I have seen a rise of ideas on line that essentially consist of forcing the players to start off weak or unassuming characters. The most common one, for me, has been the idea of stripping away build points in the new Shadowrun.  Typically the number I see approaches 300, but I've seen ideas pushed as low as 200.  To be clear, the 'power' of a starting character in Shadowrun fourth is not a linear progression. At 300 BP's you can't even make an average man on the street. At 200, by the rules, your character is virtually a bed ridden moron with curmudgeonly tendencies. Imagine a D&D character who's highest stat was 5...

Of course, I also see this for other systems. Threads about 'nerfing' player characters.  I see this a lot at the table. A Rifts GM that insisted everyone play as city rats, scientists or scholars... in other words the classes with no weapons, no armor and no special abilities.  I regularly hear GMs who want to strip out entire subsystems of the games because they are 'too powerful'.  

The worst offenders are the guys who insist there be limits on combat capabilities and then toss off challenges that would be hard for standard characters to face! The 'all your zero level peasants must now chase the rampaging ogre out of town' senario.  The solution is combat, only the GM has given everyone nerf swords.



Don't get me wrong, I'm all for low powered games. What baffles me is why so often low powered seems to translate into 'invalids'. Like the reoccuring Shadowrun problem. At 300 BP's the so called 'street level' characters become not 'street punk gangers', they become average chumps, no stronger or smarter than anyone else. They become bland. Again, in D&D, everyone has 10's for stats. Some have 8's, and only the guy who made half his stats 6's has a 14.

Why is the 'street level guy' suddenly weak? Or Stupid? or uncharismatic?

No. To me, the lower powered, street level games begin with character concepts and end at equipment...with perhaps a breif stop-off at skills along the way.    The Ganger on the street is just as Capable, he just lacks the specialized training, the fancy toys. In his element, however, he... if anything, is superior to the special forces guy, the commando.

It holds true across the spectrum.

Why, what is this urge to reduce all characters to pale shadows of characters?  Or to scale levels of heroics to levels of potential as well? The chumps are not only NOT the big bad heros, they can never be as good as them.  RPG's... and related sources of fiction, always seem to assume some sort of weird Caste structure to life. BBEG's can be nastier than entire parties of Heroes, despite in theory being playable race/class combinations.  You see it Online, where the NPC's look just like the charaters, have levels just like the characters, but have 10x their HP, and can solo fights that would be a challenge for a character ten levels higher (Bolvard, I'm looking at you!).

Not a specific beef here, I guess. I GM far more often than play anyways. I'm just curious about the phenomenon, that's all.

I think it's a response from GMs who have run games where the power creep has gotten away from them and they have felt powerless to challenge the seemingly all powerful PCs.

I want to play competent, above average people in any game.  Whether that means a witty detective with a revolver or a kung fu goddess, it's all good.

This reminds of the time I made a barbarian warrior for some old game, (maybe powers and perils?) and within 20 mins of play I was soundly dispatched by a goat...

Sometimes I think this happens in games where the players know the rules better than the GM. Lacking the skill to challenge the players, the GM nerfs the PCs so that everyone can have "fun". Which can work as long as you present the PCs with fair challenges. Really, I think if the PCs blow through the baddies you have set against them, then you should let them and just make better baddies next time.

As you say though, low powered games can be fun, as long as its not just an excuse for the GM to powertrip on you.

I also hate it when the NPCs are so much more competent than the PCs that you have to wonder why they even need the PCs to go kill the orcs/capture dr doom/burn down the malls, etc...

And here was I thinking this thread would be about boring characters.

It reminds me of when I recently saw one player comment to another, "Man, why do you always make such flawed characters?"
"Flaws are interesting! They make a character more alive, more interesting."

When characters are low-powered, players more often take the time to flesh them out a bit; when they have a whole swag of k3w1 pw0rz, the powers are the character. It's the Strong Guy, or the Guy Who Can Zap Stuff, or whatever. Not always, of course - it's quite possible for a player to create a low-powered character who's boring, and for them to create a high-powered one who's fascinating. But low-power's less likely to get boring characters, because it encourages the players to be creative. "Okay, he can't have Sniping 235% and Seduction 703%, he can't be k3w1, can he be interesting?"

That's why I, as a GM, often have low-powered characters. Because so often the high-powered ones are nothing but their powers, and are boring. And then they're "underwhelming."

So you force them to make low-powered characters on the off-chance that they'll make them more interesting for you?

Ooookay.

Quote from: RedFoxSo you force them to make low-powered characters on the off-chance that they'll make them more interesting for you?

Ooookay.

I suppose if forces people to play a character rather than a set of cool abilities inhabiting a bodyshell.

