Perfect Healer ?

Ramidel probably articulated my thoughts better than I could have.

Blame on you! What ArM5 says is "Your magic lineage and traditions are from the druids and the vanquished former house of Diedne...".
So if the parens of your parens was Bonisnatched late into his apprenticeship from House Diedne, and retained the Diedne magic Virtue and passed it on all the way to you, you can have Diedne magic and still belong to House Bonisagus, not House Diedne. That's the way I read it at least.

Our only disagreement then seems to be on how nasty Major Story Flaws are. Hmm. Let's look at those from the corebook. From what I see:
a) they occasionally have a side effect like a Bad Reputation that virtually never hurts more than a Minor General Flaw.
b) they bring stories. For virtually all Major Story Flaws in the corebook, these stories can range from the lighthearted to the deadly serious, and in several occasions it's made explicit that these have to be negotiated with the troupe. But constant, deadly threats is the very, very extreme of the spectrum -- definitely not something that's "intrinsic" to the nature of the Flaw.

So I have to stand by my previous assessment: the Diedne Dark Secret Flaw is a constant, deadly threat only if the entire troupe wants it to be so, and that would be a rather extreme decision. Look:

Black Sheep. Your Family won't help you or protect you; gain a Level 2 Bad Reputation. Sounds on par with a Minor General Flaw to me. As a Story Flaw, it should also generate stories, but it seems this is left to the troupe; i.e. implicitly it states that you get stories centred on your enstrangement from your family.

Curse of Venus. People you want to seduce are harder to seduce (and you tend to want to seduce the wrong ones); people you don't care about get attracted to you. Vague, but to me it seems on par with a Minor General Flaw like Disfigured or Social Handicap, plus it can be used to brings stories in the form of unwanted admirers.

Dark Secret. This is the one we're discussing. So vague it could range from an almost cosmetic hindrance, to someone almost guaranteeing death in a very very near future.

Dependent. You are bound to help a Dependent who periodically gets into trouble. Other than forcing stories onto you, this seems to carry virtually no "intrinsic" inconvenience at all. Of course, a SG might create really nasty, really "contagious" trouble ... but also just comedic one as your daughter keeps falling in love with The Wrong Man.

Diabolic past. You were associated with diabolism in the past, though you have escaped evil and are no diabolist now. Unfortunately, your past haunts you. While you could choose to make life very hard for your character and choose to make him a former diabolist who has thus broken the code, you could also say something like "My parens was a diabolist, he was discovered and Marched, but the Quaesitors searched through my mind and found I was innocent." Again, this is bound to generate stories, but how lethal is entirely up to the troupe.

Difficult underlings. Your underlings periodically cause trouble to you, though the way it's phrased is seems more like they get into trouble or do not competently follow orders, rather than they are constantly trying to stab you in your sleep.

Enemies. Ones "powerful enough to endanger you", but the examples given are "a local baron or bishop, a band of outlaws, or a really nasty innkeeper." Not three and a half Hermetic Houses...

Favors. You owe some favours that you may have to pay back, and if you do not "The consequences ... can range from mild to deadly serious, at the storyguide’s discretion." Again, a lot of latitude, but a SG who made the favours very hard to pay back AND the consequences of failure deadly serious seems to be at the very extreme of the spectrum. Compare with a Dark Secret Flaw with a secret that's hard to keep and is deadly if uncovered...

Feud. You are part of a feud and your side is roughly as strong as the other side. Again, how deadly this entire thing is, is entirely up to the troupe. But it's not you against three Hermetic Houses...

Fury. This sounds as if it should be a Personality Flaw. It's basically Oversensitive with explicit mechanics.

Indiscreet. Again, effectively a Personality Flaw with explicit mechanics (you have a hard time keeping secrets), but it takes a very, very determined SG to make this into a deadly problem unless the player wants it to be.

Mistaken identity. Basically, an evil twin "responsible for an ongoing variety of violent, illegal, obscene, or embarrassing acts. You often have to explain who you are, and sometimes have to deal with the consequences of the other person’s acts." Sure, if your SG goes out of the way to make the twin's actions really nasty (diabolism!), and the reaction really nasty (but note that the wording suggests most of the time you'll just have to explain who you are) this could get deadly, but that's at the very edge of a fairly broad spectrum.

Monastic vows. Of poverty, chastity and obedience to a superior. These vows are supposed to generate stories, and it takes the nastiest SG to make them into consistently deadly ones.

