#1: The Starting Five

http://www.rpg.net/columns/timeout/timeout1.phtml

Summary:

Imagining a group of super-heroes as a basketball team.

Go to the column for more information.

[gschneider]

One of the traditional "Point Guard" roles is leadership.

What this really means depends a lot on the basketball team and coach. Some coach's would consider the point guard to be the bastion of order - understanding the plays, knowing the game and the positions, and be able to bring that order to the team through a leadership role.

Others would consider the point guard more of a force of chaos - they are the one that takes the initiative to break down structured defenses, find the holes in the opponents armor and involve the other players in the chaotic flow of the game, which would fit more into the description from the column.

Either way, leadership is a very hard role to fill in an RPG. Just like in Basketball, the player that everybody trusts is most likely to be the leader.

Greg

[David C]

Good points. My goal in the column was to describe the player in each positions as a potential leader. After each description I speculate about how position affects leadership style. A team leader who plays points guard will have a different take on the game than someone who plays center.

[Mechante_Anemone]

I found the article very interesting, even if I haven't played basketball in about 20 years. I love the discussion of team work, how each team member has a different but crucial and versatile role in the overall strategy. I would very much enjoy a follow-up discussion of how positions interact whn two teams meet.

The parallel gets fuzzier when we start thinking about what scores victory points. In basketball, it's very well defined: dropping the ball through that particular hoop. Moreover, both teams have identical but parallel victory objectives (different hoops). In a super team, the victory conditions may vary dramatically from fight to fight (e.g., just knock all the bad guys down, or prevent a doomsday device from going off, or free a captive, or prevent the destruction of a structure...) Consequently, different team members may have the necessary abilities from fight to fight and thus be in a position to score. The Point Guard, for example, may have to be the one to score.