Post by Charlotte on May 25, 2016 18:46:28 GMT -5
Back in the Mesolithic, when this game was created, memory of the original EOTF was fresh in the minds of SWRP’s founders (I wasn’t one of them). For those who don’t know or who have been reincarnated too many times since then to remember the original EOTF, it existed in the Yahoo! Arts & Entertainment user rooms (or Entertainment & Arts, because Yahoo! just wanted to fuck with some nerds one time). Canon characters were everywhere, planets annihilated daily at teatime, and often before and after teatime as well. The Force was a Michael Bay movie in both destruction (much) and depth (little).
That, at least, was the impression that was left by the game for many. Certainly people had fun, but stories get weird and unsatisfying when the extraordinary becomes too ordinary.
SWRP was created with a couple of general ideas: there would be no canon characters (without GM approval—and this was difficult to come by), and character powers should be at a level that I would characterize as comparable to those on display in the movies. These rules meant of course that the burden of building and establishing characters was on the player, as opposed to some distant author or comic book writer, and that the characters would always be relatable as humans, even if they weren’t, technically, human. There was no overarching plot at the start, but once one was born the rules also meant that the characters got to be clever underdogs starring in their own group story, rather than corpulent invulnerable demigods limited only by the player’s ability to skim Wookieepedia, yawning whenever faced with trouble.
The idea that to have play that was fun and memorable people had to feel like they could do their own thing if they wished, and nod to the plot when they wished (within reason), was part of the feeling that there is a great difference between good RP and a good novel, and between good RP and a good video game. Video games are all about power increases and escalating boss fights; even MMOs were leveling and numbers. There are no levels of firm definition and no numbers in our system-less “combat system” to speak of, which can cause problems if the purpose of encounters, from an OOC standpoint, is to shallowly “win” instead of to create a great story with other people.
SWRP opted to have the latter be its focus.
The trouble with EU Force powers (non-canon now, of course, with a wave of Disney’s wand), was that they were born in choreographed environments (novels) and serial story environments that are all about power escalation and spectacle (comics and games). In RP, with no combat system to provide structure and challenge and limitation, and to regulate fairness, they are not only possibly rapid-fire, but also potentially plot-destroying and eventually game-destroying.
There are reasons why games like this one don’t tend to have long life-expectancies, and this is one of them.
In the past, we talked about this as “power inflation.” It turns games about characters and weird events into DBZ and X-Men, where one imaginary power can be trumped as soon as there’s a new, better imaginary power, with no end in sight. Often, it happens with the best of intentions: ‘now I’ll give someone a challenge,’ or ‘my character needs something new because she or he has been working hard.’ Sometimes, it happens because things slip toward escalation: A new person arrives, for example, with a padawan character who can do Knight-level things, thus making every Knight-level character look foolish unless they beef up their list of Nifty Powers. There are times, as well, when confusion comes because people forget that there’s a difference between Big Plot Villains, who are meant to be daunting and outsized either individually or as a group, and player characters. Only rarely does this escalation happen because someone just wants their character to beat every character that doesn’t belong to them. Pretty much, by this time, we’re all out to try to make the game fun for each other.
Whatever the case, the result is the same:
Powers jump a notch, so dangers have to jump two notches. Once someone has demonstrated a power, those associated with them might also, but players may do this at different paces or not at all, leaving the game a hodgepodge of abilities and senses of where the limits should be. To create some challenge, GMs have to take this into account or put their foot down. If it goes on too long without a GM word about reining things in, the inflated powers get sort of “grandfathered in,” with a sense that this is how the game simply is. They become the pulse of the game; the game’s personality. GM villains and dangers become bulkier, more complicated, more precise, more enormous, as they try to give increasingly versatile, powerful, and confident characters plot to gnaw on. You get escalating threats like the existence of the Core, to the existence of the galaxy, to the existence of the universe or the Force or Time. Threats grow, rather than deepen and diversify, and on that linear track there is an end to stories that feel original.
That is not to say that characters should not have increasing versatility and confidence as a result of their experiences, only that in their extremes they make it very hard to plot. From the outset, even young Force sensitives, barely trained, are probably going to be able to give others a run for their money. They are good at things, have intuition that is incredibly powerful in a game like this, and their stories from the start may have a sense of destiny to them. Trained up, you get characters who are fast, in tune with the universe, precise, and hard to kill—harder still to capture and keep captured.
They are extraordinary, but they can be bested, which means that the widest range of gameplay is open to them. They can do the big showy stuff. The more subtle dangers and plots still have punch. They have advantages, but must use their wits and their strengths. They are not immortal.
In our particular game, power inflation isn’t just a matter of Force stuff, but also tech and slicing, and any other area where cause-and-effect erodes in the face of the Rule of Cool alone (as opposed to the Rule of Cool + some forethought about costs and weaknesses, for example).
Difficulty is the seed of plot. Difficulty is the seed of plot that doesn’t need to have a GM around all the time. Difficulty, complication, surprise. The more corners that get cut as a matter of course, the more characters will find themselves only with Big Plot stuff to play, and less reason to care about it.
Right now, Force users somehow can speak like telepaths. So instead of having to solve problems about communication, and instead of being forced to plan ahead, they can sense each other constantly, and can communicate like Professor X. Force Lightning and even Electric Judgment have made appearances from player characters. These things make you wonder why canon characters did not use these tools—there would be no Star Wars movies if they had.
