And yet, how are you going to consistently obtain this... I can pretty safetly say that a Face is not going to contribute as much as the Street Sammie in a Combat encounter... and the Sammie will probably Never be able to negotiate a settlement like the Face will...

So, using your definition, I have just shown 2 examples where there is absolutely No Balance whatsoever... I think that it is a pipe dream to try to accomplish in most circumstances... can you do it, maybe, but in my opinion (and experience), they will be obscure, edge situations...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

It's a more loosely defined "Gentleman's Agreement" based something off credulity and social credit budgets. It is also an utterly new (to the players), and quite unquantifiable, system you've merged with chargen, there. They would be wise to act conservatively since they have a higher degree of uncertainty as to the costs of any particular choice.

However, I wonder how the balance of power would shift over repeated usage with a fixed group.

We've done this various times - mercenary, corporate or military campaigns, particularly - but we've never had a mechanic for it, it's just something that gets roleplayed.

Wha? That should be relatively easy to consider. When player roles don't overlap at all, balance is elementary.

The face does the talking and the sammie throws down in combat. Easy. Problems arise when you add infilitration to the game - the sammie might be able to add anything, but the face can talk his way past the guards. Bam! You've got a problem that you need to fix because the face is getting to much spotlight time. so the GM can add more combat or whatever.

It becomes a problem when the sammie gets 4 ranks of hide and the face learns how to turn invisible. Suddenly the sammie sucks compared to the face.

It's hardly "unquantifiable." The description of skill ratings apply across the board with only minor adjustments to those descriptions. An average attribute (before adjustments for race) would be 3. An attribute you use regularly would be 4, while one in which you've trained extensively would be 5. If you've trained all your life to improve it, it would be a 6. A score of 7 would still be 'world class;' an Olympic medalist or a renowned scientist, for instance, and would include the "costs" of the appropriate quality or metagenic improvement. Anything that has a rating follows the same guideline.

Implants come down to what a character would reasonably have for their experience. Deltaware is still insanely rare regardless of who you are for the most part, whereas a wealthy socialite running around with betagrade Zeiss Aulderauge cybereyes is perfectly viable. If you're playing a scuzzy street bum living a Squatter's lifestyle, secondhand 'ware is the call of the day at best. Maybe some standard or alpha implants if you were somebody special once upon a time. etc.

It all comes down to relying on descriptions and believability. Which, honestly, is a hell of a lot easier on most players. Especially when they don't have to struggle just to get the basic skills they need to perform their duty, which is a huge disappointment for me in SR4.

Those rules apply to the bad guys, too. If for some reason a particular player decided to abuse the system and I (doubtfully) let it slide, they shouldn't be too surprised when they run up against competition with similar if not superior "descriptions" for their abilities.

it's really easy if you're all working for the same organization (it's basically down to some combination RP and/or social rolls.) I was curious about a way to quantify a requisition system when you're more or less independently financed.

like say, Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark team up. or CIA/MI6 field agents working together without explicit pre-arrangement by the agencies and so on.

The game stops working if you're a 'Legal' in the system, because you really can just call up special branch and they will kick the door down when you find the BBEG or whatever.

I'd play something else at that point.

However, James bond still works because he's an 'illegal' going outside of england because the british SAS cannot just rock up to help you out.

Limited assets. you'd be surprised how often real agents are on their own/temporarily rogue* (under cover, acting in the moment etc.) it's actually relatively infrequent that field operatives can speed-dial uniformed enforcement.

you pre-suppose that the BBEG is a single entity you can actually collar too.

I'm pretty sure I can knock out something myself I was just curious if anyone else had done so yet.

Yeah look, it's not perfect but at the end of the day if you're a serving FBI agent you can call other FBI agents. Also you can legitimately walk around with an M-16 in your trunk. Which goes against SR's ruleset somewhat.

Given that all these problems go away just by moving events to Brazil, I have no idea why you would not just do that.

What I mean is that the prices in social currency of any choices at chargen are unquantifiable. There is a significant amount of doubt as to what any particular option will even cost you, let alone the fact that you have N different social currencies with uncertain rates of exchange.

