Until Further Notice...

[magicaddict]

...and and all calls I make during TL Time In should be taken with a pinch of salt unless they can be immediately verified by the GM or battleboarder. I'm serious.

If last weekend was a bad day as far as roleplay was concerned, this weekend completed the duplex with a bad day for mechanics. This is not remotely the fault of GMs or other players - indeed, had I enacted what I was told to rather than what that which used to be my head for LARP came out with, I'm sure I would have had a better time. The vast majority of other people seemed to enjoy it.
There simply is no excuse for someone who's been playing the game for three and a half years making as many fundamental errors in game mechanics, safety and simple mathematics as I did on Sunday. Must do better.
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The game itself revolved around the eternal battle between chocolate and sugar. One one side, in the land of Berry, the party encountered the Cream of Society - Queen Berry and Princess Straw. They led the chocolates, aided by their bodyguard, Walnut Whip, and their slightly jumpy advisor, Flake. Wandering Minstrels pervaded the court, feeding the pet Mousse and making sure the captive Whine Gum didn't escape. What they didn't know was that the sugars had put a spy in their midst, in the form of a Kit Kat (mainly biscuit and sugar, but wearing a chocolate overcoat), sweet talking them with sugar-coated whispers.

Dispatched to retrieve the Easter Bunny, deluded into believing he was giving out chocolate eggs when in fact they were higly addictive sugar-coated chocolate eggs, the party had to follow the Milky Way and the directions of Moomar the Cow Druid and the Milky Bar kid, for whom only the best was good enough. Battling with their own increasingly debilltating sugar craving, they faced the full pick and mix of the sugars forces: Shock troops from the deep south (American Hard Gums), capricious mages (Caster Sugars), morale killing heralds (Wine Gums), stoic defenders (Gum Shields), wild animals (Gummy Croccodiles, Candyfloss Sheep and Gummy Bears), and seductive geometric objects (Sugar Cubes), all under the command of the evil Princes Tate and Tyle, running the show from the court of the Refined Sugars.

Much insanity ensued and the players won, as such. I got progressively worse throughout the day, the pinnacle coming after I had been asked to mind how hard I was hitting, when the joy at having landed an almost unanswered blow on Warren was rather offset by the fact that it was an unpulled fourpenny one right on the crown of his head. But anyway, see earlier for such whinging.
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Finally, the conversation in the pub afterwards led me on to thinking. I will make this point with the disclaimer that I have Guard Gerrard Knight statted, half backstoried and waiting to come out in October of 2009 or 2010.

The players were discussing how the party got fragmented quite a lot during the game, as they had shock troops and soft underbelly, but nothing defensive to rally to. They said they needed guards. I pointed out that general IC opinion tends against guards, with implications of incompetence, small-mindedness and wasting of space. I received confirmation that such feelings were only IC, and that, in fact, the abilities of guards were both appreciated and seen as useful.

However, if such feelings are pretty widely existant IC, and any guards coming into play will have a stigma attached to them that they will need to spend a couple of years overcoming before having a chance to be viewed on the same playing field as other characters, even other military characters, what on earth is the incentive to play one?

I have heard arguments about years in which there were very few military, and the party had to get by without them. I have heard arguments about there being a lot of powerful, capable pathfinders whose command ability and durability erodes the usefulness of guards. I have also heard arguments suggesting that there is nothing a guard can bring that a properly buffed different character cannot provide in spades. Are these enough to condemn all those potential new characters who would don armour, pick up a shield and take the Prince's Shilling to a lifetime of being ridiculed for stupidity, used as yardsticks to show how powerful your non-guard character is by beating them, and viewed with suspicion because back in your day you didn't exclusively need them?

As I have no illusions about how unpopular this opinion will be, let the flaming commence.

Comments

[ruthste.livejournal.com]

I can see the possibility of that in theory. However, I don't see that it particularly applies any more to a Guard than to anyone put in charge of a party who is incompetent. Only that if one is present, command of a party tends to be given to the ranking Guard...

Can you give any actual examples of where this has happened on a game that would not have been the case if a different party member had had command?

[drabbit.livejournal.com]

The Guard, in command or not, is required to hold out enemies from the weaker characters, more so than any other fighter class. It's in their job description.

If a Guard is incompetent, they'll let enemies in to the weak people, blink out of the way of attacking enemies and not block their advance, or 100 other ways to mess up and let skirmishers in to those who can be hurt easily.

Any other warrior can fill this role - Calum has spent a large chunk of his time IC when there was a Guard in charge defending various specific party members as a standard position - but the Guard is expected to always be doing it.

[same-difference.livejournal.com]

Sadly that's the one way my mind doesn't work, I really struggle to remember concrete examples. Which sadly means I have reached the practical limit of my participation in this discussion.

Next time it happens I will point it out though.

[ruthste.livejournal.com]

As soon as drabbit brought up the example of a certain Guard who would blink out of the way of attacking enemies to let them reach the mages I had a better idea. I'm not sure it led to any deaths but it does go to show the point.

However, I would still like to have examples pointed out since, whilst I can see the possibility of it happening, I strongly dislike generalisations and feel that if there is no actual evidence that the concern comes from something that has actually happened IC then the point is moot.

Ifs and maybes are all very well but I prefer to see arguments backed up by fact.

[magicaddict.livejournal.com]

If so (and I appreciate I'm probably going to open a floodgate here, which would be fair enough), can you think of concrete examples where someone in charge who wasn't a guard was willing and able to stand there and take hits to protect the less physically hardy members of the party?

I can't, of the top of my head, think of any of those either.