Again, not necessarily. The person who has the higher ability in the contest should win more of the time. And the guy with the magic won't always have a better situation. Arm Wrestling is mostly about strength, but I wouldn't automatically let a player who had Arm Wrestling 10W2 pick up a boulder at 10W2. ("You've got big arms; how's your lower back? Maybe you psych out your opponents. You're still pretty strong, though, -15.") Similarly, depending on the feat, you might get an advantage or you might not.
>This doesn't mean, however, that some people don't want to see things in
>metagame terms, however. And you saying that they should won't change their
>minds.
Sure. Having fun is what it's about. Use whatever solution makes you happy. As far as metagaming goes, how is it fair that the person who bought the stand alone feat Strong 15W at +1/1HP always beats the guy who bout Strong 15W at the same rate?
> > If they decide to have a rock throwing contest, since Magic
> >guy is steamed at losing and wants revenge, the Narrator needs to set
> >a difficulty -- maybe everyone agrees that "impressively far" has a
> >resistance of 10W. Bull guy, with all his muscles, has a level of
> >mastery but a few point disadvantage. Let's say Bull guy gets a
> >failure and the distance a success. The failure gets bumped, and the
> >Narrator decides that Bull guy threw his rock impressively far. Magic
> >guy rolls against a 14 again and rolls a success bumped to a critical
> >against the distance's success. The Narrator decides this is pretty
> >darned far, and Magic guy wins the contest.
>
>Actually, you didn't come up with this idea first, so I'm sorry to pick on
>you, here. But let's say that both characters get a Minor Success. Who threw
>the rock farther? If it's a contest, I'm afraid that "about the same" isn't
>going to cut it. In any case, this use of the rules isn't really supported
>by the rules, and is problematic, philosophically. One can always reduce the
>opponent to "the situatioin in which we're jointly engaged". So, in combat,
>it would be a roll of one character against the situation, and the other
>character against the tactical situation and compare? But then you could
>roll for the situation's situation. The system doesn't suggest doing this
>because there's no good guideline for when it would make sense. In fact, it
>always makes sense to directly compare, and I'd never use this "third party
>comparison" method.
I like the third party system in a situation where you are not competing against another person -- in a foot race, you are not beating another person, you are beating the course "better" (faster, with more style, whatever). It also has the advantage of allowing three or thirty people to compete in a contest, which rolling against each other doesn't really allow. In the case of the rock throwing where both rolled equally well, you could decide that, if one character rolled a success and the other rolled a failure bumped to a success, that the natural success was a little better. Or that it was too close to call and they had to throw again. Or, if you want to privilege magic, you could say that the magic guy won. Or the guy with the mastery won. Or whatever makes you and the players happy.
Peter Larsen
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