There's something that I wanted to try for a very long time; a thought that ran through my brain for months, maybe even years; an idea for a game that I'm still waiting to try. The idea itself is pretty simple: No mechanical advancement for the PCs.
Too much of the games that I ran saw the players focusing on the mechanics, and how are they gonna be better and cooler. This resulted with them making the characters incomplete, always saying that when they'll achieve this and this, they'll be better, fuller, richer...
I don't like it, this aspect of gaming, and if we'll look at Lord of the Rings, or James Bond, Hamlet or Casablanca, the characters don't get any better physically, or any better magically or the like. Even in comics they don't get better (except for Spider-man, but it always turns bad...), so why do we see it there? Isn't story and character advancement is enough? Must we go for the mechanics to feel the advancement? I'm not too sure.
So the idea is really simple, and the possibility of running a game like this might be even positive, might even be plausible to run a game like this. I don't know when, or how; I don't know if it will be fantasy or sci-fi; I don't even know if I'll enable advancement by getting better tools; there's too much to think about in a game like this, but the PCs... I think they and their story will be much fuller, richer, and overall all the way better.
You'd have to start the characters at max level/advancement. Most rpgs start the PCs weak in power with the idea that by the time they reach max level they are the same as the heroes of legend...like Spiderman, James Bond, Aragorn, etc.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I agree with you that they should begin past the basic level/advancement, but I don't believe that we have to go all the way to the maximum. As I see it, it's more interesting when they're still not that great and powerful, but still have their weaknesses, and still acknowledge them. If they'll start at the max level, they'll probably feel invulnerable, or cheated or both. So I think that something in the middle is enough. I don't want them as powerful as Hercules or Spiderman, but as Leonidas, still the source for legends and great feats, not too much to be well beyond anything plausible, otherwise there's no point in it. After all, it's the loss and failure that drives us to continue...
DeleteThanks again for your comment