Plot Immunity

[Bankuei]

Hi Mike,

I needed to sleep on it, but here's actually a better worded explaination of what I'm thinking of:

Resistance is actual difficulty, while degree of success is somewhat equivalent to Scale from Trollbabe, with the difference being instead of thinking about Scale externally(few people, clan, entire land), the Scale is about "How much of a difference is this going to make in the game/character's life over the long run?"   You get Just now, For a while, For some time, Forever as guidelines in that regard.

HQ's openness requires a strong statement of Goal, What's at Stake?, and What Happens If I Win?, which is pretty much where a lot of people get confused.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

See, I think you may be drifting here. "Forgifying" the game, if I might. I'm not sure that the way that you're putting it is supported by the book. That's not to say that your idea isn't effective - I'm sure it is. But the whole point of this excercise is to try and extrapolate the principle in question from the rules that exist in the book. That is, I want the principle in no way to violate the letter of the rules. And your statement about it being like Trollbabe seems like a stretch. To the extent that you mean that the levels of success and Trollbabe scope are actually the same in both texts, that it's about the presence of challenge, then I think that you're just arguing precisely the point that my principle does.

So, again, if you're just supplying a datapoint supporting the way I'm thinking, or just restating the principle in your own words, that's great. I guess my quesition is whether your ideal represents something different from mine in any way.

Anyhow, as to why I don't want to violate the letter of the rules here, I don't want anybody to be able to look at the principle and say, "Bah, that's just the Forgies twisting things to make it work how they want it to work." I want to be able to go back to the text and justify the principle rigorously. Not that it's the only possible interpretation, but that it's at least as legitimate as anybody elses literal interpretation.

So, that's why I asked if anybody can find any "legalistic" problems with my thoughts. I want to hash it out here and now before I trot it out anywhere else.

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

So, that's why I asked if anybody can find any "legalistic" problems with my thoughts. I want to hash it out here and now before I trot it out anywhere else.

I think in the specific case of wasting mooks, there is no justification in the rules for allowing PCs to off mooks with anything less than a Complete Success. The rules for the consequences of defeat are very specific and cover combat explicitly so I'm afraid going directly from the rules most simple contest combats will not end in death for one or other of the opponents, but rather will just result in some level of impairment for the loser.

That doesn't necesserily mean there has to be a further contest. The Narrator might decide that the mook will surrender on any level of defeat.
In which case it's the end of the contest and theoreticaly the PC might execute the mook anyway.

Alternatively the mook might run away. I wouldn't allow that to automaticaly succeed. Since we're now beyond the frame and consequences of the orriginal contest I'd say that if the PC wanted to pursue, that would legitimately be a new chase contest wiht the mook suffering from the consequences of the combat.

The most troublesome case (to some) is where the PC loses, takes an impairment (say -10%), but then refuses to back down. I don't think there's anything concrete in the rules that would justify a narrator refusing to allow another combat contest, should a player press for one. It may not be in the spirit of the rules, but I don't think it's against their letter either.


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

Before I respond to Simon, I wanted to restate the short form of the general principle. From mail I've gotten I think people thing that the whole post is the principle when it's actually quite short, and hopefully easy to remember. To paraphrase it to my best current understanding:

Complete success removes the challenge permenantly, and marginal success (or any other success) just alters the actual target somehow.

It's really that easy. Note how closely it matches the actual descriptions of the levels of victory. The rest of my posts were just explaining the ramifications, and arguing for why it follows the rules.

Simon, thanks for taking some swings the concept. Please continue. Here's what I think so far:

I think in the specific case of wasting mooks, there is no justification in the rules for allowing PCs to off mooks with anything less than a Complete Success. The rules for the consequences of defeat are very specific and cover combat explicitly so I'm afraid going directly from the rules most simple contest combats will not end in death for one or other of the opponents, but rather will just result in some level of impairment for the loser.

Indeed, this is the case that I most worry about. But my support comes from the idea that contests can be any endeavor that a hero tries. If he leads an army, there's no doubt in my mind that the mass combat and "horde" rules indicate that multiple objects can be treated as single objects for this purpose. In fact, to get really philosphical about it, this is a requirement of every game - my character is, of course, made up of his many organs, bones, limbs, etc. Yet I don't roll for them independently. Less ridiculously, I don't roll for every step the character takes, even in combat or other important situations. At some point the characcter is the sum of his parts, and contests are the sum of a set of actions. Just as an army is the sum of it's soldiers, etc, and it's maneuvers are part of what leads to it's success or failure in combat. So any "group" can be a target. For that to be true, partial success has to mean that parts of the group are eliminated, just as it's true that a character can be injured. Now, true, the example in the Horde section does mention that members of a group that are eliminated one at a time can be considered to be "out" and not neccessarily dead. And using that one method, yes, everybody ends up with the same level of consequence (one more than the primary character in the conflict). But the other horde methods make them more of a group meaning that they don't really have an existance as a challenge. Their elimination is merely color. The Mass rules make this even clearer. Given that the members of a lead army aren't accounted for, their elimination, too, is just color.

Now, what does this mean for the mook? Well, depends on the mook. I'm strictly defining them here as members of some group, meaning that their elimination doesn't destroy the group as a whole. Again, that's where my principle lies. If you can destroy it without eliminating the challenge overall, then it's not really the source of the challenge, and can be eliminated on any success. It's really just an alteration of the group, representable, if neccessary, by giving the group a penalty based on the loss at the appropriate level of consequence.

Now, if the mook is actually an individual to the extent that eliminating him will eliminate the challenge that he's representing, then the principle says that he's not a mook for my purposes, and everything that you've said applies. I can only kill him outright on a complete victory.

Consider the "deer hunting" situation. Is the deer the actual source of the challenge, or is it hunting in this forest? As long as you frame the contest as the latter, then the deer are killable, and we avoid all the starving Gloranthans without having to go to the Coup De Grace concept.

That doesn't necesserily mean there has to be a further contest. The Narrator might decide that the mook will surrender on any level of defeat.
In which case it's the end of the contest and theoreticaly the PC might execute the mook anyway.

Which I showed at length how my principle allows. That is, something less than a complete victory can alter the mook such that the following contest is now dofferent. Allowing me to either execute him, or to reasonably change the contest to something dramatically appropriate to the situation.

Alternatively the mook might run away. I wouldn't allow that to automaticaly succeed. Since we're now beyond the frame and consequences of the orriginal contest I'd say that if the PC wanted to pursue, that would legitimately be a new chase contest wiht the mook suffering from the consequences of the combat.

And that's where my principle and your ideas meld. By narrating that the mook is changed to where he might want to run, this indicates that it's potentially time for that to become the new contest.

The most troublesome case (to some) is where the PC loses, takes an impairment (say -10%), but then refuses to back down. I don't think there's anything concrete in the rules that would justify a narrator refusing to allow another combat contest, should a player press for one. It may not be in the spirit of the rules, but I don't think it's against their letter either.

Here's where I disagree. The rule about no repeat attempts specifically prohibits this. The exception to the rule is specifically to give the narrator the right to allow such a repeat contest if he thinks it appropriate. Meaning that the final authority rests firmly in the narrator's hands. If the narrator says no, there's no appeal.

Again, I think this is a good thing. It informs the player to think in terms of conflict resolution instead of task resolution. Which is the more funcitonal for the game. It's only when the player backslides into thinking in task terms that the problem every comes up at all.

Mike