Re: [BNW] What is wrong with BNW?

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

>What do we need?  Well I have stated this more than
>once, yet the concept doesn't seem to sink in with
>some individuals, so I'll reiterate it:
>
> > >What we do need is a suppliment explaining what the
> > >heck is going on.  I'm sorry, the whole idea that
>the
> > >powers "just are" and there's no reason for their
> > >existance doesn't settle with me.
>
>Note, this has nothing to do with the plot involving
>Jack, or the power packages, or Delta Prime, or
>Defiants.  It has everything to do with a fundemental
>premise behind the game.
>
>Let's put it another way.  The nature and source of
>Delta powers is missing.  This is not something a
>Guide can decide on, and still maintain a BNW
>campaign.  Why? Because ultimately when the secret is
>reveiled he will be found wrong.  So then it returns
>to the question, of why does it matter?  After all
>other games have done this, right?
>

And my question remains:  _Why_ do you need to know this?  Why does a Guide 
need to decide this?  The DC comics line went along for _decades_ without 
revealing why many folks had super powers (the "metahuman gene").  So were 
all those stories up through the 80's or so (and the Invasion mini-series, 
when the first idea came out with the "metahuman gene" was revealed) lousy 
or badly written?

> > Steve Crow writes:
> > *shrug* For what it's worth, that is the BNW (and to
> > some degree the Pinnacle) "style" of campaign
> > setting.  White Wolf (kinda) did it, Shane
> > Hensley kinda brought it over from his Torg days
> >(where Torg had a similar concept), and currently it
> > exists in the Deadlands trilogy.
>
>Let's see what happens if we modify just the basic
>first book of some of these systems with the same flaw
>that BNW has.
>
>In White Wolf's V:tM if the nature and source of
>vampirism was decided to be kept a big secret the game
>would look more like this:

Ummm, actually in some of the early books the nature of the powers was kept 
secret, or left to the nature of the Guide.  One early adventure booklet 
even presented the likelihood that Storyteller-type vampirism was a 
scientific-type virus.

>   No generations would be listed. Instead you would be
>told there were more powerful vampires around and
>couldn't play them.  If the players ask how vampires
>got more powerful, all you could do is shrug.

Ummm, not entirely.  Vampires get more powerful in Storyteller simply by 
buying more Disciplines and raising their skills and attributes and levels 
in existing Disciplines.  Your concern here is more accurately of a player 
wanting to surpass their established limits, and knowing there are certain 
NPCs out there that have already done so.

I don't see a problem with White Wolf having initially gone this route.  It 
was a choice that they made to let players know about diablerie from the 
beginning.

But to continue the analogy, they didn't give all the ins and outs of 
diablerie until sometime later.  So again, anything the Storyteller may have 
come up with may very well have been proven wrong.  So Vampire remains 
fairly close to BNW as you seem to be concerned about.

>   How someone became a vampire would be secret.  You
>would just have to accept you woke up one day and were
>allergic to sunlight.  Maybe WW would have been kind
>enough to hint (but not directly admit) that being
>bitten by a vampire is part of the process.  Players
>would then try this, biting people, bringing them near
>death, feeding them blood, etc, and again you'd have
>to shrug.

There is no secret about how someone becomes a Delta in BNW, so the analogy 
doesn't work here.  It's stated several times that the government maintains 
a watch on emergency wards, disasters, etc.

>   We would at least know about the Camerilla and the
>Sabbat, and I guess the game would still be playable,
>but for a Storyteller this crimps the extent of what
>he can and can't do.  Maybe a story teller decides
>they're really space aliens, or people stuck with
>demons, just dead people who get back up because they
>have nothing better to do.  Only the ref who chooses
>to follow something similar to an Anne Rice universe
>would be close enough to 'the Truth' when it comes out
>to be able to modify his campaign.  It's scrap and
>restart for everyone else.
>

And again, different options (such as the scientific/virus route) were 
presented to Storytellers early on for Vampire.

>What about werewolf?  I doubt anyone would even hit
>close to the mark if they didn't let us know about the
>nature and source of lupinism.  Everyone would be
>playing hairy vamps the infected anyone they bit.
>Likewise the whole backstory of gaia, the web, and the
>weavers would have to be hidden, so no one could
>really play a character with a noble purpose.  They're
>just a bunch of monsters out to eat people.
>

Your analogy is failing here because the basic nature of werewolf powers 
_is_ known...but so is the basic nature of Delta powers.

Enough information has been presented to play Deltas "accurately."  The 
problem is that...well, there is not much to playing a Delta "accurately."  
Werewolf involves PC werewolves (sort of) in a noble manner, because they 
needed to know it.

What I guess I'm not seeing here from your arguments is..._why_ do you need 
to know _where_ Deltas get their powers from to run adventures?

You need to know this (kind of) for Werewolf, because PCs are expected to 
always play nature/Gaia types.

PCs in BNW aren't always expected to play Defiance members (although as 
previously noted, that is the one-sided viewpoint presented so far, mostly).

