[IaWA] Chapter 3 Question
David Artman:
I think Moreno's got it, but I too would like to hear Vincent's take on the "whys."
When I read that stuff, I just thought, "yeah, makes sense." It struck me as similar to when you have to roll a new character in a level-based game after your first one dies--often, the GM lets you roll one whose level is equal to the lowest level in the party, right? Otherwise, you end up with lvl 1 glass-jaws rolling with lvl 20 heroes. THink of it like maintaining the CR.
Also, mechanically, if new characters were significantly weaker than those recurring, the recurring characters would have little opportunity to get back on the We Owe list (to re-reoccur), and that's tough if you're going for epic-length stories (e.g. Conan wouldn't stay in the story until the end of a single novel, if the "opposition" didn't ramp up with him).
lumpley:
Ralph: That rule does two things.
First, it keeps NPCs roughly on par with recurring PCs, dicewise, a little longer into the game. Without it, recurring characters would quickly come to own any and every NPC. With it, they still will, but less quickly. That's the straightforward one.
Second, it makes the second generation of PCs into foils for the first. This is a pretty subtle effect and I'm happy with it. You know how your character's story is the story of her personal strengths and best interests coming to align? The more chapters that her actions put her up against stronger opposition, the longer her story - it's when her actions and her personal strengths come together against weaker opposition that she gets what's best for her, or doesn't, finally, and her story ends.
Without that rule, over the long game the characters' stories would rise and fall at roughly the same rate, each generation replacing the one before in stately (if bell-curvular) rhythm. With the rule, though, the first generation of PCs gets an owe-list boost: it puts them uniquely up against better opposition longer into their stories. The long game isn't, thus, a steady progression of PCs, but weighted frontward: it's subtly but uniquely the story of those first PCs.
Now, of all the rules, that's the one whose good working is going to depend most on what happens per group per game. If in the first few PC recurrences, the players always do the reassign dice thing and never the more significant particular strength thing, that'll throw the rule off a little. If in the first chapter only one PC goes onto the owe list only once, or if all the PCs do more than once, that'll throw it off a little too. It may be that introducing the rule at chapter 5 or 6 instead of 3 would have been better, maybe let the early PCs get a bit stronger first and let the variations between groups' play even out. It didn't seem to matter in playtesting, so I decided to introduce it and the GM-swapping rule at the same time.
If you'd like to hold off on implementing it until the NPCs and new PCs seem to be at a consistent disadvantage, do.
Moreno: I love to answer questions about my games' designs. Whatever you're interested in hearing more about, please ask.
David: Right on.
-Vincent
Valamir:
Ok, cool. I see the reasoning behind it...I'm still a bit hazy on whether it actually does all that* but this will be my first returning character, so we'll see.
I think my initial reaction to it was because having managed to get on the Owe list without taking any damage I could use my bonus to increase my PS...and I expected that to make me special (not in terms of power per se...but in terms of having something no one else did...a spotlight if you will). Finding out that it did not make the character special in any way, because every other character gets it too, rubbed me wrong.
That more than any balance notions would be a reason I could see for pushing it back to Chapter 5. But I'm not a fan of house ruling stuff without having played it first...plus this Chapter should benefit from confronting me with big baddies.
*Hazy because increasing the significance of the new character's PS's doesn't automatically lead to bigger dice / stronger opposition because there are a lot of other things that Sig could be spent on besides dice. And because having bigger dice in your PS doesn't really make it that much harder to get on the Owe list because you can simply not use that PS a time or two.
Moreno R.:
Hi Vincent!
In your answer to Ralph, there is something that don't align with my perception of what the rule says:
Quote from: lumpley on June 19, 2008, 07:31:19 AM
First, it keeps NPCs roughly on par with recurring PCs, dicewise, a little longer into the game. Without it, recurring characters would quickly come to own any and every NPC. With it, they still will, but less quickly. That's the straightforward one.
I thought that ONLY the new PC could start with particular strengths with double significance. I took this from the text that talk about "new characters" when in page 4 there are two different chapter, one called "creating a new character sheet" and the other "creating a new NPC sheet" (so I took "character" in the game as another name for "PC", and the others are called "NPC")
It doesn't make a lot of difference in play, but I think that the rule should be more clear about that
Quote
Moreno: I love to answer questions about my games' designs. Whatever you're interested in hearing more about, please ask.
Eh, I already wrote a thread with my questions. Now I am more interested in what you could say about the whys behind IAWA, that I didn't think to ask (I hope this sentence made sense...). As the TV hosts sometimes say.. "what is the question you always wanted to answer about IAWA, but nobody asked?"
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