Well, you're right, I really don't think I could drop my wife....Look me in the eye and tell me that you could just drop the single most confusing thing you've ever dealt with in your entire life. I will then look you in the eye and call you a boldfaced liar.
Sorry, it just seemed the best joke I've been able to make in a while....
--M. J. Young
In order to drop her, you'd have to pick her up first, and you didn't look that strong when I met you.....
Sorry, that too is the best joke I can make.
Two Posts
As Scott would say, I'm just using the most salient example to explore confusion with the rules.
That said, "Repeatedly TK pulsing the back of his head, saying not a word."
Why would the MP get mad about that? Adam seemed to think that the TK pulse had a point of impact. If what it's doing is changing the gravity on the object being affected, then the MP would feel momentarily lightheaded and his head would move forward. It would be a sensation unlike anything he had ever felt before, and he would have no reason to suspect that I was the cause of it. Even if he did, he would have no way of knowing what, if anything, I was doing. Don't you ever feel lightheaded suddenly for no reason? Why would the MP think that I was the cause of that?
because he believed you were an Oriental spy, and there have always been rumors of martial artists able to use moves that do not appear to be physically touching an opponent due to being so incredibly fast. He thought you were smacking him really fast, but lightly, just to annoy him. In other words, he thought you were being a jackass on purpose. What he didn't think of was that if you could do that, he never stood a chance of arresting you, so by his logic, had it been fully thought through, it would be impossible, according to the rules he believes are true. That was my take on the matter.
No, your take is incorrect. The correct thing there is that Adam didn't know diddly about the true nature of how a TK pulse works. It seems to be a common misconception that a TK pulse has a point of impact. Myself and a few others on this board believed that a TK pulse was some manner of ball that you threw out which impacted the target. It's actually an instant's worth of simple TK. Telekinesis which lasts for a moment in time. Had Adam REALLY known what he was doing, he wouldn't have said that it "bopped him right between the eyes" he would have said "gravity shifts and his head rocks gently" or something. Not knocking Adam's style, or lack thereof, as I said, it seems to be a very common misconception about how that particular skill works.
Actually, I had it envisioned as more of a pulling in a direction at every point in and on the object simultaneously, so I know what I meant. That particular person in that setting was already suspicious of you, and when something is moving his head on it's own, he would have thought you were doing it. It may be gentle, but it still is something. The regularity of it is what gave it away, however.
I cannot picture that scenario going well for the verser, no matter how hard I try. Getting arrested for trespassing on a military base can't be a good way to start. Since he started me 2 days prior to the attack, it's fairly obvious I wasn't going to be questioned for an hour and then be released. That would kind of defeat the entire purpose of the story. Has anyone played that world besides me? I want to know how that usually goes.
And I'm not saying I should have been allowed to leave with no resistance, I'm saying I should have been told where I was BEFORE I met resistance. Tell me where I am, see how I react, THEN send the MP after me, and see how I react to that. I really and truly think you would gain a lot more information about the player that way.
Two Posts
Ya know MJ, you keep saying "You weren't willing to pay a price to stay uninvolved" like it's some kind of horrible thing. Given the same situation, and the same knowledge that I had, I don't think very many people COULD stay uninvolved. Laying in a hospital bed for 24 hours waiting to get bombed to smithereens only to verse out in need of the very medical care that they are refusing to protect by getting involved (or so they would be thinking) If they could do it, it would be the single longest 24 hours of their existence and they would be sweating bullets the whole time.
The last part is difficult to answer, because very few of my players have a non-involvement policy. My own characters both recite with some frequency a quote from one of their heroes, The Doctor, who said, "Interfere? Of course we should interfere. Always do what you're best at, that's what I say." Even Dan O'Malley, most famed for non-interference, would at the last minute pull a rabbit out of a hat and solve the world's problem with a single involved action. His non-involvement was that of an interested observer, willing to watch what the world was doing to itself until he came to a place where he thought he could make a real difference with very little effort. If that didn't happen, he just watched.
--M. J. Young
MJ, I think you are absolutely 100% wrong about me. I don't have a non-involvement philosophy. If I did, I would have let the demons take over Dancing Princess. I don't have a self-serving philosophy either. If I did, likewise, I would have let the demons take over Dancing Princess. It's not even a PLR philosophy. The path of least resistance in that case would be again, doing nothing. I think my philosophy is fighting for a cause I believe in. A task which you have, as of yet, not accomplished. Please note, the first thing I did when I found out about the demons was attempt to augment my weaponry and then go after them. You have to find a cause for which I believe in enough to fight. Demons taking over the world is a cause worth fighting for. Sleepwalking princesses? Big deal. Send them to a doctor, have the doctor give them some ambien. Problem solved. (At least that was my line of thinking) Once I found out about demons..... It was time to kick some ass.
