I'm mostly in complete agreement, so this reply seems almost not worthwhile.
> I think text would be perfectly fine for verisimilitude. Numbers are ok,
> but as had been discussed ad nauseum in the past, they aren't a fixed
> scale anyway. (Are you faster than a horse? What does Large mean? Can
> you get smaller if you spend HP on Small? Is "In Love with X" 17 proof
> that you don't care about someone as much as if you have "Friend of X"
> 10W? Etc. etc.
I know and have dealt with these problems, but think that the scale exists despite of them.
> OK. I vaguely remember GNS from my Forge days, but what is the "Big Model"?
> And what's GDS (presumably Gamist/Dramatist/Simulationist?)?
http://www.temppeli.org/rpg/process_model/KP2005-article/Process_Model_of_Roleplaying/node12.html
has links to most of them, as well as my analysis of them. The Big
Model has developed further since then, so for that there are newer
sources too distributed across the
net. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Model#References has the
most important and concise ones.
> >Here I was talking of published adventures. Do they not need a
> >baseline that tells to what kind of heroes the adventure can be
> >easily applied to?
>
> And I think Matthew's answer was along the lines of "if the story fits
> your heroes, then it applies".
> I agree a published adventure has an assumed baseline. If I recall
> correctly, none of the ones published for HQ1 ever specified what this
> baseline was.
Indeed, now I realize I was reacting to a side issue. The reason I originally tackled adventure baselines was to try to tease out an acknowledgement that scale still exists and matters. As long as we're on the same page about that I certainly agree that an adventure text itself will let a GM judge its applicability. A mastery range given at the start would merely give the GM a hint about suitability before delving in.
As for Jeff's info about the Sartar book, it seems that what I've been discussing here doesn't affect that so much. A self-contained epic arc needs only be consistent with itself in scale and progression. I've been focusing on how easy it is to glue together adventures of your own from more general background books and stuff taken out of context from scenario books - how easy it is to adapt material into new consistent wholes, in other words.
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