Mike Holmes:
> Augmenting is just one of many features of the system as
> written for me that interject themselves into play [and] help
> guide play along, and are fun in and of themselves.
I agree in theory; augments help to show the relevance of many of a characters abilities to the situations that occur and so reveal more about the character. And hence they *should* add to the narration rather than detract from it.
However I increasingly find the opposite because of the *way* they get applied:
After many years of play we now have characters with *lots* of skills that can give a worthwhile augment. Given the long list of abilities on each sheet finding 10 abilities that are relevant would be the norm. 4 players with 10 potential augments each is 40 augments.
Attempting to describe each one being applied takes too long and kills the pace of the game.
An alternative is not to describe them but just have each person quietly do an add up. This is what tends to happen when we play. Not that we decided to do this, its just happened. Often each player will give a desultary description of the augments that's pretty much a list. But no one is really paying attention because they are examining their sheets to work their augments out.
Its getting to the point where the pace and attention to numbers makes me feel things are degenerating back to an RQish situation.
This is all fine and dandy if a group is focussed on simulatory play.
However if the group is focused on narrative play then it would be better if every augment got some camera time, even if its only one frame. Things that effectively happen in an individual players head are happening off screen and should be discouraged.
If you imagine how a contest would be filmed or framed in a comic book a few key actions would be brought to the audiences attention to show that they were relevant to the situation and that we might be about to find out something about them. Only a few such things would be highlighted. If 40 different actions were highlighted then the audience would loose track and you might as well have highlighted none of them; nothing additional will be revealed about the character because no one can see the trees for the forest.
This is why I believe less is more when it comes to augments adding to the narrative. Either there must be a very small number of augmenting actions highlighted or, if the list is longer, they must be resolved in turn so we can somehow appreciate what is revealed about them.
Kieth's Postumous Augments seems to have potential for doing the later.
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