The Balance Of A Sword: Dueling on the 7th Sea

I'm looking at possibly starting a 7th Sea RPG campaign next month. I'm all excited to try out the new-ish 2nd Edition of the game, but I've noticed in the past that sometimes games by that designer (John Wick, not Keanu Reeves) have some mathematical and mechanical issues. The first edition of 7th Sea had a few bugs (Panache was way too strong, damage calculation slowed combat considerably, Swordsman Schools and Sorcery both probably cost more than they were actually worth during character creation, and Half-blooded Sorcery in particular was a disaster), but was still worth playing because the setting was so cool. I've complained at length about the balance issues and lack of niche-protection in the otherwise conceptually excellent Wilderness of Mirrors by the same author. John Wick writes great settings, and comes up with innovative mechanics, but I feel like sometimes he's doesn't take enough care with play-balance and munchkin-prevention. Or maybe his home playgroup is made up of such high-caliber players that balance issues are tertiary to the story and fun. We should all be so lucky.

With that in mind, I poked around the internet a bit looking to see what flaws my fellow gamers had identified in their 7th Sea 2nd Edition campaigns. The biggest complain I've read (aside from some folks just not taking to the more "story game" approach in the rules, or having been burned because they expected it to be more of a 1.5 edition instead of a completely new core mechanic) is about Duelists.

In short, Duelists are way too powerful. According to this article I read, a properly trained Swordsman from the Duelist Academy can do 3 to 5 times as much damage as a character with identical stats who just didn't take the Duelist Background. That's a problem, and a bad one. It's at least as big of a character creation land mine as the over-importance of Panache in the first edition. 

The problem seems to be mostly in Slashes and Ripostes. Both of these Maneuvers are significantly better than the default attack of any non-Duelist. Most starting PCs will do 1 damage per hit, maybe 3 or 4 damage total in a Round. A starting Duelist is will almost always do 3 damage per hit, and a total of 9 to 12 in a round while also preventing at least one wound to themselves with a well-timed Riposte.  When one character outperforms the rest of the party combined, it's a recipe for unhappy envious players.

The obvious power-level of the Slash and Riposte also have the side-effect of making the other Duelist options seem worthless in comparison. The only other option that compares favorably is the Lunge, but doing a Lunge ends your turn prematurely. Instead of providing interesting options and tactics to spice up duels, the strength of Slashes and Ripostes pretty much render the Duelists choices meaningless. The optimal sequence of plays for every Duelist in a sword fight is to Riposte against the first attack an enemy launches, use a Slash for the actions directly before and after the Riposte, and then a Lunge instead of a Slash for your very last action of each turn. If you're graced with the good luck of having more than 4 Actions to spend in a Round, you might throw in a single Bash, Parry or Feint, but this will be rare and you'll always know that these moves are inferior to every Slash, Riposte and your final turn-ending Lunge. That all feels like a missed opportunity to me.

I'm currently considering the following house-ruled Maneuver set for all Duelists. It reduces the overall bonus for being a Duelist to roughly a 50% increase in combat effectiveness, instead of the 200% to 400% increase that they receive with the default system written in the rulebook. Duelists have the following combat Maneuver options, listed in the same seemingly-random order in which they appear in the rulebook:

Slash: This is a basic attack, the same as any non-duelist can use. It does 1 Wound to the target. You may spend additional Raises to add damage to this attack, the same as a non-duelist can when they land an attack. Slash is the only Maneuver that is exempt from the consecutive-actions limitation on page 235 of the rulebook (you can Slash twice in a row, but cannot use any other Maneuver twice in a row without doing something else in between).

(Duelists will rarely use the basic Slash in this version. Their other options are generally better in one way or another. The only common exception to this is to use a Slash for a killing blow if your enemy starts the round close to defeat. When that happens, it will be worth it to dump a stack of raises into one large Slash early in the round to prevent them from striking back.)

Parry: This prevents a number of Wounds equal to your Ranks in Weaponry. Using Parry takes your action (and 1 Raise) and must be done immediately following the attack by an enemy that caused the Wounds your are preventing.  

(This is functionally identical to the Parry as written on page 235 of the rulebook, nothing has changed about Parry.)

Feint: This does no damage when activated. Instead, it puts the foe in a position that makes them more vulnerable. The next time your target is injured in this same Round, they take +2 extra Wounds. 

(Note that this house rule leaves the Feint at the same power-level it had in the rulebook provided you have another action to follow it up with (or an allied PC available to do the same), but I've made it just a little trickier to use. A Duelist needs good planning or a good roll at the start of the Round to get the bonus damage, and they will have to switch their tactics up from round to round. It's now usually, but not quite always, better than a non-duelists attack or an unraised Slash. Much like the new Lunge listed below, the two actions spent for a Feint+Slash are collectively 50% more damaging than two consecutive Slashes or two attacks from of a non-duelist.)

Lunge: Performing a Lunge requires 2 Raises (exactly). It does damage equal to your Ranks in Weaponry. (Unlike a Slash, this cannot be increased by Raises.)

(Note that there is no longer any restriction about Lunges ending your action. You can open your assault with a Lunge now, but it is no longer possible to spend extra Raises to increase the damage of a Lunge. The Lunge is now the only attack that does damage based on Weaponry Ranks. If your Weaponry Rank is 3 to 5, Lunges are better than Slashes. Most PC Duelists will start with Weaponry 3, so it's generally 50% better than a Slash in the early campaign. If you have enough actions available, a Feint followed by a Lunge can be very powerful.)

Bash: Does 1 Wound to the target. (Unlike a Slash, this cannot be increased by Raises.)  If that wound is not prevented, the next time this Round that target deals Wounds, their damage is reduced by your Ranks in Weaponry.

(If attacked with this version of Bash, if you can Riposte or Parry it's worth doing so to prevent the Bash penalty from effecting you. Note that a Feint preceding a Bash will boost it's damage up to the point where a Riposte cannot stop the Bash from landing and applying its penalty.)

Riposte: This prevents 1 Wound from an attack you just suffered, and does 1 Wound to the attacker in response. Using Riposte takes your action (and 1 Raise) and must be done immediately following the attack by an enemy that caused the Wound your are preventing. 

(Note that there is no longer a limit to how many Ripostes you can do in a turn, I just dramatically reduced the damage each Riposte prevents and does. Against non-duelists, the Riposte is pretty much always better than a Parry, but against a fellow Duelist the best defensive choice will depend quite a bit on what attack Maneuver they threw at you. Riposte effectively stops a basic attack, Bash or unRaised Slash, but is not a full defense against a Lunge or raised Slash or any attacked boosted by a Feint.)

