Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 28, 2025, 05:32:01 PMFirst, just to be blunt and honest, I have a hard time responding in good faith to this kind of thread, primarily because of the people involved. 

Try responding to the topic then, rather than to specific posters. If you can't see past who is saying something to actually deal with what is being said, that's a failure on your part.

About the definition of "zero-to-hero"... In some posts, two things are being conflated:

1) Being low-power and/or low-status

2) Having little or no detail in the character's background

A PC can start out as a low-power, low-status nobody - but I can still write three pages of fan fiction about their childhood and their relationship with their older stepsister and so on. In general conversation, the phrase "zero to hero" is used to talk about the difference in power level.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 28, 2025, 12:11:16 PMThe majority of classic rpgs, and I include things like Champions, World of Darkness and Call of Cthulu here, have you begin as weak but competent enough for an initial adventure within their setting.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 28, 2025, 12:11:16 PMNow of course we have games that start you as ultra competent from the get go. But I truly believe every one of those original core games was zero to hero, it's just the point buys were easier to get stronger, faster since you could ignore the rules on xp and starting points easier.

This waters the phrase down to meaninglessness. Call of Cthulhu is "zero-to-zero" and Champions is "hero-to-hero".

If it isn't clear enough from those 1980s examples, I'd cite _Marvel Superheroes_ and the _James Bond 007 RPG_ as "hero-to-hero". In MSH, you start by playing Spider-man or Captain America. You can still advance as XP to become more advanced Captain America, but you're clearly already a hero at the start. Likewise, in JB007, you can start out as a "Double Oh" agent. The examples of play have a Double-Oh PC doing what Bond does.

A concrete way to measure it would be this:  Take an encounter that would be challenging to the PCs at the very start of the game - 1st level, beginning superhero, etc. After twenty sessions of XP, take that same encounter and double it (e.g. instead of 6 enemies, have 12 enemies). How do the PCs fare?

In Call of Cthulhu or Champions, the PCs would be overmatched - following the rules exactly as written.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 28, 2025, 05:32:01 PMThe sort of (good) DMing that leads to emergent stories in games?  Well, it's about setting up challenges and not solutions.  I may decide that some villain has taken up residence outside a small town, hoping to resurrect the worship of a fallen evil god in the ruins of a temple razed decades before.  He needs the town (and its people) for supplies, cover, and sacrifices.  He may have hired orcs to waylay caravans to and from the town.  He may have coopted the local trading post to help smuggle supplies and weapons.  He may be building a force of bandits in a nearby abandoned building, preparing for wholesale slaughter and kidnapping.  So, when the PCs roll into town, maybe on a mission to deliver goods or dispose of the orcs, I have no idea how this is going to end.  No set-pieces or "plot points."  The players tell me what they do, and the town (and villain) reacts.  Maybe they kill the orcs and bandits, and the villain sneaks away to try again.  Maybe the PCs get sidetracked and never meet the villain's forces, in which case the next time they pass the village it is a ghost-town with an evil temple nearby.  Whatever happens to the characters (because of their choices), it becomes part of their "story."

I think that both zero-to-hero and emergent story are intertwined.  It's hard (not impossible, just hard) to let the story emerge from play when the players already have a ton of mental baggage and expectations for who and what their PCs are.  It's much easier to let the story happen from play when the characters aren't already bound by twenty pages of backstory.  And they are both important parts of D&D.  Which is why recent WotC sucks at making D&D adventures and games...

Since they first started out, most RPG modules are written with plot points and set pieces. There were some innovators like Jaquays who emphasized non-linear dungeons, but a lot of modules - especially 1980s D&D tournament modules and later Dragonlance modules - were very structured and linear. In the 1990s, a point-to-point quest format became standard for many games.

I agree about letting story emerge by having challenges and not solutions. I should update my old article about "story soup" to about outlining that.

