[kris_40000]

OK so here I am today, talking to my friend who works at my FLGS, and he hands me his character sheet that was drawn up for him by the VtR ST for the local game, based upon the character details given to him by my friend.

To my horror I was viewing some awful monstrosity of a min maxed sheet.

The character being a Gangrel is an attept to break some stereotypes and be less combat more social (thought on the intimidating side). The character has been around for 120 or so years and was torpor for the duration of the Blitz.

But the stats. Good God!!???

A composure of 5? A resulting willpower of 9!!!

All the mental skill dots were placed in Occult and Politics (great but if your are a politics type maybe you might need some academics and investigation to be able to fast talk the others)

The physical stuff had all gone into brawl... of 4!

And the Social skills were just animilism (of what use is that to a people person) and Intimidate (how obvious... but what of empathy and socialize).

Did I say that the experience awarded based upon the characters age had (when I did the maths) gone into only the attributes.

I was shocked.

So I sat down with my frined and explained my reasoning. In half an hour we had retrofitted the character who had now lost a few dots of the high end skills and attributes, but as a result had gained dots everywhere allowing him to be more flexible.

And to think I'm planing on trying out Larp with this same local group.... gee wizzz......

So I made a pact with my friend. I'll defend his none min maxing based on a number of things.

My experience as a ST (which puts others into a pale comparison).

My approach to TT games (they turn out more like Larp... just no make up and less wlaking around... yes I pace about),

Oh and that I'll make a character that like his is a level well rounded character so we can prove a point... its not how many dots you have in a few skills.... its where you put them about.....

Am I over reacting or am I just being sensible???

Forums open.

Matches ready.

Burn away.

[agasha kumiko]

Fight the good fight Kris! Seriously you are not overreacting to me. Tell us how it turns out please.

[Aleksanteri]

Sensible.

Min-maxed chars are boring to play anyways.

[kris_40000]

Cheers..... seriously when I saw the character sheet and then showed the guy the Chicago book and went "this here is the Prince of the City..... do you spot some things that now seem odd about your sheet?"


Sigh

I'm gonna love hammering those poor saps (which I hope is the minority).

[Luxifer]

The situation with the Camarilla is that MET mechanics demand a different set of statistics.

You draw, add that number to your pool and at 10 and every 5 above you get a success (10, 15, 20, 25 etc...).

Because of that, what would be an average dice pool in TT is a very weak one in MET.

This is perhaps one of the major problems tha tI have with the Cam, is that they have 10 and 5 again. A more reasonable threshold would be 8 and 3 again to resonate more with the statistics of TT.

Comparing a LARP character to characters from Chicago is an exercise in futility I find, because of those differences in statistics.

Essentially it's a catch 22 that I strongly dislike. The system was designed to account for the large number of uber characters to try and give a level playing field, this in return encourages players to min-max just so that they can have reasonable dice pools.

It's one of the more contentious issues, especially for domains like ours where the players are moderately senisble about characterisation and stats.

If you've got a good domain, you're more than likely going to have STs who are going to almost always run complex scenes cinematically rather than mechanistically. If you've got a bad domain you'll be glad of the system.

[kris_40000]

Cheers Lux....


I guess I cringe more at not how a character is made but more with what stories I've heard this group do....

Example

Obfuscate a hallway??!!!????

Yeah the rules don't say to much on the subject..... but for f**k sake come on......

I dont know.....


Gonna have to sit down and look at my pdf of Mind's eye and decide.......

[Luxifer]

hrmmm... Obfuscate a hallway... potentially feasible with cloaking the gathering...

Certainly obfuscate a doorway with level 1.

Though personally, if the idea is truly creative I prefer to reward it.

[kris_40000]

Well to put this way my initialy chats to some of th players for this larp made me go "wtf".

Lets put it into context. These Cam guys get off on doing mad shit with uber powerz.

While my own players get off on being cunning vile bastards playing the Dnase Macabre.... kewl powerz to them are helpful... but then at the end of the day they are far more into wheeling and dealing.

This is what I'm hoping to inject into the Cam game.

If it doesn't work....

Well I might just try and start setting up and indy Larp group.... but that is for the future.

