The game I actually want (Part 1)
Dec 28, 2013 19:43:16 GMT -8
Ross, Iris "Chases-Rainbows", and 2 more like this
Post by Barnaby Cuthbert on Dec 28, 2013 19:43:16 GMT -8
I don't hate the vampire game we play, not at all. I have fun usually. Sometimes though, I don't. I really don't like it, and here's why:
Stories
What I like are:
1. Involved personal stories based on character backgrounds and player goals
2. within and surrounding a solid set of political frameworks and
3. occasional external antagonists to turn down the heaviest of PVP and give folks a common enemy to strive against from time to time
4. with hints of metaplot thrown in perhaps a couple of times per year to move forward the setting
Themes: The personal stories can be mysteries, tales of discovery, tales of warrior bravado, overcoming adversity, political intrigue, horror, suspense, punk rock politics, luxurious bestial descents into darkness or tearful tales of sacrifice for a higher goal. There isn't any wrong story for a character within those themes in my opinion. A moral choice (within whatever morality path) is *always* more interesting than an NPC with crazy stats and equipment to fight. At no point should we be running the world of failure. It is the world of darkness though. Bad things happen to all people in that setting eventually. It's not a game for children and it's not a game to 'win', it's a dark, dramatic journey to experience. These stories can and should be intertwined with other character's personal stories too. There is nothing wrong with encouraging Coteries to be formed, (remember coteries?) even across sect lines. You still tell everyone a story that wants one though, regardless of character type, sect or snowflake, and if they don't prefer to party up, you have to deal with that as an ST.
PC Types: Storytellers should set a cap on special concepts and stick to it. Incentivize low standard clan populations if you want, but there don't need to be three of every weird thing in the cWoD in game. If someone comes to you with something bizzare and lnot high powered that they promise to costume the shit out of, hey, consider it. If someone wants a level seven discipline or a 7th gen Lasombra, you feel free to tell them to sod right off, but do it with a smile. Chances are, they just want the assurance of attention. Seriously though, some of the best interactions come from clan stereotypes interacting with one another. The game gets really good, really political and really subtle. And there are a lot less demons from Ritual botches. And a lot less 'murder is the only answer'. And a lot more awesome.
NPCs: The personal stories can involve NPCs brought in with character backgrounds, but should only very briefly feature known NPCs from canon, if at all based on what is logical cause and effect. Most canon NPCs should tend heavily toward a hands-off approach to Seattle politics unless somehow manipulated very cannily into involvement by player action. Even so, such involvement should be a light touch. NPCs should seek agents within the city to do their work for them, not show up and swing stats around. Storytellers should always, always be willing to 'kill their darlings' and let NPCs fail. NPCs should be characters with flaws and foibles too. An aire of untouchability is fine, actual untouchability is just not. If Kharsh shows up, everyone should know not to fight him, but he should be made to be malleable to public opinion (to use a recent success story about NPC use in my opinion).
Mortals: In-city mortal NPCs should be diverse and colorful and most often be mortals with something to offer the story. A tale to tell, as well as a skill to teach in exchange for something. But they should offer opportunities to delve deeper into a street level tale if PCs desire. A missing finger, a gang tattoo, a heroin addiction, possessed of a nosy slumlord or harried by a schoolyard bully, these NPCs should be tied to their neighborhood and the stories of Influence that exist within it if at all possible, creating a rich web of street level intrigue and moral choices and adventures that are always and forever available to any PC regardless of power level or sect, did I mention forever. The 8th Gen Ventrue Immovable Object should be able to get involved in the story just as easily as the Caitiff's Ghoul, and moral questions can often not be answered with any level of power use. All NPCs need goals, flaws and failings and need to ultimately be expendable to the story.
Outsiders: Wraiths, Fae, Werewolves, Revenants, Demons and Spirits all have their place in the cWoD, and there is no reason why they shouldn't occasionally feature. Stories about them should be a crossing of paths though for most PCs, where perhaps because of an unrelated quest one of these creatures' goals is or is not in line with a PCs, causing conflict that must be resolved. Occasionally these things could balloon into larger plots based on PC action, but they needn't always do so, and more often than not, shouldn't. They should not be off limits to the storyteller toolbox though, and a graveyard with a Revenant, a Mage Chantry, a haunted house full of Wraiths and a Caern outside of town are pretty standard features in any chronicle, but they aren't always needed to tell a good story. All NPCs need goals, flaws and failings and need to ultimately be expendable to the story.
