The Drawbacks of Disadvantages
... and vice versa.
The one aspect of the ongoing Aeranos fantasy game we have going that I have the most trouble with is not the incomplete spell list that's being fleshed out only as we players get to new spells or the wound system that does away with HP whittling in favor of something that practically works out to usually be minor scratches or mortal wounds with relatively little use of the gradient between, rather it's the disadvantage system.
You may take up to X points in disadvantages at character creation. They do not give you points to gain more advantages or anything. Rather when a disadvantage hinders your character in play, you earn a fate point (usable for ass-saving critical moments). The closest published example I can think of is (if I'm remembering correctly) the disads in 7th Sea. But I have yet to see it actually work, and the concepts don't sit right with me.
Part of the issue is how the conditions vary. A Sense disadvantage could come into play with every awareness test (ie. Notice - probably the most frequent roll). A Loner disad, which gives penalties to social rolls, is only going to mechanically come up when there are social rolls. A Secret disad is only going to come up... uhh... when? When the GM specifically makes it? A PC certainly isn't going to bring up his/her own deep, dark secret deliberately and along with Outlaw, it might be region-related, meaning an entire campaign could pass by somewhere that the disadvantage would have no meaning even if it did come up somehow.
Then there's the hindering aspect. I specifically played up a Covetous: Renown disad in the first game of our picked-up story, but it meant nothing because that didn't do anything bad for my character. We had some discussion on this and the current verdict is that it's not enough for a disadvantage to give -2 on a roll, but you have to fail the roll by that amount for it to count. Arguably, any penalty on an successful attack roll might qualify because damage is partly dependent on the difference between attack and defense. But I could play that Covetous disad to the hilt and it only hinders my character if... uhh... well, I guess if the GM deliberately decides that some NPC has a negative reaction to it of such a degree that they do something about it which works against the PC(s)?
A lot of the time in RPGs, I find that stats, skills, and advantages are good at defining what a character can do, but disadvantages tend to show who they are. That makes them a lot more interesting to me, but then the mechanics get involved and sometimes that doesn't work real well. In this case, the system feels scattered unhelpfully complicated to me. It seems like there's got to be a better way...
The one aspect of the ongoing Aeranos fantasy game we have going that I have the most trouble with is not the incomplete spell list that's being fleshed out only as we players get to new spells or the wound system that does away with HP whittling in favor of something that practically works out to usually be minor scratches or mortal wounds with relatively little use of the gradient between, rather it's the disadvantage system.
You may take up to X points in disadvantages at character creation. They do not give you points to gain more advantages or anything. Rather when a disadvantage hinders your character in play, you earn a fate point (usable for ass-saving critical moments). The closest published example I can think of is (if I'm remembering correctly) the disads in 7th Sea. But I have yet to see it actually work, and the concepts don't sit right with me.
Part of the issue is how the conditions vary. A Sense disadvantage could come into play with every awareness test (ie. Notice - probably the most frequent roll). A Loner disad, which gives penalties to social rolls, is only going to mechanically come up when there are social rolls. A Secret disad is only going to come up... uhh... when? When the GM specifically makes it? A PC certainly isn't going to bring up his/her own deep, dark secret deliberately and along with Outlaw, it might be region-related, meaning an entire campaign could pass by somewhere that the disadvantage would have no meaning even if it did come up somehow.
Then there's the hindering aspect. I specifically played up a Covetous: Renown disad in the first game of our picked-up story, but it meant nothing because that didn't do anything bad for my character. We had some discussion on this and the current verdict is that it's not enough for a disadvantage to give -2 on a roll, but you have to fail the roll by that amount for it to count. Arguably, any penalty on an successful attack roll might qualify because damage is partly dependent on the difference between attack and defense. But I could play that Covetous disad to the hilt and it only hinders my character if... uhh... well, I guess if the GM deliberately decides that some NPC has a negative reaction to it of such a degree that they do something about it which works against the PC(s)?
A lot of the time in RPGs, I find that stats, skills, and advantages are good at defining what a character can do, but disadvantages tend to show who they are. That makes them a lot more interesting to me, but then the mechanics get involved and sometimes that doesn't work real well. In this case, the system feels scattered unhelpfully complicated to me. It seems like there's got to be a better way...
I'm getting into the idea of not having disads in a game -- instead allowing something closer to what 7th Sea has - 'backgrounds', which you can bring into play. John Wick mentioned something about hidden disadvantages -- they suck if you, as a player, don't specifically try to slip it into the game. The GM probably won't do it, and if you never say anything about them, they'll never come into play. The best thing to do is to drop hints, and help set things up so you can do the 'big reveal', shock and gasp, and then have the other players come to terms with it. He mentioned how he and another player wrote this secret, hidden backstory with dark, horrific things in it for a LARP, and they played very well -- but without bringing this stuff into the game, what use is it?
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