Oath of Fealty. Basically, Favors, with the attached caveat that for magi this means breaking the Code "though some do it anyway". The wording seems to warn against taking this if you are a magus, while leaving the freedom to do so. Note that from examples given in other sources, this usually results in secret activities by the magus which, if discovered, typically result in relatively minor punishment (vis fines, service etc.) not Marching.

Plagued by Supernatural Entity. In the examples given, the entity in question is definitely not out to kill you and it "may even have your best interests at heart, but the result is that you get dragged into stories".

Tormenting Master. "Periodically troubles you with political moves or indirect attacks". Emphasis mine

True Love. In its Major Story Flaw form, basically a Dependent (that periodically gets into trouble) with an additional fluff about how your love gives you strength -- plus a few very marginal, mostly positive side effects in terms of Hermetic magic, and the explicitly stated possibility that in a few cases your lover might actually provide useful assistance. Probably the "best" Major Story Flaw from the corebook :slight_smile:

Ok, this was fun, and it helped me get a better grasp on a few issues (thanks Ovarwa and everyone else). Sorry for derailing the thread :stuck_out_tongue: I'll stop here.

Maybe instead your lineage could be known as one who stole house secrets from them. Or so you've always claimed. The rest of the Order isn't so sure.

Unfortunately, the real House Diedne are after you and they could be anywhere! Did that tree just move or am I getting jumpy again?

It's important to remember that the purpose of Story flaws, especially for magi, is to give the troupe/SG some mechanism for getting the character out of their sanctum. In the meta-game, it's saying I agree to involve my character in stories that can be linked to this flaw. Dark Secret isn't a bad flaw. It's not even a bad flaw for a character with Diedne Magic. But it is a compulsory flaw for Diedne Magic, and it provides no benefit for picking Virtues. Another flaw that is compulsory, is Landed Noble, which requires taking Oath of Fealty. However, these two balance each other out. And I'm thinking that Diedne Magic and Dark Secret are sufficiently balanced that one should get the virtue points for taking Dark Secret. Any character with Diedne Magic is going to set a lot of tone for the game, anyway.

I've had this thought in the back of my head about a game where all of the characters have Diedne Magic, and are brought together by someone because they all have Diedne Magic, though none of them knows the others have it. Ars Paranoia, anyone?

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Landed Noble's required Oath of Fealty has been errata'd to "usually," not "mandatory" (Lords of Men 31). There are cases where the noble in question would either have no Oath at all, or where it would be shoved into the background or replaced with Knightly Demands.

Diedne Magic technically requires Dark Secret, but that's by definition a flaw you can convert to another one. The fallout depends on the saga.

Hi,

laughter Yes, that's a favorite of mine from some decades ago.

Everyone is a member of House Diedne. Everyone practices diabolism of some kind. All lab work is experimental. Everyone has deep mundane entanglements that requires interference. House Guernicus is your friend.

Hi,

Then there's no Dark Secret.

I do very much prefer the kind of approach you take. There are many legitimate ways a magus could have an extra dose of Diedne goodness without being Diedne.

Anyway,

Ken

IMO, that comment about Oath of Fealty is not an erratum, but is rather a guideline that outlines how you can use the Central Rule to justify someone who has Landed Noble not also having an Oath of Fealty. And it also presupposes that you are using Lord of Men, or know it. That's probably one supplement that a lot of troupes who focus on magi and Hermetic politics don't pick-up. Regardless, it doesn't take anything away from my position that Dark Secret, being compulsory and not counting as a Flaw is a much worse deal. You can still be a Landed Nobel, now, according to Lords of Men, but might not have Oath of Fealty as a flaw. Presumably, it's a different story flaw, so that you can tell different stories that the player and the troupe agree upon. That's great.

I generally allow two story flaws in my game, a major and a minor, or two minors, but never two majors. It puts far too much focus on that single character. So the Diedne Magic character has to take what amounts to 13 points of flaws to get 10 virtues. He can get 1 virtue point in a minor story flaw, can take a major personality flaw, and a minor personality flaw, and gets to 5 virtue points. Out of the five flaw points remaining, he has to take a major virtue, because characters may not have more than 5 minor flaws. It's all possible, don't get me wrong. But it's more of a logistics exercise in character creation than it needs to be, for very little gain, IMO.

Then there's Cailleach Magic vs. Diedne Magic.

Hi,

Then there's no need for a Dark Secret. (Which brings me back to my preference to just drop the flaw.)

