Stats for Epic Heroes

[Caldis]

How do you address the problems mentioned?  i.e. That even epic heroes have their limits -- such that Cu Chulain ambushes stragglers and skirmishes rather than riding head-on into the opposing army by himself.  Roland is killed by a horde of Saracens.  And so forth.  It also suggests that all heroes should be specialists (i.e. Hercules = strength, Achilles = invulnerability).  But a lot of epic heroes aren't specialized.  The Norse epic heroes are almost all well-rounded, for example.  

For the first part of the question you may have missed it but I suggested that you avoid those problems by tightly defining how the attribute applies.  Cu Chulainn or Roland are both unbeatable in single combat but against an army they can lose, they have to use other attributes to bring the situation to a point where their strength applies.  

As to the second you may be thinking of other Norse epic heroes than I but the only ones I'm familiar with are the gods and each of those have something that makes them distinct something that sets them apart.  Thor has his prowess in battle and Mjolnir, Baldur is invincible save to mistletoe (?), Loki is cunning, Odin is wise, Heimdall is steadfast.  They each have some aspect which defines them.  


I'll try another example to see if I can make my point.  Lets move on to the Lord of The Rings.  Frodo Baggins is an epic hero, his quality is his perseverance to the task that has fallen on him.  Through all his trials and the tortures he goes through he often wishes he could but he never gives up his quest.  In the end he fails because his will is not strong enough to resist the ring but he never gives up, he never cries to Gandalf that he can not go on any longer someone else must do it.  Likewise Sam never betrays Frodo, Aragorn never does anything to make him unworthy of kingship.  Mechanics that would make any of these three fail in a related task are as destructive to the characters as having Hercules fail when he tries to lift something.  Any dice variance that allows that possibility accepts destroying the characters essence in exchange for the challenge of random task resolution.

Just to clarify, my suggestion is that this is addressed by having super-high stats and a low-variance system.  Now, I know the response will be (roughly): "Just a high stat?  That doesn't *feel* epic."  But I think that functionally it does what you say.  A mighty warrior can brush aside foes without rolling, a trickster can automatically mislead a mark, and so forth.  A very high stat still gives automatic success but also conveys that there is *some* limit to capability.  On the other hand, the issue of feel is important.  Would having special "named" levels of epic stats be useful, rather than just numbers?  

There has to be no chance of failure when that distinctive ability comes into play or the risk is just the same in my mind. I agree that the limits to the ability should be defined but as I said earlier I dont think a stat does that.  With a number you still have the arugements as to what that means exactly and how that applies.  You really have to define the ability and what it means before hand and what it's appropriate uses are, beyond that sound judgement is required.

You can use the stat to judge the character against other characters or creatures but that should never come into play, if the character is defined by that stat then he should be the best at that stat and not come into conflict with others that could compete with him.   Hercules doesnt wrestle the giant, Robin Hood doesnt compete against William Tell in an archery contest, and Arthurs second cousin doesnt come along and also pull Excalibur from the stone.

No, I just meant that if you are using up positive "hero points" then intuitively something should happen when you get to zero.  Either you just can't spend any more or perhaps you have to "go into debt" -- sacrificing something each time.  That's what intuitively should happen, I think, although the rules don't have to stick to the intuitive model.  If you are accumulating negative tragedy points, then there isn't an intuitive break point for how many is too many.

True, I see where you are going but I dont share your concern.  There arent intuitive points for many things in rpgs.  Target numbers for one have always seemed arbitrary to me yet they work.[/quote]

[Ian Charvill]

Doesn't Frodo on Mount Doom ask Sam to carry the ring bringing the "I cannot carry the ring master Frodo, but I can carry you" response.  Did they invent that for the film?  If they did invent that for the film, does that mean in the film Frodo isn't an epic hero?

Re Hercules' labours: twelve is the canonical number, but many of the tales vary the number.   Apollodorus - whose account has the Hydra holding fast to Hercules such that he is unable to remove it - has Hercules initially sentenced to ten labours:

And she told him to dwell in Tiryns, serving Eurystheus for twelve years and to perform the ten labours imposed on him, and so, she said, when the tasks were accomplished, he would be immortal.

