Unequal PCs and Buffy Comparisons

[John Kim]

Originally posted by Doug Burke IIRC, Buffy at the begining of Season One was basically just starting. Just found out what she could do and learning to adjust to it, right? In LOTR analogy, that would make her on par with the hobbits in the fellowship (Merry & Pippin have 1 advancement each, Sam has 2, and Frodo has 6).
...
So continuing my comparison, maybe, after decades of experience fighting the forces of the shadow, the hobbits would be more on par with Aragorn's 68 advancements, no?

Hi. I'm splitting this from the FOTR thread because that thread is huge and this doesn't really have anything to do with the Fellowship sourcebook per se. First as a side note, Season One Buffy is not really just starting out -- she had already learned of her powers and wiped out a group of vampires in Los Angeles prior to the series. She certainly should not be considered on par with the hobbits, since she started out already with superhuman strength and dexterity, and was fully capable of taking on many vampires at once.

I think a much better analogy would be that Buffy is parallel to Legolas or Aragorn, while her friends Xander and Willow are parallel to the hobbits. Like Xander, Merry and Pippin are ordinary folk that end up sharing adventures with great heroes like Legolas and Aragorn. This brings up the question of having similar parties in the LOTR game.

One of the central design concerns of the Buffy RPG was making it playable to have both Xander (who is an ordinary high school student) and Buffy (who is a superpowered Vampire Slayer) in the same PC group. They do this by having Drama Points which players can spend to manipulate the action, and players of lower-powered "White Hat" characters get twice as many. Having played in a Buffy campaign, I think this works reasonably well.

Could a mixed-power party like this be made to work in a LOTR game? Has anyone tried anything something like that?

[Ineti]

Originally posted by John Kim
Could a mixed-power party like this be made to work in a LOTR game? Has anyone tried anything something like that?

While I have not tried it, I don't see why it wouldn't work. The Fellowship is the perfect example. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, and Boromir have significant advancement levels between them; and the Hobbits are pretty much either 0 advancement heroes or low-advancement heroes. The Hobbits still manage to do cool things during the course of FOTR (and LOTR). Hell, Frodo takes the One Ring all the way to the Crack of Doom before he falls to Corruption.

Since a 0-advancement hero can be quite effective in combat, I don't really see a higher level advancement character outshining a lower one. There'd be some role-playing going on.

Interesting idea. I'll have to give this a try sometime.

[Jason Durall]

Sam Johnson, the narrator of our Ice & Fire campaign, let us begin at a variety of advancements.

Since I wanted my character to be somewhat impetuous and young, I had a single advancement.

Others in the group had 3-5 advancements.

After 18 sessions or so, my feeling is that we should have started with even more advancements for the older and more experienced characters.

[Lt. Dade]

The Fellowship of the Ring isn't, I don't think, a very good example of a mixed-Advancement party yet, because all of their actions were scripted and totally free of anything statistical related. They would be, though, a terrific example to try out. I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull this game together, but I would be very, very interested in reading an account of an RPG session that, say, handles Moria using the stats found in the Fellowship of the Ring Sourcebook. Anybody have the first adventure game and the new sourcebook (and a willing party of players) who could try this out and let us know?

I suppose it's fair to say that one of the equalizers in gameplay might be that the One Ring is given to one of the most inexperienced members of the party.

Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser.

In the meantime, has anyone played the Buffy game with the original cast characters? How did that go? (I'm desperate to keep this thread on track after getting the last one shut down around my ears, but I don't play or watch Buffy.)

word,
Will

[Jason Durall]

Originally posted by Lt. Dade
(I'm desperate to keep this thread on track after getting the last one shut down around my ears, but I don't play or watch Buffy.)

I think that the thread being shut down had far more to do with bloke/kong's presence than any off-topic discussion which was still relevant to the thread.

To answer your question somewhat, though, I haven't played B:tVS yet, but have had the following experiences with differing-level characters:

a) I have ran and played in Amber Diceless games where characters ranged in point totals from 150 - 500. One scenario I ran with this range of points ended, oddly, with the 150 pt character maneuvering things to come out on top of the scenario, becoming one of the few survivors

b) I've run Marvel SAGA games with characters as different in power level as Thor and the Beast, where much fun was had all around.

c) Ran an Eternal Champion game where players ranged in power from Elric, Corum, to Ulrich von Bek. Mostly, the fun came through the role-playing and the following the characters, not their stats.

d) I ran a short Wild West d20 RPG campaign and just told the players to create their characters and choose a level between 1-7 which was suitable. I had two 6th and 7th level retired Texas Rangers (they were basically playing the Augustus McRae and Woodrow Call from Lonesome Dove), a 4th level black homesteader who'd been a former buffalo-soldier type, a 3rd level bounty hunter, and a 2nd level gambler. There was absolutely no complaining about the differences in levels, and all worked surprisingly well.

e) A Weird War 2 mini-campaign I ran had characters of differing level ranges, including a clear higher-level Sergeant who was the party leader. No problems or complaints there, either.

f) Another Amber campaign (long-term) I ran had characters who were from different generations, and were constructed of different point totals. The younger members thus looked to the Elders as being more competent, more powerful, but still were on similar footing and equally vulnerable. It simulated the experience from the books perfectly.

I've done plenty of other games where this has been the case - and have yet to encounter a time where the players thought it was unfair (or at least, none of them have commented on it).

In fact, often I get compliments from players who say that it opens their eyes to see artificial "balancing" of a group thrown out the window in favor of representing the flavor and feeling of the world more properly.

To use another popular example, consider the main characters of Star Wars in role-playing terms. If Luke is a first-level guy (though with ridiculous advantages), is Han? Chewie is supposedly 200+ years old, and an experienced first mate. Is Ben Kenobi a PC - if so, he's a high-level Jedi Knight. Princess Leia, while young, is still a skilled diplomat. Are the droids PCs? If so, they've got plenty more experience than Han or Luke or Leia. Jumping to the second film, is Lando Calrissian a PC? If so, is he equivalent in experience to anyone other than Han?

Personally, I have no problem with characters with dramatically different levels of experience for campaigns. I don't play with munchkins, though, so it is not a problem.

[Lt. Dade]

I understand why that last thread was closed, I was just bummed because my long post is over there and not in here. Anyway ...

I've had some success with mixed-power parties in other games, though my experiences aren't nearly so far-ranging as yours. Castle Falkenstein, LUG Trek, d20 D&D and, like you say, Star Wars are the games I've tinkered with in that regard. All of those were short exercises, and I think they all went well, too.

I'm very curious to hear how such a game might unfold with LotR. I suspect, what with this game's emphasis on roleplaying and storytelling, that the game would go quite well. Like I said before, Coda lets characters define their little niches very easily, even at very low power levels; as a result, I don't think there'd be much fear of stolen thunder.

word,
Will