The One Ring DFRPG Stats

[Silverblaze]

There are certainly consequences to statting stuff up, but there are also consequences to leaving stuff statless.

Without stats, the GM is basically making stuff up as he goes along. This can be difficult for the GM and annoying for the players. More importantly, it isn't really possible to run a conflict with something unless you stat it.

And it's my firm belief that it should be possible to run conflicts with the gods. Here's why:

Killing Mab as a Submerged character is probably not possible. But beating or at least challenging her in an argument isn't. (Harry does it).

And overpowering Sauron as a Feet In The Water character is almost certainly impossible. But you can totally kill him if you hit his weakness. (Frodo did it.)

Part of the reason for having stats is so that you can see what is possible and what isn't.

So even if there's no point in giving Mab's combat abilities, her social skills and stunts are valuable.

And personally, I think that anyone trying to fight Mab deserves more than death by GM fiat. Death by rigorously-defined mechanics is much more palatable for me.

So...that's why I think that gods ought to have stats. Does that sound reasonable?

PS: Tedronai is totally right about high-level rituals. The game consistently presents 25-shift rituals as impressive. 145 shift rituals are supposed to be truly awe-inspiring.
PPS: The One Ring's plot-altering stuff is mostly just compels.
PPPS: I don't much like perfect effects myself, but sometimes they are the only way to go.

Any GM who can't improvise well shouldn't be running games. (just my opinion)  Also just my opinion, but rigid mechanics don't go well with a storytelling game.

As for gods etc.  stat what you will, I just have to agree to disagree, unless the specific scope of a game has these godlike foes as a main antagonist; it simply is a waste of time.

I don't like instant death by GM fiat much, but in some cases, much like perfect effects ...it has to happen.  if for no other reason than moving a game or story along.  I can't stand a game being bogged down by two hours of rolling to establish a forgone conclusion (or being told: "see they died because they had no chance, mab has X refresh and the rolling was a formality to soothe egos"). Just get it over with.  "You managed to poss off a god despite tons of warnings and knowing better, it wants to kill you...yeah you died. You also deserve it"

[Sanctaphrax]

What exactly do you mean by "a storytelling game?"

Also: A god trying to kill you will probably take about 90 seconds. A 20-shift evocation takes little time to resolve. No need to worry about wasting time.

Also: Nobody can improvise infinitely well. The argument that you should be able to improvise would also justify not making a city or any NPCs at all. In fact, it would justify that better. The weaker the NPC, the easier it is to make (generally speaking).

[Richard_Chilton]

Talk about statable and unstatable has reminded me about a meta system called the Primal Order that came out years ago.  (Back when D&D was 2nd edition.)

Basically:
This DM wanted Set to show up and intimidate the PCs into doing something.  Someone had a copy Deities and Demigods so they had the stats for Set - and rather than go on the quest they pounded Set and his entire court before going on to the next adventure.  That started the DM wondering about how to effectively stat gods that:
a) can't be stomped by a high level party, and
b) had effective limits on their powers.

The resulting meta system was a way to handle god in almost any system and gave conversion notes for D&D, Palladium, GURPS, Ars Magica, Castle Falkenstein, Harn, Rolemaster -  basically every system that existed when it came out.  Then they got sued and sued and and were sent a couple of letters from lawyers saying that they should have asked permission to print those conversions...

But the basics of the system - that there is a Primal level of reality that somethings operate on - might be able to be adapted to DFRPG.

Richard

[Silverblaze]

1. What exactly do you mean by "a storytelling game?"

2. Also: A god trying to kill you will probably take about 90 seconds. A 20-shift evocation takes little time to resolve. No need to worry about wasting time.

3. Also: Nobody can improvise infinitely well. The argument that you should be able to improvise would also justify not making a city or any NPCs at all. In fact, it would justify that better. The weaker the NPC, the easier it is to make (generally speaking).

1. Any story that the player has more say in what is going on or that has a more social setting.  D&D can be very social, but hte GM has total control (in most games) and can be nothing mroe than dungeon crawls.  White Wolf systems and DFRPG seems to be more about the story than the loot and dungeons.

2. You under estimate how twinked out a character can get in a short time.  I will admit - 2 hours was hyperbole. The fact that combats even against superior oposition can become protracted and slow the game to a crawl where most other players are sitting with their thumbs up their collective rears is what I was reffering to.  Statting something makes it possible.

3.  I think you may be taking my opinion of improvising off the deep end.  True enough a plan is required but not being able to improvise at all is a bad idea. 
If your game is in... Texas and the PC's want to go to Mexico and then further south to mess with red court leaders, you'll likely need to improvise since this idea seemingly came out of left field.  You may not have the nobility statted to perfection.  They deserve more than a template in a book.  What do you do, some GM's can't deal with that.  I think all Gm's should be able to.