So why did Hercules end up doing twelve?  In part because Hercules fails to kill the Hydra single-handed.  Furthermore while on the way to the Erymanthian boar he pulls a critical fumble on a bow shot wounding his host Chiron so grievously that the immortal Chiron asks to die.  Archery is one of Hercules' things - witness the trickshot used on the Cerynitian hind.  It also happens to be one of the things Hercules' is capable of fumbling.

Now, the idea of a hero who cannot fail at their 'thing' is a fine idea.  It's very hollywood.  Unfortunately, it has little basis in epic poetry.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Ian, I think you're falling into a dangerous trap.

If we're discussing epic heroes in the RPG context, the point is emphatically not to recreate the technical aspects of the epics in all their detail. The point is to recreate our perceptions of epic heroes, and in my perception, Hercules is "the strong guy." Regardless of the details of the stories, I know enough about him to believe that any feat of strength I can think of, he can accomplish.

I won't argue that it's impossible that his strength should fail him, but it seems clear to me that whenever it does, it's not because he's unequal to the task at hand; it's because a storyteller made a conscious choice to make him fail in an interesting way. Which is very hollywood again. But it makes for better epics than, "sometimes, unpredictably, Hercules fails", or, "Hercules doesn't fail at all."

[Caldis]

Doesn't Frodo on Mount Doom ask Sam to carry the ring bringing the "I cannot carry the ring master Frodo, but I can carry you" response.  Did they invent that for the film?  If they did invent that for the film, does that mean in the film Frodo isn't an epic hero?

Frodo doesnt ask Sam to carry the ring, he was too consumed by his desire for the ring at that point to pass it off.  Sam knew that Frodo wouldnt allow him to carry it because it was his task so he offers to carry Frodo.  He still doesnt say that the task is too hard, that they will be caught and that he should run off somewhere to try and hide.  Your example still fits the mold because Frodo is still trying to finish the quest he does not quit.

So why did Hercules end up doing twelve?  In part because Hercules fails to kill the Hydra single-handed.  Furthermore while on the way to the Erymanthian boar he pulls a critical fumble on a bow shot wounding his host Chiron so grievously that the immortal Chiron asks to die.  Archery is one of Hercules' things - witness the trickshot used on the Cerynitian hind.  It also happens to be one of the things Hercules' is capable of fumbling.

Hercules can be very good at archery but it is not his 'thing' he derives no epic status from archery.  So yes he can fail at tasks with a bow and he can fail all kinds of tasks that dont relate to strength. There is no question that heros fail all the time.  They dont fail due to running into someone better than them at what they do. The Hydra can latch it's teeth onto Hercules such that if he rips them out he'll pull himself apart
but it doesnt settle down to an arm wrestling match and beat him two times out of three.

Now, the idea of a hero who cannot fail at their 'thing' is a fine idea.  It's very hollywood.  Unfortunately, it has little basis in epic poetry.

Sorry hollywood took the idea from epic poetry, myth, folklore and plenty of works of fiction that developed the idea long before film existed.

[Walt Freitag]

Doesn't Frodo on Mount Doom ask Sam to carry the ring bringing the "I cannot carry the ring master Frodo, but I can carry you" response.  Did they invent that for the film?  If they did invent that for the film, does that mean in the film Frodo isn't an epic hero?

No. Sam wishes he could carry the ring (apparently, out of a desire to ease Frodo's suffering rather than from any desire to possess it himself). But Frodo cannot permit him to (partly out of a desire to spare his friend from the ring's effects, but mostly because the ring is taking hold over him and he can't voluntarily give it up). Sam would be quite willing to carry the ring, but Frodo could never allow it (and the last thing he'd do is ask Sam to take it). Hence, Sam saying "I cannot [as in 'circumstances prevent me from...,' not 'I'm incapable of...'] carry the ring, but I can carry you." A rather simple and effective solution, since Frodo can't go any farther due to the burden of the ring, but the burden is mental or emotional, not physical weight. To Sam, Frodo-plus-ring is no heavier physically than any half-starved hobbit would be.

Lets move on to the Lord of The Rings. Frodo Baggins is an epic hero, his quality is his perseverance to the task that has fallen on him. Through all his trials and the tortures he goes through he often wishes he could but he never gives up his quest. In the end he fails because his will is not strong enough to resist the ring but he never gives up, he never cries to Gandalf that he can not go on any longer someone else must do it. Likewise Sam never betrays Frodo, Aragorn never does anything to make him unworthy of kingship. Mechanics that would make any of these three fail in a related task are as destructive to the characters as having Hercules fail when he tries to lift something. Any dice variance that allows that possibility accepts destroying the characters essence in exchange for the challenge of random task resolution.

