I wanted to highlight this passage from the Pistols at Dawn extravaganza:
I've seen gamers try to create OtE characters where they pick a trait that is so broad it can apply to everything ("I have 4D in martial arts master/acrobat/strategist"), or take supposedly narrow traits and try to make them fit any situation ("I can use my 5D Football Champ trait to attack the thugs, right? Using my football training... oh, AND i can use my 5D football champ trait to beat the Chessmaster, because football has strategy that can also apply to chess").
To me, this is "Faking it". It creates situations where, by trying to encourage "roleplay" by giving positive bonuses to those who use their descriptors, it encourages people to try to stretch those descriptors to ridiculous limits.
Ditto with games that give bonuses for "descriptive stunting"; at that point every fucking action turns into a descriptive stunt ("I do a double backflip before sitting on the toilet to give me a +2D to taking a dump"; "I make an exaggerated courtsey when I meet Unimportant NPC x in case I have to get a bonus to my diplomacy check").
That's why Feng Shui has got it going on: there, you are ALLOWED to do any normal attack/action as a stunt, in a cool way and without penalty, as long as the end result not have a greater positive result than if you did it the normal way. For ex, instead of just saying "I run toward the guy and shoot him" you can say "I run three steps, jump onto the table sliding down off it shooting at the guy". Since the end result mechanically is the same ("Ok, roll to hit") there's no penalty for doing it acrobatically. Its "encouragement" in the sense of not fucking you over for giving your character a personal touch; rather than giving you a bonus for thinking up ways of dragging your personality into every little act.
I agree with the first bit.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings on the second. I get the impression that he's specifically taking aim at Exalted here. In Exalted, the bonuses you get for stunting are - in most cases - fairly minimal. In any case, his examples don't actually support his point.
"I do a double backflip before sitting on the toilet to give me a +2D to taking a dump"
Right. Because that's something you need bonus dice for? Having played Exalted quite a bit, you use descriptive stunts in two cases: when it counts (i.e., when you really need the bonus) and when it would be really cool.
"I make an exaggerated courtsey when I meet Unimportant NPC x in case I have to get a bonus to my diplomacy check"
That's fine. You may get pegged as someone who cowtows to nobodies, though. Again, I fail to see his point.
The stunt system in Exalted isn't perfect and I could see it might benefit from a "no bonuses if it unnecessarily slows down play" rule, but I don't think that it is nearly as broken as our Uruguayan friend seems to believe it is.
That said, I am a fan of Feng Shui's stance on this - for a certain type of game.
"That said, I am a fan of Feng Shui's stance on this - for a certain type of game."
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was the paragraph on Feng Shui that really spoke to me. I felt I needed the rest to give the comment context. Usually I've seen the Feng Shui rules held up as a prototypical form of the Exalted rules. Pundit is the first person I've who differentiates the two in this way.