FitM and bonus dice for roleplaying

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

One of the things I think we've handled awkwardly in Scott's Sorcerer game is fortune-in-the-middle in conjunction with bonus dice for roleplaying. As a player, you want to earn bonus dice for effective roleplaying, or at least avoid the penalty listed in chapter one for "announcing a task generically." But FitM is based on announcing general intent. I know my version of Sorcerer is soon to be superseded, but since I haven't seen the rewrite, what's your take on this? Does FitM preclude bonus dice for roleplaying? Or are we not perceiving how this should work?

Thanks,

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Paul,

Part of the problem is verbiage from 1995 trying to express concepts of play that I had no vocabulary for at that time. The other part of the problem is that my own style of play has evolved since then as well.

So the following is more of a band-aid than a foundational answer. It's based on a post-hoc distinction between "general" and "generic."

A general statement of intent is great - "I beat the crap out of him with a flurry of crunching tire iron blows." It is general because we have a visual of the outcome and the way it's done, but not a blow-by-blow, step-by-step account.

A generic statement is horrible - "I hit him. I hit him." (Of course, I mean this to include no gestures and a generally boring delivery as well.)

I claim that individual-action FitM can be applied very nicely in the case of the former. It's not REALLY necessary; in Sorcerer, one can present a detailed account before the roll as well.

The real FitM in Sorcerer exists more at the group level, in the combat sequence, in which actions are completed in the order of the highest values on the dice rather than in the order of announcement or any sort of initiative roll. This leads to a sort of conceptual re-write of what actions completed in what order, following the roll.

Best,
Ron