Just so that it's recorded should we play again, after finishing the Ice Tower adventure characters have a total of 30 experience points.

Awesome game last night! Thanks for running!

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"Talk like this you would, if hand-up-butt-puppet you were!"
Master Yoda, The Honest Years

You're welcome - I had fun doing it.

- - -

I still don't have any concrete ideas house-rule wise but there are a couple of things that I don't quite like the "feel" of. The first, like I mentioned briefly at the table, is the pattern of bennie flow. I don't like how sometimes they can all be spent early - leaving you screwed for the rest of the night, or they can all be spent right at the end because, well, 'why not'? The use of bennies has a huge impact on an encounter and it doesn't seem right that the difficulty of an encounter should depend on where it falls in the session. That's tying a real-world factor into a game-world effect too strongly for my tastes.

There's also subtle way that they can be used as a method of complaint - if a player is disatisfied with something (or it something seems too hard) they can blow through their bennies as a way of making a statement to the GM. Of course, the effect is that it makes the rest of the session just that much more difficult so then the GM is forced to ease up. We, as a group, generally do that sort of GM-steering through good natured complaints. The bennies add a mechanical way to do that too. I don't care for that.

As for a solution, I'm not sure. Maybe awarding 2 bennies at the start of the session and then 1 per encounter (and maybe another per story milestone) would do it. With a 3-encounter session that would still be 4 spendable bennies, but they would be spread out more. Of course then someone will die in the first encounter because they needed that 3rd bennie and the mean old GM house-ruled it away...

- - -

The second thing I really just noticed last night. Tough creatures are easy to hit but really hard to damage, and really hard to finish off once they are out of wounds. Seeing 80% of the hits being pointless struck me as less fun than other games. I've no idea about what could be done about that, but as it stands this feels like a system that is literally full of fail. Failing to have an effect is the standard outcome of an attack and those instances where you do have a lasting impact (inflicting a wound) are the rare shining moments. On the bright side, this was mainly noticable against super-tough solo monsters. For extras and even wild-card NPCs it usually seemed to work ok (though the duel with Eldeer was certainly a wiff-fest).

- - -

A final, more minor thing, is how just about every critter needs an ace in order to have a chance of hitting even low-level characters. I guess when you only have 4 hit points, you have to have lots of misses but again, that pattern of wasted dice rolls lessens the fun a bit on my side of the screen. The solid hits seem like flukes of luck rather than a measure of combatant skill.

- - -

That wraps it up for this time around. I don't really expect to solve these problems here and now but I wanted to get them down in writing so that I'd have them in mind for future games.

I recall that our method of bennie allocation was a trial of a preemptive houserule. I have no objections to trying it another way - in fact, I have to admit I've never liked the "per session" concept in itself because that adheres real life situations to game flow.

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"If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences."
- H. P. Lovecraft

I think, as written, you get 3 at the start of the session and then the opportunity to earn more as play progresses (though good role-playing etc.). I suppose that would, in itself, prevent you from spending 4 in the first encounter (though you could spend 3). That method also lets the GM toss in an extra one or two if he feels it is necessary further on.

I hadn't thought about it, but I can see where some of my criticisms are an indirect result of our "fixed number + up front assignment" method of bennie allocation. Still, I don't really want to go back to competitive or subjective allocation either.

Maybe just a flat "2 bennies per encounter" would work? Seems ok for NPCs. A more complex version could be 1 bennie per encounter for each of your "levels" (so Seasoned would be two bennies anyway).

Just some food for thought Ryan..

I know where you're coming from with competitive and subjective bennie allocation.

If you were designing a game, you probably wouldn't want that rule in place. That sounds wise.

However, perhaps another perspective on it is considering that you're not playing with random players. This group is carefully selected of people with relaxed attitudes, common sense, and the willingness to be open minded.

I guess I'm suggesting that maybe the RAW wouldn't work with just any group, and certainly not with unknown players. But maybe it would work with this group? Because you don't have random and unknown players...

I guess I'm in the tricky waters of asking "can we self-moderate our own behavior" but there we are.

If you're not comfortable with that, I understand. This is not a challenge, merely a thought for consideration.

(And I don't exactly have a stake in the matter anyway, but...)

