TSoy BDtP Rules Quibble

[IMAGinES]

Hi, Clinton,

Something I wanted to check with you. Over in the Actual Play forum, you wrote:

Parallel vs Perpendicular actions: At one point, we had two characters involved in BDTP using Sway on each other. I ruled that this was a parallel action, which caused a bit of a problem when, in one roll, both players were forced out of BDTP. The last time I read the rules, in a parallel action, both players take Harm equal to their opponents Success Level. Am I wrong on this? If not, then I will use the suggested house-rule that characters take Harm equal to the difference in their SL's, so as to avoid this problem in the future.

You're right, and you can't "knock someone out of BDTP." This is a common confusion. Being broken puts you at a serious disadvantage, but you aren't knocked out until you give up or literally cannot perform another action (empty pools + broken.) The difference in SL's is used for perpendicular actions.

I'm a little confused, as p41 of the Revised text reads, "Harm past broken results in the attacker's intention immediately happening." I read that as meaning that if a character has already taken 6 harm and his attacker either scores another 6 harm or a lower harm that comes up the ladder past 6 (as its rung is already filled), then the harmed character is forced to give.

Is that right?

[Eero Tuovinen]

That's how I read and play it. I could imagine doing it otherwise, except that the character with a filled harm meter has already lost everything and has nothing to lose, so he might as well continue in the conflict. At worst he loses a couple more points from pools, but as he's going to get a refill at some point anyway, that's not so much. Add to that the 20% of players that won't get the idea of giving up in any conditions whatsoever, and you'll soon have a BDTP dragging too long.

So yes, it's a good idea to apply that rule.

[Daermon]

Since it's my (admittedly) brief thread in Actual Play we're discussing here, I think I'd have little choice but to apply it as written and interpreted by Eero.  My group and I all come from very gamist backgrounds, and the idea of an extended conflict being able to drag on near-indefinately just completely ruins it all for me.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Since it's my (admittedly) brief thread in Actual Play we're discussing here, I think I'd have little choice but to apply it as written and interpreted by Eero.  My group and I all come from very gamist backgrounds, and the idea of an extended conflict being able to drag on near-indefinately just completely ruins it all for me.

Yes. This is why I shouldn't post without reading the rules: I don't know them all without looking at the book.