Some rule questions:
1. If a PC opts to roll a resistance roll, but doesn’t have enough Stress in the end, what happens?
2. What is the difference between Heavy armor, and normal armor?
3. In judging position, is it considered from the PoV of a baseline human, not the character himself, unless he has certain special abilities (for instance, the Cutter’s Not to be Trifled With)
1. They would be taken out of the conflict in whatever way seems to make sense (left for dead, rolled into the canal, etc), and earn a Trauma, unless you permit them to roll back their decision, and simply take the Harm instead.
2. Normal Armor is good for reducing or eliminating Harm once, without having to roll Resistance (and spend Stress). Heavy Armor adds another instance of this, but the total cost to Load is 3 (1 for the initial Armor, and 2 more for the +Heavy).
3. This seems to make sense. A normal person (or indeed, even a normal PC) going up against a gang of five thugs could be considered Desperate, while for a Cutter who is Not to Be Trifled With, this might merely be Risky.
1) Trauma. page 7 of v7
2) page 47
3) the character themself… and everything else in the situation. Maybe reading the examples (p25-30) would help?
I agree with Ben Morgan (and also Bryan Lotz) but I don’t think that it should be permitted to step back from your decision after a roll of any kind (Resistance, Action, etc): if you decide to roll knowing the situation (like knowing that you could take Trauma because you are low on Stress), you accept all the risks and commit to the result.
That’s true. Once the dice hit the table, the decision should stand. However, before it gets to that point, everyone should be cognizant of the fact if a character has enough Stress that the possibility of a Trauma is on the table. It could be that it’s still a better option than, for example, taking a second level 3 Harm (which would automatically bump up to a Level 4).
3. This hearkens back to a question I had before about whether to consider factors like that during the setting of position at all – since those things are typically accounted for already in the determination of effect. And so the question was basically: what do we consider when determining fictional position? This question arose for me because of the interaction between position and effect (whatever effect I can get with one approach, can be heightened with a riskier approach, and can be lessened with a safer approach).
I think the position should not be adjusted because of abilities like that; the effect already is (see Scale, Factors), and by proxy the position is as well.
Mark Cleveland Massengale But the game takes a fiction first approach. If the Cutter’s Not to be Trifled With means he counts as the size of a small mob in combat (perhaps of his size, his martial art skills etc.), it should extend more than just the mechanical effect for determining effect, because in the narrative sense, he could handle a small mob by himself, so fighting a small mob is Risky for him, instead of Desperate.
Or are we both talking about the same thing but from a different PoV?
re: “but the game takes a fiction first approach”
Yep. “Should do more than just the mechanical effect” – yes, but because of Fiction First (FF), fictional effect is mechanical. And vice-versa. The moment you don’t give added fictional effect to a +1 mechanical effect then you have stopped being FF (and vice-versa).
re: “both talking about the same thing”
I think we are (or rather, at times we are – see above). At other times, not so much. See if what I say next clarifies what I am talking about.
Re: “Risky for him, instead of Desperate” that sounds like what I am saying. That change in position has made the thing Risky instead of Desperate, which also has increased the effect. Not sure if we are talking about the same thing? Check it: now I can take a Desperate approach to get the increased effect (hence, a softening of position has increased my effect).
And this leads to the following: What happens if you then neglect to reduce his effect in the consideration of factors because you are rewarding him for having the ability? you have now double-increased the effect if you also adjusted the position for the same ability.
So I think if you do either what you describe, or what I described, then we are both coming up with the same result. Again, the problem arises for those who do both – i.e. double-counting the ability. Doing either has another problem though: this leads to some inconsistency with the text in that the factors of the obstacle are specifically named in the effect-setting stage. So that is why I say the position should not be adjusted for that; effect is taking care of it.
However, clearly position is accounting for something. But what? I want to know what precisely that is (which, as I said before, your question hearkens back to that). In the text, the answer is “Which of the various phrases best matches the intersection of the character’s goal, obstacle, and action?” [referring to which of the three positions] BUT then I definitely feel like I am told to double-account for the fiction between that (on p.9) and the Effect Factors section (on p. 10).
My conclusion at this time about the text above is that this is actually a summary of the entire position & effect determination process, not a statement of what to do in addition to adjusting for factors. This means there is no actual definition of what exactly to consider with position, because if we followed that, we’d be doing it twice. And if I had to interpret, I would say the intention was to say setting position should be considering “intersection of goal and action” (but not obstacle too; since we do that with the effect factors). That leads to some weirdness with character intent though..
Sigh: Issue is not easily communicated or understood with my convoluted way of communicating. So in this case, it might be that a separate thread seeking an official answer to my question would serve us all better. But I definitely think my question and yours are closely-related.
Thanks for explaining, Mark. I think I see how the text is misleading, but if you want to start a new thread to talk about this more, that would be fine, too.
(In brief: I think when you say that the text represents a summary of the entire process, that’s accurate. But potentially confusing if you treat position and effect as separate “steps” — then you get the double-accounting problem.)
I believe I am still confused haha. It will be good if we can have another thread to discuss this. I ran a one-shot last week, and this same problem came up. Let me gather my thoughts and start a new thread later.
I +1ed because I think it’s less complicated than I made it sound. John has demonstrated understanding of my point in a short paragraph – the jerk! (I tease, of course)
But yea, I think it’s just that we should assess the position as described in the quote I took from p9, but we are doing that at the same time as effect and risks, using what feels right OR you could also just default to Risky and standard effect, and shift that around and determine risks using the guidelines to come to an agreement.
And for me, I think I get more than ever that there is no exact science to it by design, due to the tone-setting statements earlier in the text. And only a very literal (narrow, even) reading of the text seems to present an actual issue.
PS: That being said, if you decide to form a thread, I will of course be reading with interest / probably commenting