p. 10: When evaluating an action’s effect, GMs are directed to “evaluate the intersection of goal, obstacle, and action”. However, when determining effect, I am also directed to increase or reduce it for the quality, scale, and potency (the “factors”) of the opposition. This sounds a lot like the obstacle that was already considered. I would like more examples of the semantic difference between the obstacle, and the factors of the opposition.
Basically, where this doesn’t jive with me is.. I find myself consciously adjusting my thinking to consider position from the angle of “how well does the action match the goal?” and ignoring the obstacle for the most part (except in terms of how well it applied to it), since considering the obstacle itself when judging position makes it all too easy to accidentally account for the factors, leading to a double accounting when effect is boosted or reduced by the factors.
Thoughts?
I always think of the obstacle FIRST as a clock (even if it turns out to be a simple one resolved without effect).
That way the player’s choice of action colour the fiction (and possibly the position and effect), but not the intrinsic nature of the obstacle itself as a complication in the story.
The relative factors of the obstacle however ARE tied to the player’s choice of action and the relationships of scale, quality and potency that apply depending on the action choice.
Remember to talk it through with the group; ”This combination of position and effect is something the GM assesses a lot. A player announces their action, and the GM
responds with position and effect… Sometimes the players and GM negotiate a bit about the action, position, and effect, before settling on a final choice.’
‘
Nathan Roberts THAT FIRST SENTENCE IS BRILLIANCE. I’m stealing that for my GMing mindset.
If you are fighting a gang in a straight-up fight, mano-a-mano, the size of the gang might limit your effect AND give you a worse position. (Obstacle+opposition)
If you are fighting a gang and have some sort of cover (a choke-point or sniper roost) then the size of the gang might limit your effect but NOT cause any worse position. (Opposition only)
If a gang is fighting you but you’re not fighting back (you are doing some other thing, like trying to leap past them), then maybe the size of the gang worsens your position but does NOT reduce your effect. (Obstacle only)
Nathan Roberts I do this as well for simple goals. A two-segment “clock” makes partial success a thing that my players can measure in their heads. They either do it, or make progress on doing it which nearly finishes the task.
Will Scott That sounds a bit like counting the factors twice to me. Perhaps your example gives me one of my own..
I think the alignment of the action to the goal should be the judging point for the position of the roll. Like.. if you want to fight a gang from afar, it is “desperate” to run and Assault them. It would be “controlled” to Hunt and shoot from the elevated position behind cover though. That is sort of like judging the obstacle, but its not what I take that to mean – because we have not accounted for the raw numerical parts of this comparison.
And I think that the discussion of effect should indeed go on with simple actions, and how to get a 2-tick effect to finish the 2-segment clock should ensue. However, the factors of the opposition/obstacle shouldn’t have been considered until Now, so as not to account for it twice. The effect might have -1 factors because of you being outnumbered, but we dont change the effect for your approach/goal correlation [ex_cept_ in the ancillary sense of.. is the smaller Scale of the group more or less advantageous here? they are fighting, so it’s less. But if they were sneaking…it might not matter]
I was just suggesting that you should count the factors twice when the fictional thing count as both mechanical things, and count them only once when they only count as one thing. I was NOT trying to suggest that you go through the exercise of enumerating “quality/tier, scale, and potency” when judging position.
However, I also don’t think you should studiously ignore fictional elements that might count as those factors for fear of double-counting. At the end of the day, position really just determines the outcome of failure, and effect determines the outcome of success. It feels natural to me that some fictional elements affect both.
(For a non-size-related example, consider disarming a really lame bomb vs a really awesome bomb. We could invoke “quality/tier” to explain the difference in explosive force, but we don’t have to. But neither should we say that the bomb’s “quality” can make it harder to disarm OR hurt more, but not both.)
Will Scott I didn’t mean to indicate I thought that you were suggesting to go through that process when judging position; I was trying to stress the point about the obstacle consideration during the position-setting. My fault; I see I articulated poorly.
I agree here: “Harder to disarm.” I agree that the quality one should be harder to disarm, by virtue of lowered effect, for which quality could (and probably should) have been the cause. However, I am saying that this also means the same amount of progress will already hurt more, so the position should not be affected by the obstacle itself, just the alignment of action to it (since the position is indirectly affected by the Tier through the reduced effect)
IE: if 2 effect (disarming it) is risky for the first bomb, then 2 effect should be desperate for the quality bomb. (while both actions might want to defuse it completely, with the quality one the GM will have to advise that the risky position will not completely disarm the bomb because of its quality, so a desperate action would be needed to achieve that same 2 effect).