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Old 04-11-2017, 01:23 PM   #60
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#39): Daredevil, Luck, Super Luck

Quote:
Originally Posted by NineDaysDead View Post
The Krommquote I posted addressed this issue, did you read it? Here are some more:
It's clear to me that Kromm and I have radically different sensibilities about gaming; to put it really simply, his preferences are more toward the cinematic end, and mine are more toward the realistic end. So most of his arguments just don't seem relevant to me.

In particular, when you quote him as saying

Obviously, a player could add modifiers that move Luck into the exotic or supernatural category: Active, Costs Fatigue, Game Time, and just about any power modifier would do this. Then all the arguments about it being a strange ability would become valid. As written, though, Luck doesn't even exist in the game world . . . it just ensures that the player gets to play a slightly more positive story role. It's basically no less cheating and no more exotic than the GM being your buddy and giving you an extra 20 points without telling the other players; it's just more honest and structured than that, to avoid hard feelings.

then I would say that the arguments about Luck being a strange ability don't concern me at all; they simply seem irrelevant, because I've decided to allow a certain kind of strange abilities. The version he says "doesn't even exist in the game world," on the other hand, just feels wrong to me. I can try to analyze why—and to look at what changes increase, or lessen, or take away the wrongness—but it's an emotional conclusion in the first place.

Perhaps part of it is that I don't want the player to get to play that more positive role. Even if they pay points for it, it isn't an interesting way for their character to be successful, and it makes the story about that character less enjoyable for me. And that probably has something to do with my having a taste for realism, and finding it more entertaining, not less, than cinematic fiction or drama.

And note that I've made an exception in the past. For example, when I ran a Buffyverse campaign, I used the Drama Points mechanic in the BtVS system; in fact I had a player who deliberately put every experience point he earned into Drama Points, and never got better at doing anything, and kept surviving by luck and coincidence. And I was fine with that, because I had chosen to emulate the Buffyverse, where things work that way. But if I'm emulating a more realistic universe, I don't want things to work that way. And in the last analysis, I think that's purely a question of taste.
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