The Spock/Herminone Problem

[subplotkudzu]

 No, not slash fic. 

I'm absently noodling on ideas for the potential Potter game (remember fans, prospectus deadline is Thursday!), and I'm wondering how to stat out Hermione. She, like Spock before her, is just too good at everything in comparison to the other characters. She's smarter and better read than either of them (and most Ravenclaws!), better at magic in a casual casting and just as good if not better than Ron in magic in combat.  She's just as brave and steadfast as Ron (if not more so), and based on her boundless desire to do well and exceed the school's expectations does not lack for ambition - clearly she has more ambition than Ron as well. Finally, she's no less socially adept than her partners in adventure, in part because none of them are overly socially adept. 

She does have some weaknesses - she's muggle born, and unattractive thanks to her teeth and hair in the first few books. And she can come across as an insufferable know it all. But that's no worse than Ron's relative poverty and lack of confidence compared to his brothers, or Harry's eleventy-skillion ranks in the "enemy" disadvantage. We have no idea how good she is at Quidditch, but she isn't inept on a broom.

In short, she, like Spock (and too an extent Data) look like the PCs built by the players who had read the rulebook with an eye for point breaks - insanely good at key skills, not bad at anything that matters. I want my players to be able to build characters that can mirror the books' heroes if they choose, but the little red headed muggle is giving me grief.

Comments

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Trying to stat Hermione is a lot like trying to stat Wesley, hint hint.

Putting it in the kindest possible terms, she's a DMPC.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Putting it in the kindest possible terms, she's a DMPC.

Others on this thread have agreed, but I don't see it that way. As Josh pointed out, she doesn't have an overwhelming effect on the story, she's just as much in the thick of things as Harry and Ron and she's very well fleshed out. To my eyes se's clearly a PC - she's just a more efficiently designed PC, and hence my problem.

Designing a Harry Potter mechanic that can't accomidate Hermione as a PC is like building a Star Trek mechanic that can't handle Spock: it's broken from the get go. It doesn't matter that the game is taking place before Hermione gets to the school so she can't be played as a character and won't appear as an NPC. If a player comes and says that they want to play a character modeled on one of the three main protagonists in the book and I say it's not possible then I'd feel like I'd done a poor job in recreating Potter's universe.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

How many points is "Played by Spouse of the GM" worth? I think most people would agree that it's a very real advantage, but can it be quantitized in-game? Or how about simply "GM's Favorite"? (Let's face it, in most groups, the GM likes some PCs more than others.)

That's what you're up against, IMO: meta-game considerations.

Honestly, I think the best way you could duplicate the feel of the book characters is to give Harry to a player who's very enthusiastic but isn't good at planning, Ron to the guy who's there to roll dice and eat Cheetos and make pop culture quotes, and Hermione to your SO or other favored player who will enjoy the attention and spend most of the evening relaying the plot-dumps that you pass to her in notes.

[mneme]

Eh. If anything, Harry's the "Gary Stew/Favored player" character. Hermione is the arch typical "geek" stereotype -- it's very relevant that while she solves problems and is presented as very competent, she typically is -less- relevant to the story than Harry or even Ron; this is most blatant in the Prisoner of Azkaban, where her use of the Time Turner was key but also meant she wasn't part of a lot of the lead-in, but it's also very true in other books.

It's far, far more interesting to examine Hermione as a balanced PC than to relegate her to NPC (now, Merlin, OTOH, or Gandalf, or Dumbledore -- -those- are clearly NPC types, for a multitude of reasons).

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

It seems to me the analog of Hermione is Willow Rosenberg. Starts out as a fairly ineffective nerd, becomes useful through research skills, learns powerful magic, ends up as a big gun. While in the meantime Xander starts out as a fairly ineffective comic relief character, gains a bit more confidence and some combat skills, but really is the same Xander at the end.

In my campaign Boca del Infierno, one of the players handily simulated this by having his Watcher spend every single point he earned on drama points. He was repeatedly saved by dramatic coincidence, but never got any more skilled. In the meantime, the other white hats' players were spending their eeps on stats and skills.