My gaming experience is circling the drain.

[Killer Cyborg]

They need to get over it.
If they can't do more with less, then they're not real gamers in my book.
It's not about high stats.

For your part, all you can do (which you're probably already trying), is not to be a poke about things.
Don't hog the limelight. Don't make it all about you.
Use your high attributes and good rolls to assist them, not to outshine them.
The best way to do this is to make sure that your characters aren't stepping on somebody else's niche.

[Killer Cyborg]

Trust me, I try not to be the shining light of every encounter. In fact I have been toying around with the idea of making my psi-nullifier a drunkard and using the rules from New West to give him appropriate negatives and "bring him down to earth." This could be a lot of fun, add humor and certainly take the focus off him as an "uber" character. I mean, who looks at the guy drooling in his own spiddle, smells of urine, and can barely pick his head up as "uber?" The best part about that is a psi-nullifier's power is reactive, it even works when he is unconscious. So, he can still be somewhat effective when he can barely stand as a drunk. Another party member has agreed to be my "big buddy" and look after my drunkard if I decide to go for that approach. What do you think?

Sounds pretty good.

[Natasha]

Plenty of options. Imbalanced pc groups can be compensated for in game by GM and by your own play; they don't have to be promblematic. You could also just nerf the character by dividing his high attributes in halfs or something. I think you'll avoid the drain... you recognise that something needs to be done and are willing to do something.

[cyber-yukongil v2.5]

I've been in that same boat before and even times in point-based games where I recieve bonus points, due to more work on the game than anybody else (including the GM sometimes), I've found that complimentary characters or those that boost the rest of the team go a long way to patching over such feelings. When you make everyone else look good, you dramatically increase the parties fun as a whole, while feeling good that you helped them have such fun or succeed so well.

[Noon]

I'm thinking that if we said "Drop your stats to 10 and put a -5 on your strike/parry/dodge" you'd say "But I want to have fun too!"

Which means your not 'burdened' with high stats and rolls - you actually want them, but your crying that your a victim of circumstance (high rolling circumstance) as if you don't really want them.

It seems pretty straight forward to cut them all down. That you don't tends to look like you actually like those lucky rolls you got.

[Dog_O_War]

Use different dice; the ones you have are weighted funny.

The why? Nobody can quantify luck as a "something they have". I have a friend that rolls well as well, but the moment he touches my dice, his luck "amazingly" disappears.

My dice have the "black spot" basically, and I believe it's because they're weighted wrong. I don't put faith, ritual, or mental mantra towards them; I only expect the dice to come up as a random average of the resulting toss. They do exactly as I command, and it's not because I'm a magician or believe them to be "lucky".

Anyways, your dice are weighted wrong, so the solution is to use different ones. Preferably a friends' that supposedly "roll bad". You'll see your "luck" quickly vanish and your quality of experience with the group will rise. When you get sick of bad rolls, bust out your old dice for that immediate "luck" effect.

[Noon]

I said 'if'. I'd get equally offended about your own assumption that I merely assumed, but we'd go in loops then.

To be frank, being out rolled by a 'drunk character' seems worse than being outrolled by a compentent character.

Seriously, I doubt you roll that well and confirmation bias is kicking in (you only remember the twenties and not the 19 other rolls) - write down all your rolls during a night then post it here.

Other than that, how much do they try and look after their own feelings in regards to it? Do they do anything at all, or look to you to do all the work of protecting their own feelings?

[Natasha]

Unless they're rules lawyers and say that there's no such thing as a computer random number generator.

[Noon]

I was just using the 20s as the extreme example of what goes on. a lot of my rolls end up 15+ or so. And it is fine that you don't seriously believe I roll that well. My friends do feel that way it is seems to bring them down a lot. I don't see how my posting all my rolls to prove to you that I roll well really helps.

Because if your not actually rolling well, then their getting upset over something that isn't happening? Surely it'd help the situation if you can demonstrate they are getting upset over something that isn't happening?

The issue is not if I roll well or not, it's ideas for helping them deal with their own negative feelings about themselves and their characters. They complain about my characters making their characters "useless" and say things like "what's the point of trying when your character is around?" I may be the one looking after their feelings in this but that is because I want them to be happy about what they have created and I care about their feelings. They are my friends, I feel it is only right that I look after their feeling. That is why I came to ask advice, not prove myself as lucky or defend my statements about my rolling.