Most GMs won't let magi take this, because a certain amount of estrangement is already expected. A great flaw if you're a magus, to be sure! :slight_smile:

BTW, having unscheduled stories ruin seasons in the lab or drag you into mundane entanglements that are against the code can have significant effects!

One of the great downsides of story flaws is that you don't choose when they get activated. Most other flaws, you know exactly what you get. (It's also one of the upsides, I'll agree, since many troupes sort of agree to make most story flaws cosmetic.)

This can get nasty. Hell hath no fury, and all that. But it can also be played as lighthearted comedic diversion.

If it's cosmetic, it's not a dark secret.

Ah, yes, the trusty Dependent point bucket from Champions, taken at Common/Total! I suspect that this is meant to represent the "Don't shoot her! Here, I surrender" kind of dependent seen all too often in movies and comicbooks (spelling for Stan Lee :slight_smile: ), the kind that is very dangerous to have.

Of course. The two reasons why people don't treat Story Flaws as Major are that in Troupe play, everyone has a character with one of these, so a) a consensus emerges in which everyone agrees not to push too hard and b) there's really no time to generate stories for these flaws, which compete for spotlight with each other and with the "real" story of the saga.

Of course, the flaw doesn't grant underlings. So you have to get these some other way, either because your covenant just has them or through other virtues. As usual, this can be played as cosmetic, to the point of just not having underlings. But if your grogs desert or mutiny while you are on an important mission, or do something you are responsible for, that can get bad. If you are a senior Tremere or Guernicus, and your underlings always seem to act like the keystone kops, that can get bad.

Yes indeed! Of course, these flaws are also for companions, and a knight whose Enemy is the local baron or bishop will have a hard time indeed. If you are the local village headman, and your Enemy is a band of outlaws ravaging your village.... that's Seven Samurai; you can have that kind of body count too.

Yes.

Which makes being discovered as a real Diedne especially bad. I'm not saying that "3.5 Hermetic Houses want you dead is a typical Major Flaw." I'm saying that Dark Secret is already a dangerous Major Flaw, and specifying "I'm a real member of House Diedne" makes it especially dangerous, the same way that "I have sacrificed 12 magi to my demonic overlord" is an especially dangerous Dark Secret to have.

Yeah.

And yeah. These are personality flaws. They can cause problems, but they seem out of place here.

Or you have to repay 1000 pounds that 'you' stole. Or....

Poverty means that you also don't have cool stuff. Chastity is fluff, unless the GM forces temptation rolls on you. Obedience... that can be cosmetic "Oh, so my superior is sending me on a mission that just happens to be the adventure we are running this session," to "The GM gets to tell me what to do."

At least the first time it happens....

Yes. But meanwhile it also causes problems that themselves don't kill you, but can make other stories more difficult.

Hmm. Forgot that was major.

I like this one too, especially the Minor version, which gives you a peer, say, a Faerie Princess (never mind that canonically, faeries cannot love; there are too many stories about true love for faeries to be unable to handle this) who gets into danger and then rescues you from danger and then drags you into family problems....

But like dependent, this flaw requires total commitment from the character; if your magus isn't willing to die so that his True Love can live, maybe this isn't the right flaw. Not saying that it has to get that far.

Going back to the beginning of point based rpgs, there are whole categories of disadvantages that are taken, with the hope or expectancy that they will never be triggered to full extent; these needed to be taken for the character points. The first editions of AM were published in this era and the current edition was never intended to stray too far.

During the interim, however, the tendency of major flaws to rarely be played as major was noticed; it was also noticed that when these flaws were played, they generated spotlight time for the player.... hardly a disadvantage in a meta-sense.

Different systems offered different solutions to this. D&D3 ignored flaws entirely: Want a personality or background? RP it. Kult forced you to pay for things like being honorable, and fit all vfs into a system of 'mental stability' which imposed game-mechanical problems for people with too many problems. Then you get various systems that provide xps when a disadvantage matters, or their version of Confidence (eg Fate Points). Others don't have disadvantages, per se, just properties that can sometime be harmful or beneficial.

I think that moving toward having fewer flaws would be good.

In parallel, 'effect based' systems have some degree of popularity. For me, the identifying characteristic is that the description or fluff matters almost not at all, for it is just chrome atop a game mechanic. So, in D&D3, I can have an 'instrinsic' and an 'enhancement' and a 'squiggle' bonus and a 'natural' and a 'glorp' bonus to AC; the descriptor doesn't have to actually mean anything because we just process these bonuses through the rules engine: Never mind that a glorp bonus to AC is totally silly and meaningless; you can have exactly one of these.

