>I think it flows naturally from the first question. If in situations
>like the tree-leaping one, you're reallyreally good at it on your own,
>but mediocre doing so in a contest in with someone, there's a bit of a
>lacuna in the game-world account of what's going on here that either
>needs to be "fixed" on the one hand, or rationalised on the other.
I agree that some people have a perceptual problem with these things. It's just that the other solutions either stick with the rules (the rationalizations that you mention), or change them very slightly. That is, dropping the 14 rule, for example, is a lot simpler to me than adopting the third party method.
That said, I think your last incarnation of the idea seems pretty functional, and almost within the rules (and pretty ingenious).
>Not sure I follow: you mean have them roll once, and read each roll
>twice in two separate simple contests? (Or for N participants, oops
>it's quadratic. <g>)
Yes, this is what I'm talking about.
>That's _definitely_ not a procedure in the rules,
I wasn't sure. But I thought there was *something* in the book on three way simple contests...
>and I can't see how it'd work for extended contests at all.
Uh, it doesn't. I only mentioned simple contests, and then mentioned that the Multiple Extended Contest rules handled more parties just fine already. My point was that a new method was unneccessary for the extended contest case. The overall point being that if you have more than two parties, the rules definitely have at least one way of resolving things already. So the original point, that there was no way to do this, wasn't true.
There may be no way of doing more than three sides in a simple contest, I'm not sure, but in any case, this doesn't pertain to the original original problem (magic vs. mundane). At best it's a small new problem of it's own.
> > Well, by clear I mean, that it's the only sensible interpretation.
> > But I totally agree that the text doesn't make it clear at all.
> > Hence the problem here.
>
>Ah, OK, I see what you mean. (I think a lot of the throwings-around
>of GNS jargon are on a similar premise -- makes no game-world sense,
>hey, there *must* be a narrativist pony in here someplace...)
Well, I'm talking about a functional reading. It's totally possible that it was meant to simulate something in-game, but if so, then it is by far the most problematic idea to rationalize. Waaaay more difficult than the archery stuff, or nutting the lawspeaker, or crossing the bridge with words or any of that stuff. I'm willing to accept that the original intent may be messed up. But from a narrativist perspective it works just hunky-dorey.
>so whether the tree gets its 'saving throw' or not is
>entirely in the realm of interpretation.
Yep. Total agreement there. That said, I'm all about establishing that gestalt, and don't mind it. But for groups unawares, yes, there may be trouble.
>I'd have thought that mundane abilities were necessarily the domain of
>physics rather than metaphysics
I think the "point" is that even the mundane is somewhat magical in Glorantha. In HW, this was explicit - everything was magical to some extent. And I think the new game doesn't get away from it, really. The Mundane world, we find, is actually the conjunction of the other worlds. In a way mundane is "most magical". We just don't see it that way because we live there.
>But we're back in interpretation-ville here:
Yep. You really do need to have this figured out before play. I think most GM's get an idea, however, and apply it consistently in play. So I don't know how often it's a problem. Even left unadressed, it's possible for the "problem" to just get overlooked in play. That is, as I've said, players tend to only look at the outcome of the resolution, and don't worry about what the ability levels are at. In my game, I don't announce resistances a lot of the time (I just do the comparisons and table lookup in my head and announce), so they probably just don't know. I mean those who've read the book may be aware that something may be going on, but it isn't brought to their attention in play. They just don't know or care if they're rolling against a 14 or a 5W2.
Mike
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