thread: 2006-04-13 : T equals Zero
On 2006-05-17, Vincent wrote:
Colin: My players are going to need to be warned that a success on "Influencing Others" can pretty much give anyone mind control over "your character", and I'm just figuring this out myself. This breaks one of the basic axioms of every game we've ever played.
Awesome.
Now turn your mind 90 degrees. Hold "mind control" in your peripheral vision, vague, not central. It's real; what you just said is real. This DOES break one of the basic axioms you've always held. But it's not some weird mind control thing.
What it is is: whenever something really matters between your character and another's, neither of you gets to just decide it. You roll for it fair and square. This goes for "I hit you," "I rob you," "I throw you off the wall," "I turn your lover against you," "I invade your dreams," "I seduce you," "I trick you into leaving your armor at home," "I engulf your castle in a tremendous earthquake," and "I stab you in the ear."
The victim doesn't ever get to just decide that it doesn't happen. The aggressor doesn't ever get to just decide that it does. We roll for it.
This makes AG go "This reminds me of the Hero system..."
...where they assigned point values to everything, and eventually came up with a Transform power as a catch-all for anything they hadn't costed out already, and priced it out as if it were a lethal attack, figuring that if spent enough points to kill someone, that was also enough points to do something odd that wasn't killing them.