Where I disagree is that emergent story is a problem if the players know who and what their PCs are. First of all, talking only about the extreme of 20 pages of backstory is reductio ad absurdum - like saying that "zero to hero" doesn't work because complete zeroes are easily slaughtered by cats. I've played lots of modern story games as well as classic RPGs, and long background is the rare exception.


I'd say detailed background / backstory can be a problem only if the players understanding of who and what the PCs are doesn't match the game. The test is this:

• As play goes on, there is more and more accumulated background and story for the PC.
• If accumulated background and story are a problem, then it should be harder and harder to get emergent story out of a PC.

I find it's the opposite. As a PC gets more experienced and more detailed, then more emergent stories get easier.

So it's not detailed background that's the problem. It's poorly-fitted background.

Quote from: grimshwiz on January 27, 2025, 06:30:22 AMHappyDaze is a troll.

Just ignore everything he says and move on with your life.

The truth.

Quote from: jhkim on January 29, 2025, 03:00:19 AMI find it's the opposite. As a PC gets more experienced and more detailed, then more emergent stories get easier.

So it's not detailed background that's the problem. It's poorly-fitted background.

You are almost there.  Now keep going.  All detailed backgrounds are poor fits.  Some are less worse than others, the same way that some drug addicts have more discipline than others, and thus degrade slower.  Or to be more fair, at best, someone who puts a lot of effort into having a fitting, detailed background may pull it off, paying the opportunity cost you don't see of all the game play that could have been going on with that effort, instead.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 29, 2025, 08:51:12 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 29, 2025, 03:00:19 AMI find it's the opposite. As a PC gets more experienced and more detailed, then more emergent stories get easier.

So it's not detailed background that's the problem. It's poorly-fitted background.

You are almost there.  Now keep going.  All detailed backgrounds are poor fits.  Some are less worse than others, the same way that some drug addicts have more discipline than others, and thus degrade slower.  Or to be more fair, at best, someone who puts a lot of effort into having a fitting, detailed background may pull it off, paying the opportunity cost you don't see of all the game play that could have been going on with that effort, instead.

Conversely, I'd say zero background is always a bad fit. Said character is basically a "meat robot" avatar of the player.

I go back to my previous examples as wha I think are very good backgrounds for emergent results; a veteran with no legitimate prospects and hungry mouths to feed at home, and, the youngest son of a noble seeking to acquire the bride-price of a noble maiden he wishes to wed (both are Human Fighter 1s).

Neither is particularly deep, nor do they involve any past mighty deeds, but they provide a motive for their actions and at least some element that might influence decisions in how to handle things where a blank slate would not.

The family man, for example, has a reason to be more cautious. He's risking his life because he has no better options to feed his family at home, but living to bring the money home to his family is at the top of his goals... he'll take the lower risk/reward options and seek to minimize risks as best he can.

The youngest son though probably doesn't want to settle for just achieving the bride-price. His entire inheritance is likely his starting gear and he must not just meet the price, but then be able to support a noble lady in a style she is accustomed to. He's also grown up hearing tales of glory and knows brave deeds are a currency of their own. Similarly, since no one is depending upon his survival, he can afford greater risks... achieving a degree of immortality simply by dying well.

That's the value of a reasonable background in a zero-to-hero setup. The characters aren't just player avatars with no desires of their own. To roleplay them requires a degree of consideration of their limited backstories that keep these two 1st level Human Fighters from being interchangeable...

ie. The emergent story told after the party finishes their dungeon delve will be different depending on which of those Human F1s was in the party.

That's what I want out of a backstory. Enough of it so that even if you threw two statistically identical Human F1s into an adventure, the outcomes would be different (and not just because the combat dice rolled differently, but because the choices made in the adventure are different).

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 29, 2025, 10:37:06 AMConversely, I'd say zero background is always a bad fit. Said character is basically a "meat robot" avatar of the player.

I go back to my previous examples as wha I think are very good backgrounds for emergent results; a veteran with no legitimate prospects and hungry mouths to feed at home, and, the youngest son of a noble seeking to acquire the bride-price of a noble maiden he wishes to wed (both are Human Fighter 1s).