This is an interesting point. But are we talking about stats here, or about circumstantial judgment calls? Can "Never does anything to make him unworthy of kingship" be called a stat? Sure, in many systems you can write that down on the character sheet, with or without a number after it, but can it then be used in any of the ways stats are used in RPGs, in order to guarantee the character's epic-ness? Rolling a check against "never does anything..." or using it SA-style as a modifier for some other action ("if I fail to sever the kraken-tentacle holding Frodo I would be proven unworthy of kingship...") would be self-defeating. It would make the possibility of failure implicit in the very "stat" that's supposed to be claiming an area of infallibility.

To be absolute, "never does anything to make him unworthy of kingship" has to not be stat but a fact, a la Universalis. It cannot be infallible if it's subject to fortune rolls or karma comparisons. It only works in drama resolution -- which is to say, judgment calls. (Failing to protect Frodo from wounding on Weathertop did not, apparently, make Aragorn unworthy to be king, but what if when it's about to happen Aragorn's player thinks it would? What are the limits on invoking the infallible quality in a given situation? What if Frodo's player wants Frodo to give up the ring because he finds the quest tedious? Does the character's infallibility trump the player's decision?)

In-game causality cannot account for why Hercules misses one arrow shot and hits another. Predictions of the results of in-game causality (which is what we're usually talking about when we talk of "stats") are simply not applicable when Hercules picks up a bow. High-variance, low-variance, and deterministic predictions will all fall equally short. Conventional stats (character attributes, skills) are neither helpful nor, in themselves, harmful to epic role playing. They're irrelevant.

- W

[Shreyas Sampat]

In-game causality cannot account for why Hercules misses one arrow shot and hits another. Predictions of the results of in-game causality (which is what we're usually talking about when we talk of "stats") are simply not applicable when Hercules picks up a bow. High-variance, low-variance, and deterministic predictions will all fall equally short. Conventional stats (character attributes, skills) are neither helpful nor, in themselves, harmful to epic role playing. They're irrelevant.

- W

I'm not sure I entirely agree with you, Walt, though I may be misunderstanding what you are saying.

Of course in-game causality can account for why Hercules misses one arrow shot and nails the next, but it's a different kind of causality than the kind that determines whether I burn my omelet this morning; I think it's closer to fairytale causality, where things mean more when they come in threes and sevens, and all things speak that need to be spoken to. A system that succeeds in producing epic-style material will not only produce "Hercules misses", but also, crucially, "and hits Chiron, who begs for the ability to die." I don't think it's impossible or even that difficult to construct a system that does exactly this.

[Ian Charvill]

Shreyas - I think you and I are hitting an agree to differ point, because I see my line of reasoning as one way of avoiding a dangerous trap: the subjectivity trap.  To you, Hercules is the 'strong guy'.  To me, stories about Hercules wouldn't be worth reading if he was the strong guy.  He's a guy on his way to godhood who's mortal life is fubar because daddy dicked around on mummy.  It's a complex marriage a fundamentally human qualities - jealousy, rage, lying, cheating, stealing - and way over the top mythic elements.  His strength is just colour.

Saying Hercules is the strong guy is like casting Arnold Swartzenegger as Conan.

Epic poetry - at least the translations of it - mostly suck as prose or poetry (there are exceptions - Christopher Logue's gradual, multi-volume, translation of the Iliad, for example) but as story-telling, the stuff sings.  It's complex, multi-layered, vivid, bursting with life.

Reductionist models like Hercules is the Strong guy, and he must not fail at being strong because that is his thing, and if he did then he would not be Epic... it's not worth arguing against because it's bad scholarship (which it is) or bad sim (although I think that's a legitimate concern for a certain spectrum of posters).  It worth arguing against because it misses everything about the epics that's worth stealing.  It takes what could be a phenomenal game and reduces it to a two dimensional superhero with a schtick routine.

