In general, Drawbacks are not as "valuable" as they are in GURPS or HERO. I've often felt that drawbacks are priced incorrectly in most games because they assume that a penalty is worth as much as a bonus. But because of the team-based nature of RPGs, people build their characters into niches, and a penalty in an area you don't care about is worth much less than a bonus in an area you do care about. So that insight informed a lot of how Drawbacks were priced.

Quote from: amacris;1123361I've often felt that drawbacks are priced incorrectly in most games because they assume that a penalty is worth as much as a bonus. But because of the team-based nature of RPGs, people build their characters into niches, and a penalty in an area you don't care about is worth much less than a bonus in an area you do care about. So that insight informed a lot of how Drawbacks were priced.

I always thought that's why one of the GM's jobs is to make sure that Drawbacks cause genuine problems.  It's easy to not care about an area you can count on never having to deal with, but an adventurer's life takes that control away from you; the point of the GM is to make sure that PCs have to face challenges tailored to their weaknesses rather than their strengths.

In practice, dramatically, Superman runs into kryptonite a lot more often than most "point value" builds of that weakness indicate, simply because he's so powerful that that's the only way he can be seriously threatened.

Quote from: amacris;1123352you're not misremembering. It was posts by the *moderators* that caused the ruckus. That said, my "legal threats" were simply an email to shannon pointing out that his moderators were engaged in defamation and asking him to have them cease doing so.

 How dare you question the Anointed Godkings of the Antichurch!!!!

Quote from: Antiquation!;1123357LMAO wow, holy shit. That last part I was *not* aware of. Every time I think I've seen the most petty, pitiful and infantile TBP reactionaries can get they surprise me with a new low.

I was under the impression they thought all republicans were nazis, given that they effectively banned republicans from their forum. So it strikes me as strange they would attack a particular person for working under a famous republican.

Good luck with your kickstarter!

Quote from: amacris;1123361In general, Drawbacks are not as "valuable" as they are in GURPS or HERO. I've often felt that drawbacks are priced incorrectly in most games because they assume that a penalty is worth as much as a bonus. But because of the team-based nature of RPGs, people build their characters into niches, and a penalty in an area you don't care about is worth much less than a bonus in an area you do care about. So that insight informed a lot of how Drawbacks were priced.

That makes sense; I agree with that logic. I am more familiar with GURPS' pricing schema than HERO's but there are definitely some wonky bits in there, much of it comes across as highly arbitrary and it can be obnoxious fiddling with the pricing and dancing around all the edge cases for any given campaign. And to your point, because of how high return some disadvantages are you run the risk of having the one-eyed, terminally-ill, paraplegic psychokinetic problem. The model you written as you've described it appears to reach a nice middle ground between disadvantages being too mechanically rewarding, and not at accounting for them at all. Which also seems to fit the superhero genre better, as on average you'd probably want flawed heroes who are nonetheless not entirely crippled mentally or physically.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123365I was under the impression they thought all republicans were nazis, given that they effectively banned republicans from their forum.

Oh they absolutely do. They will breathlessly string together "Republican," "rightie," "alt-right," "nazi," "KKK" labels all in the same sentence when referring to basically anyone outside the far capital-L-Left, with absolutely no provocation or reasoning whatsoever. It's actually really funny how many posts there are over there along the lines of "oh no, my friend turned Republican! whatsoever shall I do?! " followed by the cacophonous outburst of comments like "burn that bridge!," "oh no I'm so sorry for your loss," "vibes," "get rid of that toxic sumbitch, they're simply not the person you were friends with anymore!". :rolleyes: It's like reading a fucking obituary over at TBP, lol. They're so desperate and hateful of the idea of having Republican in office that they literally don't care which candidate wins the election "so long as they're not red." "Vote blue, no matter who!" If I couldn't keep friends with differing political views from myself, well, I wouldn't fucking have any... or family (ESPECIALLY family) for that matter.

In any case, to drag this back to the topic such as it is, I'm glad to see Ascendant fund so quickly. I have to admit I'm a bit sore about the stretch goals being locked to higher tiers but I'm still at least going to grab the PDF. Might hold out to see what funding is like closer to the end date before I jump in, just to see.

I downloaded the quickstart yesterday and was pleasantly intrigued. Now I find out that the Outrage Brigade is still filled with untempered irrational hatred?