...

I don't disagree with those examples, though I would classify motivations and goals as separate from backgrounds--even if functionally the way motivations and goals get explained is in "background" text.

Yeah, desperately need money is great.  Desperately need money to feed my starving family is good (though doesn't explain why he keeps going when he has enough to accomplish that).  Any more than that shared before play starts is harmful to group engagement. 

Though of course there is a difference between some ideas that the player notes for themselves versus ones that are in a written background for the GM and/or group.  If the player isn't good at spinning up or remembering details when asked, it might be prudent to decide whether the spouse is ill, disabled, dead, missing, etc.  It might be helpful to note 3 kids instead of 5 or whatever.  Maybe jot some names for those NPCs.  That way, when they do something particularly risky and get asked why, they can say because little Suzy was gonna starve if he didn't take the chance.  Other players will remember that.

Where it completely goes off the rails is taking that next fatal step, of either sharing those irrelevant at start details or expanding on them. Wife is missing. Fine, that's something the character would know.  Versus, wife was kidnapped by brigands, orcs, yuan-ti, etc. Or ran off with a door-to-door bardic gauntlet salesman. Let the GM provide any additional details as the player would know them--and again, the other players will actually remember and care about it.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 29, 2025, 08:51:12 AMAll detailed backgrounds are poor fits.  Some are less worse than others, the same way that some drug addicts have more discipline than others, and thus degrade slower.  Or to be more fair, at best, someone who puts a lot of effort into having a fitting, detailed background may pull it off, paying the opportunity cost you don't see of all the game play that could have been going on with that effort, instead.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 29, 2025, 11:11:31 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 29, 2025, 10:37:06 AMI go back to my previous examples as wha I think are very good backgrounds for emergent results; a veteran with no legitimate prospects and hungry mouths to feed at home, and, the youngest son of a noble seeking to acquire the bride-price of a noble maiden he wishes to wed (both are Human Fighter 1s).

I don't disagree with those examples, though I would classify motivations and goals as separate from backgrounds--even if functionally the way motivations and goals get explained is in "background" text.

Yeah, desperately need money is great.  Desperately need money to feed my starving family is good (though doesn't explain why he keeps going when he has enough to accomplish that).  Any more than that shared before play starts is harmful to group engagement. 

Though of course there is a difference between some ideas that the player notes for themselves versus ones that are in a written background for the GM and/or group.  If the player isn't good at spinning up or remembering details when asked, it might be prudent to decide whether the spouse is ill, disabled, dead, missing, etc.  It might be helpful to note 3 kids instead of 5 or whatever.  Maybe jot some names for those NPCs.  That way, when they do something particularly risky and get asked why, they can say because little Suzy was gonna starve if he didn't take the chance.  Other players will remember that.

This seems flatly contradictory to me. First you say that all detailed backgrounds are bad -- then you endorse creating details for all of a poor PCs siblings that they're providing for. From your examples, it seems like you're saying that some details are potentially good.

The question is, what is the criteria for good detail?

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 29, 2025, 11:11:31 AMWhere it completely goes off the rails is taking that next fatal step, of either sharing those irrelevant at start details or expanding on them. Wife is missing. Fine, that's something the character would know.  Versus, wife was kidnapped by brigands, orcs, yuan-ti, etc. Or ran off with a door-to-door bardic gauntlet salesman. Let the GM provide any additional details as the player would know them--and again, the other players will actually remember and care about it.

Here you're defining not by what the detail is, but by who made it.

So, let's take a suggestion that the wife was kidnapped by yuan-ti... If the GM came up with it, then it's a good idea. If the player came up with it, it's a bad idea.

Is that your position?

If so, then this isn't about the amount of background detail or even what the detail is, but rather who controls it.

Quote from: jhkim on January 29, 2025, 04:47:57 PMHere you're defining not by what the detail is, but by who made it.

