Balance, Mechanics & Fun

Howdy all.

Following last night's session, and indeed building for the last couple sessions, there have been some game mechanic concerns expressed by a few of you. In my estimation the game is going really well. I'm having a blast. The quality of the roleplaying is superb, the story and setting development you've all jumped into here on the blog has been fantastic, and I like you all as people and enjoy gaming with you. So, while I am bringing this up so we can address the topic, I don't want this to sound like the game is failing or anything.

Essentially, though it wasn't said directly, what we are engaged in here is a kind of extended playtest. BESM 3rd ed didn't get much playtesting on it's own and I added and changed a lot about the system in building the campaign, so we're really doing something completely original. That means that the rules will need work. Additionally, the system does not have any (I mean ANY) built in balance. It is effects-based and designed to cover a very wide spectrum of possibilities, thus all the balance has to be accomplished by social contract. We have to agree to try and maintain a parity between character's and their various abilities. I really appreciate the maturity of this group that we can accomplish this, and though it means the rules might get changed a few times during the course of the campaign to reflect our current play experience, I hope it won't impact anyone's fun negatively.

Here are a few things that stand out to me as needing addressed and some thoughts of how to address them. Please jump into the comments and express your opinion.

Problem: Gem Distribution. It is tough to measure gems distributed for subjective reasons like roleplaying. Some players feel like gem acquisition has become difficult enough that they won't achieve the rest of their Kata.

Solution#1: I recommend that we end each session with a brief 5 minute chat wherein players recap important moments and nominate each other (or themselves) for gems for things which the GM might have missed. In that time we should each account for how many gems received during the session so we can see if Gem distribution is roughly even - though I don't plan on trying to make it perfectly equal every night.

Solution #2: I'm going to start rewarding gems for failures. Technically this was always a possibility, but I'm going to emphasize it. If you narrate a failure in a cool way you get a gem, just as you would for a success. Furthermore, if you narrate a spectacular failure in such a way that it has a concrete impact on your character (ie: I fall down disarmed in front of my foe) then you can earn an additional gem for embracing the fact that fun doesn't only come from kicking ass. I hope this increases the number of gems awarded each session.

Possible Solution #3: I'm considering this, though I'd like your opinion first... what if Katas did not require gems to activate, but only to learn or increase level? This would increase gem availability by having one less cost. It might mean though that Kata's were used extremely frequently in the game. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm not entirely sure. I may increase energy costs or consider other costs for Katas if we did this.

Problem: Imbalances between characters. I do not want all the characters to be identical. Moses can take a ton of damage, but not every character needs to be able to. Kiyoshi can deal a ton of damage, but not every character needs to be able to. Nevertheless it is important that players feel there is some kind of parity between their characters overall.

Solution: Mostly this will have to be dealt with on an individual character by character basis, though I encourage you guys to talk to each other about it as well in a polite fashion, so that we can come to agreement about what is fair. One thing that would be a big help is if people had some idea of their "role". In general I see the roles like this: Moses is the Tank, Kiyoshi is straight damage, Una is the healer, Rei is the stealth, HD is speed/recon, Mokuzai is support/buffing. Those aren't written in stone or anything, but they're what I've been basically assuming.

Problem: Kata Kariana. Really there are two problems here. One is that the Kata's need to be balanced. Mostly I'm actually pretty happy with them, but in Mokuzai's case they need work. Please let me know if your Kata don't match your expectations. From the beginning I've stressed that the Kata are flexible/changeable if you have different ideas. The second problem with the Kata is that they are designed by me instead of by you guys. On one hand I really like this because it adds an element of "discovery" to the game instead of character building being all about planning out how to spend the points. However, many players like planning out how to spend their points. Sooooo...

Solution: One option is that I could open up the Katas and just tell you guys what I was planning and then you could have input in their design. I'm okay with this. Doing it here with the Prill even gives us a decent story justification for it, since they are planning to teach you about the Kata Kariana anyway. The downside is that it removes a lot of suspense each time you go to buy a Kata, you'll already know what you're getting.

Problem: It seems to me that the Character Points are causing some confusion. More than one of you have observed that you could come up with better ways to spend the points than the Kata, so why should you pursue them? Not only does this derail the plot a bit, but it presents the problem that I have to account for a much wider array of possible abilities than I'd like to in game planning, and it circumvents the gem reward system which I think of as one of the coolest aspects of this campaign.

Solution: I planned the campaign to go from 200-500CP, but then I found that the Kata ate up around 200 of those CP in design. Originally I made the Katas require both gems and CP because I was concerned gem acquisition would be too easy so having a CP requirement would help control the pace that the Katas came into the game. I was wrong. The gems control the pace much more than the CP. Therefore the CP for Katas is pretty much superfluous. I could set it up so that Katas no longer require CP, but then drastically reduce the amount of CP gain per session. Because there has already been so many CP distributed and some of you have spent more than others on their character build, it would mean that I would have to do some math to make sure that you're all equal in terms of CP spent, but it would remove the confusion about whether you should save CP for Katas or use it on abilities of your own design.

There are some thoughts.