Invitation to help create a botch list for John A1nut Cross

In his game thread, page 12 of John Cross in TerraTerrawhatever, he was attempting once again to teach himself to snap instantly from hands raised to boxing readiness, as a steal initiative surprise skill.

He botched.

Last time he botched, he argued that he should not have been able to knock himself unconscious doing this.

This time, I am inviting everyone, including him, to give me botch results, from which a list will be compiled.

Understand what he is trying to do: he is attempting to hold his hands above his head in a surrender position, and then abruptly go directly to fighting position without any warning to the opponent. Somehow in attempting to do this, he has botched. Maybe he hurt himself; maybe he broke something; maybe he--well, let me know.

Thanks.

--M. J. Young

Elbowing myself in the gut would probably be one.

Perhaps Lauren was a participant, and I accidentally hit her?

Does the botch have to be that I did something to myself? Could it be that someone sees me, and recognizes boxing as an illegal activity?

(For myself, I really like the last. I've already gotten a warning about looking up boxing due to a previous botch. I'm sure MJ could do something interesting with it.... Perhaps a "Three strikes and you're out" judicial system?)

(Doing Therapy)

I could see how the extreme situation might cause someone to black out. However, here's a quick list that does not include unconsciousness:

-Dislocate shoulder, arm useless
-Activate random psi power (if biases allow)
-Stumble and fall
-Elbow to gut, winded and stunned
-Strike self, deal damage
-Strike ally
-Damage piece of equipment
-Sprain knee, leg useless
-Poke self in eye, temporary loss of vision gives -15 sit-mod
-Carried equipment is scattered about

Mmmmmm....

1. Fall on face, break nose.
2. Break belt, pants fall down.
3. Accidentally activate magic key to break seal by use of strange hand motions and cause the end of technological civilization as the Magic Comes Back with man-eating dragons. The biggest and baddest is overhead of John.
4. Strike nearby weapon causing it to fire at self or ally.
5. Comedically stumble about provoking general laughter.
6. Pull tendon.
7. Pull muscle.
8. Bang hand on villain's head, breaking pinkie finger of self, doing Annoying damage to villain.
9. Freaking out villain who does an unaimed quick shot. It may hit nobody, or John, or ally.
10. Frighten cat in hiding to lurch out, run across area screeching, and give John time to punch out baddie very easily.

I could see how the extreme situation might cause someone to black out. However, here's a quick list that does not include unconsciousness:

I hit myself in the head quite frequently during my psychotic rages. Not as much now as I used to, but I haven't knocked myself out yet.

I really like Eric's botch that I accidentally do a magic spell... That could be interesting too.

(Doing Therapy)

Mine are pretty tame by comparison. I would go with the obvious of dislocating his shoulder or overshooting and punching himself in the groin (much to Lauren's amusement, I'm sure).

Personally, I like Eric's list.

Thank you. I was inspired by Graeme's idea of a psi skill activation.

I do like that the movements activate a spell but summoning dragons might be a bit much. Would call for a GE though to see how bad it was.

Regarding blacking out - I wasn't referring to hitting yourself on the head. I was thinking that the stress or the rush of blood to/from your brain might cause it. Like feeling dizzy if you get up too quickly - that's done me in before.

Looking at some of these botches, I think I would have been better off just letting MJ say I momentarily knocked myself out......

The complete list to this point, copied with minor editing, reads:

1. Elbowing self in gut, annoying level injury
2. Hitting bystander (Lauren)
3. Recognized practicing in illegal activity
4. Disclocate shoulder
5. Activate random psionic skill
6. Stumble/fall
7. Elbowing gut, winded/stunned
8. Punch self, damaging damage
9. Damage equipment
10. Sprain knee
11. Poke self in eye, temporary penalty on vision
12. Scatter on person equipment
13. Fall on face, possibly break nose
14. Break belt, pants fall
15. Unseal magic
16. Accidentally fire weapon at self
17. Accidentally fire weapon at bystander
18. Stumble comically, evoking laughter
19. Pull tendon
20. Pull muscle
21. Injure hand on unintended strike on opponent
22. Disorient villain, who strikes
23. Frighten hidden cat
24. Punch self in groin, damaging

24 is actually a good number; but some of those will have to go.

• Unseal magic I have a lot of trouble with, because magic works by expectations of the user and John has no expectations, so the question becomes whose expectations are these? The answer would have to be that there was some ancient wizard who sealed magic out of the world and created the ritual for restoration, such that John has in essence become the missing material component (a person performing these acts). Magic botches really should be limited to magic skill attempts, unless you're in a very high mag bias world such that sneezing really does dispel demons and stuff like that.
• Injure hand on unintended strike on opponent; Disorient villain, who strikes--well, there is no opponent, because it's an attempt to teach himself in practice. As nice as these are, the situation excludes them.
• Frighten hidden cat--well, I won't say that it's impossible that there might be stray animals aboard a city-sized space station with a controlled environment, but it's unlikely that there would be one either in his apartment or at the gym in the mall, to the point that I would have to exclude this. Besides, the suggested consequences assumed an opponent, which again we do not have.

