MB Review: Chapter Two

This chapter covers the Advantages and Compensations mechanics of character generation. Shatterzone first introduced the concept though there are many differences in how things are laid out and handled. Torg players will not be familiar with these mechanics as there is nothing comparible in the Torg system. But there are plenty of other RPGs on the market that use a similar format so the ideas should not be totally alien to most gamers.

Advantages and Compensations are ways of fleshing out the background of a character and getting something out of it in terms of game mechanics. Some gamers I know do not feel that characters should get anything special just because their player comes up with a history, background and personality for the character, but that discussion is best saved for another day (besides which, it comes up regularly enough in the rec.games.frp.* newsgroups that if you really want to discuss it there are plenty of people there who will be more than willing to oblige you. 8-)

Using the Advantages and Compensations are optional, they don't have to be used if a player doesn't want to take advantage of them. However, once a character has started play the player can't go back and add any Advantages and Compenstaions (unless the GM is very lenient or forgiving) so it's probably a good idea to come up with some kind of background, especially if everyone else is doing it for their characters.

Something I mentioned in my commentary on Chapter One is that I think it would actually work better for a player to work on the background material before he builds the character - that way the player may have a better idea of what kinds of skills and attribute levels he'll want for the character and what kinds of Advantages will help him achieve those ideas.

Shatterzone used a point-based system for its Advantages and Compensations, each Advantage and Compensation had a certain point value and you had to try to match up your point totals in both areas, with a limit of 10 points in either area. Masterbook makes things more complicated by dividing everything up into "Columns" and instead of matching points you are given a number for each Column based on the particular setting you are in, such as a "real world" setting allowing three Column I choices and two Column II choices (the Columns officially go up to IV with the effects getting more powerful as they increase.)

Players still have to balance things out between Advantages and Compensations so takeing three Column I Advantages requires taking three Column I Compensations (there are optional rules for crossing columns and doing things like trading one CIII Advantage for two CI Advantages but upward trades are not recommended.) Characters aren't allowed to 'stack' Advantages or Compensations, for example getting two CI "extra skill adds" Advantages and applying them to the same skill isn't allowed (though they could be applyied to different skills.)

My first comment on this system is that "Columns" is a strange word choice to me, especially since the Columns aren't large enough to actually take up an entire column on a page - you end up with two Columns per column. 8-) "Category", "Level" or something like that sounds better to me.

While there are 35 Advantages listed, there are actually only 15 distinct types of Advantages in the rulebook, most of them repeat in more than one Column. For example, something like Contact ranges from minor connections such as knowing a mercenary for hire (CI) all the way up to having a diety watching over you (CIV). Some Advantages are narrowly defined enough that they only exist in one Column, like Trademark Specialization (CII).

I will briefly list the various types of Advantages (in alphabetical order) and then comment on them seperately. There are a couple that I won't comment on simply because I couldn't come up with anything to say about them.

Additional Skill Adds (CI-III): Pretty self-explanatory. The only comment I have is that the tradeoff between regular skill adds and specialization skill adds is not the same here as it is in the rest of character creation, instead of a 1:2 ratio you get either X general skill adds or X+1 specialization skill adds rather than getting 2X specialization adds.

Additional Attribute Point (CIII): Also self-explanatory. A difference from the Shatterzone Advantage is that the Masterbook Advantage also includes an automatic increase in the attribute maximum while Shatterzone made you purchase that as a seperate Advantage.

Contacts (CI-IV): You know someone, a group or an organization that can provide you with help. I see a couple of possible problems with some of the definitions here. For example, by their definition a character in a "real world" setting with a membership in AAA (American Automobile Association) would have to buy that as a CI Contact. I really can't see making a character pay for that with a CI Compensation when he could just wait until the first game session and then send AAA some money and join, getting the Advantage without having to take a Compensation.

Another possible problem is the vagueness of how Contact is used with organizations. Obviously if your Contact is with a person or small group it's likely that you know the individual(s) personally. But what about a group? Do you know the actual organization, someone in the chain of command, what? I understand that the description has to be kept generic but there really isn't much to go on for organizations.

For example, if I have a CIV Contact with a "large governmental agency", does that mean that I can contact any member of this organization (the FBI for example) at any time and in any place and expect assistance or do I have to go through channels or contact a "friend in high places"? There's a lot of leeway there in the power level of the Contact and I would have liked it defined a bit better.

