Nothing much to do with Ranged Combat

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 22:36:35 +0100 (BST)

Wulf Corbett:
> To break down a door, Strong is obvious, but also I'd allow Large (at
> -5), Carry Heavy Loads (maybe -10), or quite a few Combat
> abilities/feats (Shieldbreaker at -5 comes to mind). On Saturday, my
> Narrator decided my character could fit through a narrow gap because
> of my description of her - 'Fine Appearance 17'. My DESCRIPTION of
> her was 'slender and elegant', which wasn't anywhere on the sheet,
> but justified an Improvised ability.

If one has players that are more verbose than their 100 words quota, one can make use of such things by way of an explicit "back story". I work on the basis that if it's in the back story, you don't automatically have it, but it's a fairly robust justificat of abilities impled by said "extra words".

An idea that occurred to me, slightly too late for the latest round of char-gen, so again, no playtesting, was to say "write as much character story/description as you like". Then take a hiliter pen, and mark out the 100 "core description" words

• in grammatically complete sentences, of course -- before picking out the abilities from the 100 words. The "unhilit" portion you can retain simply as colour text, or work your way through with your HPs if you really want to see it all in bright yellow... (Or perhaps more likely, cos you're a real ability-fiend.)