[John Kim]

How do you address the problems mentioned?  i.e. That even epic heroes have their limits -- such that Cu Chulain ambushes stragglers and skirmishes rather than riding head-on into the opposing army by himself.  Roland is killed by a horde of Saracens.  And so forth.  It also suggests that all heroes should be specialists (i.e. Hercules = strength, Achilles = invulnerability).  But a lot of epic heroes aren't specialized.  The Norse epic heroes are almost all well-rounded, for example.

For the first part of the question you may have missed it but I suggested that you avoid those problems by tightly defining how the attribute applies.  Cu Chulainn or Roland are both unbeatable in single combat but against an army they can lose, they have to use other attributes to bring the situation to a point where their strength applies.

I guess this comes down to differing visions.  Within my vision of "epic", I don't have a problem with an epic hero being overmatched by a god, a world-threatening monster, or an outrageous task (hop over the ocean on one foot, hit a bullseye at a hundred miles, etc.).  I don't consider being infinite power within one narrow field to be a defining quality of an epic hero.  For example, Roland is explicitly not unbeatable in single combat -- since it is made clear that Ogier the Dane is his better in this respect.  Roland is an example of a non-specialized epic hero, in my opinion, like Norse heroes such as Egil or Njal.  He is superb in many fields and matchless as a whole against any mortal, but he is not infinitely powerful in a single narrow specialization.  

However, people can have different views.  I don't see a problem with your approach, but it isn't what I would use for my own games.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think, Ian, that I am trying to make the point that there is no such thing as "just colour", and when you devalue Colour you sacrifice a powerful tool. Colour is as essential to Hercules' identity as the thematic elements that you just described; without Colour, he'd just be a guy with a messed-up family, and without the thematic elements, he's just some guy who's strong.

He's not just some guy who's strong.

And he's not just some guy with a messed-up family.

[Caldis]

This is an interesting point. But are we talking about stats here, or about circumstantial judgment calls? Can "Never does anything to make him unworthy of kingship" be called a stat? - W

Probably not, and the example was used more as a comparison to show how ruining the iconic abilities of an epic character can destroy the flow of the story.  However in an epic game I could easily see a attribute for a character of "One true King"  especially for conflict based resolution.  It would have to be defined very tightly as to how it works and where it can come into affect but the way I saw it working was much as Aragorn uses the Palantir to distract Sauron in LOTR.  As the rightful king he is able to use these magical devices which would almost instantly corrupt others.  In group play this type of action allows players to wander off into different regions yet still be able to interact in the story going on elsewhere. Not sure If I'm explaining this well but my ideas are at a very basic stage yet, I'll try and formulate them more fully.

Shreyas - I think you and I are hitting an agree to differ point, because I see my line of reasoning as one way of avoiding a dangerous trap: the subjectivity trap. To you, Hercules is the 'strong guy'. To me, stories about Hercules wouldn't be worth reading if he was the strong guy. He's a guy on his way to godhood who's mortal life is fubar because daddy dicked around on mummy. It's a complex marriage a fundamentally human qualities - jealousy, rage, lying, cheating, stealing - and way over the top mythic elements. His strength is just colour.

But thats exactly the point.  The important thing about the epics are the things going on in the background causing the events so why bother with hefty mechanics and stats to determine if Hercules can lift rock x when that's not important.  Let him lift rock x and get on to the important stuff like dealing with those emotional questions lurking in the background.    
Why should we focus on the colour?  Why not let Lancelot win the joust and move on to the ramifications of him sleeping with the wife of his king and best friend?

However, people can have different views. I don't see a problem with your approach, but it isn't what I would use for my own games.

I think I came to the same conclusion a couple posts ago but continued to struggle along for whatever reason.  I agree we have different visions of what we're trying to produce in an epic game.   I dont disagree with your sentiment that heros can lose to a god or cant jump an ocean.  I simply feel that for the game to take the form of an epic the hero shouldnt be involved in contests that make him lose face or fail utterly until some kind of dramatic climax has been reached.  I think we almost agreed on that though favour different approaches.

[M. J. Young]

Somewhere in this thread (probably the second page) I suggested a bonus on chance of success that was based on whether the task was specifically relevant to the character's status as an epic hero. Thus Robin Hood would get it in archery (and probably swordfighting) situations, Hercules would get it in meeting his tasks, Aragorn would get it if it related to his road to kingship in a meaningful way.

I also suggested that the amount of this bonus could increase as part of play, connected to legendary status--the more legendary the character had already become, the greater the bonus he received on tasks that were related to that legend.

