Re: Re: Ditching the difficulty increase rule?

From: Frédéric Cloutier <dreaddomain_at_...>
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 12:41:05 -0500

Reading the exchange below, it sounds like the "difficulty increase" rule is only a meta rule to tell the GM "don't forget to come up with an interesting challenge as they get better. Here is the number you should use and come up with whatever reasoning to justify it".

While I can appreciate the intention and can find the rule an interesting guideline, I sure don't need it to keep my game from becoming dull. I always think about what would make the challenge interesting this time (the tiles came loose since the last time, the bad guys are shooting arrowns at the same time) and then come up with the modifiers and never the other way around (oh, the game tells me I should find enough challenges to come up with that difficulty rating).

So I guess my answer to the OP (Adam?) is ditching the difficulty increase rule will not make your game dull as long as you, as the GM, keep the challenges interesting. Having said that, I haven't seen the rules yet so something might escape my grasp.

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From: "simon_hibbs2" <simon.hibbs_at_...> Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 9:54 AM
To: <HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com> Subject: Re: Ditching the difficulty increase rule?

>
>
> wrote:
>>
>>Why should jumping from one building's roof to another have
>>a resistance of 16 in your first session and the same task
>>with the same character 20 sessions later be at 6w?
>
> Because after 20 sessions of jumping through the same old repetitive hoop
> all the effing time, we just don't care anymore. This is the real rason.
>
> We dress it up by saying that now the character has learned where the god
> footing is and which tiles are loose and how much run-up is needed. All of
> these are perfectly valid reasons why it's not a big chalenege anymore,
> but they are window dressing. We say this because we don't want to be
> bothered the same problem all over again. The in-world explanation follows
> on from the needs of runing a fun game, not vice versa.
>
> Now if the players are being chased by bad guys and come to this ga n the
> rof again and we want to make this a more dramatic situation, perhaps it
> turns out that the roof on the other side has had bulding work done and is
> now 3 feet higher than it was before. However the Narrator made this
> choice to make the game more interesting, not to simulate some arbitrary
> notion of realism.
>
> We can always justify these choices using in-world reasons, and it's
> important that we do so, but the reasosn and the difficulty rating flow on
> from the needs of running an interesting game, not vice versa.
>
>> Have others taken this rule out of their games? What long
>>term effects will this have?
>
> Your game will contain more dull and repetitive challenges, in a static
> world where fewer interesting things happen and more dull things happen.
>
> Simon Hibbs