[HoE] Roving Templars, etc.

[Abdullah Oblongota <toadpooka@usa.net>]

<<Well, actually, that question was asked and nobody here seemed to know of 
  any way short of death to _effectively_ punish someone without destroying 
  party unity, or imposing restrictions on the rest of the party that were 
  undesireable.

  Certainly there are ways to punish a solo templar short of death, yes. 
  Unfortunately, it seemed that very few PC Templars are solo templars.>>

What I was getting to here was not about punishing characters, but about the
fact that Simon doesn't have the resources to police his own men in addition to
helping the world.  He never sends a Squire out of training without knowing that
he trusts him to make the right decision on his own.  Sometimes he's wrong, but
usually he's right.

<<But sometimes class does dictate what a character would do. Or at least, 
  some sourcebooks (and I'm not just talking Pinnacle and Hell on Earth here) 
  do heavily emphasize that route.>>

This is definitely true, and is a good thing, but it's the source of the
problem.  Back when games would have "classes" that were only defined by their
abilities (fighter, mage, thief), it wasn't a problem because players could put
as much or as little personality into their characters as they wanted.
Now, games that have "classes" include as much personality as they do power into
them.  This is good, because you have something to go on.  But a side effect is
that people tend to take the class personality as the end-all, be-all of it's
members' minds.  You must remember that a Templar isn't just someone created
according to the Templar rules, he's a person who has a life and personality all
his own, who happens to be a member of this group.  He might think the Oath of
Poverty is stupid, but he's not gonna say that in front of Simon.  A Doomsayer
might think that a group of Chosen are assholes, but it's his job to help them
out.

<<While the perceived "problem" per se doesn't bother me, the fact that the 
  adventure in question doesn't clarify whether this is a standard (or even 
  permissible) Templar tactic is somewhat bothersome. Ideally, the Templar SB 
  should have presented it as an option (along with several others), just so 
  players wouldn't get the impression that the wandering Templar was the only 
  permissible norm.>>

The adventure is there to tell a story about a particular event, not to dictate
acceptable behavior for all it's characters.  If the adventure did explain why o
why not this was a good thing for a Templar to do, and stuff like that, there
would be too much non-adventure information in the adventure, and it'd be a pain
in the ass to read.  Likewise, when someone writes a sourcebook, he's not trying
(nor should he) to outline everything that that character type can do. 
Characters aren't computer programs.  They can roam all over or stay in one
place without being told to do so.
-- 
From Whom It May Concern,
Richard Ranallo, The Man They Couldn't Hang

Your money talks, but my genius walks
Morticians wait with a shovel and a fork
As detectives trace my hands with chalk
Your money talks but my genius walks.
--They Might Be Giants, "You'll Miss Me"