Re: Re: Ability advancement

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 14:02:31 +0100 (BST)

> Alex Ferguson
> > Is this because you have an especially vicious GM (the phrase
> > "Vicious Narrator" seems very odd...),
>
> This matches with our experience. Half or more of the HP gained are
> used to bump.

It was my experience too, in my last game, but I think for that latter reason, not the former. (I would say that, though, being the arbiter of cruel fate in question.)

In my current game I'm playing a different bump rule: an arbitrary post-hoc bump-up will cost 3HP (though subject to 'rebate', depending on the circumstances). As a partial sop to this inflationary pressure, you can spend 1HP _before_ the roll, to get +10 (or more, again depending on the circumstances).

> One point that concerns me is that when analysing the game people
> talk about returns for the bid (bid low if higher, high if lower
> etc.). but this rarely happens to us 'in game'. People describe the
> bid, and we decide the AP cost. When players act heroically, as they
> are want to do (in fact being more heroic or outlandish than your
> fellow players is part of the fun of HW 'I swing from the
> chandelier', 'I pole vault over the wall slamming foor first into the
> defender as I fly past, in an attempt to knock him from the wall' for
> us). These actions are very big AP bids, you don't want to fail them,
> so we end up parting with HP.

By the same logic, simple contests are a "good" time to use HPs, perhaps oddly.

> I think that this is group style more than anything else.

My old group also seemed to be excessively cautious in their bids. Which isn't to say the "big high, it's heroic!" idea is _wrong_, just that it may need to be "incentivised" in some way (either group social dynamic, or by GMly sit-mods), since often the actual game mechanics are a perverse incentive.

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