[Design] Ordinary is relative

[David Cake]

At 2:12 PM +1000 17/10/05, Kyle Schuant wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:catodon at whale-mail.com>Carl Brown
>To: <mailto:kyle3054 at iprimus.com.au>kyle3054 at iprimus.com.au ; 
><mailto:design at mimesisrpg.com>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

	The sort of things that HeroWars 'levels of mastery' is 
designed to deal with.
	Cheers
		David