If I'm counting aright, though, that still leaves 20:

1. Elbowing self in gut, annoying level injury
2. Hitting bystander
3. Recognized practicing in illegal activity
4. Dislocate shoulder
5. Activate random psionic skill
6. Stumble/fall
7. Elbowing gut, winded/stunned
8. Punch self, damaging damage
9. Damage equipment
10. Sprain knee
11. Poke self in eye, temporary penalty on vision
12. Scatter on person equipment
13. Fall on face, possibly break nose
14. Break belt, pants fall
15. Accidentally fire weapon at self
16. Accidentally fire weapon at bystander
17. Stumble comically, evoking laughter
18. Pull tendon
19. Pull muscle
20. Punch self in groin, damaging

And the d20 roll is 13, which if I'm counting aright is "fall on face". Let's use a GE to see how bad the damage is: 20 against the bod botch injury table: dangerous level injury with broken limb, we'll go with the nose, roll of 39 means 4 intensities.

Let me express my thanks to all for your contributions; they were all excellent. I really wanted to have his precious verser survival pack break, but that's not what happened--but I would not have thought of many of these on my own. This, too, is a bit more like the way we do it at the table much of the time, getting the players to participate in recommending each other's fate; and indeed, sometimes when I am here and you botch, I walk out into the other room, describe the circumstances, and get contributions from the in-house gamers.

--M. J. Young

Yayy!

And I agree with your logic about 'unseal magic'. That's basically what I had in mind.

And I think its an insanely unlikely event, but I was somewhat trying to have fun more than be reasonable.

I really wanted to have his precious verser survival pack break,

Well, since I wouldn't be wearing it during this, that wouldn't be too likely.

Wouldn't you? I thought the whole point of the pack was that you were wearing it all the time, so it was always on-person.

On person or close by. I would take it off when I was doing boxing skills.

Thanks for the point, Scott--I was thinking the same thing exactly, but wasn't certain whether I had missed or forgotten something.

John, you've made a clear point that the survival pack is always on person. I would assume that means that it is always on your person unless you specify otherwise. You would have had to have pointed to a post in the thread which stated specifically that you were removing the survival pack before attempting this, and I do not think that post is there.

I think, too, that if this botch had been fatal (which would not have been impossible, even on the list we used, as some of the damage levels were unspecified), you would be insisting that you had your survival pack on you in the new world, and particularly if for example you awoke in a lake or ocean (which does happen sometimes).

--M. J. Young

I know we're talking about a game and everything, but really, seriously, do you honestly think someone could kill themselves by messing up on changing the position of their arms? Yeah, a lot of people contributed some wacky ideas, but use your brain. How can someone kill themselves by changing the position of their arms? I think even falling down and breaking my nose is unrealistic. Do you honestly think someone could do that?

It's like in Revenge of the Nerds. They guy breaks his leg playing chess.... HOW DO YOU DO THAT?????????????

Well, one of the fun things is thinking of ways by which people could do that.

Besides, this "changing your arms" isn't like crossed or uncrossed--it's about high-speed snap to a defensive position as part of a combat maneuver. And you botched. People do get hurt trying to teach themselves martial arts (which is what you are doing), and some of them wind up in hospitals for it.

--M. J. Young

Say whatever you want, I think there are skills at which it would be impossible to fail or botch. I recently got into making rice wine. I've been making wine of different kinds since I was 15. (You can't buy alcohol at 15, but you can buy all the ingredients to make it yourself...) As long as you mix the ingredients properly, you will never fail to come up with rice wine. Or whatever kind of wine you're making, for that matter. The only botch would be putting the lid on too tight, which can result in an explosion. However, only a rank amateur (1@1) would make a mistake like that. And they would never make that mistake more than once. As for mixing the ingredients improperly, you've got the ingredients in the right proportions, how can you mix them wrong? It would be virtually impossible to fail to come up with rice wine.

You can make about 3 1/2 gallons of rice wine for less than $10, and it's only 2 days work, all told. (Not counting the month when it's fermenting, that is) What's not to love about it?

There are circumstances which could result in being unable to botch. Remember that if your chance of success is at least 91, you never botch, and if it's at least 100, you never fail.

Let's say you're an ordinary guy with maybe a 1@7 BRA. You know a bit about computers, so your Tech bias is 11@ something. On your first attempt at making rice wine, you roll a 01, so you obviously succeed and acquire the skill: 1@1 Ferment Alcoholic Beverage T8@1. This means you have, at baseline, a 50% chance of successfully creating a second alcoholic beverage by fermentation (17 + 22 + 11 = 50).

But wait! That's "at baseline," and it turns out that baseline, in this case, is distilling fuel-grade alcohol. In the skill description (page 129, I think, or thereabouts), whiskey, rum, and the like get sit-mods of up to +25 (depending on the proof and things like that). Your referee might decide that rice wine is so simple it deserves a +30 sit-mod. Having the perfect equipment for the job, along with having the ingredients pre-measured for you by someone else, might be worth an additional +10.