I don't love to fight, but I will fight for what I love.
Multiple Posts
There was a thread about botches, and why can't they be safe? I was just thinking, that if I were refereeing someone, I would have a list of 1 potentially hazardous botch, and the rest of them funny, or at least harmless, but only in certain situations.
For example, the jeep crash. I recall MJ suggested "Melt steering wheel" The MP could still stop the jeep, the radio would still work, and perhaps the MP would injure his hands enough in the molten steering wheel to offer a chance for the verser to escape. If I were feeling particularly sadistic, perhaps "Fuse MP's hands to steering wheel." If nothing else, the verser would have some explaining to do, and they would either be on foot, and/or the radio would be used. It's funny, mostly harmless, and doesn't derail the story.
The hazardous botches would come during combat situations, or otherwise stressful situations. Perhaps the verser's mood affects the botches. In a cocky, playful situation, such as hassling the MP, the botches would be cocky and playful. In a stressful combat situation, the botches would be reflective of that, and thus, be more hazardous. In a training situation, botches would be potentially harmful. However, as in a case like mine, where the referee has something in mind for the story, they would be mostly not so. Just enough to let the versers know what they're messing with.
It was just a thought. I'm trying to get an idea for my refereeing style.
(Doing Therapy)
Just bear in mind that the more important the outcome is to the verser, the more the botches will be devastating. If you botch while trying to jump a fence, that's one thing; If you botch trying to jump a gorge, that is quite another. The point is, botches are already tailored individually to the situation, and the one thing that all botches share is that they are disastrous in the context of the situation. For example, in the MP scenario, had the MP botched on his driving check he may have gotten tangled up or something, and it would be bad for him, but only a little for you. However, were you to botch while TK pulsing him, the result must be bad for you, so 'the MP's hands fusing to the steering wheel' is unfortunate for him, but not disastrous to you. Therefore, it is unlikely (but possible by the referee's discretion) for that outcome. It is far more likely to, say, accidentally use a different TK skill, maybe even a force generative (botches ignore the bias rules if I remember aright), on the MP, or get brain burn or a shockwave.
Unless I am misunderstanding something somewhere, which would be understandable considering I don't have the book yet.
I'm just popping in to point out that in your jumping the gorge example, the botch would have to be worse than ordinary failure (which I presume would be falling into the gorge after the fashion of Wile E. Coyote).
Why would the botch have to worse? Failing the jump over the gorge, you would fall in like the coyote. Botching on the jump would be you tripped before you made the jump. At least that sounds like how a botched jump would result. Failing to complete the jump and messing up making the jump, the mess up would mean you would trip and roll down the side of the hill. That sounds like it would be less dangerous.
Tripping before you make the jump is an especially bad failure. Bad failure means you failed badly; a botch does not mean that you failed badly, only that your attempt produced disastrous consequences. One botch possibility is that you leapt most of the way across the gorge, but fell short and hit your head on a rock protruding from the other side (roll on the Bod Botch Injury Table). Another would be that you twisted your ankle (or broke your leg) in the attempt, not falling into the gorge but removing your ability to make another try.
See, I would want the story that I intended to be told to be told. I wouldn't want the verser to get banged up in a jeep crash before they even get there. What's the fun in that, unless you're a really sadistic referee? The botches would be more dangerous during dangerous situations. Botching using your P10@1 force field in a training montage would mean that you messed up just badly enough to let you know what was up. Botching during a combat situation would get you killed. That just seems more appropriate to me.
It's interesting to me that you're taking the opposite approach from what is suggested in the book. (I really mean that; I'm interested.) The general policy is that combat botches are less lethal, usually limited to loss of the attack form - jammed gun, dropped sword, pulled muscle, things like that - while botches out of combat are more volatile.
I think the reasoning behind that approach is mostly out-of-game. If botches in combat were especially dangerous, then combat would be (ironically) too lethal; characters would die in fights too often, even in those fights where they clearly have the upper hand. It would become less about skill in combat and more about which side loses the botch lottery first.