I didn't ask you to defend your rolling statement - if it demonstrates you actually roll average, it would genuinely help your group, as I described above. Or you can think that I am on the attack in everything I say - I'm trying to help, but not so much that I want to keep arguing that I'm trying to help.

Otherwise, I dunno. As I take it, a person partly looks after their friends feelings, and the friend also partly looks after their own feelings. Both people put effort into that, not just one of them. I can't tell from your post if your doing that or taking on 90% of the job or more.

[dark brandon]

Here is my problem. I roll well . . . really well. As an example I will be playing a human psi-nullifier in the upcoming game and these are my stats (after skills): IQ: 22 ME: 23 MA: 24 PS: 20 PP: 31 PE 18 PB 14 SPD: 30 ISP: 203.

Curious, How'd you get a PP of 31?

Other than the High mental stats (and unusually high PP), there's nothing wrong with being lucky. Some believe in luck, some don't. I do. When I game with friends who are rather "lucky" I try to take luck out of the equation. For mages, I tend to cast alot of spells that either don't require saves (buff spells) or tend to hang back for opportune times to cast a spell (such as when an enemy has fallen).

Do more RP and try to work around having to roll dice so much. A good GM may find it necessary in extreme cases to try and find other ways around playing rather than having to roll dice. This could be to make sure there's alot of times and option to RP around combat, and skills. In combat senarios, after a few levels, (and assuming your fighting a sort of continual enemy) they may start to naturally focus on the lucky one assuming no one else really sticks out (like the glitter boy).

Other than that, there isn't much you CAN do. Some guys have all the luck...and some guys have to work for it. If you want do something that may help the group feel more "comfortable" you can try playing a character such as a buff mage, or sensitive psionic, a grey seer or something that naturally takes a back seat to everything...more like observers than "actors". That may not sound too clear...but it's kinda hard to describe.

[Spinachcat]

Are you playing with 10 year olds? What adult gets upset because another adult sitting next to them rolls well? This sounds like childish egos.

Here's what you do. Get everybody on a roadtrip to Vegas. They bet and you throw the dice for them and split the pot 50/50. Everybody will be happy.

But I agree with Dog_O_War, your luck is probably dice related. If its not, you better hop that plane to Vegas while it lasts!

[dark brandon]

Thanks for the suggesstions and I do appreciate the feed back. I am sorry Noon if I got the wrong impression from your posts. I like the idea of playing more support characters as oppossed to "actor" characters. Maybe if I make them better they will not feel so threatened. Also if I make my character last and explain to the gm what I am trying to do them maybe I can lower my stats to be more into the medium of the group. Again, thanks all.

That actually got me thinking...why not just ask them what kind of character they'd want to play and then roll them up for them. They make the choices...you roll the dice.

[Iczer]

In my experience, there are no lucky rollers.

Yet some people roll particularilly well for characters. Suspiciously well. Most are cheats.

And you can tell a cheater, just by the way he defends his great rolls. People with great attributes are the first to leap to their own defence. They have a bunch of stock phrases, that you see over and over again.

Needless to say, I call foul. If a player came to me with supiciously good rolls, I would remain sceptical for a long time. I would be paying extra special attention every time he rolled another character.

It's basic math. The 3D6 spread should be 7-13. The 4D6, drop the lowest should spread 9-15. characters with attributes routinely higher than these, particularilly in extremely combat relevant areas (IE PP), without any statistically complementary rolls (lower) scream cheat. especially if it's done twice.


jcook03, I mean no disrepect, but there is no 'luck' in dice. I'm not in an actual position to call foul, but your fellow players are. If the GM is helping you, then he needs to be taken to task as well.

Noon, you raise excellent pooints. bravo for bucking the curve and making a stand.

Batts

[drewkitty ~..~]

When I look @ my die rolls and they are too high, and are even higher after adding in skills, I drop a few points off them. I do this most often with the PP stat.

I doubt they would complain when you fudge your stat scores downward.

I do this because of the way I roll my stat dice, rolling 5 d6 at once & re-rolling 1's and 2's. then taking the top 3, if that puts me over 15 then I use one of the other dice to fill in the extra d6.
thou, I only re-roll 1's and 2's 2 times, if the third time is a one or a two then that is what it stays.

[Iczer]

wow drewkitty, that seems awfully complicated. what is your average spread like with that.

Batts

[drewkitty ~..~]

wow drewkitty, that seems awfully complicated. what is your average spread like with that.

