Post by Magic Rob on Jun 19, 2015 15:39:18 GMT -8
Good evening, my lovelies.
Many of you might have heard that I favor ‘fair and balanced’ games. That it is my aspiration to run a fair and balanced game. That I want EC to be, now and always, a fair and balanced game. I imagine that this is a statement that most people can agree with (though often disagree on what that means). I also imagine that when people come to me and say that something isn’t fair, and I shrug with a ‘the world isn’t fair’, this clashes a bit with what they think I’ve vowed to run.
Take Fortitude as a for-instance. Fortitude, mechanically, isn’t as awesome as Potence. Sure, in V20 they brought the relative power of Potence way down, but they did nothing to raise up Fortitude. Potence adds to strength and Fortitude adds to stamina. Yet, you can spend a blood to convert Potence to auto successes. It seems a small errata to change Fortitude to operate on the same metric. Yet I won’t. Why is that?
It’s not because I hate Fortitude. It’s because I have little interest in game design.
Let me explain what I mean by a ‘fair and balanced’ game. There are, generally speaking, three forms of ‘role-playing’ games (at least from a marketing perspective). You have free-form games, where there are generally very few rules, and your character is capable of what you think they are capable of. There are strategic simulations, where the rules are paramount. And there are blends, emphasizing one aspect over others.
Free form games remind me boys in a school yard playing cops and robbers shoot at each other with their fingers. Nothing can be fair here, because there isn’t anything you’re testing. You’ve put on a costume and you’re wasting time, hopefully in an enjoyable way. But you’re still wasting time.
Strategy games are more my cup of tea, and have a lot in common with Risk or Magic: the Gathering. The rules are fairly static, and you build something to test something else. In D&D, the classes need to balance so that when you are building a team the team balances. You then place this team in a variety of situations where you are testing something; be it resource management or team work or what-have-you.
In a free-form game, the rules are immaterial because you aren’t testing anything that can be measured by the rules. In a strategy game, the role-play is immaterial because that’s not what you’re testing at all. How well you role-play your dwarf’s accent doesn’t affect how well he swings his axe in D&D: the role-playing isn’t necessary. So what do we have in Vampire?
Vampire is a game of personal horror. Or at least that’s what the game espouses. It is a blend of rules and role-play, but the emphasis is on role-play time and time again. Certainly, the rules are there. But they are after thoughts, and honestly the weakest part of the WoD experience. In vampire you are playing a creature faced with immortality and doomed to not survive it. Either you’ll be killed, you’ll die, or you’ll fall to the beast. Best case scenario, you survive long enough to watch everything you knew and loved die. That’s pretty dark.
So how does one make a heavily role-play game ‘fair and balanced’? I’ve elected to use the book rules and rulings 9 times out of ten. I’ve elected to emphasis the role-play rather than the rolls. But most importantly, I’ve tried to ensure that when the rolls are used, they are consistent regardless of what is using them.
See, in Vampire, the powers don’t have to balance as long as they work the same regardless of who uses them. The different Clans don’t need to have the same power in the city, because that isn’t the point. Malkavians don’t *need* to be as strong as Brujah. In fact, putting everything on a balance every single time, every single way, defeats a great deal of the point.
Vampire isn’t a strategy game, though it should be played strategically. Vampire isn’t a game about mechanics, though you should educate yourself to how your powers work. Vampire isn’t about everything being fair and balanced because that isn’t what you’re testing here. That isn’t what we’re testing here.
In a D&D game, you kind of need everyone to be on the same level, with a similar point spread. You are testing your thinking skills in a different way. How much fun would Vampire really be if everyone had the same number of dots in disciplines, abilities, background, etc? That’d be the most ‘fair’ way to have characters develop, wouldn’t it? New players would have the exact same XP as established ones. Then we’re politicking with the same set of powers and the same set of XP. But honestly, then we’d just have a free-form game because the rules would stop mattering.
In a game of politics, you need to have two things to make it work: Resources to fight over, and inequity to overcome. Vampire has that, and it needs it. It doesn’t need Fortitude and Potence to be the same. It doesn’t need Necromancy and Thaumaturgy to be the same. It needs those valleys and peaks to make the game work. It needs to have darkness and despair and things not being hunky-dory all the time.
In short, the game is designed to function in a wobbly way because you aren’t supposed to be caring about the mechanics.
What I see as a fair and balanced game is one where all players have the same opportunity to have access to what they want to play. Maybe they can’t *all* play what they want right now because of beads or what-not, but they have the same opportunity. Staff returning to the player base don’t have an undo advantage. Friends of the managers don’t get extra stuff. People who have more time to send emails don’t get extra stuff. All systems are equally accessible, and all players are treated more or less the same.
Fair and balanced in vampire isn’t everyone having a character that wins. It’s a game that everyone enjoys. Not every game, but most games. Not every scene, but most scenes. Fair and balanced means that Rob and the rest of Staff will rule based on the facts rather than the people. Rule of law is fair and balanced, even if the rules aren’t.
