Advice/Help Dealing with power progression

[Delinquent]

So a thing I've noticed lately is that in superpower roleplays some people have the tendacy to have their character suddenly realise a new way to utilise their power(s) the second their character is met with any form of challenge (or even as early as their first post). And to make this worse, often this new way to utilise the power(s) tend to undercut any flaws said power(s) had during character creation.

Now naturally I don't want people to do this in any roleplay I might run, but I can't think of a way to prevent this shit aside from just forcing everyone to run any character's potential power progression by me before they implement it. But would that be too restrictive to other players?

Do any other people run into this problem, and if so how do you deal with it?

 

[Idea]

The solution I attempt using isn't very complex, but it does have it shortcomings (haven't really adapted my strategy as of late as I haven't been GMing without a fixed system). The way I've done it, is that I always look at powers and rate them in review based on potential, not on the way "the player will use them". Put in other words, I make the base assumption that players will, sooner or later, attempt to abuse any exploits I let them have in their powers. As such, I am very meticulous in imposing adequate limitations and ironing out the vague aspects of powers.

Of course, there's no way I can absolutely predict everything someone else will come up with, and this method does make it rather troublesome to get through any individual approval. Results have been mixed- some, as one might expect, were considerably frustrated by this method. At the same time however, I've also had a fair share of players who at least said that they appreciated the care put into reviewing each character, excuse the repetition, carefully.

Another thing you can do is promote weak powers. This is actually a little difficult and will largely be reliant on player good will, but it is a good approach if you can find a way that works with you and your players to reward creativity and bizarre approaches over efficient approaches. Players who bring in weaker, more thematic or out of the box powers that are nonetheless specific, are also the player kind least likely to engage in pissing contests and tend to be the most cooperative- with you, other players or even just from a narrative standpoint.

Lastly I could recommend the "no BS" principle- as a GM you do have the authority to call BS on some stunts a player may pull off. "How did your character even get to that conclusion, that makes no sense" if applicable, could potentially work.


Oh and of course, talking to the players directly also should help, preferably beforehand, but I take that much as a given.

Hope this helps, best of luck and happy RPing!

 

[Zer0]

Is this a dice rp?

 

[Delinquent]

Is this a dice rp?

Nope, freeform.

 

[Zer0]

There is this system, I forgot the name, where a challenge is rated as: mild effort, moderate effort, and great effort.

Players would have abilities ranked as 1, 2, or 3.

Ability 1 can overcome a challenge that requires mild effort, Ability 2 moderate effort, etc.

And in each "scenario" it can require a specific number of mild, moderate, and great effort challenges.

And players can only succeed in overcoming these challenges if their abilities are up to par.

They can however, reach 1 ability higher than what they currently have, if they pay a price. If you like you can sort of give all of them 2 Hp? Or something like that? And if they want to go beyond they can, but they pay 1 Hp for it.

If you wish to limit them more, you can also make those points their "stamina", so an Ability 1 power can only be used once per mission. This use is only used up when they are doing something meaningful. If they are just doing something not plot related they can spam their ability as much as they want.

 

[Sara Sidereal]

I deal with it by using one of the many systems designed to fix this problem.

 

[Delinquent]

I deal with it by using one of the many systems designed to fix this problem.

Like what?

 

[Jannah]

Another thing you can do is promote weak powers. This is actually a little difficult and will largely be reliant on player good will, but it is a good approach if you can find a way that works with you and your players to reward creativity and bizarre approaches over efficient approaches. Players who bring in weaker, more thematic or out of the box powers that are nonetheless specific, are also the player kind least likely to engage in pissing contests and tend to be the most cooperative- with you, other players or even just from a narrative standpoint.

Sometimes the "weak" powers are the most fun. I have a character I've been wanting to play for ages like that. She's an omnilinguist and because of it she's a master hacker(since computer code is technically a language). There's really nothing else extraordinary or "super" about her. She has regular human limitations in every other way except for being able to communicate with anyone and everyone with ease. Of course, in certain situations that's rather useless compared to, say, super strength or pyrokinesis but in other situations it's great. Like, I had her in my head as an anarchist type who uses her skills to undermine corrupted regimes and such. She would travel across the world to do that and of course she was useful for espionage due to her ability to understand all these various languages.

She's really a great character, but I'm yet to really see a RP where she fits. I'm picturing a cyberpunk or urban fantasy type setting for her. I know X-Men RP's are a dime a dozen, but I don't do fandom RP's unless it's strictly OC's only.