Cultures (CI-CIV): There are two possible ways for this Advantage to work. The first is that you know stuff about a particular foreign culture (size and uniqueness depending on the level of the Advantage.) The second use is less specific and is an intuitive ability to draw parallels between cultures you are familiar with and unfamiliar cultures.

The descriptions here are a bit confusing and you have to read all four before you really know what any of them represent. CI says that it represents "a particular (usually unusual) culture" but in CII we find out that you can't take a really unusual culture in CI because CII is where you can first understand "alien" cultures with a CI level of understanding. (And don't confuse the CII "alien" cultures with the "alien cultures" mentioned in CIV!)

You also have to read CII to find out that a CI culture has to be "small", so having cultural know-how for anything larger or more common than obscure Amazonian tribes requires CII or better...but wouldn't an Amazonian tribe count as something alien to most of us? That means it would require CII, not CI. So just what ican CI be used for?

A player who wanted to build a character who is from an unusual culture but is also part of the "macroculture" of the game setting (like an American Indian character in a "real world" American setting) has to take that as a CIII Culture Advantage. There's one slight problem here - by WEG's guidelines "real world" settings don't get CIII Advantages, meaning it's impossible to build an American Indian character in a "real world" game unless the player doesn't want him to actually be part of his Indian culture (ie, the player could give him a CII Advantage so that he knows stuff about it but he wouldn't be a part of it, unless of course his Indian culture is "alien" enough that the CII Advantage just means he's familiar with the basics. at the CI level....)

I see this as a major problem since it could easily force almost all characters to be from the dominant culture of a setting with little cultural variety possible. Sure, I could say my character's ethnicity is some variety of American Indian but he's not going to actually be an Indian, he's going to be a dark-skinned American who knows a little about American Indian culture. I might as well make him a caucasian anthropologist, wouldn't be any different.

Fame (CI-CIII): Again, pretty straightforward, the character is well-known for some reason. The level of recognition and how widespread the fame is depends on the Column. At CI the character may have to do something to be recognized and will get relatively minor perks, while at CIII the character will probably be recognized on sight by anyone in the game world and will probably be treated like royalty.

One nice suggestion I really like under CIII Fame is that the character should probably take at least a CI Infamy Compensation because no matter how well liked and how famous someone is, there's always going to be some people who hate him. However I think this is a valid suggestion for CII as well since that's the level that would describe most "world famous" people.

Learning Curve, Positive (CIII): This advantage represents an unusual ability to learn new skills and improve old ones. But it does not have any effect during character creation, just on skills gained in play. Considering how the number of skill points characters start with is supposed to represent to some extent their intelligence and education I would think that this should have some effect during character creation but that's not the case.

That's probably a good thing though, as this Advantage is very powerful; when it comes to buying new skill adds, the character always pays as if he had a teacher (cutting some skill costs in half) and he always pays one less point than normal (so instead of paying three skill points for a third add he only pays two.)

It is optionally suggested that if this seems too powerful to limit the skills affected to one Physical or two Mental attributes, to which I reply "why one Physical but two Mental?" Several friends have commented to me about Shatterzone that the rules are set up to where building "mental giants" is not only easy but almost encouraged, and this Advantage plus optional rule would seem to suggest that Masterbook encourages it even more.

I think what I would do is limit the Advantage to just one attribute and then optionally have a CIV Learning Curve Advantage that allowed for more attributes to be affected. An additional problem I have is that the Learning Curve, Negative Compensation is only CII but it is much more severe by comparison to what you get from the CIII Advantage (with the Compensation you pay double for all skill add purchases.)

Luck (CII-IV): Let me quote from the description of this Advantage: "In a roleplaying game, it is often hard to simulate actual luck of a character...but Masterbook has a way." Maybe I'm mistaken but isn't that what Life Points and the cards are supposed to represent?

Anyway, Luck means (wait for it...) that the character is lucky. In game terms, he essentially gets a free card effect to use whenever he wants (limited by the Column level of course.) At CII the character gets to choose from four card effects and he can use his Luck once an adventure. At CIII it goes up to seven choices but again only once an adventure. So far so good. What do you suppose CIV is like, ten choices or multiple uses an adventure? Of course not, that would be following a pattern! At CIV the character gets to use all seven choices under CIII and all four choices under CII "once each" an adventure.

