I've just come back from a relatively awful night of bowling, and it got me thinking. Have you ever done something, whether consistently or on-and-off, for years, and find yourself getting no better, or even slipping backwards? Found your practice - far from improving your skills - doing nothing but working in bad habits and perennial frustrations to the point where the more you work at it the worse you get, with no real idea why? I don't know if this relates at all to Multiverser, where the practice rules don't allow for anything but improvement or stagnation, but at least insofar as we as gamers try to simulate reality, it got me thinking.
Practice and getting worse?
(4 posts) (4 voices)-
JohnA1nut
MemberYou get older, your reflexes slow down, you're not as strong as you used to be. Your gaming character doesn't have that problem. I know what you mean about not improving with practice. My brother is easily a 3@3 throwing darts. I of course would throw darts with him. Most of the time, I was lucky to hit the board at all. My brother gave me a single tip in my throwing style and I instantly went from barely able to hit the board to probably a 1@5.
(Doing Therapy)
Fri Mar 26 2010 4:36 am # -
My brother gave me a single tip in my throwing style and I instantly went from barely able to hit the board to probably a 1@5.
In the rules as written, this can happen in a situation where a character is trying on his to learn a skill he doesn't have and continually failing, and then a skilled person gives him instruction. A high roll made successful by his new-found example, instructor, and teaching bonuses can launch him from no skill at all straight to 1@3. Graham Bryden learned to ride a horse that way in Prisoner of Zenda.
O'Sevens - as gamers, we do try to simulate reality, but we also pursue some conflicting goals. In Multiverser, this departure from reality is a deliberate sacrifice. I as referee have enough trouble just keeping track of which skills you have and how good you've gotten; I certainly don't want to be asked to track their atrophy.
If I feel like it, I can slap a negative sit-mod on a skill you haven't used in a while, to simulate you being "rusty." I'd probably remove it the first time you succeeded. Alternatively (and this is the default), I could just wait to see how the skill roll goes: if you failed, you must have been rusty.
Fri Mar 26 2010 5:01 am # -
What he said.
--M. J. Young
Fri Mar 26 2010 5:43 am #
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