Re: [HoE] assorted [HOPLER]

[PEGHopler@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/24/99 1:32:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
bflory@frontiernet.net writes:

<< First and foremost are issues of game balance.  I can say with some degree
 of certainty that I am far to the left when it comes to schools of
 role-playing.  Storyline and character development are items that I hold
 near and dear to my heart.  As such, game balance between different
 "classes" (in this case Arcane Backgrounds), usually matters very little to
 me.  However, when such a glaring disparity exists as does in the HoE
 universe, I *do* notice.  Fortunately (or unfortunately), this problem
 seems to be restricted to HoE; I've never had a problem with Hucksters,
 Mads, or Blessed overpowering the "norms" in the party in a Weird West
 game.  In all honesty, I do not expect to be able to say the same of HoE in
 a few months.
    A primary factor in this concern is the mitigation of the probability of
 backlash.  In the Weird West, power always comes with risk.  Even Blessed-
 potentially the most powerful AB in the setting- need to be wary of the
 Sinnin' table.  In HoE, I cannot say the same.  For the most part, the
 backlash rules in HoE seem to be included strictly for form's sake, and do
 not present a real danger to the posse.  Sure, every now and then a
 Doomsayer is going to go bust on his 5d12 faith roll.
    Maybe.
    A similar situation exists for sykers.  The Templars, OTOH, get off scot
 free, nary a naughty backlash mechanic among them.
    The only AB that seems reasonably balanced under the current rules are
 junkers.  Sure they can build devices of incredible doom, but there is risk
 involved.  Risk of jury-rigged components falling apart.  Risk of the
 fickle tech spirits abandoning you at your hour of need.  The risk of being
 *burned* is very real.  Thereby the junker is perhaps the only AB that is
 roughly balanced with a non-AB starting character.  Kudos to you, Mr.
 Hopler, for including this aspect in "The Junkman Cometh".
 
    Exacerbating the problem of overly powerful ABs are some of the Edges and
 Hindrances (?) available.  For the best example, one need look no further
 than Children o' the Atom.  The hindrance 'Lifetap' is either
 ill-conceived, ill-categorized, or ill-managed.  In any case, it makes *me*
 ill.  For those of you in the dark, the Hindrance affects the way strain is
 spent by a Doomsayer.  Half of the strain a Doomsayer spends on any spell
 is instead (not in addition to) lost from the Doomie's wind total, with any
 odd point distributed as the Doomie sees fit.  For example, he would cast a
 Nuke for 2 strain and 2 wind, with an additional point lost from either
 strain or wind, player's option.
    Can you say "broken"? 
    Good, I knew you could.
    In my experience a Doomsayer is largely limited in the long term, when it
 comes to strain.  Normally, low strain issues will not come into play until
 the end of an adventure, forcing the Doomie to make some hard choices on
 when and which spells to cast.  By subbing Wind for Strain (which, I might
 add, requires a *minute* to recover, as opposed to an *hour*), the problem
 of strain management is essentially removed.  Barring property and posse
 damage, the Doomie may now cast nuke with abandon.
    Ah ha! But I could make individual encounters more difficult, yes? 
 Perhaps.  But what about the gunfighter?  The old soldier?  What about all
 the other characters that can't dole out destruction on a massive scale? To
 use a D&D frame of reference for a moment, it's like plopping a 20th level
 character into a party of 1st level characters.  One of two things is going
 to happen: tailor to the low-levels, and have the high level clean house. 
 Bored low-levels.  Our other option is to challenge the high level, and to
 hell with everyone else.
    Because that's exactly where they'll go.
    They won't have the firepower to stand up to the punishment they'll take.
    Further complicating matters are additional edges such as Child o' the
 Atom (extra strain).
    It's no wonder the days of AB-lite posses have passed us by.  Rather than
 being a rare, mysterious, and sometimes dangerous gift, players often must
 take an AB simply to keep on an even keel with the rest of the party.
    Feh.
 
    Finally, I come to the last (and possibly most important) complaint:
 Killer Tomatoes.  The complaint is more general than that, but I find
 killer tomatoes are the symptom most emblematic of the underlying disease. 
 Stuff like this simply does *not* belong in Hell on Earth.
    Right about now, I can hear many of you cracking your knuckles, ready to
 lay into me for making a blanket statement like this.  I'm sure I'll
 receive plenty of messages along these lines: "Who do you think you are,
 coming in here and telling us what does and doesn't belong in the HoE
 universe?!  We'll play the game however we want!" Guess what, kids?
    You're welcome to it.
    But Killer Tomatoes and other assorted silliness are not out of place just
 because *I* say so.  I'm just another guy who plays Deadlands.  Killer
 Tomatoes and such are out of place because they're inconsistent.  Because
 until now, the Deadlands universe has not been a Saturday morning cartoon. 
 And with a dime novel entitled "Killer Clowns" coming down the pipe, it
 looks like it's going to get worse.
 
