[Torg] Awards

[Benjamin Grant]

> > In Torg, possibilities are obviously key.  An opponent with 30 of
> them will
> > be more of an issue than an opponent with 2.  However, let's say that
> since
> > each PC starts out with 10, a GM decides that each p-rated villain
> should
> > start out with 10.  Or even worse, a GM could say to himself that
> since the
> > villain is a mature character, maybe he has 15, or 20.
> 
> If you think it's "even worse" that a mature character might have as
> many as 20 P-Points, you must think the many published NPCs who have
> more than that in their writeups are the worst things ever!

Ah, I don't use modules - am driven to create my own stories when GMing.

> > We are employing a simple system that solves ALL of the above.  Here
> it is:
> 
> > In a standard scene, the non-PC side should have a total of X
> possibilities
> > available to them, where X equals the number of possibility rated
> characters
> > on the hero's (PCs and protagonists') side.  In a full dramatic scene
> (which
> > should happen less than once per session at the start of an Arc, once
> per
> > session in the middle, and maybe a couple of times per session near
> the
> > Arc's end), the antagonists' side should get three times that number.
> 
> The published rules suggest that the villains' side should have "around
> two Possibility points per player character they face" in Dramatic
> scenes (Adventure Book, p9). They don't give any advice for Standard
> scenes because they say you shouldn't be facing P-Rated opponents in
> Standard scenes (ibid).
> 
> On the other hand, they made these guidelines based on an assumption of
> player behavior that I hardly ever encountered in my games - it says
> that PCs should not have to spend more than one P-Point during fights
> in
> Standard scenes and should only spend two P-Points in Dramatic scenes.
> Twice that is more like it in my experiences, and that's not counting
> the players who would burn through dozens of P-Points every adventure
> simply because they refused to accept any failure, a bad or mediocre
> die
> roll always had to be augmented with cards and/or a P-Point!

Yup, I based the rule off of some quick numbers that seemed to make sense:

Assuming that NPCs are expected to use all the possies they have per scene
under those rules, and assuming that to maintain parity the PCs would also
have to expend about the same amount, in a dramatic scene with 3 players,
the antagonist side would have 9 possies to spend, therefor the players
would probably want to spend about 3 possies each (to maintain parity)  If
there are also a non dramatic scene with p-rated antagonists, they would
probably spend 1 per player to maintain parity.  Then there's just the
moments in which the players roll crappily and want to fix it for style
reasons.  If you figure maybe one dramatic scene and 4 standard scenes,
that's an average of 6-7 possies per session the players would need to spend
overall.  Maybe slightly less.

So this forces the players to spend faster than they can make them up, until
the end of the adventure, when they get all of them back and have a surplus
besides.  They spend the surplus on raising skills, and we start again.


> [...]
> 
> > Furthermore, with these limits, you do not have to track the
> possibilities a
> > villain has from scene to scene - no matter how many they had last
> scene,
> > each scene is different and starts off with a fresh batch for the
> villains.
> 
> That I actually find unfair - if Wu Han goes from 10 to 3 P-Points in
> Act One after an encounter with the PCs, having him back at 10 PP
> when they meet him again in Act Two means all the effort the PCs put
> into reducing his PP total in the preceeding Act was for nothing. And
> from the PC point of view, if they only earned 1-3 P-Points at the end
> of the previous Act, why does Wu Han rate earning 7 PP at the end of
> the previous Act?
> 
> --
> Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
> Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html

Yes, I agree - people who assume that their pet villain should start of the
scene with 20 possibilities each time is unbalanced.  I think someone on
this list said something like that.  You can't just say "guess what, he's
back at 20" every session.

On the other hand, my method doesn't give Wu-Han *any* possibilities -
instead, it give a precise number of possibilities to the entire antagonist
side that all p-rated members of that side share.  It's a fairly moderate
amount, equal to (in dramatic scenes) 3 possies per p-rated protagonist.

Therefor the players have a choice - outspend the antagonists, but have
fewer possies to fight them next time (makes sense), spend equal to the
villains, and have parity with the villains next time, or spend fewer this
time and have a surplus versus the villains next time.  It's all under the
player's control since the number of possies the villains are getting is
always the same.

Note, the players also get drama cards, which the villains do not - this is
of course another whole source of possies for the players to spend.  In our
game where we use Hero points instead of cards, the players get 3 HP per
session (which expire at the session's end) - this means that they have 3
possibilities *extra* (through converting Hero Points into rerolls or damage
reduction) each session.  So actually, the players have a bit of an
advantage.

Btw, we play a supers game, and one of the mechanics is that all supers are
p-rated.  However, not all supers are made equally.  Plus, some non supers
are also p-rated.  Bottom line, scenes are quite possible where the players
go up against a antagonist that is not terribly difficult to defeat, even if
he is p-rated.  So we do not insist that every scene with an p-rated
antagonist be considered a dramatic scene.  Instead, we define a scene as
dramatic by its intensity, importance, and how much the outcome is in doubt.
In other words, the the scene isn't dramatic with a small "d", we do not
qualify it for Dramatic with a big "D". 

-Benn Grant
eFix Computer Consulting
benn at 4eFix.com
603.283.6601