Topic: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Started by: Der_Renegat
Started on: 2/24/2005
Board: HeroQuest
On 2/24/2005 at 7:00am, Der_Renegat wrote:
Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
At the moment im writing on a cyberpunk background for HQ, so im thinking a lot about how to do stuff.
Especially the whole weapon and armor category is something that confuses me a lot.
One thing thats hard on my mind is how to design bonuses.
Also i want a scale - something that makes assessing weapon bonuses easier.
Well, there is already a scale of course: we know that M3 is the ability of a master and M12 a god like zeus, for instance.
Also we know some weapon categories: +3 for a sword - which also tells us, the „ability“ of a sword to wound someone is 10M (a tenth of 10M=30 is +3).
Okay, what i dont quite understand is: if you are wearing full plate armor (+5) and someone with a sword (+3) attacks you, there is nothing in the rules that says you cant harm him because you armor protects you so fully....
I understand that someone with a dagger can defeat a knight in full plate because he cuts through the slits of the helmet...
well theoretically....
actually i think thats a special tactic that has to be announced....also youd get a modifier because thats a difficult task.
I understand there are always different ways to defeat someone, but if a player says: i attack the guy in plate with my sword, that doesnt mean, hes using a special tactic, it just says hes slashing his sword at the plate guy, no?!
It irritates me that armor doesnt help much in HQ.
While the protection rating of full plate is 10M2, the bonus it gives you is only +5...
I guess the reason why this is so, is because HQ is a narrative game and not sim.
But
if you reversed the whole thing and armour would be used as an ability only, it would be much harder to be defeated. Also youd know what kind of weapon cant harm someone in full plate.
It seems bonuses are weakening your effectivity...
Also i think every tool (or weapon) in HQ is an extension of the user.
You dont use the sharpness of a sword and augemnt it with your swordfighting skill.
Its the other way round: you augment your swordfighting with your swords sharpness (or length or whatever the bonus means...)
So if i use my .45 gun: +4 against the guy in the power armor +11 i can defeat him.
But if i use my .45 gun: 20M against the guy in the power armor: 10M5 i cant...
Does anybody understand my problem ?
Christian
On 2/24/2005 at 8:44am, Mandacaru wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
I understand there are always different ways to defeat someone, but if a player says: i attack the guy in plate with my sword, that doesnt mean, hes using a special tactic, it just says hes slashing his sword at the plate guy, no?!
That special tactic is subsumed within the sword fighting skill, so he's not just slashing, he's doing all the manouevres to get into the position where he can slash with his sword appropriately (or trip the guy in plate up, lift the visor and put the tip of the sword between his eyes).
So the dagger through the helm would also be part of the dagger fighting skill, not a special ability, no. You may of course have a second ability (Find weak spot, for example) with which to augment.
This issue has been discussed here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14129 Although I would agree with you in a way that there is something dissatisfying in all this, I personally would leave it pretty much as is so that something like wearing plate armour doesn't outweigh the interesting stuff (the drive, passions whatever of the heroes).
Final point, in a one-to-one face off I am not entirely convinced that plate armour is that useful. (Power armour perhaps if it allows mobility.)
Doesn't answer your fundamental point, but I expect someone will.
Cheers,
Sam.
Forge Reference Links:
Topic 14129
On 2/24/2005 at 2:22pm, Brand_Robins wrote:
Re: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Der_Renegat wrote: Does anybody understand my problem?
I get you. I also think you’ve a couple closely grouped problems, rather than one.
First off, HeroQuest will never tell you how you won or lost, only that you won or lost. It won't tell you if you used a special trick to get past the guy's armor, that's up to you to narrate. If you've a dagger and they've heavy armor and you beat them it could be that you tripped them and then yanked off their helmet, that you parried with the dagger and twisted their arm until it broke, that you got behind them and cut open their butt, or even that a random meteor from space fell upon them and crushed their legs, letting you casually cut off their armor and stab them in the nipple.
So the question of how someone with a pistol defeats someone with power armor, or how someone with a knife beats someone in full plate, is one of narration. Trust me, it isn’t even as weird as this fact – someone shooting a gun at someone in no armor and no ranged combat ability has a chance of getting taken out despite the fact that there is no obvious, immediate way for the person to take them out. (The easiest narrated explanation is a backfire, of course.)
Personally, I’m glad of this on both a nar and sim levels. Things like this are the sorts of things that most games don’t allow – to their detriment. In real life people do amazing things sometimes, like a group of light infantry with pistols and the contents of a poor Sri Lankan village stood off a combined arms charge for over two weeks – destroying a half dozen heavy tanks in the process.
The second issue is that that HQ stories are not all about the gear. HQ follows the heroic fantasy model of the hero being the center, the gear being the secondary. Their gear can support them, but in the end it is the person that normally does the big action, that is the focus, and is the reason we’re there. If they can be replaced by their gear then they aren’t much of a hero. (There are some exceptions to this, which is why things like named weapon sidekicks are nice.)