I'm hearing alot about roleplaying and that's kinda the point of why I do this in my games. When someone dumps 10k a month into role playing I think they deserve a reward (especially since most living at the life style happens between runs). In fact even the book says to reward good roleplaying woth karma. So by doing this you inspire more roleplaying. plus most character will role play by doing voices or accents and trying to amke their peronalities show through but when they have 10k they'll save it for cyberware or magic supplies. They won't call it rp. They'll call it throwing their money away. 1 or 2k maybe but not 10. also all those hidden benifits aren't that cost effective you can just buy that stuff and save money in the long run.

ANd I actually had mixed feelings about the edge I'm still tinkering with the exact numbers but think of it this way. They spend their edge on a hard run and yhe characters are emotionaly drained. (cause though edge represents luck that's what it means in terms of rp I think) After they notice they have a lull to take some time off the run they go hom to relax with their available creature comforts and the next day are happy and refreshed: edge restored. It's a nice way to give that edge boost in the middle of the run (especially if you find your players saving the edge for when they really need it and in the end not spending it at all)

Also Cuthulu don't get self righteous I doubt you have as much role playing as my tables. I tell my players to thing of a character and then I build stats and a campaign around that. I bring up parts of their past and try to make the rp meaningful. I even had a player turn down a run to help one were wolf pack defeat another with a mysterious arms suplier because he didn't see them as any different from the first. (frankly I thought it was dumb since he never turned down on a run since the first pack wasn't evil before helping a neutral party before and this werewolf pack was the former pack of one of the players and had he done even a tiny bit of legwork he would have discovered that the later pack's suppliers was their arch enemy who was supplying the pack BECAUSE they were planning to strike at the players)

"This is a bad idea. If their is any material advantage to having a high lifestyle, you'll killing street sammies and rewarding mages. Which hardly needs to happen I might add."

I think you're missing the benifits.... I did this partly with sammies in mind..... as a street samurai You spend nost of your dough on cybernetics so I think if you spend it on a nice house instead you deserve a reward bare in mind you don;t have to buy a nice house, you can still buy a cheap one. You're not being penalized except for the squatter and street styles which would happen anyway via rp.

still this is the perfect example of what I mean you wouldn't want to spend money on a house you'd rather save it for cyberware. but not having that house has a benefit to it.

I think there's something implausible about starting with alphaware implants and living like a bum on the streets. I like my lifestyle and equipment to be roughly in balance with each other.



As for the game balance thing: the real problem then is that the sammie who lives the good life is disadvantaged against the bum?

Consider picking up a different combat specialty, and use karma to be the best in that. Using game balance in an attempt to give equal spotlight to characters that are too similar is not the solution. Be different through method, not power.

What the hell? I've constantly been talking about negotiating what game you want to play before hand - and then you're suggesting I don't do that? Why would I constantly be talking about getting the players in a room and agreeing on what you want to play if I wasn't doing that?

But don't worry, you're here to tell me I'm a bad roleplayer because I think about mechanistic as well as negotiated solutions to problems.

Whatever.



What? there are like a billion good in genre reasons for this to be the case - you were experimented on by crazy machines SS2 style, you were betrayed by your corporation and you're on the run, you're an ex military guy who's pretty shaken up and had a run in with the bottle and is just putting the pieces back together. That's what I thought of in the time I was reading the sentence you wrote anyway, I'm sure there are more.



Err, that is one way of trying to explain what the underlying problem is - people that invest in expendable resources instead of permanent power will gradually fall behind unless they are re-reimbursed for the stuff they consume. It wouldn't matter if it was a CRPG, because it's perfectly valid to trade power now for power later when it's just you. It's an entirely different issue if you've going to have 3 months of game where John is dominant and Bob may as well be playing super smash bros, then 3 months of visa versa.