 Hopefully that reigns in the power of Duelists enough to keep things fun for the other players, and also adds enough meaningful decision-making to each Round to keep the Duelist's player entertained and engaged. The idea was to keep the rules elegant, while enhancing the tactical variety from turn to turn.

Those house-ruled Maneuvers will require a few house-rules for specific Duelist Styles, as a few of the existing Style Bonuses give out too much bonus damage or interact weirdly with my revised versions of Riposte or Lunge. In general below, I haven't house-ruled any defensive powers, and have only worked to reign-in damage output. For balance reasons, I believe any particular Dueling Style should only add about +2 damage per Round, and getting even that much of a bonus should require the player to jump through a hoop or two to get it so it's not 100% guaranteed to happen every Round. Damage-prevention powers are less likely to need revision, because any PC willing to sacrifice offensive power and aggressive success to just concentrate on staying alive should be able to do so pretty reliably.

Aldana: Once per Round, when you perform a Feint, instead of adding +2 extra Wounds, it adds extra Wounds equal to your Panache.

Drexel: When the Metzger and Gerbeck stances talk about "additional" or "fewer" Raises, this is referring only to initiative order, and not any other effect. (I feel this is more a clarification than a House-Rule per se, but it's possible the original authors intended it to function differently with the old Lunge rules in a way that's not crystal-clear in the rules as written. Regardless of that intent, in my revised Maneuver system, it only affects initiative.)

Eisenfaust: Your Ripostes prevent up to 2 Wounds (instead of just 1), and inflict 2 Wounds on the attacker (instead of just 1).

Sabat: When you apply bonus Wounds from your own Feint to your own Lunge, instead of the usual +2 extra Wounds, you can apply +3 extra Wounds.

Those effects are intended to entirely replace the Style Bonus for the effected Dueling Styles, so the boosted Riposte mentioned for Eisenfaust completely replaces the "Iron Reply" text/ability, and the like. No other House Rules should be necessary to make any of the Duelist Styles in the core book play nicely with my revised Maneuvers.

On page 174 of the Pirate Nations book:

Lakedaimon Agoge: Your Lunges require 3 Raises to perform, but they do damage equal to your Weaponry Ranks +2. (This replaces the "Agoge Thrust" alternative-to-Lunge Maneuver rule, but does NOT replace the other effects mentioned for weapon type -- the benefits that you would gain a second of if you took the "Agoge Weapon Mastery" Advantage on page 150 of this book. On that note, I'm not convinced Agoge Weapon Mastery is worth the investment, even in the default rules system, but that's perhaps beside the point here.)

On page 195 of the Nations of Theah Volume 1:

Hallbjorn:  Your Feints are replaced with Slams. Slams do 1 immediate damage in addition to the normal Feint effect of setting up your target to take +2 extra Wounds the next time they take Wounds this Round.

None of the other Dueling Styles in the core 7th Sea 2nd Edition book, Pirate Nations or Nations of Theah volume 1 seem like they would need any house-ruling to work with these rules. I haven't read any of the other books, so I'm not sure if any of them have Duelist Academies or Swordsman Schools that need further modifying.

Hey, speaking of Nations of Theah, Volume 1... I couldn't help but notice that the page that mentions the Rossini Style (page 79) fails to actually provide a Style Bonus for Rossini. I'm not sure if that's a publishing error, if it got intentionally cut, or if it's lurking on some other page and I've just missed it. Here's a proposed house-rule for the Rossini special move if you also can't find it in your copy of that book:

Rossini: You may perform the Parry or Riposte Maneuvers in response to another character nearby being dealt Wounds, instead of just when you take Wounds. It still costs your Action and a Raise as normal, but it prevents Wounds to the person you are defending instead of to yourself.

Munchkin Opposition

What is the point of the Opposed Check mechanic in Warhammer 3rd?  I only recently figured out the answer to that question, and until I did so, I hated the mechanic. Now, I realize it's kinda awesome and absolutely vital to the health of the game.

The point of that rule is certainly _not_ to provide results where both parties' stats have equal weight. Not by a long shot. Blue dice and purple dice just don't have anywhere near mirrored results, and really there is no accurate conversion ratio (because Chaos Stars complicate all the math). Even if they did equate better, the initiating participant in the challenge would still have the advantage of Green, Red, or Yellow dice, none of which are available to the opposing participant in the roll. The defender's stance makes no difference, and the defender's skills are devalued in comparison to the aggressors.

So there must be some other reason for using the opposed mechanic.

Having run a lot of math (see below), I've come to a likely answer to the above question. The answer is interesting, and it's a shame that the designers over at FFG never discussed it in something akin to one of those "Behind the Curtain" sidebars you sometimes see in D&D books. Why does the Opposed Check mechanic exist, and work the way it does? For the singular purpose of preserving character niche for those who didn't take a 2 in Fellowship and Intelligence.  It's main point is to ensure that the wacky non-combat careers in Warhammer (such as Agitator, Courtier or Scribe) actually have a relevant specialty that isn't easily encroached upon by the brute-force combat types just throwing 2 XP at a non-career skill.  Tangential to this, the Opposed Checks ensure that those who optimized their stats actually pay some trade-off for those 5 or 6 blue dice they're getting in their best areas -- there are some things they just can't do at all.

To elaborate: Warhammer 3rd is a game where characters generally begin with a high degree of competence. Starting characters can readily get above a 90% success rate from their best skills and actions. Even if something is well outside your focus, you've still almost always got a better than 50% chance of success for a standard roll.

There's two areas where this high success rate isn't true:

• one is Opposed checks by characters with a low stat,
• the other is arbitrarily high difficulty ratings used on plot-relevant checks specifically called out in published adventures. 

The later exist as speed-bumps to prevent PCs from whistling through a scenario due to dumb luck in a way that's not dramatically satisfying. If the PC does manage to short-circuit drama by grasping at straws / thinking outside the box / spamming some random skill at every NPC, the drama that was lost by short-cutting the plot is (hopefully) replaced by the thrill of having beat a high-difficulty (often 4 Purple) check.

The former, those Opposed checks when one side or the other has a 2 in the relevant stat, is there only to make sure that if you put a 2 in your Fellowship or Intelligence you will never succeed at a default roll of that stat. It does this to protect the character niche for those who did invest in Fellowship or Intelligence.  Tangential to this it also makes the person with the 2's occassionally and infrequently get brutally pwned by NPCs with high stats. Said pwnage is just the icing on the cake, it's not the main point of the opposed checks. The game already puts high success rates on the high-stat (N)PCs and if providing PC vulnerability was your only goal you'd solve it with something less like opposed checks and more like the elegant 1-purple of vs Target Defense rolls. There's easier ways to empower GM's manhandling of PCs, but there's not easier ways to protect character niche.

