Community

Jan 8, 2013 -- 12:02PM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

...Or, you know, like I've said multiple times, I've been talking about old WoD. But that's irrelevant, really, because you're still wrong, and you're still confusing abillity to kill or neutralize with challenging.

Ah. I became confused, and thought you were talking about nWoD in both threads, not talking about nWoD *there* and oWoD *here*. My apologies for my confusion.

However, I'm still not wrong, unless I've forgotten a lot more about oWoD than I thought I had, as you still have to make pretty much everything with the same rules as PC's, and I have had antagonists challenge PC's.

And no, I'm not confusing ability to kill or neutralize with challenging. Or have you missed the minimum of two times I've brought up the politician antagonist? He's not going to do either of those. But let me give you an example from actual game play (I wasn't even the ST for this one.)

So, in a multi-venue nWoD LARP (as in, all venues exist in the same continuity, but don't necessarily play at the same time except for very special circumstances), the Forsaken ST started a plotline wherein a local politician really pushed for some leash laws and other animal control laws due to some various "animal attacks" (really, werewolf activity, but the politician didn't know that) in the area. Obviously, this put a bit of a monkey wrench in what the Uratha were doing, as even using Gifts to make themselves appear as normal canines instead of wolves wouldn't be enough.

The other venues were notified that this happened, because they would notice that a city-wide imperative had occured, and it would affect any characters who could change into certain animal shapes. So, in our Requiem game, we had 2-3 Gangrel who were starting to get a bit upset about this. Of course, my character - an Invictus Daeva who didn't like Gangrel - was sending money towards this politician's office in an effort to make sure he stayed in office. Oh, sure, later on he made a deal with the Gangrel Priscus ("head" of the clan in the city) to try and use his influence to get the leash law taken care of, but that's just icing on the cake. Either way, my vampire character won. Now, my werewolf character....that's a different story. He had to either not use his wolf form, or spend quite a lot of Essence to utilize a Gift called Vanish, which allowed him to become invisible. Depending on how much Essence he had, that could be quite troublesome.

I never saw if the NPC had a sheet, but if he had, it would have been a regular mortal sheet, with his standing as a city politician represented by the Status Merit. And really, that's all he needed to be a challenging issue for characters in two different venues - and one that they could NOT simply go and kill, because killing a high-profile antagonist like that would have caused even worse trouble. But the characters weren't neutralized - they could still do most of their activities, they just had to be a lot more circumspect in how they did them. Which, really, was the point of the antagonist.

Now, does that illustrate a good enough challenge as you described? If so, great. If not, why not, and what exactly would you term a "challenge" for a group of protagonists that does not neutralize or kill them?

Jan 8, 2013 -- 8:36PM, strider1276 wrote:

Jan 8, 2013 -- 12:02PM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

...Or, you know, like I've said multiple times, I've been talking about old WoD. But that's irrelevant, really, because you're still wrong, and you're still confusing abillity to kill or neutralize with challenging.

Ah. I became confused, and thought you were talking about nWoD in both threads, not talking about nWoD *there* and oWoD *here*. My apologies for my confusion.

..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" class="mceContentBody " contenteditable="true" />

Happens. That's why I try to avoid thinking about anything from any other threads while I'm posting in a given thread.
No worries, though.

Jan 8, 2013 -- 8:36PM, strider1276 wrote:

Jan 8, 2013 -- 12:02PM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

...Or, you know, like I've said multiple times, I've been talking about old WoD. But that's irrelevant, really, because you're still wrong, and you're still confusing abillity to kill or neutralize with challenging.

Ah. I became confused, and thought you were talking about nWoD in both threads, not talking about nWoD *there* and oWoD *here*. My apologies for my confusion.

However, I'm still not wrong, unless I've forgotten a lot more about oWoD than I thought I had, as you still have to make pretty much everything with the same rules as PC's, and I have had antagonists challenge PC's.

And no, I'm not confusing ability to kill or neutralize with challenging. Or have you missed the minimum of two times I've brought up the politician antagonist? He's not going to do either of those. But let me give you an example from actual game play (I wasn't even the ST for this one.)

