> This is the source of many of the most lasting discussions on the
> list: "I want to tell a story in which foo happens -- how do I go
> about modeling that in terms of game actions?" For example, the
> archery thread: "It is important to my story that the opposition has
> ranged weapons while the heroes do not. What are my options for
> expressing this situation in game mechanics, and what are the
> ramifications of each?"
Indeed so. Few such problems are insoluble (though many of them do lead to "no, you fewl!" type discussions here, which is doubly infuriating).
> Now, one could say, as the rules do, that the choice between simple
> and extended contests ought to be made purely on the grounds of "how
> much screen time would it get," but unfortunately that doesn't
> actually work very well, because the outcomes are so different. For
> example, in message 9153 (Tue May 8, 2001 9:45 pm) Roderick Robertson
> wrote:
This is true. Here's a quick hack, which I've sometimes used (though generally even more 'informally' than this 'rule' would suggest, so I can't claim to have 'rigorously' playtested it:
When using a SC to 'quickly' resolve something you'd normally do as an EC, without unduly 'disadvantaging' the stronger party, _double_ the difference in skill between the two parties before rolling the SC. i.e., give the existing difference in TNs to the superior party as a bonus.
This obviously doesn't iron out all the differences: but it sure confuses the pain a little.
> However, I prefer the subtraction method because it smooths
> out all the mastery-level boundary effects, rather than just many.
You might be onto something there. Certainly this has been suggested as an improvement for the _augmentation_ rules, so maybe it'd work more generally.
> The only real problem with this that I see is that it never generates
> major or marginal results, only complete or minor ones -- but then,
> that's because it's taken directly from the ability test table, which
> has the same structure. The only ways around this that have so far
> occurred to me involve modifying the result based either on how close
> you rolled to the target number, or on the result of a second die roll
> -- both of which reintroduce things I was trying to avoid, namely
> weird breakpoint effects or rolling two dice and cross-indexing -- or
> trying to do something with how many uncancelled masteries didn't get
> used as bumps -- which seems confusing at best. Any suggestions?
I'd go with how close, myself, if it's really necessary to discrimate that finely. After all, that's what one often does "informally", when judging "how good a success" a given result really is. "A 2? OK, I'll give him the _juicy_ rumour..."
> For example, one species of deer in
> Anaxial's Roster is supposed to try to augment with an ability of just
> *10*, which is either useless or foolish under standard rules.
Be fair, it's worth an expected net +0.0875, to be precise. ;-)
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