That's probably a good point to segue into all that math I alluded to. After I broke down the success-rate percentages of the official opposed check rule and the most common house-rule to replace it (many GM's use purple dice = opposed stat minus 2), I got a comment from one of my players that perhaps the problem with those numbers was due to the minus two, and the way it zero'd out the difficulties at the low end. If I did 1/2 or 1/3 the stat as purple dice, and any remainder as blacks, maybe that would fit a more reasonable curve. So a 5 in the opposed stat would always produce either 2 purple and a black, or 1 purple and 2 black depending on which variant I used, and a 1 in the opposed stat would always be a single black die no matter how high or low the aggressors stat was. That was actually pretty close to a house-rule I actually used in my first couple one shots, but had eventually dropped because I wanted to try a campaign with a minimum of house-rules to see how the game ran by the books.

Anyhow, I ran a bunch more numbers, and here (after a weird gap that blogger insists on inserting before all tables) are the results:

Opposed Stats	original success rate	Purple = Stat -2	Purple = Stat / 2, Remainder = Black	Purple = Stat /3, Remainder = Black	1 Purple
2 opposed by 1	44%	75%	58%	58%	44%
2 opposed by 2	25%	75%	44%	44%	44%
2 opposed by 3	14%	44%	33%	44%	44%
2 opposed by 4	8%	25%	25%	33%	44%
2 opposed by 5	8%	14%	19%	25%	44%
2 opposed by 6	8%	8%	14%	25%	44%
2 opposed by 7	8%	4%	10%	19%	44%
3 opposed by 1	88%	88%	75%	75%	60%
3 opposed by 2	59%	88%	59%	63%	60%
3 opposed by 3	38%	59%	49%	59%	60%
3 opposed by 4	24%	38%	38%	49%	60%
3 opposed by 5	24%	24%	31%	40%	60%
3 opposed by 6	14%	14%	24%	39%	60%
3 opposed by 7	14%	9%	19%	31%	60%
4 opposed by 1	94%	94%	85%	85%	72%
4 opposed by 2	72%	94%	72%	76%	72%
4 opposed by 3	72%	72%	63%	72%	72%
4 opposed by 4	51%	51%	51%	63%	72%
4 opposed by 5	37%	37%	43%	53%	72%
4 opposed by 6	37%	23%	37%	51%	72%
4 opposed by 7	37%	14%	29%	43%	72%
5 opposed by 1	97%	97%	92%	92%	81%
5 opposed by 2	97%	97%	81%	85%	81%
5 opposed by 3	81%	81%	73%	81%	81%
5 opposed by 4	81%	63%	63%	73%	81%
5 opposed by 5	63%	46%	55%	65%	81%
5 opposed by 6	46%	32%	46%	63%	81%
5 opposed by 7	46%	21%	39%	55%	81%
6 opposed by 1	98%	98%	95%	95%	88%
6 opposed by 2	98%	98%	88%	91%	88%
6 opposed by 3	88%	88%	82%	88%	88%
6 opposed by 4	88%	72%	72%	82%	88%
6 opposed by 5	88%	56%	65%	75%	88%
6 opposed by 6	72%	42%	56%	73%	88%
6 opposed by 7	56%	30%	49%	66%	88%

See how every variant I tried* resulted in far more favorable numbers for those with a 2 in the relevant stat? It's a feature, not a bug. It was as if the designers had specifically chosen the official method just to screw with people who had 2's.  It's not monsters they're trying to hamstring, as a quick glance through the NPC stats and PC's Action cards will show you that even the most dim-witted beast has Willpower enough to resist any opposed check the PCs want to throw at them (it's almost always easier to stab a monster than to intimidate or charm it). The only rolls that these opposed mechanics specifically penalize are rolls only PCs ever make: haggling checks, all-or-nothing improvised social rolls, and intution checks to determine NPC motive. PCs with high stats are (as expected) very good at them, but PCs with low stats are terribly handicapped (far more so than a low-strength character swinging a sword).

* = (EDIT: running some more numbers, I just stumbled across a version that probably would work. More about that in a future blogging, as adding it here now would further bloat an already unreasonably-long post.)

Every character in the game needs a decent (at least a 3, and really it should be a 4) Toughness and Willpower, or else they'll spend most of the campaign carrying around a dangerous number of critical wounds and insanities, and slump over at the first sign of Fatigue or Stress. 2's in either of those stats will kill you. You also need either a high Strength, or a high Agility, to power your attacks. Wizards can get away with a high Intelligence + Willpower, and (at least some varieties of) priests can get away with a high Fellowship + Willpower. Between Strength and Agility, whichever of those stats you don't focus on, the other can be dropped down to a 2 with almost no associated downside or penalty. Likewise, each party needs a single character good at Fellowship, and a single character good at Intelligence, and everyone else could effectively dump those stats down to a 2 as well.

The opposed checks mechanic exists only to make that sort of min-maxing dangerous, and to reward the one person per party that decided to invest in the stats everybody else is ignoring. Opposed checks generate unfair results that double-dip on the stats and penalize those with 2's and 3's. Because the game fails to ever discuss the logic behind this, it strikes most readers as a bug. The moment you realize that Hans the shy dockworker can't ever pull a fast one on his coworkers, but Prof. Moriarty can always pass a Guile check vs Sherlock Holmes, you feel like you've just found a shocking loophole that the designers somehow missed. You didn't. That the system works like that was actually the entire point of their design.

There's one thing I'll say about FFG's crew: somebody over there (probably Jay Little) really knows their math. Words aren't always their strong suite, but numbers clearly are. The stance dice, and their complex interactions with the two sides of the action cards, are absolutely brilliant. There is a lot of very complicated math going on behind the scenes all throughout this game system, and so when I see something where the obfuscated math does something very pointed and unusual, I can only assume that it was put there for a reason.

As it turns out, if opposed checks it didn't work like that, there would be no downside to having a 2 in Fellowship. The game has such low difficulties across the board (outside of a low-stat Opposed check) that anyone can try their hand at any non-opposed check. If you're using the default difficulties for non-opposed checks (which is usually around 1 purple), anyone can reasonably do anything. "I absolutely suck at this" means I've only got a 62% chance of success. Unless it's an opposed check, that is.

While the game makes some nods towards Social encounters and progress trackers moved by "Influence the Target", the obvious truth is that most social situations likely to come up in play will be solved by a single roll of a single social skill. GM's might like the idea of building intricate social encounters, but it's a lot of work to do so, and is not an easy thing to improvise and still make it fun. The game is rather light in concrete examples of it in action, and off the top of my head I can't think of a single published adventure that has a really good one at it's core. If there is a good example, it's probably in the adventure from Lure of Power, but that came out very late in the game's development cycle.

