Greed...But not really

[Mokkurkalfe]

I know it's all the rage to dress in black, do your own thing, walk around plundering the land murdering sentients for loot, and generally play the cool, silent anti-hero...but who wants to GM that? You want big numbers on a character sheet, or want to say "I got this, and I got that, then I got this other thing?" Enjoy. It's all yours. Write it down and I'll go watch the LoTR video.

Me, I'm going to reward heros in the traditional mold - people who give of themselves to help others. If you want to play a selfish character, do so. Take luck, and nothing else, and live a mediocre gaming life. Great people do great things for others, not for themselves.

At least when I'm running the game.

I just wanted to say that I did *not* refer to a bloodthirsty killer who is out for money and money alone, run by a player who wants to brag about his equipment and stats. Where did anybody say that we were talking about any anti-hero? And why are you talking about taking only luck when the discussion is about finding fitting SA's for someone who's *not* prepared to put the rope around their on neck themselves to save a serial-killer who's been wrongly convicted of stealing a wagon?
That peasant I mentioned earlier, who does he fit into your looting and killing anti-hero?

And I find it a little silly that *all* characters are do-gooders that go out to help people, especially in a world where most people are more concerned about their own day-to-day survival.
I think many are after gold and glory when they *start*, but evolve into more caring persons later on.
As long as you have a decent amount of Concience(lower Concience=prepared to do more bad things to reach your goals) you can have almost any Drive and still be considered a good character.
I don't give a damn what the rules say about Drive.
Anything the character is prepared to make some sacrifices(how much depends of course on how big the Drive is) for and makes for good play is allowed in my book.

Many terrorists have what they think of as "Worthy and Noble causes". Do you agree with them?

I agree completely with Mike on the flaw thing. It's the flaws that make heroes and their stories interesting, a wise man once said.

I don't like to GM for that kind of player you ranted about wither either, so I agree with your there. Its just that it is kinda off-topic, since no-one was talking about that kind of character.
Besides, I don't like your elitist view that your gaming style is somehow superior.
You play your way, I play my way.

[Brian Leybourne]

What kinda cool stuff can you come up with for a guy that has "Passion: Loyalty to the king" and "Destiny: Overthrow the king"?
Would one of them just cancel out the other or what do you think?
And another thing, should a player know his PC's Destiny from start, or have to find out during the game?

That would be pretty cool to play out actually. Remember that a character is not necessarily aware of his own destiny (but would certainly be aware of his passions and drives).

So I could see this playing out as the character working for the King, but unwittingly (through bumbling, or careful planning by the king's nemesis) be actually causing harm (politically, socially or otherwise) so as to make it easier for the king to later take that fall.

Brian.

[Mokkurkalfe]

I had something like that in mind.
And when he realises that he has been fooled to overthrow the king, he will get mighty angered and his loyalty passion will soar as he set out to hunt down this nemesis.

[Nick the Nevermet]

Ho boy.

First, I completely agree with Mike about SAs not being proscriptive.  PCs can act against them.  If I was using a more harsh tone about the limiting sides of SAs, it is because the original question that started this thread involved the potential munchkining of SAs.  IMHO, the more a player tries to milk the rules for power, the more the rules should bite back.  My more draconian comments about losing SAs and what SAs allow and don't allow were pointed toward the Hypothetical Munchkin.  A 'normal' player who was roleplaying his character well I would imagine should be allowed a bit more flexibility to make his PC a living entity with several dimensions.  (there are more proper opportiunities for a GM to be harsh with a munchkin is my basic argument)  I realize Mokkurkalfe wasn't purely speaking about the bloodthirsty killer, but the word munchkin was mentioned in passing, and my personal experiences make me very, very aware of how a system reacts to munchkinism.

I also agree about flaws or tension making a character more interesting/entertaining.  The ways of creating flaws for a particular character involving his SAs is pretty much limitless, so I'm not gonna even try to give examples.

Can I just say I infinitely prefer threads like this one over the "How many rivets are in platemail" threads.  This probably has more to do with my total lack of historical knowledge than anything else, but ANYWAYS...

