[Design] Ordinary is relative

[Kyle Schuant]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Carl Brown 
To: kyle3054 at iprimus.com.au ; design at mimesisrpg.com 
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: [Design] Why random rolls? d4-d4


of coarse with words your scale has fixed end points and if something is off the scale (eg a chimp)...

***

Certainly! But the game assumes that in general, characters will be interacting with characters of a similar level of ability. This is "league", if you like. Another human is in my "league," but a tank or a gnat isn't. A tank doesn't have to make a roll to crush me - if it hits me, it crushes me automatically. I don't have to roll to crush a gnat, if I hit it, I crush it automatically. And a gnat is beneath the notice of a tank. To the gnat, the tank isn't a tank, it's a mountain. The gnat doesn't distinguish between a mountain and a tank anymore than we non-astronomers distinguish between a star 10 light years away, and one 1,000 light years away; both are simply beyond our reach. 
    So "Ordinary" Strength lets me, as a normal human character, pick up another human, but it doesn't let me pick up a tank. On the other hand I can crush a gnat with ease, if I can hit him. So, something in one "league" can deal with impunity with something in a lower league, and is helpless before something of a higher league.
    A super, it doesn't matter exactly how much stronger than a regular person they are. Is Superman 1,201 times stronger than Kyle Schuant, or 1,232 times stronger? It doesn't matter to Superman, he flings Kyle aside with ease in any case. What matters is whether Superman is stronger than General Zod or not! So, Superman would have Strength Ordinary, and the question is whether Zod has Poor or Excellent or whatever Strength compared to Superman. Both Superman and Zod can toss Kyle aside with ease, I'm the lower league, and neither can move the planet Earth out of its orbit, Earth's in the higher league. 
    But of course, they're not in higher leagues in Education, or Confidence, or Piano Playing, or Macrame. Just Strength. 
    So, as I said, what matters is not a character's abilities on some absolute scale, but their abilities compared to the characters they're likely to interact with. So we don't need rules for exactly how much damage a tank does to a person when it runs them over, it'll just squash them automatically and messily. This is because they're in different leagues in terms of strength. But we DO need rules for the tank's driver to be able to aim it to hit or miss the person, because they're in the same league in terms of agility, that is, ability to change direction to hit or miss something. 

    This supposes, of course, that you want to deal with things in terms of a realistic flavour for a game. You might want the PCs to always have a chance of success, however small. 
    GM: "Night falls."
    Player: "I try to dodge it!"
    GM: "Okay, if you roll a triple high open-ended, 350 plus, you can dodge nightfall."
    Player rolls... 97, 96, 00, 76: "Woohoo!"
    GM: "Cool. So from now on, Bob the Super-Agile Thief has a little pool of sunlight around him wherever he goes. It's always light two feet around him, which will kind of hinder his sneaking about at night."
    Player: "Woops."
    If you want that kind of effect, that's cool:) I've had lots of fun with that!

Cheers,
Kyle
Better Mousetrap Games
home of d4-d4 and other stuff
http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339
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