What I Learned From the SM RPG

[Bjorn]

I've been reading the logs of the SM RPG on and off for the past little while.  As by far and away the most successful of the games run on SR, there's quite a bit to be learned from it.  The key lesson, of course, is: you're a bunch of sex-obsessed pervs.  But there are other lessons to be learned about the key to running a good online game.

Things I took from it:

1) Make your game as player-centric as possible.  The vast majority of the SM game, as best I can tell, was player-player interactions.  This is a key element of all games, of course, but it was the core of the SM game, as opposed to, say, The Day After Tomorrow, where player-NPC interaction was just as if not more important than player-player.

The reason this is such a big deal is that the biggest obstacle in online gaming is the bottleneck of communication.  It takes a lot longer to type text than to speak it, and when you're quiet, no one knows if you're typing something or waiting or making yourself a sandwich.  When the name of the game is player-player interaction, the communication gap isn't as big an issue.  The most obvious reason for that can be seen by going to look at the postcounts for tDaT: Brian, as GM, had as many posts as all of the other players put together.  When progress in the game essentially requires one person posting for every post by everybody else, eventually things are going to get bogged down.  In player-player interactions, the GM has to post less, the burden of posting ends up more evenly spread, and things keep up a good pace.

Perhaps more subtly, player-player interactions keep the players more interested.  When it gets to the point where a player knows his request is in the GM's queue, as it were, his attention is going to wander, and it's those sixty-second trips to the web browser than can really kill pacing.

2) Keep combat rare and the battles epic.  No online forum is really very good for combat, so keep it infrequent.  Keep the numbers of enemies down  -- things are going to bog down in lists of numbers.

The battles in SM revolved around one or two villains, tops, who were all very tough to deal with, and they were generally fun to read and seemed to be engaging to the players.  Partly this was the use of BESM as a rule set, which keeps combat fast and simple, but it was also because there were lots of opportunities and even necessity to roleplay in combat.

3) Don't worry about cookie-cutter PCs, they'll end up that way no matter what.  In my tabletop gaming experience, it's worthwhile and often necessary to make sure that the PCs are as diversified as possible.  And I'm pretty sure that the SM players probably put a lot of effort into doing the same.

But going through the logs, the only time game mechanics really seem to come up was in combat.  That's perfectly understandble -- dropping to dice rolls, rules checks, etc slows things down.  What's more, it's not really justified in player-player RPing interactions, where half of skills are inapplicable and the other half interfere with dramatic narrative.  Skill checks are only really a deal in player-environment and (to a lesser degree) player-NPC interactions, both of which SM didn't emphasize as much.

But if combat is the only place worth spending points, then character designs end up coming across as either useless or useful, and useful ones tend to pretty much all come across the same way -- as combat machines.  What SM seems to demonstrate is that this isn't really a bad thing -- if everyone's effective, then everyone's happy, and the "fluff" can be more than enough distinction.

4. Fanfiction RPing has enormous benefits.  I'll be honest, and say that when I first heard of the game, it didn't appeal to me at all -- why sign up to pretend to be an anime character when you could make up your own character concept?

I was wrong.  The SM setting offered a lot of benefits.  Firstly, and most importantly, the players knew exactly where they were, who they were, who they were playing with, and what they were supposed to do.  There was no introduction phase, with the GM leading the players into things and the players tentatively working out their relationships.  There was a solid base from the get-go, and that let everyone hit the ground running.

As another added benefit, in a fanfiction RPG, it's a lot easier to deal with players coming and going.  No one wants to deal with this, of course, but in a game of decent length, you're going to have people leaving, and new people wanting to join.  In fanfiction RPG, you can simply turn characters into NPCs, or NPCs into PCs, without any major problem.  You can even let a new player take over someone else's old character, exactly because there isn't that element of personal creation: a player is just stepping into a pre-existing role.

A anime-based RPG is also going to find an easier time of meeting a lot of the above points, too.  Anime is all about the interaction between main characters, and they tend to be filled with epic fights against single enemies.  It also leads to an episodic organization that is nice for gaming, preventing that oh-so-dangerous plot creep.

