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Old 01-06-2010, 08:55 AM   #511
Nymdok
 
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
Meh, I'm not running video games, I'm not playing some D&Dish game with levels, James Bond doesn't become more heroic by the end of a movie, Wolverine doesn't regenerate faster in movie 3 than he has in movie 1.
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Originally Posted by trooper6 View Post
I have a couple of responses for you Nymdok....
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Originally Posted by copeab View Post
It seems what you are looking for a D&D type progression, where as the PCs increase in power you face increasingly powerful monsters....
Gentlemen Thanks for your patience!

I see now what the misunderstanding was and I believe I understand how our techniques in GMing differ. In short, my game balance issues are different from your game balance issues because we are fiddling different knobs for difficulty.

By setting the 'Standards' for background and scaling encounters on situation and multiplicity of enemies as opposed to individual enemy strength, you save ALOT of work and I see the efficiency of your approach. You all generally keep NPCs similar to troop's tier/level of specialization model with Skills peaking out around 14-16 for NPCs. TO balance that, you seem to keep more 'horizontal' concepts of character advancement (multiplicity of skills, allies, contacts etc).

The 'D&D type' comparison is a fair one (in the sense that as the players progress, they tend to grow 'vertically'), and that is the sort of game Im running and, although it gives me fits on balance, it allows my players to feel a sense of progression and accomplishment. Its worth noting that my players are, 13-18 years old, all come from a video game background (as all kids do these days) and all but one are males. Shooting a rope in half with a rifle from 300 yards away is fun for them. :)

We play it a bit more open ended on the character side. If my players wish to dump a sizable amount of points in <weapon of choice> skill and run it to the moon, I allow that, with the known and accepted condition that specialization means your chances to perform in those areas are much more limited than a 'rounded' build. They're cool with it, and so am I.

Bringing it Back to the OP however, this doesn't excuse us from:
  • assigning numbers to skills levels that people ask for and being clear on why those numbers are at that level.
  • Making sure that the Ability builds are consistent with the rules (RAW or House) on both sides of the screen.
  • The use of Full Pointed Character Sheets for Allies and Enemies as they are point driven Ads/Dissads.
Can we at least agree on this?

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Old 01-06-2010, 09:05 AM   #512
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
If you want something that quantifies thousands of hours of GMing into a readable package go buy Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering. He offers lots of good advice on game mastering. Nowhere in it does he suggest that the best way to learn to game master is to run mathematical projections or stat out every NPC or encounter ahead of time. Most of his advice centers around learning how to be prepared for the unexpected by creating stories that are flexible yet fulfilling.
I've not read Robin's cover to cover as of yet, but I have flipped through it casually (ironically enough, at games where I was a PLAYER and had down time). Its a good book (what little I read), if somewhat brief.

Just because Robin doesn't mention it doesn't mean its not a worthwhile exercise. Its a good book, but its not THE Good Book. :)

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Old 01-06-2010, 09:14 AM   #513
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by RedMattis View Post
'It is recommended for new GMs to avoid assigning stats greatly beyond what is likely going to be required for the NPC to fulfil it's role. This is recommended because to much statting can overwhelm a new GM
Creating stats for NPCs either in the form of complete characters with character sheets or NPC-sheets can be good practice and a good, albeit often slow, way to flesh out that particular NPC, and speed up play.
For moderately important or even core NPCs many experienced GURPS GMs recommend special NPC-sheets in order to get down all the needed detail in a speedy way.'
Good first draft, ID try something along these lines....

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Originally Posted by Me
Stating up NPCs is a great exercise in character building, but due to their large number, its impossible to do one for each minor NPC. Keep this in mind when allowing Allies and Enemies as Advantages and Disadvantages. Feel free write complete sheets for Major/Recurring NPCs as this can help build richer characters, but for lesser NPCs only stat the skills and attributes that are relevant to the interactions.
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Old 01-06-2010, 09:15 AM   #514
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
To be ready for that, you are going to need a fully developed character concept, including a bunch of different traits . . . and while you can come up with a plausible individual trait, as you come up with more traits, it gets steadily harder to make sure they form a coherent whole. Doing a character sheet is helpful in making this sure . . . and for a recurrent NPC the overhead cost of design is spread over many more play sessions.
See that's the thing, I do agree that the overhead cost of the NPC would be spread out of many play sessions, but that's because it can be formed in play and written piecemeal after every session.
An NPC sheet is indistinguishable whether or not it was made ahead of time, or developed organically in play.

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Your wording does not actually preclude this. But if read hastily, it could sound as if it did, and thereby could lead a GM astray, into making their settings duller than necessary, and putting too little work into imagining them.
I would suggest to you that the sort of GM that I'm talking about has no difficulty in allowing their imagination to run in providing vibrant settings on the fly.

I would also bet money, that you yourself, if you were to relax into it, would likely be awesome running such an improv setting.

Taking it back to your poetry analogy, just because you can compose in iambic pentameter doesn't mean you can't write in free verse and the beauty you may achieve in free verse may surprise even you.
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Old 01-06-2010, 09:22 AM   #515
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

awesome thread you guys, a lot of insight about everyone's game style.