Now something like this can also change if you’re wanting to play a gritty sci-fi game in which part of the point is that no matter how heroic you are, you cannot overcome an overwhelming technological advantage. In that case you may want to let items of extremely high technology have massive ratings that can’t easily be overcome without other technology.
The big problem with that, and the final issue, is that things do not exist in isolation. Even if you have a pistol 10w against a suit of power armor 10w5 you do not guarantee the power armor victory unless the pistol user has no better skill to use. If you’ve got someone with “Pistol Combat 10w5” they can still beat the guy with the power armor, and still using a pistol. The only way to make sure the guy with the pistol can’t win is to say that you can only use your gear rating, at which point you’ve so completely removed the important elements of character, situation, and drama that I don’t think HQ is going to handle the stress.
OTOH, if you have two roughly equal characters and then give them vastly different equipment bonuses, you can swing the fight without having to destroy it. If you’ve a guy with Pistol Combat 5w2 and a guy with Power Armor Combat 5w2 and the pistol gives a +5 and the Power Armor a +30, then the fight goes from being dead even to having the Power Armor Guy winning 80%+ of the time – and probably winning with larger margins of victory.
That’s why equipment often gets reduced to a bonus, because most of the time it will be an augment anyway, and because no matter how huge your equipment bonus it does not guarantee you victory against someone with no equipment if they have a high ability.
On 2/24/2005 at 2:53pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
High five to you, Brand.
Best,
Ron
On 2/24/2005 at 3:31pm, Bryan_T wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
I think the previous posters have covered the heart of it pretty well, but a few additional thoughts:
- Don't forget about degree of victory and narrating victory. In most cases it is not that the person with the dagger cut the throat of the person in the plate armor--that would be the case only in the rare complete victory, and that level of victory will usually only happen in an extended contest after a parting shot. The more usual lesser level of defeat would be something like that armor wearer is knocked down on his stomach, winded and dazed, and the dagger user is on his back (marginal victory), or the armor wearer has become disarmed and perhaps has a a concussion, sprain, or nasty gash where the dagger slipped through.
- The +5 level armor in Heroquest is something like chainmail. For high rennaissance plate armor with the fully enclosed helm and all, the bonus would be notably higher, maybe +10. If you really want to emphasize the armor in an extended contest, you could also give it a significant defensive edge, so that cautious moves would be useless against it, and only bold moves have a chance (instead of a +10 bonus, give it a +5 bonus and +15 edge, for example).
- In the case of an extended contest, if you feel that the armor is proof against most sword attacks, and the hero describes their action as "I hack at him" once you've made sure that the two of you share a view of reality, you are free to throw in penalties, or probably better to declare that that HAS to be a small AP bid--after all, it has minimal chance of changing the situation in any significant way. If they want to make a reasonable size bid, they need to narrate a bolder action "I dive under his sword, the stab up between his legs" or "I keep circling around him quickly, trying to get to his flank or else trip him up as he moves in that heavy armor" or even "OK, I settle in, fight defensively, and keep moving--in the hot sun he's going to be getting exhausted in there, so I'm going to out last him."
But the big points are the ones that others have already made--it is supposed to be a heroic game, with the emphasis on the hero, not their equipment.
Regards;
--Bryan
On 2/24/2005 at 10:02pm, Gelasma wrote:
RE: Re: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Der_Renegat wrote: I understand there are always different ways to defeat someone, but if a player says: i attack the guy in plate with my sword, that doesnt mean, hes using a special tactic, it just says hes slashing his sword at the plate guy, no?!
The others already mentioned it, but didnt spell it out explicitly: In HQ you dont roll on actions, you roll on goals. So when a player anounces "I attack the guy in plate with my sword" the Narrator should reply "This is an action, you can describe that later.. if you win the contest, but first what is your goal?". Teach your players to state goals like "I want to defeat the opponent." instead of actions.
Another point is, if you play HQ the Forge way - one called that ForgeQuest once - then the value of a trait (and a sword is just that) doesnt describe its physical attributes but its "narrative importance". So a sword with 10w2 is not meant to be sharper than one with 17, the values just tell you that it is meant to have more influence on the narration. The same goes for armour, a higher values doesnt mean more protection but more influence on the narration.
On 2/25/2005 at 1:57am, Der_Renegat wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Thanks for the interesting input! I got some very useful inspiration!
It seems everything comes down to philosophy.
Part of the HQ philosophy is, as Bryan said: the emphasis is on the hero, not on the equipment.
I think cyberpunk is different, Technology is an extremely important element of the genre.
So one very easy way to solve my problem would be to treat equipment just as any other ability. So you may use it as a primary ability in a contest if you have at least 13 at the relevant ability to use this kind of equipment.
