General musings on role playing

I’m not sure what it is about October and November that distracts me so, but it has obviously been a while since I had anything to say here.

Gaming has continued to be fun. I’m really enjoying my steampunk tech genius. We’ve had three more people join the campaign each playing a unique and interesting character, so that’s worked out well. I believe we’ve had three sessions since I last mentioned anything about Matt’s campaign here. We’ve finished up with the D&D world, and Matt had us hit all the D&D high points: we fought a dragon, we fought an NPC party, and we received loads of magic items.

The acquisition of magic items illustrates an interesting difference between level based systems like D&D, and point based systems like BESM. Level based systems don’t really have a method (or at least a very precise method) for maintaining character balance when magical goodies are acquired (D&D 3.x at least assigns a monetary value to magic items, and then gives you the wealth ranges per level the designers thought were appropriate for the standard game of D&D). It basically falls to the GM to make a judgment call about whether giving out “magic doodad x” to characters of “level y” will unbalance the campaign or not. Under a point based system (assuming items are built using the same rules as characters) it is very easy for the GM to determine if characters are advancing at basically the same level. If character A gets a 25-point magic sword, and character B gets a 5-point magic sword the GM at least knows there is now a 20-point difference between the two characters. Whether this is significant will depend on which system is being used, the nature of the campaign, the nature of the players, and the GM’s style, but the tools are there to easily identify any potential balance issues.

These magic items also brought to light another interesting difference between level based systems, and point based systems. Generally in a level based system you get treasure and move on, in a point based system the GM has to decide if the characters have to pay character points for their treasure. If the GM decides that characters don’t have to pay for items (magic or otherwise) the game plays just fine (level based systems have been doing this way all along so it is a perfectly viable method), the GM’s ability to determine game balance is lessened a bit, but is still superior to that of a level based system. If the GM decides to make characters pay for items, then the balance issues are completely sorted out, but you can get some suspension of disbelief issues – such as looting some cool magic item from your defeated foe, only to find you cannot use it because you don’t have the character points to pay for it. Or maybe something like this:

Player1: What do you mean I can’t use Excalibur to smite my foe, the Lady of the Lake gave it too me?!?!

GM: Yes, but you blew all your character points making Arthur a king, so until you earn some more points and pay for it, Excalibur is a paperweight.

Most GM’s get around this by allowing the characters to use the item on a short term or temporary basis but make them pay to use it long term, for example: when you wrestle the wand of fireballs away from the evil wizard you can immediately use the wand to blast your foes, but if you want make this a permanent addition to your character you have to pay the points for it. Another popular option is to allow the character to use the item, but require them to spend some or all of the future character points they earn on it until it is paid off (so basically an installment plan). One interesting variation on that is to limit the item’s abilities to what the character can pay for, and as the character spends more points on the item, it gains more abilities until it is back to full strength.

The main downside, as I see it, to making characters pay for their magic items is it robs the items of their wow-factor, and largely negates their status as a reward. In a role playing game like D&D if your fighter gets a magic sword, that is pretty much a clear bonus. In a point based system where you have to pay character points for your magic items, that is no longer the case. If your fantasy warrior gets a magic sword, and then has to pay character points for it, you didn’t just get a bonus, you got a suggested path for character advancement (although if your GM is strict about what you can spend your points on, magic items can be a path to buying abilities you wouldn’t normally have access to).