[Torg] Jumping in Torg

[Phil Dack]

--- On Thu, 11/12/08, Benjamin Grant <benn at 4efix.com> wrote:
From: Benjamin Grant <benn at 4efix.com>
> I am not a fan of an approach that only suits people who want to play 
> Batman and tells people who want to play the Flash that they are 
> out of luck.

If you'd said your issue was with games that require you to think of every possible effect in advance, or bog you down with detail, those are valid concerns. An effect-based game does not explicitly prohibit playing any particular character, even game-breakers such as Flash.

To return to the original jumping argument, however, I'll go back and summarise the reason I disagree with your approach. But your mileage clear varies:

1. To me, Torg is more effects-based than powers-based, so when you buy super-running all you do is the ability to run (specific game effect) faster. You benefit from any direct game correlations, such as collision damage, but do not benefit from other correlations that may exist in the real world but do not currently exist in the game. That's a judgement call, and yours differs. There's no right or wrong here.

2. I think bringing real world physics into a superhero game is just plain nuts. There is no way for any bipedal creature to accelerate itself speeds of 7,500 mph and survive without significant protection (eg a spaceship). Given this is the case, why should it follow that the laws of physics that says "great speed = great leaping ability" follow, when the laws that say "great speed = great friction", "great speed = great mass", "great speed = great energy requirement" clearly don't apply.

3. I don't know the canon particularly well, but I'm familiar with Flash and followed the recent reinvention of the JLA for several years, and he's never leapt in all the books I read IIRC. Equally, I'm not aware of Quicksilver being known for jumping about the place either. I always feel that superheroics as a game is highly genre-driven, and there's little in the genre that I know that suggests either of them should be able to leap great distances.

4. I know superhero rpgs very well, and I don't know of a single game that associates running speed with leaping. Many of these games do a good job of recreating the genre, and in all my years of reading, playing and contributing to forums, I've never previously come across the suggestion that leaping should be linked to speed. Not proof that it shouldn't, but it's circumstantial evidence in support of point 3.

And finally, a new point!

5. Superheroics is all about power stunts, as Travis or Smooge mentioned. I could definitely foresee a power stunt where a speedster ran up a ramp and leaped huge distances for a specific purpose. The difference here is that in the realms of a power stunt a superhero can achieve things that they would never otherwise be able to achieve (cheesy examples: think Batman producing a kryptonite arrow; superman flying backwards around the Earth to reverse time; Beast coming up with a way for Storm to conduct lightning through Wolverine's adamantine to turn him into a human electro-magnet). If Flash starts regularly building ramps using his superspeed, then it sounds to me like he's investing in a limited version of the Superjump power, and should buy it accordingly rather than trying to get it as a freebie.

Now all of that is simply how I would rule in my game. But I am a fearful GM who loves effect-based powers because of the awesome control they allow me to exert over my puny players. Or something like that.

Phil



      
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