I'm so in. PARAGON!

So, you planning on a compatibility license so other peeps can make cool things for Acendant?

Quote from: amacris;1123361In general, Drawbacks are not as "valuable" as they are in GURPS or HERO. I've often felt that drawbacks are priced incorrectly in most games because they assume that a penalty is worth as much as a bonus. But because of the team-based nature of RPGs, people build their characters into niches, and a penalty in an area you don't care about is worth much less than a bonus in an area you do care about. So that insight informed a lot of how Drawbacks were priced.

I'm glad to hear that. I recall in GURPS everyone pushing to have that 95 pt DNPC, or in the old exponential system DC Heroes game where Traumatic Flashback got you some of the most points, but was a really limited Disadvantage. Same with Fatal Vulnerabilities.

On one hand, it's nice to be able to get some extra points with Disadvantages/Flaws, but I didn't like feeling that I had to take the full available amount to be as useful as the rest of the group. A lot of times it felt like coming up with plausible ones was the most time consuming part of character generation.

How can rpg.net be taken remotely seriously when you ban discussion of a fucking superhero game because the dude who wrote it told the owner of the site to tell the mods to stop calling him a Nazi? What a bunch of faggots.

I'll back it at $20 just because it'll piss them off.

Yeah I got a question:

How are you gonna spend my $60?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1123365I was under the impression they thought all republicans were nazis, given that they effectively banned republicans from their forum. So it strikes me as strange they would attack a particular person for working under a famous republican.

To avoid "he said, she said" I have uploaded a screenshot of the exact email I sent to RPG.net
https://www.dropbox.com/s/43urm7mzgrmgua5/RPGnet%20Email.jpg?dl=0

The text of my email read:

Shannon:
One of your official Moderators has once again libeled me.
https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?828681-Recommend-me-an-OSR-game/page6

This is false. I do not have "strong Neo-Nazi ties". I don't have any affiliation with Nazism at all. I do not believe what Nazis believe. I happily work with talented people regardless of religion or ethnicity. The idea that I am a Nazi can only perpetuated through malicious misconstrual of the facts.  My current writing partner is a black Hispanic veteran married to an Asian immigrant. My previous co-author was an Israeli designer recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Another Autarch writer is a gay Broadway actor.  

All of these facts are publicly available but I want to make sure you are personally aware of them because your staff is openly lying about me and ACKS to gamers with direct intent to cause me and my company harm. And it is not just causing me reputational harm, it is causing reputational harm to my co-writers, who do not appreciate being accuse of being associated with Nazis.

The last time I brought this up you told me to handle it through moderation. But because your staff banned me for "Rule Zero" despite being a member in good standing without even a single warning ever, I cannot. You need to handle it.

This is straightforward libel. I trust that you will remove the libel and inform your staff to halt its ongoing campaign of defamation against me and my company.

Alexander Macris

Quote from: trechriron;1123369I downloaded the quickstart yesterday and was pleasantly intrigued. Now I find out that the Outrage Brigade is still filled with untempered irrational hatred?

I'm so in. PARAGON!

So, you planning on a compatibility license so other peeps can make cool things for Acendant?

Where is this mythical download?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1123366Good luck with your kickstarter!

Thank you!

Quote from: Antiquation!;1123367That makes sense; I agree with that logic. I am more familiar with GURPS' pricing schema than HERO's but there are definitely some wonky bits in there, much of it comes across as highly arbitrary and it can be obnoxious fiddling with the pricing and dancing around all the edge cases for any given campaign. And to your point, because of how high return some disadvantages are you run the risk of having the one-eyed, terminally-ill, paraplegic psychokinetic problem. The model you written as you've described it appears to reach a nice middle ground between disadvantages being too mechanically rewarding, and not at accounting for them at all. Which also seems to fit the superhero genre better, as on average you'd probably want flawed heroes who are nonetheless not entirely crippled mentally or physically.

That is the hope, in any case! I'm fortunate in that one of my playtesters is absolutely committed to designing paraplegic space aliens if it means he can eek out one extra point here and there. So far his most triumphant success was an armless floating invisible sphere with telekinesis and cause fear... For about 3 months, each time he made a new character, I had to make a new draft of the rules to fix what he broke!