I was just thinking about practicing, from the Verser's point of view. You use a skill, let's say TK pulse on practice mode. You could use it in practice mode for years, and never botch. From the verser's point of view, he's really good at TK pulse. Then all of a sudden, he tries to use the TK pulse for something important, and botches with it. How do you suppose someone like The Architect would explain this to the verser, from the verser's point of view? I could just imagine my character explaining this to The Architect. (I hate to use this example, but it's the only one I can think of) "Well Architect, I used TK pulse for months in my first world, then I got arrested by some jerkoff MP at Pearl Harbor, and knocked him out with it. What the hell happened there?" I'm trying to imagine that from the point of view of the character. How would that be explained by an elder verser? Any thoughts?
Practicing
(21 posts) (5 voices)-
Keep in mind that while you never botch in practice (usually - MJ mentioned some exceptions, at one time), you do fail. If you're not very good, you fail a lot. You know you can screw it up. It's just that this time, when it was really important, you screwed up badly.
Maybe you froze under pressure. It happens - especially if you've been practicing for years, but never had to use the skill in a crisis. Maybe you got over confident, and in your eagerness to prove that you can do this even when the stakes are high, you overlooked something that you would never have missed in practice. However it happened, I think your reaction would be more along the lines of "that's just my luck," or, "isn't that always the way?" than "how was that possible?"
(Of course, you might very well be asking yourself how you could possibly have screwed that up, but at that point you're sort of in denial. I've done that before.)
If you've ever been involved in a school play or anything similar, I think you'll know what I'm talking about. When the chips are down, no amount of practice can stop Murphy if he decides to come calling.
Wed Nov 21 2007 7:27 am # -
I might. It depends on how far I go with linguistics once I graduate with my bachelors. My little brother's already planning to teach history; we'll see how that goes.
Thank you.
Should I tag this thread with something? It seems similar to the 3@10 thread where MJ and Graham and I think Graeme and I (and maybe Eric? and John II, of course) all got into a discussion about skill ability levels, and what it takes to go up in level and what that means, with typing as an example. What would call that sort of thread? "Explanations?"
Wed Nov 21 2007 7:44 am # -
Turns out I already had a "mechanics" tag on "3@10", and I suppose that'll work well enough. I slapped it on this one. Anyone can add tags, so if anyone thinks something else would work better, just go ahead and tag it (and, if you think it makes the "mechanics" tag on this one unnecessary, just tell me so I can take it off).
Wed Nov 21 2007 7:59 am # -
johnosevens
MemberWhat I want to know is, if Versers never actually die, what prevents me from simply declaring "I spend the next 1277-and-a-half days practicing Force Lightning," and after a brief training montage (as no referee is cruel enough to make one roleplay 1277 and a half days of nothing but training) having Force Lightning at 3@10? Is there a failsafe for this in the rules, or are players just on their honor not to jerk the system like that?
Wed Nov 21 2007 5:02 pm # -
JohnA1nut
MemberI tried to do exactly what you're talking about in my last world. I had 3 years in which I was going to be pretty much idle, so I intended to use that time to train in boxing and work out. What I wanted was to instantly gain 3 years worth of body bonuses. The referee has to agree to it, and you do a lot of talking about it, but yeah, things like that can be done.
Wed Nov 21 2007 6:00 pm # -
Tadeusz
MemberYour naivete about what a GM could do is refreshing. Let's modify that--No GM not being silly horrible, or botching on their GM roll, would do that. I've seen some really horrible GM moves. Had to go through therapy to recover. :)
If someone tried that, I'd probably have some things happening in their life that might get them to do other things, I'd also probably require that they seek out teachers or do training that was hazardous (not sure thats necessary by the rules--But the Ultimate Rule is: Was the Game Fun? You can break other rules to fulfill that rule.), and eventually I'd start requiring Willpower rolls for a while because Humans Don't Do That (and eventually, I'd stop, and let the PC have it because humans do develop habits.)
Basically, if the player was determined, and ready to jump a lot of hurdles, then yes.
At which point, if you're evil, and chortle, chortle, really really mean, you send them to a world where Force Lightning doesn't work.