In much the same way, if botches outside of combat are too safe, the referee might never be able to kill some characters off in some worlds. At the very least, dangerous botches are a useful tool for moving characters out of worlds where the player has become bored. Bored players experiment, so it's useful to have experiments be dangerous.
Anyway, that's my retelling of the Standard Answer for why botches are the opposite of the way you suggest. I'm interested in any further support you might have for your own position.
Well, I was thinking combat botches in psionics and magic should be more lethal. You're stressed, you're not thinking quite as clearly as you would be under normal circumstances. You don't botch during practice, so why would training be different? You're (mostly) calm and relaxed. I think botches, especially psionic botches, would reflect your mood. Knocking the MP around. The player is feeling cocky. The botches should reflect a cocky attitude. In a combat situation, the player is feeling dangerous, threatened, scared, etc. The botches should reflect that. And how in the world can combat be TOO dangerous? That seems like an oxymoron.
Two Posts
Bored players experiment, true. However, if the player is bored, the referee isn't doing his job very well. If the player is in a good mood, calm, relaxed, and just messing with something, why would the botches be hazardous? (Just to be clear, I'm speaking strictly of psionic and magic botches here) I think the botches in a training montage would be less lethal. Not UNlethal, just less lethal. Like getting hurt just enough to let you know that you're messing with some dangerous stuff. Like getting a proverbial bloody nose from your father to show you who the boss is.
Combat is dangerous. Why would the botches not be? To me, the idea you suggest seems like a contradiction. Of course, I'm the least experienced player here, so I could be completely off base.
Too dangerous for enjoyable play. If every fight is over within a few rounds - not because one side or the other was clearly superior, but because the first botch rolled by either side ends the fight - that's a system of combat too arbitrary to be fun. Combats are often decided by botches even when the botch is as simple as a pulled muscle or a dropped sword. If combat botches were made more dangerous, you risk every combat being decided by the botches that occur during it.
I'm not sure I understand your point about training. What's the difference between practice and training? If you're training, you don't botch. If you're experimenting - trying to invent a skill you don't already have, or using a skill you know in a way you've never used it before - that's an entirely different situation.
I'm not sure I understand your point about training. What's the difference between practice and training? If you're training, you don't botch. If you're experimenting - trying to invent a skill you don't already have, or using a skill you know in a way you've never used it before - that's an entirely different situation.
That IS what I mean. You're experimenting, learning new skills, TRAINING yourself for what awaits you in the future.
I totally see your point about combat botches, but I really just think that your mood would reflect how the botch went. If you're angry, frightened, or wanting to kill someone, you've got a negative aura around you. Hence, negative botches.
Do you at least understand my thinking here?
However, if the player is bored, the referee isn't doing his job very well.
That's not always true. Besides, even if you're right, that still supports dangerous botches out-of-combat: they give the referee an opportunity to do better, starting with moving the character to another world which will hold his interest better (based on what the referee has learned about the player from this experience).
Combat is dangerous. Why would the botches not be? To me, the idea you suggest seems like a contradiction. Of course, I'm the least experienced player here, so I could be completely off base.
In character, in game, that sounds like a good reason to make combat botches just as lethal as out-of-combat botches. Like I said, though, the reasoning behind making combat botches less flashily dangerous is based on out of game, out of character thinking.
It goes like this: you're already in combat. You're already in danger, and that danger increases every time you fail a roll instead of succeeding. A botch in combat represents more danger to the character than an ordinary botch because it's in combat. To balance things out, the botches themselves are made less severe; that way, a botch in combat is, roughly, just as dangerous as an ordinary botch.
We're cross posting like crazy, but I think I'm following along.
I'm not sure I understand your point about training. What's the difference between practice and training? If you're training, you don't botch. If you're experimenting - trying to invent a skill you don't already have, or using a skill you know in a way you've never used it before - that's an entirely different situation.That IS what I mean. You're experimenting, learning new skills, TRAINING yourself for what awaits you in the future.
Ah, so I was just confused by your wording. Yeah, I disagree with you completely. Your purpose in these cases is the same as when practicing, in a loose sense - you're preparing for the future - but what you're actually doing is vastly different. In practice, you're sharpening skills you already have by repetitively going through familiar motions. In experimentation (or "training," in your words), you are attempting do accomplish a result when you quite literally don't know what you're doing. It's the difference between you (John) going to the firing range and a caveman picking up a rifle and wondering what the little lever does.