Someone responded that this still allowed the possibility that the hero could fail in relation to a task in which he was legendary, and that this was unacceptable.

I have two responses to this.

The first is that as the bonus grows it can be designed to quickly overcome any possibility of being defeated by any non-legendary character. Let's suppose we have Robin Hood in an archery match in which the chance for an amateur to hit that target is probably about 20% and the chance for an expert is closer to 70%--it's a tough target. Robin Hood is already assumed to be an expert in archery which puts him in the same category as the other expert archers as long as this is not related to his legendary status. However, if his legendary status is now giving him a +30% bonus on all tasks related to his legendary status, and this one is, he is the only archer on the field who cannot miss the target (unless there is another legendary opponent present). It isn't until the chance of success has dropped below this that he has a chance of failure, and as he increases his legendary status that chance of failure is similarly reduced. Reach a high enough status, and anything that anyone else has any chance to do is for the hero automatic, because the bonus will always put him over the top.

That means he can only fail at tasks no one else would be crazy enough to attempt; and that's when we're in legendary territory. He doesn't have to always succeed at those tasks; the fact that he can succeed at all, even if not entirely consistently, when no one else can, increases his status as a legend.

The other response is that I'm not entirely certain that it's a mistake in such play for the character to have failed at something that seems obvious. Let us suppose Robin is shooting against Sir Guy of Gisborne, who is an expert. Let us suppose that Sir Guy, after shooting Robin to a tie thanks to lucky rolls on his part, suggests pushing the target back another fifty feet, which now puts it out there where Robin has a chance to miss. Robin still has a better chance to hit than Sir Guy; but the objection is that given the vagaries of fortune mechanics it is possible for Sir Guy to hit and Robin to miss.

What of it? The familiar story is that Robin defeats Sir Guy, increasing his legendary status. But we don't have to create "the familiar story"; we have to create an epic story. The dice fall, Robin misses, Sir Guy hits, and the contest shockingly ends in Robin losing--and the realization that he has been cocky, over confident, and has allowed himself to be lured into a contest that truly tested his abilities. It drives him to perfect his skill, and leads us toward that moment in the future when Robin and Sir Guy will face off again--a time when it will count for something more than the best archer trophy, and when Robin will have greater skill and greater epic bonus, and this time will win. Certainly that's a more epic story in some sense than the one in which he never lost an archery match.

So I think the legend bonus is a good idea. Is it the perfect answer for everyone's approach to creating epic play? No, it isn't. But it does fit what John is looking for at the beginning of this thread: a way to do stats for epic characters that makes them clearly better than most people in their important aspects without letting Robin Hood shoot an arrow to the moon or Roland defeat the entire Saracen army one man at a time, and without relying entirely on "you can't do that" as the limit.

--M. J. Young

[Ian Charvill]

Shreyas - sure it's the admixture: the mythic elements and the prosaic elements.  Abandoning the mythic elements would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  My point would be that Hercules strength is not as important as people are making out and doesn't need protecting in the way people have been suggesting.

'Just colour' is hyperbole, gonna have to cop to that one.

Caldis

The chance of "failure" is important to me for two reasons.

I like fortune resolution because it means until the dice hit the table no one knows what's going to happen.  Handled right it's an antidote to railroading and predicatable gaming in general (handled wrong it's a whifftastic fudge-fest but that's neither here nor there).

If there's no chance of failure then there's nothing at stake.  The "conflict" is a non-starter and so is fundamentally uninteresting (to me at least).

Now - should Hercules ever fail to lift a 200 lb rock - why would it ever be an issue?  Ditto Lancelot and the ordinary knight.  Why would we ever have a scene in which that was an issue.  Why would such a scene be interesting to play out.

Now, let's say Hercules's player decided to have him try to pick up a 200 lb rock and there was a roll, and he failed.  I'm pretty much in the post-facto crowd here.  If he fails, we frame it as Hera is messing with him again today, and then that complication reverberates through the remainder of the session.  The story becomes, at least in part, The Day Hercules Lost His Strength.  If Lacelot loses to an ordinary knight, we determine, retrospectively, that the 'ordinary' knight is Lancelot's illegitimate son.  We play out the ramefications.

You see, to me, success in lifting a 200 lb rock is uninteresting; failure is interesting.

