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Long ago, I started a write-up for the first thread, on the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Basic Game. I remember getting a message from someone about their taking over on that particular write-up, but I can't seem to find that message now, nor can I seem to find where those further updates would have been posted. That said, I beg the indulgence of some of the more active posters in this thread in clarifying a concern I have with picking back up with reviewing MHR. The game is very light, so I'm worried about veering too close to just paraphrasing right from the book and infringing on copyright. I know that fair use usually applies to excerpting portions of a work for purposes of review, but how much is too much? I don't have mountains of setting details to draw on for content like a lot of other games being posted. Is this even something I need to worry about? vv I want to apologize for doubting the TOC. Seriously, bang-up job. vv PrincessWuffles fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Apr 30, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 06:41
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Lemon Curdistan posted:It is foreign, therefore dity, godless and communist. But enough racism ...  Better late than never, it's time for another thrilling installment of MARVEL HEROIC ROLEPLAYING: BASIC GAME! Last Time: I gave a broad overview of the game and how awesome I think it is. Then, I talked about Hero Datafiles and Dice. All of which you can read here. Now, without even further ado, There Ain't No Point to a Plot With No Plot Points Chapter 1: Introduction Plot Points When we last left this examination of a really cool superhero game, we were talking about all the damned dice it takes to play the thing properly. All through the previous updates, there has loomed a spectre in the shadows, a feature only almost glimpsed, but never fully observed. That spectre, my friends (because this is Marvel not DC where there's a character with that name), is plot points! At their most basic, plot points are like Action Points or Bennies or any other such dramatic currency with which the reader might be familiar from any of a number of other games. The main difference is that plot points are totally awesome. Most games that have this sort of thing will start a player with a set number of them, per session or otherwise. Then, it's up to a gentlemen's agreement between players and GM to see that more are given out over the course of play, even as the things are spent on making things more interesting for everyone involved. I had a regular GM who gives out Action Dice in SpyCraft for making him laugh, for example. Back to the point, or plot point as it were, plot points are basically like Awesome Dollars. You get them for investing in the story, for your own good or ill, and making things interesting, and then you get to spend them on being even more super-heroic! If you really go for it, and really try to do something super amazing, but you fail, you can actually earn back plot points for screwing up! I come from a wary school of player thought that says I should always hang onto expendable special advantages like these, and so might prospective players of this game, but fear not GM's of wimpy players! One of the things that makes the plot point mechanic so much fun is that the idea is for these things to be going back and forth across the table from GM to players and back so often that no one would think of just sitting on such sparkly tickets to Awesome Town. We'll get to how you get more plot points in a little bit, but for now, you might be asking ... What can I really do with Plot Points anyway? I'm glad you asked, disembodied voice of the idealized reader. Plot points can be used for all kinds of things. You can use them to add to your dice pool, in the form of an extra d6 called a push die, use another power or distinction, a stunt die, or use an SFX from your power set. What's a stunt die? What's SFX? Patience, True Believer. You waited just under a year for this post, you can wait longer, and the book is going to make you. So that's stuff you can do before you even pick up the dice. What about after? Well, you can keep an extra die toward your total, but you could also keep an extra effect die. Extra effect dice let you effect another target with your action, so you don't necessarily have to prioritize which of the fleeing muggers to stop in his tracks with Spidey's webs or Punisher's bullets. What else? If the Watcher rolls an opportunity (1 on any die), you can activate it with a plot point to make things more difficult for the opposition. You can also use a plot point to use an effect die from a reaction roll. A more interesting use comes in the spending of a plot point to change stress damage to a different type. Before, we looked at the fact that there are three kinds of damage in MHR, and maxing out your damage taken in any of the three categories is a bad thing. We'll talk more about that later, but for now, you can use plot points to avoid this. Think of it like mind over matter in a really literal sense. Plot points can also be used to buy resources, which are basically temporary advantages drawn from a character's specialties. Usually, resources are bought between action scenes, when there's time to acquire the special device, knowledge or whatever advantage this particular resource is. Plot Points sound awesome, where do I get more of them? Everyone starts the game, and every session, with at least one plot point. The easiest way to get more plot points is so easy you'll literally fall into it by accident. Every time a player rolls a one on any die, they can trade it on a one-to-one basis for plot points. Another way to earn plot points is using a hero's distinctions against him. It might seem counter-intuitive, but bear with me, and those who remember the previous example with Captain America defending protesters from riot police, bear with me especially. MHR: Introduction: Dice posted:... if you choose a distinction that might actually hurt you in succeeding, you still get a d4, but you also get a plot point to use on this or a later roll. ... Maybe you just want to build up a pool of plot points. That's cool, but you're going to take a cut to your distinction die on this action, which helps to deepen your character by exposing a weakness. I mentioned before a hypothetical situation wherein Captain America sees some protesters being pushed back by riot cops. Maybe Cap sees this as the authorities impeding the right of these protesters to express themselves. Obviously, if riot cops are on the scene, there's probably a reason, but not necessarily so bear with me. Maybe the protesters are out in force against a corrupt politician, who's using the police to keep back his dissenters. In this belabored example, Cap's status as the "Sentinel of Liberty" might actually work against him, as engaging the riot police will likely endanger not only him, but also any other heroes on the scene if the cops decide to strike back. Hell, Cap might be seen as leading a charge of sorts that ignites the protest into the full-blown riot that the cops are trying to prevent. Cap's player gets a plot point for taking the smaller die that shows a disadvantage to his character's personality or convictions or status or whatever, and the scene is made more interesting as a result. Awesome. A hero's powers have limits, which are also a potential source of plot points. Limits are things that can shutdown a power or even an entire power set. The fact that Iron Man needs his suit to fly around and fire off repulsor blasts is a limit. Activating a limit complicates a hero's situation, and limits their abilities, but it also nets a plot point. There's more about limits later on, but for now they're just another way that heroes can make a situation more dramatically interesting for themselves in exchange for a later mechanical advantage. The Watcher can activate limits too, by spending dice from the doom pool instead of paying off the hero with a plot point, but we'll get into all that later when we look at the doom pool. Next Time: Beware the Doom Pool! PrincessWuffles fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Apr 30, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 08:11
