[Glorantha] Re: Power Levels

[Trotsky]

Graham Robinson:

>Wow. I'm slightly shocked by the reaction to my last e-mail. Who'd have thought it was so controversial to suggest that GMs adjust stats to match their PCs and their group's tastes...
>
>Anyway, in the hope that some of this is a huge misunderstanding by someone (maybe me...) I'll try to make my position clearer.
>  
>
There may, indeed, be a misunderstanding here. Nobody argues that 
powerful NPCs will not seek out powerful heroes to test themselves 
against, or that major opponents will (as a rule) send their best men to 
swat a minor group of PCs. And, of course, recurring villains will 
probably advance in power at a similar rate to the player heroes. The 
question is as to whether there is a meaningful 'typical' level of 
ability for certain groups, as /Barbarian Adventures/, and p. 61 of 
HeroQuest (among other places) says there is.

If my hero is 10w2, is that good, or not? Is it just as good as a 
typical fyrdsman, or as good as the tribal champion? This tells me what 
sort of challenges I will face. If I'm weak, then I won't face off 
against the Lunar College of Magic, I'll face off against some 
relatively minor threat instead. If I'm hideously powerful, then it's 
the Bat I'm after, not some piddling little College. Yes, the challenge 
reflects my power level, but the College of Magic is still what it is. 
And, yes, it probably has elite units that are better than the average - 
not everyone would have identical stats.

You seemed to be suggesting that a clan champion might be 5w in his best 
ability one day, and 10w3 the next, depending on the player characters. 
If this was your intent, then, well... its hardly surprising that's 
controversial, surely? And if it wasn't your intent, well, there you go 
- there's your misunderstanding.

>Now that's okay if you happen to want to tell that story at that rate. If you want to tell it faster or slower, skip the beginning stages, or never reach the last few, you need to make changes. One of the most obvious is to change the stats of NPCs.
>
>I'd have thought the above was inarguable... I await the inevitable argument that proves me wrong. *grin*
>  
>
But you'd change what the NPCs *are* - whether they're clan champions, 
typical fyrdsmen, or demigods from Luathela, not what it means to be a 
clan champion, or whatever. Or you say 'this clan champion is better 
than average', or whatever. Otherwise, the story isn't really changing 
to reflect the character's power level, you're just fiddling with 
numbers, and keeping the story the same. Which, surely, is the 
antithesis of the advance from local nobody to mighty hero?

And, without some idea that, say, demigods from Luathela are 
super-powerful, but just happen to be however good the heroes are, how 
do you get stories where the players think 'oh, crap, better not go up 
against them directly; better find another way to solve this one'? 
Unless you randomly change the power of given opponents, so that, yes, 
today, they're too powerful to go up against directly, because you want 
to tell a story about sneaking round them, even though last week, they 
were a bit of a push-over. Which I presume you don't...

>And for those who seem to be arguing for some sort of statistics as holy writ, and playing with other numbers means you're somehow wrecking Glorantha, well I hope I'm misunderstanding you. If not, I'm very glad that YGWV.
>
'Holy writ' seem extreme, since YGWV, after all - and I don't think 
anyone's argued against that. But it's useful, at least to me, to know 
whether a particular opponent is meant to be tough or not. This enables 
me to tell better, and more varied, stories than would be possible if I 
just twiddled with stats to adjust the opponents. This is a good thing, 
and I wouldn't really want to play in a Glorantha that didn't work like 
that, since it sounds like it would get boring fast, there would be no 
sense of progression, and no sense of being in a living, breathing world.

-- 
Trotsky
Gamer and Skeptic

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