But wait, does that mean he gets 11 free card effects an adventure or does it mean that he gets to use CII Luck once an adventure and CIII Luck once an adventure (in other words, just two free card effects)? The description certainly reads like he gets the 11 card effects an adventure but then the example suggests he only gets the two uses out of it. Personally I think the first option is vastly out of scale compared to CII and CIII but the second option is hardly worth being a CIV so I'm not sure what to think.

Oh yeah, CIII and CIV Luck has an optional use - if the character gets in a really bad situation the GM can "burn out" his Advantage to alleviate the problem. This counts as using the Advantage so the character won't be able to get a free card effect until the next adventure. That's fine and to me it represents luck better than getting a free card effect once an adventure.

The problem I have here is the use of the phrase "burn out"; there is a Compensation called Burn-out and that causes you to lose an Advantage permanently. Using the same phrase to represent both a temporary loss and a permanent loss seems pretty sloppy to me, especially when the "burn out" usage isn't burning out anything, it's just using the Advantage for something other than a free card effect that adventure. Why not just say that the Advantage has been used for the adventure instead of confusing people?

Skill Bonus (CI-III): The character receives a bonus (not skill adds) to a select group of skills, the number of skills and the size of the bonus depending on the Column level. I guess this represents a natural aptitude in some specialized area like hand-to-hand combat or scientific fields. You can substitute two specialization skills for a general skill in the group the bonus is applied to, but I'm not sure why anyone would want to do it except maybe as some kind of character trait; for example, would you rather have a +1 bonus to all forms of Melee Combat or to just two types of weapons? Sure, if it fits the character concept the two weapons would be okay but what option do you think most players will take?

Skill Minimum (CIV): The character has three skills (that cannot be affected by any other Advantage) and whenever he generates a skill total he gets a minimum bonus value of +0. The three skills must be related in some way so I guess this represents a different kind of natural aptitude from Skill Bonus; the character basically cannot screw up with those three skills.

I can easily see players selecting three skills for maximum abuse potential (three skills they're very good at and use all the time) so GMs are going to have to be careful with this one. I'd suggest making sure that the CIV Compensation is as effective for the GM as the Advantage is for the player but there's one problem, namely there aren't any CIV Compensations....

Special Abilities (CIII-IV): They could also be called the miscellaneous Advantages.

These are the really strange things, the stuff that 'normal people' can't do. Some examples are the ability to breathe underwater, infravision, natural weapons or armor and so on. Most of the problems I came across here are how effective some of the Special Abilities are compared to others of the same Column level as well as other Advantages of the same level.

For example, one of the suggestions under CIII is Fast Reactions. In games that use the Drama Deck to determine initiative a character with Fast Reactions gets three Hastes to use through the adventure whenever he wants. By comparison, a character with the CIII Luck Advantage can get one Haste an adventure. Does the wider selection of card effects for Luck equal the three uses under Fast Reactions? It's a judgement call ,my call is that it doesn't, Fast Reactions comes out as being more powerful than Luck.

If the game does not use the Drama Deck for initiative the character instead gets a +3 bonus to his Agility or Confidence when determining initiative. So in a game with the Drama Deck, this Advantage only comes into effect three times but in a game without the Drama Deck for initiative this Advantage is always in effect. This sounds kind of unfair to the guy in a game using the Drama Deck!

Okay, moving along, how about Accelerated Healing (CIII-IV)? Not only does the CIII Advantage give the character a +3 bonus on his healing rolls but the DN is also one step lower (ie, if he has two Wounds the DN he rolls against is the one Wound DN). Since the Difficulty Numbers for healing wounds are all two points apart why not just say it's a +5 bonus? Well, they can't do that for CIII because the guideline is nothing over a +3 bonus for combat-related effects. The same situation exists in the CIV writeup except that now the DN is two steps lower (or in effect a +7 bonus to healing rolls.)

The ability to Breathe Water (CIII) should be pretty useful but the only game mechanic effect is a +2 bonus to swimming skill totals. I'd probably throw in a bonus to the base swimming speed value as well.

Natural Hand-to-Hand Weapons and Natural Armor have the same problem, which is that the damage/armor value can be up to +3 (CIII) or +4 (CIV). How is this a problem? It means that a character with the natural equivalent of big fingernails (STR+1 dmg) has to pay the same CIII Compensation that someone with knife-like fingernails (STR+3) pays. Ditto with armor, you pay the same Compensation if your skin is like thick fabric (TOU+1) or woven metallic fibers (TOU+3). Why would anyone go with anything less than the full value available if he has to pay the same price regardless of the level? Maybe there should be a CI and a CII version where the max bonuses are +1 and +2?