-snip-

Now, does that illustrate a good enough challenge as you described? If so, great. If not, why not, and what exactly would you term a "challenge" for a group of protagonists that does not neutralize or kill them?

An interesting example, but we seem to be having an issue where you think I'm arguing something other  than what I'm arguing, or something.

That character could have a character sheet, could not have one, it could be built at a PC or not, doesn't matter. Because the stats of that character aren't relevant. The same character at a table, where the considerations are different than in a LARP, doesn't need any stats whatsoever. Hell, the order could come out of a political body made up of multiple people, and all you lose is the chance of being able to influence that one politician to your ends, but then you gain the fun of trying to influence a body instead.

Now, that body could, in a system that doesn't care about NPCs having the same stats as PCs, be built on a single sheet, depending on what you want to do with them, or they could just have some values for things like how strong willed they are, how persuasive, what the pecking order is if the specific game calls for a mechanical determination of status in a group, etc. No need for a full sheet.

In other words, the example you use is...odd, because it isn't effected by this debate, at all. This debate is completely irrelevant to that character. Every single thing it does can be done solely through roleplaying, with no need for mechanics unless the players go meet him in person and interact, and then he only needs whatever stats the players will interact with.


Now, if his purpose was to act as a threat which would require the whole party to overcome, in a normal game, (seriously, multi location LARPing is your example? You don't think that's a bit far afield? ) then you'd have to show me how he could be built using PC rules, be a fair challenge (ie, not auto win), actually challenge them, (not auto lose) and do so without it being a matter of who used the cool ability first or got the good die role first (ie, not be rocket tag, whether lethal or non lethal).

Jan 9, 2013 -- 8:17PM, strider1276 wrote:

Jan 9, 2013 -- 3:37PM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

An interesting example, but we seem to be having an issue where you think I'm arguing something other  than what I'm arguing, or something.

That character could have a character sheet, could not have one, it could be built at a PC or not, doesn't matter. Because the stats of that character aren't relevant. The same character at a table, where the considerations are different than in a LARP, doesn't need any stats whatsoever. Hell, the order could come out of a political body made up of multiple people, and all you lose is the chance of being able to influence that one politician to your ends, but then you gain the fun of trying to influence a body instead.

Now, that body could, in a system that doesn't care about NPCs having the same stats as PCs, be built on a single sheet, depending on what you want to do with them, or they could just have some values for things like how strong willed they are, how persuasive, what the pecking order is if the specific game calls for a mechanical determination of status in a group, etc. No need for a full sheet.

In other words, the example you use is...odd, because it isn't effected by this debate, at all. This debate is completely irrelevant to that character. Every single thing it does can be done solely through roleplaying, with no need for mechanics unless the players go meet him in person and interact, and then he only needs whatever stats the players will interact with.


Now, if his purpose was to act as a threat which would require the whole party to overcome, in a normal game, (seriously, multi location LARPing is your example? You don't think that's a bit far afield? ) then you'd have to show me how he could be built using PC rules, be a fair challenge (ie, not auto win), actually challenge them, (not auto lose) and do so without it being a matter of who used the cool ability first or got the good die role first (ie, not be rocket tag, whether lethal or non lethal).

See, I'm not 100% sure at this point what you're arguing, which is why I specifically asked you to define it (which you've not done, at least so far as I can tell, unless I'm missing something).

And sure, the example might be a bit odd, but it was the first one I could think of that couldn't be handled in a physical manner (thus negating any chance of the "neutralize or kill" clause). And the LARP wasn't multi location. All games happened in the same in-character physical space - the various supernatural creatures' territories had some significant overlap. The venues were played on different weekends, though, so it was (for instance), a Changeling/Requiem double-header one Saturday (play Changeling, grab some food, come back for Requiem), and a Forsaken/Requiem double-header another weekend. As you can tell, Requiem was popular, although I personally prefer Changeling and especially Forsaken.

