>Replying to whole bunch of things from several emails, in no
particular order:
>1. Intimidation/Mugging contest. I suppose it's an issue of different
play culture, but definitely not something I'd ask for. If the footpad
says: "Wait a second, I have my weapon drawn, I'm big and >intimidating,
and you just charge me? WTF?" -- sure, do an
Intimidation/Assess-Your-Opponent or whatever contest, and _inform_
Bruno's player on the basis of that. ("Seems risky to attack him!" or
>"Feh, kids these days...") In my game Bruno's player he still gets to
choose what he does -- always. System removing choise from players is
never cool in my books. Sometimes I'm willing to allow for >supernatural
powers that do that, but I'd rather not do even that. Eg. Greg Stolze's
comments on this in UA and Reign are worth thinking about.
HQ2 has a specific section about the PC double standard on manipulation skills. I've often found that for Players who have a serious issue with this (and like to throw fits about it) one solution is to have the contest result in penalties only. i.e. - If the intimidation roll is successful, then Bruno will take a minus on his roll as a consequence of being intimidated. He can still choose to attack, though.
>1b. Coolness. Integrity always trumps coolness. You can be uncool a
million times, and retain the capasity to be cool without any problems.
If you lose integrity it's a lot harder to regain.
I think you're going to have to define this for me. Character integrity? As in truth to the character concept? I'm not sure that is much difference from what most of us are thinking of when we cite "coolness" in this case. (I could be very wrong.)
>2. Zooming out. Yeah, sometimes it helps to make the system smooth.
It's a feature not to have to zoom in, but I consider the occasional
apparent requirement to zoom out a bug. I prefer to resort to Fiat in
>those cases if nothing helps. However, for the most part it's easy to
work with micro-goals, and resolve on basis of those. Carryover requires
some care, though, as noted.
Micro-goals?
I find if I need to be at the level of zooming in, I almost always go to
an Extended contest. Mind you, I actually don't think of this as
"zooming out" very often. For instance, this could be a mugging roll, or
it could be an attack vs escape - which doesn't strike me as "zooming
out" much at all.
>3. No Repeat Attempts. I think I see what I think about this in a
better light now. My interpretation of the rule means that for the loser
the first result stands: try again, and the same happens. Not "you can't
>try agsin" -- which would be silly, and goes against the grain of
allowing players all the choises I possibly can. If they _want_ their
character to keep trying, sure -- and getting hurt in the process.
Interesting. I view (and I think HQ2 specifically mentions this) "No Repeat Attempts" as "the roll encompasses all the attempts to accomplish this". In other words, the roll covers all Bruno's attempts to chop Adam's head off. If you view it as a roll to cover the success of a single swing, then the No Repeat rule seems really weird.
>3b. I think I will actually allow retries for the winner from now on:
they might lose this time, in which case they will keep losing -- so a
retry is a gamble. You might get a better result, or you might lose what
>you've gained -- which is fine with me.
I'm not sure what you're going for here. How is this not just a re-roll? oh, I see, if you win you can improve the result, but the first time you lose you have to stop? I guess this is sort of like the logic behind a parting shot in an extended contest.
>4. Implicit Stakes. Word! Hear, hear! I find delineating the exact
price of failure and results of success beforehand boring -- assuming
the players understanding of the stakes and their chances of success
>approximates that of their character. ("I jump over the chasm!" Um,
you realize it's a mile deep, so if you fall... "Yeah, I know! I jump
nevertheless.")
I agree here.
>Anyways, again: many many thanks for the comments. This has clarified
my thinking on several points. Maybe not enough to articulate my
thoughts properly, but enough to make me happy. :)
Glad we're helping!
LC
Cheers,
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