[Caldis]

I cant believe I didn't see this earlier but several recent posts make it clear to me what we are arguing about comes down to GNS preference, Story Now vs. Story if it happens.  If that's the case then I dont think we'll ever agree on this but maybe we'll get a chance to see into each others minds, and heck there are a lot of useful game mechanics being thrown around ;)

What of it? The familiar story is that Robin defeats Sir Guy, increasing his legendary status. But we don't have to create "the familiar story"; we have to create an epic story. The dice fall, Robin misses, Sir Guy hits, and the contest shockingly ends in Robin losing--and the realization that he has been cocky, over confident, and has allowed himself to be lured into a contest that truly tested his abilities. It drives him to perfect his skill, and leads us toward that moment in the future when Robin and Sir Guy will face off again--a time when it will count for something more than the best archer trophy, and when Robin will have greater skill and greater epic bonus, and this time will win. Certainly that's a more epic story in some sense than the one in which he never lost an archery match.

But here you are assuming that Robin comes back to beat Sir Guy at some point.  If you've already let him fail at the archery tournament the how do you know he wont also fall into the trap that was set for him and he's now imprisoned.  Bad dice rolls and not only is he imprisoned but he fails to escape and is executed.  Now we are left with the tragic tale of Robin of Locksley the man who's arrogance let him fall into a stupid trap and get himself killed.  He's never achieved anything and is not an epic figure, nothing about him is larger than life.

So I think the legend bonus is a good idea. Is it the perfect answer for everyone's approach to creating epic play? No, it isn't. But it does fit what John is looking for at the beginning of this thread: a way to do stats for epic characters that makes them clearly better than most people in their important aspects without letting Robin Hood shoot an arrow to the moon or Roland defeat the entire Saracen army one man at a time, and without relying entirely on "you can't do that" as the limit.

You certainly are still relying on "you can't do that" as the limit.  The only difference is you are saying it when you decide what that stat means.  If I sit down and talk to you and explicitly say that even though you are playing Hercules and are capable of carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders it doesnt mean you can choose to rip open the ground and create a crevice to swallow up your enemies.  When you create a mechanic that says you have strength x you are saying what it is you can and cant do, making the "you cant do that statement" plus you have to make it workable so it allows what the character should be capable of, lots of extra math for essentially the same result.

This is my same quibble with hero points.  You still have to go to all the extra trouble of creating range penalties charting out stats and deciding probabilites when I can do it simpler by stating that you will succeed the only probabilities I have to work out are whether you succeed cleanly or whether there will be complications.  A matter of taste cerainly, some people like charts, figures and diagrams.

Now, let's say Hercules's player decided to have him try to pick up a 200 lb rock and there was a roll, and he failed. I'm pretty much in the post-facto crowd here. If he fails, we frame it as Hera is messing with him again today, and then that complication reverberates through the remainder of the session. The story becomes, at least in part, The Day Hercules Lost His Strength. If Lacelot loses to an ordinary knight, we determine, retrospectively, that the 'ordinary' knight is Lancelot's illegitimate son. We play out the ramefications.

The problem is that with bad dice rolls the story can end without the character having succeeded at anything meaningful.  As someone pointed out if William Tell misses shooting the apple off his sons head it can still be an interesting story, not an epic one however.   If you let the dice determine the game you have no idea what type of game you will get.

Making the conflict interesting despite the lack of chance of failure is the key, thats why Valamir's idea of tragic ending points seems like a great idea to me.  If you roll badly you can choose to fail or you can win but if you win when you should have lost you will pay for it in the end.  It's certainly better than having a chance of failing on the dice but knowing the DM will throw up some form of safety net to keep the game going so the failure has no real consequence anyways, which happens quite a lot imo.

[Shreyas Sampat]

The first is that as the bonus grows it can be designed to quickly overcome any possibility of being defeated by any non-legendary character. <snip> Reach a high enough status, and anything that anyone else has any chance to do is for the hero automatic, because the bonus will always put him over the top. <snip>

I think that the method you detailed here is some kind of elaborate Sim-style smokescreening that's trying to conceal a very simple Drama mechanic - "I can't fail trivially (by which I mean "fail to create story") at any task relevant to my legendary status." Am I just filtering your point through Torchbearer-consciousness (where that mechanic is explicit rather than derived), or is that what's going on?