I would like to imagine that the politician had a sheet, but as I was a player dealing with that plot, I never saw it. So, admittedly, I can't verify that he did or did not. Personally, were I running that particular plotline, he'd have a sheet just in case the PC's did go interact with him in some way (such as sending some vampires to go screw with his mind at night to force him to change his ways). And in this specific plot, it was just one politician - well, yes, I suppose others would have to vote it in, thus making it a body, but the prime thrust for the legislation came from one NPC.

So I would argue that he wouldn't need a sheet at all, given that players are resourceful and wily creatures, and especially when dealing with supernatural creatures like vampires, have all manner of nifty resources at their disposal...particularly of the insidious, screw-with-your-head ways (Dominate, for instance, hasn't changed much if at all between oWoD and nWoD, and if you know oWoD, you know Dominate can be nasty). And I can't even imagine what would have happened if the mages would have gotten involved.....oy.

Okay, you'll have to excuse me. That last part made me feel dirty, so I must shower. lol 

OK, so what I'm arguing is that single enemies built like PCs cannot (especially in combat, where there's less wiggle room between the rules and resolution via roleplay) engage the whole party in a way that is mechanically equivelent to a group of enemies.

I've also put forth that non PC rules are required to make good cannon fodder/minions work, swarms, etc.

In the game I'm building, for instance, I'm using something vaguely similar to SW Saga Edition's  unit or squad rules from the Clone Wars book, but where a Captain unit, which can be a PC if the PCs are leader squads in battle, can Charge The Line, which puts that unit inside the space of an enemy squad, and decreases it's morale, but puts the Captain at great risk. (As you decrease a squad's HP, it's morale drops, and it gains penalties to attack and defense, so large battles have a sense of momentum)

I've also put forth that it's much more efficient to use separate rules, especially in terms of balancing the game, because what's balanced for PCs isn't necessarily balanced for enemies.

Jan 11, 2013 -- 11:51AM, strider1276 wrote:

Jan 11, 2013 -- 10:29AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

OK, so what I'm arguing is that single enemies built like PCs cannot (especially in combat, where there's less wiggle room between the rules and resolution via roleplay) engage the whole party in a way that is mechanically equivelent to a group of enemies.

Ah, got ya. Well, in that case, I'll simply refute with "Mage. Either one" and call it a day. But that's mostly due to the ridiculous stuff one can do with the Spheres/Arcana (depending on which version you're working with). :-)

Everything else, we'll have to agree to disagree, as I've not had a problem with this in any WoD games. In class-based games like D&D or Pathfinder (admittedly the only two class-based games I've played as I vastly prefer classless games), that's not so much the case. That's due to the restrictions I feel a class-based design puts on the game, however.

Jan 11, 2013 -- 10:29AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

I've also put forth that non PC rules are required to make good cannon fodder/minions work, swarms, etc.

In this, we can agree - and if it wasn't clear I wasn't speaking to this above, my apologies, and I'll note that I wasn't. For these, I typically don't even bother with certain stats (or sometimes any stats at all), and handwave the PC's mowing through them if neceesary.

Jan 11, 2013 -- 10:29AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

In the game I'm building, for instance, I'm using something vaguely similar to SW Saga Edition's  unit or squad rules from the Clone Wars book, but where a Captain unit, which can be a PC if the PCs are leader squads in battle, can Charge The Line, which puts that unit inside the space of an enemy squad, and decreases it's morale, but puts the Captain at great risk. (As you decrease a squad's HP, it's morale drops, and it gains penalties to attack and defense, so large battles have a sense of momentum)

I've also put forth that it's much more efficient to use separate rules, especially in terms of balancing the game, because what's balanced for PCs isn't necessarily balanced for enemies.

I'll have to take your word for that, because I never got the chance to play Saga Edition at all.

Saga squad rules boil down (IIRC) to making a group of enemies that act as a unit work as a larger sized single entity. I took that basic concept, and used it to accomplish the goals of minions, without the number of attack rolls being dealt with.