Doing the math again, we have a well-equipped, well prepared amateur with a 90% chance of successfully distilling rice wine - that's a 1% chance to botch, by the way - at 1@1, with only a so-so BRA. Notice that if he improves to 1@2, that botch chance vanish. Notice also that he could have learned the skill at 1@2 or 1@3 and never have had a chance to botch to begin with.

__

What you can't have is a skill that says, "Use me, and even if your chance to fail is 2000%, you won't botch." That goes against fundamental properties of the system.

(Not it unless it also says, "of course, even if your chance to succeed is 200%, you won't succeed either.")

It's not distilling, it's fermenting is what I'm doing/talking about. Distilling is turning the rice wine into rice whiskey. It's a chemical reaction between the ingredients. Yeast is a kind of mold. It eats sugar and poops out alcohol, carbon dioxide, and a few other by-products. (So, getting drunk, you're drinking yeast poop.) The carbon dioxide is what makes it potentially explode, as it builds up pressure inside the container. What I'm saying though is that if you mix the ingredients properly, you're going to get rice wine. If you mix the exact same amount of ingredients exactly the same way, you're going to get exactly the same thing.

Under the game system, it's completely random. Mixing the exact same amount of ingredients, then roll the dice. You're not going to get exactly the same thing every time, even though you would if you were really doing it. Unless you can tell me why doing exactly the same thing exactly the same way every time should come up with a different result the second time....

Mistake.

Ah, but it doesn't become exactly the same thing. In your circumstance, you might not fail, but the quality, the taste or whatever appeals in rice wine, that is what is variable. It becomes rice wine that could be merely good, or it could be the best damn rice wine you've ever tasted, or anywhere in-between.

Unless you can tell me why doing exactly the same thing exactly the same way every time should come up with a different result the second time....

I don't have to. When you fail, you did something differently.

(Or, possibly, some relevant condition was different, and you didn't notice - Ingredient X had gone bad since the last time you made rice wine, for example, or the battery in your electric Z was low and died in the middle of the process).

I almost posted the recipe for rice wine just to show how simple it was and how hard it would be to screw up. I know MJ would take objection to that (He thinks Prohibition was a good idea, just badly executed) I see the points you're both making, but it really is a simple thing to do. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Just an aside, I got my original wine making recipe out of a children's storybook of all places. Encyclopedia Brown, I believe.

If it's really hard to screw up, slap a big sit-mod on it. That was the point of my example with all the math: it is very easy, with Multiverser's mechanics, to have a skill which is too simple to botch.*

*for a given character in the usual circumstances. That's important - what if you had just won a fight with twelve orcs, and as a result you were concussed, missing an arm, blinking blood out of your eyes, and utterly exhausted? And then you say, "you know, I should really get started on that next batch of rice wine," and you want me to let you just do it without rolling the dice.

I then say, "No, usually you can't fail, but this time we're rolling. That's -5 for the exhaustion, -10 for only having one arm, and -5 for not being able to see too well; you've got a 2@1 BRA, a 2@1 SAL, and an 11@ tech bias (but the world tech bias is only 5@), that comes to 52, +40 because it's only rice wine, but -20 because you just climbed out of an orc-powered blender, so 72% to succeed (2% to botch)."

See how that works?

Scott, I get what you're saying, makes perfect sense. However, I'm not certain I was completely clear. Let me try again.

In this game, you have relative success. As I understand the rules, that means that a 01 and a 00 can both be successful rolls. However, the 00 would be a product of much better quality. The 01 would be rock-gut-strip-the-varnish-off-furniture rice wine, and the 00 would be decadent, gourmet rice wine that you serve to dignitaries. Both successful rolls, but one is a better quality.

The problem that I have is that, in both cases, you did everything exactly the same way. It's not like blacksmithing where you can hit the hammer a little too hard and break something. We're talking about a chemical reaction. The chemicals react the same way. How can you get a better quality product from doing exactly the same thing exactly the same way? Or is this what you were saying about maybe the ingredients went bad when you made this batch?

I can't believe I'm letting myself get dragged into this but it is just too much.

John, nothing is ever exactly the same. Ever. That is why things sometimes turn out really awful and sometimes really great.

You are not controlling the temperature outside, the barometric pressure, or the humidity of the room you're making the wine in, much less the conditions the ingredients were grown under. You cannot measure the ingredients to the nearest microgram. You cannot control how long you let the chemical reaction go for to the nearest nanosecond. You cannot get every molecule of contamination out of the pots or utensils you use. There are billions of things that could make a small difference, and sometimes these all add up. Even if you came from a family of famous rice wine brewers and were making rice wine for your entire life in a top-grade clean room with calibrated scientific instruments there will still be some variation.

It is absolutely not possible to do anything 'exactly' the same way as the previous time.

Crystal Clear.