Necessary Evil

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

that's not a strong enough argument to change to a system that doesn't interest me, esp when I already have stats and adventures for the system I already like a lot.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

yeah but you havent even looked at the other system yet.... so I think your judging it a little early.

Oh and they have a conversion table for d20 that would allow you to convert M&M stuff in a flash...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

it's the same system as Savage Worlds, you just said that. That's what I'm basing my judgement on. Plus, Mr. P said the system had little to offer someone who already had a system he likes.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I think you should look at it first before you decide its useless, because its well done. As for what SW brings to the table I say the biggest plus is speed  SW tends to condense things to a managable level and since most powers are just trapping or flash over a base effect it works really well for SW.  SW's philosophy of NPC's is pretty good,

Consider this GM rule # 1 when it comes to NPC's: Don't design them! Dont create your NPC's wth character creation rules. Just give them what you think they ought to have in their various skills and attributes and move on. The game is supposed to be easy for you to setup run and play. Dont sit around adding up skill points for NPC's when you could be designing fiendish traps and thinking up nasty special effects for your monsters!

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I never said it was worthless. I just said it doesn't look like it has nearly enough to offer me to convert.

I disagree with that NPC philosophy. That's great for Orcs and grunts and such. But when you have a Super-villain, welll.. they're typically recurring characters. They're unique. Who, as a super-hero, wants to fight a band of orcs? Sure Joker's minions can be generic thugs, but the main baddies, they need to be characters. I don't have a lot of time, and M&M has a HUGE database of character stats with complete villains, with backgrounds and everything.

The problem with just making up numbers is balance. Is this something the characters can take on. M&M is VERY good and being able to quantify relative power levels.  And supers are the hardest to balance at all. Working out what their powers can and can't do is important.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I disagree with that philosophy in super games completely. Statifying Super Villains is saying that they can be beaten with brute force. Take Magneto, no lucky roll should be able to take him out, he's wicked smart, and usually gets the upper hand over a lot of the X-men. Is giving him hit points or skills at level 20 really useful, when you can just say.. hey its Magneto, he can do that, and he can do that without effort.

Beating Villains should be an iffy thing, and players should be forced to get really creative to win...

But thats just my opinion.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

That's not terribly fair. "He can do anything he wants" amounts to a gm just saying "Ok, now I've decided you can beat him." there's no way to quantify when the players can actually beat him but referee whim. If you give him stats, you've set the boundaries. Magneto CAN be beaten, incidentally, and there's no way, even with stats all set forth, that a character with the powers of say, Jubilee, is going to stop him. But a Wolverine with the adamantium stripped off his skeleton... well, he's got a shot at it.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I dont see that as being a bad thing, especially in game circumstances where a villain should be able to do something and cant because he doesnt have the appropriate points r skill. Incidentally most super hero villains in the major RPG books weren't designed using the character generation system anyway. They were explained by it.
Anyhow I never stated that they don't have stats, in SW, just that you dont need to balance the points before a game more than, Ok he's got invisibility, toughness level two and super speed. If he ahs to use a skill you say, yeah magneto can use a computer, or Spiderman knows how to take a picture.
 but even still with a statted game reoccurring villains is more an issue of letting them escape.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

then why have rules at all?

yes, it is a serious question. if none of the villains have stats, FAIR stats, then the GM is just making it up anyway. There doesn't seem to be any reason whatsoever for having rules in the first place.

and yes, that gets exactly at what I was saying. If you don't have to balance them, then there's no balance. No way to gauge if they're a fair match for the players. I'm all for GM cheating if it will enhance the game. But minimizing the amount of cheating necessary seems desirable. Thus an easy to balance set of abilities. Like M&M.

and you still haven't said anything about the system that makes it seem better than M&M to me, which is my primary reason for not wanting to play it, let alone RUN it. I don't particularly care for the SW system. I don't hate it, but it doesn't appeal to me. M&M however, is a system that very closely approximates a system I was trying to work out anyway. It's veritably ideal.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

then why have rules at all?

yes, it is a serious question. if none of the villains have stats, FAIR stats, then the GM is just making it up anyway. There doesn't seem to be any reason whatsoever for having rules in the first place.

and yes, that gets exactly at what I was saying. If you don't have to balance them, then there's no balance. No way to gauge if they're a fair match for the players. I'm all for GM cheating if it will enhance the game. But minimizing the amount of cheating necessary seems desirable. Thus an easy to balance set of abilities. Like M&M.

I disagree and heres why... Superpowers in their own right arent really balanced anyway, no matter how many points it cost to buy Super Strength it doesnt equate with Telepathy, or Invisibility, or the ability to shrink and grow, or strech like plastic man.

Any balancing point system is subjective and thats ok. I dont feel that designing a Villain in Savage Words and NE is as you say cheating. You and I arent 14 and it can be assumed that we arent out to screw the PCs in the party. You and I also have no interest in power gaming . What we do want is a fun creative game. And maybe thats why SW is targeted at an older gaming crowd, one that wants a loose framework of rules to do a lot of things and that trusts the GM and players to play a game they want to. Its far more creative and realistic not to mention convienient  to work out a character background and jot down what the Villain should have instead of taking 40 minutes to roll up a character and then level it. Thats ok when all the work is already done, but how balanced is a character that has been written by someone else for a party that isn't remotely like yours.
Designing the villain around his background rather than a point system seems much more balanced in the long run and at least give the hero's something to shoot for if they can't beat them right away.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I think you underrate the balancing system severely. As far as playing fast and loose with the rules, I still have not even a remote sense of why people think you can't do that with d20. I don't, typically, because there's no need to. but you certainly can.

And it doesn't really answer my question. If the GM is going to make everything up without regard to the process, why do you have rules at all?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I dont think I severly underrate it, I just dont care for that style of GMing... it seems restrictive and like stifles creativity. As for d20, I realize you can do anything with it you want, after all its your game, however it isnt the philosophy of the game, which is more likely to influence how its played.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't understand where this "philosophy of the game" comes from either. Every book they have states to bend things to your use. Just because it's complete? That doesn't make sense to me. I grew up playing, almost exclusively (a few romps into WEG systems, Palladium, and WoD), D&D and d20. I never felt like I couldn't twist things to meet my group's needs. I also found that the games I liked the least were the games where the GM ignored the rules the most. This is a huge part of why I will never play a WoD game again.

If you want to make it all up, write a book. If you want to play a game with friends, at least try to stick to an agreed system.

[Entsuropi]

This is a huge part of why I will never play a WoD game again.

At this point a little puppet pops down and sings in a silly little voice, 'Bias! Pinapple bias!'. It then pops up again.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

see, it may be a bias, but people always tell me that the strength of the Storyteller system is that it allows so much improvisation and "doesn't bind you to rules"* or something. And it's that exact lack of definition that has made the games I've played very unfun. It always felt like gms were playing favorites or running an agenda instead of helping everyone have fun.

*as a huge digression, one reason I am wary about arguments about this being a virtue is that it's the sort of complaint I heard all the time from missionaries who didn't want to obey mission rules. This is an irrational association, I know, since game rules have nothing to do with salvation and service to God, but the association comes unbidden to my mind.