So, let's take a suggestion that the wife was kidnapped by yuan-ti... If the GM came up with it, then it's a good idea. If the player came up with it, it's a bad idea.

Is that your position?

If so, then this isn't about the amount of background detail or even what the detail is, but rather who controls it.

(Deep breath, types, deletes ...) OK, No. It's when the detail emerges in play, the whole point of this topic.

Some details are irrelevant or actually harmful if they occur before play begins.  Many are outside the scope of what the player should even be considering.  Let's spell it out.  Bad version:

Player: My character's wife is missing.
GM: Sure, we'll say she was abducted by orcs.
Player: Could we make it those snake people instead?
GM: Hmm, yeah I can make that work.

(Later in the game, as this gets explained in some kind of exposition--or even worse, background drops en masse)
Other players :  Whatever.

Good Version:

Player: My character's wife is missing.
GM:  OK.

(Later in the game, party comes across signs that orcs, yuan-ti, whatever, abducted, killed, whatever someone or even several someones)

Player: Get chill up spine, "Hey, we need to track this down."  Hmm, could it be?

(Even later when the party finds the wife's body, rescues her, or finds signs that she was in the group that got pulled out by the orcish leaders that they've been fighting.)

Player: Those bastards have my wife.  I'll not rest until we get her back!  Or kill the bastards.  Or whatever he would say depending on how it played out above.
Other Players:  Right there with you!

As hackneyed and drawn out as my example is, I hope it has conveyed the very fundamental difference between what happens before play starts versus what develops in play.  It should be obvious why the emergent story (told after the adventure is complete), no matter how it comes out, is going to be stronger in the second case than the first.  If not, I'll say more.

 

Why zero to hero is great is because it allows more variety in foes.
Fighting Goblins for your entire career is likely to get lame pretty quick.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 29, 2025, 09:03:32 PMWhy zero to hero is great is because it allows more variety in foes.
Fighting Goblins for your entire career is likely to get lame pretty quick.

Literally no game I've ever played or even heard of without zero to hero advancement is remotely even close to that level of monotony; I get that you're exaggerating for effect but you're slathering it on pretty thick.  The difference is that players will have to work together to fight off a giant with no certainty of winning instead of EACH player breezing through taking one on individually by 10th level.  Personally, I think a bog standard (pun intended) troll should be a tense encounter with real risk for even experienced adventurers instead of a ho-hum random forgettable random encounter. 

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 29, 2025, 09:03:32 PMWhy zero to hero is great is because it allows more variety in foes.
Fighting Goblins for your entire career is likely to get lame pretty quick.

Played in a Star Wars game for a long time and various types of Stormtroopers were fought for the entire career of my characters (two of them). Sure, there were other oppoents too, but there were always Stormtroopers around if nothing else showed up to shoot.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 29, 2025, 09:03:32 PMWhy zero to hero is great is because it allows more variety in foes.
Fighting Goblins for your entire career is likely to get lame pretty quick.

The most variety I found in a campaign was in the superhero genre; literally every supervillain (solo, teams, or organizations) had their own shtick and scheme and had to be overcome in different ways.

You definitely don't start as a zero when you can lift a tank and tank an exploding shell as opening moves.

A lot of the "zero-is-better" and "anything pre-established is bad" arguments seem to always present the opposing idea in the worst light and their own preferences in the best.

ex. that other players would go "who cares" to a background element coming in to play, but will be gung ho "we're there with you" if they only find out later in play.

Please.

My experience is that any player who goes "who cares?" to the first example will yawn if the same comes up in play, and anyone who says "we're there with you" to the second would also say "we should make that a priority, let's go" if they learn it from the start.

Sidebar - the "my wife is missing" is a prime example of where the PC should be knowing more. If my wife went missing I'd be scrounging for every possible clue to find her, not shrugging my shoulders saying "she's gone, oh well." This doesn't mean over-deciding establishing details can't be bad... just that it's a very poor example to me because the nature of the potential threat to a loved one makes the lack of any knowledge other than "missing" feel discongruous to human nature. - end sidebar.