A CIV Special Ability is a Permanent Special Effect, like having a Pulp Power. My only question is how do you handle the feedback on a permanent SFX?

My final comment concerning Special Abilities is about the CIV ability to take two CIII Special Abilities - this is actually very special because if it were done according to the optional column swapping rules the CIV could only be traded for one CIII, and with this Special Ability only one Compensation has to be chosen for two Advantages - - and even better, as I mentioned earlier there are no CIV Compensations to choose from so I guess that's two CIII Advantages for free!

Special Effects (CIII): This Advantage is used "to produce special effects in a game setting where this is not normally possible." But if I'm going to be doing something "almost no one else in the universe can do", shouldn't this be a CIV Advantage instead of a CIII? After all, CIV is supposed to be the column for "superhuman or supernatural" effects.

Wealth (CI-III): Despite what it sounds like, this doesn't represent the starting cash a character has, just his economic standing in the mainstream community - unless the character has CIII Wealth which states that the character can start the game with the equivalent of $10,000. Everyone else starts the game with...say, what does everyone else start the game with? Can they just pile on whatever equipment seems reasonable and then assume they have what they need plus cigarette money?

Now for Compensations; this section will be much shorter than the previous one as there are less Compensations than Advantages and I didn't find as many things to bitch about. 8-)

About the only new comment I have on the overall A/C rules is something I briefly mentioned in my second post, there are CIV Advantages but no CIV Compensations, only six lines of text saying that they have to be custom-designed in most cases or more powerful versions of CIII Compensations. A few examples would have been nice though....

Wait, I did think of another overall comment! Something that may not be obvious to people just beginning with the system is that several Advantages and Compensations make for perfect subplot material (for example, Enemy is basically a Nemesis subplot campaigned before the game started.) It would have been nice to see this mentioned somewhere but it's not.

Okay, as with the Advantages there are many Compensations listed but there are actually only 18 distinct Compensations. Here they are listed alphabetically and then I'll comment on each one (assuming I have a comment) individually:

Achilles' Heel (CIII) Advantage Flaw (CI-III) Age (CI-II) Bad Luck (CI-III) Bigotry (CI-II) Burn-out (CIII) Cultural Infamiliarity (CI-III) Debt (CI-CIII) Employed (CI-III) Enemy (CI-CIII) Handicap (CI-III) Infamy (CI-III) Language (CII) Learning Curve, Negative (CII) Poverty (CI) Prejudice (CI-II) Price (CI-II) Quirk (CI-III)

Achilles' Heel (CIII): As you might guess, a character with this Compensation has a vunerability or flaw in his defenses. My problem here is one that I found with several Advantages, namely that by WEGs own suggestions you won't find CIII Compensations in a "real world" setting yet I can easily come up with "real world" examples of this Compensation.

For example, a possible Achilles' Heel is "Severe Allergies". I'm sure we've all heard about or know people who can die from a bee sting, right? Well, that's just an allergic reaction to bee venom so this Compensation sounds like a natural, except you couldn't build a "real world" character with that problem.

The other suggested Heels do fit CIII a bit better, they are a bit more "fictional" in nature. But I think that to some extent we could find real-world examples of them too, though maybe not to the limits given in the rules. For example, a possible Vulnerability is freezing up at the sight of firearms, resulting in a +4 "to hit" modifier against the frozen character. Freezing up sounds reasonable for real-world situations but +4 is pretty heavy, especially since that will also increase the damage through extra result points. But then they give an example of a +8 bonus for another vulnerability - eight? That sounds ridiculous to me, even for a CIII!

So I think that maybe there should be a CII Achilles' Heel, not as severe as the CIII that would allow for "real world" situations to be represented in the game as "real world" instead of being consigned to the realm of the "fictional world".

Age (CI-II): The character is either older or younger than "average" for a PC and suffers some detrimental effects. At CI the effects are primarily roleplaying problems, at CII some game mechanics are introduced and the roleplaying problems get more severe.

My primary problem is inconsistencies between the two variants. CI is described as being for teenagers or middle-aged characters while CII is for older children or characters past middle-age. The description for CII says that it's possible to have a child or old person without the CII Compensation but there's no such disclaimer for CI. In other words, teenagers are going to be descriminated against (because they have to have the CI Compensation) but a 10-year old kid won't be treated like a kid unless he decides to take the CII Compensation!?!

