Rootin' fer the Underdog

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I guess I'm seeing an enormous difference between these two things:

1. Underdog as an individualized character concept, in a game in which the other characters are extremely competent and in which most play presupposes that all the characters will be extremely competent.

[make characters first; one guy says] "I rolled sucky, so hey! I'll play this cool underdog!"

2. Underdog as a group-based expectation, as in the game Stuperpowers, meaning that every single character is expected to suck relative to the threats and problems they face.

[saying first] "Hey, let's play this game in which we all suck! Then our successes will be so sweet!" [now everyone makes characters]

Randomized character generation may play a role in either of these approaches, but since the approaches are so different, the roles are too.

In #1, typical randomized character creation is simulating some kind of normative spread of competence "in the population" in the imaginary world. Your particular individual rolls happened to come up on the lower ends.

In #2, typical randomized character creation is picking from a smorgasbord of possible nifty high-Color abilities or features, all of which are already customized for maximum fun suckiness. (Again, I recommend Stuperpowers for a pretty masterful example, although there are others, like Kobolds Ate My Baby.)

Again, I don't see these as similar, but as two different approaches to play. Can someone clarify for me which one we're discussing in this thread?

Best,
Ron

[simon_hibbs]

It's not neccesarily stupid people though.
IE Frodo is quite intelligent, but in RP terms, he'd get his hide OWNED by anyone, even a Goblin, Orc or Urukai, even though Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn mow them down by the hundreds.

Lets say you had the chance to play a 12 year old Page or a 23 year old Knight in a setting akin to Dark Ages Earth. Intellectually, for argument, lets say the Page ranks higher than the Knight. Now, lets also say, the Page is also a young girl.

On the first point, yes Frodo is physicaly weak, but he has a piece of the best armour ever made, a magic sword forged in the ancient elf city of Gondolin and the most powerful magical artifact in the whole mortal world. Much of that he effectively gets during character generation.

On the second point, this reminds me of the protagonist in 'Northern Lights' by Philip Pullman, which I read recently. The heroine is a young girl in a late feudal alternate-earth fantasy world. Physicaly she's nothing (unless fighting other children), but all her real abilities are in social manipulation, relationships and unusual equipment/innate magical talents.

TYraditional RPGs have always had huge problems coping with characters like these because they've focused on combat and raw magical power as the only significant characetr abilities, with purpose-built resolution systems for these spheres of conflict. Othr abilities such as personality traits, relationships and social skills were basicaly an afterthought of system design.

Modern game systems have found ways past these limitations that make the kinds of protagonists you're talking about, which you do often actualy find in fiction, at last playable in an RPG.

Simon Hibbs

[Callan S.]

Perhaps it's best to think of it this way:

If there is a rule that characters who are good at combat get more turns in general, what happens? Someone who has a PC who isn't good at combat get's fewer turns.

How interesting is a PC when you hardly ever hear from them?

Ie, imagine if the better you are at combat, the fewer turns you get. That means the combat characters wont be interesting.

It's not just about spreading turns evenly, it's about what you can do in your turn/spotlight time that determines if you really had a turn at all. I mean, if some PC wiffs 50 times in a row while some other PC is doing all sorts of carnage 50 times in a row (with nifty carnage chart use), did they really both have an equal amount of turns?

[John Kim]

It's not just about spreading turns evenly, it's about what you can do in your turn/spotlight time that determines if you really had a turn at all. I mean, if some PC wiffs 50 times in a row while some other PC is doing all sorts of carnage 50 times in a row (with nifty carnage chart use), did they really both have an equal amount of turns?

Well, that depends on what you're interested in.  If what you're interested in is dealing carnage, well then obviously the carnage-dealing PC is superior.  But that's not always the case.  For example, if what you're interested in is horror, then playing a victim can be interesting.  I've played many Call of Cthulhu games where the players had a blast being thwarted and ripped to shreds.  I GMed a gothic fantasy campaign where one of the players, Steve, played an over-the-top ingenue who was constantly show-stopping as she constantly walked into a dark basement barefoot in her nightgown and otherwise put herself into harm's way.  Paranoia similarly often has the most fumbling and incompetant steal the show in how they get into trouble and killed.  

In general, I would say that once you remove the expectation that the PCs are supposed to deal carnage (as with horror and comedy), then spotlight time doesn't depend on it so much.  Other examples for me include my Water-Uphill-World campaign, where the PCs were all school-age children.  It didn't have any combat, but even outside of combat it was just as interesting to see Steve get into trouble as to see Noriko avoid it.

[epweissengruber]

In any game that brings character traits into resolution mechanics, one's "weakness" can be one's best ability.

In a convention game of HeroQuest I had, a player choose a weak profession: "Pathetic Peasant."  His abilities included "Obsequious" and "Mild Stink."  

You should have seen the way this wormy good-for-nothing shaped the behaviours of the NPCs and aided his fellow PCs (and the way the clever player stimulated the imagination of his fellow players).

[John Kim]

In any game that brings character traits into resolution mechanics, one's "weakness" can be one's best ability.

In a convention game of HeroQuest I had, a player choose a weak profession: "Pathetic Peasant."  His abilities included "Obsequious" and "Mild Stink."

It's interesting, but I'm not sure this qualifies as an underdog.  Since Champions (or possibly before), in many games you can have "special effects" or description which is independent of mechanical strength.  So I can design a 48-pound little girl who can kick ass far more than a giant warrior.  But I don't think that really qualifies as being an underdog in the sense that Kris described in the original post.  You're still just as powerful a character, it's just described differently.

[James Holloway]

It's interesting, but I'm not sure this qualifies as an underdog.  Since Champions (or possibly before), in many games you can have "special effects" or description which is independent of mechanical strength.  So I can design a 48-pound little girl who can kick ass far more than a giant warrior.  But I don't think that really qualifies as being an underdog in the sense that Kris described in the original post.  You're still just as powerful a character, it's just described differently.

I would have thought that this is actually a pretty good definition of the traditional literary underdog. For the most part, the underdog in films or whatever lacks money or physical power or social standing but makes up for it with pluck, determination, luck and a little help from his mates.

In a system which has game inputs for pluck, determination, luck, and a little help from your mates, a traditional underdog could be said to be balanced with effective characters.

(I know you're talking about something different, of course).

Speaking of which, I've often heard the idea that it's fun to play a mechanically weaker-than-average character just for the challenge of it. I have kind of a hard time seeing this in most cases (although I'm sure it could be an interesting sort of experiment -- it reminds me of what Ron said a while ago about using non-rules-moderated input to compensate for mechanical weakness in D&D). I've been in enough games where someone generated a weaker-than-average character to observe them laughing and joking at the first couple of humiliating failures but usually getting discouraged by the end.

Of course, depending on your group's CAs, this could be a complete non-issue.

HeroQuest is actually a great example of a game where some people do like to play characters who are crap compared to others -- or do they? Does anyone ever really initiate into those two-affinity deities? I dunno.