If only there was someone who could compile a summary of what was learned in this discussion into bite sized chunks.
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Old 01-06-2010, 09:27 AM   #516
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
I would suggest to you that the sort of GM that I'm talking about has no difficulty in allowing their imagination to run in providing vibrant settings on the fly.

I would also bet money, that you yourself, if you were to relax into it, would likely be awesome running such an improv setting.

Taking it back to your poetry analogy, just because you can compose in iambic pentameter doesn't mean you can't write in free verse and the beauty you may achieve in free verse may surprise even you.
But I'm awesome doing the kind of gaming I do. It's not as if writing up character sheets ahead of time prevented me from being awesome.

It doesn't even prevent me from doing improv; rather, as I've said, a good character sheet is a great starting point for improv.

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Old 01-06-2010, 09:31 AM   #517
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
I'm pretty darn good at breaking things down in English, but before I get there I'm basically working it out in my head in computer logic, then TRANSLATING it.
Very good.

I admit that the possibility of anyone's brain being wired in such an alien manner escaped my notice. If this is truly how you think, I can certainly understand why you'd prefer to write down NPCs using another descriptive language than English*.

All the same, I think that more people are wired to think in narrative terms than in binary code. We are, more than anything else, a storytelling species. The thing that makes us human is our ability to turn events that may be only loosely connected into a coherent narrative.

So I don't think it's inappropriate to advise new GMs on the basis that they are like most people in this regard and not among the minority, hitherto unconsidered by yours truly, which is simply wired differently.

*Though my natural inquisitiveness all but forces me to inquire whether you might in fact achieve better results by simply using whatever computer language you are most fluent with. It's worth trying, at least.
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Old 01-06-2010, 09:42 AM   #518
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
But I'm awesome doing the kind of gaming I do. It's not as if writing up character sheets ahead of time prevented me from being awesome.

It doesn't even prevent me from doing improv; rather, as I've said, a good character sheet is a great starting point for improv.
Of course, but like I said, just because you prefer to do awesome iambic pentameter doesn't mean you wouldn't also do awesome free verse.

On the other hand, some of us prefer doing free verse, with a little haiku thrown in, and we rarely go through what we consider the extra work of doing iambic pentameter.
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Old 01-06-2010, 09:44 AM   #519
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by davidtmoore View Post
The important, final question is, when my PC wants to engage an NPC in a contest of some sort, will the GM know the skill levels I'm competing against? The answer, of course, is in all cases "yes." He may make it up at the instant I start trying to fast-talk him, attack him, buy something off him or whatever, or he may have a fully-realised sheet to hand, but he will know and I will have my competition.
I'm afraid defining that as "the important, final question" sounds awfully gamist to me. It sounds as if you think RPGs were about conflict and challenges, and the high points were the conflicts.

Let me tell you about my best moment ever in GMing.

I was running a campaign set in an alternate DC universe where the published heroes had started their careers in the years when they were first published, and had aged realistically since then. I borrowed the White Wolf supplement Midnight Circus for a scenario (adapting from Storyteller to DC Heroes proved surprisingly straightforward). And I had most of the Justice Society trapped in this mystical, sinister circus, until Batman and Green Lantern went in in civvies to rescue their amnesic teammates.

Well, the supplement described how the circus was disguised by a "veil of delirium." So I decided that our DC universe included the Endless, and this was the Veil of Delirium, which she had lost eons ago. And one of the mystical PCs was able to perceive its presence, and to use his dream-related powers to call on Dream to ask him about it. Dream suggested that he needed to talk to his cousin Delirium (having recognized it), and called on her, and the PC escorted her back to the waking world . . .

where she said, "You found it! I didn't even remember I lost it!" She reached out, and put it on, and I described how her eyes became the same color, and how they felt a wave of change as Delight came back to the cosmos . . .

and the players all fell totally silent for a full minute.

I could very well spend the rest of my life GMing, and never achieve anything that intense.

Now, this isn't really relevant to the primary topic, because I didn't achieve it by having a character sheet for Delirium. A character sheet would have been totally inappropriate, if not impossible: Delirium is Endless, and Delight is Endless. But it's relevant to the question of where the high points of gaming are, and of what gaming is about.

Gaming is an art form, and the function of art is to create emotion. Combat and dice rolling create uncertainty, fear, and excitement, which are sources of emotional intensity, and thus useful; but other ways of creating emotional intensity are just as much the point. If your gaming creates only one form of emotional intensity it's not exploring the full possibilities of the medium; if it doesn't create emotional intensity there's no point to it.

Bill Stoddard
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Old 01-06-2010, 09:45 AM   #520
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Default Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

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Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
Of course, but like I said, just because you prefer to do awesome iambic pentameter doesn't mean you wouldn't also do awesome free verse.

On the other hand, some of us prefer doing free verse, with a little haiku thrown in, and we rarely go through what we consider the extra work of doing iambic pentameter.
I would rather do iambic pentameter, because I enjoy iambic pentameter more.

Bill Stoddard
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