Dungeon Fantasy party compositions

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm not sure it's about being a "Mary Sue" per ce, so much as wanting to be just kind of unique and special.

Yet there's no much so special when everybody is a freak. Perhaps this can explain why so much players quickly grow unfond of their characters.

[Dammann]

One last thought on Mary Sue in GURPS:

I am starting to see a trend where the first character a player makes in GURPS has a personality more like the player's own. The second character is generally more different. I think this is partly a confidence thing, partly an affinity thing, but in any case, it applies to most but not all of the players I have recruited to play GURPS who had no previous GURPS experience.

[Dammann]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

Yet there's no much so special when everybody is a freak. Perhaps this can explain why so much players quickly grow unfond of their characters.

I ran a Sci Fi campaign with this issue. It is hard to plausibly have the NPCs not react with alarm when a bunch of weirdos show up. I do enjoy throwing in the occasional jaded NPC who has seen it all, and is not impressed by cigar chomping unicorn snipers who travel with pixie neurosurgeons.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Dammann

I would love this problem.

LOL.. I see your point....

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Dammann

I would love this problem.

Indeed. I've tried to mix up the fighting repertoire of my Warrior Saint, but it's hard to beat the value of the axe to the neck (made worse with Targeted Attack (Axe/Neck), which I did to myself), with the possible exception of the axe to the leg.

I've got Axe/Mace-19 with my weapon of choice, and a 1-point perk "Judo Throw defaults to Axe/Mace." Hey, I wrote the grappling book; I wanted to have some tricks. I've also got Wrestling-13, which Just Ain't Enough. :-)

The upshot has been that just bashing the guy with my Axe is the most straightforward and effective way to fight. If I get my game on and Righteous Fury adds its usual +4 to +6 to DX (Crakkerjakk allows me to assign the three dice as I like, and I almost always go DX, ST, HT) I can have a pretty spiffy deceptive attack thrown in there, or do fancy stuff.

But by and large, it's "Hit Him with my Mace," except with an axe.

[Dammann]

I am looking forward to your book a lot. Even if the PCs want to just use a single optimized attack, the bad guys can get fancy.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Then the whole game becomes cheap jokes and then the players get bored and want to do something else. In this situation it is difficult to gettgetthe players drawn into the game and interested in the adventure.

Originally Posted by Ji ji

Yet there's no much so special when everybody is a freak. Perhaps this can explain why so much players quickly grow unfond of their characters.

Originally Posted by Dammann

I ran a Sci Fi campaign with this issue. It is hard to plausibly have the NPCs not react with alarm when a bunch of weirdos show up. I do enjoy throwing in the occasional jaded NPC who has seen it all, and is not impressed by cigar chomping unicorn snipers who travel with pixie neurosurgeons.

When I build a character with -4 in social penalties (or more!) I really do expect NPCs to give me trouble, to be made to sleep in the barn and served a bucket of pig scraps or whatever. It's part of the fun.

I've played a minotaur barbarian (basically, the same one) for over 15 years now. I am fundamentally That Player who keeps remaking the same character over and over again, although in new games, not for the same game after Bob #5 dies or whatever. I haven't got tired of them yet, and I probably won't.

I find in character dialogue for the character very easy to compose, I don't really have difficult decisions to make in combat because I know how the character works, and it's very easy to give other players and the GM some hooks to roleplay with me.

Part of the attraction is that I just don't see why non human/elf/dwarf/halflings must always be The Other. We have The Other humans (evil cultists, callous bandit raiders, and ruthless warlords are some of my favourite npc foes), I don't see why everything else has to be Always Chaotic Evil.

It's not really about being a Unique And Special Snowflake so much as everyone I know is a human, and I can't help but see elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes (the classic demi-humans) as just as human as everyone else I see. They're star-trek aliens - rubber ear tips or an interesting bone growth disorder do not a foreign creature make. Sci-fi can be loosely categorized into "no aliens", "rubber forehead" aliens, and "can't possibly be played by an actor in a suit" aliens; I'm firmly in the third camp for my favourites, and I don't see why fantasy should be condemned to rubber-forehead aliens just because Tolkein liked them.