Hrm.  You know, when I started writing this post, I thought I had a lot more to say.  But it's 10 PM, and I suspect my mind has slipped.

Anyways.  In short: the SM game was a lot of fun to read, and it gave a lot to think about. Not enough, apparently, as my clever plans to incorporate the lessons I thought I'd learned into Past Sins don't seem to be working the way I'd hoped, but there ya are.

[Anastasia]

I'm pretty much obligated to reply to this one, of course. <_<

I've been reading the logs of the SM RPG on and off for the past little while.  As by far and away the most successful of the games run on SR, there's quite a bit to be learned from it.  The key lesson, of course, is: you're a bunch of sex-obsessed pervs.  But there are other lessons to be learned about the key to running a good online game.

I am innocent and chaste. I speak not for my PCs.  <_< >_>

Things I took from it:

1) Make your game as player-centric as possible.  The vast majority of the SM game, as best I can tell, was player-player interactions.  This is a key element of all games, of course, but it was the core of the SM game, as opposed to, say, The Day After Tomorrow, where player-NPC interaction was just as if not more important than player-player.

Yeah. I can't agree with this enough. Having run SM1 and SM: Redux, I've done both a PC heavy game and an NPC heavy game. Even if you're a talented GM who can run a dozen distinct NPCs convincingly or close enough to it, you're still only one person. Inter PC communcation, focus and attention is -vital-.

No one wants to admit it(Well, okay, some do. <_<), but everyone at heart likes attention and having the spotlight. The GM often needs this himself to tell the story, but he can't let the players starve for it. Not only that, sometimes he needs to stand away entirely and let the PCs have it all to themselves. This helps solve the communcation issue; players that can take chances to just talk communicate far better than being corraled into it by the GM. It also builds bonds and communications, ones that forge stronger interplayer ties.

The reason this is such a big deal is that the biggest obstacle in online gaming is the bottleneck of communication.  It takes a lot longer to type text than to speak it, and when you're quiet, no one knows if you're typing something or waiting or making yourself a sandwich.  When the name of the game is player-player interaction, the communication gap isn't as big an issue.  The most obvious reason for that can be seen by going to look at the postcounts for tDaT: Brian, as GM, had as many posts as all of the other players put together.  When progress in the game essentially requires one person posting for every post by everybody else, eventually things are going to get bogged down.  In player-player interactions, the GM has to post less, the burden of posting ends up more evenly spread, and things keep up a good pace.

In effect it's delegation of authority. By decentralising the GM from being the only arbiter of gaming and interaction, you free up the PCs to go at their own pace. The GM can focus on what he needs to while the players have a chance to talk and roleplay. This is also the most counter intuitive way of GMing; it's asy to think of running everything as the GM. But hey, the GM runs the entire world already, so he doesn't need to shoehorn the PCs along so much, does he?

Perhaps more subtly, player-player interactions keep the players more interested.  When it gets to the point where a player knows his request is in the GM's queue, as it were, his attention is going to wander, and it's those sixty-second trips to the web browser than can really kill pacing.

SM wouldn't have been nearly so rich if there hadn't been such superb PCs that could interact with the other PCs on a regular basis. Further, this encourages more PC growth to continues a positive feedback cycle. Plus, as you said, it helps fill the gaps when the GM is busy, typing or just needing to pay attention to somethin' else.

2) Keep combat rare and the battles epic.  No online forum is really very good for combat, so keep it infrequent.  Keep the numbers of enemies down  -- things are going to bog down in lists of numbers.

This is mostly correct. While I slightly contest it in the fact that I feel there need to be some easy encounters and throwaways, ideally I have a goal for each one to accomplish. Be it a bit more information about the bad guys, a really good fight, or just something interesting going down. Each battle can't and shouldn't aim to be 'epic', but it should aim to entertain.

A brisk system helps speed the above up. While combat usually isn't short by any means(There's just no way to do it quickly,e specially with narrative heavy attack actions), trying to keep most it flowing with a simple system helps. It isn't a cure all; SM: Redux uses a souped up and slightly more complex system, but even with that and excellent player knowledge, it can still drag. The final epic battle of it's first arc took...5 hours or so? This was against just the last villian, too.

