Re: [BNW] The Sneak, Death of a Campaign and more

["Steve Crow" <crow_steve@hotmail.com>]

>The Sneak:
>As has been said similar to a thief in AD+D, the sneak can be useful, but 
>sure he/ she is no combat monster. I think keeping such a player amused is 
>up to the GM and the player.

At least one problem, as noted earlier, is keeping the player amused without 
forcing him into "side adventures" which make the _other_ players bored.

I don't expect or really desire the Sneak to be a combat monster (although 
to some degree they have to be at least competent, given what happens if 
they fail, or the lack of drama if they never fail).  I don't expect every 
package to be combat-oriented.  Sneak has its own problems, which I've 
mentioned elsewhere, though.

There's another problem with Sneak that I and the player in question came up 
with - I'll post on that separately.

>The Power Packages:
>Limiting? Sure. But if you just take what is there and make every blaster 
>the same, they will all be the same. What you bring to a

The point is the _powers_ of every blaster is the exact same (Tricks as is 
don't really allow enough variation to make them distinctive).  Matt has put 
that there, not the player or Guide.

You can certainly than deviate as far as Skills.  But then it becomes a 
skill-based game, not a delta/super-power based game.

character is far more important than what you think the limitations of the 
game are. Why not a Goliath with a 5 Speed and 2 Strength. Sure,
Actually, Matt has stated in various places that he want limited power 
packages, so it's not what you or I or my player "thinks" are the 
limitations of the game - it's the limitations deliberately built into the 
system that indisputably exist so that the player is not allowed to fully 
apply his "taste" to the one critical aspect that makes BNW differnt from a 
non-superpowered game...ummm, the superpower itself.

you may not be utilizing him to his fullest, but it would be pretty cool. 
It's the skills and tricks and the way the character is played that will 
determine if your character is similar to all the other characters. I'd like 
to see more packages, but if one looks at older comics (pre Jim Lee et al) 
one will generally see x different types of characters. Are Spiderman and 
Daredevil really that different? The Hulk, the Thing and Wonderman? Sure 
characters like Superman can't be made, but he is in a class all by himself 
anyway.

To answer your question...yes, they are all different.  Spiderman has 
super-strength - Daredevil does not.  Daredevil has "radar sense" which 
operates as vision-plus for him - Spiderman at best has a danger sense.  
Spiderman has a web-spinning Gadget - Daredevil (at best) has  a billy club 
which can occasionally be used to entangle someone, but is basically a 
throwing weapon.

I suppose a case could be made that the Hulk and the Thing are 
variant-Goliaths, but Wonderman is nowhere close in comparsion to either of 
them.

To take a good example, back in the "Golden Age" there were a lot of 
"costumed acrobat" types over at DC (Mr. Terrific, The Atom pre-atomic 
strength, Wildcat, a host of others that drifted through All-Star Squadron a 
few years back).  Guess what?  There's a reason you and I don't remember 
most of them - they all blurred together because they were built on the 
_same package_.  No distinctiveness, which is why only old farts like me and 
Roy Thomas remember them.  :)

[various snippage of some of Barak's "more, as I didn't really have many 
complaints on the background per se]

>As I've previously said, BNW isn't about being SUPER-powered, it's about 
>subtle powers. If one wants to min/ max the game, sure it has flaws and 
>some packages are inherently more powerful than others, but isn't this the 
>case with any game?

But they're not subtle powers - calling a Goliath or a Blaster or a Screamer 
"subtle" is nonsensical.

And my players don't want to min/max the game...but they do want to design 
powers to their _taste_.  The mistake here is in assuming that just because 
people want to have some say in the powers (subtle or otherwise) that define 
their character, that they are min/maxers.

>Fighter's are good, mages at anything but low-levels are good. But who 
>really wants to be the thief whose main job it is to disarm poisonous 
>traps. And the cleric aka Healing Battery. What fun is that?

I'm not sure that citing a flawed system suffices as a justification for 
another potentially flawed system.  However, this tends to demonstrate the 
problem (to me at least) of character "classes" or "packages" or whatever 
you want to call them.  There are plenty of games out there that don't which 
don't suffer from the problems you cite.

>Cater the enemies to the packages your players have chosen. It can be good 
>for them to get their asses kicked once in awhile, but any group that is 
>comprised entirely of Blasters and Toughs can also be taken down. Check the 
>Gunner's pierce armor trick.

The issue of power "balance" is not one I really touched on per se (that's 
more relevant to the Sneak discussion, maybe, than the "Death of a Campaign" 
issue I started).  Although your arguement does illustrate the flaw that 
whatever takes out a Blaster or Tough will make mincemeat of a Sneak too, if 
he happens to get spotted.  And if he doesn't get spotted...how dramatic is 
that?

