Re: Enlo Soakage

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 03:48:36 +0100 (BST)


Richard Melvin suggests not ordinary characters, but:
> Ordinary conflicts are those who don't matter to the story.

Trotsky put answered this point well (before it was made, indeed). If a conflict doesn't matter, HW has the concept of an "automatic success" for this. If it matters a bit, it has simple contests; if you're using an extended contest _at all_, it should be fairly important.

There could be something in what Richard says, but I'm leary of adding yet another type of contest...

Joerg:
> In the (self-inflicted) arm wrestling disaster I experienced, it was a
> malus of 1 for each "hurt". Not exactly significant, but meaningful in
> the long run.

That's right, it's -1 for wounding in combat, too.

Well, one man's Signficant is another's Meaningful, but remember that a -1 means that not only do you succeed 5% less often, but your successes are 1 worse when you get them, so you also lose more contests when you succeed. (This amounts to up to another 10%, if a quick calculation serves me correctly, depending what your skill is.)

And if you get to -5, you're in serious doo-doo. (Not the official HW terminology, but it amounts to much the same thing...)

Slainte,
Alex.


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