Of course it was suitably epic after a year of buildup and massively entertaining, so it's all good.

The battles in SM revolved around one or two villains, tops, who were all very tough to deal with, and they were generally fun to read and seemed to be engaging to the players.  Partly this was the use of BESM as a rule set, which keeps combat fast and simple, but it was also because there were lots of opportunities and even necessity to roleplay in combat.

You hit on one point - keep battles focused. Hordes are only effective in certain cases, it's too easy to lose track of too many baddies in one battle. The opposition should have a few very distinct attacks and effects each, and if they do have underling support? Keep it simple and never let them overshadow the main bad guy short of stupid dicing. I even take that farther, by often using certain cookie cutter designs when I need multiple throwaway bad guy servants.

3) Don't worry about cookie-cutter PCs, they'll end up that way no matter what.  In my tabletop gaming experience, it's worthwhile and often necessary to make sure that the PCs are as diversified as possible.  And I'm pretty sure that the SM players probably put a lot of effort into doing the same.

True. You always need a cleric, to poach a D and D expression. Just accept it and focus on the RP, man. I don't think it matterse so much about overlap or diversification as long as the RP is good and the team can function well in battle.

I do get disagreement from my PCs on this at times, though, if they'd like to chime in.

But going through the logs, the only time game mechanics really seem to come up was in combat.  That's perfectly understandble -- dropping to dice rolls, rules checks, etc slows things down.  What's more, it's not really justified in player-player RPing interactions, where half of skills are inapplicable and the other half interfere with dramatic narrative.  Skill checks are only really a deal in player-environment and (to a lesser degree) player-NPC interactions, both of which SM didn't emphasize as much.

Pretty much. Except in certain cases, I try to keep more than a dice roll or two out of pure player/player interaction, 'less they do something to provoke one knowingly. There are always times and cases for it, but y'know. A lot of dice rolling can slow things down, needed or not.

I'm guilty of breaking this rule a lot, I like the dice. *shrugs*

4. Fanfiction RPing has enormous benefits.  I'll be honest, and say that when I first heard of the game, it didn't appeal to me at all -- why sign up to pretend to be an anime character when you could make up your own character concept?

I was wrong.  The SM setting offered a lot of benefits.  Firstly, and most importantly, the players knew exactly where they were, who they were, who they were playing with, and what they were supposed to do.  There was no introduction phase, with the GM leading the players into things and the players tentatively working out their relationships.  There was a solid base from the get-go, and that let everyone hit the ground running.

As another added benefit, in a fanfiction RPG, it's a lot easier to deal with players coming and going.  No one wants to deal with this, of course, but in a game of decent length, you're going to have people leaving, and new people wanting to join.  In fanfiction RPG, you can simply turn characters into NPCs, or NPCs into PCs, without any major problem.  You can even let a new player take over someone else's old character, exactly because there isn't that element of personal creation: a player is just stepping into a pre-existing role.

A anime-based RPG is also going to find an easier time of meeting a lot of the above points, too.  Anime is all about the interaction between main characters, and they tend to be filled with epic fights against single enemies.  It also leads to an episodic organization that is nice for gaming, preventing that oh-so-dangerous plot creep.

I by and large agree entirely. I won't belabor my reply since you hit it hammer head to nail on. It's a stepping stone for instant appeal and familiarity, even if you end up withs omething a ways from the original. I cannot emphasize enough how useful this is for gaming.

PS - I'd love to hear about your Past Sins stuff in regard to this sometime, Bjorn.

[Bjorn]

I'm pretty much obligated to reply to this one, of course. <_<

Actually, I was hoping you'd never ever read it, cuz then I could never be wrong!

No one wants to admit it(Well, okay, some do. <_<), but everyone at heart likes attention and having the spotlight. The GM often needs this himself to tell the story, but he can't let the players starve for it. Not only that, sometimes he needs to stand away entirely and let the PCs have it all to themselves. This helps solve the communcation issue; players that can take chances to just talk communicate far better than being corraled into it by the GM. It also builds bonds and communications, ones that forge stronger interplayer ties.

