Curving disadvantages point cost idea

[sabanknight]

All veteran GMs know that there are a vast variety of player architypes. In an open character creation process this can be troublesome if you wish to give all players an equal amount of opertunities. Disadvantages are a common place where power gamers try and pick up those extra points for disadvantages that dont really fit with their characters theme more just to eak out points. Where I find other roleplay players like the disadvantages because they make humorous and fun characters but grumble when they run out of disadvantage points.

I am going to test out this solution in my next game. Lets say given a 100 point character generally you'd have a -50 disad limit. So beyond that I want to allow an aditional -50 however these additional disadvantages give diminished returns each point is actually only worth -1/2 points to your total. Example you have -50 in disads you take a -10 disadvantage that you really want to round out your character idea you get the disadvantage as normal but only recieve the -5 in disadvantages.

This allows players bonuses to their character for disadvantages they planned on playing their character as anyways without reducing them to a quirk level or leaving them off the sheet all together. This may also allow the gm to further tell the players motivations for the character on why they act certain ways. Where your power gamers can still try their best to maximize their points they still get their points but the cost is greater to get those last few little things.

What are peoples thoughts on this take on disad limits?

[the_matrix_walker]

It seems a little convoluted to me to change the values like this. As an alternate suggestion, why not say that you have a -75 point disad limit and that -25 points of that must be Disadvantages with a frequency of submission of (6) or -5/-10 points in self imposed disadvantages.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by sabanknight

All veteran GMs know that there are a vast variety of player architypes. In an open character creation process this can be troublesome if you wish to give all players an equal amount of opertunities. Disadvantages are a common place where power gamers try and pick up those extra points for disadvantages that dont really fit with their characters theme more just to eak out points. Where I find other roleplay players like the disadvantages because they make humorous and fun characters but grumble when they run out of disadvantage points.

I am going to test out this solution in my next game. Lets say given a 100 point character generally you'd have a -50 disad limit. So beyond that I want to allow an aditional -50 however these additional disadvantages give diminished returns each point is actually only worth -1/2 points to your total. Example you have -50 in disads you take a -10 disadvantage that you really want to round out your character idea you get the disadvantage as normal but only recieve the -5 in disadvantages.

This allows players bonuses to their character for disadvantages they planned on playing their character as anyways without reducing them to a quirk level or leaving them off the sheet all together. This may also allow the gm to further tell the players motivations for the character on why they act certain ways. Where your power gamers can still try their best to maximize their points they still get their points but the cost is greater to get those last few little things.

What are peoples thoughts on this take on disad limits?

Your solution to the percieved problem of players having more allotted disad points than reasonable disadvantages is to give them more access to disadvantages?

Enforce your game's disad cap.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by sabanknight

What are peoples thoughts on this take on disad limits?

I do something a bit like that in Sagatafl, with psychological disads only. All player characters (and sheeted NPCs) are expected to have 20 points worth of psychological Flaws. If you take less than that, you must pay for it. If you take more, you're rewarded for it. And the payment/reward follows a curved rather than linear system, so that for each of the first few FP you take beyond the mandatory 20, you're bribed handsomely, but if you take more still the bribe gets smaller and smaller. In this way if a player wants to build a character with 35 or even 50 Flaw Points worth of Flaws, he can, but he's not rewarded much for it, making the issue self-correcting.

At the same time, a player who wants to skip Flaw selection is strongly discouraged from doing so, having to pay a lot, especially to get rid of those last 5 Flaw Points, because Flaws help give the character a consistent personality, and they increase dramatic potential.

For physical and intellectual disads, Sagatafl gives fairly miserly compensation (but linear, although it's not as simple as it sounds); not quite as miserly as in BESM but certainly less than in GURPS and Hero System. Social advantages and disadvantages have their own point category, and so it isn't really possible to saddle one's character with social disads an use the compensatory points to purchase non-social advantages. Not directly and not efficiently, anyway.

[Celjabba]

A possible solution (and one I have used) is as follow:

assuming, for example,
a 100+50+5 game,
you just give instead 155 pts to everyone
and ask them to take a few quirks and around 50pts of disads (ie something between 40-60, or even 30-70).

The powergamer may take only 30 pts of disads in that case, but odds are that if they had to get 50, they would have found some which would have had as little impact as possible anyway, or doesn't fit the character.
The roleplayer may take 70 points of disads that make sense to his character.
And best of all, the player with 47 points of disads won't reread the disads list 40 times to find the missing 3 points...

Hope this help

celjabba

[Peter Knutsen]

Dudes! This guy is actively striving to give his players greater freedom in the character process, and you're discouraging him!

[LemmingLord]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Enforce your game's disad cap.

Another idea I've toyed with to handle the kinds of issues you've described is to just to NOT give points out for taking disadvantages during character creation. Just give the player the extra points he/she needs and base all point awards on how disadvantaged the character was that session..

If a player decides "oh cool. Then i won't take any disadvantages." Ok, that's fine. The character is never disadvantaged and will never receive character point awards.

If a player decides to take a disadvantage but fails to play it that is also fine. The character is never disadvantaged by it and will never receive character point awards (at least from that disad).

This also encourages a certain amount of interparty conflict as players try to find ways of making their disadvantages disadvantageous!

If you are playing a charitable character, for example, and there don't seem to be all that many people needing your help you may be concerned that you won't get any points so you look over your fellow player's character sheet and realize that he's a loner.... Now tell the group "Mr. Charity feels sorry for the loner and is going to try to get close to him and try to help him." Conflict soon ensues as the charitable player tries to help and the loner tries to keep his distance... Both characters are inconvenienced, both players get to roleplay, and the gamemaster will make sure both get points at the end of the session. :D

[gilbertocarlos]

Give less points in the end of the session for players who don't roleplay.

[Ts_]

Originally Posted by LemmingLord

Just give the player the extra points he/she needs and base all point awards on how disadvantaged the character was that session..

I think (dunno), that this is like in FATE where you get a bonus for pointing out how your disad should come into play right now. You may opt not to bring it up, but then you don't get the bonus point. If it's not FATE, there is precedent for this and supposedly it works well.

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

Give less points in the end of the session for players who don't roleplay.

That also works, I think.

Regards
Ts

[Lamech]

Another idea I've toyed with to handle the kinds of issues you've described is to just to NOT give points out for taking disadvantages during character creation. Just give the player the extra points he/she needs and base all point awards on how disadvantaged the character was that session.

If a player decides "oh cool. Then i won't take any disadvantages." Ok, that's fine. The character is never disadvantaged and will never receive character point awards.

If a player decides to take a disadvantage but fails to play it that is also fine. The character is never disadvantaged by it and will never receive character point awards (at least from that disad).

I think this will run into problems with a lot of the disadvantages really quickly. How does someone play weirdness magnet? The GM does those things. Or playing disturbing voice? It hits them every time they negotiate, or get a reaction roll. Will that player get a free character point every shifts down on the reaction roll chart? And then when they have +10 points what do you do when they buy 2 charisma?