[Design] Character Generation: Detail vs Opportunity Cost

[Kyle Schuant]

From: Andrew Leitch 
The problem with Ars Magica is that PC's start off way too powerful compared to say, the grogs. They seem almost like demi-gods. If they started off less powerful, you wouldn't need to spend the entire night just reading up on spells.

KS: Well, I dunno. Each of the editions has a different introduction, from the 1st to the 5th the introduction becomes more defensive about the mages' being so powerful compared to everyone else. It seems like the authours got abused by a lot of point-buy system fans. "But we should all be EQUAL." Communism in roleplaying game design? Is it really necessary? 

AL: My experience went: 

"What sort of character do you want?"

"Well, can I be a fighter?"

KS: I think you missed something - the game title. It's called "Art of Magic," and you ask about being a fighter. That's like playing _Vampire_ and saying, "can I be like Buffy?" It's like playing _Recon_ and asking if you can be a hippy pacifist. Sure, you can, but it completely defeats the purpose of the game itself.
    So what we're talking about isn't a failing of the game itself. It's simply that you, in this example, don't want to play a mage. Which means you're playing the wrong game. 
    It's much like the time I went to a con, got pushed into playing _Vampire_, and when roleplaying the Embrace, my sportsman character reached down into his sports bag, whipped out a cricket stump, and staked the vampire Embracing him. It rather shocked the goth GM, I can tell you. And of course I was missing the entire point of the game. If I didn't want to play a vampire, I shouldn't have played the game called "vampire." 
    If you don't want to play a mage, why do you sit down to play a game called "Art of Magic"? I honestly can't see how that's a failing of the game. 

    Games are tools. Each tool is designed to do a certain job well. If you ask for a spanner and then complain it makes a poor hammer, that's not the fault of the guy who designed the spanner, or the guy who handed it to you - it's your fault for asking for a spanner when you wanted a hammer. 

AL: They should have gone for spell lists rather than spell groups. That way you only had to make a choice from 20 spell lists, rather 2000 spells. You could buy the first 3 or 4 spells in each list and be done with it. (Maybe I'm recalling this wrong though...).

KS: Ah, a player of _Rolemaster_, I see:D I think you forget the experience many people had with that, which was, "but I don't WANT the whole friggin list, just this one spell, why should I pay for ten spells when I only want one?"

AL: There's not much encouragement for playing good characters either, when the central ethos of the various magic guilds seems to be "don't get caught" rather than "don't do". 

KS: Er, not quite. Many people have to do good in secret, or at least quietly. Secrecy does not spontaneously produce evil. Amensty International has to be sneaky sometimes:)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a brilliant system. I was having a look at the rulebooks over the weekend, overall it's a terrible, clunky, messy system. But it succeeded in its central aim, which was to make the mages the stars of the show. 

Cheers,
Kyle
Better Mousetrap Games
home of d4-d4 and other stuff
http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339
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