Re: re: Defaults and who has em

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 02:24:38 +0100


On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 01:03:16AM +0100, Jane Williams wrote:
> As far as I remember, the answer suggested was to set such "automatic
> success" abilities to 21. Not 1W, 21. I forget quite why.
>
> I think every keyword has a bunch of skills that we just don't usually
> bother to mention. This would be one of them, under "female human", to
> be mentioned only if it differs from the norm. "Infertile 17"?
>
> I'd quite like to see some guidance on this sort of thing myself. For
> instance, I believe all (most) humans have a "fear heights" Flaw, but at
> what level? If it becomes relevant, we need to know, and to have it
> consistent.

I think it's pretty moot both a) whether they're abilities as such, and b) what their rating would be. In the first instance, they're each implied by "(female) human", and are hardly worth mentioning in that they're the baseline for both our personal OOC experience, and the "norm" in an in-game sense. (Well, in most games, at least.) One might as well ponder whether "being human" itself is an in-game ability. (And if it were, wouldn't it in effect imply the others?)

I think the ratings are unimportant, OTOH, because they only really make sense in the context of how they're going to resist some other force/be resisted. e.g., how difficult is it to stand in this situation, how scary is this height (really requiring a 'brave' ability to resist it with).

BTW, I don't know what the distinction between an ability of 21 and 1W is, other than aesthetics. In the cause of same, I prefer to keep all abilities scores 'canonical', but all modifiers as single integers. (I was both bemused and amused at one Convulsion demo game in which Greg announced a "+20W" modifier would be applied... (Though since I play a variant where W = 10, it's not like the conversion is megadifficult  in any event.)

Cheers,
Alex.

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