[Nick the Nevermet]

On the subject of loyalty & overthrowing kings... The destiny SA is a touchy one for me.  It sounds like you're planning on getting a lot of campaign mileage out of it, which works.  The real dangers come up if people make PCs the way my old D&D group did: everyone makes their characters in private, and then drops them all in front of the DM 15 minutes before gaming starts.  uh-uh.  Can't work very well, especially with things like destiny involved.

I think you also point out a good point about SAs: seeming conflicts and contradictions do not need to be.  A character can sometimes walk a moral tightrope successfully, and sometimes the world the PC lives in creates unusual circumstances.

[Jaif]

And why are you talking about taking only luck when the discussion is about finding fitting SA's for someone who's *not* prepared to put the rope around their on neck themselves to save a serial-killer who's been wrongly convicted of stealing a wagon?
That peasant I mentioned earlier, who does he fit into your looting and killing anti-hero?

Well, your character isn't a hero by your own admission, and isn't prepared to do an honest day's work, preferring 'adventure'.  That doesn't leave many other avenues beyond violence and looting, whoever the target is.  More specifically, you also said: "I think many are after gold and glory when they *start*, but evolve into more caring persons later on. " which is the classic anti-hero; someone out for themselves at first who end up drawn into doing heroic deeds.

I'm not against the anti-hero, actually.  I just prefer the 'anti-' part be background, and we start the gaming with the 'hero' part.

Second, I think that there's a large difference between the "dressing in black and being bad" thing, and having heroes with flaws. The fact that SAs can reflect these flaws (if designed appropriately and withng the rules) is a very cool thing.

I strongly dislike rewarding people for flaws.  This leads to things like rewarding a bigot for killing the object of his bigotry, or rewarding a klepto for robbing a castle blind.  It gets old very fast.

RE: 'rules-lawyer' (many comments)

I was clear that I was being a rules-lawyer, i.e. unyielding and rigid.  I recognize that people would bend and adjust for their campaigns.  However, the examples I see on this board feel -to me- to be hopelessy broken, and I think it's because people stray far from the clear intent of the rules.

For example, "Passion: the sea." is just as bad to me as the "Passion: horses" which was discussed in the actual gaming forum.  It sounds neat, but it's really hard to create stories where those passions come into play over and over again.  When you love someone, I can toss little reminders in some adventures, or have giant cries for help in others.  When it's the sea, there isn't much I can do unless you jump on a boat, so the passion basically ends up being a convience for you.  I'm a strong believer that the SAs should cling, push, prod, or be demanding as much as possible for the story to be good.  Something that can easily be turned on and off as convient to the player doesn't work for me.

Besides, I don't like your elitist view that your gaming is somehow superior.

Didn't mean to give this impression.  In all honesty, I do like Diablo and other games which emphasize wargame-skills and greed.  I don't think pen-and-paper are a really good outlet for these things, though.  One-offs? Sure.  But a long-term campaign built around self-serving characters? Boring, to me the GM.  Again, I think you can have much more fun with those drives in different games.

-Jeff

[Brian Leybourne]

On the subject of loyalty & overthrowing kings... The destiny SA is a touchy one for me.  It sounds like you're planning on getting a lot of campaign mileage out of it, which works.  The real dangers come up if people make PCs the way my old D&D group did: everyone makes their characters in private, and then drops them all in front of the DM 15 minutes before gaming starts.  uh-uh.  Can't work very well, especially with things like destiny involved.

You're completely right, ofr course. There are three ways around it, as far as I can see:

1) GM Fiat - the GM specifies an SA (or 2) that every character must have, this is used to draw the characters together. It might be common loyalty to a monarch, or a common drive, or whatever. This will work better if the GM also limits which countries characters can be from. This is the easiest solution to be honest, but the least rewarding IMO.

2) The players make up their characters as a group. This can be a lot of fun and quite rewarding. You'll find that characters will take SA's in common with one or two others, so instead of a single overriding common SA, you'll have a "chain" of linked backgrounds/SA's focusing the group.

3) (this is what I did for my first RoS campaign) let the players make up their characters individually, but get the characters a week or so before the game starts, and weave the backgrounds and SAs together yourself. You just tell the characters beforehand that there may be very minor changes to their backgrounds and SAs. For example, IMC I changed the name of one characters nemesis so that it matched a passion another character had, altered one characters background info slighly (letting him know I was doing it) so as to make it that two characters had a portion of their history shared, which drove them together, and I only had to convince one player to replace one SA that I simply couldn't fit in with everything else. This option is the most work, but the most rewarding IMO.

