>From: "Jamie" <anti.spam_at_...>
>
>So yours is a slightly more personally directed opinion than mine, but
>both are valid and both have a subjective context.
Nope. For one, my conclusion is not that I have the correct reading at all - my conclusion is that the text is ambiguous, and so there can be no definitive reading of it (my arguments were that my reading is just as likely as yours, not more likely, except in cases where yours may have at times seemed to have been against what the text does state).
Then I changed the subject to consider which might actually work better.
>"Don't you think that it is more appropriate to stack, and thereby
>allow multiple effects on a contest, than to limit those effects by
>only allowing one negative effect?"
>
>My answer to this (hypothetical until you verify) question, would be
>that I am less concerned with stacking negatives, than I am showing a
>shift in dramatic effect via reference to the resolution system.
As am I.
>I like the idea that your current negatives plug into the contest
>up-front, and that the contest itself, and nothing else, informs the
>outcome and therefore the narration. I see this as adding an
>encouragement to take risks for a quantifiable potential gain. This is
>something that I previously saw only the extended contest mechanic
>allowing.
Except that the system I'm advocating does allow for a change: getting a new penalty is a change. Further my system also allows for the elimination of penalties that you seem to want to have. It just only does it when the situation warrants rather than it being mandated by the system.
That is, as I've pointed out with the example of the character who kills the one who embarrasses him, I agree that any contest can result in the reduction of a penalty. In addition to whatever other goal the contest may have.
So, going into a contest with a penalty at hand, the way my version works is that any of the following can occur:
Your version seems to say that #2 should never occur, and that 4 can occur, but it's an exception to the general rule, and only happens in combat (probably meaning something more like physical contests). So, since my system subsumes yours, I'm not seeing how it's not also about what you say yours is about. When it needs to be.
Mike
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