First Among Equals
By
Winter_Heart
Sooner or later, if you and your group of friends play with any kind of
consistency, the characters will go from being a cut above the average to being
the best of the best. I’m talking about those level 18/19 dual classed
Fighter/Mage, the Rank 5 Ahroun Get of Fenris, and the Aberrant with Quantum 6.
Characters who can truly mess up a story or make the task of finding an
appropriate challenge almost impossible. This is an even greater problem when
you deal with a group of such individuals.
Before going further, you should know that this is not an essay on how
to stifle high powered characters and how to “beat them”, but rather on how to
work with such troublesome characters and make interesting stories out of it.
It’s also on how to be ready for the transition to this new level of power.
So, when the characters reach that level of power, what are you as a
poor Storyteller to do? Well, it depends.
The first thing to consider is, do you want to run a “high power” game
or do you want your game to eventually become one? Before you even get started
on your next chronicle’s idea, you really should stop for a moment and answer a
few simple questions:
• How
powerful do you want the characters to begin/become?
• Are
you planning to let the players keep their characters after this chronicle? A
chronicle can span almost any length of real time, and players might well get
bored after playing the same characters for a year (no matter how powerful they
get).
• Do
you think you can entertain yourself and your players at that power level?
You should let your players know the answers to avoid further confusion.
That doesn’t mean they have to be set in stone, but you should still have a
general feel for the ultimate power-level of the character.
With that in mind, let’s take a deeper look at those questions,
How
powerful do you want the characters to begin/become?
This is probably the most important question of the bunch. If you set a
cap early on, after all, then you won’t have a high power game. This question
also allows you to get prepared, if you want a high-power game, then you will
design your game with the concept that the players’ characters will be powerful
one day in mind.
As the Storyteller, you do have to take this in consideration even if
you play a “high-power” game like White
Wolf’s Aberrant
(where one plays a super-powered being), or Wizard of the Coasts’ Council of the Wyrm (where players take
the roles of dragons). After all, there are power gaps even among the
“juggernauts” in those games… a hatchling dragon is a far cry from a Greater
Wyrm and characters in Aberrant can
range from Spider-Man-esque superhumans to Galactus-like cosmic beings.
If you simply don’t want to run a high power game, then don’t. The most
important thing at this point is that you know if the players will get to the
point where power will become an issue. The “limit” doesn’t have to be very
strict, necessarily, you can “just go with it” and impose a very distant limit
on power that may never come into play. If you are playing Werewolf: the Apocalypse, saying you won’t allow players to become
Legends (Rank 6, the last rank possible in the game) isn’t that much of a
limit, as most people never get to the 4th rank in the first place.
A quick note: Level-based games (D&D
being the most notorious) don’t really work for this. It is true that simply
imposing a limit on attainable level is an easy fix for the Storyteller.
However, this may turn out to be a very unpopular decision, limiting
characters’ levels end to stunt their growth, making them static and
unchanging. That may very well make the game pointless or less interesting to
some players. In a skill-based game, you can set a limit based on whatever
stats determine ‘power level’ (example: Ranks for Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Quantum for Aberrant, School Ranks and Ring Ratings for Legend of the Five Rings and so on) and still allow place for
growth, which makes it better suited to this treatment. Another way that works
rather well is to limit equipment or specific traits (like spells) that players
can get (Very effective in D&D
or Shadowrun). The problem remains,
however, that placing limits on characters can annoy the players. Ask yourself
why you feel the need to place limits on the characters at all. If the answer
is “Because they’ll get too powerful and I won’t be able to challenge them,”
relax and keep reading. If the answer is more like “Because they’ll have
outstripped the themes and bases of the chronicle,” then you’re probably right
in ending the game before they get there. Even then, though, the better
solution is to put the limit on time, not power (as in, they have X amount of
in-game time to complete the chronicle before the world ends, or something like
that).
Are
you planning to let the players keep their characters after this chronicle?
This will certainly define the pace of the game you are running. If you
want a one shot game where players start out as stables helpers and end up
saving the world, you may have to rush things quite a bit or hands out huge
rewards every game (often creating the feeling that everything is too easy for
the characters).
