Re: Difficulty Balance

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, Simon Smith wrote:
> Being heroic is a luxury over and above surviving. If
> the characters can barely survive, they have no margin in which to act
> heroic - they may even have to minimax the rules and their characters in
all
> sorts of ways just to achieve the edge they need to survive.

Which do you consider more heroic?

A) A fighter pilot blowing up a column of enemy vehicles that lack the 
ability to effectively fire back and kill the fighter pilot.

or

B) An infantry soldier who refuses to surrender against a force that will 
almost surely kill him to buy time for others in his unit to escape 
capture.

???

> Make the
> scenario easier, and characters get the chance to look beyond their own
> immediate round-to-round survival and do more stuff that would generally
be
> considered heroic - such as sparing villainous NPCs, and performing
flashy
> but probably suboptimal combat moves during the fight. That sort of
> behaviour makes for a heroic tone in my eyes, scrabbling merely for
survival
> doesn't.

> Please expand on your own point, and/or ask me some questions to expose
the
> holes in my own assertions.

Do you want real heroism or a "heroic tone"?  Roller coasters feel 
dangerous but they aren't really very dangerous.  So if you are looking to

describe a dangerous activity, would you point to riding a roller coaster 
because it feels dangerous or would you point to something like crab 
fi****ng off of Alaska where a person has a very real chance of dying?

What I think you are describing is to heroism what a roller coaster is to 
danger.  It's the trappings of heroism that you can safely ride without 
really getting hurt.  It's an amusement park ride version of heroism.

There are versions of hunting like this, too, where they put birds in 
traps in release them right in front of the hunter, so the hunter is 
certain to have a bird to shoot at and is almost certain to kill one or 
more unless they are a really terrible shot.  It produces a predictable 
outcome and spares hunters from spending their entire day roaming through 
the woods without finding anything to shoot at, but is it hunting?

John Morrow