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View Full Version : Breaking the Setting vs. Breaking the Game



Angry Bob
2012-06-30, 11:43 PM
I'm running a campaign in a few months. The premise can be boiled down to "characters from disparate settings find themselves in a place that acts and operates very much like an rpg." The place does not play fair, actively resists attempts to discern its nature or probe its limits, and is oblivious enough to the characters' reactions to such a place that such probing will be inevitable, out of spite if nothing else.

I, however, built the campaign with the theme of breaking a system through sequence breaking, early "nukes", or exploiting glitches. By the end of the game, if the players do what I expect them to(That's what players do, right?), the players would have defeated several enemies of the "Lord British" variety - supposed to be unbeatable, but actually has stats, so a sufficiently powerful or cheaty player can beat them.

How do you allow for players and characters to be overpowered in the context of the internal setting without ruining the game itself? How do you run such a game?

If it helps at all, the game will be in HERO system 6th edition.

Kalaska'Agathas
2012-07-01, 12:19 AM
I'm running a campaign in a few months. The premise can be boiled down to "characters from disparate settings find themselves in a place that acts and operates very much like an rpg." The place does not play fair, actively resists attempts to discern its nature or probe its limits, and is oblivious enough to the characters' reactions to such a place that such probing will be inevitable, out of spite if nothing else.

I, however, built the campaign with the theme of breaking a system through sequence breaking, early "nukes", or exploiting glitches. By the end of the game, if the players do what I expect them to(That's what players do, right?), the players would have defeated several enemies of the "Lord British" variety - supposed to be unbeatable, but actually has stats, so a sufficiently powerful or cheaty player can beat them.

How do you allow for players and characters to be overpowered in the context of the internal setting without ruining the game itself? How do you run such a game?

If it helps at all, the game will be in HERO system 6th edition.

Not knowing the HERO system (of any edition) I can't speak to that. However, breaking the internal setting is simply a matter of being able to do things beyond what is expected of your class/level in said setting. Like, if a setting assumes that a Level 1 Rogue shouldn't be able to make arbitrary amounts of GP, getting into the ten-foot-ladder-converted-to-ten-foot-poles racket (a feature of D&D 3.5) then "breaks the setting" without necessarily breaking the game. However, once our enterprising businessrogue starts spending that money to emulate a Wizard, especially a high level one, then you've broken the game (in terms of 3.5). They have become able to handle situations that they are not intended to by the game's designers. And the difference between the two seems to me to be incredibly slight.

That is, unless the setting assumes that people won't be able to do things that the PCs are mechanically supposed to be able to do. In that case, then it seems it'd be fairly easy.

TuggyNE
2012-07-01, 01:03 AM
That is, unless the setting assumes that people won't be able to do things that the PCs are mechanically supposed to be able to do. In that case, then it seems it'd be fairly easy.

Riffing off this, it sounds like what you want is for PCs to be significantly stronger than NPCs by way of clever system tricks, rather than simply having it awarded to them, or being kept at the same power level as NPCs by fiat. You may be able to gain some insights from the better old-school D&D game styles and modules, which tended to encourage cunning plans and a certain amount of metagame thinking.

Keep in mind that only certain people are likely to enjoy or be good at this style of play, too.

Like K'A, I'm thinking from a perspective of 3.5 primarily, so some adjustments may be needed.

Angry Bob
2012-07-01, 01:22 AM
Riffing off this, it sounds like what you want is for PCs to be significantly stronger than NPCs by way of clever system tricks, rather than simply having it awarded to them, or being kept at the same power level as NPCs by fiat. You may be able to gain some insights from the better old-school D&D game styles and modules, which tended to encourage cunning plans and a certain amount of metagame thinking.

Keep in mind that only certain people are likely to enjoy or be good at this style of play, too.

Like K'A, I'm thinking from a perspective of 3.5 primarily, so some adjustments may be needed.

I've gone over the basic premise with some of the players, and they're willing to give it a try, at least. If breaking the setting isn't something that ends up entertaining them, there's still the option of playing it through "as intended" which should provide plenty of material and an okay finale/ending.