>Deadlands?  Sure it had it's 'Secret'.  Ooooh, the
>real nature of the Reckoners.  Didn't affect anything,
>and personally I don't use it.  Why?  Because it's a
>fundimental flaw.  What would be the flaw?  Well if no
>one knew the nature or source of the powers behind
>hucksters, mad scientists, shamans, blessed, harrowed,
>those walking dead things, etc, etc.  What you'd end
>up with would be magic users who play with cards. Why?
>*Shrug*. Blessed who do magic effects one way, and
>Shamans who do it another.  Why? *Shrug*. Mad
>scientists who could make great inventions no one else
>could make. Why? *Shrug*.  And I guess no one could
>play harrowed because that little wiggly worm inside
>them is unknown.  Again, is it aliens? supernatural? a
>really bad mushroom trip? *Shrug*.  What kind of
>adventures could a Marshal make with this limitation?
>Well any western theme, bank robberies, stage coach
>robberies, train robberies, murder/mystery.  But a big
>element is the supernatural (of course that would be a
>secret as well), so I guess you could have zombies
>rising for no reason (blaim it on a comet), dark
>sorcerers raising dead things (since you know there's
>magic because of hucksters), and um, maybe a big worm
>can pop out of the ground.  Most villians/adventures
>are based around fear, but unfortunately Fear levels
>would be completely thrown out (it'll be in a later
>suppliment).  The game would degrade more into the
>silly than into horror.
>

I guess I didn't follow your analogy here.  Sorry.  You showed why the big 
secret wasn't necessary, but I guess I didn't figure out what you considered 
the fundamental flaw _of_ that secret was.

>There's a distinct confidence factor missing when a
>basic premise is purposely kept from the ref.  I would
>like to be able to wing any situation, knowing there's
>a logical reason for it (even though the players don't
>know the reason), and that I'd get official support in
>my decision so that another ref would make the same
>call given the same circumstance.  I want to know why
>you can kill a deadland zombie by shooting, and not by
>hanging, or decapitation.  I want to know why a V:tM
>vampire could be 'younger' than the player's
>character, yet be considered more powerful.  I want to
>know why a White Wolf werewolf cannot transmit
>lycanthrope by biting someone else.  I want to know
>why a Delta is a Delta.
>

But your last question/reason requirement is not the same as the others.  
And I repeat my earlier statement:  _why_ do you need to know why a Delta is 
a Delta?  Or to state it more clearly:  why do you need to know that someone 
in a life-threatening situation beomes a Delta, as opposed to becoming a 
corpse?  ;)

I've always understood your point, but I guess I'm not understanding why you 
need this question answered.  Before a campaign begins, the PC Deltas are 
going to be folks that survived a life-threatening situation and lived.  
Afterwards...what situations do you anticipate where you need to wing the 
background on the origin of Delta powers?

>Being told we have to wait until a DIFFERENT gaming
>system comes out a year from now doesn't really
>instill my desire to play THIS gaming system now.
>

Well, it isn't a DIFFERENT gaming system.  If it truly were a DIFFERENT 
system, why are you concerned about how it impacts BNW?

>-Munch Wolf
>
>ps: No I did not mention TORG, I am unfamiliar with
>that system.  There are other systems I could have
>mentioned, but felt this letter was too long already.
>Just think about the basic nature behind the
>characters, and you'll see that most games answer that
>question, or don't need to since they use normal
>people.  BNW does not.
>

Torg "answers" what you seem to consider the basic question.  But to repeat 
my question above, _why_ do you need to know this for BNW?  What problems or 
issues have arisen (or anticipate arising) that you need to know the 
explanation at this time?

Your concern here, as far as I can tell, is what do you do if your players 
ask how they can become an Alpha?  Apparently simply telling them they can't 
do it is insufficient - you want to be able to tell them _why_ they can't 
become an Alpha (and correct me if I'm wrong here).

This strikes me as a somewhat irrelevant issue, relevant to the genre.  You 
don't see Aquaman asking how to or otherwise striving to become a 
Superman-level character, or Spiderman attempting to gain the powers of an 
Asgardian deity.

And finally, one other thing to keep in mind is that the events of Vampire 
and Werewolf and the whole Storyteller thing span millenia.  The Deadlands 
"trilogy" spans two hundred years.  Torg spanned the events of countless 
millenia of "High Lords" researching the effects of Possibility science and 
their efforts to strip worlds of such power.

By comparison, the events of BNW covers a span of...about 80-90 years.

Within that context, and given the approach Matt has taken, the mystery 
behind it seems justified.  BNW Deltas are not folks who have had millenia 
to play around with "the rules" as Vampires PCs have (or had a mentor who 
has been around long enough to play with the rules).  So PC Deltas knowing 
little or nothing about said rules seems to make as much sense as a PC Vamp 
in Storyteller that _does_ know those rules.

But we're talking superheroes here.  The Flash functioned for years without 
either the character knowing that his meta-gene was activated by lightning 
and chemicals, and the authors of the comic not knowing the "true" nature of 
his powers.  That didn't stop them from telling good stories.

*shrug* Overall, it is an editorial and design approach that Matt Forbeck 
has taken.  If you disagree with it, you disagree with it.  Fine.  Not every 
game is for every person.  I'm not going to sit here and try to convince 
anyone to like something they don't like.

However, I don't find it a "flaw" in the game.  The game doesn't break down 
over this lack of information as far as I can tell.  I've never seen it 
happen, and no one on here has ever mentioned it happening to date as far as 
I can tell.  If the game did break down over this lack of info, then I would 
indeed consider it a "flaw."

It's a style.  A style you don't like, and many others may not like.  Again, 
this is perfectly understandable and reasonable.  Someone who likes this 
kind of mystery, as opposed to having everything laid out from the 
beginning, may very well like this style.


---

Steve Crow

"Worm Can Opener Extraordinare"

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

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