[Torg] metapower vs advancement, reconsolidation

Thu Mar 12 08:48:05 EDT 2009

Wow, lotsa of replies and thoughts.  Cool.

Everyone seems to be saying the same thing as everyone else, Jeff and Andrew
aside.  Less cool, but what can you do. ;)

(By the way, this post will probably not be skimmable and if one only reads
the top 3 paragraphs, one will not get the purpose of this post.  In other
words, one will have to skip this post, or carefully read the whole thing.)

I think some interesting points got raised.  Firstly, I think Travis has
brought to our attention certain assumptions that need to be taken to their
logical conclusion.  Dominic mentions the lack of Metapower in other game
systems - and also shares his experiences about what players will or will
not save for.  Scott bring up a glass-half-empty versus glass-half-full
paradigm to this conversation which may be less helpful than it might first
appear.  I hope to address all of these points as we go here.

It's important that we start with you, Travis.  Let's simplify some of what
you are saying.

You note that anyone can spend possibilities, and that does not necessarily
equate to adventure success.  Well that's true, one could spend
possibilities on minor stuff that one just can't let a failed roll stand
for.  However, the fact that possibilities can be spent ineffectively does
not add anything that I can see to the discussion, so let's assume for the
sake of argument the following two players:  Bob, who spend his
possibilities intelligently and effectively to help bring about the
successful resolution of the adventure goals, and Ted, who also works hard
and places his character at risk in order to try to accomplish adventure
goals - and helps out quite a bit - but stops *short* of spending very many
possibilities.

For the sake of argument, let's say that both Bob and Ted start off the
session with  10 possibilities.  Let's also say that both Bob and Ted would
really like to eventually raise their Dodge skill (both have a +2), their
Fire Combat skill (both have a +3) and their NCI skill (Bob has Trick and
Ted has Taunt, both have a +2).  This means to do all that, both would have
to spend 10 possibilities.  However, in this game skill advancement occurs
at the end of the session, so they put that off for now, and begin the game.

Bob plays extremely effectively, throwing himself into the fray, making good
choices, and spending his possibilities freely in each circumstance where
that greatly aids the successful resolution of the Act.  By the end of the
Act, Bob has spent ALL 10 possibilities, but each and every expenditure has
been effective and spent towards the successful resolution of the story.

Ted really REALLY wants those three skill to go up - so he spends NO
possibilities.  However, he is NOT hanging back - instead he is trying to
"make up for that" by doing the opposite - he also jumps into the fight
without hesitation, he plays even more carefully, trying to outthink every
challenge so as need fewer possibilities.  He takes some real damage to his
character that he does not buy off, and by the end of the session, he has
two Wounds.  In other words, he is not coasting, he is doing everything
*short* of possibility expenditure.  Also, the failures that do occur as a
result of not being willing to spend the possies he utterly accepts, and has
the philosophy of "temporary failure = more story drama, more roleplaying
(as opposed to roll-playing) possibilities (no pun intended) with the reward
for be willing to explore a storyline based on lack of success being more
story power later with greater skills.

At the end of the session Ted's the star, but Bob's story is also
compelling.  However, at the end of the session, Bob raises all three skills
he had been planning to, while Ted is lucky to be able to raise one.

So right off, we can see that not spending ones possibilities does not mean
that one is coasting.  Let's agree that point is proven.  Now let's address
your (Travis') point about the awards b eing able to fix the dilemma of
metapower vs advancement:

We know that before the awards are given out, that Bob spent (and spent
well) 10 more possibilities than  Ted did.  When the GM hand out awards,
assuming that Travis' point that Bob will get more possibilities awarded to
him is true (and we will also ask later if it should be), the following are
the three ways it could go:

.         Bob gets *less than* ten possibilities more awarded to him than
Ted got.

.         Bob gets *exactly* ten possibilities more than Ted got.

.         Bob gets *more than* ten possibilities more than Ted got.

If it is the first option, then Ted still comes out ahead as far as
possibilities go.  That is, that Ted is getting more advancement than Bob
*because* he held back on spending them.  And thus Ted will over time as
this continue have a more effective character to game with.  This outcome
*proves* my assertion that it *is* a dilemma in Torg - that you have to
*choose* between metapower and advancement.