Antagonists: Sabbat and KoE were written as antagonists for Vampires. They should be present based on backgrounds and occasionally brought into play to stick with the setting. Storytellers should strive to make those stories personal by working with players to tie them to their character backgrounds. Sabbat should feature more than KoE, but anyplace on the American West with a Chinatown is probably going to have some KoE every once in awhile. Elders with inscrutable goals are common antagonists. Artifacts with goals of their own are common antagonists (Entire series of books were written about the Eye of Haziel by Vampire creator Justin Achilli). Independent clans all have their 'villains' as well. Those should feature with a build up, some mystery and a confrontation of some kind, whether social, political or combat related. NPC's designed for combat should be created within reason, and recognizing that whatever Generation or -3 diff gadgets a storyteller puts on an antagonist's sheet will likely become owned by the player by the end of the night, so be friggin' reasonable about power levels for godfrigginsakes. The best antagonists are always from the personal backstories of the player characters. If your antagonists aren't tied to your PCs in some way, maybe you shouldn't be running that plot. All NPCs need goals, flaws and failings and need to ultimately be expendable to the story.
Mechanics
Rules Calls vs. House Rules - when enough is enough: There are way too many house rules. It actually serves to obfuscate the rules, not clarify them. Put another way, it does not provide enough value in it's clarity to justify its muddying of the waters by becoming a legal library. More rules have made things worse. I would strip the house rules back down to bare bones and go with v20 entire, choosing to make some common sense house rules standard (the Inigo Montoya Clause for example) and RULES CALLS in the moment, review them and only make a HOUSE RULE if the call turned out to reveal a flaw that couldn't be resolved with common sense in the moment. Proactive rules-lawyering has manifested the aforementioned legal library, but also Storyteller initiated loopholes and problematic power rebalancing without oversight. OR at least the feeling that that is the case, which is just as much a sin in context. It's the wrong way to do things.
A V20 run game should run like this:
Vincent Ventrue: I use Presence on Grady Gangrel. You have to grovel now for 6 hours worm.
Grady Gangrel: Nuh uh. That's not what it says in the book... I don't think.
Storyteller: Let's look in the book! I think it says you need to grovel Mr. Gangrel player. It even says like a worm.
Grady Gangrel: Ok, but not for six hours, it doesn't say that.
Storyteller: You're right, it doesn't.
Vincent Ventrue: A hah! But I'm also spending willpower/using another power/clicking my heels so that means I should be able to do this all night!
Storyteller: Well, it doesn't expressly say that either, so for now this power will work for a scene like the other levels of the power that are sight based, and we'll discuss it at a storyteller meeting. If we think that you've got a point, we'll post a house rule vote. If not, the call will stand by the book, unchanged.
Vincent and Grady: Cool.
Afterward, assuming the call sticks, if all the Ventrue come up wanting to use the same power the same unwritten way, a house rule might be worthwhile. If just THAT GUY keeps asking, then THAT GUY needs to be told: "Look dude, the call is this, we're not changing it for you, don't be THAT GUY that has a whole house rule written just to tell you no." Don't be THAT GUY.
If it does go to vote then that's easy. STs need to just present the options and let the players decide and move on.
Too many cards in the deck: There are too many books and powers in use and available. No staff member can be expected to be familiar with them all and no player can have confidence in any parity of concept with another PC. This defines and creates a need for an 'arms race' mentality. V20 and it's supplements will consolidate everything and the rest can be ignored, lest it be for any valuable story flavor. The last staff gave me a form of Kuldu-thaum from a Dark Ages book for my Malkavian. What the actual hell? It's cool. The flavor is great, but I didn't ask for it per se, and if I had known what it was I probably would have turned it down. Libellus Sanguinus II is a First Edition Dark Ages Vampire book, which means it's based on 2nd Ed. Granted, they'll probably have it in V20 with the Thaum Book, but wow. I don't even. They gave me that power when I espressed concerns about the fact that there was no way my character could compete with the power bloat. That right there represents the style of Storytelling that I disagree with as related to system. The *story* to get those powers was great. The powers themselves are a silverware drawer full of crack on spoons. We don't need them. We don't need any of them.