This is Warhammer. The game has several-decades of reputation as the game where your party includes the dregs of the Empire. The party is more likely to be a ratcatcher, a blacksmith and a coachman than it is to be a knight, a wizard and a healer. That's a vital part of the setting and product identity, and FFG wasn't about to eliminate it entirely (even though they were interesting in making the game more cinematic and heroic than the previous editions). Part of the fun is being the unlikeliest of heroes. The spoiled nobleman fop, the illiterate peasant, or the malpracticing barber-surgeon that is thrust into the deep end and has to make do. Someone was going to draw those careers, and feel compelled to invest in non-combat stats just to be true to the character.

It's not fun for those players if everyone else (especially those lucky few who drew legitimate warrior careers) can sink those same points into killing things faster, and then still get by when forced to roll their one non-combat check of the session (because the difficulties are always low and success means the puzzle or social encounter is over). To make those colorful non-combatant careers worth playing at all, it was necessary to make 2s in non-combat skills suck.

The lengths the developers went to in the attempt to make these wackier careers worth playing is actually kinda cool and commendable. A vague framework of a social encounter system that takes a lot of GM prep time? That's to give the nobleman or agitator a chance to shine, and if you don't have one at the table the GM can skip it in favor of a single die roll. Obnoxious rarity and haggling system that relies on too many opposed checks? That's so merchants and conmen have an area where they feel needed, and if you lack that sort of character you can handwave it. Byzantine healing rules that involve a million die rolls? That's so barber-surgeons and physicians can be vital to the party, but if you don't have one, a liberal dose of GM fiat will whisk it all away.  All the clunkiest, most annoying parts of the rules exist just to make players of certain careers feel good. The only problem with all this is that FFG is so tight-lipped about design philosophy, they never actually say "skip this if you don't have a character at the table who cares about it."

Maybe I'm wrong and they don't intend you to skip them -- it could be that they expect high PC mortality rates to make all those careers relevant eventually -- but we'll never know because FFG never explains their motives or decisions.

---

Arcane Afterthought: Wizards and Priests sort of break this dynamic I was just raving about. They both use a non-combat stat as a combat stat, and so get a large number of spotlight moments both in and out of battle from that single investment. The game tries to compensate for this by making 1st rank spells and blessings weaker than default actions, so they don't come into power until late in the campaign. The game also makes them vulnerable to a bad channel/curry roll, so they have to invest in a second stat (Willpower) to fuel their effects. Intelligence has the most skills, so Wizards in particular are also subject to nasty miscasts (there are also thematic reasons for this, but that's beside the point) and minor restrictions on armor. Priests avoid those downsides, but require extra XP investment to unlock their "magical" abilities in the first place, so they trail behind wizards in the early game (at a time when wizards themselves trail briefly behind others in combat at least). None of which really manages to bring wizards or priests back in line with the other characters in a long campaign -- any Wizard (and any Priest of Rank 2 or higher) has tons more options and spotlight moments than a similar-rank scholar or merchant.

Honestly, the biggest thing keeping this in "balance" there is the low frequency of these character types. To be a wizard or priest, you have to get that one particular career card as one of your three random draws from the pile of 50 basic careers (and not have anything of greater personal interest on the other two cards). If none of the players get a lucky draw on day 1, it's a non-issue. If you have every expansion and follow the character creation rules as written, there's a less than 25% chance of even having an apprentice wizard in a 4-player campaign.

Obviously this mitigating factor goes out the window if the GM lets players pick any starting career instead of drawing randomly, but even then it's a least partially mitigated by the lesser chance of anyone playing the random non-heroic careers who get eclipsed early on by Priests and Wizards. Even in these circumstances, a min-maxed caster will eventually grow to be better than everyone else at nearly everything, but you'll get 20-30 sessions of balanced play before that happens.

So again, perhaps the designers just figured the game's high lethality and grimdark grittiness would prevent characters ever living long enough for that to be an issue.

Opposed to Proposed Opposed

There's a fairly common house-rule for "Opposed Checks" in Warhammer FRP 3rd that I decided long ago not to use in my campaign. It keeps coming up, because the official rule for opposed checks in the game is a little clunky and rewards whichever party acts first. (My Stealth vs your Observation is usually a better die pool for me than your Observation vs my Stealth would be.)

The proposed opposed check house-rule is:

valvorik, on 13 May 2014 - 04:43 AM, said:A variant opposed check rule floating around has been to use "challenge dice equal to opposing stat -2", so sneaking past Int 6 is 4 challenge dice.

So if your character's Intelligence is 3, all Stealth checks against them would be vs 1 Purple die. If your Int is 2 or less, there's no purple dice on those rolls. 

(What follows is a slightly revised version of something I posted at FFG's Warhammer FRP forums. I'm cross-posting it here largely to preserve the math that went into it.)

I know a lot of GMs use that as a house-rule, but I don’t feel it improves the odds (or game experience) in most situations. The only thing I particularly like about that rule is that it’s simple and requires no chart-referencing or division at the table top.  That alone is almost enough for me to adopt it, but in the end I decided against it after running the math on how it affects the odds of common rolls.

(As a reminder: PCs can have stats from 2 to 6, but no higher than 5 at character creation. NPCs can have stats below or above that range, but it's somewhat rare. That's why my table starts with 2 and ends with 6, but has opposed values of 1 to 7.)

Opposed Stats    | original success rate    | house-rule success rate

2 opposed by 1     44%             75%
2 opposed by 2     25%             75%
2 opposed by 3     14%             44%
2 opposed by 4      8%              25%
2 opposed by 5      8%              14%
2 opposed by 6      8%               8%
2 opposed by 7      8%               4%

3 opposed by 1     88%             88%
3 opposed by 2     59%             88%
3 opposed by 3     38%             59%
3 opposed by 4     24%             38%
3 opposed by 5     24%             24%
3 opposed by 6     14%             14%
3 opposed by 7     14%              9%

4 opposed by 1     94%             94%
4 opposed by 2     72%             94%
4 opposed by 3     72%             72%
4 opposed by 4     51%             51%
4 opposed by 5     37%             37%
4 opposed by 6     37%             23%
4 opposed by 7     37%             14%

5 opposed by 1     97%             97%
5 opposed by 2     97%             97%
5 opposed by 3     81%             81%
5 opposed by 4     81%             63%
5 opposed by 5     63%             46%
5 opposed by 6     46%             32%
5 opposed by 7     46%             21%

6 opposed by 1     98%             98%
6 opposed by 2     98%             98%
6 opposed by 3     88%             88%
6 opposed by 4     88%             72%
6 opposed by 5     88%             56%
6 opposed by 6     72%             42%
6 opposed by 7     56%             30%

Which stats benefit from this house-rule?  I find I don't like the answers to that question.