The only way to escape the dilemma is for the GM to always make *certain*
that when he awards possibilities, he make sure that the result is option 2
or 3, that the GM makes sure that well-spent possibilities always increase
the award of the spender by no less than that amount.  In effect, the GM is
saying to the player, "If you spend your possibilities well, they will all
be returned to you in the award over and above if you hadn't spent them."

Well you could do that, but that I think would be wrong on many counts.  For
one thing, Torg has specific guidelines on how many possibilities to award.
It is conceivable that a character could save up over time an amount of
possibilities, and then throughout an Arc, spend (in a very effective and
well chosen way) 40 possibilties or more.  It is unlikely given Torg's
guidelines that he will get everyone one of those back - that his awards
will be 30 possibilities more than the other player who only spent 10
throughout the Arc.  That is, unless you abandon the Torg award guidelines
completely.

But let's say you *do* abandon them completely, because you as a GM are
*committed* to making sure that whatever award Ted gets for spending *no*
possibilities, Bob gets the amount of possibilities he spent (at least)
*more* than Ted back.  OK.

Well, as a GM, you will not be able to accomplish that goal without tracking
each expenditure of a possibility precisely.  Congratulations, you have now
become the possibility point sending record keeper.  Now, every time anyone
spend a possibility, you need to decide in the moment if the expenditure was
a "good" one (one worth rewarding) and need to write it down, to make sure
later that you give it back.  

If you actually do all this, guess what happens?  Now all players know that
a well spent possibility is nothing more than a possibility boomerang - that
it is guaranteed to come back during the awards.  So they all start spending
them without hesitation, still, not on dumb stuff, but on success-enhancing
stuff.  And as the adventure goes on, as over the course of months, one can
expect the players to have more and more possibilities to spend, since they
not only get the "boomerang" awards, but the basic awards as well. By the
time 6 months have passed you may have gone through 24 Acts, perhaps 4 Arcs.
Let's assume conservatively that they get an Act award of around a miserly 1
possibility apart from the "boomerang" ones, and miserly 6 possibilities per
Arc, apart from the "boomerang" ones.  This means that if they do not raise
their skills, and if we continue to examine players that spend their
possibilities wisely, therefor qualifying for the "boomerang" GM possy
giveback, at the end of the six month the character will have 48
possibilities.  Now in the fifth arc, the character can spend 48 extra
possibilities, and so long as he spends them "well", he knows that they will
be returned to him in awards.  And if the awards are not so miserly, and you
count the effect of glories, dramas, etc, he could be at 70-100!!  That's
70-100 possibilities he can know spend to overrun the story, knowing that
each of those will boomerang back to him anyways if he spends them "well".

To my way of thinking, this is broken. I cannot imagine ANY GM actually
doing this.  This means that of the three options, the truth is probably
that the GM will NOT give back to Bob ALL ten possies he spent, which means
that Ted DOES get to advance more, and the dilemma of spending metapower
versus gaining advancement is alive and well.

So, Travis, you can see that the idea of Bob simply getting more wards
points for his higher expenditure of possibilities does not remove the
choice, without a guarantee and the virtual creation of "boomerang"
possibilities, which is I think every less Torg like.

I ought to point out two further things at this juncture.  Firstly, In many
of the other responses, people on this list don't *want* the dilemma to
away.  Travis, if you increase the award to "bounce back" the possibilities
back to Bob, you *remove* the need to choose which is more important,
metapower or advancement, and according to many fellow listees, they *want*
to have to choose one or the other, without getting both.

A smaller, second, aside.  In the above example, I am not sure that Ted
deserves a lesser award than Bob in the first place!  Sure, Ted refused to
spend possibilities, but he still threw himself into the game in all other
respects.  He thought through the session, probably more deeply than Bob.
He certainly got more wounded than Bob.  Are you so sure we should reward
his gung-ho, willingness to take his lumps in game, and clever play with
fewer rewards than Bob?

So I think this effectively demolishes the idea that in Torg the dilemma
does not exist.  Torg as we know *forces* you as a player to choose: if you
spend your possibilities for metapower now, you WILL have less character
advancement later.