Well, I'm thinking in character. You're thinking out of character. Your point makes sense in an out of character perspective, does mine make sense in an in character perspective?
I just think the danger of the botches would increase to the danger of the situation. Perhaps the botches would get so dangerous that they would end they fight by killing EVERYONE. Enemies included. War can bring about peace. If everyone is dead, it's pretty flipping peaceful.
Third post.
Do you at least understand my thinking here?
Yes, I do. For right now, I'm just explaining my side. Your reasons are of a different kind than my reasons. You're explaining how the rules should be based on how you think the reality should be, and I'm explaining how the reality should behave based on how I think the rules should be. In the end, I suspect it comes down to which is more important to the referee.
MJ might not agree with me on that (I dunno), but I'm pretty sure we agree that the game balance wins the fight in this case - at least, in the games we run, it does. You're free to run games how you like.
Edit: I cross-posted, but I think this post answers your most recent one.
Edit 2: Although I think my point about experimenting/"training", above, works both in-game and out-of-game.
Scott, I just went and took a shower for the sole purpose of letting you catch up to my postings. I hope you're caught up now, although you may have missed one up above. That's why I always check the whole thread until I'm back to my last post, just to be sure no one cross-posted with me.
As you would say, I'm just using the most salient example. Given the situation, "Knock out driver" was probably the single most appropriate botch that could have been used. However, it ALSO completely derailed the story, changed everything, and no one (besides maybe Adam) had any fun. The entire attack boiled down to one post describing me hearing planes flying overhead. What was the point in that? The only point I can see in it is if Adam was deliberately trying to hurt me and not wanting to tell the story of the attack. I wouldn't want botches to get in the way of the story. I was looking forward to being there during the attack. Yes, I was doing something stupid, but the botches still could have been made safer. "Knock out driver" was appropriate, I'm not disputing that at all, but why not just make it safe, so the story still gets told?
I guess I would make botches safe if they could potentially derail the story. If we were at a safe point in the story where nothing would get derailed, the botches would be more dangerous. If I had something in mind for the future, and the player botched, the botch would be safe so I could tell my story.
Two Posts, hope it's not a cross-post.
Derail the story isn't exactly what I mean. Putting the story's main character in traction right before the best part of the story? What's the fun in that? Appropriate or not, only a really good GE roll would keep that story going in any kind of positive direction. "Knock out driver" would be the botch I'd use if the player were TK pulsing a driver on the way to Sunday School, see what I mean? It's not going to prevent something really awesome from happening.
MJ has said that I am coming to a point in a few weeks where the story is going to accelerate greatly. If I were refereeing a story like that, all botches would be relatively safe, until we got to that point. Does that make more sense?
Putting the player in traction right before the attack? Does he not want to tell the story of Pearl Harbor or something? (That probably sounds a lot more insulting than it is intended to be.) I wouldn't have used a botch like that in that situation.
(Doing Therapy)
I was actually in that situation not too long ago in Graham's game. (Well, okay, I guess it was a year or two ago; I'm not checking.) He was in Men of Psience, slowly building up his psionic skills and having a fine old time, and I was marking off days on the calendar until the special ops forces of the nation across the Atlantic moved in to capture him and bring him back to their home nation's psientists for study. (They were researching human teleportation, which was just out of reach of the world bias, and since that's how it appeared Graham had arrived on Earth . . . )
Graham, though, eventually started going out into the woods to experiment. Three times, he botched. The first was injurious, the second inconvenient, and the third was - just barely - fatal. I could have nudged the damage down by a single intensity, and he would have survived to experience my carefully planned scenario.
It was a tough decision, but I let him die.
I do see your point. Different referees will make different decisions about this sort of thing.
I could have nudged the damage down by a single intensity, and he would have survived to experience my carefully planned scenario.
I don't know the rules well enough to say with any modicum of certainty, but this could be considered borderline cheating by some people. Maybe that's completely within referee's prerogative, I wouldn't know, but I'm sure you understand what I mean. I'm saying, that if it were a botch capable of killing the player, it would be the worst botch on a list of 10. Does that make sense?
(Doing Therapy)
Two Posts
As I've said several times, I'm trying to get a feel for my refereeing style. I think I'm going to be the exact polar opposite of Adam by default. Just to ruin his day.
(Doing Therapy)
Multiple Posts
In Dancing Princess, 9 out of 10 botches would be non-harmful, until the demons came into the story in some way or another. The player wouldn't die by a botch until the demons were dead. If the demons kill the player because the player botched, that's different, but it wouldn't be a botch that killed them.
