From: christopher gribbon [c.gribbon@dundee.ac.uk] Sent: Sunday, August 29, 1999 4:16 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. >You misunderstand me. I'm not calling you arrogant, I was *agreeing* >with you. *phew* thank goodness for that! Cheers, Christopher Gribbon Vision Research Laboratories Medical Sciences Institute University of Dundee Dundee DD1 5EH UK (01382) 344 229 ____________________________________________________________________ "A scientist is meant to be disinterested, pure; his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio!" - WILL SELF, The Quantity Theory of Insanity *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Andrew Pearce [ajp@dcs.qmw.ac.uk] Sent: Sunday, August 29, 1999 9:48 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - character balance / 2nd ED. christopher gribbon wrote: > > >christopher gribbon wrote: > > > >> Otherwise they're going to play the game once, fail to enjoy themselves, and then never > >play > >> it again and never buy any of the supplements. > >> Kind of "shooting-yourself-in-the-foot" roleplaying elitism there, no? > >> > >> What do people think? > > > >There seems to be an attitude on this list that "If you can't enjoy > >playing a character who's completely inferior to another character, go > >away. Only true roleplayers should play this game." Surely having a > >balanced character creation system doesn't stop you from playing a weak > >character if you want to? > > > >I find this attitude arrogant, frankly. > > > >Andrew > > Just in case I didn't make myself clear last time: > > The point I was trying to make with my previous email was *not* that "only true roleplayers > can enjoy this game. Everyone else should go away and play D&D or something" > What I am trying to say is that, while I do understand that playing the underdog *can* be > enjoyable, certain people may not enjoy playing characters who are under- powered in > comparison with the rest of the party. Equally - while playing a character who can do > everything does seem attractive, it also gets boring after a while. > > I'm positive neither of these points are new to anyone on this list. However, a group > consisting of relatively inexperienced roleplayers may not realise this as yet (I know I > wouldn't have when I first started roleplaying). > Now, if they were to play a game where the system is designed to give balanced characters, > they will not come across the problems of an imbalanced party. They are therefore more likely > to all enjoy themselves playing the game. > If however the play a game where it turns out that one of them can do everything, and > someone else is pretty much useless, they might not be having such a good time. > > Of course having a balanced character generation system doesn't stop you playing the > underdog if you want to - all it does it reduce the liklihood of you unintentionally doing so. > > Now, purely from a sales point of view, it must be preferable to have as many people enjoy > themselves as possible on their first try at playing BP! > > When I started out roleplaying (And I'm sure this is true for a lot of people), I wasn't actually > *roleplaying* as such: I was solving problems, killing monsters, and saving > damsels-in-distress. My character's stats and skills were all-important. I was, after all, 13 > years old. > I only gradually moved from this to being "in character", and realising that playing someone > who occasionally had problems was actually fun too! > This is all part of the maturing process, and is something most roleplayers go through. > > I'm sorry if that sounds arrogant. I really hope I'm *not* actually an arrogant person. You misunderstand me. I'm not calling you arrogant, I was *agreeing* with you. It's *them* that I find arrogant, the ones that say what kind of people can play 'their' game. Let me explain: working with the players to prevent abuse is fine if you have time, and co-operative players. But many of the people on this list seem to be living in 'roleplay utopia'. I'm certainly not. The only role-playing anywhere near is forty minutes away on the train, and it's a club, not a group. There's not much time, it's noisy, etc. Now, I'm not a hack-and-slasher, but I'm not that good a roleplayer either, as much due to lack of chance to play, as anything I think. But a game at this club is often organised at short notice, and the GM doesn't have time to carefully watch over character creation, and there are lots of people worse than me, people who *will* take the most character that has the most hit points and uses the most dice. So I'm in the state of being enough of a roleplayer that I want to choose a different, complementary character concept, but I'm not good enough not to be annoyed when the guy next to me examines the book for the toughest archetype! Now people say that the GM should be discussing with the players their character concept and origin, acting as a partnership to create a balanced party. And if someone proves uncooperative, drop him, there're plenty more roleplayers out there! That's fine if everything's perfect, but my role-playing experience is far from perfect, and that's when the elitists' arguments break down. Having a balanced character creation system is having one less thing to go wrong under stress. Andrew *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.