PersonMan
2012-07-01, 07:32 AM
I'd imagine they'd have abilities like 'able to climb over fences', be capable of just walking away or saying no to people who you normally must listen to/say yes to (cutscenes and plot-important quests) and such. In a dungeon, for example, they can just break down locked doors instead of having to go find the key (the sequence breaking you mentioned).

Geostationary
2012-07-01, 05:09 PM
So, this is all in Hero System? Breaking things in that game is easier done than said; seriously, it's hard to not break something by accident sometimes.
Why is this? First of all, in order to protect a villain from any eventuality and play by the rules, you need astronomical quantities of build points relative to the players in order for it to be effective without resorting to gaming things with multiform, disadvantages, or the like. Second, if the players know that they're going to be gaming things, then there are several powers that are perfect for doing so, as either 1) no one ever buys things like flash defense or 2) there's no realistic ways to defend against them for whatever reason. You also have to consider that some powers require that you make them over the top in order to function reliably, such as most mental powers.

To this end, how many character points are you giving them, at least to start with? Are you allowing them to take powers like summons or multiform? How closely do you plan at looking at their character sheets? Are you giving them any dice- or active points- caps, such as no more than 5d6 in a killing attack? What's your position on power frameworks? What kind of "Lord British" schemes do you plan on undertaking? Note that I have experience with Hero 5e, so there may be some discrepancies.

Angry Bob
2012-07-01, 11:51 PM
So, this is all in Hero System? Breaking things in that game is easier done than said; seriously, it's hard to not break something by accident sometimes.
Why is this? First of all, in order to protect a villain from any eventuality and play by the rules, you need astronomical quantities of build points relative to the players in order for it to be effective without resorting to gaming things with multiform, disadvantages, or the like. Second, if the players know that they're going to be gaming things, then there are several powers that are perfect for doing so, as either 1) no one ever buys things like flash defense or 2) there's no realistic ways to defend against them for whatever reason. You also have to consider that some powers require that you make them over the top in order to function reliably, such as most mental powers.

To this end, how many character points are you giving them, at least to start with? Are you allowing them to take powers like summons or multiform? How closely do you plan at looking at their character sheets? Are you giving them any dice- or active points- caps, such as no more than 5d6 in a killing attack? What's your position on power frameworks? What kind of "Lord British" schemes do you plan on undertaking? Note that I have experience with Hero 5e, so there may be some discrepancies.

Disclaimer: Myself and the players are learning Hero system for this campaign. Character creation will probably be a group effort. One of the players is familiar with 5th edition and I've started practicing building npcs/enemies with him. The group is chill enough that glaring balance issues that pop up can most likely be dealt with with a minimum of acrimony.

Note: The setting has a built-in "respawn" system as a safety net for myself and the players. Its not without its price, but it should provide an adequate buffer between the PCs and GM miscalculations, as well as giving the opportunity for players to try things they normally wouldn't. Basically, whenever a remnant dies, a Revenant is spawned, a copy of that character with the sole purpose of hunting down the original and slaying it. If a revenant slays the original, a shade is spawned, essentially a more powerful revenant. If a shade slays the original, the remnant is gone for good. They can be identified by their fairly obviously different eyes. Unless the original also had black, smoking holes for eyes, or had no eyes in the first place.

Note 2: For expedience, I'll be using my campaign's terms. the setting is called "The Canvas," the players and other characters in the same boat are "Remnants," as in each one is the only remnant of a world that has been destroyed. Minions are simply rank-and-file enemies generated to oppose the players and provide "loot and xp", while titans are the bosses in a specific area.

Fortunately, 6e comes with active point cap recommendations. For Low-powered superheroic, which the PCs and most of the other remnants will be starting at, it's 75. Because of the nature of the Canvas, they won't be buying perks with their characters points, instead having a separate pool to buy them with, representing the Canvas "trying to make them comfortable" with poorly-interpreted vestiges of whatever world they left behind.

Multipowers/frameworks, from what I understand, are more limited in 6th than 5th, so they will probably be available to the players. Variable power point pools, I'm more suspicious of, but in the npcs I've created, the powers resulting from them are far weaker than simply giving them a power would make them.

The various "Lord British" elements include four types of entities called "Praetors" which patrol the Canvas, enforcing its various constraints. They are intended by the Canvas to be invincible, and would be built as "cosmic superheroic" beings or better. They respawn indefinitely whenever defeated.