A “2” in something is now much better at offense, and only weaker at defense when being targeted by someone with a low-to-middling stat. I think that’s overall an improvement for anyone with a “2”, especially PCs. This is because it’s rare that an NPC will target you with an opposed check using a stat that the NPC has a 3 or lower in. Sure, a soldier or goblin will often attack you with Str 3, but that will be vs Target Defense, not vs your dump stat. A hypothetical min-maxed PC with a Fellowship of 2 has a 44% chance of talking his way past the city-watch using this house-rule, where the original rules would have that success rate down at a punishing 14%. PCs with a 2 in Agi, Int or Fel will hardly every suffer for it, and this makes that even more true. So I kinda prefer the original rules, just because they’re harder on munchkins.

Average PCs, making fairly typical checks, won’t see much of a difference. They’ll be a little better at affecting people far below them in stats, and a little worse at affecting those who greatly outclass them. Neither is going to happen often enough to make a big impact. 3 vs 3 gets easier, and that's the only mid-range roll with a major change that's likely to come up often at all. In my experience, PCs with a 3 in a stat are pretty reluctant to use it (even if it's not an opposed check), and there's almost always someone else in the party who can fill that niche better. I see neither gain nor loss from this house-rule for this segment of characters.

At the other end of the spectrum, high stats (5 or above) become much less effective against other high-stat characters when using this house-rule. If you’ve got a 5 in something, your active/aggressive use of that stat suffers, but oddly enough your passive/defensive (opposing) use of that stat gets a big bump. That might actually work really well if you’re using ever “player-facing” mechanic you can, as it avoids the problem built-in to WFRP3 where if the players make all the rolls their success rates are much higher than if the GM grabs the dice more often. It's also a benefit if your scenario is relying on a lot of mystery plots, as it protects your Black Cowls and Moriartys a bit from players just spam-Intuition-ing every NPC. Henchmen and average-or-below flunkies will still get broken or revealed by Str 5 Intimidate or Int 5 Intuition checks, but at least the Big Bad can stand in the same room as the PCs without being immediately outed by the wizard/scholar/verenean in the party. The chance of scoring a chaos star while making those Int checks is greatly increased, which helps make spamming them much less attractive.

That last bit is a strong benefit to the game, but it comes at the cost of downgrading many of the best Social Actions and non-combat spells when used against above-average targets. “Influence the Target” takes a nose-dive under this rule, at least when the target is a nobleman with a high Fellowship (who, I should mention, already gets numerous social-encounter benefits for being a nobleman such as increased Shame soak, bonus boon-lines, and minimum Social initiative). The lower success rate further pushes the GM towards ignoring the rules for Shame Thresholds and Progress Trackers in favor of single-roll social encounters just to keep the plot moving (a pressure that GMs feel already with the core system and the overly-long trackers in some of the published expansions). While the total change isn't game-breaking, I really don't like that it only penalizes characters whose focus is outside of combat.

TL;DR: The common House-rule (opposed checks use Purple = opposed stat -2) is a good match for Mystery plots with competent villains, and is better the more you have PCs roll instead of NPCs. The downside is that it rewards min-maxed and combat-focused characters, and devalues Social actions.

Scion +/-2

Thinking about my latest post, I find I admire Mark Rein-Hagen just a bit more, and the work of the 15 or so authors of White Wolf's more recent Scion line that much less.

• Mark designed Vampire: The Masquerade. In that first edition, he said there were 13 tribes of vampires, but only let PCs choose from between 7 of them. It was relatively easy to store the archetypes of 7 vampiric tribes in your mind. Easier than 13, anyway.
• In the game he had 9 attributes, and seemed to know that might be pushing the envelope of some people's memory. So, rather than giving you points to split 9 ways, he instead had you first rank Physical vs Social vs Mental. You'd make that 3-way decision, then move on to subsets of 3-way decisions to make it all easier to handle. Smart move, that.
• Likewise, instead of 30 skills, you had Skills, Abilities, and Talents, IIRC. You'd prioritize those 3 groups based on your concept of the characters professional or educational background. Then, within each group you'd get some number of points. This wasn't quite as fluid as the Attributes, but it was worthy effort, at least.

But then compare that to Scion:

• 6 pantheons to choose from in the main book. That's not too bad.
• But each pantheon has a dozen Gods statted out, and you have to choose one to be your parent. Luckily, you've got mythology to draw upon, it's not clans or characters you've never heard of. You probably already have one or two favorites from mythology.
• For attributes, they kept the Phy/Soc/Men distinction, and it's subchoices. Good for them. But for skills, they just made one big list of 25 or 30 skills, many of which are further subdivided into specialties. Luckily, skill dice become irrelevant fairly quickly, so poor choices at this stage won't hurt you much.
  
• Then you get 10 dots to split between Epics and Boons, combined. Here's where the problems set in.... There's 9 Epics (available at 1-3 dots each, and 15 knacks to choose from for each Epic), and 50+ boons (3 boons each in 16 standard purviews, +3 special purviews that use levels, one of which also has spells which adds another half-dozen choices at least) to choose from if you're making a Hero-level PC. Your divine parent gives you an xp break on half a dozen of those, but it's not such a break that it makes you stay purely "within type" - you can take any boon you want, and most PCs will dip outside the parently purviews.
  
• By mid-campaign, you've 200 to 400 things you could be spending your XP on, and it's downright overwhelming.

That last point pisses me off. Faced with a landslide of possible expenditures, the players who are playing for fun, or to portray a character or tell a story just don't work at figuring out the puzzle. They grab whatever strikes their fancy, 'cause they don't want to spend time trying to balance out everything. Meanwhile, the munchkins who are playing to stroke their own egos find it worth their time to analyze and dissect between games. So the very people you don't trust with the most powerful characters end up with characters that are more powerful than everyone else. If you simplify things, and are up-front about the best choices in character design, you end up with minimal power gap between the players you trust and the players you want to throttle.

Diminishing Returns in Savage Worlds

While righting that last post, I realized something that almost was a bullet point, but deserves it's own attention as a separate topic. I've long wondered about exploding d4s.

Not some clandestine CIA plot to eliminate Castro's D&D group, though that could make for an interesting tale, I'm sure. Hmm... there's a one-shot concept in there somewhere.

Instead, by "exploding", I'm referencing dice that you get to reroll and add to the total if they score their highest face. I think Savage Worlds calls it Acing the dice, but I first encountered it in 7th Sea, where it's said they explode. If you rolled a "10" you'd roll again and add 10 to the total. If you rolled a second ten, you'd roll a third time and add 20 to that roll.

