> > Ah, ticks! And tick-fishing! That takes me back! About as far as
>
> So that's what its called! We had a much less polite name for it.
Well, I dunno if that's exactly the official term. ;-) I pointedly don't say "check", having been driven mad (and driven others mad to boot) by the awful Pendragon usage (sorry Greg!) in which "check your Loyalty" can mean either "put a tick in the box", _or_ "roll against the skill", depending on the phase of the moon, how much water one's putting in it, or whatever...
> But our group does the same - kinda/sorta. I am forced to admit its a
> convenient way of keeping track. But at the end of the night, the
> players usually ask each other whether or not it was used enough to
> warrant the reduced rate. It seems to work out pretty well. If
> someone's simply jonesing for a check, the attempt often gets laughed
> at by the other players. They can spot a fraud faster than I can...
Ah yes, the old Group Laughter spe-- errrr, Feat!
I've never formalised this at all, as in my last game I was still mulling over how best to handle this, and my current crop of players are (to a man) non-BRP-heads, so they haven't cottoned on to the "implicit ticks", but I what I'm doing currently is a sort of stream of consciousness "measurement" of how "important to the story" a given ability was. Beyond getting the "good rate", if something been especially important (e.g. the Yinkini does nothing at all, all evening apart from lazing and fornicating <g>), I allow myself to be cajoled into giving a "yet more reduced rate" increase, and/or a free point or so. (A sort of "directed increase by request", if you like.)
I'm in two minds if this would be helped along by a practice of keeping track of (multiple) ticks -- might be a handy aide-memoire, or it might trend towards "rulesification" of the idea. ("I have 15 ticks in my Sensuality affinity: doesn't that mean I get to increase it at 1/5 cost, eh? Eh, eh, eh?")
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