Something that burns my butt is the description in CI of how an older character (someone around age 50) will be treated by people - "as if he were infirm or possibly senile." Excuse me? Have I lived a sheltered life or do people in the rest of the world actually consider the 50's to be the age we start putting people away in rest homes? I hope not! I'll agree that 50 fits the "middle age" definition but I think "infirm and senile" is rather insulting to middle aged people! I know both of my parents would be insulted if I started treating them that way! Sheesh!

Oh yeah, and to mirror the teenager problem I outlined above, if I make a 50-year old character he's going to be seen as senile but I can make a 100-year old character and as long as I don't give him the CII Compensataion (because I don't have to!) no one is going to think twice about his mental capabilities!

I realize I am making a bit much out of this but that bit about treating middle-aged characters as "infirm and senile" really gets my blood boiling, so you'll have to excuse me for ranting about it.

The Shatterzone Age Compensations (Youth and Elder) work a lot better IMO, particularly for young characters. Young characters start out with fewer attribute points but will gain them as they age through the campaign and the Compensation may eventually go away on its own as a result. And at least the Elder Compensation is for old people, not middle-aged ones....

Bigotry and Prejudice (CI-II): I'm grouping these two together because they're basically mirror images of each other and I have the same comments for both of them. Bigotry is where the character is on the giving end of the hatred while Prejudice is where the character is on the receiving end of it.

I don't really have a problem with either of the Compensations, I'm just a little put off by the placating warnings about using them in "real world" settings because someone's feelings might get hurt if you're being a bigot or if they're being discriminated against by the GM. (This after they suggested treating middle-aged people as if they were senile?) It just rubs me the wrong way, it's like the book is talking down to me ("Now be a good boy and play nice with your friends, don't go saying bad things about other people!")

Burn-out (CIII): Simply put, you match this up with an Advantage (doesn't have to be a CIII Advantage) and come up with some kind of situation where you could lose the Advantage permanently. This probably should have been a CIII Price Compensation because that's basically what it is, you pay for your Advantage by risking losing it forever (and it's required that the opportunity to lose the Advantage could come up once or twice an adventure!)

Language (CII): The character does not speak the common language of the area he spends most of his time in. My only comment is that there is a rather confusing sentence in the writeup: "The difficulty numbers listed under the language skill have all the difficulty numbers listed for this Compensation." Anyone know what that means? And to top it off, there are no difficulty numbers under either the language skill or in this Compensation!

Learning Curve, Negative (CII): The character has a hard time learning new skills and improving old ones - a very difficult time, all costs for skills are doubled. This is way out of proportion compared to the Advantage counterpart to this one, and it's a CIII instead of a CII! Maybe instead of double on all skills it should be slightly more expensive (like one point extra per add) or maybe the character requires a teacher for untrained skills as well as for trained skills (maybe trained skills are double even with a teacher?)

Price (CI-II): This Compensation has to be linked to an Advantage, though not necessarily to one of the same Column. Basically the Advantage has a cost; you may have to do a favor for a Contact or there may be a special obligation that must be met whenever you use the Advantage.

One suggested Price is paying Life Points at the end of the adventure for an Advantage. Torg players are certainly familiar with the idea of an Adventure Cost but considering how stingy Masterbook is in rewarding Life Points I find the idea of a one Life Point per adventure cost being a CI Compensation a bit extreme, and three Life Points per adventure a CII Compensation really extreme! I might accept the one LP cost as a CII and the three LP cost as a CIII though.

There's also a brief set of suggestions for building nonhuman species/races with the Advantages and Compensations but it basically comes down to a few freebie Advantages and Compensations in exchange for some limitations on what you can do with the other Advantage and Compensations Colums you get from the setting (for example, not getting a CIV in a high fantasy setting in exchange for a couple racial Advantages and Compensations.)

The main problem with it, as several of us observed on the list, is that you really can't build much more than a "man in a rubber suit" kind of alien/nonhuman without getting rather ridiculous. Say we wanted to build a giant in a fantasy setting; think about how many CIII "Extra Attribute Point" Advantages we'll need just to get him up to human maximum Strength and Endurance levels, much less up to the points we'd expect for a giant! It can't be done.

Torg, Masterbook, Shatterzone, West End Games, and WEG are trademarks of Purgatory Publishing. You can find out more about Torg at www.westendgames.com.