Batts

complicated, to explain maybe, but to me it just by feel mostly

I ussully end up with all double digit scores..... mostly 12-28 but once it gets tothe 20's I tend to ether fudge things down and/or just not add in the skills bonuses.
thou, for HU chars...

if I make a low powered char for a game I throw out a lot of rolls

Then again, when I make 4/5/6d6 stat chars I don't have to go hunting for more dice to roll.

I made a char once thinking it was real strong (SNPS 40ish) about my limit even for NS chars.....but Noooo, one of the Great Thing of a player's char was even stronger (SNPS 60something)

[Iczer]

so you're saying you always roll these kind of stats and always have witnesses, none of which are actually 'here' to confirm. Which sort of hurts your veracity.

Just wanted to clear that up.


On a seperate note....last night I rolled 43 natural 20's in a roll. I did it in front of a GM too. It was a good night.

My advice is, because you asked for some, is to stop worrying about the other players. They're not doing anything wrong. they do have a rogue element in their game though, and it is upsetting the gameplay experience, so some drastic 'intervention style' action should be taken to sort out the aberrations on the bell curve.

Batts

[Noon]

I always have to question the notion that it's the GM's job to tailor the game to be fun.

I'm taking that phrase to mean it's his job alone, with help from nothing else. If the phrase is supposed to mean it's 70% (or some pecentage) his job and something else helps with the rest, I'll pay that, but it doesn't read that way.

I always wonder why people who say that would buy a system that does nothing at all to make the game fun and only the GM makes it fun? It's like going out and buying an empty pizza box, because it's up to the chef (entirely!) to make something tasty for everyone.

[Spinachcat]

If I wanted to play in the Rifts world a gritty, blood-shed campaign with a high degree of pseudo-realism, I think the system would not well-tailored to that style of playing.

Come to the Open House and play in Carmen Bellaire's games. Trying to keep your character alive for four hours will be a challenge.

I also run Rifts as a rough and tumble, extremely dangerous post-apocalypse and it works great. The problem I suspect is in your definition of "pseudo-realism" and what exactly that means varies tremendously between people.

[Noon]

I always have to question the notion that it's the GM's job to tailor the game to be fun.

I'm taking that phrase to mean it's his job alone, with help from nothing else.

You are mistaken though. Reread what I had said:
"It's the GMs job to callibrate/tailor the game so that everyone can have fun."

That's a far cry from stating that the GM is the only one responsible for making the game fun; gaming is a shared "burden".

Why is it a far cry? If you had written "The GM buys the drinks and brings them to you" I wouldn't have read "Buying drinks and distributing them is a shared burden not soley handled by the GM".

Rather, I'd suggest your mistaken in how you communicated the activity, rather than I am in how I read it. I don't know quite how to prove that, except "The GM's job is..." just does not stand for "A shared burden is...".

What I was alluding to is that it is the GM's sole burden to provide fun challenges for his/her group and for the whole group.

Do you mean there's something outside of challenges, in roleplay? Kind of idling around, or something?

And by challenges I mean social conflict, diplomacy, etc, not just fights.

The fun is almost never due to the system, unless you're playing hack&slay-style. The fun in general comes for the most part for (depending on style of gaming):
a) overcoming interesting challenges (including fights)
b) solving interesting mysteries
c) entertaining in-character role-playing,
and so on.

Well I totally disagree about fun not coming from system. So this is probably where were divided.

How your GM made a mystery or challenge interesting, could be written down (at the very least, the session could be recorded on tape and then reviewed, looking for how he did it). The very structure of how he did it could be written down and another group could follow that structure and have fun. And that structure would be...a system. And the fun would come from following that system.

Fun can come from system without having to be some sort of 'hack and slash' thing.

I think it's a self forfilling prophesy that people think fun can't come from system, so they write systems which fun doesn't come from, and of course that provides 'evidence' for others who play it that 'fun doesn't come from system'.

[Cybermancer]

To the OP,

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're being truthful.

Since this powerful character is causing you grief and you're losing fun over it, dump it. Tear it up. Burn it after that.

Then, when you get together with the GM to make a new character, either have one of the other players there as well. Now, you pick everything about your character, race, OCC, etc. But either the GM or the other player makes ALL the rolls by whatever conventions your group uses. Take and use whatever the dice (rolled by someone else) give you.

This will end any possible suggestions of cheating and no one can possibly blame you for your luck.

The only reason not to do something like this, that I can think of, is because you don't want to give up your uber character and would rather the other players just learn to live with it. Here's the thing, people are jealous creatures so if you don't want to give up your character to play a reduced role, then you'll just have to learn to live with it.

Hope that helps.

