[Nevercast] - Truth through Mastery
Ar Kayon:
I'll provide the detailed descriptions of the roles, and all I want to know is what role, if any, appeals to you - that's it. It would be counterproductive for me to completely flesh out a role, mechanics and all, only to find out that others don't find it interesting.
Now, if what you are looking for is mechanics information, I need to know the specific context of your inquiry. Please refrain from conjectures and remain objective; refine your questions down, and I'll do my best to give you a refined answer. Nevercast is based on a system that has been through some heavy development already, so I probably have an answer for what you need to know.
Ron Edwards:
Hey guys,
Let's take the stated questions at face value. Never mind the whys and whatnots.
1. If you check out the document and if one or another character type appeals to you, say so. This isn't any different from what you do when you read any RPG text anyway. I think it will turn into the foundation for a discussion and not merely be a poll.
2. The question about death is phrased in a troublesome way concerning how people "feel," but I think we can productively talk about times when character death did in fact play a fun role in particular games and did not constitute a "bang stop playing" point for the player. 3:16 and Tunnels & Trolls come instantly to my mind, for instance. If you've experienced such times, then weigh in.
3. If neither of the above applies to you, then let others post, please.
Best, Ron
masqueradeball:
Favored role would hands down be the Emissary, but I would be warily of actually playing one, its a bad habit from being burned to often in the past by similar character types. In a game when so much combat is floating around, I find that social characters, though I'm drawn to them, tend to be overshadowed.
The Mastermind looks pretty sweet at first, and then I realized that I have no idea what they would do in play or how.
In reality, I would opt for the Soldier unless they were already over-represented in the party, because Martial Artist characters seem cheesy to me,(not the way your doing them, but my feelings about martial arts in RPG's in general) I don't know what one does with a Mastermind and the Emissary would probably be forced into the "supporting character" role, which can be cool sometimes, but I prefer to feel like a fellow protagonist than a sidekick.
Death sucks and would disappoint me unless:
1) I got to choose when I actually died so that it happened while doing something cool and heroic.
2) Something about what character did while alive would have an immediate impact on what was going on with each subsequent character.
That was written out of a lot of RPG pessimism/realism. I'm skeptical about character archetypes that are focused on such different fields of play and about "fun" character death because that's my RPG baggage. I would love to see the game make me feel safe enough to leave this baggage behind and to embrace the game as written.
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
"Ask Ron a question and he'll point you to a thread." Here, two questions, hence, two threads ...
Part One
I'd like to play the Master of Martial Arts if my experience of play really would include some sort of attainment of truth, for that character. If that phrasing is merely a bit of rhetoric that the character gets to parrot, and the real point is simply to kick ass as much and as hard as possible, then I'm not interested. This is effectively the hard line between incompatible gamer-interpretations of Jedi or samura characters. I would be very interested in whether and how your game rewards and expresses seeking and attaining truth, for these characters. If it doesn't, then I suggest that all your Force or honor or truth rhetoric is merely a mask, perhaps to trick your kill'em-all friends into playing in a tolerable manner. In my experience, that doesn't work.
The Soldier / Mercenary, Technology Hunter, and Mastermind all appear to me to be uninteresting door-opener, orc-killing, utility devices.
The Emissary would be fun to play if and only if his or her activities generated genuine consequences in the local setting of play. I would have no interest in merely posturing about in scenes which have no function except to set up future fight scenes.
I think you might be interested in my breakdown of how characters are categorized in The class issue. This thread cleared a lot of air at the time. What you're calling "player role" appears to be my #3 and #4 in my little scheme, and it strikes me that you might be seeking #2 instead, which #3 and #4 cannot do. But I'll hold off on that until you check out the thread, if you want to.
I would also like to stress that my enjoyment of play is not limited to myself and my character. My enjoyment is strongly affected by how other people at the table play their characters. If I have to share the table with some snorting, torture-happy moron who gets to play his hard-bitten uber-cool Merc, who is indistinguishable from every other Merc and indeed every other character this person has played, then I'm not happy. So it's not merely a matter of finding a game which includes a particular character role or class for me - it's even more a matter of being able to stand any of the available classes/roles being played.
Part Two
I've played a hell of a lot of games whose rules make character death fun. It may be disadvantageous, or a "local loss," or it may not, but it doesn't preclude me continuing to play, nor does it devalue the character who met his or her end. I listed some of these games, and the relevant techniques and modes of fictional death, in Interview with Vincent and me; see specifically Marshall Burns' post concerning character death on page 3 and my response.
The short answer to your question is that I love and welcome character death as a feature of play insofar as it's fun. For it to be fun ...