In this case, of having a Dark Secret of being a Diedne, we get this same kind of reasoning going: Never mind that if you are discovered to be a Diedne, you are going to have a lot of powerful people out to kill you as a high priority in any saga that vaguely conforms to the description of the setting! Because "Dark Secret: X" is a Major Story Flaw, and Major Story Flaws matter to some degree Y that is determined by the troupe according to a rule on page XX. Now, I do understand that story flaws are supposed to generate stories, and are not a Kill Me Now button. But not all Dark Secrets that can be expressed make sense in AM (Dark Secret: I have a spaceship) and not all ought to have similar consequences (Dark Secret: I sacrifice one infant to Lucifer every morning) once they are played out. In the latter case, the character will either not play the flaw or will probably get squished very quickly. Saying that the latter Dark Secret ought to have no more game effect than True Love really doesn't fly for me. Secret spaceship notwithstanding.

Anyway,

Ken

In general, a Breakthrough shouldn't be counted as part of the standard balance calculus, unless you want to tell me that Mercurian Magic is balanced against Vis-less Rituals.

The purpose of a Story Flaw is to ensure that your character has a particular hook. In troupe play, that means that sometimes your magus or companion will have to deal with something and get out of the lab for their own reasons, and ideally that other PCs can be dragged into their troubles. The way I've most often seen it used in my limited actual play experience is that SGs (troupe play? Hahahaha...) will use Story Flaws to tie PCs into adventures that they already have planned. As I mentioned in the "Writing a saga" thread, if the SG wants to have a suspicious Quaesitor poking around the covenant's actions, and a PC has Enemies in the Quaesitores, that means that they're first against the wall.

A side point then clairification...
I personaly resent the very concept of "Story Flaws" and the related concept of "Hooks". I have enough on my plate to deal with. I don't need some newb player or a rule book telling me how to run my game or formulate a plot. I will go so far as to say that the very idea is formulated to create a crutch for retarded SGs and those who have no idea how to DM. Especially in a PbP environment, where characters come and go so quickly, a Story Flaw often becomes background fluff that never comes into play. Or, if it does, it is one character whose pick(s) happen to align with an existing plot, and so that one characters flaw gets used and reused over and over again while the rest get lip service at best. Get real. How am I supposed to fairly handle ten different magi with ten different major story flaws? And just as I pick one to run with, that player disappears on the troupe (a common PbP hazzard). I have found that the besy way to cope is to put it on the player. It is your flaw. Act accordingly. Want a story out of it? Then run one. Every player is allowed to SG in my saga. Take two story flaws if you want. Just act accordingly and incorporate things into a hollistic concept.

Now as for the Diedne death sentence flaw, keep in mind that I run a Flambeau heavy saga. Old school, using the original history from Iberia. Playing a Diedne would be quite disruptive and force characters and/or npcs to take action and said player of the Diedne would have a very unhappy time. As would I. That is not the sort of game I want.
Indeed, as part of the Interoggatory when petitioning for covenant membership is the question "Are you now or have you ever been a member of House Diedne or are you a Diedne sympathizer?".
Finally, as alpha SG and "producer", I get to decide (have the responsability to determine) what the secret backstory of everything is. And I decided that the Diedne were all guilty and got what they deserved. House Flambeau was right and Entisimon's speech was awesome.

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Calling people who don't play the same way as you "retarded" is entirely out of line, Marko.

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*grin* He's dissing the game designers, not GMs! After all, he didn't specifically say that any of these retarded GMs actually exist, only that he believes Story Flaws are designed for them! And that this should not have happened. :slight_smile:

That aside, he raises some specific points in line with some of my more general ranting:

  • Story Flaws are often free points because they don't get played.

  • Story Flaws rarely get played because there are very many of them, in proportion to the number of players, and the guy who has to put all that work into creating an adventure might prefer to run something else. Moreover, players rarely mind because they usually took the flaw for the points, a strategy I completely endorse.

Note that it is possible to run a satisfying saga that is based only on Story Flaws, or at least mostly on Story Flaws. This is not typical. A perusal of pbps here, for example, shows that a majority begin with an overarching premise that dwarfs story flaws. Ironically enough, given the current conversation, Marko's saga is one of the most open in this respect, though the result remains adventure-driven, by design. (Doctorcomic's HBO Season One seemed driven by Personality Flaws as much as anything, with the environment and stories working to spotlight characters and their personal evolution. This is exceptional: Most sagas are adventures into which characters plug in, with personality and personal predicaments being icing. Nothing wrong with that! Most successful action movies work that way.)