Exploding dice have strange interactions with systems that use multiple die types. Barring explosion, the average roll of each standard die type is 1 higher than the die type preceding it (except the jump from d12 to d20, of course), so a d4 roll averages 2.5, a d6 roll averages 3.5, etc. However, that flat progression falls away when you start messing with exploding dice. The average roll of an exploding d4 is about 3.56, and the average roll of an exploding d6 is about 4.19. Those numbers aren't quite accurate - I'd have to take the math out past several more explosions to figure out the actual repeating digits. But, it should be clear from these aproximations, that there's diminishing returns. Each consecutive upgrade in die size gives you a smaller boost to your average roll.

It's worth noting that since dice explode, there's technically no upper limit to rolls. Sure, you're probably not ever going to get "6" two dozen times in a row and score around 150 on a roll. But getting a d4 to roll "13" will happen from time to time, and I've yet to see (only 3 sessions of actual play) a difficulty above 10. If that holds true, then die size doesn't end up mattering much. An exploding d6 has a 1 in 12 chance of hitting difficulty 10, and a d10 only has a 1 in 10 chance. The d10s a little better, but not a lot.
The most common difficult I've experienced as a player is "4". A d4 has a 25% chance of hitting that, a d6 has 50%, a d8 has 62.5% chance, and a d10 has 70%. Again diminshing returns.
All this does for me is reinforce my deep-rooted desire to buy my d4s up to d6s.

So, with diminishing returns, and the possibility (though infrequent) of the lowliest die scoring any number the best die can score, you'd expect the system to make high die-code skills fairly cheap.

Nope. To get a high die-code in a skill, you typically first buy a high rating in the Attribute it's linked to. That costs points from a very limited pool, so some other attribute will "suffer" for it. (Again, having the low die in something ain't that horrible, but Attributes also generate some static numbers that are based on non-exploding averages or maximums, so it can hurt if you chump stat the wrong the Attribute.)

If instead you choose to buy the skill above the corresponding Attribute, then the higher levels cost double. That double cost hardly seems worth it, since you're at the point of diminishing returns. Especially since those same value in points will buy you another Edge. Edges are special powers (like Feats in D&D) - they make your character unique, and they are almost always of greater benefit than just rolling a slightly larger die.

Damnit. Now I've worked myself into a weird place. I've pretty much convinced myself that there's illogical flaws in the Savage Worlds system. However, I have friends playing said system, and I've very much enjoyed meeting them, gaming with them, etc. I'm quite certain I'll continue playing with them. I'm tempted to steer them to Fate (or more Wushu), but doubt they'll make that switch based on my recommendation. After all, I haven't even read the Savage Worlds book, and haven't given it a fair try, and I'm still the new guy of the group. I've done an analysis that tells me that taking a skill above a d8 is dubious, but I see d10 skills on PC sheets at game night quite often. Either there's something I'm missing, or they just haven't analyzed the math. My personal code of conduct won't let me sit quiet on this discovery. Munchkins game the system and keep the secrets to themselves - not me. But you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Clearly, any future PCs I make will be from an informed viewpoint. So I'm going to have to point it out to the group, which will lead to spirited conversation. Natural human reaction is to say "no, I'm not in error" and debate, so they'll want to. Since I've never read the book, I'm inadequately prepared for that debate - there could be balancing factors I'm missing. So that means I have to go buy a book for a game I would not choose to run. I'll be buying it for the express purpose of talking my friends out of running it, and/or figuring out the optimal character builds, should talking them out of it be impossible. That whole situation stinks. I kinda wish I'd never run the math that lead to this conclusion.

(And no, I can't just ask to borrow theirs. We've known each other for a short time, or rather, a small number of events over several months. Long enough that someone might spontaneously offer, but still new enough you'd seem impolite to ask. Besides, if I'm going to turn a whole group off of a company, the least I can do is throw one final sale in that companies direction. Luckily, I think there's a $10 or $12 pocket guide to the game, which will assuage my guilt without hurting my budget.)

Munchkin Slutty

From the Scion forums, advice for a new GM...

Grumpert wrote:

My only other advice is this system is not munchkin proof. It's not even muchnkin [sic] resistant. It's more munchkin slutty. Now if you have good players, this is a non issue. They will make who they want to make and play accordingly. If you have bad players, kill them, then run it.

That should be emblazoned on the cover of the first book. I may lay-out a little warning label to that effect, and print it out on a sticker sheet for my copy of Scion: Hero.

Part of the Solution

Something a friend mentioned (in a forum I frequent) is quoted below. It doesn't really matter what the this and that are referring too.

There are three players in my regular game who would try garbage like this.

Maybe I just need better players. But then, we've had this discussion before...

Myself, I'd put up with that once. The same holds true for any behavior (at the game) that is actively and intentionally detracting from the fun of others. After the session, I'd talk to the player(s) involved. If it happened again (in an unreasonably short amount of time, and without exceptional mitigating circumstances) they'd be out of my game.

To be clear, I'm not advocating booting someone the second time they have a problem. Part and parcel of friendship is supporting people while they learn and grow. What I am saying is that if someone has poor behavior, which has been pointed out to them repeatedly, and yet they make no efforts to correct it, then they don't deserve to game with you.

This is a recurring theme here at Transitive Gaming, because I've seen it happen at campaign after campaign while I was running the game store. Hundreds of RPGA sessions, dozens of campaigns in the Active Imagination gameroom. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, and so they let someone else be a jerk, a cheater, a rules-lawyer, and/or a spotlight hog. Feeling uncomfortable, the good players slowly go AWOL as the game collapses under the weight of the munchkins. If and when the GM finds the courage to put his foot down and say "my standards are higher," everything gets better - and it's amazing how fast that can happen if you're firm.

By holding someone accountable for their poor manners and munchkinism, you provide an opportunity for them to improve themselves. Coddling them, or pretending not to notice the wretched things they do, actively encourages further bad behavior. Every time you raise the bar, gamers everywhere get incrementally better. Every time you put up with outrageous crap, you actively slow the global progress that others are working towards.

but I digress...

For the past 5 posts or so ago, I tried to share a very simple concept, and kept getting mired in tangents. Getting mired is rarely fun, as we'll read below.

Finally, the topic at hand: The most brokenly point-weaselish Ork army I ever wrote up for Warhammer 40k. I never played it, 'cause I'm just not a Munchkin at heart, and I knew no one would enjoy facing it.

It was a 2,000 point army. Warboss (nothin' terribly special, but on a cyboar), several small mobz (squads) of Snakebite Boarboyz, pretty much the maximum compliment of Squig Catapults, and the rest in Gretchin.

