Re: [HOE] Running the perfect HoE Campaign

["Kai Tave" <kaitave@harborside.com>]

If you have to limit your players arbitrarily, then it sounds like you need
to talk things over with your players rather than arbitrarily limit them.
>
>    but the reason all three characters survived at least three
movies/novels
>each, is that the idea of a normal man facing incredible odds in
>post-apocalyptic West (And all three draw inspiration from the American
>Western) is more interesting than guys with powers fighting guys with other
>powers

No, the reason they survived for so long is so their respective
authors/producers could make more stories with them, and coincidentally,
more money too.  They survived, basically, by author fiat.

Not saying they're not COOL but their coolness and their "mundaneness" (Hey
kids!  Making up your own words is fun!) wasn't necessarily keeping them
alive.

>(play Brave NeW World for that one).

Why should I have to go play a whole new game to get the same thing I can
get from ANOTHER game?

>    So Try it people (I know almost none of you have ever played in a party
>without any AB's).  Make an entire damned party of HoE mundanes, and put
them
>in an abomination filled city hunted by an undead Combine cyborg. Let me
tell
>you, that will up every factor of the game a notch or twelve.

Death factor included, no doubt.

Well, not necessarily but...

>     Seek the point where you think
>"The Mutants have four Doomsayers, we're being hunted by one undead Syker,
>The Combine has sent an Automaton Squad, we're down to ten rounds of ammo
>each and we've still got 200 miles to go before we hit Junkyard......


At that point, your posse is pretty much toast.

I just don't get this...  Basically, you're saying "Play, but don't let the
players use 3/4ths of the book."

Doesn't exactly sound...well, can't say it sounds horribly exciting do do
over and over.  There's only so many ways you can make a gunslinger,
ex-soldier, or wasteland savage before you start getting resentful that
every GM-run "bad guy" has mystic powers on his or her side.

There's ways to avoid "arcane abuse" WITHOUT resorting to arbitrary
restrictions at chargen, and I prefer to use those before I have to resort
to that kind of thing.

--Kai Tave