Re: Digest Number 571

From: Kmnellist_at_...
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 09:24:19 EDT


In a message dated 09/06/01 09:50:36, you write:

<< IMO the best bit of advice in the book was to learn to say yes more.  GMs have inherited a role of policing ther players, but HW does not  really work that way, and for the better.
>>

I tend to agree here, although it can and has led to minor problems in my game. This is (IMO) more than compensated for the extra ideas that come out of it.. ie ideas that
I (as narrator) had not or would not of thought of.

Personally, I would allow "stop time" as an ability, maybe modified to "slow time" to avoid it sounding like a measure of machine performance (I'm a production controller in a factory so "stop time" is always depressing to me) and certainly allow "change reality" using the guideline in the HW book, p173, and make changing reality as difficult as becoming insubstantial, ie +80, with additional improv modifiers. Of course, one could argue that any action that anyone takes effectively alters reality, so the ability could not really be less specific and therefore less applicable. "slow time" is really only any use to you if you can slow or stop the rest of the world while you carry on doing whatever you wanted to do, it could really be viewed as either a teleport ability (ie you stop time, move, then start time again being in a different loation) in which case see p173 again, or as a "fast" ability with the unfortunate side effect of ageing faster while being used. I guess it might be handy if you were trying to save someone with a limited amount of time...you could slow their relative rate of dying, but really, not a particularly useful ability.

If the player chose it as their 5W ability I would want to know how and where they got it from, although in my game, set in the second age, slowing time and other atrocities against the cosmos are the everyday feats of those Godlearners of the Middle Sea Empire. I do not think it would be appropriate in a Sartarite Rebel camp, or other primitve backwater.

Keith Nellist.

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