Oh, yeah.  This reminds of another thing I took from the SM RPG:

5) Pick your players carefully.  This isn't just the obvious "try to find good players."  In fact, in an onlne forum, good players are often the problem -- it's too easy for them to unintentionally shove more passive players even further to the sidelines.  On a tabletop, it's a lot easier to pull the wallflowers into the show, but online, where even the fastest of typists can get frustrated at the turnaround time, it's far too easy to leave the quiet ones behind.

Unless you're going to be running a game which enforces participation, you want a group of players with roughly equal aggression levels.  You also want people who want roughly the same thing out of the game, but that's ground we've hashed over before. ;)

[/quote]This is mostly correct. While I slightly contest it in the fact that I feel there need to be some easy encounters and throwaways, ideally I have a goal for each one to accomplish. Be it a bit more information about the bad guys, a really good fight, or just something interesting going down. Each battle can't and shouldn't aim to be 'epic', but it should aim to entertain.

I didn't mean "epic" in the sense of "plot-shatteringly important," but rather in the sense that every fight should be a production, regardless of whether it's easy to win, important, or just a bout of comedy.  The example here I'm thinking of is the battle with the snow youma.  It was just a light-hearted fight, and one that the PCs didn't have problems with -- but it wasn't easy either, and it wasn't over in a flash.  Combat is a pain online, and that in turn means that going up against that hassle for a five-minute "two rolls and you're done" encounter is frustrating.  Any time you go into combat, the PCs should feel like they accomplished something.

True. You always need a cleric, to poach a D and D expression. Just accept it and focus on the RP, man. I don't think it matterse so much about overlap or diversification as long as the RP is good and the team can function well in battle.

Well, this is the trick.  Every player -- and rightfully so! -- wants to feel useful.  And being plot device ("Okay, combat is done, Clerica heals everyone, let's go on!") may be useful, but it doesn't feel very rewarding -- why'd you spend points on a skill you never roll?

I think online games particularly suffer for this.  Because of the communication bottleneck, there's an urge to avoid diving into mechanics if you can help it.  In combat, in my experience, people tend to rely a little more on generic tactics than they might normally otherwise, just because of the difficulty of explaining the exact details of your complicated and insane plan. The result of this is that characters tend to converge towards a sort of default combat build, which is fine, especially if you've got them making up for it with RPing.

Though I do think it's a shame.  Certainly, my favourite moments from tDaT battles are the times when people just used incredibly insane tactics -- Drac headbutting the ogre, Rez splashing the mechaspider with a bucket of water, me spending two rounds trying to seize an axe from a Dreadmarch general three times my size.

PS - I'd love to hear about your Past Sins stuff in regard to this sometime, Bjorn.

Well, that should probably wait until later, when we see how successful my experiment was. ;)  But hell, I got hubris.  Limited by my unwillingness to spoil the game, to address the points one by one:

1) Past Sins won't be as player-centric as SM.  The game is, fundamentally, an exploration one.  However, more like SM and less like tDaT, in Past Sins the players should end up being together as much as possible.  In tDaT the players were intentionally split up as much as possible, to keep us from bottlenecking on the other players.  But that just put a phenomenal load on Brian, and it did restrict a lot of chances for interesting player-player stuff.  Certainly I know I had some IC conflicts with a couple of the other players (notably Rez) that I never got to play with as much as I might like.

2) Trying to follow this as closely as possible -- both SM and tDaT used this to great effect.  

This is also a reason I chose HERO.  It's a lot more complicated, perhaps painfully so, but in the end what I hope is that it'll encourage the players to try really creative stuff in battle, and that'll make things more memorable.  On the other hand, I'm not off to a good start here.

3) Should have paid more attention to this.  I tried to make sure the players were really well differentiated, and I find myself in a situation where it's hard to make a fight where one player or the other won't just completely dominate.  That isn't bad in a table-top game, where the option of just throwing in enough battles that everyone eventually feels useful is practical.

4) I'll be honest, it's the beginning of Past Sins that's made me really appreciate the value of fanfiction RPing.  That sort of "instant momentum" is subtle, but man, it makes a difference.