I'd let the story be told.
After the demons were dead, botches would be potentially fatal. That is, until something else came into the story, then botches would go back to being harmless.
(Doing Therapy)
I don't know the rules well enough to say with any modicum of certainty, but this could be considered borderline cheating by some people. Maybe that's completely within referee's prerogative, I wouldn't know, but I'm sure you understand what I mean.
Well, it's kind of both. It's completely within the referee's prerogative, but you don't want to let the players know you're doing it (which includes not doing it very often). I mean, I could also have decided that the damage category of the shockwave was a maximum of Dangerous, which would mean that it couldn't have killed him, and that doesn't seem like cheating. Instead, I went with a GE roll, and I got Lethal, and then I rolled 85, which is exactly enough to deal 17 to a guy with 1@7 DV (e.g., Graham). Going easy on him after the roll or before the roll is still going easy on him, right?
But I do know what you mean, and that's why I didn't do it. I could have, though. On the other hand, I didn't soften the botch to try to keep him alive, either. (It was his third time, it's not like he didn't know better by then.)
I'm saying, that if it were a botch capable of killing the player, it would be the worst botch on a list of 10. Does that make sense?
It does. I think with Graham, that was the only botch that did damage on a list of six, but he managed to roll it twice. Oh, well.
One problem I see with your method is that you may end up inadvertently signaling to your players when The Story is happening and when it isn't. Players are smart, and they will notice if all of their botches produce foul-smelling flowers one week and fiery explosions the next. They will figure out the pattern, and they will have one of two reactions:
1) "Oh, I see what he's doing - that's neat. Now I can be a little more careless when I'm still part of the narrative, but I better shape up once the mission's over. (I'll be able to tell when it's over because my botches will get scarier.)"
2) "That jerk! First he goes soft on me to make sure I follow his plot, and then when it's over he kills me off the first time I try something risky!"
Like I say, it's a stylistic choice. It'll have advantages and disadvantages.
I'm just trying to figure out my style, which is the whole point of the boards. I still can't believe that Adam gave me a botch which put me in traction right before the attack. I would NEVER do that if I were running that world.
I've been told that botches are the number one cause of death for versers. I'd still want the story to be told.
I guess. To each his own. Me, I have a preference for botches which severely inconvenience the player, like mind swap, mind meld, really bad cases of brain burn, paralysis, opposite effect in some cases, etc. I wouldn't want to kill the player very often, and indeed it was my impression that MJ uses a table of at least 6 outcomes, only one or two of which are potentially fatal. Then you have to make additional rolls to determine damage.
Botches are rarely lethal in and of themselves from what I understand, but they can be, like what happened to B Movie Monster World. How many botches did the versers collectively have in that world? How many were shockwaves? How many were shockwaves strong enough to kill the verser? Answer: 2 shockwaves as I recall, one from Oak and 1 that wiped out everything, out of a long list of botches. It was still unlikely in the first place! The odds of that happening were really low!
Point being, more often than not, it's not the botch that kills; it's the result of the botch, the repercussions.
Oak had shock waves, and I had shock waves. What killed us was an explosion.
MJ, I think you are absolutely 100% wrong about me. I don't have a non-involvement philosophy.
Ah, but you talked non-involvement back in B Monster Movie World, and led all the other players and most of the characters to believe that you held such a philosophy. The cracks were starting to show, though, when you fought against Godzilla--but by that time we had already chosen this world for you, so that I could figure out where to send you next; and since I very much needed to lighten my load by moving new players to other referees, and you were the only one for whom I'd made arrangements when Eric surprised me with that botch, I couldn't really cancel the plan.
Scott is right about the limit on combat botches. He overlooks one point: On an ordinary day, there might be as many as ten skill checks if a character is busy. Put him in combat, and there might be that many in the first minute. There are more botches in combat because there are more skill checks in combat. Besides, "lost an attack" can be devastating, particularly if you are up against a well-matched adversary. You not only swung and missed, you put yourself in a position where you can't swing again, and that creates the situation in which the opponent is hitting you repeatedly while you attempt to recover. (Figure if it's one to one on the attacks, and you have the initiative, you botch, he swings, you skip an attack, he swings again, and if he gets the initiative on the next round, he swings a third time before you get to swing.) You don't want to lose an attack after a miss, so that's pretty serious. You only get more serious botches in combat if you're using inherently dangerous weapons--we can all see how a botch with a grenade might mean it's bouncing around at your feet.