Hope: The first praetor the party is likely to encounter: Comes calling if the players engage in sequence breaking repeatedly. It would have high PD and ED, both resistant, Damage negation high above the PCs' damage caps, damage reduction of at least 50%, and any automaton powers that make it even more of a nightmare to even scratch, let alone actually slow down or stop before it delivers its warning in the form of a TPK. It only has melee attacks, though like all praetors, it can teleport with perfect accuracy to anywhere in the Canvas.

Delta: A three-headed beast that strictly enforces a ban on time travel except in scenarios provided by the setting itself. Would be unfeasably fast, with autofire ranged attacks, any one of which would be capable of instakilling all but the hardiest remnants. This in addition to high defenses and BODY, though not as atrociously high as those of Hope.

Gravedigger: A mass of barbed tentacles that appears if the PCs claim any kind of success in learning about the Canvas' construction, limits, or true nature. Not as fast as Delta or as Hardy as Hope, but possesses an attack of obnoxiously high power, capable of slaying even the final boss of the Canvas in one blow.

Core: Shows up if the PCs repeatedly defeat other praetors in combat. Dispatched only after sending multiple praetors at once to "show they mean business." As fast as Delta, as unkillable as Hope, and with as much attack power as Gravedigger which additionally bypasses the Canvas' respawn system, irretrievably destroying the Remnant.

I'm trying to think of ways in which the Praetor system could be exploited or tricked, by the PCs or by other Remnants, which the PCs will by turns cooperate or compete with.

Other Lord Britishes:

The Final Boss is a thing called Yggdrassil, whose form isn't actually set in stone. It is a physically large and powerful chassis upon which are added upgraded versions of the remnants' powers. It is accompanied by all of the remaining revenants and shades, whose purpose is now to defeat the remnants who have come to the battle. While not technically unwinnable, the battle is obviously unfairly stacked against the PCs.

The Maimed Princess is a remnant whose world was destroyed by an eldritch abomination which she birthed. She possesses immense psychic powers, the mechanical nature of which aren't really important at the moment. What is important is that without some very special finagling, those powers will, one way or another, end up on Yggdrassil's side for the final battle, even though she herself is quite friendly once you get to know her.

There exists a single-use artifact which will utterly annihilate any character it is used upon without error, remnant, praetor, or minion. On a remnant, it will remove all of their shades and make Yggdrassil unable to use their abilities. Against a Praetor, it will make that praetor cease to respawn. Against Yggdrassil, it is just as effective as against anything else, though with severe consequences for the intended function of the Canvas. This artifact is unique, absolutely single-use, and barring some very task-built powers, impossible to replicate or recreate, providing a very interesting choice for the PCs. Or challenge, should another remnant get their hands on it.

It's very late, but I hope that was at all informative.

Geostationary
2012-07-02, 12:30 AM
Disclaimer: Myself and the players are learning Hero system for this campaign. Character creation will probably be a group effort. One of the players is familiar with 5th edition and I've started practicing building npcs/enemies with him. The group is chill enough that glaring balance issues that pop up can most likely be dealt with with a minimum of acrimony.

Note: The setting has a built-in "respawn" system as a safety net for myself and the players. Its not without its price, but it should provide an adequate buffer between the PCs and GM miscalculations, as well as giving the opportunity for players to try things they normally wouldn't. Basically, whenever a remnant dies, a Revenant is spawned, a copy of that character with the sole purpose of hunting down the original and slaying it. If a revenant slays the original, a shade is spawned, essentially a more powerful revenant. If a shade slays the original, the remnant is gone for good. They can be identified by their fairly obviously different eyes. Unless the original also had black, smoking holes for eyes, or had no eyes in the first place.

Note 2: For expedience, I'll be using my campaign's terms. the setting is called "The Canvas," the players and other characters in the same boat are "Remnants," as in each one is the only remnant of a world that has been destroyed. Minions are simply rank-and-file enemies generated to oppose the players and provide "loot and xp", while titans are the bosses in a specific area.
This looks fine so far, though I will note that, at least in 5e, healing is surprisingly hard with the way the power functions, requiring a cooldown period, and any healing during said period only takes effect if you roll higher than the previous roll.