Bjorn

[Anastasia]

5) Pick your players carefully.  This isn't just the obvious "try to find good players."  In fact, in an onlne forum, good players are often the problem -- it's too easy for them to unintentionally shove more passive players even further to the sidelines.  On a tabletop, it's a lot easier to pull the wallflowers into the show, but online, where even the fastest of typists can get frustrated at the turnaround time, it's far too easy to leave the quiet ones behind.

Unless you're going to be running a game which enforces participation, you want a group of players with roughly equal aggression levels.  You also want people who want roughly the same thing out of the game, but that's ground we've hashed over before. ;)

A. FUCKING. MEN.

This applies in so many ways that it just needs to be reemphasized. Nothing to add beyond that.

I didn't mean "epic" in the sense of "plot-shatteringly important," but rather in the sense that every fight should be a production, regardless of whether it's easy to win, important, or just a bout of comedy.  The example here I'm thinking of is the battle with the snow youma.  It was just a light-hearted fight, and one that the PCs didn't have problems with -- but it wasn't easy either, and it wasn't over in a flash.  Combat is a pain online, and that in turn means that going up against that hassle for a five-minute "two rolls and you're done" encounter is frustrating.  Any time you go into combat, the PCs should feel like they accomplished something.

Bingo, yeah. Short of stupid dicing(Say a 4x critical on the first attack, which happens once in a moon.), that's the goal. I don't begrudge it to the players if they make it that through luck or good playing, of course.

Well, this is the trick.  Every player -- and rightfully so! -- wants to feel useful.  And being plot device ("Okay, combat is done, Clerica heals everyone, let's go on!") may be useful, but it doesn't feel very rewarding -- why'd you spend points on a skill you never roll?

It's rewarding when you see your friends alive and not bleeding out in front of your eyes? <_<

But to get to the rest of what you wrote? Yeah. Creativty makes and breaks combat; while you can't let the players run too wild, you should allow some stuff like this. Bullshit and go along with something that amuses you.

Past Sins stuff in another post.

[Merc]

5) Pick your players carefully. This isn't just the obvious "try to find good players." In fact, in an onlne forum, good players are often the problem -- it's too easy for them to unintentionally shove more passive players even further to the sidelines. On a tabletop, it's a lot easier to pull the wallflowers into the show, but online, where even the fastest of typists can get frustrated at the turnaround time, it's far too easy to leave the quiet ones behind.

Unless you're going to be running a game which enforces participation, you want a group of players with roughly equal aggression levels. You also want people who want roughly the same thing out of the game, but that's ground we've hashed over before. ;)

Ugh...I can relate to the typing speed problem. I tended to hate a lot of group scenes unless they were battle, because I -always- tended to get sucked into the background, no matter how much I tried to keep up.

That's the one big failure of IRC, it's hard to tell when someone wants to say something, so unless you're a fast typer, you're very limited to short, brisk replies, which doesn't lend itself to learning to roleplay better. In combat it doesn't get so bad as every character has at least one point per round that they can get fancy, so I always heavily favored combat in any of the games I've been in.

It was admittedly not so much a problem in this particular game because it was so heavy on PC-PC interactions, so my character was expected to talk plenty and given this chance, but in another I had almost considered quitting at one point because of my difficulty in getting involved in the game and conversations in group scenes involving plenty of PCs and NPCs alike.

It's very important that you make the GM aware if you have such a problem though. While it didn't get totally resolved in that one game in question, the GM did his best to try and get my character a little more involved once I made known just how frustrating I was finding the situation. It was never completely resolved and I still feel very uncomfortable in huge scenes that aren't combat related, but the effort was made and allieved enough that I wasn't at my breaking point and was starting to have fun again.

[Bjorn]

That's the one big failure of IRC, it's hard to tell when someone wants to say something, so unless you're a fast typer, you're very limited to short, brisk replies, which doesn't lend itself to learning to roleplay better. In combat it doesn't get so bad as every character has at least one point per round that they can get fancy, so I always heavily favored combat in any of the games I've been in.

In one of the IRC games I played in, we introduced place-holder conventions for exactly this reason.  If you wanted to type something, you just entered (I think it was) "\" and hit enter.  Once that line popped in the chat, everyone knew it meant you were going to type something, and please don't start talking until they'd seen your line.  You could also end text with a "\", which meant it was going to be followed up by something.