The same with "fighting goblins would get boring" as if that's the only thing you'd ever face without zero-to-hero progression.

It's disingenuous at best.

Zero-to-hero has its good points and can be really enjoyable. Not discovering things about your character until the GM decides them for you in the right context can be fun (say, if you're playing an amnesiac) too.

But they're not the always best and sole way to play, except as a personal preference.

Me? I prefer a variety of different modes because I would find every setup and progression being broadly the same to not fit more than a handful of genres and I do get burnt out on particular genres if they're all I do.

I'm specifically pushing to run a superhero game for my Friday night crew specifically because the last three campaigns have been zero-to-hero fantasy. If it's zero-to-hero fantasy again I'm gonna have to find a new group for my own sanity.

If all you like is zero-to-hero fantasy with thin at best backstories then have at it. Just don't pretend its what's best for everyone all the time.

Well the assumptions that seem to be here (mostly) we're talking about a D&D type of progression? Zero-to-Hero for me being, as always, contextual to the setting, but it's normies(+) suddenly doing big shit relative to whatever the status-quo for the setting is. At least broadly speaking.

But conversely, I also try to adapt my baseline villains - let's use Goblins accordingly. As the heroes learn to mow them down, the Goblins themselves adapt. While people might say "fighting goblins forever is boring" - the GM's job is to keep it interesting. And while I generally agree, making characters fight only one general monster repeatedly *is* boring, the goal should be to set parameters to change or end that status-quo.

Meanwhile *I* get to scale up the stakes to keep the Heroes on their toes.

- The Goblins are reproducing their numbers at a startling rate, they're becoming more feral. Why? Maglubiyet blessed the Goblin Queen and she's producing like an ant-queen? Attrition is causing her make more and more who learn less and less as the Heroes constantly cull them? Maybe it's something else? Whatever it is - until it's dealt with, they'll keep coming.
- They're adapting, using novel tactics and even multi-tier strategies. Why? They have some new mutant Goblins that are /gasp Smart. And they serve as mad-genius officers hatching plans. Until these guys are hunted down and killed - they'll keep coming, and getting smarter as they learn more and more.
- They start bringing in more allies, often against their own will. Why? Because they have numbers and with Smart Gobs leading them they can coerce/force others to their will to use against the PC's and their peoples.

This dovetails with what Chris24601 is saying. *I* can stretch out the assumed gameplay I'd get out of Goblins a *very* long time - but I leave it up to the PC's to decide that organically. While they're grinding on that, I'm introducing other issues into the Sandbox, to help incentivize the need to deal with some form of finality the "Goblin Problem" - which will have some general parameters on when that will happen. The point being, it's not the only thing the PC's would be doing in the campaign.

Yes, they're "just Goblins" but their importance is, like any other monster you toss into the gaming stew, only as important as you want. The PC's are Heroes because they deal with shit no one else reasonably can, and they earn it. That's the journey.

Some players don't like doing the Zero-to-Hero thing because they wanna get straight to the meat and start cooking. I definitely get that. This is likely why many of my players *always* want to play Supers at my table. And now Rifts. They want to start the game like dick-swinging Godzillas and are looking to fight Kaiju-sized problems and pretend they're not killing thousands as whole cities get smashed underfoot.

That's hard to pull off in D&D-style campaigns because that's "high-level" play, and you gotta GET THERE. That requires a system that's easy to support and players with the ability to grind there naturally. I've rarely seen (i.e. NEVER) a D&D specific game starting at 20+ level of power and going very far. And largely it has to do with the system more than the setting.

ALTHOUGH... I have this idea in MSH/Heroic to do a fantasy-based supers game set in this Mos Eisley like place in one of the Ten Realms, where Asgardians, Vanir, Greek Immortals, Aliens etc. all gather to do "jobs" across the universe that others won't/can't do. Since everyone is of relative same power-level this would be both high-powered and yet Zero-to-Anti-Hero.