Fortunately, 6e comes with active point cap recommendations. For Low-powered superheroic, which the PCs and most of the other remnants will be starting at, it's 75. Because of the nature of the Canvas, they won't be buying perks with their characters points, instead having a separate pool to buy them with, representing the Canvas "trying to make them comfortable" with poorly-interpreted vestiges of whatever world they left behind.

Multipowers/frameworks, from what I understand, are more limited in 6th than 5th, so they will probably be available to the players. Variable power point pools, I'm more suspicious of, but in the npcs I've created, the powers resulting from them are far weaker than simply giving them a power would make them.
75 active points in a power, or 75 build points? Important distinction, as 75 build points is rather low for what you have in mind for them to survive. I'd recommend 100-150 build points to start with, assuming ~5-10 xp/session. AS for VPPs, the weaker powers isn't the problem- it's that they can have any power without Limitations, and can use weaker powers that have potent advantages. Additionally you could use VPPs to, say, create a flexible skill pool that can change as needed for a mere 9 or so points for competency in the entire skill list- just one at a given time though. Elemental frameworks aren't to bad though, and are useful for saving on costs.


The various "Lord British" elements include four types of entities called "Praetors" which patrol the Canvas, enforcing its various constraints. They are intended by the Canvas to be invincible, and would be built as "cosmic superheroic" beings or better. They respawn indefinitely whenever defeated.

Hope: The first praetor the party is likely to encounter: Comes calling if the players engage in sequence breaking repeatedly. It would have high PD and ED, both resistant, Damage negation high above the PCs' damage caps, damage reduction of at least 50%, and any automaton powers that make it even more of a nightmare to even scratch, let alone actually slow down or stop before it delivers its warning in the form of a TPK. It only has melee attacks, though like all praetors, it can teleport with perfect accuracy to anywhere in the Canvas.

Delta: A three-headed beast that strictly enforces a ban on time travel except in scenarios provided by the setting itself. Would be unfeasably fast, with autofire ranged attacks, any one of which would be capable of instakilling all but the hardiest remnants. This in addition to high defenses and BODY, though not as atrociously high as those of Hope.

Gravedigger: A mass of barbed tentacles that appears if the PCs claim any kind of success in learning about the Canvas' construction, limits, or true nature. Not as fast as Delta or as Hardy as Hope, but possesses an attack of obnoxiously high power, capable of slaying even the final boss of the Canvas in one blow.

Core: Shows up if the PCs repeatedly defeat other praetors in combat. Dispatched only after sending multiple praetors at once to "show they mean business." As fast as Delta, as unkillable as Hope, and with as much attack power as Gravedigger which additionally bypasses the Canvas' respawn system, irretrievably destroying the Remnant.

I'm trying to think of ways in which the Praetor system could be exploited or tricked, by the PCs or by other Remnants, which the PCs will by turns cooperate or compete with.
So, here's the issue. None of these ideas can even defend against half of the possible attacks that could be thrown against them. You're thinking purely in terms of physical/energy attacks that target PD and ED. The players don't even need to game the system to bypass their defenses. The players will have a harder time to defend from the attacks, but with the instant-death nature of them they may be more unfair than you think.

So, what kinds of damage do you need to worry about? PD and ED are basic, but never underestimate mental defenses. Flash defense stops you from being blinded and unable to function without sensory powers. Power defense stop your powers from being totally nullified by a suppression or stop you from being punched into a duck. It can also block attribute damage, a major concern. As for these attacks, anything with No Normal Defense will easily break through, or if they added levels of Penetrating and Armor Piercing to negate any Hardness you may have bought-there's nothing your damage reduction or armor can do to stop those short of having sufficient hardness, though note that you get to choose what gets through.

It's also easy to pump up you OCV stupidly high for the purpose of an attack by 1) increaseing DEX (always good) and by investing in Combat Skill Levels (CSLs), which range in price from 1 point (single strike) to 8 points (all combat, ever). generally they'll want the 3-point version that improves a strike.

Ranged attacks are easily stopped by a boosted OCV and Missile Deflection.

Other Advantages offer a variety of ways to screw over the other party, but I won't go into them unless you want some absurd defensive or offensive measures to look at- for example, it's relatively easy to construct a power that semi-permanently disables a character's entire powerset if you're feeling particularly evil that day and happen to be in melee range. Especially if you make your melee attacks ranged.


