thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-19, Rafael wrote:
Christian: other times they'll slow the game to a crawl
You're right, and this is a question of taste.
One quality of my group that I think is unusual among classic and new wave roleplayers alike is that the story progresses glacially because we savour absolutely every possible detail.
That is one reason why using the dice only for dramatically significant points seems radical to me. Suppose we're trying to cross the river. No one is trying to stop us. The story so far seems to point to our crossing the river; there's certainly no narrative reason why we shouldn't. So should we bother rolling to see if we cross? I think most people here would say "no". Many classic groups would say "yes", but if the roll failed, then you'd take d6 damage and try again until it worked. My group might well roll, and if it failed we'd spend half the session dealing with the immediate consequences, and there'd be long term character development as well, so it would turn out to have been a dramatically significant moment that no one anticipated (and that wouldn't have been significant if we had just said "ok, we cross the river, what happens next", or if the roll had succeeded).
For example, the roll fails. Alice gets swept away. Christine gets swept away trying to save Alice, and the Don has a terrible dilemma trying to decide who to save first. Alice end up with a permanent fear of rivers, Don realises that he's actually in love with Alice, and Christine never really trusts Don again.