I think you have somewhat extreme notions about the competition between players. I think this would only be a problem if their fighting styles were so similar that they'd be competing for the same spotlight moment. But sammies can be different enough that this doesn't have to be a problem. Some ways to be different:

- special movement, to get to places the other guy can't (climbing, jumping, running, swimming, or weirder things)
- different specialties in your "core" skills - against drones, people, etc.
- focus on different weapons, which are best in different situations
- focus on defense and staying power
- infiltration skills
- traps, or trap detection
- unusual fighting style (bike-mounted combat, extremely close/grappling)
- environmental adaptations (comfortable in a burning chemical plant)
- misdirection, confusion skills
- tactical expertise, fancy maneuvering tricks

Some of these are equipment-centered, some more skill-centered. But they're all different from trying to outrace the other sammies on the "standard sammie cyber progression track". Try picking up some cool, but not directly useful implants or skills, and then figuring out how they can come in useful.

Obviously if you want a balanced group, you just make a character, run over to the photo-copier, hit 'copy' and pass her out to the whole group. Everyone then adjusts the backstory and bam, totally balanced group

Also, no character should be able to buy anything or spend karma without group consensus and everyone doing the same thing to prevent power creep.

Suddenly I have this vision of a group of players all taking the escaped clone quality... of the same original person

You will obey the Hive Queen! All Soldier Ants are Equal before the Hive Queen! All hail the Hive Queen!

that's 'probably' a bad trade on the part of the sammie, and is abusive on the part of the mage (unless you do it in the reverse for mages: giving them RP karma for living on the streets.) It's also mean to players who are playing street concept characters.



RP speaking (just to reinforce your interpretation), it *can* mean that (it doesn't strictly represent luck, if it did you'd be rolling something related to edge on every test, and when it came up positive you'd get a bonus.) it's basically that je ne sais quoi that makes 'runners the protagonists and villains the villains. Roleplay-wise that can be pretty much anything from emotional guts, luck, badassery, thinking like a 'hero', professionalism, etc.

mechanically you refresh it whenever as a GM you feel appropriate.

personally, my table tends to run a cinematic game in SR4, so our karma refreshes when its dramatically appropriate. (this can literally be in the middle of a run, going from one objective to another; it can also be 3 months between refreshes, game time wise.)



self-righteous much?

That would be the worst possible group and would indeed be grossly unbalanced, because many jobs can only be performed by one person (e.g. picking a lock)

Edit: Look, this is just insane. You guys are seriously saying that I am unbalanced, then YOU the posters here go to 'Welcome to the Shadows' and then post houserules about how you don't like possession mages in your game (Because they are OP or not genre approriate)

As they are clearly not OP in the abstract (You're seriously saying it's worth dropping 3-4 IP to get +12 armor, and sammies would make the reverse trade any day of the week, and the higher IP situation also gives you someone who you can sacrifice, a conjuring mage is probably better), your doing it because they overshadow the other players in your game, or disrupt the game you want to play by doing stuff outside of your vision for the game (bouncing bullets off their armoured hide).

How am I unbalanced for articulating what you are doing anyway? YOU DO IT TOO! Argh.

But they would be perfectly balanced with each other. They would all get the exact same amount of spotlight, which is what some people have indicated is balance to them. And there are ways around (or through) virtually any problem.

I hope my generous dose of sarcasm with the post wasn't missed.

Please see my edit above. You in particular are a gross offender as you ban stuff (Source: L4D thread, welcome to the shadows, character generation rules) for the reasons I am outlining, then have a go at me for taking specific actions to prevent this unbalance... which you already do yourself.

The only difference is I've done a root cause analysis and try to act systematically and fairly to all players whereas you are doing point fixes for specific issues as they arise.

I happen to think doing something systematically is better, but obviously YMMV. However, it is ludicrous that you are making a joke of a position that you already adopt informally.

I was making a joke of the fact that in order for everyone and everything to be balanced, it would have to be exactly the same. All systems have a problem with balance due to this fact. SR, D&D, VtM, WoW, -everything- suffers from this problem.

And yes, I banned possession mages in that game, but I did not ban mages you might have noticed. Possession mages have more or less always been seen (As far as I can tell) as being more powerful than other mages, and their problem magnifies much quicker at high power levels. Like I told you before, I don't really care what you do in your game. If you think that there needs to be some weird lifestyle rules, or that a sammy is unplayable if he doesn't live in a box, then that is fine. I personally don't see that balance issue between mundane advancement and mage advancement. I did however see a balance issue between a high power possession mage and a high power normal mage.