Other Lord Britishes:

The Final Boss is a thing called Yggdrassil, whose form isn't actually set in stone. It is a physically large and powerful chassis upon which are added upgraded versions of the remnants' powers. It is accompanied by all of the remaining revenants and shades, whose purpose is now to defeat the remnants who have come to the battle. While not technically unwinnable, the battle is obviously unfairly stacked against the PCs.

The Maimed Princess is a remnant whose world was destroyed by an eldritch abomination which she birthed. She possesses immense psychic powers, the mechanical nature of which aren't really important at the moment. What is important is that without some very special finagling, those powers will, one way or another, end up on Yggdrassil's side for the final battle, even though she herself is quite friendly once you get to know her.

There exists a single-use artifact which will utterly annihilate any character it is used upon without error, remnant, praetor, or minion. On a remnant, it will remove all of their shades and make Yggdrassil unable to use their abilities. Against a Praetor, it will make that praetor cease to respawn. Against Yggdrassil, it is just as effective as against anything else, though with severe consequences for the intended function of the Canvas. This artifact is unique, absolutely single-use, and barring some very task-built powers, impossible to replicate or recreate, providing a very interesting choice for the PCs. Or challenge, should another remnant get their hands on it.

It's very late, but I hope that was at all informative.
Yggdrasil would need to be more fleshed out in order for me to say more, but it sounds absurd and like it requires the PCs to game the system, which sounds like the point, really. Keep in mind that the Maimed Princess will need an absurd quantity of d6s to use her mental abilities effectively against someone with adequate mental defense- at least 20+.

If you have any questions/concerns/whatever, feel free to ask. I ended up being the rules lawyer for the games of Hero system I played in. The hardest thing you'll have to do is build the bosses so that they don't actually insta-murder the PCs on first contact (or get instantly defeated by the PCs), so they at least have a chance of winning. You can also give the bosses interesting/strange disadvantages on their powers that make them weaker or nonfunctional if the players have time to start testing for such things.

NichG
2012-07-02, 01:20 AM
This sounds a lot like a 3.5ed D&D campaign I participated in. The idea was, you could play anyone, but their world is destroyed and they're stripped of whatever power they had and dumped on a dark island in the void (i.e. you begin at Lv5 regardless of whether you were a shopkeeper or a deity). The island had buildings you could unlock by donating XP to a column (sort of like Bastion and its cores), and other videogamey things. We figured out in character that the whole thing was kind of videogamey and it turned out to be a plot point (one of the various things was that we were supposedly AIs designed to create and playtest an MMORPG in the 'real world', though that eventually fell through).

There were a lot of pseudo-invincible-but-had-stats overarching characters that we came up against, and we ended up having various screwy ways of dealing with them based on things we found, glitches, tricks from two layers of reality above the current that we didn't understand but we had discovered, etc. It was all orchestrated well by the DM, such that we had the opportunity to find these things and could possibly put them together to do big things despite the powerful entities in the setting. An example was that we had a thing that would randomly permute an energy type into a different one (d100 chart kind of deal), and we occasionally got really weird stuff that we stockpiled.

It turned out to all be about an entity whose MO was to create beings of power by grooming them through a series of challenges, trying to make people strong enough to break out of the cosmological prison that it had found itself in (which the PCs were in as well). The party ended up sort of beating the entity by realizing the trick of the prison that it was unable to see, and then having the choice to stay, leave on our own, or bring it with. It wasn't a mechanical or system victory, so maybe not what you're looking for.

The equivalent in the campaign to your Praetors would be things called Daemons, which showed up when the PCs started to figure out what was going on (and a skeleton in a dunce cap guy who we thought was a daemon but was actually something else). When we fought the skeleton guy, we used Earthquake to stop him from being able to act (no save, you can't act spell), so thats an example of gaming the system I guess. We never ended up killing him, but we were able to get away (and then later on we found out stuff that just made him moot).

Angry Bob
2012-07-02, 01:56 AM
@Geostationary:
Points: Low Superheroic in 6e means 300 characters points, 60 of which are from disadvantages(which you don't have to take, so I guess it actually means 240 points, with a maximum of 60 points from disadvantages). I'm guessing this means points buy you less power in 6e, since in 5e the same bracket is 150 character points. The book recommends an active point cap of 75 for this bracket in 6e.

