Re: Assembling a Tricky Situations List

From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:48:17 -0000

I guess you appreciate that this is not the goal of people on the other side of the fence?

Maybe I can explain the story view of HQ on ratings. Let's say I am building a James Bond style game with HQ. Now one of the abilities in my Secret Agent keyword is soave. Under the measure system I might include in my supplement the 'soave table' that tells us what each soave rating means:

  1. Dress for Dinner, Use correct knife and fork 5W: Identify fine wine, etiquette 10W: Chemin De Fer, Identify Perfume, Mix martini

Now imagine in play my hero has been captured by the villain and has been dragged from the dungeon to meet Mr. Big. 'I want to impress him so he lets me live', says the player, 'with my cultivation and I say "Ah, a chateau Roschild 68"'. Under the measure model the narrator might look at my sheet and say 'But you're soave is only 17, you can't identify wines'. But I would want to say 'Yes, you recognize the wine instantly, let's see if he is impressed by your knowledge of culture. Roll your 17 vs my Haughty of 5W'. Now unless the player fumbles he would have got the wine right. He is a hero, he acts in a heroic way. What matters is not 'what wine is this' but 'does my soaveness impress the villain so he lets me live'. That is why we talk about conflict not task resolution. The conflict is 'I want to impress him so he keeps me alive', not 'I want to know what wine this is' which is just a task.

The same model extends out to physical quantities. You can be a 50' giant with Large 13 and a 50' giant with large 5W, and can both say 'I want to terrorize the puny villagers by tearing the roofs from their houses so they flee' and both can tear the roof of a house (the task) but the large 5W giant would be much more likely to succeed at driving off the villagers (the conflict). He is better at using his size to advantage.

Under this model we don't roll to accomplish tasks but to resolve conflicts. I don't want a soave table. In fact for my purpose it would stink. Description is a feature of the story, not a product of the ratings.

It might not be how you play, but it is how a segment of people play.

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