Here's how it would have worked. I'd deploy the Gretch up front, and fan them out on the opening turn. Each mob of boar-riders allowed one extra runtherd, so the Gretchin could operate at a slightly higher morale rating. Gretch, of course, had very little chance of killing anything. That didn't matter, they were there to be speed-bumps and cover. The idea was that any foe who tried to approach would get mired in melee.

In addition to providing extra Runtherdz, the boarboyz would be available as tactical strike teams. If any enemy unit tried to break through the Gretch screen, I could respond quickly.

What would actually have won the game would have been the often-crappy catapults. These heavy weapons are crewed by Gretchin, and fire hives of Buzzer Squigs. Think killer bees that won't sting Orks. The templates move randomly about the battlefield every turn after being fired. Individually, or as a battery of 2 or 3, the catapults where unpredictable and wacky, but not unbalancing. The odds of any given buzzer squig template bagging a target is normally pretty unlikely. However, I've seen one down a Carnifex, in one shot, on turn one, with a lucky miss (not even a hit). It was seeing that happen that caused me to think of this stratagem.

At 40 points a piece, I could easily afford 20-30 Squig Catapults from the 1,000 points of my support budget, and spread them out across the back of my lines. That meant that even with misfires and the resulting attrition, I could expect to place at least 20 templates on the board on the first turn, and a good 50+ by game's end.

In fact, I just got out the old codex, and did some math. Starting with just 24 catapults my statistical average (counting misfires) would be 69 templates having been deployed before the game ended. Most would miss, but the effect would be total chaotic disruption of the enemy lines. Cover wouldn't help. Toughness and forcefields would be irrelevant. Heavy weapons and melee troops alike would be just wasted points.

I'm pretty sure there's only two strategies that would stand a chance against this.

• Massed indirect weapons fire devastating my gretchin when they were clumped together on the first turn. I don't know if Eldar (or Tau these days) could pull that off, but I'm confident you could build a Guard army that could do it. However, a Guard army needs to roll a 6 to my 1 in order to win the initiative for the first turn. With just one movement phase, I'll have spread out enough to stop it.
  
• The other strategy would be open to Eldar, Space Marines, and Sisters of Battle - it would involve jump packs or teleporters to put entire squads into my deployment zone on turn 2. Most other fast-attack troops would be incapable of getting there in time or be too few in number. Bikes and Genestealers would get mired in the Gretchin waves, heavy vehicles would be an easy target for coordinated catapults, and a Lictor or Imperial Assassin can at best take out two catapults a turn.

Working through this revolutionized the way I built armies for 40k. The best tactics made the game unfun for the other player, which also made me not want to play anymore. I played two or three games after theorizing this army, then switched to Gorkamorka.

3 traits I value most in gamers

What Silence said...

What are the traits of an ideal role-player?

In a nutshell, here's what I need to see to enjoy gaming with anyone:

1. First and foremost, the ideal RPG player wants everyone to have fun - not just themselves. They don't need the spotlight 100% of the time, and they don't always have to be "winning" to enjoy the game.
   
2. Secondly, they are honest about what they want out of the game. If they want a particular style of game, you'll know it in no uncertain terms, by maybe the second or third session - sooner if you were friends before sitting down at the gaming table. No surprises like learning 10 sessions in some player really hates cinematic action.
   
3. Lastly, they don't cheat. Dice rolled are dice rolled, and reported as such accurately. Nothing on the character sheet ever gets fudged, or altered on the sly. No out-of-character lies about anything relevant to the game. In short, don't do anything you don't want to be accused of to your face in front of the group, 'cause I will.

If you meet those three criteria, we're gonna have fun. I can work around or through all your other odious habits. :) I'll do my best to alter the style and tone of my game to match the needs and goals you've expressed. If I'm doing a poor job at that last bit, mention it privately and we'll work it out.

But if you don't have those three traits, I'll gladly kick you out of my game.

---

LARPing was a little different, in that it was an "open" game. Anyone could join, and the only person I ever kicked out was due to his Sexually Harassing other players. We charged a dollar a session dues, and that $80-150 bucks a month (put in to props, location fees, and rulebooks) was enough for me to put up with just about anyone.

The Edison Gambit

Today appears to be the day in which I bitch about issues gaming related. I said who am I to blow against my own wind?

I used to be the Head Storyteller for a Vampire LARP in Albuquerque. In that game, I had a player named Joe. He was smart, clever, and far more mature than most of the other players. You could count on him to take a leadership role when you need it it, and he was happy to play supporting role when it was someone else's time in the spot light. 99% of the time, Joe was an incredible asset to your game.

This is a tale about the other 1%.

---

Like I said, Joe was smart. Too smart. I sometimes didn't get his obscure references, and I'm a fairly history-savvy guy. For example, I'm terribly embarassed just how long it took me to notice that his elder vampire was named Martell - I bet Rob and Gilbert noticed it the first time he was introduced in-character.

But I feel no shame in not catching his Edison set up. The game was set in Albuquerque in the 1800's. Joe arranged for his character to have just moved there (in 1850) from some place in Florida. His assets included two allies - a young engineer and hobbyist inventor back in Florida, and the vampiric Prince of the city that engineer lives in. Not knowing Edisons early career, I just assumed he'd always been from Menlo Park, New Jersey - and thus, I had no clue he'd started out in Florida.

As the game moved through the years, it deviated further and further from established history and the default white-wolf setting. Joe's faction (known as House Iron Horse, as they were rail barons) became positively intertwined with a group of NPCs called Titan Industries. The heads of Titan were european werewolves, using the transcontinental railroad to dominate the chi of the new world and win an age-old war with the native american werecreatures. Titan was intended as a foil, a dangerous obstacle. Joe (and Mike aka Doom) had done a great job of turning that around - they allied with Titan and were reaping all sorts of benefits. This made me very happy, and kept strengthening that connection. We also started pushing the steampunk and technomancy elements of Titan, including one memorable scene with a were wearing cyberware.

Then out of the blue, Joe pulls this deft maneuver that results in his old engineer ally being ghouled by his old Prince ally, and sent to Albuquerque as a birthday present. We'd already said yes to it about a week before Joe pointed out (to one of my narrators) that this Engineer was clearly Thomas Edison. Via email that week, Joe basically laid out that he was going to blood-bond Edison, loan him out to Titan, and become the richest most powerful man in America. He'd been laying the groundwork for this for over 6 months out of character, which included about 15 or 20 years of in-character time.

