For me, its always a bell curve. If you have 5 players who's stuff is in the +10 to +15 range, and then one player who's stuff is -10, that guy is way more fucked than if the rest of them were all in the 0 to -5 range.
Likewise, if most people are in the -5 to +5 range, and you have one guy with +30, he's going to be very lucky indeed.
RPGPundit
I'm not sure I follow your use of the term "bell curve" in this instance, but Stuff certainly is relative in my campaign. If everyone is at +5 then bad things get distributed equally, but if one is above another then the bad things tend to get deflected toward the low-stuff guy evem if the low-stuff guy is in the positive range.
Yeah, I don't understand "bell curve" in this instance either.
It kind of implies a kind of mathematical function between stuff and bad luck, which is so antithetical to the style of Amber play that you espouse that I'm gobsmacked you would use the term.
I'm not really a big fan of Stuff. It implies a hero/villain dichotomy that I think is too simplistic and can't readily be applied to the characters in the book.
What I mean by "Bell curve" is very simply that the group of players who are in the middle will all get lumped together in getting the same kind of luck, while any who are on the two extremes will get a more extreme level of good or bad luck.
Just like how a bell curve works... :confused:
RPGPundit
Uh, no. That's not how a bell curve works. It's a function (AKA "normal distribution") that's used to define standard deviations, and for modeling certain kinds of "random" phenomena statistically.
Maybe you're talking about "grading on a curve" where raw data (such as test scores or stuff scores) are transformed into a final value that causes the raw data to conform to a curve?
I don't think anyone could argue against the idea that characters with similar stuff scores should get similar luck. That's not "using a bell curve" that's just common sense.
The thing is, depending on the shape of the curve and the input data, transforming the data to conform to a curve can cause results that are contrary to this ideal.
For example, if stuff for PC's were, say, -10, -9, -8, +8, +9, and +10, then if you made this data conform to a bell curve then the +8 and the -8 would have ordinary average luck, very similar to each other.
Do you see why I was confused?
I agree with Otha on this one in terms of the mathematical definition of the function. On the other hand, I was pretty sure what you meant, which is why I answered as I did earlier. :cool:
Ah, well I should have meant "relatively weighted" then, perhaps? Where the actual stuff values are not "objective" values, but values that are similarly "ranked" in the sense that a guy with -4 stuff in a party where everyone else has good stuff will be relatively far MORE fucked than a guy with -4 stuff in a party where everyone has worse stuff than he does.
That's what I was trying to get at.
RPGPundit
What you seem to be saying is that "stuff" becomes another ranked attribute, with the highest value (no matter what it ends up being) having the best luck and the lowest having the worst.
Interesting.
Do your players know you do this? Because if so, then the players have no incentive to STOP bidding on attributes. They could collectively agree that, for example, they'd like to work on 200 points instead of 100, and give themselves 100 points of bad stuff (on average) knowing that it won't hurt, at least not 100 points worth.
With an enlightened group of players you could wind up totally breaking the auction system.
When we played, Bad Stuff had a -10 limit during the bidding. Afterwards, if you went lower (by using a Blood Curse), you died.
On the other hand, there was nothing stopped characters from reaching +53 Good Stuff. I remember a certain time when one character had that score, the rest was average, and one guy had -10. :heh:
Quote from: OthaWhat you seem to be saying is that "stuff" becomes another ranked attribute, with the highest value (no matter what it ends up being) having the best luck and the lowest having the worst.
Interesting.
Do your players know you do this? Because if so, then the players have no incentive to STOP bidding on attributes. They could collectively agree that, for example, they'd like to work on 200 points instead of 100, and give themselves 100 points of bad stuff (on average) knowing that it won't hurt, at least not 100 points worth.
With an enlightened group of players you could wind up totally breaking the auction system.
:jaw-dropping: Wow. I never thought of it that way. Unless the GM imposes a maximum amount of Bad Stuff a character could have, it does look like the players could manipulate the system. I applaud you for your insight. :)
However, I might counter that a GM could determine that if the entire group was burdened with excessive Bad Stuff that bad things would happen to everyone and no one would ever really succeed at anything attempted. In other words, the NPCs would keep winning the lottery while the PCs would all get dumped on -- just some more than others.