It was a system a bit prone to abuse (you'd often get a race to see who could get that \ in there first), but it did work.  I was especially fond of using it for line-ending.  It encouraged people to break long bits of text up over multiple lines.  That gives the illusion of faster progress (since you'd get five lines, one per minutes, instead of waiting five minutes for the whole lot), and it also let people interrupt if interrupting would be RP-ly appropriate.

[Merc]

3) Don't worry about cookie-cutter PCs, they'll end up that way no matter what.  In my tabletop gaming experience, it's worthwhile and often necessary to make sure that the PCs are as diversified as possible.  And I'm pretty sure that the SM players probably put a lot of effort into doing the same.

But going through the logs, the only time game mechanics really seem to come up was in combat.  That's perfectly understandble -- dropping to dice rolls, rules checks, etc slows things down.  What's more, it's not really justified in player-player RPing interactions, where half of skills are inapplicable and the other half interfere with dramatic narrative.  Skill checks are only really a deal in player-environment and (to a lesser degree) player-NPC interactions, both of which SM didn't emphasize as much.

But if combat is the only place worth spending points, then character designs end up coming across as either useless or useful, and useful ones tend to pretty much all come across the same way -- as combat machines.  What SM seems to demonstrate is that this isn't really a bad thing -- if everyone's effective, then everyone's happy, and the "fluff" can be more than enough distinction.

True. You always need a cleric, to poach a D and D expression. Just accept it and focus on the RP, man. I don't think it matterse so much about overlap or diversification as long as the RP is good and the team can function well in battle.

I do get disagreement from my PCs on this at times, though, if they'd like to chime in.

You have it, Ana.

Bjorn, this was actually one of the small problems in the first SM RPG, so I'm forced to disagree that 'it really isn't a bad thing'.

Given that there are only three stats, and only two characters that excelled in this stat, it was ridiculous how much the game depends on your character having high Soul. Characters with Mind or Body as their main stat did not necessarily get the time to shine nearly on the level that characters with Soul as their main stat did.

While there were attempts made to clarify this issue later on in the game, both in involving a bit more mind or roll checks as opposed to soul checks, or characters creating unique attributes allowing them to use their main stat more as opposed to Soul, it still remained a problem throughout the game.

Note however, that for the sequel, SM Redux, this issue is almost non-existant, most heavily due to the GM learning from this mistake and -vastly- increasing the variation between the usage of any particular stat. While soul was still a very important stat, it wasn't ridiculously more important anymore, and characters could still use unique attributes to improve their abilities to use soul-driven attributes.

There were also -plenty- of chances to do non-combat involved stat checks, and not just mind or body, but also soul checks.

In my opinion, from this game, I've learned that a GM should always make sure that he does not favor one particular stat or attribute over another. Even if the system itself tells you that you should, do -NOT- allow this to happen, -especially- in a tristat system. If the system does this... IT. IS. WRONG.

To recap:

Diversity in game 1 = bad, to some degree

Diversity in game 2 = awesome

[Bjorn]

Bjorn, this was actually one of the small problems in the first SM RPG, so I'm forced to disagree that 'it really isn't a bad thing'.

I need to clarify.  If everyone is diverse, and everyone is useful, then there's no problem.  If everyone basically has the same character, but there's lots of distinction through role-playing, then again, there's no problem.  But when you have distinct characters, and the net result is that some players aren't useful, then you have a problem.

From what you're saying (and from what I can tell reading the logs), SM1 started off in the last case, and over the course of the game started to drift into the second case.  What struck me reading the logs of SM1 is that the second case isn't that bad.  If you'd asked me, I would have said that the first case was the only useful case, and that when characters all pretty much end up acting the same, there's not much fun to be hand in the game.

In my opinion, from this game, I've learned that a GM should always make sure that he does not favor one particular stat or attribute over another. Even if the system itself tells you that you should, do -NOT- allow this to happen, -especially- in a tristat system. If the system does this... IT. IS. WRONG.

There are damn few systems that don't suffer from this problem, and those are usually class-based (unsurprisingly).  HERO's problem stat is Speed, for example, though that's comparatively easier to control -- just make sure there's no huge discrepancies in Speed between the players.