---

That munchkinny 1% of him that really wanted to win the game had somehow metastatized and spread throughout my campaign like a cancer. Funny thing is, I would have been okay with the Edison Gambit, if he'd just been honest with me. I would have downplayed Titan a bit, and given him Edison Labs instead. I would have let him be bigger than Rockefeller. We'd already let player action grow Albuquerque to rival New York - and we were still in the 1800's. This was an epic tale, and I was prepared to give players what they wanted as long as they worked for it and were being honest with me.

---

Long story short, he tells Titan that Edison is on his way. The were-CEO replies "This is not good. My cousin Nicolli is also moving here next week. He and Edison had a falling out a few years ago, and they tend to fight." I had people guest-star as Tesla and Edison for a session or two, constantly arguing. Rob did a killer job playing up Edison's well documented bigotry. Joe didn't figure out a solution to the conflict fast enough, and so eventually we ran a story time as follows:

Edison sits in his lab, working on some project.
Tesla knocks on the door. Edison ignores him.
Tesla pounds furiously. Edison just smiles and hums.
Tesla kicks in the door, and stomps in. Edison says "That wasn't smart - my floor is electrified" and flips a switch.
Tesla jumps, slumps, twitches, jumps again, then turns into a giant werecritter and bites Edison's head off.
End of story.

---

I penalized Joe's XP pretty harshly at the end of that storyarc - 1/4th to 1/6th what the other members of his faction got. I felt a little bad, but I needed to make sure the point got driven home. He never tried to pull the wool over my eyes again.

Moral of the story - just be honest with your GM. Tricks and duplicity never help.
Secondary Moral - I'm a mean and clever S.O.B. when I'm provoked.

Munchkinism vs Point-Weaseling

Munchkin: Someone who sees all Roleplaying Games as a competitive sport, and is willing to use less-than-ethical means to feel like he or she is "winning." There are a few intentionally-competitive RPGs out there, Rune and Amber for example, and most LARPs. The Munchkin is distinguished by shady actions and a desire to achieve at the expense of the other players - not just at the expense of adversarial characters.

Point-Weasel: Someone who "min-maxes" a system, by making every decision during character creation (or XP expenditure, magic item creation, etc) based on achieving the maximum possible impact from the system. A point-weasel never asks "is this fair?" Character concept, or the overall enjoyment of the game, are distantly tertiary to the attempt to milk every advantage out of a system.

Corollaries to these: Munchkinism can manifest as point-weaseling, or as resource-hording, spotlight-stealing, or out-and-out cheating. Not all munchkins are point-weasels. By the same token, I've met people who point-weasel at character creation but then do a fine job of role-playing cooperatively ever after. Making an effective character isn't the same as point-weaseling, either, provided said character has flavor and doesn't take abusive advantage of obscure loopholes in the rules. Also, note that "playing to win" isn't munchkinism when playing a game where there is a way to win, and winning is the stated goal.

Developer: A person who's job or hobby is to playtest and refine a game system with the intention of minimizing the opportunities for munchkinism and point-weaseling.

Caught In The Act

Can you give a two-paragraph version of what the guy on the threads was trying to do? Maybe on your game blog. - Digital Sextant, commenting to a post at Repeated Expletives

No. But here's a one-sentence inflamatory summary:

What I thought was a brainstorming session designed to make a fair and balanced "super-tech" system for Scion, turned out instead to be a munchkin's attempt at creating mechanics he could abuse to get the upper hand over his GM and fellow players.

I tried to trim the following down to two paragraphs, but doing so resulted in inaccuracies. Instead here's a three-paragraph version that I can share without feeling like I'm putting words in his mouth...

Basically, this guy was trying to build a system that would allow Scion characters to design super-science and improve the stats of weapons. Overall, it's a cool idea, but his mechanics had some flaws. In a nutshell, it would let a starting character create a weapon more powerful than the best magic weapon the existing Relic system would allow. I'd responded by saying his system seemed "a little too good for my tastes," and then offered some suggestions on how he might consider changing his difficulty numbers to prevent that from happening. I also followed up with a different take on a system to represent the Hitori Hanzo portion of the concept. I largely left the super-science parts alone, since they were less relevant to my campaign.

We went back and forth for a bit, fairly amicably at first, but growing more aggressive with every post. He used very stilted examples that showed only the least abusive utilization of his system, and refused to acknowledge the more broken applications. His responses included emotional appeals like "This really seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a new mechanic and to water it down to uselessness." He also frequently misinterpreted (things I'd proposed) in ways that smack of straw men - it was just too many misunderstandings to be believed. On the 5th page of point-counterpoint, he finally mentions that his whole system is predicated on a bunch of other house rules he'd never mentioned previously. This felt deceptive to me - and so I reread key portions of the thread with greater skepticism.

Those portions of his posts made it crystal clear that, yes, he did intend for characters to make weapons better than the best ones in the books. Further, he'd started the thread with: "I'm playing a modern Scion of Athena." I wasn't debating the merits of the system with the GM who would implement it - instead, it's likely this was a Player trying hard to hide the fact that he'd intentionally sold his GM on a system he could abuse. All in all, my responses to this revelation (and the whole thread) were far much more polite and measured than he deserved, but it was still more flamey than I prefer.

Zero Tolerance, Tempered by Trust

Between a weird experience I had while boardgaming this weekend, and some observations in a political essay a friend pointed me at, I've come to the conclusion that my Zero-Tolerance policy vs cheaters, and my willingness to assume total strangers are not cheating, are both something of a rarity.

The experience I mention was just a minor argument over semantics of lying vs bluffing. It was no big deal. But I was puzzled by certain reactions to it.

Specifically, someone I was playing with seemed adverse to the ideas that:
a) I'd only play certain games (in this case Shadows Over Camelot) with people whom I trusted completely.
b) I'd extend such total trust (in regards to gaming) to him just because he was a friend-of-a-friend.
c) That when playing such a game, I'd need no accountability. That is to say, I'm completely fine with bluffing rules that had no means of verification - I was willing to just take it on honor that no one would abuse such rules.

To me, the temporary rush of winning a game is worth significantly less than the long term value of my integrity and self-image. Not everyone feels that way. I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I can usually spot potential cheaters within the course of a game. So, I'd rather extend a person the benefit of a, b, and c than not do so. Assuming there's no money riding on the game, the most they can cheat me out of is a couple of hours of my time.

That said, when I have a hunch that someone is cheating, I'll call them out, and pretty much blacklist them. I've kicked people out of campaigns and casual gaming groups for being cheaters, even when I couldn't prove it. While it's hard to prove if someone did cheat in a specific instance, it's generally pretty easy to tell whether or not they have the sort of personality that's prone to cheating on a regular basis.

That said, money complicates this. People who would never cheat for ego will often do horrible things when $500 is on the line. You wouldn't last long judging Magic PTQs if you didn't know that.