[Torg] metapower vs advancement, reconsolidation

[Benjamin Grant]

Scott - awesome reply, you have no idea how grateful I am for it! :)

I need to read it more thoroughly, and in depth, perhaps a few times, before
I reply to it, but I wanted you to know I saw it and am excited.  More
soonish.

(The reason I can't go through it right now, is ironically enough, I have a
Torg game to get to shortly.  And this is after playing in another Torg game
on Tuesday. ;)  An embarrassment of riches.)

>From the bottom of my heart, thanks! :)

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


> -----Original Message-----
> From: torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com [mailto:torg-
> bounces at justintimeadventures.com] On Behalf Of Scott Schultz
> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:10 PM
> To: torg at justintimeadventures.com
> Subject: Re: [Torg] metapower vs advancement, reconsolidation
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > 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.
> >
> 
> I'm trying to think of a polite way to say "Lighten up". *heh* Let's
> say that disagreement is part of discussion. It's better to assume that
> the people you're debating with have no emotional investment until
> demonstrated otherwise, than to imagine an emotional investment that
> isn't there.
> 
> However, if the half-empty thing came off as judgemental, then let's
> put that aside and focus on the other points that I feel your proposed
> changes aren't addressing.
> 
> 1) Penalty for success/Other games reward success with advancement -
> I'm repeating myself here but I feel that you and Mike are missing a
> vital point here. Namely that the mechanic in question has nothing to
> do with rewarding success. It has to do with CREATING success where it
> didn't previously exist. If the possibility mechanic didn't exist,
> there would be no success to give a reward for.
> 
> In a typical RPG, Bill and Ted are chasing Dr. Mobius. Mobius uses his
> rocket boots to leap a chasm. Ted says "Crap!" Bill say "Geronimo!" and
> rolls the dice. He either rolls low and falls to his death or he rolls
> miraculously and everyone says "Dude! That was awesome!" and the GM
> gives him some extra XP just for bravado.
> 
> In Torg, Bill rolls low, misses his hold, and says "Wait! I'll spend a
> possibility!" He rolls again and with the possbility boost, he manages
> to make his dex roll (or whatever), grabs a hanging branch and pulls
> himself up to continue the chase.
> 
> If you now say "Well, he succeeded so he should be rewarded extra just
> like the first example" you're turning the XP reward into a zero-sum
> game. You're ignoring the fact that the success was engineered by the
> player effectively "cheating".
> 
> Torg is all about cinematic action. That's what makes it different from
> most other games and the possibility mechanic is there to encourage
> cinematic action. A possibility-engineered success is qualitatively
> different than the same kind of success happening "naturally". You
> can't compare the two and say they should be equally rewarding, IMO.
> 
> 2) Resource management - I'm repeating myself again, but as I said, I
> don't see the proposed solutions dealing with this aspect of the game.
> In fact, I see them being deliberately designed to eliminate it.
> 
> This is a case of YMMV. Some of us view this part of the game as one of
> its charms. What I hear you saying with the whole Bill, Ted, and Bob
> thing is "Everyone should always have equal opportunity to advance,
> despite the decisions they make while playing the game."
> 
> That's a perfectly valid design philosphy. It's also a tried-and-true
> design philosophy. Essentially, I hear you saying "Bill has the
> opportunity to make decisions that will gimp his character down the
> road in comparison to Ted and Bob, who choose skill advancement over
> gameplay."
> 
> Yes, you're correct. My response, is "So what?" I don't see this as a
> problem that requires correction. Bill is having fun running wild with
> his possibilities during game encounters or he wouldn't be playing that
> way. If everyone's having fun,what's the problem? You are looking at
> Bill's playstyle and judging it to be inadequate and attempting to "fix
> it" so that he can't make that decision.
> 
> This isn't a bad thing. MMO designers make these kinds of decisions all
> of the time. City of Heroes, for instance, was re-designed from the
> ground up halfway through development for this very reason. The system
> was uber-flexible, and it was judged to be "too flexible" because it
> allowed players to make decisions like being invulnerable while being
> unable to hit anything.
> 
> Torg isn't an MMO, though. If Bill wants to spend his possibilities