 

[Idea]

Sometimes the "weak" powers are the most fun. I have a character I've been wanting to play for ages like that. She's an omnilinguist and because of it she's a master hacker(since computer code is technically a language). There's really nothing else extraordinary or "super" about her. She has regular human limitations in every other way except for being able to communicate with anyone and everyone with ease. Of course, in certain situations that's rather useless compared to, say, super strength or pyrokinesis but in other situations it's great. Like, I had her in my head as an anarchist type who uses her skills to undermine corrupted regimes and such. She would travel across the world to do that and of course she was useful for espionage due to her ability to understand all these various languages.

She's really a great character, but I'm yet to really see a RP where she fits. I'm picturing a cyberpunk or urban fantasy type setting for her. I know X-Men RP's are a dime a dozen, but I don't do fandom RP's unless it's strictly OC's only.

Yep - the problem though is that the majority of people who get in a situation where the others have powerful abilities don't pursue weaker abilities anyway. For some, they just wanted these really strong abilities anyway or are just copying something they thought was cool and don't realize how easily broken it is, however from experience talking to people about these matters for most the reason is a lot less ambitious: They just don't wanna be left behind. People often feel that if they aren't useful in a given situation they are just not going to get to really enjoy or contribute. This belief leads to many problems we know- pissing contests, powers that are good in every situation and the character never lets others take the spotlight, randomly adding buff techniques to powers whenever a downside shows up... in many cases, it's just that the player feels like they'll be lesser or they'll be left behind, if their character doesn't stay useful.

The issue is only compounded by the fact that it isn't entirely an unfounded belief. I have seen GMs banning character concepts for not being useful enough in a kind of RP where being useful isn't really necessary, and I've seen a lot of players seemingly only associating with useful characters in an almost meta sort of way. When a tournament or really any fighting comes around, a lot of the spotlight ends up on whoever is the strongest, and if the premise is based on those, it's only natural one would fear not being able to keep up.

 

[Kaihaku]

In my opinion, this kind of power creep is a "people" problem. You can try a systemic fix but that will limit your player base and push away people who prefer freeform. Also, then you might as well just use a published system like FATE, PbtA, or M&M.

I think the better but more difficult route is to repeat expectations endlessly around power creep and make it clear that characters without a weakness are narratively weak. That probably means monitoring every power up, at least in the beginning, and clarifying/correcting power creep. Sometimes abilities are just poorly worded. Sometimes people just need to read something five times before it sinks in that you really meant you want everyone to have a weakness.

In my experience, most players get into power creep because they don't want to get left behind (or, sometimes, because they're trying to mirror a character's power progression from media). If you find the one or two who are pushing things you can usually stop the trend. Sometimes it just happens automatically because players are use to power creep and assume that's how it works here too. Unfortunately, that means confronting people who keep on doing it and possibly even booting them from the game. It's never fun but when it gets that extreme often the remaining players have thanked me.

Something else to consider is finding a way to reward weakness in the narrative. This is a bit extreme but have NPCs shower praise and attention on the characters who got injured because of their weakness while the invincible warriors who never take a hit are stuck on the frontlines where they miss out on the interaction.

 

[Shivana]

I see this problem as well usually it's a reaction to players that just have to have the strongest character and win all the time which isn't a problem in itself but these people also tend to bully the other players and suck the fun right out of any plots or interactions so people raise their power to combat this and try to recapture the fun now that the offender can no longer bully them.

 

[Jannah]

I see this problem as well usually it's a reaction to players that just have to have the strongest character and win all the time which isn't a problem in itself but these people also tend to bully the other players and such the fun right out of any plots or interactions so people raise their power to combat this and try to recapture the fun now that the offender can no longer bully them.

One reason why I don't do group RP's much.

 

[Shivana]

One reason why I don't do group RP's much.

Every time I've seen it the person like always tries to pick a fight with everyone like they're rarely ever like chill like they're powerful but don't bug literally everyone.

 

[Kaihaku]

One reason why I don't do group RP's much.

I think that one problem is that a lot of the people who organize/run group RPs do so because they want to tell a story collaboratively. They are really focused on the storyteller role. It's more fun than managing people. It's tempting to think that you can fix any problem by advancing the narrative or that as long as the RP is moving things are fine. But they also have a responsibility to manage people as the one running things. Like it or not, they embraced the group leadership role by running the RP.

It's not too different from throwing a party. If I throw a party I probably just want to focus on the fun elements. If a guest starts shouting and throwing things every time they have a bad luck in a game, even though they've winning most of the time... Well, that means I invited my brother. But seriously, it's tempting to ignore bad behavior and try to keep focused on the fun. And sometimes that's fine. But not always. As the organizer, it's your house and your responsibility to address it. If you don't the party isn't going to be as much fun and people are going to hesitate to join again - is so and so going to be there?