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"Talk like this you would, if hand-up-butt-puppet you were!"
Master Yoda, The Honest Years

I agree with all of Ryan's above points about flaws with this system. I experienced all of them at one time or another when I was trying to run this but I couldn't conceptualize them as concretely as Ryan did here. But it's certainly not just him...

I think I might have said this early on when I was running but I'll say it again: I don't really like the idea of bennies, or force points or whatever you want to call the extra luck points you can use for various game benefits, be so heavily required for combat. When you have to spend a point just to avoid normal damage in the standard give and take of combat, that seems weird. The fact that you can also use bennies to reroll makes them doubly important, but as we saw last night, it is a huge and often pointless risk to do a reroll when you need to save your bennies simply to not die from a normal attack. The idea of "soaking" damage seems silly to me. What good is armor, then? I can think of perhaps five or six instances in this run where I was hit by an attack that failed to overcome my toughess, but everything else got through, and easily so. PC's can only expect to have a toughness in the 10-20 range at best with everything maxed out as much as possible, but it's not hard at all to outdamage that. I really feel there ought to be some other mechanic involved in determining damage other than just burning bennies to survive. Unfortunately I think the bennie/damage system is hard wired into the code of this game and couldn't really be changed without changing the fundamental way the game works. But I still think it's a pretty big flaw that cuts down on fun.

I also really hate that you have to make a roll to cast a spell, and that you can fail such a roll very easily, AND that you can suffer ill effects on a critical failure AND that you still lose the power points if you do. Furthermore, if it's an attack spell, you STILL have to make an attack roll to hit on top of everything else, and THEN you have to roll your damage. That's a lot of die rolls that slows down combat, and it seems needlessly harsh on spellcasters, who already have to spend at least one edge for the privilege. The spells that I have seen so far don't seem powerful enough to justify such hoops. I agree there needs to be some kind of skill check to determine how well a spell works, but I think this should be less apt to outright failure and should not have an negative consequences other than wasted time. If we play this system again, I will most definitely not play a spellcaster because it's just too frustrating, especially when you can be just as effective with a normal weapon (as Dave proved several times with his mage, dealing just as much damage with a sword stroke as with a magic bolt).

Those are just some of my observations. There are a lot of things I like about SW and I did very much enjoy this little module...It was well written for the most part, or at least was well written enough for Ryan to spruce it up to manageable shape, and the flexibility of the system is definitely a plus. But I don't think the rules are thought-out and nuanced as much as we want them to be and I don't think we can fix them without revising the whole thing from scratch. It's a fun system to play occasionally but I don't think it's got long-term potential.

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Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

I withdraw the previous remark. I guess its just my Amber-centric deterministic tendencies showing.

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"Talk like this you would, if hand-up-butt-puppet you were!"
Master Yoda, The Honest Years

Well, I'm still gonna reply ;)

I'd actually be more comfortable using a subjective competitive system with strangers, or people I really didn't give a damn about. Any system where bennies, or xp, or anything depends on a judgement call by the GM is forcing the GM to judge the players. Sure, you are constantly judging player actions by basing in-game consequences on what they do. But to blatantly add a point value to their role-playing skills, or humor, or whatever, is just beyond my comfort level. I do not want to judge my friends like that and I don't want to be judged. I know we're all mature adults but suppose you got 1 bonus bennie a week while Dave got 3 or 4. The first time it's no big deal, Mr. Mehl just had an on night. But what about after 3 weeks, or 7 weeks, of constantly 'scoring' less than someone else at the table. Isn't that going to start to get on your nerves? I know it would piss me off to no end.

I've been there, it bugs me, and I don't want to experience it again. Competitive roleplaying just bites. No matter how good of friends we are, the GM either sacrafices integrity to give everyone the same long-term score, or they risk building disatisfaction by making blatantly clear who they think are the 'best players' at the table. I don't like either option. Roleplaying is a team sport with just one team.

I couldn't agree more!

It's one of the reasons I am alwyas thinking about balance.

I have aboslutely no problem with rewards for a great session... but give it to the entire group.

"Wow, that was great... everyone take an extra benny/force point."

This is all the same reason why I don't like random attributes. It sucks, when Mr. Mehl has 14s or better in all of his stats while my best stat is a 12.