Not said generally, but Marko's specific point suggests something I generally believe to be useful design practice:

  • The GM should not have to track PC status. GMs have enough work to do. Thus, keeping PC HP levels secret from players is bad. The GM having primary responsibility to remember Story Flaws is bad. Passing responsibility for mechanical actions related to a PC to the players spreads the work around, allowing the GM to concentrate on the stuff that only he can do.

But I very much dislike the idea that a player who wants a story featuring his character should run one. Ugh. Having a GM run an adventure that spotlights his PC ranks among my least favorite things.

BTW, nothing wrong with banning Diedne! (Or banning Flambeau.)

(And yeah, Entissimon's speech is awesome, even if the Diedne didn't deserve anything.)

On the other hand, hooks and story flaws can be useful:

  • During game creation, they can help reach consensus about the kind of stories the group wants to highlight. This works better for Hooks than Story Flaws. Conversely, a Boon can help reach consensus about the kind of stories the group does not want to highlight, although this is mixed with other mechanical benefits. For example, a boon that provides wealth ought to suggest that stories about magi needing money should not happen; a boon that provides a castle suggests that stories about magi being weak or not having a cool place to live ought not occur.

One doesn't need hooks and flaws for this, just as one doesn't need to balance virtues and flaws. Having rules that require such a balance does make life easier in some respects, in the same way that starting with a fixed number of xps prevents endless justification of endlessly increasing xps.

Finally, sometimes even experienced gamers can use assistance. I don't consider myself a neophyte, nor do I consider myself retarded atm (though I do from time to time), yet, for example, I never could figure out what to do with Nephilim, other than maybe a generic conspiracy game. (It probably didn't help that I dislike the underlying game system. But I did have fun playing with character creation.) Getting an AM saga off the ground and keeping it aloft is hard; I like having utilities (tcpdump is today's UotD) and documentation and tutorials and walkthroughs and samples.

Anyway,

Ken

Marko doesn't like story flaws, but lets players take them, and then complains about having to do something with them.

PbPs are different enough beasts that using them as a sample size of all Ars Magica sagas is flawed. The thing about Story Flaws, is that they are the players way of telling the SG what kinds of stories he's most interested in being part of. He might be part of many others, but those are at the player's discretion, rather than at the SGs. Hooks are much the same, except it's the whole troupe that's deciding.

Storyguides are certainly entitled to reject character concepts/story flaws that they don't want to do anything. If they do this, though, one needs to ask, what's necessary to get to 10 virtue points? Right now, Marko is all but admitting that he ignores Story flaws. And when he ignores story flaws, he's basically saying 7 or 9 flaw points = 10 virtue points.

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My apologies to the mentally handicapped for misusing the word. But no apologies for "being out of line". Other than my misuse of a medical term, I consider my statement amusing, soft and lighthearted. And TRUE.

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Hi,

Excellent! Can I get 3 points for it?

More seriously, they are different enough, but not altogether different. Still lots of time spent dealing with rules. Still people who want to GM, want to play or want to do both. I see games go by here in which the GM declares everything up front, and games in which everyone pitches in with hooks and stuff. It's a biased sample, to be sure, but does a bias toward online gaming make a difference?

That totally works too. And don't forget the freebie personality flaws! (If all the PCs do it, it completely balances out.)

Anyway,

Ken

Just because I say something, it does not mean I am admitting anything. I am consistantly inconsistant and enjoy talking out my ass and offending people :mrgreen:

Having said that, my criticism was not aimed at any SG or designer. It is aimed at the design itself. And I don't ignore story flaws altogether. I just trast them as Flaws (no ajective). They can affect stories, design, and/or the way people act. There doesn't always have to be a "story". As for any potential imbalance for ignoring a story flaw, I call that a non issue. A number of story flaws are actually virtues. Case in point: Mentor was a Virtue in previous editions. In ArM5 it is categorized as a "story flaw", though it is worded exactly the same as it was when it was a virtue. So what is imbalanced about ignoring a secret virtue?
On the other hand, I play a character with that Flaw, and it has been called out several times. All the while he has a Major Hermetic Flaw that has never ever come into play or ever been touched on.
Also, It has never happened where a player has run a story centered on a flaw of their character. That has been suggested by me but no one has yet taken me up on it. What has happened instead is that other players, when they want to run a story, will pick out a stroy flaw from another character and base their story around that. In a specific example, one player is running a story based off of my own characters Mentor flaw. I have been trying to stay in the background as the cause and motivator and let other players shine.
So one migt determine that is how they are useful. Not for the main saga arc, but individual side stories run by BSGs.
However, I can make a story out of just about any flaw (or even virtue) without needing a lable or command slapped on it.
Old school AD&D didn't have any V/F options, yet I managed to keep the game going every week for years. Ars campaigns are no more difficult to launch or fly that old D&D was, so I fail to see the "story" point.