Wed Nov 21 2007 7:54 pm # -
JohnA1nut
MemberTad, that's something you and I won't agree on. To me, skipping ahead and gaining huge bonuses WOULD be fun. Then, once you have the bonuses, see what the player wants to try to do. In my case, I was training in boxing with a teacher, and I had 3 guys to spot me doing weight training and whatnot. After I was in good shape, I was going to try to escape from them. I would need the skill bonuses to try to make a good escape though. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you wouldn't find that fun, and I'll laugh in your face.
Wed Nov 21 2007 8:34 pm # -
"Well, John--" the teacher scrunched his face a bit. "Consider this. You want to get good at falling without being hurt. So in some grassy area you can control, you build this contraption, and clear the ground below, and make sure conditions are ideal. Your contraption has a rope ladder to a platform supported by a couple of pilings. You set it at five feet, and step off, and hit the ground in a shock-absorbing roll. You do this a dozen times, and then raise the platform to six feet, seven feet, ten feet--within a couple months, you're hopping off a platform twenty feet in the air and managing to land unhurt every time. You've gotten the wind knocked out of you once or twice, but in the main, it's been good.
"Now you're in some unfamiliar city, and you're racing across flat rooves of row homes in darkness, being pursued by something that might be a werewolf. You reach the end, and, oops, you trip. You're headed for the pavement. It's not as far as you usually fall--but everything is against you here. The ground has not been prepared; you don't know the exact height; you didn't set up the jump; you're not psychologically ready. You have maybe seconds--maybe seconds--to get yourself in position to land right.
"If you do it, wow, that's where all that practice paid off. If you don't do it, well, that doesn't mean you don't know how to do it--it only means that you didn't respond quickly enough, or you couldn't predict the conditions of the landing area, or something went wrong.
"Now, that's an extreme example, but it's always the same thing, really. When you're practicing, you're relaxed, you're setting up your shots, as it were, if you're interrupted you just don't go through with it--you only do it if everything is right. When you're in the field, when you do it for real, conditions are never perfect, and you have to commit without time to prepare. So of course it's going to go badly wrong sometimes--it's not going to be what you expect, and you're not going to have time to change that."
I think that's what he would say.
--M. J. Young
Thu Nov 22 2007 1:05 am # -
JohnA1nut
MemberHere's one regarding the practice that I don't quite get. In my first world, I was trying to levitate something to do an experiment. It would have been practice conditions. No one around but me. Ideal circumstances, nothing hinging on it except to see what would happen when I levitated it. It was probably better circumstances than most practice settings. Why then do you roll for it? Why not just say "You try to levitate it a few times, and finally get it into the air." Rolling makes it possible to botch, which doesn't happen during practice. This would be practice conditions, so why not just say it's practice? I think we went through 2 or 3 days of play before I finally got the *BLEEPING* thing into the air. That seems like a waste, when, as I said, it would be practice conditions. Why not just do like I said "You try to levitate it twice, and on the third time, you make it."
Thu Nov 22 2007 1:43 pm # -
Ah, but by definition you were trying to do something with the skill you'd never done before, in order to see what would happen.
If you succeeded, that would be a new use; therefore whether you succeed matters; therefore, whether you botch matters.
Besides, "to see what happens" means that you don't know how it will work, and thus in one sense you do not know whether it will work: you do not know whether what you expect will happen is what will happen.
Experiments are skill use, not practice.
Does that make sense?
--M. J. Young
Thu Nov 22 2007 8:39 pm # -
johnosevens
MemberMakes sense to me - kinda like my failed attempt to cast a simple D&D-style "Light" spell at Ubercon.
As for training... that's why you don't train in ideal, contrived conditions. That's one thing I learned from reading up on Krav Maga - you don't train in ideal conditions except for the basics. Once you have the basics down, you train in increasingly difficult, strenuous, and disadvantageous conditions so that when it's the real thing, it's no different for you than practice. They even say you should go to train in places where it is possible that you will be attacked and need to use your skills to defend yourself.
Fri Nov 23 2007 2:29 am # -
Yes, and since you mentioned that example, you also don't know whether the jeep hit a bump at that moment, throwing off your timing and messing up the outcome. If you were practicing by bumping paperclips around, who cares if you messed up your timing? Maybe you knocked over the table, but probably it doesn't matter.
--M. J. Young
Sun Nov 25 2007 10:19 pm #
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