Spiritual Attributes

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I agree to dis agree with you whole heartedly. Thats the other beauty of TROS, I can do that. my players want a storyline that they can uncover, alter and manipulate. If the pc wants to avenge the man who killed his dad then the story is more fun if the baddie killed the dad for a reason that the pc doesn't know etc. Story telling is part of being seneschal to me and it iswhat my players want, so Iwill just agree to disagree before this degrades into a narrativist-simulationist style debate. I love how TROS is able to work for all styles of play, mine, yours, tht other dude down the street... versatility man, versatility.....

[Valamir]

This has nothing to do with Simulation vs Narrative or anything.  I think perhaps you are having an unnecessarily defensive reaction to my comments.

I tried to be very careful in my choice of words and not imply that you were doing anything wrong.  Thats why I made a point to say that you're making it harder than it needs to be.  You're worrying about creating set piece encounters to highlight 20 different SAs as being a collasal chore...and you're right, it would be.  I'm saying that in my play experience no GM I've gamed with has done that.  Nor in any of the campaigns I'm privy to the details about have they done that.  That's the whole point to the SAs so you don't have to do that...its that point I think you're missing.

The SAs are not there to trick munchkin players into having a personality.  The SAs are not there to assign numerical values to a players "background".  The SAs are not there to turn the characters into supermen.  The SAs are there so the GM doesn't need to have a carefully crafted plot with set encounters in order to achieve a story.  I'm not talking bleeding edge director stance mumbo jumbo here.   I'm talking letting the game work for you so you don't need to work so hard.

It works, I don't know whether Jake conciously knew it would when he designed it...since that's the way he GMs I suspect he just created rules to facilitate what he was already doing...but it works.

I really think that trying to control which SAs are the focus of a session is like hammering a square peg into a round hole...and I think you'd really be short changing yourself in the process.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I love interpreting emotions over text, you cant, dont worry friend I was in no way offended, I used narrativist/simulationist as an example of how debates can go NO WHERE. Thats all. i enjoy conversation too much to want it to degrade to fast. Sorry for the misunderstanding, as it is you do a good job explaining your point, I like how you phrased it.
and to clarify, I dont railroad the sa's, I just like having confrontations and opposition that works into the game for the players instead of just making crap up as I go. I write story as 10% planned and 90% what te players do with the 10% but I like to have that 10% linked to more than just color. If pc 1 hates mr x and pc 2 want s to avenge his father, while pc 3 wants his lands back and wants to recover his social status then I have MR. x be a powerful noble who killed pc 2's father and stole PC 3's land and offended pc 1. Now thats how I create a story with one MAIN SA for each PC. I let the rest handle it self. I dont limit the SA's because if the PC earns points in drive and drive has 5 points already I dont want to have to say "you earned it in drive but that full so heres a faith die"

Now I am not mad, let me clarify that, I am neither offended, I enjoy this thread.