At 07:05 PM 10/8/2003 +0200, RaspK_FOG wrote:
>I am here making an effort at clearing things up on a level of balancing
>two very different aspects of role-playing: Flavour, the
>distinct feeling that provides as with verisimilititude above all, and
>Game-Mechanics, that present us with game-balance.
I think a definition of “flavour” needs to be made first off. There is a
third category of material that needs to be presented. That is, there is
not only flavour text and game mechanics, there are also campaign
themes. Flavour text needn`t influence game mechanics, while portraying
the campaign themes in game mechanics is what makes something a D20 product
and an individual campaign setting.
Recently, it seems like certain things in the original materials that are,
essentially, campaign materials are being described as flavour
text. Sometimes the campaign material in question might conflict with
other campaign material–though I think that is more rare than has been
suggested–or there may not be a ready 3e/D20 method of portraying that
campaign material, but more often than not there`s no real reason to
redefine things as flavour for the purpose of the campaign setting as a
whole. In fact, in a few cases the redefinition seems to obscure several
aspects of the setting that are really pretty valuable for actual play.
What`s worse IMO is that in several cases it seems like campaign material
is dropped or altered in order to make things fit into the 3e/D20 set of
rules. Aside from the loss of several campaign themes, the 3e rules make
several attempts to describe how they can be changed for particular
campaigns, and it is one of the expressed purposes in developing the 3e/D20
system, so an effort to make campaign material fit into the rules rather
than adapting the rules to fit the campaign setting is an inverted way of
going about it. Portraying bloodline in 3e is probably the most obvious
example of what I`m going to dub “3e formalism” for the sake of this
issue. Making bloodline an ability score, a character class, a template,
etc. are all methods that have been used in order to incorporate the idea
into a 3e update. In fact, all one really needs is a way of accounting for
the granted powers that fits into 3e`s mechanics, not a completely new way
of portraying bloodline.
More significant is the redefinition of things that are pretty clearly
campaign material and meant to reflect certain campaign specific dynamics
into flavour text. The most obvious one in this case is the changes of the
BRCS that several people have expanded upon is in regards to one of the
most fundamental aspects of the BR setting; bloodline and bloodtheft. The
ideas expressed by several people, and apparently the Playtest document,
redefines bloodline as a sort of generic system of political influence
rather than the BR thematic role of bloodline–the product of an actual
divine power granted by exposure to energies released at the Battle of
Deismaar. Now, it needs to be noted that it`s fine to develop a generic
system of political influence that parallels that of BR. However, that`s
not what bloodline is meant to be in the campaign setting. This has led to
several overt game mechanical changes to the setting materials that may be
inspired by the original BR materials, but don`t reflect the original BR
materials` theme. Non-scions can be regents, bloodline is transferred as
the result of any demise hand-to-hand fight, bloodline can be gained by
non-scions by bloodtheft, etc. All of those things make sense (arguably)
if bloodline is a generic system of rulership, but none of these things
appeared in the original materials, not because we didn`t have 2e game
mechanics to portray them–which we didn`t then any more than we do
now–but because bloodline isn`t meant to be generic in the original
campaign materials.
In the long run the purpose of such flavor/colour commentary needs to be
defined. As in, what is flavour and, therefore, unlikely to be true vs.
what is actual campaign material vs. the game mechanical presentation of
both/either of those two things.
When it comes to issues of game balance I think the problem isn`t so much
how to balance things, but simply selling the concept of balance in the
first place. That is, there are several ways to balance things in
3e/D20. Templates, ECL, XP penalties, etc. The problem is that for a lot
of folks having characters that are out of balance appears to be the point
in developing them. Scions should be out of balance, the thinking is, in
order to reflect their superiority over commoners. While I agree that that
is the case, game mechanically one uses some balancing factor not in order
to compensate other characters or penalize the scion, but in order to
situate the scion`s power in the game so that adventures and awards are
appropriately created and granted. One doesn`t balance in order to turn a
gaming session into a sort of all-encompassing level playing field. The
playing field can and in may cases should give a decided advantage to
certain characters. Balance, however, should be used to rate and account
for that advantage in relation to the rest of the system`s accounting for
levels, abilities, powers, etc.
Gary
), we went on discussing how proper it was that Bardic Music was as level-based as other such abilities of similar character/prestige classes were (see the Virtuoso from