Brian.

[Mokkurkalfe]

I'm not against the anti-hero, actually. I just prefer the 'anti-' part be background, and we start the gaming with the 'hero' part.

One-offs? Sure.

Well then. It seems that agree on that, since I prefer to have the 'anti-' part present only in the first few sessions(the fewer the better).

On the SA's.
You have a point there. The reason I started this thread in the first place was to find out if there was any good SA's for the 'anti-' part of a hero, after all. I myself couldn't find any.

Didn't mean to give this impression. In all honesty, I do like Diablo and other games which emphasize wargame-skills and greed. I don't think pen-and-paper are a really good outlet for these things, though. One-offs? Sure. But a long-term campaign built around self-serving characters? Boring, to me the GM. Again, I think you can have much more fun with those drives in different games.

Actually, it was the "Take luck, and nothing else, and live a mediocre gaming life. " that ticked me off.
OTOH, I have no doubt that your gaming is technically superior, since you probably have played since before I was born(-86)...

[Jaif]

I thought of a different way to phrase some of this.

Let's say you take 'Passion: Wanderlust'.  Under what situations do you get to use those points?  Under what situations are you awarded points?  I honestly can't figure out the first (when you get to add the points to die rolls).  For the second, I need to come up with a situation like this: "...you did great work their son.  Our town could really use more men like you; would you consider hiring on permanently?..."  Then you chose to move on, and I give you a point.  Every adventure.

Then there's 'Drive: Fame and Fortune'.  Again, ask yourself the 'use' and 'award' questions.  I think you can see that this one absolutely leads to munchkin gaming very quickly.  If that's your goal, well, that's your goal.  It's not mine, and not one I would GM.

-Jeff

[Jaif]

Actually, it was the "Take luck, and nothing else, and live a mediocre gaming life. " that ticked me off.

Sorry about that - you're right, that was very poorly phrased. FWIW, I was referring to the fact that a character with only one SA would be a mediocre character by 'munchkin' standards.  You're right, though, it sounds like I'm telling people their gaming style sucks, which wasn't my intention.

-Jeff

[Nick the Nevermet]

I thought of a different way to phrase some of this.

Let's say you take 'Passion: Wanderlust'.  Under what situations do you get to use those points?  Under what situations are you awarded points?  I honestly can't figure out the first (when you get to add the points to die rolls).  For the second, I need to come up with a situation like this: "...you did great work their son.  Our town could really use more men like you; would you consider hiring on permanently?..."  Then you chose to move on, and I give you a point.  Every adventure.
-Jeff

If I was the player making the PC, I would probably argue that Wanderlust would apply to being curious through traveling.  It would probably be instrumentally speaking a waste of good starting SA points, but it could possibly come in handy for something like convincing some ship-captain you'd be a decent enough deck hand (even though you have no experience on the seas) to trade your labor for passage.  But yeah... this SA wouldn't allow extra dice often.

As for when a PC gets more dice, I'm unsure about EVERY adventure.  Now... everytime a great opportunity to settle down and be successful occurs, and you turn it away, yeah, thats worth points.  But I wouldn't expect that to happen every adventure.

Then there's 'Drive: Fame and Fortune'.  Again, ask yourself the 'use' and 'award' questions.  I think you can see that this one absolutely leads to munchkin gaming very quickly.  If that's your goal, well, that's your goal.  It's not mine, and not one I would GM.
-Jeff

I agree with you that if I saw a player wanting this SA, I'd mark him as a potential problem.  If he proves himself to be trouble, thats when the big stick comes out in the form of constantly putting the PC in a circumstance with 2 choices:  either he's nigh suicidal in his pursuit of fame and fortune, or he isn't living up to his all-encompassing drive, and therefore will lose SAs.

But again, I think we can all agree these are situations best avoided by lots of communication between players and the GM, starting from character creation on through the campaign.  The goals and concerns of everyone in the gaming group should be discussed instead of waiting for them to become manifest, in these examples the manifestation is potentially munchkin-born Spiritual Attributes

[contracycle]

Another scenario for the king thing, with plenty of historical precedent.  the character has loyalty to kingSHIP, but not necessarily the present incumbent.  So, when attending court, the character makes all obeisance due the stature of the king, but secretly plots treason on the basis that they need the Right King.  Such a character would never permit even the false incumbent to be demeaned in their kingship, but would happily conspire for them to have a fatal accident.