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This time, there's no escape from another installment of MARVEL HEROIC ROLEPLAYING: BASIC GAME! Beware The Doom Pool! Chapter 1: Introduction The Doom Pool Last time we talked about plot points, but now let's take a look at their nefarious opposite, the doom pool. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Basic Game posted:The doom pool is the Watcher’s resource for adding to the heroes’ opposition and, at the end of an Act, populating the Event with additional threats, challenges, and situations. Like the push dice that players can add to rolls, doom dice begin life as d6's. The doom pool itself begins every Act at 2d6. Acts, Scenes, and Events aren't really explained until later, but basically, an Act is like in a film or play, it's a set of Scenes, and an Event is made up of Acts. Depending on how high the stakes are for a particular Act, The Watcher gets more dice. Makes enough sense for now. So we talked before about how The Watcher can buy players' opportunities with plot points, and then add a die to the doom pool, right? Well, they can. They can also, instead of just adding a new d6 to the pool, step up the lowest die in the pool by one, so a d6 already in the pool can become a d8. If a player rolls more than one opportunity in the same roll, The Watcher can just straight up step up a new doom die once for each additional opportunity past the first, paying only for the original die. If you're just adding d6's to the pool, though, every one costs a plot point. These doom dice can come in the narrative form of a hero's actions causing collateral damage or otherwise adding chaos to the scene. Another way to add to the doom pool is with effect dice from a villain's action. Instead of directly attacking the heroes, they're putting that effect to work in stirring up further chaos for everyone caught in the fray. Some hero powers also have SFX that add to the doom pool. There's those that SFX again. I swear we'll get to them. So What Does The Doom Pool Do? Mostly, doom dice work just like plot points. The Watcher can add them to a villain's dice pool for a roll or activate villain SFX. Let me just stop here to clarify that SFX are basically like d20-style feats that you activate with plot points. Anyway, Doom dice can also be spent to add a die to the total, after a roll, just like with plot points. They can also be used to keep an extra effect die in the same way. The difference with doom dice is that the extra die, whether to the total or effect, has to be of the same size as the doom die spent or smaller. Okay, how about cool new things that separate doom dice from plot points? Well, a doom die of d8 or larger can become a new distinction for the scene, something like a burst steam pipe or a plummeting wrecking ball, or anything else that gives an advantage against the heroes. A Watcher character can use a doom die to interrupt the established order of action. If I haven't established it yet, and I don't think the book has at this point, the usual order of action is determined by, usually, the Watcher asking a player, "What do you do?" and then that player selects the next to act and so on. So if the Watcher wants to get an action in edgewise, they can spend a doom die to do it. Remember how some characters work better on a team, with a buddy, or alone? Doom dice are how the Watcher can separate a team or pair, or even force a loner in with a companion or companions. In addition to power SFX, a spend from the doom pool can activate special effects tied to a Scene or even an Event. Maybe the scene takes place in Dr. Doom's castle, so this could have the effect of summoning fresh doombots to the fight, or maybe this spend advances Dr. Doom's progressive doomsday device another step toward it's catastrophic purpose, or whatever fiendish thing the Watcher desires. The other thing doom dice do is force the end of a scene. It's expensive at 2d12 from the pool, but it can help keep things moving when a fight goes long or some other element of a scene is proving tedious or otherwise standing in the way of action progression. In addition to being a spendable resource for enhancing actions and scenes, the doom pool stands in for opposition when there aren't any villain characters to represent it. Let me clarify because that's a terrible sentence. When it would be dramatically interesting for a character to fail in doing whatever it is they're doing, it calls for a roll, but not every roll is directly opposed by another character, villainous or otherwise. This is where you actually roll the doom pool. Of course, the doom pool as a resource for enhancing rolls also extends to rolls made with the pool itself. Oh, every time the Watcher actually spends a d12 doom die, any hero affected by the spend gets 1xp. That means if the Watcher uses 2d12 doom to end a scene, all the heroes in the scene get 2xp. Those look like pretty small numbers, I know, but this is a narrative game, where xp values tend to be low, so don't worry about it, and we'll talk about it later. In the meantime, I'm spending 2d12 to end this update, so take 2xp and join me ... Next time: The End of the Introduction! (Stunts, Resources, Push Dice, Assets, Stress, and Complications) And then: Playing the Game! (Finally!)
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Apr 30, 2013 09:55
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ibntumart posted:If PrincessWuffles posts have piqued your interest in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, you should act on that now. Today is the very last day you can buy the PDFs as the license expires tomorrow. The Premium versions of event supplements have the rulebook as their first half (don't know if that includes all the superhero datafiles from the standalone rulebook, though). Xelkelvos posted:Besides datafiles and setting fluff, what do the other books add? The other books are a guide to running established comics events through the game. They're a sourcebook to the event and then an outline of key scenes that defined the event, so you can see how your heroes react and change history or follow what went on in the comics. If nothing else, the event lines are a great way to focus your thinking on running a comic book style campaign, even if you just end up picking and choosing from what's already there and altering it to your own purpose. Editing for clarification: The event lines are more than just a plotline, each scene might have cool new Special Effects or other goodies that make it fun and unique, and that could serve any Watcher well in creating their own Event. PrincessWuffles fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Apr 30, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 19:40
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