The problem, as I pointed out, Jimmy-b, is not with lower powered character in and of themselves, but the interpretations of 'lower powered' which always, ineveitably results in 'incompetant boobs who should be in a hospital, not out fighting ogres'.

You want to talk about how high powered characters are often overwhelmed by their own leetness, by all means, go for it.

But let me lay out the math.

At 300 BP's a shadowrun character will only have 15 'stat points' to distribute among 8 stats.  That means that he isn't even average (average being 3's in every stat... this guy get's all 3 except for that one 2). The 200 BP guy is even worse off. He only gets to be average in two of his eight stats.

Would you play in a D&D game where you had to roll 2d6 for all your stats?  that's not low powered, that's fucking gimped. Even if you gave the players the ability to move dice out of one stat into another, they are still going to be horribly wrecked.

Yet, I see people advocating this. More: they bring in powerful NPC's made using the RAW or RAW+, and use them to fuck over the PC's on a regular basis.

It's the brute force method of dealing with 'leet powers make dull characters' that you decry, sort of like bricking up a barn door because the horses escaped. You could just, you know, close the fucking door!

Lets take a look at some of the awesome leetness that leads to dull characters:

D&D, in its many forms, is a poster child for requiring certain types of magical gear in order to compete. It's not 'Joe the fighter, using his father's sword'... It's 'my +5 flaming burst longsword of DOOM, with attendant biological utility thing...'  Characters become a framework to hang neat magical stuff off of.  That's not the only issue, mind, but I realized long ago how many PC's I'd had described to me, or NPC's I read about were only cool because of the gear they carried.  Hell, a morkendainian's Disjunction would DESTROY Drizz't Do'urden, and you'd hear fanboys wailling and gnashing their teeth from here to Tasmania.

In Shadowrun, the 0 essence cybersamurai and his panther assualt cannon of doom doesn't have much room to grow as a character.  Sounds pretty similar, don't it? the character is defined by his gear as much as anything else.  

Duh: Low powered characters are not mentally handicapped bed ridden klutz'es with inferiority complexes.   They are, or should be, just as capable as any other character, they just lack the neat toys. Is Hamlet less interesting a character* because he is the Prince of Denmark? Is Rosencrantz a hapless boob because he isn't the main character?

Anyway... I've lost track of myself, so I'll leave off until I come back around.




*I fucking hate Hamlet. Could NOT find a worse example of a hero in any book. Whiney, mopey and generally deserving of the death he gets...and he murders people as casually as his enemies... if not more so.

More interesting for me, yes.

Yes, the GM must be interested in the characters and the game. Is this some revelation? When I'm paid at least minimum wage to GM, then and only then I'll do it even if the characters and play bore me. Without dollars as payment, my payment for GMing is that I get to have fun, too. And my having fun requires that the players create interesting characters. Am I supposed to GM boring characters and players out of the generosity of my own heart? What am I GMing for, charity? No - I GM to have fun, same reason they play. The players expect that NPCs they encounter will be real characters, not just a laundry-list of k3w1 pw0rz to smack them over, I expect the same of the PCs.

As I've said before, when one player or GM has fun, others have fun, too - that's the fellow-feeling humans have. When one is bored, others become bored, too - fellow-feeling, too.

And the player themselves gets to have fun. A character that, as O'Borg put it, is nothing but a shell for k3w1 pw0rz, for most players that'll be fun for a session or two, but not for a real campaign.

I don't force players to play anything. They ask me to GM, I ask what sort of campaign they'd like, and then I construct a campaign based on that. They begin reasonably weak, and if they need it or want it, I guide them through character generation so that they can specialise and be good at a few things, and so they can have an interesting character. I begin them at overall low power because that encourages creativity - necessity is the mother of invention, and all that.

After that, I'm generous in play - no, you do not need to make a riding roll to get on a fucking horse, or a survival roll to put up a tent. Ordinary people are not disabled. And then I'm generous with xp awards, so they can improve their characters if they want to.

Players often think they have to be Neo to have interesting adventures. They don't. let's face it, Neo was k3w1, but he was as a character the most boring one in the series.

Quote from: O'BorgI suppose if forces people to play a character rather than a set of cool abilities inhabiting a bodyshell.

But it doesn't. You can't make folks roleplay. Either they want to or they don't, and that's going to shine through despite GM, game, system and circumstances.

Seanchai

Quote from: SeanchaiBut it doesn't. You can't make folks roleplay. Either they want to or they don't, and that's going to shine through despite GM, game, system and circumstances.

Active roleplayers will be active roleplayers no matter what; boring sods will be boring no matter what. But in between are the majority of gamers who will respond to whatever's put in front of them. Most players will quite naturally look at their character sheet, and say to themselves, what stands out about this character? and they'll play to that.