[Noon]

How you can read that as "It's the sole responsibility of the GM to make the game fun" is beyond me. It's the sole responsibility of the GM to provide fun challenges to the player.

Well, because you said it's the GM's job to calibrate the game to make it fun, you didn't say it was his job to calibrate challenges. And you didn't say stuff outside of challenges is fun to you. None of that was communicated to me until now, let me assure you. That's why it looked and still by and large looks identical, even though I get the subtext your using now.

Please continue to read the sentence. Where in that sentence am I talking about the fun of gaming in general? I was talking about the challenges presented to the players which is part of the fun. Part, as in: not all there is.

And please keep reading my post - I latter asked you if you meant you had some sort of fun outside of challenges. Come on, a bit of credit for actually trying to figure out what you meant (and bang, my question was actually dead on, you were refering to some sort of fun outside of challenges...so pat on the back for me!)

When I say challenges in roleplay I am referring to riddles to solve, enemies to overcome, situations to resolve, etc. But beyond that there is something outside of it in roleplay. Roleplaying, for example. PCs talking to each in character for the sake of roleplaying, engaging in conversations which have to do with their background and not the adventure at hand.

To be frank, I just don't do this and don't enjoy it. What I go for is the players focus is naturally talking in character about what they are doing now. Why? Because what they are doing now will be in the past soon...ie, it will become their background. Writing character backgrounds before gameplay just seems to be a way of avoiding the group background writing that is play.

Look, I think I get the context of what you said, but I honestly don't think background writing before play is part of play to any great extent. I think the challenges are the only thing to play, and talking about challenges in character is simply part of those challenges.

Which specific rule mechanic is "fun" though? Critical hits and fumbles maybe because they represent high-drama. Without a dangerous situation even these might not be fun. Rolling initiative ain't too much fun either unless you're in a situation where you need to draw first or face death.

I heard of a test play in the riddle of steel game system. It was supposed to be a bandit attack that would kill all the PC's and the noble women they escorted (it was just a test run). But during it, one player decided to use the rules to change his spiritual attribute of 'love' from what he'd set it to, to instead be on the noble woman. And each time you pursue your spiritual attribute, it goes up by one dice, up to five (five dice is like +10 to hit, +10 damage in D&D). He found love for her and then found more and more strength to protect her. He killed all the bandits in the end! It gives me shivers to think about it and it wasn't fudged, it was all from hard system use. But it wasn't just gamist 'Iwannawin' - it represented the characters true feelings. And his true feelings made him kick ass!

I find those mechanics to be damn cool!

[Noon]

No, you misunderstood. We've been talking about fun. And you'll have to acknowledge that a noteworthy chunk of the role-playing gamer population does at time have fun playing as their PCs, enacting on their background, etc. Just like an Elf player and a Dwarf player might enjoy getting at each other due to their backgrounds - it has nothing to do with GM-provided challenges.

Well, alot of gamers eat snacks while roleplaying. That doesn't mean eating snacks is part of roleplay (though if you wrote a game where you had to eat a snack each time you took damage, I grant for that particular game, it is part of roleplaying). Same goes for elf and dwarf getting at each other - just because you do it while roleplaying, doesn't mean it IS roleplaying.

I'd also note the cultural heritage of dwarf and elf animosity is Gimli and Legolas, most notably shown by competing over the challenge of orc slaying. It's...unusual that roleplay culture has stripped out the actual challenge part.

Sure but the mechanic itself is just an aid to a situation. The best mechanics in the world don't mean much if the scenario you play is lame, right? In what your described above, it was the combination of the mechanic and the high-drama life or death situation. That's why I said that in a situation where it's clear that you'll defeat an enemy easily a critical strike will
not be very thrilling.

It's the context which make a rule mechanic thrilling or not.

The situation wasn't thrilling at all. A bandit attack. Honestly, that's about as exciting as being hired by an old bearded guy in a bar. It's very cliche and cut and dried. The scenario was indeed lame (it was there to test the mechanics of fighting).

An exciting scenario doesn't have to come first at all. Behold the power of system! It can do more than stupid old climb checks, or rolling to hit.

[KillWatch]

1) They can't be happy for you?

2) Why do stats matter that much? I mean by the book having those stats aren't all that impressive. I MIGHT understand it if bonuses started at 10 and were 1:1, but they don't and they aren't

3) Hello, take physical skills

4) You could roll stats for everyone

[KillWatch]

One of my friends used the following method
1 30
2 20's
315s
and the rest were all ten