>I love the mechanics of the game, they're some of the cleanest I've seen in 
>some time, without being a twinkie system. The Deadlands system it is 
>similar to is nice, but too many dice types, and too many "meaningless" 
>stats. The other game which has caught my fancy of late has been 7th Sea, 
>but that has some limitations as well. I'm not saying that BNW is a perfect 
>system, but what game is? And what fun would it be to play anyway?

I've noted myself that the mechanics are the best part of BNW, so you won't 
get any arguement from me there.  Your observations on the Deadlands system 
are right on the mark as well.

>I've been playing Aberrant as a player, and enjoying that as well, but it 
>has an entirely different feel and all those dice that White Wolf games 
>require one to roll can be mighty cumbersome. Yes, it does allow for more 
>customizable characters, but truth be told the starting point limit makes a 
>starting character be quite weak.
>Champions is just a pain to play, the ability to group powers together to 
>pay a lesser cost always irked me.

*nods* Certainly Multi-Power and Elemental Powers are two of the most 
misunderstand and/or over-abused "packages."

>Villains and Vigilantes is near and dear to my heart as I've played it for 
>years, but it's quite limited and can get unbalanced very easily.

Ah, my alma mater, as it were!  :)  There were definitely problems there 
(random super powers?!?), but at least you got a little bit of opportunity 
to "tweak" your initial selection of powers.  Rolling a 1 on that d6 for 
initial # of powers still sucked, though.

>DC Heroes aka MEGS is fun, but it can take quite awhile to tweak that

And that would be my second alma mater.  To my mind, with the release of the 
2nd edition, probably the best game on the market, now or then.

character just right. The old Marvel game, well it was just plain hard
to make a character that didn't immediately elicit responses of "Oh he's a 
cross between X and Y" since all the power were just powers that an already 
existing character had.

Yeah, Marvel was designed to basically let you play Marvel's super heroes, 
and that was it.  It was fun recreating many of those marvel heroes for the 
Marvel Universe series when I helped out Chris Mortika, though (the fact 
that Snake Marsden was a rejected member of Omega Flight before moving on to 
the Enforcers was one of my favorite bits).

>I like the simplicity of BNW, it harkens back to when I first started 
>playing games (some 17 years ago) where I never felt like I was missing 
>something in Character Creation ("Aww, my character can do what his can 
>just not as well. Where did you find that rule?").

The simplicity is okay up to a point, but there's currently nowhere to go 
beyond that.  Again, maybe Crossroads will fix that (although one gets the 
impression that Alphas will be basically folks with multiple Delta packages 
- that's certainly Matt's current recommendation for how to make Alphas if 
yoiu need them).

I'll touch on this elsewhere, but I think a system that was _simpler_ than 
Champions, btu more complicated (and what wouldn't be? :) ) then the current 
BNW one would have generated a broader appeal and allowed players to build 
to their "tastes."

>I ordered my copy of Defiants and hope it arrives by tomorrow so I'll have 
>the long weekend to check it out. I'm looking forward to the further 
>supplements and the campaign I'm running. It's the first time in quite 
>awhile I've had fun being a GM.

It's good.  I'll touch on it in a separate post, but I'd recommend it.

>In closing:
>BNW isn't about your hero being able to fly and lift up trains and shoot 
>bolts out of his eyes. It's more akin to team books of the silver age. 
>Think of the Avengers or the X-men. So many characters could be categorized 
>with the power packages.

Well...umm, it is abot that to some degree.  If you couldn't do stuff like 
that, you wouldn't be a Delta and wouldn't have problems.

Again, your Delta power is your character's defining aspect, from which all 
others drive.

And the other question which Matt raises is, "Now that you've got that 
power, what is your Delta going to do with it?"  The issues involved depend 
on the power you _have_.  If you've got the same power as every other 
Blaster, or Sneak, that makes the issue a bit less.

>I don't think there's any reason a Blaster couldn't shoot from his eyes or 
>The Flame package (forgot the name offhand) couldn't blast from his hands. 
>These are just details.
>

I have no problem with adjusting for such details, either.  But what if I'd 
rather have a Blaster that had a little more oomph, but didn't have the 
armor-piercing or ROF ability?  Or a better range?

Sure you can do this (although the guidelines to do so are frighteningly 
vague), but why should I pay $30.00 for BNW that doesn't help me much in 
doing so, when I can buy another system that can?  Just so I can get a nifty 
background?  Release the background as a $6.95 paperback and let me find the 
mechanics elsewhere.  Heck, Matt as much as says this.

>barak
>
>Barak Blackburn
>Angelfire Ambassador
>www.angelfire.com
>


---

Steve Crow

"Worm Can Opener Extraordinare"

Check out my website at:  http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/4991/

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