I'm not saying Richard_Chilton agreed or disagreed with me: however, as you can see - sometimes statting a god can be detrimental to a game.  Set got stomped flat.  Once that happens by the way.  Once a veritable god is defeated, many players (or at the very least characters) will become very jaded to danger.  They get big egos.   Well deserved big egos in my opinion.  Then you have two choices. 

1. Prove them wrong - crush their egos and establish other things are meaner than gods and meaner than god slayers

or

2. Deal with the fact that your villains and antagonisits no longer scare/intimidate them.

[Belial666]

1) All beings that are not omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent can have stats. That the magnitude of those stats can be incredibly high for some beings is no barrier to statting them at all. I can just as easily write down "John Smith can lift 200 pounds-as much as a heavyset adult" as I can write down "Jane Smith can lift 2.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 pounds-as much as a small moon." So the magnitude of a quantity is no barrier to it being stated (and thus statted).

2) All beings that were part of a conflict of any sort in a story have had stats at least once; the writer at least had to have a good idea of their abilities to write those conflicts in the story. Take Sauron for example; he was physically beaten by a) a talking dog, b) the men of Numenor, the elf and man warriors of the Last Alliance. He was outsmarted by a) a half-maia elf princess, b) Gandalf, c) Saruman (for a time). He was matched in spiritual conflict by  Aragorn at least for a short time. All the above means that Sauron had stats; you can't have conflicts if you don't have stats, even if those are in a fantasy writer's head (or notes)

3) Wanting to write down the stats of anything for whatever reason is reason enough to do it. After all, you read fantasy to have fun and if writing down a fantasy being's stats is fun to you then you should do it.



So, given that statting gods and other extremely powerful beings can be done, has been done at least once, and should be done, why not do it?

[ways and means]

Some things can't be stat-ted with numbers for example I know of at least several instant death God Killing abilities/artifacts in fantasy (Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, Razor Eddies Straight Razor, the Saint of Killers' Colts etc) these abilities/artifacts do as much stress as needed to kill an opponent (if it is 1 or 10,000) and don't differentiate between who is being fired upon. These sort of abilities can't really be statted in terms of weapon rating or attack accuracy though they can be costed (In Exalted a perfect defense is costed at a charm and a mote use per attack). Now if someone wanted to stat a perfect attack (always hits) or an absolute weapon (if it hits it always kills) by guessing how much refresh they are worth as an advantage that would make sense IMO.   

[Ricky]

It would be, in a similar vein, to statting up Excalibur if you planned on using it as a central theme for the story (like, for example, in the movie Excalibur). It should have some tangible stats, for sure, but a lot of the more "plottish" stuff should be left to... well, the plot.

They did stat Excaliber, Michaels sword is Excaliber. The Merlin tells this to Harry at the end of  Proven Guilty.

[Richard_Chilton]

I'm not saying Richard_Chilton agreed or disagreed with me: however, as you can see - sometimes statting a god can be detrimental to a game. 

I'm torn over whether plot devices should be statted - but someone did come up with a method of statting gods that limited their power while removing them from the "list of things we can stomp".

If you search online you might be able to find "The Primal Order" and maybe the three books that went with it (one had three example gods/faiths, one was an overview of working planes of existence, and one was a monster manual type listing of divine agents).  The system is a bit dated now but it still has interesting concepts.  The problem is, if you try to stat out the One Ring in that system you have to find a way of converting the refresh cost and that would put it beyond the reach of PCs....

Unless you only charged them for the powers that they could use...  If you determined that most of the abilities that Sauron would get from the ring are only available to a Sauron level character you could get away with not charging them for the things that they haven't "unlocked" by mastering the ring.  That is, just charge them for the things that the ring will share with them, not its whole potential.

Richard

[Sanctaphrax]

@Silverblaze: Yes, I was deliberately taking your point too far in order to demonstrate why I don't like it. What I'm trying to say is that saying you should be able to improvise isn't really an argument against statting stuff.

@Richard Chilton: Sounds interesting. Will take a look.

@Belial: I agree.

@ways and means: I like using unlimited FP debt for such things. Either that or exploitation of the abstract nature of stress. Both seem to work.

@everyone: If you want gods to be invincible and then you use non-invincible stats for them, you have only yourself to blame. Same goes for the time-wasting problem. Now, personally, I kinda like the idea that a party can turn around and kill the uber-characters that the GM is trying to scare them with. But if something really ought to be unbeatable, make that thing unbeatable. Like anything else, god stats can be done wrong. Many of the problems raised here will not arise if they are done right.