And to answer Dan's comments (so I don't have to get back to work), I think your observations are spot on, though I think the fights with Extras were a lot different than the fights with the wild card solos. For some fights, damage needed an Ace to have any chance of beating your toughness - for other fights, it couldn't help but be 20+ points. Strangely, in all cases, the bad guys (big or small) had a hard time hitting.

The bennie-based damage system would be hard to fix, though a "fixed 2 per fight" might help with that as it would be more constant than having 4 the first fight and 0 the last.

I hadn't really thought about the frustration with casting. Maybe we should consider not charging power points for a spell that fails to cast (or fails to hit for those spells that use a "to hit" roll for their casting check)?

Another thing I thought of that rankles a bit is the severity of the "death spiral". I like the loss of pace and I guess the penalty on trait test makes sense, but I'm not sure it's fast, furious, and fun. I might be inclined to not apply to penalty to actions aimed at healing (like getting out potions, casting heal spells, etc.). That would provide an incentive to try and recover rather than continue the offense and would actually make it feasible to recover.

I don't have a good response really.

Perhaps other to say, I never had the experience.

I have been in games were there was blatant GM favortism, but it never manifested mechanically. It transcended that to a more social level.

GM Favortism, in my past experience, usually manifested in the form of the GM telling me that I couldn't take certain actions or think in a certain way, because it would impact what another player was doing.

For example: "I'm not going to let you make a perception role to see if this other player is pickpocketing you, because you overheard the player say they were going to pickpocket you. You're using Out Of Character knowledge Jim, shame on you."

So I got robbed by another player and had no defense against it, because his right to steal from me was being zealously defended by the GM. And the GM and the Player had a professional work relationship too, which compounded it too

I called that favoritism and I walked out.

Understand that example is not a counter to your illustration. I'm merely describing that is the only type of favortism that I have experienced. And its grounds for an automatic walk out by me. Usually with an extended middle finger.

I concede the point. Again, perhaps that sort of abuse is just outside of my experience.

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"Talk like this you would, if hand-up-butt-puppet you were!"
Master Yoda, The Honest Years

That sounds pretty awful. I think you did the right thing (and probably more civilized than I would have).

I don't think that scoring systems are bad just because of potential favoratism though. Probably the worst cases of unfair scoring I've seen have had fair GMs. It's just that there are players that will make a point to sit next to the GM so they can get as much of the spotlight (and thus points) as possible. Luckily, that's the sort of thing we don't have to worry about in our group (at least since we made up the "Rob has to sit opposite the GM" rule).

But there is also the case where some of us just aren't as vocal, or witty, or dramatically inclined, or insightful, as others. A fair GM, following the guidelines as written, is going to consistently award some folks more points than others based on their opinion of what warrant points. I don't see anything good coming of that. The other option is that the GM makes up reasons to keep everyone about equal. In that case, why not just stop pretending and make it a fixed (or group) award?

Anyway this is a good discussion, and much more fun than working on my lesson plans. Thanks for the feedback.

Hehe.. I have no shame in saying that was Knox, of Fuchikoma fame.

You're right. I am actually not all that witty, vocal, and dramatically inclined- so this does seem more fair.

And the pretense should not be necessary in that case.

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"Talk like this you would, if hand-up-butt-puppet you were!"
Master Yoda, The Honest Years

Always sit the "Glory Hog" as far from the GM as possible!!!!!

That's my new sigline. Great way to sum up what we do.

I don't have anything useful to add to what's already been said other than "I whole-heartedly agree." Subjective awards are just a minefield, no matter what one's intentions or one's group's personalities. And yet we've experienced a number of systems that not only encourage this, but have it built right into the RAW. I guess that means a lot of people prefer it that way.

Say what you will about D&D, but one thing you have to admit is it's always been pretty cut and dried how much reward you're supposed to give players, based on cold, hard numbers and nothing else.

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Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

Coincidentally, this makes it easier to use tiny and/or poorly contrasted to dice to cheat. Hmm. Correlation, meet causation.

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Roleplaying is a team sport with just one team. --Ki Ryn

Of course, D&D tends to show favoritism through treasure. How many pre-written modules have we run through where there are great items for certain classes, but others seem left out in the mud... forcing us to go through complicated accounting schemes to keep everything balanced.


Oh btw... my new small entirely black dice should be in by the time we start Trollhaunt!