Now, let me address Dominic's points.  Dominic said that many games do not
have metapower, and that is true.  D&D doesn't, to the best of my knowledge.
However, almost all games have advancement - not all, but just about.  In
any game that has both metapower and advancement, there are precisely three
ways to handle it, not one. There is:

1.       Metapower versus Advancement(MVA) - the Torg approach.  

2.       One Yields The Other (OYTO) - the idea that for example spending
Metapower points for rerolls makes you advance in the skills you get the
rerolls for.

3.       They Are Completely Separate (TACS) - that points spent for
metapower and points spent for advancement are different and do not convert
into each other.

So sure, Dominic, some games do not have metapower, but the ones that do
still have a decision to make.  Torg's way of doing it is only one way to do
so.

Dominic also says, and I quote "In my experience, players will not save for
Taunt, Test, or some other minor skill like that. If they save, it's for a
major expenditure. For me, a major expenditure consists of any of the
following: an attribute point, "special effect enablers" (such as a magic
skill, arcane knowledge, faith, focus, weird science, or psionics), medicine
skill for a party with no healing, or reality."

I cannot tell you your experiences are wrong, but boy oh boy are they NOT
the experiences I have had over playing this game since it has come out.  My
players (and I as a player) raise not only the "supernatural/power skills"
but also:

.         Dodge - I have seen unholy characters with a dodge of +10

.         Fire Combat/Melee Weapons/Unarmed Combat - I mean, how else are
you gonna fight when the chips are down?

.         Non-Combat Interaction and related skills (Trick, Test,
Intimidate, Maneuver, Taunt, Charm, Persuade)

.         Even skills like Stealth, Willpower, and Find I have seen greatly
pursued.

Let me tell you about one of *my* character, Cad Calloway.  He is a
super-powered character like the Flash.  But that's not the most fun thing
about him.  He has a 13 Charisma, and has invested *heavily* in Charm,
Persuade, and especially Taunt.  He can *often* (especially if he spends
some metapower in addition, but even without that) get into player's call
territory.  (I think his Taunt is around +7 or something - and it's still
going up)  If you players are only pursuing that narrow range of skills that
you say, they are missing the boat and their GM perhaps ought to explain to
them the power of some of the other skills.  

Even a skill like Stealth, if raised enough, can be awesome.  In my time,
with single minded player I have often seen +10 add in skills, or close to
it.  With an appropriate underlying attribute of 12 or 13, a Stealth of 22
to 23, it allows one to virtually have invisibility!

Finally, the whole glass half-empty or half-full thoughts that Scott brought
up but many have repeated, I have to say that it seems to me that this
misses the boat entirely, and I will tell you why:

It's not about half-empty or half-full - that implies that the central
conversation is about whether the dilemma of MVA (explained above if you
skipped the middle of this post) is a good thinig or a bad thing.

I need to type the next sentence in all caps, something I almost never do,
but it is that important - please forgive my breach of etiquette:

THIS IS NOT ABOUT HOW "GOOD" OR "BAD" TORG'S EXISTING WAY OF DOING THIS IS,
IT IS INSTEAD ABOUT COMPARING AND CONTRASTING DIFFERENT APPORACHES TO THIS
ISSUE, WITHOUT MORAL JUDGEMENT.

Every single post since my original one (apart from possibly ones that have
come in since I starting writing this post back in the '80s, grin - and of
course apart from Andrew's and Jeff's comments) has largely failed to
embrace this.  Instead, mostly people's responses vary from "Torg isn't
bad/broken" to "If you change this about Torg, it stops being Torg.", but
none of those responses are on point.

Of the three ways to handle the metapower vs advancement issue - MVA, OYTO,
and TACS, it is possible - even probable - that NONE of them are bad *per
se*, and that ALL have their place, depending on the goals of the GM and the
players.

What I am curious about, what I have been interested in since the beginning,
is how does the nature of an RPG change, depending on whether it uses MVA,
OYTO, or TACS?  As Torg is one of the few RPGs to truly embrace metapower at
all, and as Torg may be one of the most mod-friendly games out there due to
its brilliant core design, a Torg crowd ought to be a great place to ask
this question.

Unless they mistaken think that you are saying that Torg's choice was the
wrong one.   Grrr.

Heh.

-Benn Grant

eFix Computer Consulting

 <mailto:benn at 4eFix.com> benn at 4eFix.com

603.283.6601

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