Unrelated Actions Revisited

[nichughes]

I think double jeopardy is just fine, given that the duration of any penalty is really a matter of narrator whim. By adjusting the nature of the description of a penalty, the narrator can make it something that will fade quickly, or stick around until healed. I like this feature, personally, and so I don't want something to artificially limit the duration of penalties.

My problem with double jeopardy is not so much game balance - as a narrator I could always work that out - more that it rarely makes narrative sense. If you "wound" someone's reputation with an aside then decide to switch the contest to destroying that reputation then the contest is now measuring how well you do at destroying their reputation. If you lose the contest from this point then how can their reputation be other than intact afterwords. Trying to keep the "wound" in this situation would just feel forced and artificial to me, far easier to narrate the outcome as the opponent having been initially ridiculed but then managing to recover and defend his reputation.

If you lose a contest then you do not achieve your goal, I confess I feel uncomfortable with applying UA in a way that breaks this simple mechanic.

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Nic

[lightcastle]

Wow, this went on quite a bit while I was otherwise occupied.

To go way back to earlier, I think that I fall in with Mike concerning the idea of "let the players choose".  I had hesitations (as mentioned above) but I'm becoming convinced. You can do the exact same action, and the player can choose if it is affects AP or has a different mechanical effect.

I don't think it would get overly clunky at all, but I'll playtest it and see. I see nic's idea of double jeapordy, and I'd probably do something similar (disallowing it if it becomes moot due to changing contest goals.)

[Mike Holmes]

I can buy into what Nic's saying above. That is, I think we're really saying the same thing in many ways about the duration of penalties being at the Narrator's fiat. From one POV, he's just saying that he would always expire them at that particular point, which, of course, makes sense.

I'm only saying that there may be cases where it seems to make sense to keep it.

Mike