[Glorantha] Re: Power Level

[Trotsky]

Mikko, replying to Graham:

> > Page 21 - Powerful. What that means in your campaign really depends on
>
>
>That, I'm afraid, is an ansver I have very little time for. The world is
>not just a subjective stage for the Player Characters. The training and
>power level of the Imperial Field Colleges don't change to fit the level
>of the player characters I happen to currently have in my game.
>  
>
I completely agree with this. Of course, in individual games we might 
change that, depending on we hand out hero points, and so on. If the 
player heroes can get good quickly, presumably so can the NPCs. But I 
definitely want to know the baseline figures - Barbarian Adventures was 
very useful in that regard, for instance. I disagree with Mikko in that 
I don't think ILH-2 was necessarily the book in which to include such 
things, but I think its a perfectly valid thing to want in some book, 
somewhere.

Jane:

>Same here. We have known levels for many things, the
>power level of a typical Orlanthi clan warband, or
>champion, for instance. We know the levels of several
>major Orlanthi NPCs. So if we get a contest between
>Orlanthi and Lunar (think that might happen from time
>to time?) we need the relative numbers.
>
>Sure, I'll adjust to fit my PCs. 
>
This is very much my approach, too. Not every book has to support this 
approach, but I'd like to see some that do.

Graham:

>>The world is
>>not just a subjective stage for the Player Characters.
>  
>
>
>Of course it is!
>
Not in my Glorantha, it isn't. And I have absolutely no intention of 
ever changing that. I'm not saying its a bad approach, of course, and I 
have no doubt it will work for many people. That's cool. But it won't 
work for everyone, and I believe that HQ should support both approaches 
where it can - as it has in the past.

>
>You have a cool story featuring the Imperial Field College. You also have a book that gives official numbers for the colleges. Unfortunately, the official numbers mean that your cool story can't possibly work - the difference between your PCs and the NPCs is just too large.
>
>What do you do? Not tell the story? Or change the numbers? Would anyone really chose the first option?
>  
>
I'd change the story. Or justify why this particular group are elite, or 
having an off-day, or whatever - while still making it clear that this 
*is* unusual, and not what you'd normally expect. If I don't have the 
typical figures, of course, I can't do that so easily, because I don't 
what I *would* normally expect. If none of that works, then yes, of 
course I'd not tell the story. I'm not going to tell a story just 
because it's cool, but because it also makes sense in the objective 
stage that is my Glorantha. If I have to change the numbers just to tell 
the story, then it can't really have been that cool a story in the first 
place - at least not for my PCs.

In fact, you're making one of the points of my earlier post for me; that 
not every book will appeal to everyone. ILH-2 doesn't have what's useful 
to Mikko, and pp21-29 of Barbarian Adventures presumably didn't have 
much that was useful to you. Personally, I'd like to see both types of 
book, but that's just me.

-- 
Trotsky
Gamer and Skeptic

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Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/