So you might totally rely on your firepower augmenting it with your gunskill.
An it between solution might be to use every bonus as an edge where possible. You could treat simple contests as an extended contest with only one exchange.
Christian
On 2/25/2005 at 9:37am, Lorenzo Rubbo-Ferraro wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Part of the HQ philosophy is, as Bryan said: the emphasis is on the hero, not on the equipment
Initially equipment appears to be significant because relative to the hero's ability it is. e.g. +5 for a greatsword is almost one third a hero's ability.
Until that is the hero becomes truly heroic. The nature of the system is that as a character progresses to higher levels of heroism the greatsword becomes much less significant. What do we remember about Hercules? His greatsword? No it’s his great strength.
I think your dead on the money about different philosophies, there’s no reason why your game can’t focus on technology over heroism.
Cheers,
Lorenzo.
On 2/25/2005 at 3:20pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Hello,
I suggest that cyberpunk does not focus on the technology either - that is, if by cyberpunk you are referring to the books and films. Yes, cyberpunk gaming is all based on whatever technology your character manages to accrue, but so what? Why use HeroQuest for cyberpunk gaming when such gaming is already fully established and expressed by other games?
If instead your inspiration is based on books like Neuromancer and films like Blade Runner, the rules for HeroQuest will work perfectly as written. Consider technology, effectively, to be a religion, and you're all set. (And yes, that is thematically dead on point for the cyberpunk source material.)
Best,
Ron
On 2/25/2005 at 6:17pm, Der_Renegat wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Not sure if this will still be on topic....
Maybe my view of the genre is a bit different than yours.
I read most novels i could get but what really influences me comes from manga.
So im the kind of cyberpunk guy who likes a melange of:
neuromancer (william gibson),
hardware (walter jon williams),
appleseed + ghost in the shell (masamune shirow)
and maybe a bit of eden (hiroki endo).
To say it in another way, i think (my) cyberpunk is essentially:
high tech - low life (and style).
So i want a mixture of anti heroes and cyborg action in a post world war3 corporate dystopia.
The reason why i want to use HQ and not any other game is simple, in nearly 20 years experience with roleplaying games, i found no better game that lets me do everything i want to do!
Also, this thread has really given me all the answers to my questions.
thanks
Christian
On 2/25/2005 at 6:36pm, Eero Tuovinen wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Ron Edwards wrote:
I suggest that cyberpunk does not focus on the technology either - that is, if by cyberpunk you are referring to the books and films. Yes, cyberpunk gaming is all based on whatever technology your character manages to accrue, but so what? Why use HeroQuest for cyberpunk gaming when such gaming is already fully established and expressed by other games?
But it's not necessarily as clear-cut as that, either. A large part of Cyberpunk themes seem to be about disempowerment of the individual, and the social, economical and technological issues that are the cause. Technology in this sense can be a crucial thing - when the rich can live forever while the poor all die young, that was already the theme in Bug Jack Barron, a classic pre-cyberpunk novel of Norman Spinrad. Although it's very much about individual decision, it's also about the circumstances.
But yes... technology in this sense really isn't about character empowerment, Ron's right about that... what do you call it, when it's the material cause for the issues the writer wishes to explore? It's a part of the Setting, certainly, and the reason for built-in premise. In that way the decision to have "expensive youth drugs" or whatever is equivalent to having "Lunars who assimilate valuable civilizations". The players should just agree on the issue and pick sides for their characters, but it seems to me that neither Lunars nor youth drugs actually have any mechanical impact as far as the HQ rules are concerned. Both have enormous in-world significance, but whether the characters can wield it is fully a Situational matter that's negotiated on the table.
If instead your inspiration is based on books like Neuromancer and films like Blade Runner, the rules for HeroQuest will work perfectly as written. Consider technology, effectively, to be a religion, and you're all set. (And yes, that is thematically dead on point for the cyberpunk source material.)
That's a really inspiring call, I can dig that approach. Especially as the above thoughts about technology as Setting stuff really makes it all rather passive. It's part of it, but the other half is when the characters gain a handle on the technology... which is of course exactly what happens in Glorantha with religion and heroes.
Hmm... tasty... I forget the name of that author (Bruce Sterling?) who wrote those cheap and light "cyberpunk" novels about bioware vs. hardware wars, but I can totally imagine having different technological disciplines utilizing different magic systems, like the HQ religions. Hackers as wizards, while cybertech junkies are more like theists... Heroquests are all about discovering/stealing/sabotaging new tech / old tech in elaborate operations that crash whole space stations or cities... nice.
Corporations and essentially any other powerful organizations would act as temples and religious communities. Power in Glorantha is about magic and belief, while contrariwise power in Cyberpunk is about tech, so that works out. Technology is always beholden to the organization that services and repairs it, unless it's common tech (magic) you can service yourself.