Custom powers: These need to be limited and all but unavailable. There are some high ranking Tremere canon requirements for a Tremere to create a ritual to present to the Clan, which is just about the only canon reason ever to need to create a custom ritual or combo discipline. There shouldn't be a bunch of custom disciplines and rituals in the hands of half of the game. That's just silly and overpowered, and not balanced in the slightest. It's fine against overpowered NPCs (which shouldn't need to exist in the first place) but once things turn PvP, players who are crushed by the custom powers of another PC have every right to look at the staff and throw up the "whatever fingers". I deeply dislike the play style and culture that this creates, and it becomes it's own Mobius loop of escalation between staff and players as well as between players and players. These need to go away, period, and stay gone. With V20 there will be two, maybe as many as four books that will ever have powers in them. There are a LOT of powers. There is no need for more. A million ways to perform deep customization distorts the framework of the game to the point where players and even storytellers can sometimes not tell where the edges are, which leads to distrust and unease between them. Wrong or right, that perception exists when powers on sheets are in no book ever, and it doesn't need to.
This includes crafts by the way. The crafts gadgets system has been broken. It allows people to run around in penalty-less armor with ten extra health levels, adds stats, adds blood on tap, has a beer coozy... it's out of friggin' control. There are arrows that auto fire 13 Ag. It's dumb. Crafts should allow for a +1 to hit or damage or maybe a -1 diff for something. Small changes that give a crafter an edge - but not an overpowered advantage in line with some thaum paths. So deeply ridiculous and broken. Honestly if I told most of you the kinds of things that are being crafted out there right now you would probably poop a turd in the shape of your own rage face. Crafts goes back to being a useful system that affords small bonuses, produces story and isn't churning out overpowered items.
Builds: It's no secret to those that know me that I think 'sheet builds' which I define as a deep interest in voodoo math and min-maxing are tiresome. I think as adults we should be able to move beyond needing so deeply to overcome the other guy with math. cWoD Vampire isn't tournament play League of Legends and was never meant to be. It's meant to be a storyteller tale of personal horror.
But back to builds. You can either run a game within a framework where the boundaries are something we can collectively see and agree upon most of the time, or we can run one where the boundaries are unseen and change with every new power, discipline or gadget pitch to the staff. I prefer the rules and powers are a bit more down to earth when it comes to a game where PvP is a major component. I believe that since Sean's staff stepped up we've been playing in the opposite style, were its very open ended and powers and abilities can be made up or manufactured with relative ease. Thaumaturgical paths are now common to a lot of PCs, combo disciplines are easy to manufacture, technology is as powerful with the open-ended crafting system and tech can now rival many Thaum paths.
The benefits to open-endedness allow for player creativity that wasn't there before, but its quickly disheartening to those who haven't embraced power-statting their sheets, and even then, it's been described as an 'arms race' by those that do. The other benefit to open-endedness is to de-power the sorcerer classes. Thaumaturgists used to be pretty unstoppable badasses. They used to be special snowflakes unto themselves. Currently, they're a dime a dozen. If everyone has nukes, you have to think about firing yours pretty seriously.
So the question is, does de-powering sorcerer classes by creating a game-wide arms race for Thaum, combo disciplines etc. outweigh the grumblies you get from having a single Luthias-level mage running around murdering PC's unopposed and unstoppable for years at a stretch?
I personally don't think the arms race mentality serves the game very well, or the community. I dislike the 150 long web pages of house rules we now have to govern this power bloat too, and I think a single player with power bloat is WAY easier to handle as an HST than a game full. I'd rather deal with THAT GUY than all of this overbloat in rules and powers.
Nothing fills the joy stocking of a power gamer more than to have a customizable system of some kind. There is no system that allows for unstructured modification that a power gamer cannot break and use to 'win' the game with. Anytime you allow the stacking of powers and equipment that may be constantly improved, you open up the game abuse. Storytellers should have an interest in game balance that does not allow for this kind of abuse in my opinion. Those that don't are doing it wrong in my opinion.