> playing Indiana Jones instead of building up his character, that's his
> perogative. The fact that "other games use a different model" is
> exactly what makes Torg worth playing instead of those other games.
> 
> Now, if the discussion is supposed to be "Forget Torg. What do you
> think of the idea of having two pools: a pool of "fate points" and a
> pool of "skill points"?" then that's a different ball of wax. I'd have
> to play it in order to judge, mostly because it would depend on how and
> why the "fate points" are awarded and spent. "Fate points", while
> uncommon, are not a new idea. I mentioned Top Secret, and there are
> other games with similar mechanics. The rolling of "fate points" and XP
> into a single resource is something that is unique to Torg as far as I
> know. It makes the game distinctly "TORG" as opposed to "a game with
> fate points".
> 
> Okay, so let's look at "fate points" as currency. In any game with
> currency being generated out of thin air, you eventually have to come
> up with a "currency sink" that pulls it back out of the game or else
> the players will become filthy rich and the currency loses its value.
> 
> Under the stock Torg system, possibilites enter the system as act
> rewards and mission-complete rewards. They drain out during gameplay
> and during skill advancement.
> 
> Splitting possibilities into "fate points" and "skill points" means
> that you're replacing one currency with two. As GM, you now have to
> manage two different pools of resources. Further, you have to provide
> "currency sinks" for both kinds of currency.
> 
> Skills advancement will take care of the "skill points". However, you
> have to make sure that you're giving out fewer "skill points" than you
> were previously giving out as possibilities, or else the players will
> be demi-gods before you know it. This pushes the resource management
> from the player to the GM. For certain classes of GM's, that's
> perfectly acceptable. The players may or may not like getting fewer
> skill points to spend. As long as they get roughly the same skill
> advancement as previously, they probably won't complain.
> 
> "Fate points" are more problematic. There is no "currency sink" for
> "fate points". They either have to become really scarce in order to
> preserve their value, or the GM has to deliberately engineer his
> adventure so that it REQUIRES the use of lots of "fate points" to bring
> it to a successful conclusion. This runs the risk that players will
> feel manipulated into spending their currency when they would rather
> save it. It also means that the GM is forced to analyze every adventure
> from the standpoint of "how can I suck some "fate points" out of the
> players?"
> 
> Stingy players will conceivably save all of their "fate points" forever
> until they have a giant pool of them waiting for the one adventure
> where they blow them all turning some really challenging adventure into
> a cake walk.
> 
> Essentially, "fate points" become a game mechanic that pits the GM
> against the players as adversaries.
> 
> The possibility mechanic that treats "fate points" and "skill points"
> as a single resource is a mechanic that provides two different "sinks"
> for a single currency. There's no inflation unless the GM herself goes
> out of her way to create it. Since the supply of currency tends to
> remain at a predictable level, the GM can design her adventures with a
> reasonable idea of how the "fate points" may affect the outcome and
> focus on the dramatic encounters where they players are most likely to
> perceive there to be "bang for the buck", so to speak.
> 
> As for the other suggestion of skilling up when you use possibilities,
> I see that as something that's going to cause the players to metagame
> way too much. "One more tick and I get a dex point. Where's a chasm I
> can leap over?"
> 
> I hope that this comes off this time as a game design argument instead
> of as a religious argument. The bottom line for me is that the
> possibility mechanic is uniquely Torg and changing it in the fashion
> proposed is a step backward, not a step forward.
> 
> As a player, I like having the ability to decide for myself how to
> manage my resources and as a GM I like that the players are faced with
> the decision as to how to utilize their XP. Most games don't give you
> that choice. XP is just a ranking system and skill points, if they
> exists, are a spend once and forget 'em affair. I like that the players
> have options to buy some other less tangible reward with their XP.
> Removing that choice doesn't enhance the game for me, it makes it less
> interesting.
> 
> As always, YMMV.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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