[Solar System] Conflicts against nothing?
Paul T:
Interesting!
Thanks.
My only concern at this point is that seems to go strongly against Clinton's advice to set strong counterstakes as a Story Guide--like his example of "you take level 5 Harm and are banned from the kingdom".
Do you not subscribe to that point of advice, Eero? In the Solar System, you advocate assigning Harm to the stakes of failure, but, as you point out, unless I'm trying to win bonus dice for a future check, I might as well just spend a point of Pool--after all, it would be more expensive for me to heal that Harm later, AND this way I get what I wanted in the first place...
Eero Tuovinen:
I do actually recommend having powerful consequences - or rather, just have the consequences be as powerful as they should be for the fiction to be robust, with no care for what happens to the characters. This is sort of the point here: if you insist on giving out Harm 5 for failing simple Ability checks, then those checks have to be somehow voidable; doing otherwise would be crippling as characters would take hits from pure bad luck with the dice. The point of Clinton's example is that you can be harsh with the stakes because the BDtP system is there to balance your harshness. If some conflicts are played without that backup, then the SG needs to balance his stakes for that as well, which annoys me.
I do agree that in practice a player will probably take the extended conflict to avoid the heavy loss in an important conflict. But that's what happens with real opponents as well, and this game just happens to work on the premise that unopposed conflicts are always easy. I just make them be easy in reality as well as theory; having that one Ability check be "easy" doesn't do anything for the person who failed it anyway with no recourse; doesn't make sense to me that you're actually in more danger from the flood than you're from Darth Vader - the latter at least allows you to extend and burn through your Harm track before you have to submit and accept that he's going to destroy your house.
Still, if a character is Mediocre in whatever he's trying to do and suffers a penalty die for some reason, then it's quite possible for him to lose even after extending the conflict. After all, he needs that one successful check in there. Trivial in normal conditions, but then this is an exceptional situation we're discussing - an unresisted Ability check that was so important that it had to be extended.
Paul T:
Eero,
I wonder if another way to approach this situation might be something like saying that an unopposed extended conflict is like going up against an Effect with a rating of 1?
That changes the odds a bit, but means that you're likely to succeed in the conflict, but come out of it with a point (or two) of Harm.
Eero Tuovinen:
I considered that, but didn't go for it instinctually at the time. I know this sounds stupid, but system aesthetics are so important to me that I don't like any kinds of breakpoints in scales, even ones that do not affect play. So having a "zero-level Effect" and 1-level Effect offer the same resistance in conflict annoyed me as an idea.
One thing I might consider doing is ruling that extending in a non-resisted conflict spontaneously brings to being an Effect at a level appropriate to the situation. This would get rid of that breakpoint and increase the difficulty of winning that simple little conflict you thought was gonna be a walkover.
Paul T:
Eero,
That's kind of how I was imagining it:
You're trying to do something, which would normally require a success level of 1.
But now, you've screwed things up. Your initial failure (by one level, by default) has created an Effect with a level of 1.
Sort of like:
Player 1: "Madam, your necklace reminds me of the beauty of the famed Egyptian Queens!"
Player 1, to the Story Guide: "I'm trying to seduce the princess! Rolling... oh, crap. Failure. I want to extend!"
Story Guide: "She's offended! In this country, only pale white skin is considered beautiful! Roll again, against an Effect of 1, representing the impact of your unfortunate comment."
After all, normally, when you go into an extended conflict, your opponent has bonus dice based on your initial loss.
Applying penalty dice to the PC is another way to do it, but I like the Effect approach because it means you can take Harm during the extended conflict.
Now, you suggested setting the level of the Effect as variable. One way to make this more congruent is to base the level of the Effect on the Harm threatened by the original check. For example, if the conflict was threatening you with Harm 3, then the Effect has a level of 3. Hmmm... that might be a little too brutal. I'm not sure about this one.
How would you decide what level to set for the Effect?
Oddly enough, Dave (in Denver) just posted a link in the "maiming PGs" thread to an old converstion on the CRN Games forum, where you were asking Clinton about this very issue. Here's a quote from one of your posts:
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on March 29, 2009, 11:02:46 AM
Well, that's a peculiarity to be sure. I might just go with the idea of treating all rolls as resisted, from now on. Sometimes the resisting party is implied, like in the case of the sea currents resisting a swimmer or a cliff resisting a climber. Those cases could pretty much be dealt with the same way the game does surprise attacks: the cliff or sea isn't active by design, so it doesn't roll in the initial conflict roll. Only give it stats if BDTP is somehow invoked (most likely because of an initial failure).
This is an interesting solution. Why did you abandon it?
I'm guessing it might have something to do with the fact that "natural" opposition like an ocean doesn't have any agenda or motivation, and thus no desire to "give up" in the conflict. Also, Harm is relatively meaningless to "faceless" opposition.
Am I on the right track?
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