No Great Surprise

[bryant]

Well, I finished the Niccolo series, very happily. There's more than a touch of the soap opera to the whole thing, and I think Dunnett does give in to the desire to have ubercompetent protagonists, but that's somehow tempered by the fact that she expects her readers to keep up with Niccolo. And the prose is so beautiful.

Mage: the Sorcerers Crusade would not in any sense be a good setting to do Dunnett in. The background provided in the main book is spotty and poorly researched, and there's just no tradition vs. innovation dynamic in M:tSC. As I said, no great surprise. The proto-Technomancer schools are pretty good, and Niccolo and his Bank would fit in there well (if you substituted the Celestial Chorus for the Gabrielites) but you'd have to drop the Traditions entirely. The flavor is just wrong.

So it's hard to see what the point would be, except that the magic system would provide an interesting method for solving the problem of playing social characters when you don't have the corresponding social skills. If you define Niccolo's achievements as rotes, you could allow PCs to do similar things rather than expecting players to intuitively divine the workings of their opponents.

Still and all, better to lift the magic system entirely and transplant it into some other game.

Not that I'm obsessive.

Comments

[flit.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.

I like the idea of having a game mechanic (even if it's not magic) to get you things that uber social skills would get you, without requiring the players themselves to be uber.

[bryant]

Yeah; I'm thinking it'd be easier to game-simulate the large scale, long term stuff than it is to simulate the one-on-one stuff. I.e.:

"OK, I'd like to set into motion a chain of events that would lead to the destruction of Lord Robert's good name."

"OK, roll on whatever... nice roll. OK, you make X progress over the next few months; you also learn that your enemy the Earl of Bensonhurst is trying to snipe your trade routes."

This is probably blue book stuff...

The game I thought of while picking up comics today is related to this idea and in fact sprung from it. It's called The Summit; PCs are the managers of various superhero teams, some non-profit traditional style, some corporate-sponsored, some government. You have a bunch of points to spend on up to five heros. Points can be spent on Power, Speed, Range, and Charisma. (Off the top of my head, there.) Superman has high Power and Charisma. His Speed is good but not as good as the Flash. His Range is not so great. Flash has high Speed and high Range. Silver Surfer has incredible Range. Etc.

Every session is a summit meeting of the various superhero team managers. Think of a Model UN session; your heros are resources that you can put towards various crises. Probably quarterly meetings, here. The GM is responsible for setting up the problems. At the end of each game, the players tell the GM (privately) where they're putting their heroic resources (or keep some in reserve for other problems).

The GM then resolves the various crises between sessions. I'd thought that each crisis would be rated on the same scale as the hero stats -- semi-random resolution of the problem based on the resources allocated. Allocate enough and it's a guaranteed success. If you're willing to take a penalty to your resources, you can get more media attention. Non-profits get better media coverage by default. A specific hero can split her efforts among two problems, but at lesser effectiveness. Etc.

Wow, lengthy geekout.

Anyhow, it's a perfectly viable RPG that actually does remove combat from the picture, at least as far as the PCs are concerned. I imagine you could play a session out in under 4 hours guaranteed -- there's only so much time PCs can spend arguing. You could even do without the GM at the session in a pinch, although it's likely that he'll be wanted for questioning. But most of the GM time will be intersession.

Oh, and PCs have no stats. And no need for stats. Which totally amuses me.