Next Up: What I want from a Reset
Stories
What I like are:
1. Involved personal stories based on character backgrounds and player goals
2. within and surrounding a solid set of political frameworks and
3. occasional external antagonists to turn down the heaviest of PVP and give folks a common enemy to strive against from time to time
4. with hints of metaplot thrown in perhaps a couple of times per year to move forward the setting
Themes: The personal stories can be mysteries, tales of discovery, tales of warrior bravado, overcoming adversity, political intrigue, horror, suspense, punk rock politics, luxurious bestial descents into darkness or tearful tales of sacrifice for a higher goal. There isn't any wrong story for a character within those themes in my opinion. A moral choice (within whatever morality path) is *always* more interesting than an NPC with crazy stats and equipment to fight. At no point should we be running the world of failure. It is the world of darkness though. Bad things happen to all people in that setting eventually. It's not a game for children and it's not a game to 'win', it's a dark, dramatic journey to experience. These stories can and should be intertwined with other character's personal stories too. There is nothing wrong with encouraging Coteries to be formed, (remember coteries?) even across sect lines. You still tell everyone a story that wants one though, regardless of character type, sect or snowflake, and if they don't prefer to party up, you have to deal with that as an ST.
[[[Sidebar about special snowflake characters: We're all dramatists (actors) and we want attention sometimes. A special snowflake character can be a cry for attention. There is no earthly reason that one leather handbag should be $1000 and one should be $100, but guess which one is coveted more. Not everyone cares about handbags, and you don't need one to look good, but you probably will look at yourself oddly if you're hiking with a group and everyone has hiking boots but you. The more special snowflakes there are, the more they seem like 'standard equipment'. Keep the rare concepts rare.]]]
PC Types: Storytellers should set a cap on special concepts and stick to it. Incentivize low standard clan populations if you want, but there don't need to be three of every weird thing in the cWoD in game. If someone comes to you with something bizzare and lnot high powered that they promise to costume the shit out of, hey, consider it. If someone wants a level seven discipline or a 7th gen Lasombra, you feel free to tell them to sod right off, but do it with a smile. Chances are, they just want the assurance of attention. Seriously though, some of the best interactions come from clan stereotypes interacting with one another. The game gets really good, really political and really subtle. And there are a lot less demons from Ritual botches. And a lot less 'murder is the only answer'. And a lot more awesome.
NPCs: The personal stories can involve NPCs brought in with character backgrounds, but should only very briefly feature known NPCs from canon, if at all based on what is logical cause and effect. Most canon NPCs should tend heavily toward a hands-off approach to Seattle politics unless somehow manipulated very cannily into involvement by player action. Even so, such involvement should be a light touch. NPCs should seek agents within the city to do their work for them, not show up and swing stats around. Storytellers should always, always be willing to 'kill their darlings' and let NPCs fail. NPCs should be characters with flaws and foibles too. An aire of untouchability is fine, actual untouchability is just not. If Kharsh shows up, everyone should know not to fight him, but he should be made to be malleable to public opinion (to use a recent success story about NPC use in my opinion).
Mortals: In-city mortal NPCs should be diverse and colorful and most often be mortals with something to offer the story. A tale to tell, as well as a skill to teach in exchange for something. But they should offer opportunities to delve deeper into a street level tale if PCs desire. A missing finger, a gang tattoo, a heroin addiction, possessed of a nosy slumlord or harried by a schoolyard bully, these NPCs should be tied to their neighborhood and the stories of Influence that exist within it if at all possible, creating a rich web of street level intrigue and moral choices and adventures that are always and forever available to any PC regardless of power level or sect, did I mention forever. The 8th Gen Ventrue Immovable Object should be able to get involved in the story just as easily as the Caitiff's Ghoul, and moral questions can often not be answered with any level of power use. All NPCs need goals, flaws and failings and need to ultimately be expendable to the story.
Outsiders: Wraiths, Fae, Werewolves, Revenants, Demons and Spirits all have their place in the cWoD, and there is no reason why they shouldn't occasionally feature. Stories about them should be a crossing of paths though for most PCs, where perhaps because of an unrelated quest one of these creatures' goals is or is not in line with a PCs, causing conflict that must be resolved. Occasionally these things could balloon into larger plots based on PC action, but they needn't always do so, and more often than not, shouldn't. They should not be off limits to the storyteller toolbox though, and a graveyard with a Revenant, a Mage Chantry, a haunted house full of Wraiths and a Caern outside of town are pretty standard features in any chronicle, but they aren't always needed to tell a good story. All NPCs need goals, flaws and failings and need to ultimately be expendable to the story.