There was also the fact that I simply didn't want to deal with the oddities that they possess, and perhaps even more than the other two reasons, I didn't think that the abilities a possession mage would have would fit in the game in particular. Which is why I didn't allow HMHVV immune types, as it would rather spoil the entire zombie survival aspect.


So yes, I'm poking fun at game balance because it is impossible to achieve, not that people shouldn't try. I've nothing against trying to balance archetypes, my problem here is that I don't see the issue. And that could just be a personal problem. Just because I poke fun at something doesn't mean I can't do that thing. Just because I poke fun at American's/America doesn't mean I'm not an American. Just because I poke fun at game balance doesn't mean I don't want to have a balanced game.

Actually, I'm not sure what we're fighting about here, but...

I don't really care about balance as long as I enjoy playing my character. I tend to play sammies (sometimes sammies with no cyber or bio or magic, whatever characters of that type are called). I've made the uber-sams that rival the initiate in the group, and there is a certain amount of fun in that, but even when I'm playing lo-tech having more powerful or versatile characters around doesn't bother me.

I think a character can fill a niche with raw mechanical power, but a character can also fill a niche without being mechanically distinctive. A character's viewpoint, the choices he or she makes can play a very big part of the "spotlight", despite being only tangentially related to the numbers.

Ultimately, I think the only metric by which a character succeeds or fails is, "Is the player having fun?"

That's just crazy talk

So is the Idea of character balance...

Keep the Faith

This is not true. Let's consider some well balanced systems, and then some systems where 'everything is exactly the same'

1) You use WoW as an example, so lets consider computer games - You can make a balanced game with asymmetric options. Starcraft: Brood Wars is actually a great example of a highly balanced game with no dominant options.. unless you think Protoss, Zerg and Terrans are the same.

2) Also your assertion that if things are the same they are balanced is 100% wrong. Non-physical games with symmetrical sides are always unbalanced - Go and Chess being great example of unbalanced games where both sides are the same.

Edit: Incidently, it's not always the first mover that has the advantage. In Settlers of Catan, first player is at a considerable disadvantage to third, and in Peurto Rico, it's the third player who has the greatest advantage (and first is a dud again)

I think the joke here is on you. RPGs are unbalanced because most RPG designers are bad at maths and logic, simple as that. Highly creative though.

V:tM is a great example of a really unbalanced game btw - Dominate is just a billion times better than other powers (1 net hit: I win rather than I do some damage), and the backgrounds are entirely out of wack with each other.

A major theme of V:tM is inequality and opression.

The only way to win the political game in V:tM is to sit in a closet for four years earning enough EXP to buy the Ultimate power, then you pop out and use it. Because otherwise someone else will use it on you first, and make you their bitch.

Which is stupid.

...
I guess I play the game differently. For one, sitting in a closet doesn't earn you XP.

But if that's how you see the game, then I don't really think anything I can write will convince you.

The problem with VtM is that most vampire players are frustrated because their vampire characters don't have as much cool powers as the Garou characters whom have from the very begining: small teleports (going to Penumbra and back), able to soak agravated damage without the need of a special power, extra actions per turn without the need of a special power, able to deal agravated damage without the need of a special power, natural regeneration without the need to spend resources, their Gifts are extremely cheap XP-wise and et cetera et cetera et cetera.
No wonder they would be frustrated and feel the need to accumulate as much XP as they can to use their ULTIMATE POWER OF DOOM.

There's always something bigger; they rarely complain that they're so much better off than 1st level D&D characters.

Those games were never built to be mixed together; they're about rather different things. Vampire wasn't really built to be about combat and defeating monsters, and it's not so good at that style of game.

Actually, the best WW games I ran or played were combo games.

More accurately, the best WW games I played in started out as human games, with the supernatural elements being developed as we went along.

