A ridiculous number of helpful friends
Jun. 12th, 2003 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gementWarning, game geekery.
So, when I wanted to explain why my last villain got trounced, I realized even a partial listing of the reasons would sound so cheesy it hurts. As a GM, I'm allergic to cheese. I hate it. I try like hell to never give anyone toys that don't match the nature of the world or seem too coincidentally convenient.
But I just took a long soul-searching look at the make-up of my game's cast, and decided that they're way overpowered.
A listing of characters and their toys
Bey - the Watcher. Made a deal with the Big Bad for a book that (with some very important but secret caveats) lets him learn anything he wants. [Yes, this one was a game-breaker, and I knew it when it happened.]
Phoenix - the King of Pain. You know, Mr. Billowy Black Coat. He's a very very very strong human, with everybody's favorite combat-monkey kung fu stats.
Calypso - the witch. The character is usually nicely scooby-powered, but she's been playing Fight Club with herself lately, and her second self isn't afraid to use her full magical potential. She's so useful and there's so much going on that the gang hasn't gotten around to turning her back.
Rob - the robot. He's a low-involvement player and a devotee of giant-robot anime, so I let him be a Buffyverse robot. He mostly is good for grabbing villains when the slayer tells him to, but he's quite strong, and it turns the tide of battle dramatically.
Hazel - the hacker. OK, she's a wussy-girl.
Taken individually, each of these things are soundly supported by game dynamics and reasonable back-story. But you can see how this team could make mince-meat of most standard power level plots.
So. They have a very powerful, nigh-omniscient Big Bad to face (the Djinn roughly outlined in the sourcebook), and they can't fight it particularly effectively with these toys, but it's making anything smaller a romp.
Do I cut down their power level? Accept that they're attached to their toys and up the other monsters? Or do I let them romp through the smaller villains because it obviously makes them happy to do so?
And am I missing any choices? How do people handle this situation, and how do I turn my heart to stone to stop giving them bonuses that "seem reasonable at the time"?
I throw myself on the altar of Good Plot and Fun Game. What must I do?
So, when I wanted to explain why my last villain got trounced, I realized even a partial listing of the reasons would sound so cheesy it hurts. As a GM, I'm allergic to cheese. I hate it. I try like hell to never give anyone toys that don't match the nature of the world or seem too coincidentally convenient.
But I just took a long soul-searching look at the make-up of my game's cast, and decided that they're way overpowered.
A listing of characters and their toys
Bey - the Watcher. Made a deal with the Big Bad for a book that (with some very important but secret caveats) lets him learn anything he wants. [Yes, this one was a game-breaker, and I knew it when it happened.]
Phoenix - the King of Pain. You know, Mr. Billowy Black Coat. He's a very very very strong human, with everybody's favorite combat-monkey kung fu stats.
Calypso - the witch. The character is usually nicely scooby-powered, but she's been playing Fight Club with herself lately, and her second self isn't afraid to use her full magical potential. She's so useful and there's so much going on that the gang hasn't gotten around to turning her back.
Rob - the robot. He's a low-involvement player and a devotee of giant-robot anime, so I let him be a Buffyverse robot. He mostly is good for grabbing villains when the slayer tells him to, but he's quite strong, and it turns the tide of battle dramatically.
Hazel - the hacker. OK, she's a wussy-girl.
Taken individually, each of these things are soundly supported by game dynamics and reasonable back-story. But you can see how this team could make mince-meat of most standard power level plots.
So. They have a very powerful, nigh-omniscient Big Bad to face (the Djinn roughly outlined in the sourcebook), and they can't fight it particularly effectively with these toys, but it's making anything smaller a romp.
Do I cut down their power level? Accept that they're attached to their toys and up the other monsters? Or do I let them romp through the smaller villains because it obviously makes them happy to do so?
And am I missing any choices? How do people handle this situation, and how do I turn my heart to stone to stop giving them bonuses that "seem reasonable at the time"?
I throw myself on the altar of Good Plot and Fun Game. What must I do?
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 01:58 pm (UTC)Let them keep their power level, more or less. Put strings on some of them, so there is perhaps an in-character cost for using the power (like that book, which could cause lots of trouble on it's own... make it so they won't want to use it except the most dire of circumstances).
Let them roll over the badguys sometimes. It *is* fun, and reminds them that they are powerful. This should be the equilent of Buffy staking a few vamps before the opening music rolls though.
Have a few different types of big threats. Maybe some that rely on numbers of average vampires. They should face some big "scaled up" monsters, and some unphyscial threats.
Make them make moral choices - the badguys are really possessed townsfolk, so you can't unleash your full strenght at them.
Turn them against each other. Let the robot get reprogrammed and send him against the group. Fun for everyone!
Do be careful on the new toys you give out, but don't stop... sounds like Hazel could use something fun, for example.