Antagonists: Sabbat and KoE were written as antagonists for Vampires. They should be present based on backgrounds and occasionally brought into play to stick with the setting. Storytellers should strive to make those stories personal by working with players to tie them to their character backgrounds. Sabbat should feature more than KoE, but anyplace on the American West with a Chinatown is probably going to have some KoE every once in awhile. Elders with inscrutable goals are common antagonists. Artifacts with goals of their own are common antagonists (Entire series of books were written about the Eye of Haziel by Vampire creator Justin Achilli). Independent clans all have their 'villains' as well. Those should feature with a build up, some mystery and a confrontation of some kind, whether social, political or combat related. NPC's designed for combat should be created within reason, and recognizing that whatever Generation or -3 diff gadgets a storyteller puts on an antagonist's sheet will likely become owned by the player by the end of the night, so be friggin' reasonable about power levels for godfrigginsakes. The best antagonists are always from the personal backstories of the player characters. If your antagonists aren't tied to your PCs in some way, maybe you shouldn't be running that plot. All NPCs need goals, flaws and failings and need to ultimately be expendable to the story.
Mechanics
Rules Calls vs. House Rules - when enough is enough: There are way too many house rules. It actually serves to obfuscate the rules, not clarify them. Put another way, it does not provide enough value in it's clarity to justify its muddying of the waters by becoming a legal library. More rules have made things worse. I would strip the house rules back down to bare bones and go with v20 entire, choosing to make some common sense house rules standard (the Inigo Montoya Clause for example) and RULES CALLS in the moment, review them and only make a HOUSE RULE if the call turned out to reveal a flaw that couldn't be resolved with common sense in the moment. Proactive rules-lawyering has manifested the aforementioned legal library, but also Storyteller initiated loopholes and problematic power rebalancing without oversight. OR at least the feeling that that is the case, which is just as much a sin in context. It's the wrong way to do things.
A V20 run game should run like this:
Vincent Ventrue: I use Presence on Grady Gangrel. You have to grovel now for 6 hours worm.
Grady Gangrel: Nuh uh. That's not what it says in the book... I don't think.
Storyteller: Let's look in the book! I think it says you need to grovel Mr. Gangrel player. It even says like a worm.
Grady Gangrel: Ok, but not for six hours, it doesn't say that.
Storyteller: You're right, it doesn't.
Vincent Ventrue: A hah! But I'm also spending willpower/using another power/clicking my heels so that means I should be able to do this all night!
Storyteller: Well, it doesn't expressly say that either, so for now this power will work for a scene like the other levels of the power that are sight based, and we'll discuss it at a storyteller meeting. If we think that you've got a point, we'll post a house rule vote. If not, the call will stand by the book, unchanged.
Vincent and Grady: Cool.
Afterward, assuming the call sticks, if all the Ventrue come up wanting to use the same power the same unwritten way, a house rule might be worthwhile. If just THAT GUY keeps asking, then THAT GUY needs to be told: "Look dude, the call is this, we're not changing it for you, don't be THAT GUY that has a whole house rule written just to tell you no." Don't be THAT GUY.
If it does go to vote then that's easy. STs need to just present the options and let the players decide and move on.
Too many cards in the deck: There are too many books and powers in use and available. No staff member can be expected to be familiar with them all and no player can have confidence in any parity of concept with another PC. This defines and creates a need for an 'arms race' mentality. V20 and it's supplements will consolidate everything and the rest can be ignored, lest it be for any valuable story flavor. The last staff gave me a form of Kuldu-thaum from a Dark Ages book for my Malkavian. What the actual hell? It's cool. The flavor is great, but I didn't ask for it per se, and if I had known what it was I probably would have turned it down. Libellus Sanguinus II is a First Edition Dark Ages Vampire book, which means it's based on 2nd Ed. Granted, they'll probably have it in V20 with the Thaum Book, but wow. I don't even. They gave me that power when I espressed concerns about the fact that there was no way my character could compete with the power bloat. That right there represents the style of Storytelling that I disagree with as related to system. The *story* to get those powers was great. The powers themselves are a silverware drawer full of crack on spoons. We don't need them. We don't need any of them.
