A Gamer's Musings on Walking Dead

[ladysprite]

So I think I understand what's going on here, on an RPG level. All of the PC's, in the process of leveling up, have been required to take a mandatory level in BadAss. Like, badass enough that they can kill a zombie while strapped to a chair, and then make a shiv out of its ulna.

Except there's a problem. Because when you take a level of BadAss, yeah, you get to become tough and powerful, but you also have to take a serious flaw, to counterbalance this. Like... Intolerance. Or One Leg. Or Borderline Personality Disorder.

Or, for those PC's like Daryl, who had already started the game with levels in BadAss, the GM starts actually invoking the flaw (Abusive Upbringing) and bringing it more heavily into play.

The only exception to this is Andrea, whose combination of pre-existing flaw (Overconfident) and Wisdom score of four make her ineligible for BadAss status.

I love this show so much.....

Comments

[metaphysick.livejournal.com]

Is Michonne's flaw Eternal Scowl?

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

I haven't started watching the Walking Dead yet, but I've started playing the Telltale video game adventure game version of it, and it's VERY cool.

[darkoni]

Carl seems to have acquired a Detached Emotional State.

I feel like Andrea's Wisdom score has just gotten lower and lower. She must be getting some kind of advantage for that, right? She probably spending all her points on allies.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

When I was kicking around ideas for a universal system, one of the things I liked to have was a generic idea of "level" with advancement strongly tied to power level. And Batman would be, like, level 30 when Superman was level 10 (or maybe a higher differential). And that didn't mean Batman could defeat Superman, but it meant that if you took away the fancy gadgets, and de-powered Superman and gave Batman a lowered dex so he couldn't perform any fancy martial arts moves, he'd still wipe the floor with Superman in almost any contest (with exceptions like "Kryptonian Anthropology"), because he had faced so many challenges that required a bit of luck and guts and on-the-fly improvisation, and so forth. It was intended as a kind of balancing idea. And, it explained why Storm was confident in her ability to face down Callisto with knives, even though she wasn't a knife fighter - her "player" knew she was ten+ levels higher than Callisto, and likely to win, barring a really bad roll (um. This is a *really* old storyline, but I think we were both following X-men at the time), or why Xander in Buffyverse survived, and sometimes did important stuff, despite having the "pretty bloody normal" disad (along with the "attractive to evil demon women" disad - where *did* he spend his points?).

Where was I? Oh, right, meandering. Sorry.

Anyway: I kinda like the idea that in any long, drawn out struggle, all members of the survivors would eventually be "surprisingly tough; do *not* under estimate (him/her)" which must, by ironclad law, be followed by "didn't I *tell* you not to underestimate (him/her)?!"

Though I guess that doesn't hold as much in zombie situations. There are no evil schemers who can underestimate and send lower forces.