Being PC

[subplotkudzu]

Recently viktor_haagand I were having a discussion about the merits of using rulebook space for the character sheets of the source material's stars. Do such character sheets serve any of value?

 

So I just wanted to give a shout out to a game that got it right. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG's revised core rulebook has character sheets for each of the major characters, from Buffy and Giles down to Dawn and Tara, statted for their first appearance. Each character then has season by season and episode by episode text showing you where they improved and why. (For example, this entry for Willow, episode 2:20 "Go Fish: Willow shows her interest in leading interrogatories. Her Influence skill rises to two.")

 

As a GM this is exactly what I need. If I'm one of those people who wants to run a game set in 1990's Sunnydale or use one of these PCs as a guest star or major NPC (say, a campaign of Willow running a training coven in post-show continuity) then I have the characters prepared to the very moment I want to diverge the timeline. But even if I don't need then for that purpose, this set up also provides me with as detailed an example of character experience and progression as I could ever want - on par with chadu's ZOZ campaign example.

 

There's one other thing that this game does that I have never seen before. The tendency in licensed games (outside of supers settings) is to make the original heroes insanely skilled. It's rare that they produce stats that player designed characters can ever approach. In that light the decision to stat the starting Scoobies Xander and Willow as WORSE than a starting PC is an interesting one. The design team statted what they saw on the screen, which came out close but not exact to the hard and fast mechanics of character creation - all of the season 1 characters come close enough. It certainly gives the GM a tool to use on anyone complaining about how their starting White Hat sucks - you're better than Xander, and he got to save the day all the time.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That must be a second edition innovation; my first edition doesn't have it, though it does have a general discussion of character progression. It sounds useful.

If you have a chance to pick up The Magic Box, I highly recommend it. It has the best rules I've ever seen for making up spells on the fly. I can send you my rules for spell research based on it if you think you'd like to take a look at them.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would love to take a look at it.

I'm not sure where I could find a copy of The Magic Box around here. I was only able to secure the BTVS corebook on a trip into NYC, it's out of print and most of the game stores in my area are very d20 centered. As I'm just running a 1 shot next weekend and I'm booked for other games for the next year the 4 pages on spell construction in the revised core book meet my immediate need.

I did notice a lot of spellcasting in the Boca Del Infeirno writeup, more than I expected to be honest. I suppose with a half demon and a witch in the white hats I should't be surprised, but while it balanced the characters somme it gave the game a different feel than the early seasons of the show. To keep things simple next weekend only one possible PC, the Watcher, will have any spellcasting experience and no levels of sorcery. They might be able to pull off a ritual, but that's as much as I want to deal with in a 1 shot.

[ladegard.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a copy on my black book shelf of RPGs, top shelf, about 8 inches from the left. Want to borrow it?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind PDFs, it's available through http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/ at a discount from the hard copy price.

I eventually worked out the spell research rules in self-defense—because the players for the Watcher, the witch, and the half-demon kept wanting to have their characters cast spells, or research spells, and the published rules gave me no guidance on how to figure out if a spell was available. The only PCs with no magical abilities are the Slayer and the soldier. So this is much more like season three or four than like season one. The rules I made up allow a variety of interesting problems with spell research, which replicate some of the magical catastrophes that Willow has touched off over the years.

[mneme]

I wouldn't say they insanely skill up the original media as that they tend to underpower the game (compared to the media it's based on. But it amounts to the same thing.

That they -didn't- do this in Buffy is quite impressive.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure of that, unless I'm not understanding you.

I tend to box up the supers genre and set it to the side because while DC Heroes builds Superman on 5000 points and suggests starting PCs get 450, it also has simple rules for multiplying starting points, but outside of that, I have two examples to hand.

In my Star Trek game Captain Sakhet is a qualified TOS era Captain - strong, smart, combat worthy and highly diplomatic - though she has a lot of room to grow. She has 15 Advances, five of which were earned in play over the first 20 months of her 5 year voyage; she'll probably end the series with 25 advances. Kirk, the prototypical TOS era captain, by contrast, is statted with 66 advances by the end of his 5 year voyage. His stats and skills are so high you wonder how anything ever challenged him .

In the WEG Star Wars the starting PCs are really talented, as befits a space opera hero. Normal people have 1-3d in stats and 4 d in their professional skills, while starting PCs have 2-4d in stats and up to 6 d in their important skills. Engeddi Degal, my old campaign's ships mechanic and former mercenary, ended the game with an insane 7d in Starship Repair. I had problems even pitching problems at him because Heroic/nigh impossible actions had a difficulty of 30 and his average roll was 25 - with a Force point there was nothing he couldn't fix. He also had a highly respectable 5d in Blaster and 4d in Piloting, and the character was all around highly skilled and heroically capable.

According to the source book Chewbacca ends a New Hope with 10d+2 in Starship repair, 9d with his Bowcaster and 8d in Piloting (and another 10d in brawling). If I as a GM couldn't find realistic challenges for Engeeddi's 7d in repair, how am I supposed to handle a skill where the average roll does the nigh impossible? Especially since in the movies we see Chewie have problems on a lot of occasions - the viewer comes away thinking that the wookie is good, but not that good. He's just better than your PC is ever going to see, while at the same time screwing up a lot….

As a thought exercise I once statted out the movie heroes in SW as if they were realistic PCs: picked started them in New Hope from scratch, bumped up their skills over the first two movies with XP awards that players could expect. Chewie came out with 6d of starship repair, 4d of bowcaster and 6d+2 in Brawling. This is what the system would support in my experience, and the over-inflated scores they gave him were neither justified nor functional.

[mneme]

I think they're two separate problems, which sometimes combine.

RPGs tend to set the power level of the game below that of the source material. (Amber, Vampire (in its fashion), D&D (in its fashion)), wimping out on the experience they promised to deliver.

RPGs also tend to over-value the original cast of the source material (Amber, ST, SW).