One of the things we tried to accomplish was to create a game with no real need for "hit points" or other such measures. Yet given the semi competitive nature of the game (actually much more competitive in previous iterations) there still had to be a way to measure relative "strength" of things. For example if I spend a lot of Coin Creating a steel reinforced concrete bunker to house the evil Cobra Commander I don't want some other player simply saying "Joe kicks down the door and rushes inside".

As the game got less competitive, I got more comfortable with the idea of players haveing the power to say something to that effect, but I believed (and still do) that given the nature of how the game currency regulates player authority that it should cost a player more Story Power to kick in the door of Cobra Commander's fortified bunker than it would to kick in the door of the neighboor next door who's playing his stereo too loud.

The Importance characteristic was an attempt to put up a creative boundary which says "this item is important to me and I don't want someone else messing with it frivolously". However, its rather clunky and while good for some things doesn't really do everything I wanted it to do.

However, I recently had an idea that seems to work for me. What if Traits as they already exist also serve as "Resistance". Meaning that any event which would seem to work against an existing Trait, or which the Trait would be useful for avoiding will cost more.

The player must spend a number of additional Story Power equal to the Resisting Trait to overcome the Trait and have the event occur as described. In the ubiquitous "Joe get hit by a car" example, if Joe has the Trait “Extremely Alert +3” than one might expect that as an extremely alert character, Joe isn’t very likely to get accidentally hit by a car. In this case the player would have to spend an additional 3 Story Power (total of 4) to pay for this event. He can use those 3 Story Power to describe the circumstances under which Joe was caught unawares (“he was so engrossed in a cell phone call he wasn’t paying close enough attention” etc.).

As another example of Resistances in action consider a character with “Expert Swordsman +3” as a Trait. The player wishes to have this character defeated in a sword fight. The event of being defeated would cost 1 Story Power and it will take an additional 3 Story Power to overcome the character’s Trait. One possible way to do this is to introduce an opponent with the Trait “Blade Master +6” For 1 Coin that Trait can be Activated to provide 6 Story Power related to the opponent’s skill with a blade. 4 of those are used to overcome the character’s +3 Trait and pay for the defeat Event. The remaining 2 can then be used towards injuring the character if desired.

This seems to me to work pretty seemlessly and to involve Traits in a player's normal turn in a roll similiar to what they'd have in a Complication (if the fight was a Complication, the character would most likely have his "Expert Swordsman" Trait Activated to provide him with 3 dice while his opponent's Trait was Activated to provide him with 6 dice.

Ensuring that Resistances are taken into account would use the normal Challenge mechanic. This mechanic includes a preliminary "negotiation" anyway where one player has merely to interject "hey wouldn't you have to pay to over come his Swords skill?" The acting player now realizing this is the case would simply do so and play would continue. Only if the acting player wanted to refuse would the full Challenge voting mechanic need to be rolled out.

Does that make sense?