[Torg] metapower vs advancement, reconsolidation

[Michael Jason Teegarden]

Hello, all,

Ahhh ... these examples have definitely helped clarify what we are discussing.  I point out a few differences here in our thinking.  :)

You wrote:
"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."

Actually, I do get the point.  I just do not agree with it, nor do I believe the point is expressed in the best way.  I do not agree that the mechanic in question has to have anything to do with rewarding success.  This is not its purpose.  The GM herself/himself is the one to reward the player by giving possibilities to the character.  And, at least in my own GM style, I do not give out possibilities based on a character making high, excellent die rolls, playing cards in successful fashions, and other successes.  To me, a player's success or failure does not directly lead to Possibility awards.  

I reward players with Possibilities if they follow the story line as I have laid out.  If they roleplay their characters well, impressively, dramatically, or entertainingly, I reward them with Possibilities.  If they think of excellent ideas, creative solutions to difficult problems, or if they provide good leadership to the group as a whole and keep things moving (so that I myself do not need to babysit my players and keep them all moving towards the storylines) then I reward them with Possibilities.  But my rewards for actual success in plots, problems, and difficulties are quite low.  I'd say approximately 1/3 of the Possibilities I award overall are due to succeeding in moving from one storyline scene to another.  The other 2/3 are due to other factors.

I have many different criteria for what can and does earn a Possibility or more, as far as player character actions go.  Some of those include player actions from the players themselves, not the characters.  Some of these I make known to my players, some of these they manage to figure out on their own, and some of these I do not tell them and they probably do not perceive on their own.  This doesn't matter that strongly to me, as long as the players do understand the basics of what roleplay, problem solving, and leadership I expect of them.  My own GM style does not hold that, the more Possibilities the players spent collectively to accomplish their solutions, the fewer Possibilities I reward them with.  To me, it does not matter how much they spend or do not spend.  I do inform them of the minimum I think they will need to keep throughout each story arc, but I will not prevent them from going lower.

So I agree with you that, amongst other things, the spending of Possibilities does indeed lead to the creation of success where there was no success before.  But to me, I care little for that success, in and of itself.  That's something the _players_ want, and I give them the power to create it out of nothing if that's what they want to do.  But I limit that power.  Subjectively, I give more of that power to certain players who _do_ do what I want in my games.  I do not give out Possibilities to players based on their individual successes in whatever high die rolls and/or excellent card play; to my players, high die rolls and good card play are themselves their own rewards, since they lead to those artificial successes that my players otherwise could not easily bring about.  But then, as a GM, I make sure my own plots and stories do not require certain die rolls to be made, certain skills to be used, and/or certain powers to be used.  I require
 roleplay, problem solving, leadership, organization, chaos, and drama.   (One may ask what I do reward my players with, for their amazing in-game successes.  I reward them with in-game intangibles that logically come about due to those successes.  Power, prestige, fame, connections, relationships, wealth, and resources ... all things which a player can write down on the character sheet but none of which depend on Possibility points.)

Hope this helps!

Michael

 
----- Original Message ----
From: Scott Schultz <prvteye at yahoo.com>
To: torg at justintimeadventures.com
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 11:10:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Torg] metapower vs advancement, reconsolidation


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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