    I realize that any and all of these complaints can be fixed by Marshal
 caveat, and in my campaign, most will be.  But every game needs a baseline.
  Every game needs a style, a genre, and a substance that is indelibly
 linked with said game.  Looking at Hell on Earth as a whole, the universe
 seems to be slowly sliding into a mish-mash of ideas- a patchwork quilt of
 style and substance.
    I only hope it can still be salvaged. >>

HOE was intended from the beginning to up the power meter a bit from 
Deadlands. The chances of backlash and such were reduced to allow magic-using 
types to cast spells more often and reliably. This was at least partly in 
response to the gripe we often heard that hucksters (by and large the most 
common AB in Deadlands) were underpowered and too unreliable. (To those 
concerned that the recent changes may make hucksters too powerful, don't be. 
The changes only reduce the huge number of points hucksters had to sink into 
their powers, they don't make them any more powerful other than allowing them 
to have a slightly large selection of hexes available.)  

As for heroes with ABs totally overshadowing norms in the posse, I have to 
side with Goff on this one. I have run a HOE game for well over a year and 
I've also played a bunch, and in my game the biker chick with the 
auto-loading shotgun and the ex-special forces soldier generally deal out 
more damage than the arcane weanies in the group. Sure, when ammo runs low or 
they're up against some sort of supernatural threat, the posse has to depend 
more on the arcane types, but the normals usually contribute just as much to 
the group in combat.

Non-AB heroes also tend to be more rounded characters than AB heroes. The 
average character has roughly 20 points (plus any Hindrance points left over 
from buying Edges) to buy skills with, 8 points for an AB and casting skill 
is 40% of that total. Non-AB heroes usually have a wider range of skills 
because of this and tend to do better in the social/investigation portions of 
adventures. In my experience AB players tend to want to increase their power, 
so most of their bounty points get sunk into more powers. At 5 points a pop 
that's a lot of skill development they pass up.

It also depends on how the game is run. I'm not talking about slapping the 
arcane types with arbitrary restrictions or using gamemaster fiat to keep 
them under control, I'm talking about structuring an adventure to challenge 
the group's weaknesses and considering the ramifications of the heroes' 
actions. Take Nuke for instance. When writing an adventure for a posse with a 
Doomsayer with this power, early on I'd throw in an encounter against a 
mutant horde or a swarm of radrats. Something that seems overwhelming. That 
way the Doomsayer can throw a few Nukes, get it out of his system, and more 
importantly burn off a few Strain.  Then don't let the group rest, keep the 
action going so the ABs don't have time to get their Strain back. "Complete 
rest and meditation" does not mean simply that no one is shooting at the 
hero. He has to be somewhere relatively quiet and peaceful where he can 
relax. Bumping down a rutted fire road in a pickup with broken shocks or 
pulling sentry duty in a cold downpour don't cut it. There are a lot of ways 
to keep AB heroes from getting their Strain back.

Later in the adventure, I'd have some of  the action take place in close 
quarters or in some other area where tossing a Nuke would be dangerous. If 
setting a large explosion off someplace would be a bad idea in the real world 
, it should be a bad idea in the game. If the Doomsayer throws one anyway, be 
creative. If the area is much smaller than the spell's radius, but pretty 
sturdy, intensify the power of the blast and make sure the posse gets a good 
dose of it. If the area is rickety, have the ceiling fall on the group, or 
maybe have a portion of the building or mine tunnel completely collapse. If 
the Doomsayer Nukes everything he sees, the posse's salvage potential should 
drop accordingly. Nuke victims' equipment should be shattered, broken, and 
useless, and just because a hero spends some chips to avoid damage from a 
friendly Nuke, doesn't mean his equipment was unscathed. After a few posse 
members lose some equipment to their Doomsayer's extravagance, they'll be 
begging him to tone it down. 

In short, if you make an AB hero feel the real effects of the power he has 
unleashed, he'll quickly learn to only pull out the big guns when they're 
really needed. This can be applied to any of the ABs not just Doomsayers. If 
a syker uses Arson in California during the summer, start a brush fire that 
rages out of control for days and then triggers mudslides in the winter 
because of the lack of foliage. Or it gets out of control and burns down the 
building the posse's fighting in, killing some innocent townspeople. Don't 
let players get in to the mode of thinking that their powers are simply an 
arcane widget maker in which they insert Strain X and get canned effect Y out 
the other end. The use of their powers should have real consequences.

I do agree that Lifetap should not be a Hindrance, since it gives the Doomie 
extra Strain with no added chance of Backlash. It should be an Edge. I'd put 
at 2 points (between the cost of Fortitude and Overkill) because the Wind 
loss is mandatory, not an option, and the Wind loss makes it more likely for 
a hero to get put down in combat.

As far as tone and atmosphere go, I'm with you on the Killer Tomatoes. They 
don't exist in my game. Obviously, Marshals can selectively edit the material 
however they want, but as a company Pinnacle has a responsibility to try to 
cater to what the audience wants. As the third, and hopefully last for 
awhile, HOE line editor, one of my goals is try to establish a more 
consistent mood for the line. I want to keep the humor, but make the world a 
little darker and grittier. Since the vast majority of the writing for the 
coming year is going to be done by myself and Mr. Goff, I think between the 
two of us we can come up with a consistent atmosphere. As for Killer Clowns, 
I've played it (and survived, I don't know why everyone keeps whining about 
Goff's adventures). It's both very creepy (I hate clowns) and very deadly. 

Sincerely,

John Hopler