[Anastasia]

You have it, Ana.

Bjorn, this was actually one of the small problems in the first SM RPG, so I'm forced to disagree that 'it really isn't a bad thing'.

Given that there are only three stats, and only two characters that excelled in this stat, it was ridiculous how much the game depends on your character having high Soul. Characters with Mind or Body as their main stat did not necessarily get the time to shine nearly on the level that characters with Soul as their main stat did.

While there were attempts made to clarify this issue later on in the game, both in involving a bit more mind or roll checks as opposed to soul checks, or characters creating unique attributes allowing them to use their main stat more as opposed to Soul, it still remained a problem throughout the game.

Note however, that for the sequel, SM Redux, this issue is almost non-existant, most heavily due to the GM learning from this mistake and -vastly- increasing the variation between the usage of any particular stat. While soul was still a very important stat, it wasn't ridiculously more important anymore, and characters could still use unique attributes to improve their abilities to use soul-driven attributes.

There were also -plenty- of chances to do non-combat involved stat checks, and not just mind or body, but also soul checks.

In my opinion, from this game, I've learned that a GM should always make sure that he does not favor one particular stat or attribute over another. Even if the system itself tells you that you should, do -NOT- allow this to happen, -especially- in a tristat system. If the system does this... IT. IS. WRONG.

To recap:

Diversity in game 1 = bad, to some degree

Diversity in game 2 = awesome

Yeah. Tristat's SM variant slightly favors Soul in certain cases(Especially if Rejuvenation becomes an important skill in game for the Sailor Senshi), and it's easy with the base given to shoehorn a lot of magic into Soul as a good catchall. It's doubly complicated by the fact that Mind is a sticky stat. One of the recommended uses is to allow for mind checks to figure something out, and that doesn't jive with me too much. It's a fine line between that and giving the PCs freebies.

To be honest if I had to do it over I'd make Rejuv and a couple of other skills have the potential to be related to something besides Soul. You could make an argument for Body for Rejuv, and the others could be dillied around.

[Anastasia]

I need to clarify.  If everyone is diverse, and everyone is useful, then there's no problem.  If everyone basically has the same character, but there's lots of distinction through role-playing, then again, there's no problem.  But when you have distinct characters, and the net result is that some players aren't useful, then you have a problem.

Yeah, it's the second case. Points to customize PCs as they went along helped this problem a fair bit. While Senshi attacks were and are still dominate, almost everyone has a few other tricks they can pull out.

There are damn few systems that don't suffer from this problem, and those are usually class-based (unsurprisingly).  HERO's problem stat is Speed, for example, though that's comparatively easier to control -- just make sure there's no huge discrepancies in Speed between the players.

Yeah, like STR, DEX and CON vs the other three stats in 2nd edition D/D. But yeah, at least live and learn.

[Bjorn]

Yeah, like STR, DEX and CON vs the other three stats in 2nd edition D/D. But yeah, at least live and learn.

Actually, I thought AD&D was one of the better systems for this, because it was class-based.  If you were a magic-user, you were putting your points in Int -- Str and Con were just useless to you.  Certainly the top three were a little more important than the others, since they did benefit all classes (a fighter'd get no benefit from increased Int or Wis at all, really), but they weren't overwhelmingly important.  Each stat was important for at least one class -- except Charisma, the definition of the dump stat.

[Anastasia]

Yeah, like STR, DEX and CON vs the other three stats in 2nd edition D/D. But yeah, at least live and learn.

Actually, I thought AD&D was one of the better systems for this, because it was class-based.  If you were a magic-user, you were putting your points in Int -- Str and Con were just useless to you.  Certainly the top three were a little more important than the others, since they did benefit all classes (a fighter'd get no benefit from increased Int or Wis at all, really), but they weren't overwhelmingly important.  Each stat was important for at least one class -- except Charisma, the definition of the dump stat.

Not quite. It's a little trickier than that.

