Your game... should be good? Like it feels so weird to use this as a counterpoint to an argument but games should be good and well designed.

This quality's only function is to let a player reduce the maximum of an attribute in exchange for more power now. That is ALL it does. Shadowrun is a game where it is not just extremely unlikely, but unheard of to max out all your attributes over the course of a game. It does not take a design genius to realize that this quality, therefore, is an auto-pick at at least one level, and it isn't a Punpun level unexpected outcome for a player to elect to take this quality that, in essence, does nothing, when its effect starts and ends at limiting the upper level of an attribute. Like yeah you can't always anticipate someone will combine a bunch of stuff in an unexpected way to nuke the game, that stuff happens. But we are talking about a single quality being used on its own in the context it is intended to be used in. If it doesn't work THERE its just broken, there isn't a debate to be had on players trying to 'win' the game or GMs limiting content, it just shouldn't have been written.

In the context of SR, this is a failed design on the face of it because as a negative quality it does... nothing, in pretty much any context. It isn't really 'on' the GM that something was printed that was so aggressively out of line. It isn't even like 5e Aged which KINDA gets away with it by forcing it on a bunch of attributes so that being aged really does limit your build severely on most PCs. This quality isn't 'being abused,' it just *IS* broken. That isn't on the GM, someone writing the game should notice this quality breaks good design principles and have fixed it or removed it.

There totally ARE designs where you are trusting your GM to limit content that are not just fine, but good! SR has some! Fame, for example, is a quality banned at many a table just because it is very disruptive to the campaign's dynamic, but it exists because it allows very interesting stories to exist if the GM is cool with it. Fame earns its right to exist despite being something that many GMs won't allow at their table, because it serves a purpose. You don't need to contextualize taking fame as 'abusive' to ban it from your table, it can just not be a good fit. You can just say "nah" for Fame and it is totally clear both why you said it and why it is in the book despite the GM saying "nah."

The same can't be said for Impaired. It doesn't exist to create stories. It just exists to give you karma for giving up access to a future number your never going to reach anyway. It isn't worth any of the effort it takes for the GM or players to think about or conflict over, and therefore shouldn't exist. It purely exists to make the game worse on SOME level (less balanced, GM-player conflict, or a player being disappointed by a bait and switch).

Negative qualities exist to make the game more intersting and make stories better. If they aren't doing that (They are too punishing to the point people don't want to take them and hide in the safe bubble of having a bunch of 'allergies, mild, unobtanium,' or conversely they basically don't impact the story at all) they aren't worth printing. I can't imagine a table or PC made more interesting by impaired, it just exists to be frustrating, so 'why was this printed' is a fair question and 'GM customization of their game' isn't remotely a good answer.
« Last Edit: <08-20-19/1408:03> by dezmont »