Comments on: Episode 176 – party leaders and RP sidebars

By: pagan

pagan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:34:26 +0000

Good advice from Chad on using an NPC leader-type as a GM tool for gently steering the group regarding plot or helping the group come to consensus during discussions. Or helping avoid a TPK. It’s so much better for the GM to “help” the group via a roleplayed NPC than to just tell them straight from the GM’s mouth.

By: ImberCorvus

ImberCorvus — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:34:01 +0000

I know I’m a bit late on this but I liked the ME2 approach to command. I like the fact that while the Illusive Man is bank rolling my enterprise its still a case of “The Illusive Man wants to see you” rather than forcing me into a cut scene. That’s the way I’ll be rolling it in my games from here.

By: Chad

Chad — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:16:17 +0000

@Don – Your absolutely right about my example not working in the real world military. Then again the real world military doesn’t have dragons, 30 foot tall mech and people who can shoot lightning out their eyes. ;) In RPG’s we tend to bend reality a bit to make the story work out how we want it to.

By: Aki

Aki — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:25:20 +0000

Certain people in military are the grunts. They don’t have expertise, they are there to be told what to do. This is mostly the lower echelons of the hierarchy. Higher up no-one can have enough knowledge to make the decisions alone. They need all kinds of intelligence and logistics information.

I was in the military in Finland, so I can’t talk about the US military, but even though I was (and am) a private I was taught to know enough about communications so that if I was put into a platoon outside of my usual position in the communications unit, I could make decisions or help make decisions about communications. Granted, that doesn’t lend too much opportunities for shining in an RPG, but in the Finnish army, there was always a certain sense that I had the right to bring forth my opinions. I can’t speak for everyone though. It’s quite possible that the light infantry or the artillerists don’t feel the same way.

By: Wayne Cole

Wayne Cole — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 21:28:39 +0000

There is a distinctive management style that involves surrounding yourself by those that know better and trusting them to provide a solution. The person in charge is then responsible for providing the resources and approvals and generally making sure that nothing get’s in the way of his or her people realizing those solutions. Essentially you let the subject matter experts be subject matter experts and the manager\leader is just that. Now I don’t know if that would work in the military, but I suspect it would work well on a Spaceship. The final decision is on the Captains head, but it is up to his people to provide the options and make them happen.

By: Don

Don — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:02:01 +0000

I wish you’d gone more into the problems of having player characters as leaders, something I see a lot of in some of the Weird Wars/Necropolis settings for Savage Worlds. In our current game, the leader was chosen that same way the party healer was (“Not it”), and I was hoping there was more in trying to help out those who have potential but are at the moment rather ineffectual.

There were parts of Chad’s NPC leader that I disagreed with, especially when it switched from delegation to getting options, as it doesn’t mesh with my experience (in the military) and instead seems like a re-iteration of the egalitarian system rather than a re-iteration of the hierarchy-based system and trying to explore the role-playing possibilities of the latter rather than the “norm” of the former.

By: Dragonhelm

Dragonhelm — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:06:50 +0000

Yeah, poor Arneson is often overlooked. By all accounts, he’s largely responsible for the role-playing side of RPGs.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:21:46 +0000

Thanks for the tidbit, Scott! That’s rather disappointing. After seeing the sig on the book, I’d hoped he was a better person in that regard. Apparently not.

By: Scott Waisner

Scott Waisner — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:48:59 +0000

Not to bash Gary Gygax, but he only mentions the “co-creator” bit because he was forced to. Dave Arneson sued Gary Gygax and TSR in 1981 because they had tried to cut Dave out of royalties over AD&D. Sorry, random geek knowledge….