Trotsky:
> As I suspect your quote marks indicate you realise,
> what's obvious to
> you is deeply opaque to people like me.
As I *now* realise, as a result of this conversation, yes.
> Not only wouldn't it occur to me to do it, but,
> until you pointed
> it out, it would never have occurred to me that
> anyone else might either...
Whereas I'm doing it because I take it for granted that everyone is, and that I'll be at a disadvantage if I don't. Maybe I don't have to. I'll remember to raise the question next time I'm generating a character.
> Come to think of it, I'm pretty poor at augmenting
> in general - even if
> I do have an ability that can be used to augment
> something, I rarely think to do so.
> the fact that constantly being told by other players
> 'you could augment
> that with X, you know', would rapidly get
> irritating, and spoil my enjoyment of the game!
>
> In HeroQuest, its a lot easier for a good GM to get
> around problems like this....
Trying to think how I handle it as a GM: I think I'm looking at how many augments people are putting in, and how interested they are in them, and trying to keep things balanced.
I've made it clear to the group that adding an augment list in order to get "good numbers" is a complete waste of time, because I'll make the opposition use the same level of augmentation as they are. If the player lists "brave, tough, strong" etc on every contest, I just add the same number of boring generic augments to everyone. If they add in +3,+3,+1, etc, for equipment, I'll do the same for the opposition.
OTOH if they go through and justify every ability, preferably with IC text, then clearly they're interested in them, so I'll go through a similar process with the opposition, to a similar depth. Which can involve some work if I haven't developed the NPC to that level of depth in advance, but this is PBeM, I've got the time. Yes, this can mean my NPCs get more depth than Ashley's PCs, but why not?
One player wanting to augment more than another isn't a problem unless they're competing against each other. If they're both against the same opponent life gets more tricky, but I'll do the balancing for them.
We do have other players (and me) saying "er, you had remembered that you're got a Feat that covers that situation perfectly, hadn't you?", and things like that. Reminders of things that the character would know but the player may have forgotten, and might regret missing the opportunity to play with.
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