Sunday, March 23, 2014

Things I Learned From Champions: A Power Fantasy Has A Cost

About this time last year, I wrote about power fantasies in RPGs.

I'm returning to that well once more, because I was thinking about what lessons I'd learned from playing Champions with my old group of gaming friends.

Many of them dealt with the power fantasy that some would say are inherent in comic book heroes. More than mere wish fulfillment ("I can fly!" or "I can see through walls!" or "I am the best fighter in the world!"), there's also the desire of a child or adolescent (and some would say, adults) to have a greater ability to make a difference: to become someone respected or feared, to save lives, to stop injustice, to change the world.

But in a point-based system like Champions -- which can reflect a need for the 'fair-play' mentality in a supers game, wherein everyone has the potential for roughly equal efficacy in the game, as well as a way to keep the powers at a manageable level for a desired campaign -- you routinely run out of points for your desired character concept, especially early on.

And when you hit that ceiling, that's when you start negotiating -- sometimes with the GM, mostly with yourself -- about how to realize that power fantasy embodied by your super-heroic character concept. Here are some approaches and the lessons they taught me.

Approach 01: Cripple yourself Physically, Mentally, or Socially to get more points


Veterans of point-based games know this trick. There's a famous article in an old Adventurer's Club magazine concerning uber-powerful cripples that were clearly built to abuse aspects of if the Champions system: powerful beings lacking arms, legs, and sight; dangerously insane; hunted by everyone and their grandma.

But after the initial rush of having been able to 'break the system' by getting ridiculous amounts of points, and perhaps allowed to play a game or two with your PC, there is the dawning realization that your character just isn't the suave, sophisticated hero; the even-tempered, full-limbed bastion of reason, or the hyper-competent polymath that you tend to enjoy reading about in your favored graphic novels.

There's a point that (well, some of you) realize that there's an additional cost to this type of rules abuse: the inability to play the character you really wanted to.

Approach 02: Bend the Rules Until They Break


This covers applying as many ridiculous limitations to your powers to reduce their costs (even though they're clearly not limitations due to the rarity of the occasion), combining powers and advantages and limitations in strained configurations (often devoid of a serious special effect or an attempt at a concept), and even straight out ignoring the rules that state you can't do certain things.

Again, after the rush of getting away with it (maybe once or twice), the one-trick pony character you've created loses its luster, and you end up wanting a more well-rounded, fun to play character. More likely, however, you find that the ideal situation that your character will be a nigh-unstoppable combat monster in never comes up, and you hobble around trying to make an impossible set of circumstances take place.

Approach 03: Hide from and Lie to the GM


This familiar approach, with a near-infinite number of possible variants, often ends with the realization that you're only cheating yourself because you know you didn't earn your victory. Or it ends with your GM (and possibly other players) pissed not only at your violation of rules, but also the trust of the gaming group and you find yourself reprimanded or kicked out.

Ultimate Realization: Choose Your Character Concept and Pay the Price


At some point, perhaps in a flash of grudging insight or in a slowly evolving philosophy of character creation, you accept certain things, like:
  • you don't have enough points to realize your character as he / she would be at the zenith of his / her power, but you can build him / her at the beginning or early part of his / her career;
  • the power levels of the current campaign are inappropriate for your superheroic concept, so you shift to another character concept that you're also fond of;
  • you will not take on disadvantages that will lead to you violating the spirit of your character for the sake of points, thus helping your GM understand what you're going for and avoiding irreversible reputation-damaging incidents. No more Berzerk: when in an enclosed space (almost guaranteeing an avoidance of elevators, vehicles, and narrow corridors);
  • psychological disadvantages will serve to help define your character, rather than act as a crutch to be overcome for the sake of points. Psych Lim: Never Leaves a Teammate Behind (Total Commitment) isn't even something you'll ask to roll to overcome, you play it as such -- pretty much ensuring that your other PCs will have to force you to do so in-game;
  • you accept that your GM will bring your power limitations into play with a given frequency, and thus choose them according to how often your want that disadvantage to rear its annoying head -- dropping them (by paying points) when it gets old;
  • you play straight with your GM, perhaps doing real negotiations with him / her to get certain concessions or approvals -- a word of honor to eschew rules abuse and to roleplay true to type. For example: promising to adhere to the moral codes of Batman or Superman in order gain lenience for restricted or banned powers or power framework constructs.
  • agreeing to regular peer reviews of character pointage to keep you and your players honest (and error free).
Of course, your gaming group and mileage may vary. But, in my experience, this has been the path of Champions character creation enlightenment for my fellow players and GMs -- though some achieved enlightenment earlier than others.

8 comments:

  1. Nice post. This is one reason I've been shying away from very detailed point-buy systems lately. I now favor 'skill packages' that let you buy a whole suite of stuff you can do for bulk cost.

    Once had a player who I asked to see how badly he could break my homebrew, and he proceded to create a Blind Deaf Mute Paraplegic Sorcerer With a Phobia of Everything, who was the most powerful in the world. He then pointed out that the one phobia I hadn't included in the list was a phobia of magic :-)

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  2. +Dariel Quiogue, interesting.

    I tend to like the FATE implementation for the disadvantages -- or rather character aspects that are both advantages and disadvantages.

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  3. Good post. You also make a good point on games (like Fate) that make it clear many things are advantages and disadvantages. That's something I sort of like too, though obviously some disadvantages would very rarely be advantages.

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  4. The point-buy trickery only works if the GM allows it. My feeling is only immature players want to abuse it in the first place. Sadly I have played with many of that type.

    I have been re-reading 4th edition and your posts are getting me more interested in getting a game up and running.

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  5. +Trey, thanks, and it's true about certain things being only disadvantages. Those are the things that I feel deserve points outright.

    +Matt Celis, I understand about GMs allowing things in the game -- hence the concern about approach 3. However, if the group or the GM is a newbie and hasn't read the caveats about certain powers and rulings, it's possible that there'll be a permissive GM.

    As for the immaturity of players, yes there's that -- but that's sort of my point in this post. Newbie players may need to get that out of their system first by trying various approaches, until they realize either that (1) all these things are just cheating themselves; or (2) there's just not enough points to build an uber-character, and you have to commit to a certain character concept to start to have fun.

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  6. Not to dwell overlong on FATE, but I originally balked at the notion of Aspects being both good and bad things. Surely, I thought, there were plenty of Aspects that were far more one or the other, and they must be worth rather more or less in play. It wasn't until I internalized that the less negative there is in an Aspect, the less likely it is to earn you any FATE points, and the less power you'll have to leverage the positive. Self-limiting, after a fashion.

    Now, as for Champions, you might appreciate the discussion going on over at the Hero System forum, about the questions about needing disadvantages/complications at all... http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88684-no-complications-please-simplifying-hero/

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  7. +jason packer, I should return to the Hero boards; thanks for the link. It's been a while!

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That's my side of things. Let me know what you think, my friend.