[HOE] Limiting starting char?

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

I know this has probably been passed around a few times, but I'm anxious
to get the taste of the Netscape vs. IExplorer thread out of my mouth (Oh
God, we're not going to start talking about that again, are we?)

So here's one:
Recently my Marshal (Hi Bob!) "reset" his campaign because the power level
was higher than he wanted (we had a templar, a syker, a doomsayer, and a
greenie/companion/with a gadget). 
In order to keep things lower leveled he made the following restrictions:
No BELONGIN's higher than 1
No Dinero higher than 2
Only newbie Arcane Backgrounds (doomies had to be acolytes, sykers
greenies, templars squirers, etc...)
No skill higher than 4
No VotWW (either or 'em)

Now at first I grumbled about all these (esp. the skill thing) What's the
point of making a cool gunslinger if he can't get that 5 to start. But i
was placated when I realized:
1. We wouldn't be facing people with 5's as the power level was toned down
with the game
2. It gave me more chances to develope the char.
3. It gave me more points to spread around.
4. It was actually advantagous to play a norm as AB's would be spending a
lot of their points to up their power instead of starting out as @$$-
kickers from the beginning.

Sure it imposed some limits on what kind of char. you could have (no
power-suit pilots), but our feeling was that there were enough options out
there that everyone could find something. And everyone did.

Another interesting thing that happened is a phenomanon (sp?) that we've
come to call the "Arcane Backlash" where there are almost NO arcanes in
the new posse. Sure some of that might be because of the limited power,
but that's not the only reason. So now the posse is:
- my heavily mutated gunslinger
- a thief martial artist (un-enlightened)
- a sniper
- a greenie syker (well not anymore, but that's a long story)
- an army engineer

The reason I say that the lower power isn't the only reason is because
we've seen the same thing in our Deadlands campaign. The first run of the
posse had a hexslinger, an enlightened martial artist, a blessed, a syker
(long story again) and usually one mundane (posse members came and went
over the years).
Now the new posse has:
a gunslinger from the HoE (a third long story)
an alchemist (mad scientist)
an indian brave
a gambler (not a huckster, wow!)
and soon another indian brave

My theory for the arcane backlash is that while AB's have a lot of
wiz-bang, flashy appeal, in the long run they are less satisfying to play.
Mainly because it is too easy to fall back on abilities that essentially
aren't your own. How much of a challenge is the fight when you know you
can shoot beam of energy out of your hands or re-roll any bad rolls you
get or take over your opponent. How much more exciting is it when your
char. is down to three bullets and somehow he manages to use those three
to stop the X from killing the Y town blah, blah, blah...

What do other people think? 

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab


	"I am a riddle, wrapped inside an enigma... and covered with
	 secret sauce."