Custom powers: These need to be limited and all but unavailable. There are some high ranking Tremere canon requirements for a Tremere to create a ritual to present to the Clan, which is just about the only canon reason ever to need to create a custom ritual or combo discipline. There shouldn't be a bunch of custom disciplines and rituals in the hands of half of the game. That's just silly and overpowered, and not balanced in the slightest. It's fine against overpowered NPCs (which shouldn't need to exist in the first place) but once things turn PvP, players who are crushed by the custom powers of another PC have every right to look at the staff and throw up the "whatever fingers". I deeply dislike the play style and culture that this creates, and it becomes it's own Mobius loop of escalation between staff and players as well as between players and players. These need to go away, period, and stay gone. With V20 there will be two, maybe as many as four books that will ever have powers in them. There are a LOT of powers. There is no need for more. A million ways to perform deep customization distorts the framework of the game to the point where players and even storytellers can sometimes not tell where the edges are, which leads to distrust and unease between them. Wrong or right, that perception exists when powers on sheets are in no book ever, and it doesn't need to.
This includes crafts by the way. The crafts gadgets system has been broken. It allows people to run around in penalty-less armor with ten extra health levels, adds stats, adds blood on tap, has a beer coozy... it's out of friggin' control. There are arrows that auto fire 13 Ag. It's dumb. Crafts should allow for a +1 to hit or damage or maybe a -1 diff for something. Small changes that give a crafter an edge - but not an overpowered advantage in line with some thaum paths. So deeply ridiculous and broken. Honestly if I told most of you the kinds of things that are being crafted out there right now you would probably poop a turd in the shape of your own rage face. Crafts goes back to being a useful system that affords small bonuses, produces story and isn't churning out overpowered items.
Builds: It's no secret to those that know me that I think 'sheet builds' which I define as a deep interest in voodoo math and min-maxing are tiresome. I think as adults we should be able to move beyond needing so deeply to overcome the other guy with math. cWoD Vampire isn't tournament play League of Legends and was never meant to be. It's meant to be a storyteller tale of personal horror.
[[[Sidebar: That said, I understand (and adore) several folks that really seem to enjoy that aspect of the game, and by getting to know them better in the last few years I understand and accept that it's nothing personal, it's just something fun for them. It's not really my bag, but so be it. This represents a considerable shift in my attitude. I'm not as much of a fashionista as some either, but I respect the ability of those that enjoy that can do it well. Different people get different things from the game, and that's ok. What people get from the game is also different than what stories they want for their given character, or the level of intensity of the story. Some really don't prefer a lot of ST attention unless they are ready to take an action. Some crave ST attention. Sometimes these interests and intensities and stories desired by players change with every new PC they play. Some people don't change much at all and are comfortable with a certain type of play.]]]
But back to builds. You can either run a game within a framework where the boundaries are something we can collectively see and agree upon most of the time, or we can run one where the boundaries are unseen and change with every new power, discipline or gadget pitch to the staff. I prefer the rules and powers are a bit more down to earth when it comes to a game where PvP is a major component. I believe that since Sean's staff stepped up we've been playing in the opposite style, were its very open ended and powers and abilities can be made up or manufactured with relative ease. Thaumaturgical paths are now common to a lot of PCs, combo disciplines are easy to manufacture, technology is as powerful with the open-ended crafting system and tech can now rival many Thaum paths.
The benefits to open-endedness allow for player creativity that wasn't there before, but its quickly disheartening to those who haven't embraced power-statting their sheets, and even then, it's been described as an 'arms race' by those that do. The other benefit to open-endedness is to de-power the sorcerer classes. Thaumaturgists used to be pretty unstoppable badasses. They used to be special snowflakes unto themselves. Currently, they're a dime a dozen. If everyone has nukes, you have to think about firing yours pretty seriously.
So the question is, does de-powering sorcerer classes by creating a game-wide arms race for Thaum, combo disciplines etc. outweigh the grumblies you get from having a single Luthias-level mage running around murdering PC's unopposed and unstoppable for years at a stretch?
I personally don't think the arms race mentality serves the game very well, or the community. I dislike the 150 long web pages of house rules we now have to govern this power bloat too, and I think a single player with power bloat is WAY easier to handle as an HST than a game full. I'd rather deal with THAT GUY than all of this overbloat in rules and powers.
Nothing fills the joy stocking of a power gamer more than to have a customizable system of some kind. There is no system that allows for unstructured modification that a power gamer cannot break and use to 'win' the game with. Anytime you allow the stacking of powers and equipment that may be constantly improved, you open up the game abuse. Storytellers should have an interest in game balance that does not allow for this kind of abuse in my opinion. Those that don't are doing it wrong in my opinion.
Next Up: What I want from a Reset
