Mike Holmes:
> BTW, someone covered that in another post saying that you could
> use margin to determine victor
Me, I think you mean...
> but that's even further outside of the rules
... which I noted...
> and even more unneccessary. Since there's no problem with direct
> comparisons to begin with (unless you have a certain Sim view, in
> which case the easier process is just to drop the special rule for
> magic).
But that I entirely disagree with. The question arose, how to distinguish who did 'best' in a contest where two people were competing against the same "force", but which resisted each differently, i.e. at different numerical values. If you'd resolve this differently, then fair enough, but I don't see how you can characterise it as "unnecessary".
> I thought there was a way to do three parties at once in the
> Simple Contest rules that did work. I'll have to research it,
> tho. In an extended contest I'm certain it works perfectly well.
I don't think so. You now have four numbers in a 'contest' representing a contest between two actual persons, and one abstract resistance (the tree, the distance, etc), which may (in some cirumstances) have different initial numerical values, and certainly is 'beaten' in the contest by the two separately, not acting together against it as per the standard Group Contest. (Aside from "drafting" considerations perhaps...). Unless you're envisaging some situation other than the one originally being talked about, I don't see that this works at all.
> Again, this is hard for people to wrap their heads around, so I
> don't expect instant understanding. But, essentially, you keep
> saying over and over that the game intends to do something that
> most games do, but that this game does not. And that is having
> the mechanics directly represent something in-game
> in all cases. The magic rule has to be metagame.
It's not in the least clear to me that it's intended to be meta-game. The "14 rules" states, "This is the the resistance to cast magic on one's self, and the passive resistance of the Mortal World to magical change." It doesn't say anything about this having a different narrative status from any other ability use in the game, its phrasing is entirely in terms of game-world effects.
Cheers,
Alex.
Powered by hypermail