Dialing things back a bit, considering Force powers in light of the movies as easy comparison, doesn’t mean that no one can get creative in the application of those powers, or enlarge the ideas of the Force in order to play things they’re interested in. It does mean that communication and networking between characters, IC thoughtfulness and maybe even planning, and an OOC interest in the cohesiveness of the story, become more important.
P.S. Sorry for the long-windedness!
That, at least, was the impression that was left by the game for many. Certainly people had fun, but stories get weird and unsatisfying when the extraordinary becomes too ordinary.
SWRP was created with a couple of general ideas: there would be no canon characters (without GM approval—and this was difficult to come by), and character powers should be at a level that I would characterize as comparable to those on display in the movies. These rules meant of course that the burden of building and establishing characters was on the player, as opposed to some distant author or comic book writer, and that the characters would always be relatable as humans, even if they weren’t, technically, human. There was no overarching plot at the start, but once one was born the rules also meant that the characters got to be clever underdogs starring in their own group story, rather than corpulent invulnerable demigods limited only by the player’s ability to skim Wookieepedia, yawning whenever faced with trouble.
The idea that to have play that was fun and memorable people had to feel like they could do their own thing if they wished, and nod to the plot when they wished (within reason), was part of the feeling that there is a great difference between good RP and a good novel, and between good RP and a good video game. Video games are all about power increases and escalating boss fights; even MMOs were leveling and numbers. There are no levels of firm definition and no numbers in our system-less “combat system” to speak of, which can cause problems if the purpose of encounters, from an OOC standpoint, is to shallowly “win” instead of to create a great story with other people.
SWRP opted to have the latter be its focus.
The trouble with EU Force powers (non-canon now, of course, with a wave of Disney’s wand), was that they were born in choreographed environments (novels) and serial story environments that are all about power escalation and spectacle (comics and games). In RP, with no combat system to provide structure and challenge and limitation, and to regulate fairness, they are not only possibly rapid-fire, but also potentially plot-destroying and eventually game-destroying.
There are reasons why games like this one don’t tend to have long life-expectancies, and this is one of them.
In the past, we talked about this as “power inflation.” It turns games about characters and weird events into DBZ and X-Men, where one imaginary power can be trumped as soon as there’s a new, better imaginary power, with no end in sight. Often, it happens with the best of intentions: ‘now I’ll give someone a challenge,’ or ‘my character needs something new because she or he has been working hard.’ Sometimes, it happens because things slip toward escalation: A new person arrives, for example, with a padawan character who can do Knight-level things, thus making every Knight-level character look foolish unless they beef up their list of Nifty Powers. There are times, as well, when confusion comes because people forget that there’s a difference between Big Plot Villains, who are meant to be daunting and outsized either individually or as a group, and player characters. Only rarely does this escalation happen because someone just wants their character to beat every character that doesn’t belong to them. Pretty much, by this time, we’re all out to try to make the game fun for each other.
Whatever the case, the result is the same:
Powers jump a notch, so dangers have to jump two notches. Once someone has demonstrated a power, those associated with them might also, but players may do this at different paces or not at all, leaving the game a hodgepodge of abilities and senses of where the limits should be. To create some challenge, GMs have to take this into account or put their foot down. If it goes on too long without a GM word about reining things in, the inflated powers get sort of “grandfathered in,” with a sense that this is how the game simply is. They become the pulse of the game; the game’s personality. GM villains and dangers become bulkier, more complicated, more precise, more enormous, as they try to give increasingly versatile, powerful, and confident characters plot to gnaw on. You get escalating threats like the existence of the Core, to the existence of the galaxy, to the existence of the universe or the Force or Time. Threats grow, rather than deepen and diversify, and on that linear track there is an end to stories that feel original.
That is not to say that characters should not have increasing versatility and confidence as a result of their experiences, only that in their extremes they make it very hard to plot. From the outset, even young Force sensitives, barely trained, are probably going to be able to give others a run for their money. They are good at things, have intuition that is incredibly powerful in a game like this, and their stories from the start may have a sense of destiny to them. Trained up, you get characters who are fast, in tune with the universe, precise, and hard to kill—harder still to capture and keep captured.
They are extraordinary, but they can be bested, which means that the widest range of gameplay is open to them. They can do the big showy stuff. The more subtle dangers and plots still have punch. They have advantages, but must use their wits and their strengths. They are not immortal.
In our particular game, power inflation isn’t just a matter of Force stuff, but also tech and slicing, and any other area where cause-and-effect erodes in the face of the Rule of Cool alone (as opposed to the Rule of Cool + some forethought about costs and weaknesses, for example).
Difficulty is the seed of plot. Difficulty is the seed of plot that doesn’t need to have a GM around all the time. Difficulty, complication, surprise. The more corners that get cut as a matter of course, the more characters will find themselves only with Big Plot stuff to play, and less reason to care about it.
Right now, Force users somehow can speak like telepaths. So instead of having to solve problems about communication, and instead of being forced to plan ahead, they can sense each other constantly, and can communicate like Professor X. Force Lightning and even Electric Judgment have made appearances from player characters. These things make you wonder why canon characters did not use these tools—there would be no Star Wars movies if they had.
Dialing things back a bit, considering Force powers in light of the movies as easy comparison, doesn’t mean that no one can get creative in the application of those powers, or enlarge the ideas of the Force in order to play things they’re interested in. It does mean that communication and networking between characters, IC thoughtfulness and maybe even planning, and an OOC interest in the cohesiveness of the story, become more important.
P.S. Sorry for the long-windedness!