This betrays a prejudice. After all, if someone is experimenting with nuclear fusion, you would permit an explosion; and if he's experimenting with an engineered symbiont, you would permit some serious outcome. Why would you think there would not be a serious outcome if the character is, say, experimenting with psionically or magically altering the molecular properties of matter? Even if the character is experimenting with levered wedges--swords, knives, axes--you probably would have no problem with someone losing a hand or disembowling himself on a botch, as long as other possibilities included breaking the weapon, breaking some valuable object with the weapon, or hurting an innocent bystander. That's 3@ technology; why shouldn't 4@ psionics be at least as dangerous?If the player is in a good mood, calm, relaxed, and just messing with something, why would the botches be hazardous? (Just to be clear, I'm speaking strictly of psionic and magic botches here) I think the botches in a training montage would be less lethal.
And as Scott observes, if you're talking about practice, there are no botches; if you're talking about "training" in the sense it is used in-game, that's practice. If you are talking about learning new skills or experimenting with new uses, that's not the same thing.
If we were talking about chemistry, and you were arguing that randomly combining chemicals in a beaker shouldn't have any possibility of dangerous outcomes, should never produce noxious gasses or highly caustic reactions or explosions, you'd be laughed off the boards. You're talking about experimenting, which inherently means that you are doing things you don't know how to do and you don't know what the outcome is apt to be. Botches would be more likely in such a situation, and likely to be more dangerous.
I'll bet Scott will agree with me on this: there is no "story" until you create it. There may be expectations on the part of the referee, but the referee has to roll with the punches--and so does the player.I guess I would make botches safe if they could potentially derail the story.
When I run The Last Starfighter, I drop the character near a trailer park and put the Starfighter video game there, and have someone drop some change in the parking lot so he'll have a couple quarters. I hope he'll play the game, and become the starfighter. I fully expect that if he does, he'll get killed when the Kodan attack the hanger bay--but maybe he'll find a way to avoid that, and continue the story. More problematic, though, is very few players actually will tackle the video game, and very few are good enough to beat it, so I probably won't be able to get my player to be my starfighter.
So I have options. If the player stays nearby, Alex Rogan will play the video game, be tapped as the starfighter, be replaced by the beta unit, and soon there will be Zandozan assassins looking for him--and you'll be in the middle of that. If the player walks away, well, wherever he goes there will be another starfighter game, and possibly another Alex Rogan. I can get that story to happen wherever the player goes and whatever he does. It's just a matter of figuring out what role he will play in the story, and where it will happen.
What you're requesting is called plot immunity, and Multiverser does not ordinarily have it--precisely because we have scriff. Sure, there's an interesting and deadly event lying in the future of this world, if you stay there. If you kill yourself, it doesn't matter whether it happens or not, because you're unlikely ever to find out what happened. If you incapacitate yourself, maybe the event will happen without you and maybe it will wait for you--maybe I'll make that decision myself, and maybe I'll let the dice decide. But if (for example) the station is destroyed with aboard because you were goofing around and put yourself out of commission at the critical moment, I'm not going to lose any sleep over the fact that you thought it was fun to goof off and hurt yourself when I was hoping to set you up for this other event.MJ has said that I am coming to a point in a few weeks where the story is going to accelerate greatly. If I were refereeing a story like that, all botches would be relatively safe, until we got to that point. Does that make more sense?
I suppose in essence we all assumed that you thought it was fun to pester the driver, and that you knew or should have known that pestering a driver can lead to serious consequences, and that you thought it was fun enough that you would not mind the consequences if it went badly. You did not anticipate those consequences (and in fairness to Adam, he could have set it up so that every time you threw a successful TK pulse, the driver had to make a driving skill check to keep control of the car, and on a serious failure (not even necessarily a botch) there would have been an accident). Now you know that if you pester a person operating a vehicle in which you are a passenger, there might be an accident. What's so unexpected about that? In fact, if I had been the referee, I would have thought that causing an accident was the purpose behind the TK pulses. I would never have thought you were simply being petty.
The demons are already in the story before the player character arrives, so this is meaningless.In Dancing Princess, 9 out of 10 botches would be non-harmful, until the demons came into the story in some way or another.
And do the demons get this same courtesy?The player wouldn't die by a botch until the demons were dead.
