> So, if the Rokari don't want Mr Puma to shapechange, they can tell him
> "Thou Shalt Not Shape-Change And Perform Bestial Acts" when he joins
> their church -- but he can keep the ability recorded on his character
> sheet despite that.
Well, I have a lot of time for this point of view. HQ talks the talk about story first, but it could, to be fair, do more to actually encourage this directly. Why does HQ have all this stuff about the four worlds, misapplication, and concentration at all, one might ask oneself? It's hardly for game-balance or game-play reasons -- trying to spread oneself between too much different magic is its own punishment anyway, really. I'd be hard-pressed to think of likely story-driving reasons for 'em -- and as often, if not more they're going to exist in the opposite direction, as Nick says. Essentially they're there for Evil Simulationist Crap (to coin and combine a popular phrase or two) reasons, let's be clear about that. Now, I'm as evil a simulationist as the next man, don't get me wrong, but the emphasis of these rules seems questionable in the light of a) it not being stressed in the rest of the game (and rhetorically, very much the reverse), b) the possible tension with story in places, and c) the fact that this is, for my money, such a damn *hard* thing to try to 'simulate' in the first place.
Having said that, I don't think they're a bad thing as such, as long they're a decent approximation to the 'usual' situation in the first place, and that usual situation doesn't have any perverse character- -squishing incentives in it; and that one keeps in their proper order the concerns of such approximations, and the demands of the logic of the narrative and of the game.
Cheers,
Alex.
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