Quote from: OthaWhat you seem to be saying is that "stuff" becomes another ranked attribute, with the highest value (no matter what it ends up being) having the best luck and the lowest having the worst.
Interesting.
Do your players know you do this? Because if so, then the players have no incentive to STOP bidding on attributes. They could collectively agree that, for example, they'd like to work on 200 points instead of 100, and give themselves 100 points of bad stuff (on average) knowing that it won't hurt, at least not 100 points worth.
With an enlightened group of players you could wind up totally breaking the auction system.
My players DO know this about how I do stuff.
Typically, as I mentioned before, my games have a cap on how many points of bad-stuff you can end up having, at least initially during character generation. That pretty well prevents the scenario you're imagining there.
RPGpundit
Still, it can blunt the impact of bad stuff.
In my experience, it tends more often to increase it.
RPGPundit
Hm. Perhaps it would either blunt bad stuff or blunt good stuff, then, depending on where people were clustered.
Nope, it really doesn't.
RPGPundit
Well, I'm not high on the lower cap ( :p ).
I think that both aspects should be balanced (both aspects being Stuff being absolute or relative). In my campaign, I had a few guys around -50, and a girl in the positives, so it was very hard to balance luck (oh, and BTW all character were pretty much balanced). Methinks that's a question of where the numbers are. Stuff being relative for the players doesn't mean it is relative for the world. I mean, if some guy is in -90 and another in -91, and something can go wrong to any one of them, it will go wrong to the second one, therefore the first one being "lucky" there, but both their lucks will suck anyway. And remember that NPCs have stuff too.
What do you think of this stuff policy:
Good stuff won't make you win, but it will make your failures hurt less; bad stuff won't make you lose, but it will tend to make your victories hollow.
Seems a little abstract.
RPGPundit
Perhaps I should be more specific:
Stuff isn't considered in the question of who wins a conflict, but rather is considered when describing the results of winning or losing.
Quote from: OthaStuff isn't considered in the question of who wins a conflict, but rather is considered when describing the results of winning or losing.
This is a lot like what I do with stuff.
If the villian is going to single out someone for some really bad reason, it's probably the guy with the worst stuff. Once conflict is underway, I tend to rely on the attributes and (if similar enough) eventually Endurance. Stuff rarely comes into play unless a character wants to try something really wacky during combat.
Last time I played, I ended up competing with a guy who had the same concept for a character as I did. He ended up one rank higher on each attribute save for Psyche, for which he bought an item that made him immune (at the cost of not being able to use that stat, effectively), and not having either Pattern or Logruss (again, sidestepped-so he though--through an item).
How did he do this? Bad Stuff. 70 points of Bad Stuff. (I, by comparison, had five points in Good Stuff and Psyche 4th with Basic Pattern Imprint.) He bragged about how he'd always win against me, even with his Bad Stuff, when I pointed out the following: The multiverse utterly despises him, while it likes me, and though he had a rank of Warfare, Endurance and Strength on me (1/1/1 to my 2/2/2) I had control of the battlefield--inherent Pattern vs. his Item--and my Good Stuff vs. his Bad Stuff meant that all I needed to do was to Hellride to a sympathetic Elder NPC and wait for the anti-Psyche item to get yanked off for a moment- then I'd crush his pitiful Human Psyche, and likely be rewarded for doing so.
"You'd never get that far." he said.
"With your Bad Stuff vs. my Good Stuff, it's inevitable that I'd hold my own long enough to get away- and then you're right fucked. God forbid you take a Trump call that you're not absolutely sure about; it might be me, and then Your Ass Is Mine."
And that, by the by, is why I always rate Stuff in absolute terms. (capped both ways at 100)
I cap it at 10 points either way. More than 10 points good stuff is just a reserve for when they attune themselves to something new. More than 10 points bad stuff is not allowed. That way their "bad stuff" gets shunted to more interesting things like Human ranks and Shadow lameness.
That said, ill fortune always targets the PC with the least goodstuff.