It just seems weird... why bother spending dots on skills and so forth if the game doesn't support that type of play??

Just to level the playing field? I'm sorry but that seems like poor reasoning on the side of the Cam.

I'll have to compare the 'dice rolling systems' of the Larp to TT but surely it aint that bad is it????

I guess I have high expectations of being able to 'role play' free of dice, with proper intrigue, though fear already that to do well in the setting you have to have a willpower of 9.

[Luxifer]

exactly... if you have a good domain, then it's actually rare that you'll use a discipline. In our game I can go for weeks at a time without using them.

[Luxifer]

oh and don't get me wrong... I'm a huge fan of the Cam, I just wish some dicks didn't ruin it for the rest of us.

[Tuesday]

This is what I'm hoping to inject into the Cam game.

Don't waste your time and money.

Games are only as good as their lowest common denominator of player.
Cam Games make it impossible to restrict your players.

A good Cam game will have maybe a few Discipline-monkeys, and will restrict them heavily. A bad Cam game will have many Discipline monkeys and let them run wild.

A bad Cam game cannot be converted to a good one. A player who tries will have his characters killed by monkeys, over and over again. An ST who tries will be voted out in favour of a monkey.

[Aleksanteri]

Tuesday is awesome. I just love that caustic style!

But yeah, I agree about the whole LCD thing. I've seen promising, 20 strong LARPs ruined by one lone idiot who wanted to "be the best".

[Luxifer]

and I've seen LARPS do exactly the opposite, not just the Cam.

Seriously, educating someone about gaming ettiquette out of game and handling such things maturely and responsibly can go a long way.

You vote in your ST and Co-ord chain for a reason people.

[jadedeath]

and I've seen LARPS do exactly the opposite, not just the Cam.

Seriously, educating someone about gaming ettiquette out of game and handling such things maturely and responsibly can go a long way.

You vote in your ST and Co-ord chain for a reason people.

Subtlty is an art lost on most LARPers...

sometimes the best way to get something through a skull is not slipping a note in their ear... but a hammer through the temple...

Logan

[zenten]

and I've seen LARPS do exactly the opposite, not just the Cam.

Right. A larp with a sucky ST will be no better than a Cam game. However, a good indy game can be way better than a good Cam game, because the good ST will have the power to make a good game.

[strider1276]

Right.  A larp with a sucky ST will be no better than a Cam game.  However, a good indy game can be way better than a good Cam game, because the good ST will have the power to make a good game.

I'm not going to disagree with you, per se, zen - but something I feel the need to point out:

The Cam, as a whole, seems to be putting more and more power into the local VST's. Now, this doesn't apply to things that are still Approvals (due to rarity or power levels - I mean, c'mon, not every domain can have 5 Bohagande running around....), or to ret-conning, but as far as plots go, VST's have a fairly good amount of leeway. It seems like ST plot items that are also Approvals (again, rarity, etc) are pushed through reasonably quickly, so long as they are well thought out and make sense. From what I can view in the database, it doesn't seem that there is anything particularly cheesy in my region at least (that's all I can see), although I do try to stay out of the other venues and so forth. I think, though, that there is a *ton* of stuff that a VST can do that doesn't require approval - let's take my venue (Forsaken) as an example:

For ST's - the Pure, Azlu, Beshilu, and Spirits (Rank 1-3) are Low Approval. Bale Hounds are Mid, as are Rank 4 Spirits. Rank 5-6 Spirits are High Approval, as are the other named Hosts (Crow, Snake, and Locust). Other Hosts (read: Custom) are Top Approval, as are Su'ur - the empty wolves. The named horrors from Predators (the Deep, the Flesh, etc) are Master Approval. So, even at Low Approval, a Forsaken ST, say, can still quite easily use as antagonists:

-Other PC's (always)
-Pure
-Azlu
-Beshilu
-Spirits, Ranks 1-3
-Spirit Urged
-Spirit Claimed
-Mortals
-Ghosts
-Any antagonist or creature type that is Low Approval (mages and vampires, too, as well as venue-specific antagonists that are Low Approval)

Of course, there are any number of stories that could be done without one of these particular antagonists, but these will likely form the basis of a lot of stories.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you - to the contrary, an ST for a local Indy game has the power of *everything*, so they are less restricted than a Cam ST. But the Cam is giving more power to the VST's - or, so it seems to me, anyway. Which I think is a good thing.