On Fortune Resolution:
Just because you know Herc is going to lift the rock doesn't mean that you "know what's going to happen." (Returning to the Hercules example.) It means exactly one thing - you know Herc will lift the rock. What you don't know is what's under the rock, who you will piss off if you move the rock, whether you will drop the rock on someone you care about, whether the rock is secretly a sleeping monster who wants to eat you, and so forth.

Personally, I find exploring the consequences of exercising one's heroic abilities even more interesting than trying to justify a system's forcing those abilities to fail at random intervals. Which isn't to say that the latter is uninteresting; only that I fail to see why you would need system to force that, as opposed to having system that allowed you to construct situations of that nature. (i.e., I find retconning failure much more distasteful than retconning a complication for success.)

[Walt Freitag]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with you, Walt, though I may be misunderstanding what you are saying.

Of course in-game causality can account for why Hercules misses one arrow shot and nails the next, but it's a different kind of causality than the kind that determines whether I burn my omelet this morning; I think it's closer to fairytale causality, where things mean more when they come in threes and sevens, and all things speak that need to be spoken to. A system that succeeds in producing epic-style material will not only produce "Hercules misses", but also, crucially, "and hits Chiron, who begs for the ability to die." I don't think it's impossible or even that difficult to construct a system that does exactly this.

You're right, in the sense of "system" in the Lumpley Principle sense, encompassing all methods by which the shared imagined space is created and changed, including judgment calls. What I was trying to say is that game mechanics cannot generate epic-ness. They can get out of the way and let the players make the necessary authorial judgment calls, they can even nudge players in helpful directions (such as by requiring complications at appropriate times), but they can't be relied on to produce an epic outcome by their own action.

Several methods for epic play present themselves. In one, the circumstances going into a test (of the hero's strength, say) are considered as not fully known. Thus, if the hero fails, an explanation can be invented by the players that preserves both the failure-result and the epic qualities of the outcome. This approach, described well by M. J., relies on at least partial use of the "no-myth" world view.

In another, if the hero fails, players have the option of inventing concessions or complications that reverse the actual failure while preserving the adversity that the failure represents, while also preserving epic qualities of the outcome. This is what stakes-raising rerolls and concession systems are all about.

Another possibility is that all the circumstances going into a test are fully established (if Hera is going to make trouble for Hercules while he's trying to lift a rock, we already know about it before resolution occurs and the appropriate modifier or whatever has already been applied) and the success-failure result is also expected to stand. In this case, the chance of real de-epicizing failure (or, depending on the circumstances, de-epicizing success) cannot be avoided. The only way to preserve epic-ness in the outcome, other than by pure luck, is for a player to make a judgment call on the outcome overruling any resolution mechanism. This is exactly what's happening when a GM fudges a roll in a PC's favor in certain types of illusionist play. It's also what's happening when a player has the option to use hero points to override a mechanical result.

What all these cases have in common is that ultimately it's a human being, not a mechanism, deciding the relevant results. The dice or numbers can be allowed to say "success" or "failure" if live brains then get to decide the full circumstances of the success or failure. They can say "adverse or favorable" if live brains then get to decide what complications an adverse success leads to. They can suggest success or failure if live brains then get a chance to override that suggestion.

None of these methods is particularly dependent on having some particular kind of character stats to produce an epic-feeling outcome. The epic-ness of the outcome is not dependent on the stats, but on the decisions or inventions made in each case by the people playing. Some stat configurations might be more congenial than others, but all the absolute questions (must some stat be high enough to guarantee success in certain cases?) go away. Stats might determine whether a character is more like some famous epic hero than like another famous epic hero, but the question of whether the character is an epic hero at all does not hinge on his stats.

The pipe dream is a mechanism that, given a set of circumstances, can generate a result that is reliably epic. This is being visualized as a sort of resolution mechanic that computes only successes when success is required to preserve the epic feel, computes only failures when failure is required to generate epic-appropriate complications, and computes success or failure with the appropriate probability distribution when either outcome is suitably epic-enabling. This is what I'm saying is not feasible. A mechanism that could accomplish this would be a very sophisticated (beyond anything yet achieved in the highest-tech computer labs) AI.

It's when one is trying to achieve this pipe dream that "what stats will make a character seem like an epic hero?" can look like a big important (and potentially solveable) problem. This problem is not actually solveable.

- Walt