Hi,

Um. It took minutes to create a fully-kitted AD&D character, stats and all. AD&D monsters? Coming up with an interesting idea took much longer than the implementation. AM is more difficult.

Not quite as easy as running without a system, or advertising a system but not actually using it behind the screen (Long school of system design).

As for story... yeah, story flaws aren't necessary. Heck, character personality and background can emerge even from campaigns that are little more than old school dungeon crawls strung together one after another.

Story Flaws are an Ars Magica feature first introduced in 5th edition. I think they are a cool, useful feature, and particularly well suited to a game like Ars Magica. But because they are not nearly as universal a gaming concept as xps or even just character Flaws, they are often misunderstood and maligned. Also, like virtually all features of a game, they may lend themselves more or less to a group's style of play. Let's not forget a few things.

and

I think these two passages are crucial. If you, as a SG or troupe member, do not want to tell stories that involve demons in your saga, just do not allow characters to take the Plagued by Demons Flaw. If your saga will be a short, fast paced one in which all stories will revolve about characters constantly under siege by demons, consider mandating that all magus and companion characters take Plagued by Demons as a compulsory Story Flaw.

From my experience, SGs that complain about Story Flaws are typically SGs that strongly reject the notion of player-driven sagas. Thus, they have their own ideas of what should happen in a saga, and unfolding saga events drag all characters into them, willing or unwilling, swept up into the powerful tide of the SGs imagination. These games feel a bit like Pathfinder adventure paths. Nothing wrong with that! These games have a lot of "personality" and a strong sense of direction, something that truly shines in short sagas and PbP, and can produce memorable gameplay even when a sizable portion of your gaming table is new to gaming, not so invested in the game, etc. But freely-chosen Story Flaws obviously feel useless at best and disruptive at worst in these games.

Ars Magica, however, is also well suited to a different style of gaming -- a style that traditional games like Pathfinder do not support well. These are long, multi-generational sagas with troupe-style play. Their two characteristics are:

  1. life is supposed to go on "as usual" most of the (in-game) time, and in fact most character development occurs as the result of off-screen events (i.e. seasonal activities, that happen outside stories). Stories are relatively rare crisis situations, that deserve screentime exactly because they are exceptional.
  2. these sagas are polyphonic: symphonies of many little plots. Think Downton Abbey. Every major character (magus or companion) has, or can have, his own plot or two (driven externally by Story Flaws, and internally by Personality Flaws). Different players (alpha SG, beta SG etc.) contribute to weaving the individual plots. The presence of multiple SGs both makes the total load more manageable, and contributes to making the saga polyphonic. The covenant Hooks and Boons provide a global framework in which all the individual plots come together.

These troupe-style sagas are far more difficult to pull off -- or at least to pull of well -- than Pathfinder-style sagas, because they can easily lose focus or coherence, just as easily lose balance overemphasizing a single plot or two, and can fail if any player fails to deliver (whereas in a Pathfinder saga, a strong SG will easily absorb a minority, or sometimes even a majority, of inexperienced/not-so-invested/etc. players). I do not think I could pull off one with a random group of people that I had never played with before. Story Flaws are a useful tool to pull off these difficult sagas, because they help define and enforce the play contract.

In this sense, I think that saying that Story Flaws are "a crutch for retarded SG"s, is like saying that a climbing rope is a crutch for retarded mountaineers. Such a comment suggests that you envision mountaneering as hiking every weekend in the mountains with your family and your dog. You don't need a climbing rope, alas -- how can a dog use a climbing rope anyway? It's just a burden, in fact, something that the local sport shop sells to extract money from the purse of the unwary tourist at his first hike. That's right, in a way; in fact, it's actually right for the majority of mountaineers. But you need a lot of experience to reach the top of the Everest, and exactly because of that, no Everest expedition ever failed to carry climbing ropes.