[Torg] Early/Late Campaign

[Jasyn Jones]

I’ve been looking through the List archives, and I came across some of
the discussion in regards to No Quarter Given (April 1993, for those
playing at home). In specific, the "killing of 6 million innocents"
and the "super-powered eternity shard" aspects of the module.

Without defending the module, I just wanted to talk about an arc of
power from early to late campaign. I'm going to do so by talking about
the Wheel of Time.

First book, three main characters are novices and they have to fight
Trollocs, the mooks of the enemy. It's a struggle, and they almost die
more than once.

A couple of books later, they slaughter mooks with ease, but have a
tough time dealing with another monster: the Myrddraal, who lead
groups of Trollocs.

A couple of books later (it's a long series), they slaughter
Myrddraal, so much so that their piling mounds of them on fires as
they're killing them, but the Gray Men nearly kill them.

And so on.

That's an arc of power, characters start out weak, the enemy is
overpowering, and they grow in power until they can confront and
defeat the final enemy.

What's this mean for Torg? I never got the feeling the writers were
clued in to the arc of power, or if they were, that they bothered to
let the gm's in on the secret.

Stelae are impossible to rip up. Seriously, the DN is the reality
skill of the DD (less and less as you get further away from them).
Beginning characters can't do it and even very veteran characters need
an eternity shard (see Advanced Stelae Removal 401, Infiniverse 39.)

This used to make me angry. How were people in a campaign supposed to
win? Then we got the answer, in War's End: deus ex machina. What a
weak ending to the entire game.

If we used the arc of power, by the time the campaign is over players
will have gained the ability to confront the final Big Bad, without
relying on DEM's or NPC's. By the end of the campaign, the players
should be powerful. Not powerful in terms of armor adds and DV of
weapons, but powerful in terms of winning the wars and ripping up
stelae whilst saving ords.

In the beginning, SK's need glories for glory seeds, each of which can
only be used once. For best effect, 3 per triangle, then rip up one
stelae. Which ripping up is damn hard.

Partway through the game, something makes it possible to spread glory
without having to do it in each single triangle. (I don't know what,
I'm just explaining the theory.) Ripping up still has the same DN's
but some capability they've gained (like the Block group power from
the module) makes it much easier.

End game, they don't need to rip up individual stelae one by one. They
have the capability to remove whole realms, by using their resources,
and without having to plant glory seeds. Maybe a shard that lets them
burn out stelae networks, while broadcasting the PE to save the
populace, like the Surge only for Core Earthers. Whatever caused the
Surge (dreamtime, in the novels) can work for us instead of against
us.

Climax: One High Lord, the most resilient (probably the Gaunt Man) is
almost ready to become Torg and kill Earth, and the players (who've
been partying after destroying all the Cyberpope's stelae in one day)
have to scramble to stop his plan. They can do it, and only just, and
if they do, they win the Wars.

That's an arc of power. It's not about raising stats and getting
bigger guns. All those do is let them shoot through more opposition,
which makes for a boring game. But giving them the ability to affect
the game world on a wide scale, well that's what heroics is all about.

So, people were complaining about how powerful Block was. "It's
unbalancing." They're right, for the first years of the War. But by
the time we reach mid-war, the Block group power is just right for
allowing characters to make a difference. And even more powerful
means- powerful in terms of ripping up stelae, not killing bad guys-
should be just around the corner.

Drama, in films and movies, lies in raising the stakes for characters.
Even if they win a small victory, a bigger threat looms or they move
from a smaller stage onto a larger stage, where things are more
dangerous and they can't quite cope. By giving the players real power
to affect the course of the wars- at appropriate stages of the
campaign- gamemasters can raise the stakes for players and keep them
fighting, keep them committed.

That's how Torg should be done, how it should have been done.
-----
Jasyn Jones
jasynj (at) gmail (dot) com

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Check out my Torg webpage, Storm Knights:
web.me.com/stormknights/