I am totally aware of that, unlike the new WoD where the game was already built with cross-overs in mind. But the point remains, whenever I had together werewolf players and vampire players I had the feeling that the werewolf players were much more into roleplay while the vampire players were playing what I like to call "Vampire Ball Z: The search of vampires to be diablerized" and were constantly complaining about how more powerful werewolves were to vampires.

Chess isn't mathematically unbalanced. there aren't any inherent advantages to white unless your style favors aggressive play.*


*most intermediate players are aggressive players.

I don't know the nWoD games really.

I've noticed lately that my vampire group does have a lot of focus on combat, even though generation improvement isn't a big goal (I've set the benefits of diablerie rather conservatively.) They're very interested in learning Vicissitude, which disturbs me.

I'm mostly to blame for this focus on combat; I do try to put in action and combat into most sessions, and story conclusions often feature combat. I'm planning to run some stories where violence is fairly irrelevant for a while.

While there is some theory by chess masters that this is the case, studies of games between grand masters at the tournament level indicate white has a superior winning percentage. (incidently, same for top chess engines)

So we have theory vs fact and I'm going with the measured observable facts thanks

Also statistical studies show that the advantage grows the higher the ratings of the players get.



Errr yes, but some bloodlines have super cheater disciplines, and other bloodlines have protean.

Protean 3 is the ultimate political discipline.

I think 80% of politics ultimately derives from the need to make sure your haven will exist at sunrise. This discipline frees you from that issue.

Like I said, it's all in how you view/play the game.

"Sitting in a closet" is showing up to a game and never speaking a word. Because as soon as you (the new player) are in direct conflict with anyone else (not-new player) you'll lose.

We'll do Rock-Paper-Scissors. If I (the older player) win, then I win. If we tie, then we look at our respective stats (I still win). And on the off chance that you do win, we get to go again.

That sounds fair, right?

Hey, at least it's better than nWoD where making the party get together for the first time is a task fraught with risk because they might just kill each other thanks to predators taint.

Is any game where you can go to a convention and accidentally kill all of the fae players a good thing?

Yes, its happened. A friend of mine--IIRC was the one who did this--was talking to a new player about how his character could make illusions that weren't real, and to show off he made a city-wide illusion of a nuke exploding. An ST happened to be nearby, and because Fae are effected by illusions as if they were real, announced to some 4000 people "all fae, please roll new characters. A nuke just went off in the city."

I'm guessing that is Mage, which is functionally identical to playing magical tea party and I honestly don't know what it even has rules.

it's mathematical theory which stands on the same footing as observed statistical evidence (in fact, in mathematical game theory black has a small advantage, he always has more information than white by 1 move.)

I'll counter with the fact that all the current top engines are aggressive engines (there's some philosophical arguments that this has to do with how we currently design chess engines and may in fact be a limitation of deterministic computing; but I'll set that aside since it's not germane.)

as well, while it is true that a typical grandmaster wins better with white, there is some validity to the claim that this is a psychological outcome: players win better with white because they believe white is the stronger starting position and practice wins with white more, while seeking only draws with black. (seeking dominance with white, and safety with black.) Anatoly Karpov kind of led the way to this - his win percentage with white was unprecedented and so good that he rarely had to win any games as black to win tournaments. (drawing or losing every black game)

the tempo advantage can have significance if the game evolves into symmetric play, but it is relatively easy for a skillful black player to force a sharp midgame, at which point tempo isn't as important as immediate tactical considerations of position, attack and counterattack lines - where the game is even.

There was a period in the late 19th century when black was the majority winner in several tournaments at Hastings. (although this could be a statistical anomaly.)

(I am sure that there are individual grandmasters with better black %'s than white %'s although I'm having trouble finding a chess database that allows me to break it down by color and player at the same time.) anyway, without a name to point to, I still posit that it is possible for an individual grandmaster to be better with black in the field - which points to white not having an insurmountable advantage - if indeed, white has an actual advantage at all, and not merely a psychological one.

[edit] I'm not trying to claim that white is not simpler to play well, simplicity in play does not necessarily imply a balance advantage (fighting games demonstrate many many places where this is proven in both point and counterpoint.)

Mage is also WoD, like it or not.

Warewolf has its own issues, as does Hunter and Mortal.