Praetor Defenses: Clearly I'll have to research proper defense in more detail. Thanks for all of that.


If you have any questions/concerns/whatever, feel free to ask. I ended up being the rules lawyer for the games of Hero system I played in. The hardest thing you'll have to do is build the bosses so that they don't actually insta-murder the PCs on first contact (or get instantly defeated by the PCs), so they at least have a chance of winning. You can also give the bosses interesting/strange disadvantages on their powers that make them weaker or nonfunctional if the players have time to start testing for such things.

Oh yeah, definitely. If I think of anything else specific, I'll ask.

@NichG:
...That sounds pretty much exactly like the game I plan to run, with only cosmetic differences, eg; the Canvas comes about when the multiverse falls into ruin, and the Remnants' role is to, one way or another, bring about the new multiverse, normally, by defeating Yggdrassil and growing a new world tree from its body, but if everything went as intended it would hardly make a good story.

Geostationary
2012-07-02, 10:57 AM
300 points is pretty good to start off with for what you have in mind then, though I understand that they rejiggered some of the costs. Looks like you're off to a pretty good start then!

Angry Bob
2012-07-02, 10:29 PM
It's a dauntingly ambitious project. I hope I can live up to my own expectations for it.

The general progression of the campaign "as intended" is as follows:


The Canvas is divided into five main sections, in order: The Devoid, the Collage, the Coliseum, the Masque, and Yggdrassil. In addition, there are thirteen secret "Precursor" levels, entrances to which are tucked away in corners of all of the above(except the Devoid, which has no corners). Each is linked to one of the members of the party that completed the previous iteration of the Canvas, is obnoxiously hard, and as a reward, grants an overpowered artifact, such as the one described above.

The Devoid is where the players initially "spawn," meet up with the other remnants, and receive their ouroboros, a device which opens a portal to the remnant's quests and home base, provides advice of variable quality, and manages "XP" and "loot," and allows the remnant to establish a "circle" with other remnants. Environmentally, it is a featureless white plain stretching out infinitely in all directions. Remnants spawn there and respawn there if slain, but no minions appear there. Once a certain number of quests have been completed, a circle can invade or access other remnants' quest levels for whatever reason, so there's almost no reason to spend any time in the Devoid proper, aside from reasons of neutral ground. Once all available quests in a circle's collective "main questline" have been completed, that circle's ouroboros will be able to open a gate to the Collage.

The Collage is a patchwork area consisting of juxtaposed elements from the remnants' assorted worlds. In some areas, there is more consistency, indicating that a gate to a collage level is nearby. A collage level is a bad parody of the associated remnant's home world, containing an artifact that has no other purpose than to be used in opening a gate to the coliseum. Any remnant can access any collage levels, and not all collage levels need to be accessed - when thirteen collage artifacts are brought to the same vicinity, a permanent gate to the coliseum is opened with no prompting from the remnants. The collage is home to warring minions that are perfectly happy to attack remnants on sight, but are really just there to provide loot and xp(except the higher/elite ones, but even they're probably pretty light fare compared to the things in the collage levels.)

The Coliseum is a bounded area nevertheless a great distance across, containing thirteen towers, uninhabited except for a gate on the roof leading to a "titan" level/world. One way or another, the hearts of each of the titans must be brought together to proceed to the Masque. In this case, the tenth, Ex, has been hunted down and removed by a Praetor for questioning its place in the Canvas' ultimate design. Retrieving its heart will necessitate some unlicensed time travel and/or the resurrection of a creature slated for destruction by the Canvas itself, so if the PCs haven't run into the Praetors before now, they're almost guaranteed to now.

The Masque is mostly a "boss dungeon." It's a straightforward dungeon crawl/labyrinth fulled with monsters from the remnants' worlds to be fought through if Yggdrassil is to be confronted. The gate to Yggdrassil is simply at the end of the dungeon.

Yggdrassil is the Final Boss. Once defeated, I'm not sure exactly how I'll describe it, but it's basically cutscene after that anyway. Maybe they'll fight the other remnants over the design of the new multiverse.