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

[mneme]

It's characters like Hermione (and Data, and Spock, and Morollan) that attract me to systems like Dogs in the Vineyard, PTA, and even OTE -- where what balance is in the game isn't in the characters' power level, but in the narrative control they give over the game. Hermione isn't balanced by her power level, but by the fact that her abilities don't actually cause her to have much more of an effect on the story than any of the other major characters -- and less than Harry does.

Taking devil's advocate for a moment, however -- Hermione is the best of the PCs academically, has the most flexible magic. Harry is better at Dark Arts, and is a huge plot magnet (luck? destiny? something like that), as well as starting with a substantial Fame advantage, along with his big enemy disad. By contrast, Ron is personally weaker -- he's a mediocre magician and academian, and while he eventually gains reasonable skills, he never gets a serious specialty like Harry and Neville, much less gain magical equality with Hermione in any real manner. However, Hermione and even Harry don't have the kind of personal connections that Ron have -- which is significant on a multitude of levels; while Harry is an orphan with a hostile foster family, and Hermione's muggle family is irrelevant, Ron's family helps him and his friends in a multitude of ways -- from providing allies in school to transportation, shelter, and even allies against the Ministry when things go south. Ron's chess ability may be all but forgotten after the first book, and his greater presence in several books may have much more to do with his relationship to Harry than any in-game ability, but his family is a huge asset.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

So Ron is the guy whose player sunk all his points into Contacts?

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

So Ron is the guy whose player sunk all his points into Contacts?

Kinda. Josh is parroting back an argument I made to someone else in A&E, and he's dead right in that sense. It takes the right kind of player to realize that while is character sheet says "Ron", he's actually playing "the Weasley Family", and the right sort of GM to not override the player's input on hs family actions. I expect that for maximal fun in play, Ron's player would be playing just Ron in book 1, were he is on par with the other heroes, but as the series progressed he'd be able to jump to playing any of the Weasley family. That keeps the player just as involved even as his initiial PC becomes more and more secondary.

It can work, but not if the GM treats it as "your 100 points in Contacts and Allies gives everyone else the same benefit you paid for, so you're functionally a point repository." That's much less fun.

[mneme]

Pretty much, yeah. (though I suspect I was paralleling your argument, as I don't remember it at all! :)

And yeah -- for this to work, the -player- need to have control (and, for some purposes, narration rights) over "the weasely family" -- either the ability to play them as the character recedes a bit, or at least to use them to solve problems actively and help narrate the results; it's can't be "you spend 100 points in contacts, so I play your contacts rather than you playing your character a lot of the time", nor can it be, as you say above, the player being a point repository for resources that give power/presence to everyone equally.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

where what balance is in the game isn't in the characters' power level, but in the narrative control they give over the game.

I trust by now you know me well enough to know we're in the same camp there. (and I do believe I raised exactly that argument about Ron with either Ty or Louis a few month's back.... Thanks for reminding me).

I suppose in part a backlash of desinging a new system is a temporary lack of trust in my player pool. The best way to model most characters for a narrative game is to trust the players not to take undue advantage of the abilities you give them. However, since I am trying to build a system that players will read and think is Potteresque then I need slightly more of a framework than just narrative trust.

As for Harry's control of the plot, well, that's a traditional gaming scenario. Either he got a scad of points for an Enemy that the rest of the players then had to help him with, or it's like Buffy where the other players all realize that because this is a game about the Slayer, the Slayer PC gets a higher share of the power and limelight - if you don't like that, it's time to find a new game.

Since I don't have to worry about Harry, nor do I intend to have a giant child of prophecy plot magnet in the game, I don't have to worry about balancing that.

[adoxograph.livejournal.com]

there are always other prophecies....