thread: 2006-04-13 : T equals Zero
On 2006-05-17, Sydney Freedberg wrote:
> there ought to be some mechanism for acknowledging that some actions are more difficult than others
Uh, isn't there? Each player chooses the relevant ability and/or specialization from their character's sheet and rolls that.
As I read it, the Core Endeavors are key here:
a) If Aquilo the drunken Black Knight has a hugely high score in Core Endeavor: Influencing Others, then he should have a high probably of getting other people to do awful things they'd never even consider doing if someone with a lower ability tried.
b) If Princess Bethania has a lousy score in Core Endeavor: Defending Myself (that covers both physical and social, I think—or should social be "Asserting Myself"?), then she should have a lousy chance of resisting other people's suggestions that she take action harmful to herself.
This is exactly the way the system would handle it if Aquilo tried to attack Bethania with his, err, longsword—you just plug in different abilities, endeavors, and specializations as appropriate.
I suspect the thing that's tripping you up, when you say that "some actions are more difficult than others," is that you mean more difficult inherently, regardless of who's involved: convincing someone to have dinner with you is always more difficult than convincing someone to have sex you, for example, so there should be some kind of difficulty modifier to apply on top of your ability score for "convince someone" and the other person's ability score for "not be convinced."
Here's the thing, though: We can all conceive of characters—fictional ones at least, though for some of us people we know—for whom "have dinner with me" is a much, much easier proposal to resist than "have sex with me." Maybe they're anorexic nymphomaniacs; less extremely maybe they just aren't tempted that much by food, but they are tempted by sex.
So this whole idea of "some actions are more difficult than others" is arguably unrealistic. Actions are only more or less difficult in the context of the specific people involved.
This makes colin go "inherent difficulty..."
Well, actually I mean, more difficult inherently, because Bethania's personality has already been specified as "loyal". And traditionally, the right to define Bethania's personality belongs to her player alone.