Theres also an unconscious variety, in which the very pursuit of loyalty to the king results in the king being overthrown - because the king is unworthy of such loyalty.  The honourable servant is betrayed by an unworthy master - in fact that very betrayal of the character by the king could precipitate the crisis that brings down the dynasty.

[Mokkurkalfe]

On the wanderlust thing.
It would probably be good for keeping the characters moving. I would give them points when reaching a new land, famous landmark or somesuch. A little like Tourist points.
Perhaps Wanderlust is better as a gift or flaw. It'd make you travel farther and perhaps an endurance bonus of sorts. On the downside, it'd give you a penalty for staying too long in the same place. It might lower all your Mental attributes for being absent-minded and just wanting to be on the road again.


On Fame and Fortune.
Personally I'd drop the Fortune part and make it a minor Greed flaw. With only Fame as a goal might be cool.
He get points as  soon as he does something that will make him more famous(duh!). He gets the dice as soon as he is doing something important(i.e. jousting, acting on a theatre, debating) in front of a big audience. Of course, it doesn't work if he is performing glorious actions deep down an abandoned fortress with only the spiders left alive to tell the tale.
When he actually gets famous, one use up the entire SA for buying Wit or whatever, and replace it with a new SA.

Another thing.
A character can only be truly great if he acts according to his SA's, right?
Doesn't that mean that all the very top elite swordfighters has "Drive:Be the best swordsman" or somesuch?
It would be cool when a character watches his opponent during training and trough a PER-roll estimates he has about 16-19 dice.
Then, when the real fighting begins, he have like 24 dice.

[Nick the Nevermet]

As soon as I got TROS, I started wondering about the "be the best" Drive SA.  My conclusion was that the best swordsmen don't necessarily have it, but the most obsessed swordsman do.  Personally, I can think of one way to make that drive work: its a reputation thing.  Formal duels, public displays, trying to maintain one's repuatiion is where the drive to be the best would enter in.  In 'real life,' it would also enter in for skill improvement, but that isn't done mechanically with SAs as much as the player deciding how to spend SAs.  A drive for RECOGNITION of being the best would I think be a pretty cool Drive.

If a player INSISTS that it applies to the majority of combat, then I would try to persuade him/her not to take such a Drive.  If that fails, and if his character is becoming just plain silly by being in a constant sprititually charged state, then thats when he starts bumping into a ton of other bladeslingers; some better than him (who would beat him and possibly kill him), and some worse than him (who if he kills he potentially becomes infamous and wanted for murder).

[Mike Holmes]

If that fails, and if his character is becoming just plain silly by being in a constant sprititually charged state, then thats when he starts bumping into a ton of other bladeslingers; some better than him (who would beat him and possibly kill him), and some worse than him (who if he kills he potentially becomes infamous and wanted for murder).

Which is fine. Actually the player is telling you he wants to fight these guys, and probably should bump into them anyhow (or, more likely, be looking for them). I mean, how does he know if he's the best or not until he's fought others who might be the best.

That's the essence of the bladeslinger's riddle, no?

BTW, a lot of what is being talked about as Passions would work just fine as Drives. If you don't want to allow a Passion for the sea, how about a Drive to explore the sea? Instead of a Passion for horses, how about a drive to own, know, and protect horses?

Also wanderlust seems fine as a "drive to explore" sort of thing. Personally, I'd give points for something defined as wanderlust for a character who leaves a place, insead of arriving; those with a drive to discover things or explore should get points for arriving or finding places. Ask the player which they prefer. The wanderlust guy would get a bonus to escape from bondage, whereas the explorer would have bonuses trying to obtain maps and such. Cool stuff, either way.

On the subject of munchkin play, munchkins are dysfunctional despite any system you use. There is no need to restrict non-munchkin players, and no way to restrict munchkin players. Why would you want to anyhow? Kick the munchkins out (or convert them if possible, I suppose), and move on. Allow the good players to do their thing unhindered by excessive limits. Just my opinion on the subject.

Mike