1. I have to be able to keep playing. There are lots of ways to do this, but in the case of your game, I think I might like to have a couple of characters already made up, such that when one falls, another can be brought in. (And to do this well, not "stepping out from behind the corner" to join the same fight, but rather, entering the scenario from an entirely different angle.)
2. My character cannot simply have been a potato chip. Even if he only lasts half a session, he should get a monologue first. ("Gee, as soon as this mission's over, my retirement comes through. Boy, am I looking foward to that cabin by the lake ...")
3. The death should be the kind of death that works in this setting, in this situation, and in this kind of story. If bullets are dangerous and feared by PC and NPC alike, then a bullet can kill my guy. If bullets are dramatic Color serving mainly as mood music and a means to dispose of nameless mooks, then a bullet shouldn't kill my guy. Sudden death is OK as long as it plays some consequential role in what's going on.
Conclusion
What interests me most about your setting and game in general is the strong thematic critique of many aspects of our very own society. Effectively, you're saying, "What we are doing right here and now," and I do not mean the fictional characters, I'm talking about really right here and now, "is fucked up and will come to grief." What's more, instead of providing hope through allowing humanity to start all over again (as with many science fiction disaster stories), hope is only available through
There's a tension between motifs that strikes me as interesting material for play. It's probably familiar to most people reading this through films like Princess Mononuke, but can also be found throughout science fiction and fantasy ... it's love/hate for technology. No one exemplifies this more than the Jedi, who wear homespun, look and talk like hippies, meditate, and are endlessly preaching withdrawal from technology ... yet wield fucking bzzz-bzzz glowy techno-swords! Dude! (makes light-sabre noises, jumps around) When this tension is ignored, as in most of the Star Wars material, then the topic becomes asinine. When it's treated more seriously yet stumbles in its own contradictions, as in Princess Mononuke, it is at least exciting if not coherent. When it's genuinely raised as an issue, and thrown to a system of authorship allowing for protagonism and consequences, well, maybe there's a chance to make a story which is compelling, exciting, and thought-provoking.
I don't know if that's what you're after. The detail and care of your setting work suggests that you might be. It'd be a shame if you castrated that vision and interest by truckling to some vision of "real" or "average" role-players who cannot be trusted to enter into those topics the same way you do.
If that's not what you're after, and if everything I've written here seems weird or left-field to you, then your setting work is mere costumery for standard Shadowrun or D&D play. In that case, then all that matters about the roles you've presented is whether they are effective and have a chance for survival, and all that matters about character death is whether it sets the player "back" in terms of bragging rights or tactical enjoyment.
Best, Ron
Chris_Chinn:
Hi Ar Kayon,
Sorry for derailing the thread!
As I mentioned, a lot of these are specific to how they actually interact, so I'll put forth this all provisionally:
The Martial Artist could be a lot of fun, if there's actual choices to be made in combat that have tactical significance. This doesn't necessarily equate to crunchy rules, though- for example, GURPS Martial Arts rules are often crunchy, AND often result in characters who only use 1 or 2 moves all the time because those are the optimal ones- which isn't interesting. The crunchiest rules which I've seen make for fun tactical play would be Burning Wheel, while simpler along the spectrum includes Riddle of Steel, the martial arts rules from Sex & Sorcery, or the rules in Usagi Yojimbo. There has to be some element of actual choice and strategy.
That said, you mentioned highest rate of death for these guys. Is that due to the number of combats or are they built weak, or do they do the D&D wizard thing where they start weak and become awesome later? Those issues could also impact how fun they'd be to play.
Soldier/Merc could also be fun, but again, this depends on how the tactics rules work. If it's widgy "hand out some bonuses" or worse yet, "Strategy skill" with no actual rules for it to interface with, it would be the kind of thing I'd avoid. If it actually has tactical rules, like say, D&D4E or Burning Empires, then there's some interesting play to be had.
Tertiary, I'd be interested in the Mastermind or Emissary, again, depending if there's some actual interesting mechanics that work with them. The Tech hunter doesn't appeal to me at all, but that's my personal taste of dungeon crawling and traps.
A major pitfall to avoid is what I call the Shadowrun Hacker problem- where players are left twiddling their thumbs while a single player or two players get deep into a subgame of mechanics only their characters can do, and then, during the rest of the game, those players are left twiddling their thumbs.
Which ties into the death question as well - as Ron notes above, you don't want to be left out of play for long if you do have death, and, characters need some meat to make death meaningful - otherwise it comes close to being like Paranoia's clones - merely meta-hitpoints to play.
If your game rewards via character advancement, you may want to look at what that means in long term play, since, as you note, some characters have longer life expectancies than others- it means some characters will end up entrenched at higher ability than others... and also that players will invest differently depending on character type.
Chris
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