>Essentially I look at it as being Huge's turn and he sets
>the contest, he picks fight and Rep defends as best he can. ON Reps
>turn he picks talk and Huge defends as best he can.
>
>I would allow a contest for Huge to get up the courage to attack Rep,
>which would be some roll vs REp's rep, done as a simple contest before
>Huge attacks. If he fails then he doesnt attack. Thus Reps rep acts
>as a deterring shield to reduce probable attackers as they all have to
>overcome his rep first. An appropriate skill would be required for
>this - ignorant, hate, iconoclastic etc. A goading group of
>supporters could augment this...
But, see, this is where I have a problem. And this is actually rather "simmy" of me, truth be told. But the thing is that this contest will never happen. That is, why should Rep declare a contest to prevent Huge from attacking if he doesn't know that Huge is going to attack? Once Huge does attack, then it's too late for him to retroactively declare, according to what you have, no? So Huge will only face the rep if Rep's player decides to hit him with it first.
What this leads to is players trying to hit each other first with their best ability to prevent the other character's ability from "going off" on them. If there's the threat that the character may have to go through some preliminaries first before getting to use his best ability, if it's not so clear cut, then he'll have to think twice about it. If this goes both ways, then players only have incentive to use their abilities against each other if they feel that their character has a really good motive.
Again, if nothing presents itself, fine. But if there's something plausible that the player can pull out - a metaphorical wall that needs climbing before making the attack - then I think it's quite legitimate to tell the attacker that he has to get through this first. Or, as Rory said, that he has to alter his declaration to something that seems more "appropriate" to the situation. In this case, the reputation may exist as a barrier to people who might otherwise attack the character.
BTW, I don't disagree with the idea that such a rep may actuall make characters attack you, in fact I totally agree. But that doesn't mean that the rep doesn't also exist. Basically all abilities exist to be challenged. If they're there, that's saying to the narrator that he should challenge them. And that they should sometimes fail. So I completely agree that Rep is going to be challenged, and probably sooner rather than later in the game. And, yeah, this could result in the ability being dramatically altered (most radically the positive rep could be turned into a negative one about the character being a sham). But none of this says that it shouldn't be allowed to be involved mechanically. In fact, if you really want to employ it mechanically, allow it to be the primary ability in a contest, and then have it work as a flaw as well, negatively augmenting itself. Basically, it's an impediment, but it's also a target to some extent.
In any case, this is really cool, IMO, because it means that anyone who does end up getting to actually attack really, really wants to do so. And we'll see just why in the contest of getting to attack the character with the rep. In any case, for those who fail, this just makes the rep fun and worth having taken it in the interim.
Again, I'm not saying you have to allow the rep to work - it all depends on circumstances and what makes sense. Try this, however. Ask the attacking player if he'd like to face the Reputation first. Often they'll agree to it. In that case it's the player makiung the declaration who's changing things, and nobody can possibly be put out by the choice.
"Hey, you could just attack him, but Bob wants to know if you want to face off against his reputation first? His character is known as a killer? Yeah? Cool. What's that, a Minor Victory? Cool, he'll have a -10% on his ability to defend because of the ferocity that you've generated due to wanting to knock this guy down a peg. Sucks to be you, Bob, given that your character can't really fight..."
Mike
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