[pathological]

I found with a LARP Game and i am going by T:tM AND M:tA LARP.

Because of the utter lack of anything, a lot of new people, i did, figured well if i can not have anything how am i to stay allive in thie unstable game where the outcome is not so much random as it can be determined if you have a keen eye to watch some one throw the tests.

I used to max out EVERYTHING, i learned later how to min max and twink without being CRAZY about it, it was all subtlty, and the only reaosn i did this was because the ST was the kind og guy who would pull stupid things and the players were being being dumb sometimes. You would walk in and they would try to kill you for no reason SO i made character to change that. The ST allowed them...

Anywho, Minmaxing is stupid when you are doing it for the sake of having a big gun. If there is a reaosn for it, go with it. I mean if some one was bread for the sole reaosn of ebing a cammy strong arm in sabbat fights, i do not see much in the way of anything but physicals, and a low will. Following orders can do that. All of a sudden you have 5 in poetece and you maxed your physicals, cool you are a beat machine BUT, you forget you are not always fighting, what happens when you are politicking, you are an idiot, and the game is not fun unless you are fighting. People do not realize it untill it happens.

When i first started LARP i took the TT creation rules, sort of, i gave them 7 5 3, but in abilities i broken them up and said 13/9/5 nothing above 3 yet. I meam how do you have a 120 year old 7/5/3 how did you survive so long with crap stats. At least with the 13/9/5 you could have knowleges and the abolities that can reflect the possibility that you survived long enough, i mean 5 dots in ALL of your abilities? That is stupid. I never liked that.

Anywho, nip it in the butt and you should be ok, but dang, it is hard not to in a LARP game when you get so little to work with. 5 dots in abilities is like saying how do you quantify 20 years of existance in 5 dots? you can;t impossible unless you lived uynder a rock, even then you could have soil lore, rock lore, investigations, cosmology etc. but only 5 dots, even though you did it for 20 years... Give me a break... I do not condone it but i say it CAN be hard to escape the temptation when you start SO weak, even by LARP standards.

[zenten]

The Cam, as a whole, seems to be putting more and more power into the local VST's. Now, this doesn't apply to things that are still Approvals (due to rarity or power levels - I mean, c'mon, not every domain can have 5 Bohagande running around....), or to ret-conning, but as far as plots go, VST's have a fairly good amount of leeway. It seems like ST plot items that are also Approvals (again, rarity, etc) are pushed through reasonably quickly, so long as they are well thought out and make sense. From what I can view in the database, it doesn't seem that there is anything particularly cheesy in my region at least (that's all I can see), although I do try to stay out of the other venues and so forth. I think, though, that there is a *ton* of stuff that a VST can do that doesn't require approval - let's take my venue (Forsaken) as an example:

Can an ST ban a player from attending the game, or declare that something stupid that happened in another game didn't happen?

[Tuesday]

> Can an ST ban a player from attending the game, or declare that
> something stupid that happened in another game didn't happen?

No, and no.

[kris_40000]

Pathalogical I think you missed the point here.

I St games for TT for all three of the current splats.... I use the standard starting xp if its warrented. I dont mind that.

The point is fairness and a level of control

I find it funny how some gamers seemd to forget that having 5 dots in a stat is pretty much a rarity unless its somethign you do all your life.... for a bloody long time.

I don't mind the idea of scary powerful characters... so long as its for a good reason and fits the game. (a powerful primogen is one thing... but the backlash from a dozen ancillae... I wonder who might win? thus the politics is important).

What does annoy me is the idea that to even survie the gaming experience one is "promoted" min-maxing by the ST and other players.

Fairness in games is not about xp or dots as such... but the in game story reasoning for it and the benefit such actions and so forth will make for the "entire" gaming experience, rather than for the benefit of the self mastabatory fun of a lone player or some idiot ST.

Check rule 2 of the MET books "10 commandments"... its says it all