And how do you adjudicate it? Is it that no botch can do worse than dangerous (up to ten intensities) of damage, because the verser has at least 15? If the verser is down by five, does that mean that suddenly botches cannot do worse than damaging damage? If he's below five, is it now annoying, and if he's on his last intensity he can't be hurt by a botch? Or are you saying that during this time he can't get so much as a scratch from a botch, even if he decides to tinker with explosive charges while trying to set up exploding spear tips?
You don't get that kind of dispensation. You are expected to act in a careful, circumspect manner which minimizes the possibility of botches. Sometimes you will botch, but most botches are not fatal anyway.
I've been told that botches are the number one cause of death for versers. I'd still want the story to be told.
- No, botches are the number one cause of death for some particular versers. Some are nearly always killed in combat, and some have no particular pattern.
- The story was told. The story was, this guy from another universe came into this universe, looked around, did something stupid, and left for yet another universe. You wanted a different story to be told. The story is by definition a collaborative effort by the participants. It would be entirely unfair for the referee to force the player character to stay in that world until he plays the part in some story the referee chose for him.
Similarly with Dancing Princess, you did not go for the bait on the secret plaguing the princesses. It was not until you asked God why you were there and He told you that you went with "my story"--but I was content to let you have your story, living as a village blacksmith until the demons disguised as princes took over the kingdom and started impressing able-bodied men into service as part of their military plan to conquer the rest of the world. You would have had that opportunity to play that story had you stayed on the path you had chosen. That's not something to which I would have objected. You would have missed out on the cloak and the gold and silver and gems, and the royal family would have been killed, and if you decided then to oppose the demons you would have had to fight the royal armies of the nation to get to them, but you get to write your own story.
I have no problem with a story that says, "Versed into Pearl Harbor, killed by MP on beach immediately upon arrival." I have no problem with a story that says, "playing around while under arrest managed to injure self severely, and while hospitalized was killed in Japanese air attack."
The point is, you get to write your own story, botches and all. You can't possibly say that the botches shouldn't be severe before "the story" begins, because the story is happening all the time.
So you botch, and the severity is random. Maybe it will kill you; maybe it will kill someone else; maybe it will be nothing of consequence.
--M. J. Young
I totally see your point, and I'm not arguing with you at all. I guess maybe it sounds different in my head than it does on the board.
Something else I was thinking about, if the magic bias was high enough, the player botches and is about to die. Then, suddenly, "God" comes out and says "I'll let you live, if you promise to defeat My enemies" (IE the Dancing Princess demons) That sounds really funny to me, so I hope it sounds likewise to you.
I'm not arguing anything at all. I just think that, putting the player in traction right before the best part (and entire point) of the story was a jerk thing to do. Yes, I was being stupid, but stupidity is something forgivable. It was just something I was thinking about, that's all.
Two Posts
Just to be completely clear, I am NO LONGER arguing anything about the crash. In terms of what I've learned, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. I guess I would want to have fun more than hurt players.
A botch I was thinking about "Make MP's hair grow" so when he picks me up, he's got the military cut, when we get to the base, he's Goldilocks. Appropriate, funny, doesn't stop the point of the story, and everyone has a good time.
Adam educated me with that crash. I guess my objective as a referee would be to have fun.
EDIT: And yes MJ, I know this is completely in contradiction to that email I sent you. However, that's the difference between real-life and gaming.
Multiple posts, and it's the last until a reply. (I try to limit myself to three in a row, unless it's been at least a day or two)
I just realized. All of the botches I suggest would have been to humiliate and/or harm the MP. Most of them would have been pretty harmless to the player. (The dice might decide that the MP is mean to the player, but the botches wouldn't be)
I just thought that was really funny when I realized it, for a variety of reasons which I'm sure are well known to all of you.
(Doing Therapy)
Yeah, yeah, I said I wouldn't post anymore, but this is significant, I think.
MJ, I DID get involved in Dancing Princess. Just not with the story you intended. I met Mr. Smith's wife and daughters. They taught me to knit. One of them wanted to marry me.... I taught his apprentice William how to box. (If he turns into the town bully, I'm gonna go back there and beat him senseless.....) I DID get involved, just not with your version of it.
Put the main story directly related to the characters I meet, and if it's a story I find interesting to get involved in, I will. I guess it's like Osevens said "Give him a plot hook the size of a dump truck, that's on fire, and made of explodium." If it directly involves my friends, that's a good plot hook for me.
(Doing Therapy)