HyveMynd
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Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Dec 30, 2011 7:07:04 GMT -8
So my group and I had a fantastic first run of Cosmic Patrol earlier this month. It's a great little rules-lite system that would make the perfect introductory game for newbies but still packs enough of an RPG-punch for the veteran players too. It's the only game to date that had our group stand up and cheer at the end of the session. I highly recommend that people out there give it a whirl. Anywho, I've been watching a lot of the Venture Brothers during my winter vacation so far, and I think the satirical spy/boy adventurer genre would be a great one to use for Cosmic Patrol (or any system for that matter) as a convention one-shot. But as those of you familiar with the VB's know, almost all of the main characters are complete and utter failures who usually only succeed by accident or in spite of themselves. For those of you who haven't watched the VB's, think along the lines of Inspector Gadget or Maxwell Smart - your typical bumbling hero. Thinking about how to stat out the four main VB characters got me wondering; how unbalanced can you make PCs who are meant to function as a team while still making sure everyone at the table has fun? Just about every system (except perhaps Rifts ) ensures that the characters are all balanced somehow with either a point-buy or a level system (D&D 4e takes this too far in my opinion, as I'm sure Stu will agree), making sure that all the players contribute equally to the game. So do the player characters all have to be equal somehow? Or can you have obviously inferior characters a main PCs? General thoughts?
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Post by gandalftheplaid on Dec 30, 2011 8:29:34 GMT -8
In theory imbalanced characters shouldn't be a problem if roll playing is strong enough, but it would be a gamble. I believe folks generally don't enjoy coming up short with their dice and it'll get old quick. For anyone not familiar with the show, I think the following clip does a decent illustration of the imbalance in question and the sort of silliness that could be involved. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJdf9Y86_2sIf it was Savage Worlds, bennies could help balance it, but I think this particular scenario is a bit too extreme for it to feel right. The boys are just so utterly useless, that even if they succeed via a mechanic such as bennies it would still seem sort of wrong that they succeeded. I could see it working for Henchmen 21 and 24 though. I'd be looking for some sort of luck mechanic. So if they succeed using their crappy skills that's something to brag about. But if success is achieved by their (luck roll?) then it's expected that something stupid happened and must be described. Personally I'd be tempted to use the Triad instead. Better balance and the boys could then be wrench throwing NPCs.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2011 8:39:40 GMT -8
most systems are designed to be create some level of "balance" whether you want a balanced effective, or ineffective character you can do either or. you can make a character be so bad at everything or everything except for one thing.
i was able to do that in a Call of Cthulhu game, the guy when i started out was a horrible investigator, on top of that he was skilled marksman (later it was revealed he was a sniper in the first world war) which is not a good skill to have in CoC. of course over time the character became more effective in other areas (which was a role playing choice). the character was interesting and made the game, if not more fun then more interesting.
making an inferior character is something you would have to do very lightly, make sure your group is aware of it, and then make sure when you are role playing him/her out you don't become annoying to the other players.
as for a Venture Bros game i think you are on to something by making a game full lackluster characters who might be good in one area and that's it, the only problem is whether or not your players will jive with the idea of being serious losers, in my opinion the venture crew mostly suck, but have areas they are good at (seriously look at brock, he might have anger control issues, but he can kill anything) if you are gonna make a game based around the characters i strongly suggest you look closely at them and see where their strengths are, they are fleeting but there
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2011 16:20:51 GMT -8
I hate to derail this thread, but I want to thank you, because this thread, with its talk of Venture Bros, and unbalanced characters, I got an awesome campaign starter for Dresden Files!
All but one PC is in a mental institution! It's up to the remaining PC (an investigator, a wizard, etc) to break them out, because in reality, they're being held there by someone trying to keep those with unrealized magical powers!
And if someone wants to play a pure mortal, they could be the investigator... or maybe an employee, unaware of what's really going on.
Anyway, thanks! And now, back to your regularly scheduled thread....
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Dec 30, 2011 19:42:37 GMT -8
Thanks for that link, gandalf. I don't know why I didn't think to post a youtube link of the show myself to illustrate what I meant.
Yeah, I had considered making the major characters of the show be NPCs rather than PCs and have the players be minor or secondary characters. Possibly a group of Monarch Henchmen so that all the PCs would be around the same power level (which would then mean the story would be something along the lines of getting into the Venture compound to wreak havoc while avoiding the deadly murder-machine Brock Samson). I hadn't considered using the Order of the Triad characters for PCs, but that would probably work well too.
As veremond said, having a single useless PC could become quite annoying for the rest of the group. That would be mitigated somewhat though, given that everyone else's character would be useless as well. The silliness factor of the show would have to be played up right from the get go of the session too. Setting up the idea that the characters in this world are meant to be gigantic epic losers would take some of the sting out of failure.
Cosmic Patrol actually has a Luck mechanic built into it. It's a random number from 1 to 12 generated at character creation and whenever a die roll shows that result, the PC succeeds at whatever they were attempting. I've been wondering how far I could push this before making the other characters feel useless. Like if I gave one character really low stats but a range of 4 or 5 numbers for their Luck.
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