Letting players continue their characters through different games
definitely has its advantages. They get attached to them and usually start to
role-play better as the character’s personality gets more fleshed out with
every new situation he faces. It also allows you to give the power curve a bit
more sense (the stables helpers start by rescuing their village, then save a
princess, then fight a dragon, then banish an ancient dead god and save the
world). Unless you’re running a game that starts at a high power level, this
kind of gradation is almost a must. It’s also that much more fun for players to
see how far their characters have come.
On the other hand, if you do not want a high power game, you may as well
consider having the players go back to character generation every chronicle,
because with every passing game sessions, the players get closer and closer to
what you are willing to allow and eventually reach it.
Do
you think you can entertain yourself and your players at that power level?
The main reason Storytellers are afraid of high power games seems to
be: “I don’t know what to throw at my
players anymore!”
This doesn’t only mean physically, either. What do you do to trouble a
character that has huge web of contacts, allies in every influential sphere of
the city, so much money he has a 24K gold toilet in his hunting cabin and is
the leader of his own organization?
This is where it gets difficult…Now that your players are at the top of
the hill, what do you do? Here are few ideas:
Have fun with it: Almost all role-playing games have the
characters starting at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak. You’re a
no-name personage of little importance to the world around you. When you become
one of the movers and shakers however, this all changes. Players will now get
to experience things that are too often reserved to NPCs.
In other words, don’t be afraid to have supporting characters grovel to
the characters, be awe-inspired by their reputation (dare I say legend?), have
lesser foes be afraid of them, greater nemesis respect their skills and so on.
This reversal of role is appreciated by every player I have ever gamed with. As
Mel Brooks says, “It’s good to be the king!”
Not everybody should be kissing up to them of course, but there should
definitely be a different reaction to Agmar, the Squire then there is to Agmar,
General of the Glorious Legions. Make the players feel that they are important
and powerful through interactions like these and they may very well not feel
the need to unleash their true powers (which make story planning a bit easier).
Get political: No man is an island. Powerful people attract
attention. From people flocking to their side, to people trying to recruit
them, things should start to heat up quickly. This is the perfect time to put
them at the head (or least in a position of power) within an organization or
even a government. Dealing with the newfound responsibilities and options
opening to them could take a few gaming session in their own right.
Just think on what the characters stand for, ethically and politically.
If they don’t stand for anything, then it’s possible that you haven’t spent
enough time detailing the chronicle setting. Powerful characters cannot just go
around adventuring anymore, they need a cause and goals or the game will
become pointless (“With great power comes great responsibility”, as someone once
said). This is one of the most important things to do when your players reach
that power level: make sure they do have a workable goal. Once that is done you
can use the game’s setting (that you created or that is provided with the game)
to figure out who would want to follow them, who would want to recruit them and
who would want to destroy them.
As the players garner followers and allies, conflict becomes more akin
to a chess game and direct confrontation with their foes are less likely. In
fact, players may very well know who their enemy is and may actually engage
civilized conversation with him while at the very same time, their followers
are doing all they can to undermine his position. When you have so much to
lose, a drastic action may not be worth the risk. This “cold war” mentality is
usually a new experience for players as well.
Of course there can still be “showdowns” and occasions where the players
take a more direct hand into the action, What’s the point of gaining all that
power if you don’t get to use it from time to time? The players should feel
that the situation is critical when it reaches that point and that they may do
much more damage then they truly want because they are so powerful. Removing an
enemy could totally alter the political landscape and cause further
complication.
Play with the Metaplot: Some role-playing game come
bundled together with a game world and a story. That story and the events in it
are often called the “metaplot.” Metaplots are usually controversial topics
among the players and storytellers, indeed, few have the feeling that their
characters can affect the metaplot as it seems is much bigger then them. And
most of the time, it’s true.
Once again, however, with the players being among the high and mighty
crowd in the setting, they can take direct action or be directly affected by
the metaplot. Do not be afraid to let your player do something because “It goes
against canon.”
When you think about, we role-play to see the world from a different (often impossible) perspective, to have and create a persona that will grow and react to the world around them. Having high-powered character is really nothing more than an extension of this. What’s more, it explores things that most of us will never experience and that few people even in the game experience. It also the end of a cycle; characters in literature often start with humble origins to end as kings or heroes. There’s fertile ground for stories with such movers-and-shakers, to be sure.
Besides, everybody want to cut loose with that Level
60 spell and count the damage up and give a big war whoop just once. You
know you do.