But they're all WoD, made by White Wolf, and all have glaring balance issues. Mainly because they're intended for role playing and not based around the mechanics, unfortunately, the mechanics get even more flawed when you start abstracting them.

@Jericho: Look, the argument is absurd because you have no actual evidence to support the position. In between top shelf players, white wins 54% of the time. Even the people who have advanced the black is better theory (and thus logically would have overcome the psychology as they are invested in their position) cannot actually get any evidence together to support it - the information advantage one is hilarious because yes, he does, but white also has 1 more move of board position.

Finally, it isn't supported by how black is currently played - with the objective of disrupting white's play.

And yes at the end of the day, the position "White Wins More" has the experimental evidence supporting it. Feel free to conduct a different experiment if youd like, but I note in similar games (Go and Checkers), the first mover still wins more.

@Draco18s: Okay I guess. Seriously though all the WW games are broken up front, but are super broken when compared to each other.

Out of curiousity, What exactly are you basing this on... In the Old World Of Darkness, This was somewhat true, but not as much in the NWoD... Much like any game, you can break the system if you really try to do so, but it is not an inherent problem with the system, it is an inherent problem with the players that choose to do so... I have been playing NWOD since its inception and have not observed the situations that you are describing with the system (of course, I avoid Mage for the most part, and have yet to obtain Geist or Promethean, but have played the remaining Core Systems)...

Keep the Faith

it's not absurd; the fact that white wins more in the last century of chess doesn't mean that white always wins more. It's misleading to suggest that grandmaster play represents the final balance of chess, just like pointing to play from the 18th century isn't sufficient to prove black the superior position.*

simply stated, the typical grandmaster is spending approximately 2/3rds of their preparation studying white and 1/3rd studying black. this is a chicken and egg problem with modern chess. spending twice the time should result in a superior level of play with that color - is this a psychological limitation of the current grandmaster field? reasonable minds differ. Chess is unusual in that the actual experience of stronger players goes against the predictions of game theory - it differs in this way (among others) from checkers and go, where the unbalances are corroborated by game theory. Is Chess just too complex? perhaps - but it may be a side effect of the current art in the game and not of game theory itself.

checkers and go are both simpler games. (notably checkers is NP-complete and solved to a guaranteed draw: which is to say it doesn't favor the first player to move - the player to make the first capitalizable mistakes loses, red moves first and thereby has to make one more perfect move than black.) go has a strategy-stealing argument that is actually operative from move 1 (provided the board is odd, and all boards used in human play are; typically 19x19).

the fact of the matter is, there are situations in chess where having +1 tempo when the situation evolves actually costs you the game (zugzwang - and is the reason that there isn't currently a strategy-stealing argument in chess.) this doesn't occur in either of the other two games.

I'm not disagreeing that experientially white is the more common winner, I'm disagreeing that in itself that is sufficient to claim it isn't balanced (necessary vs. sufficient factors.)

Predators taint? Not that disciplines in the new vampire game are even close to balanced anyway.

@Alar: Okay look, I don't care. If one side wins measurably more often from a game design perspective that is all you need to make the relevant game design decisions (nerf that side). Trying to prove why mathematically is a waste of time as it might not even be the problem is computable. It's clearly measurable so that is all you need to manage it.

fair enough. we were sort of losing the topic anyway.

as for nwod, I wasn't under the impression that the games were meant to be balanced in the first place? (that is, the games were left unbalanced for flavor purposes - it leads to abuse though... probably untenable.)

No, it makes the combat terrible - 16 kids with BB guns beats a werewolf every time - and it makes balance between the characters in a party impossible. Some people can make anyone into their mind slaves, some people have abilities that interact with the predators taint rules which are unplayable.

If your Schtick is make remove some rules from the equation that we weren't going to use anyway, and mine is get everyone I meet to do exactly what I want them to do, you can see what the problems that will arise are.

oh for sure, I was just wondering if it was unintentional design failure or if the dev's actually didn't playtest for it because they considered the absurd outcomes to be a feature rather than a liability of the game. (I don't know very much about WoD's line development, you see.)

Why buy lifestyles? ...