EVERYONE wants high con. While warriors get more out of it past 16, +2 HP per level is incredibly good for wizards and rouges. That's half or a third of a full HD per level on top of whatever you roll. Dexterity gives armor class bonuses that stack with any armor or protections you wear, making that useful for pretty much everyone. Strength is handy to have, but not essential for non warriors(Unless you get it over the hump of 18.)

Int? Only useful for wizards, and even then you can get by with a 14 or 15 if it's not higher level play. Wis? Great for clerics, okay for everyone else. The saving throw bonus is nice, but the best effect of bonus spells is moot for non clerics. Charisma? DUMPFUCKINGDUMP.

[Merc]

Charisma isn't absolutely a dump stat, since there's lots of cases where it's not so bad to use as a stat, but it does come up far less in use than any other stat, definitely, even with a good GM attempting to get some use out of it. The main problem is that Charisma tends to deal with a lot of things GMs would prefer to relegate to the PCs ability to roleplay though.

Charisma has gotten a decent amount of usage in both Weekly D&D and Bloody Fields though.

Still, disgressing from SM discussion...

I need to clarify. If everyone is diverse, and everyone is useful, then there's no problem. If everyone basically has the same character, but there's lots of distinction through role-playing, then again, there's no problem. But when you have distinct characters, and the net result is that some players aren't useful, then you have a problem.

From what you're saying (and from what I can tell reading the logs), SM1 started off in the last case, and over the course of the game started to drift into the second case. What struck me reading the logs of SM1 is that the second case isn't that bad. If you'd asked me, I would have said that the first case was the only useful case, and that when characters all pretty much end up acting the same, there's not much fun to be hand in the game.

Hrm...the problem was that I don't quite like the fact that for SM1 the solution was primarily "everyone pumps points into soul or creates attributes that act like soul stat", and getting everyone to have the same powers and used in different ways. It works, but it's not necessarily a great solution either.

SM1 did the best it could with the situation, but SM2 shined by letting diversity do it's job, not just relying on roleplaying to save the day. The second case is really nothing more than a plug on a leaky ceiling. It holds back some of the trouble, but for how long depends on just how good the plug (roleplaying) is. The game was in fact very lucky in that said plug was very good.

[Brian]

In one of the IRC games I played in, we introduced place-holder conventions for exactly this reason.  If you wanted to type something, you just entered (I think it was) "\" and hit enter.  Once that line popped in the chat, everyone knew it meant you were going to type something, and please don't start talking until they'd seen your line.  You could also end text with a "\", which meant it was going to be followed up by something.

It was a system a bit prone to abuse (you'd often get a race to see who could get that \ in there first), but it did work.  I was especially fond of using it for line-ending.  It encouraged people to break long bits of text up over multiple lines.  That gives the illusion of faster progress (since you'd get five lines, one per minutes, instead of waiting five minutes for the whole lot), and it also let people interrupt if interrupting would be RP-ly appropriate.

The character was ~, I think.

And in TDaT we also used * to indicate typoes, and where whoever was logging should make a correction (this, BTW, I felt helped facilitate things because there was less pressure to make sure everything was perfect.  In addition, it made things easier for the logger, since they wouldn't have to sort through the entire thing for every error, wondering if it was intentional on the part of the player, etc.).

[Anastasia]

The character was ~, I think.

And in TDaT we also used * to indicate typoes, and where whoever was logging should make a correction (this, BTW, I felt helped facilitate things because there was less pressure to make sure everything was perfect.  In addition, it made things easier for the logger, since they wouldn't have to sort through the entire thing for every error, wondering if it was intentional on the part of the player, etc.).

That second part is handy. Typos are going to happen regardless even with good typers, so it's nice to correct for that. Moreso since I'm really bad for the worst type of typo; stuff like 'work' instead of 'worth' or 'carth' instead of 'cart.' >_<

Charisma isn't absolutely a dump stat, since there's lots of cases where it's not so bad to use as a stat, but it does come up far less in use than any other stat, definitely, even with a good GM attempting to get some use out of it. The main problem is that Charisma tends to deal with a lot of things GMs would prefer to relegate to the PCs ability to roleplay though.

It's an absolute dump stat, Ami-chaaaaan. I hate to argue with you on, but it really is in most contemporary uses of 2nd edition D/D. It's salvaged in 3rd, at least.