It's been a while, but that idea would certainly make cyberpunk interesting again. Much more so than the now-current OGL/GoO/whatever rehashes of Cyberpunk 2020.
On 2/25/2005 at 8:10pm, Mike Holmes wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
All I can think of is that scene in Akira where Kaneda is leaping from rock to rock of the crumbled olympic stadium wielding the military laser, after dodging the effects of solar powered space station disintigration weapon designed to take out city blocks.
The anime especially is full of just totally improbable stuff being pulled of by normal people despite the technology involved. Even when hit, somehow main characters (yes, even those with no powers of any sort) seem to absorb blows that are otherwise destroying Mecha without dying from it.
Is it realistic? Hell no, since when is anime realistic?
That said, and despite what people are saying here about HQ being about heroics and such, HQ is actually a pretty damn realistic system in terms of output. As Ron points out, it doesn't match other RPGs output, but since when are RPGs realistic?
Let's look at the output HQ gives us. We've got two contestants in a sword fight. One has a sword and good armor, and the other a dagger. Otherwise they're equally skilled. Let's say that they're both at 5W with equal augmenting elsewhere for argument's sake. The guy with the sword and armor has +8 or 13W against +1 or 5W. Put them in a pit and have them fight, and see who comes out on top. Well, in the real world, the guy with the better gear is going to win more than half the time. The HQ model says that he'll have about a 5% edge (he wins 54.5% of the time).
Is that accurate? Well, it turns out yes it is. That is, the Marshall studies from WWII show that training is about 90% of the value of effectiveness, and that gear has only makes about a 10% difference in any circumstance, when looking at successful outcomes of armed conflicts. Lo and behold, the HQ model has predicted this perfectly.
See, combat simply isn't about swining swords at each other and penetrating armor. Actually a man with a big sword can't penetrate good plate armor either. Doesn't matter how big you make the sword it turns out. You have to make it blunt, and have him use it "half-swording" before he even has a chance to penetrate. So nobody uses the tactic of trying to swing a sword at the other guy. What Jake from TROS tells us is that you learn to trip the guy, rip off his helmet, and put your sword through his head. Or somesuch. No matter the size of your sword.
Ron is right. RPGs simply have a fetish with equipment and all the little plusses and minuses, and the idea that this is important in who wins contests. It just doesn't match reality in any way.
Let's look at dude with dagger against dude with powered armor. How is this even a contest? It's two entirely separate modes of conflict. As such, the narrator if, the character with the dagger persists, is free to assign an "improv mod" penalty of any size up to and including saying it's just not possible. This is no different than a person trying to leap a chasm using their Florid Conversation ability.
It's not that it's heroic, it's that it's "output based" in terms of how it simulates conflict. As opposed to all of the other games which are "input based" (thanks, Ralph for the terms). Instead of trying to carefully and unrealistically trying to chain together all the micro-events that make up one person's attempt to kill another - or any other sort of conflict - instead HQ takes the inputs and says, "Here's the realistic output of the situation, you figure out what the micro-events were that lead from A to B."
Note this. If you do have a contest, and it's puncture a metal suit of armor sitting there with a dagger - that could happen. I mean, one player can say that their goal is to shove a dagger through a suit of armor. Does the armor get the character's "Dodge Blow" to resist? No. Does the character get his "Knifefighting" to get through it? No. The character probably rolls his strength (probably 6) vs, a resistance that the narrator sets for the hardness of the armor. Which he could set at, say, 10w3 if he wants. Good luck getting that dagger through.
Set up contest appropriately, and HQ is very, very realistic.
Mike
On 2/25/2005 at 11:13pm, Bryan_T wrote:
RE: Why are bonuses weaker than ratings ??
Walter Jon Williams "Hardwired" was one of my favorite books....but if you look at it, really the cybernetics and equipment was mostly plot points. Yes, there was the one woman with the surgically implanted sunglasses which could act like see through computer screens, and of course there were the vehicles....but did it matter how big the guns on the vehicles were? Not really, it was all about the strategy and tactics.
Neuromancer is similar, the technology defines the setting, but it is dominantly the individual that influences what happens, not the coolness of their toys.
The effect of making equipment very powerful is to say "without the cool toys, you are powerless." But almost every cyberpunk book took the opposite theme, the heroes eventually realise that it is the power of the people, not the technology, that matters. "Little Heroes" is a fantastic example of that theme brought to the foreground, by the way.
Anyway, I think part of hte reason that most RPG focus so much on the equipment is that it let's you cheat on the power curve. You are defined by some (usually very gameist, occasionally more sym) character improvement system. But equipment is charged to a different currency than character improvement is.
Along the line of Ron's mention of religion, if you do want to give equipment big abilities, consider the "cementing" cost for charms and fetches in HQ. This would help keep equipment under the same currency base as the rest of the character.
--bryan