So I like playing the non-demihumans. They're there in the game world!

"When everyone is special, nobody will be special" is a horrible argument against letting everyone be special. If I'm playing a minotaur barbarian and you're playing an elf cleric and he's playing a half-ogre psychic, we're all special, and Syndrome can just go hang.

Originally Posted by Bruno

When I build a character with -4 in social penalties (or more!) I really do expect NPCs to give me trouble, to be made to sleep in the barn and served a bucket of pig scraps or whatever. It's part of the fun.

I've played a minotaur barbarian (basically, the same one) for over 15 years now. I am fundamentally That Player who keeps remaking the same character over and over again, although in new games, not for the same game after Bob #5 dies or whatever. I haven't got tired of them yet, and I probably won't.

I find in character dialogue for the character very easy to compose, I don't really have difficult decisions to make in combat because I know how the character works, and it's very easy to give other players and the GM some hooks to roleplay with me.

Part of the attraction is that I just don't see why non human/elf/dwarf/halflings must always be The Other. We have The Other humans (evil cultists, callous bandit raiders, and ruthless warlords are some of my favourite npc foes), I don't see why everything else has to be Always Chaotic Evil.

It's not really about being a Unique And Special Snowflake so much as everyone I know is a human, and I can't help but see elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes (the classic demi-humans) as just as human as everyone else I see. They're star-trek aliens - rubber ear tips or an interesting bone growth disorder do not a foreign creature make. Sci-fi can be loosely categorized into "no aliens", "rubber forehead" aliens, and "can't possibly be played by an actor in a suit" aliens; I'm firmly in the third camp for my favourites, and I don't see why fantasy should be condemned to rubber-forehead aliens just because Tolkein liked them.

So I like playing the non-demihumans. They're there in the game world!

"When everyone is special, nobody will be special" is a horrible argument against letting everyone be special. If I'm playing a minotaur barbarian and you're playing an elf cleric and he's playing a half-ogre psychic, we're all special, and Syndrome can just go hang.

Remarkably eloquent, Bruno. It really helps me get over my knee-jerk reaction to such character types. I doubt I'll be able to stop rolling my eyes when people just "happen" to choose an unusual race that "happens" to be optimal for the class they're playing - especially when they're noted power-gamers and min-maxers in the first place.

When I think about it, I too will grab an oddball race from time to time, but I'll almost always gravitate to a non-optimal role (though GURPS obviously makes that only marginally an issue, as it's easy enough to just buy up and down the stats that are relevant).

[Bruno]

I'll be the first to admit that "minotaur barbarian" has turned out to be horrendously efficient in every single game system I've tried it in. I followed up mine in Marks game with the pixie wizard partially as an apology/sacrificial offering to Mark: incredibly fragile.

But partly because I got the idea of a pixie taking a bath in a beer stein stuck in my head, and wizard is really one of the best career choices for them (also good: thief or assassin that relies on poisons for combat effectiveness, but we had a few thief-y types at the time).

But the absurd effectiveness of minotaur barbarians has been a delightful surprise, not something I really expected. I mean, making a front line fighter with Berserk and no Combat Reflexes is supposed to be a GURPS death sentence. *shrug* It might just be that I'm really good at playing the character type.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Fez

I doubt I'll be able to stop rolling my eyes when people just "happen" to choose an unusual race that "happens" to be optimal for the class they're playing - especially when they're noted power-gamers and min-maxers in the first place.

Heck, it's DF. Make it part of the game.

"Of COURSE every third scout you meet is a Half-Elven Bow-master. The rest of them never make it to 250 points! Do you think that kind of natural selection doesn't make itself felt?"