Make sense? I have a deep philosophy here.
-HST Rob.
Many of you might have heard that I favor ‘fair and balanced’ games. That it is my aspiration to run a fair and balanced game. That I want EC to be, now and always, a fair and balanced game. I imagine that this is a statement that most people can agree with (though often disagree on what that means). I also imagine that when people come to me and say that something isn’t fair, and I shrug with a ‘the world isn’t fair’, this clashes a bit with what they think I’ve vowed to run.
Take Fortitude as a for-instance. Fortitude, mechanically, isn’t as awesome as Potence. Sure, in V20 they brought the relative power of Potence way down, but they did nothing to raise up Fortitude. Potence adds to strength and Fortitude adds to stamina. Yet, you can spend a blood to convert Potence to auto successes. It seems a small errata to change Fortitude to operate on the same metric. Yet I won’t. Why is that?
It’s not because I hate Fortitude. It’s because I have little interest in game design.
Let me explain what I mean by a ‘fair and balanced’ game. There are, generally speaking, three forms of ‘role-playing’ games (at least from a marketing perspective). You have free-form games, where there are generally very few rules, and your character is capable of what you think they are capable of. There are strategic simulations, where the rules are paramount. And there are blends, emphasizing one aspect over others.
Free form games remind me boys in a school yard playing cops and robbers shoot at each other with their fingers. Nothing can be fair here, because there isn’t anything you’re testing. You’ve put on a costume and you’re wasting time, hopefully in an enjoyable way. But you’re still wasting time.
Strategy games are more my cup of tea, and have a lot in common with Risk or Magic: the Gathering. The rules are fairly static, and you build something to test something else. In D&D, the classes need to balance so that when you are building a team the team balances. You then place this team in a variety of situations where you are testing something; be it resource management or team work or what-have-you.
In a free-form game, the rules are immaterial because you aren’t testing anything that can be measured by the rules. In a strategy game, the role-play is immaterial because that’s not what you’re testing at all. How well you role-play your dwarf’s accent doesn’t affect how well he swings his axe in D&D: the role-playing isn’t necessary. So what do we have in Vampire?
Vampire is a game of personal horror. Or at least that’s what the game espouses. It is a blend of rules and role-play, but the emphasis is on role-play time and time again. Certainly, the rules are there. But they are after thoughts, and honestly the weakest part of the WoD experience. In vampire you are playing a creature faced with immortality and doomed to not survive it. Either you’ll be killed, you’ll die, or you’ll fall to the beast. Best case scenario, you survive long enough to watch everything you knew and loved die. That’s pretty dark.
So how does one make a heavily role-play game ‘fair and balanced’? I’ve elected to use the book rules and rulings 9 times out of ten. I’ve elected to emphasis the role-play rather than the rolls. But most importantly, I’ve tried to ensure that when the rolls are used, they are consistent regardless of what is using them.
See, in Vampire, the powers don’t have to balance as long as they work the same regardless of who uses them. The different Clans don’t need to have the same power in the city, because that isn’t the point. Malkavians don’t *need* to be as strong as Brujah. In fact, putting everything on a balance every single time, every single way, defeats a great deal of the point.
Vampire isn’t a strategy game, though it should be played strategically. Vampire isn’t a game about mechanics, though you should educate yourself to how your powers work. Vampire isn’t about everything being fair and balanced because that isn’t what you’re testing here. That isn’t what we’re testing here.
In a D&D game, you kind of need everyone to be on the same level, with a similar point spread. You are testing your thinking skills in a different way. How much fun would Vampire really be if everyone had the same number of dots in disciplines, abilities, background, etc? That’d be the most ‘fair’ way to have characters develop, wouldn’t it? New players would have the exact same XP as established ones. Then we’re politicking with the same set of powers and the same set of XP. But honestly, then we’d just have a free-form game because the rules would stop mattering.
In a game of politics, you need to have two things to make it work: Resources to fight over, and inequity to overcome. Vampire has that, and it needs it. It doesn’t need Fortitude and Potence to be the same. It doesn’t need Necromancy and Thaumaturgy to be the same. It needs those valleys and peaks to make the game work. It needs to have darkness and despair and things not being hunky-dory all the time.
In short, the game is designed to function in a wobbly way because you aren’t supposed to be caring about the mechanics.
What I see as a fair and balanced game is one where all players have the same opportunity to have access to what they want to play. Maybe they can’t *all* play what they want right now because of beads or what-not, but they have the same opportunity. Staff returning to the player base don’t have an undo advantage. Friends of the managers don’t get extra stuff. People who have more time to send emails don’t get extra stuff. All systems are equally accessible, and all players are treated more or less the same.
Fair and balanced in vampire isn’t everyone having a character that wins. It’s a game that everyone enjoys. Not every game, but most games. Not every scene, but most scenes. Fair and balanced means that Rob and the rest of Staff will rule based on the facts rather than the people. Rule of law is fair and balanced, even if the rules aren’t.
Make sense? I have a deep philosophy here.
-HST Rob.