>From: "Rob" <robert_m_davis_at_...>
>I wouldn't get too hung up on that myself. Go with your instincts I would
>say, and don't constrain yourself with *having* to come up with permanent
>effects, only if it is cool to do so. Narrative logic and MGF have to be
>the narrators guide here.
>Do you agree Mike?
Quite. The rule is, in fact, that "impediments" given as the result of contests are optional. The only thing that's required by an outcome is that "success" of the appropriate level be narrated. So there's never a requirement.
That said, I think that it's a good idea to try to produce the negative effects in most cases. If it's a narrator character who's suffered, and you intend for the character to continue to interact, then it's important, I think to note the impediments, and always to note the "permenant effects" of a Complete Defeat. Because this gives the player a sense of their character having had a tangible (mechanical) impact on the in-game world. And in the case of permenant effects, it's hard not to note these, really. The obvious example being putting a character to a dying state (especially if he then dies). But if you banish him, that should be marked (or at least remembered) so that you know that they have that status which means not just that they are banished in-game, but from a metagame POV that they can't just return on a whim. Again accomplishments like this are "hard" in metagame terms, giving the player a sense of having altered things in a real way.
For defeats suffered by players, the penalties are good for creating new conflicts and goals for the players to deal with. Wounded? Now they'll have to deal with this condition, and probably try to find a way to fix it.
Generally speaking, when a character takes an impediment, it's been my advice that one ought to enumerate this on the character sheet with not only the level of the impediment, but a term like an ability descriptor to explain the nature of the impediment. So I'd have the player put "leg gash -10%" on the character sheet. This is so that we have a good idea of when to impose the penalty, and when not to do so (this is an implied necessity - you wouldn't apply the results of a social conflict that embarrassed a character to his ability to flee a monster, right?) The imperative to list this includes the non numerative effects of a "permenant effect." That is, if the character is "Banished" then we list that so that we don't forget that the player cannot have the character return to the place he's banished from until he's "healed" of the problem.
Does having a permenant effect delivered on the character then require an ability, or even suggest one? Well, if a player wants to come up with one, and cement it at 13, far be it from me to stop them if it makes even a little sense. I'm always trying to help players come up with rationales to spend their HP, rather than prohibit it. But it's certainly not neccessary in any way. Because a listed permenant effect is actually rather more potent already than any ability can be. Keep in mind that they essentially "auto-fail" a character in some whole realm of things that they might otherwise be able to do. They're "transformative."
This goes back to another concept, that of the abilities of form. Basically, all humans can walk, with Walk 6 if nothing else, because they have legs, co-ordination, etc. That is, it's basically part of the human species keyword that humans can walk. Let's say you were playing a character who's species had wings and were known to fly. This would allow the character a default Fly 6 as part of the speccies keyword (if the variant species didn't specifically list the ability higher to start). No, normal humans just don't get the default Fly 6. They are completely incapable of flying, not being in any way equiped to do it. Neither can they breathe water, or perform photosynthesis to get energy. The form of a human has a lot of limits on what a character can attempt.
Well, permenant effects, the results of Complete Defeats, can alter what they can attempt. Death means you can't do anything that a living human could do. Losing your legs means you can no longer walk. For the man with wings, losing his wings means he can't fly any longer. This applies to social and mental "form" as well. Banishment means you can't come back to that place. A Complete Defeat resulting in a phobia of snakes, means that the character can never voluntarily come close to a snake. Nothing to roll against to see if he can, he simply cannot, until healed, approach a snake.
So the results of Complete Defeats are important themselves, and don't usually need further enumeration. You don't have to take, Fear of Snakes 13, when the character is really already possessed of what ammounts to Fear of Snakes (infinite). But if they want to take, Fear of Reptiles 5W (as a flaw is free to take at whatever level they like), explaining that they also fear all other reptiles as a fallout of the event, I wouldn't say no. Or if they get a Complete Victory over someone which results as, "He can't resist my commands" then it would be redundant to take "Commander of Target 13" because you don't ever have to roll to be successful. If he ever "heals" it, then you can take the Commander ability at that point to represent a lingering effect you have with that character. That said, if a player took something like "Inspires Target" so as to be able to use it to augment their actions (or vice versa, possibly), that I could see.
Mike
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