If the most remarkable thing about the character is that she's good at jumping and tumbling and is pissed off with her husband, that's what'll get roleplayed. If the most remarkable thing about the character is that he turns green and smashes stuff, that's what'll get roleplayed.

You can't make anyone roleplay a character's personality, or stop anyone; but you can encourage it, or discourage it. Since most players are not "Real Roleplayers" and also aren't all "HULK SMASH", but instead are in the middle somewhere, by your GMing you can sway them towards either extreme.

Having high power levels encoruages a player to think of the high-cost powers they can get for their character (or high-level skills, or whatever). Having a low or medium power level encourages players to think of the less costly traits their character can have. I've observed this in GURPS - when someone has a 50 point character, they think for a bit about their -1 point quirks; when they have a 500 point character, they entirely forget about -1 point quirks.

There are exceptions, of course. There's the guy who never picks any quirks at all, and the guy who chooses them first, no matter what. But in general, if they have a heap of points to spend they forget about the small stuff. Hulk smash!

Quote from: JimBobOzThere are exceptions, of course. There's the guy who never picks any quirks at all, and the guy who chooses them first, no matter what. But in general, if they have a heap of points to spend they forget about the small stuff. Hulk smash!

Sorry mate, but I think your whole little theory is so much bullshit.  It doesn't match up with my experience at all.  Most of the time, players will always make interesting characters, always make uninteresting characters, or a little of either.  And it's not related to their character's power level one whit.

This just strikes me as a rather ham-handed, dickish way to get players to do what you want rather than just asking them to entertain you how you want.

You need to play with other people, I have never had a  someone force me to gimp a character nor have I ever forced any player to gimp a character. Its piss   poor GMing.

Quote from: RedFoxSorry mate, but I think your whole little theory is so much bullshit.  It doesn't match up with my experience at all.  Most of the time, players will always make interesting characters, always make uninteresting characters, or a little of either.  

I think you're confusing "interesting to me" with "interesting to the group as a whole." If you talk about someone's character being interesting to you personally, that's a much narrower range of characters than if you talk about the group as a whole. A character doesn't have to be interesting to me, personally, so much as interesting to the group overall. This goes back to what I always say, that the GM is there for the interests of the group overall; each player is just for themselves, the GM is for everyone.

It might also be that you're judgmental than me, more prone to "that's crap!" or "that's awesome!", so that when you say this or that player always makes boring, or always makes interesting characters, well I'd have a different opinion, less extreme.  

Quote from: RedFoxThis just strikes me as a rather ham-handed, dickish way to get players to do what you want rather than just asking them to entertain you how you want.

I think you missed the part where I said,

Quote from: JimBobOzI don't force players to play anything. They ask me to GM, I ask what sort of campaign they'd like, and then I construct a campaign based on that. They begin reasonably weak, and if they need it or want it, I guide them through character generation so that they can specialise and be good at a few things, and so they can have an interesting character.

In other words, I talk to the players, there's this back-and-forth about how things will go. It's just that in asking players what they want, their choices are not infinite. I don't see asking players what they want in a campaign and then giving it to them is "ham-handed" and "dickish". That the choices are constrained somewhat is simply a practical measure so that the conversation goes soemwhere, instead of one player talking about Star Wars while another talks about Sin City and yet another about Hamlet.

So for example I'll offer to GM one of ten different systems, those ten being a range of different kinds of games, light, crunchy, combat-focused, character-focused, and so on. The players don't get to choose to have me GM any game in the world - just one of those ten. The choices are not infinite, they're in a certain range. As with systems, so with character power level. I offer a wide range, and they have to begin within that range. The possibilities are broad (different kinds of characters) rather than high (different power levels of characters).

I'm not oppressing my players. Relax. A GM who suggests a low-powered campaign is not necessarily out to get you.

"Gimping"? For fuck's sakes...

IME players are more likely to think about their characters -personalities, histories, quirks etc- in low to no power levels as opposed to the cool powers in high powered games. Whether this translates to interesting characters....hard to say.

Generally IME when players think about their characters they generally think in terms of how they would roleplay the character. When it comes to high powered characters it's more tactical and strategic stuff. Now I'm not sayin' that this means that they role play better in low powered settings just that the razzle dazzle of cool powers sometimes gets in the way of the character stuff...and I'm not talking about just the players, I'm also including myself -the GM.

The GM has a lot of influence in the game. He/She sets the tone and if the players like it, they contirbute to the whole thing. If a GM is indifferent then the players will do whatever they want. Both can produce fun and exciting play but I think it's a mistake not to recognize the influence GMs have in this area.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: RedFoxSorry mate, but I think your whole little theory is so much bullshit.  It doesn't match up with my experience at all.  Most of the time, players will always make interesting characters, always make uninteresting characters, or a little of either.  And it's not related to their character's power level one whit.

That's pretty much been mine as well.

Seanchai