Can someone with ATR “enjoy a movie”?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Varyon

ATR really is more just "You get an extra Maneuver" than "You operate at a different speed." Note the latter would have sizable bonuses to defense (far more than just +1 - after all, Combat Reflexes gives you that), make your own attacks markedly more difficult to defend against, etc.

AOD:determined gives +2 to defenses though =/

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, I don't buy this one, unless ETS is innately Switchable or similar. Someone with epilepsy can't just choose to ignore the "dark" moments of a strobe light to avoid a seizure - and that's exactly what a typical movie would look like to someone with ETS, a strobing light effect (half the time you're watching a movie, you're actually looking at a blank screen, it's just that it switches back and forth between the blank screen and the actual frames that the human eye can't notice. Of course, you could have ETS yet still have your eyes working with only 60 fps, in which case the movie looks just like everything else you interact with in the world.

That said, ATR really is more just "You get an extra Maneuver" than "You operate at a different speed." Note the latter would have sizable bonuses to defense (far more than just +1 - after all, Combat Reflexes gives you that), make your own attacks markedly more difficult to defend against, etc.

Our brains already "average" what we're seeing. Most of what you think you can see isn't actively being updated in real time. What you look at with focus in a relatively small, central part of your view. If you flip a TV upside down and watch it for a while, it will stop feeling "upside down" and you'll watch it as you normally would. The brain takes the raw signals and them makes sense of them in a meaningful way.

Sure, a movie might flicker. Watch a movie at 12fps. It's quite watchable and after a while you'll just get used to it. Early films were between 16 and 24fps, and they often changed to suit the mood of the vision.

There's no reason to think that you couldn't watch a moving at 24fps and enjoy it. Of course, these days with digital projection TVs that have much higher refresh rates, there are no "moving" frames, no borders between frames, and the rates are so high that even at double the rate of perception you won't likely notice anything.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

AOD:determined gives +2 to defenses though =/

With one level of ATR, you can sort of approximate the effect by using All Out Attack for you first Maneuver, All Out Defense for the second. The problem is that a) this may undersell the effect (particularly on the defensive side, it should be a bonus to all defenses, not just one of Block, Dodge, or Parry, and you shouldn't suffer the same iteration penalties), b) it doesn't really scale properly with increased ATR (again, particularly on the defensive side, as you can't "stack" instances of All Out Defense), and c) there are edge cases where it fails pretty seriously (like if your foe uses a Stop Hit, in which case you get no defense with your All Out Attack).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Our brains already "average" what we're seeing. Most of what you think you can see isn't actively being updated in real time. What you look at with focus in a relatively small, central part of your view. If you flip a TV upside down and watch it for a while, it will stop feeling "upside down" and you'll watch it as you normally would. The brain takes the raw signals and them makes sense of them in a meaningful way.

Sure, a movie might flicker. Watch a movie at 12fps. It's quite watchable and after a while you'll just get used to it. .

It's like living next to a tannery. You stop noticing the stink.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It's like living next to a tannery. You stop noticing the stink.

Exactly right!

[whswhs]

If ATR always affected your perception of time that would be disadvantageous; it wouldn't just limit your enjoyment of video, but hinder your interaction with other people ("Whymustyoualltalksoslow?"). I'd at least make it a Nuisance Effect, and I might add on Temporary Disadvantage: Odious Personal Habit for always talking fast. And if you had multiple levels it would get worse; imagine someone with ATR 4 giving 5x speed!

But such problems aren't intrinsic to ATR.

I might apply them, on the other hand, to someone with Switchable ATR, like Gully Foyle in The Stars My Destination.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It's like living next to a tannery. You stop noticing the stink.

If it's something that just transitions between frames without an intermediate black screen, sure, you'd probably be fine with it. If there are the intermediate black screens, it's probably going to be physically painful to watch for very long, on account of the constantly-flashing screen. You can't just ignore the flashing effect - if you could, nobody would ever have an epileptic seizure from flashing lights, because they could just ignore the flashing effect.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

. You can't just ignore the flashing effect - if you could, nobody would ever have an epileptic seizure from flashing lights, because they could just ignore the flashing effect.

Photosensitive epilepsy is a fairly specific Real World problem. Most people don't suffer from it. So msot peopel do ignore the flashing screens.

I wish I could say that _all_ Gurps Advantages came without hidden Disadvantages but most do and there's specific rules text when they do.

So ATR does not come with "Can Not enjoy movies" by default. It would say so if it did.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Photosensitive epilepsy is a fairly specific Real World problem. Most people don't suffer from it. So msot peopel do ignore the flashing screens.

You don't need photosensitive epilepsy for an entire movie consisting of nothing but flashing screens to be a problem.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So ATR does not come with "Can Not enjoy movies" by default. It would say so if it did.

Oh, I agree, actually, but a lot of that is because ATR isn't really "Altered Time Rate," it's "Extra Maneuver." My objection was to ETS allowing you to just ignore the flashing screen, by "ignoring the frames." That said, ETS doesn't necessarily mean your eyes support an arbitrarily-high refresh rate.

Also, I think the black-screen-half-the-time thing is something more the case for old-style projectors, and modern digital formats just switch from one frame to the next without a black-screen intermediate. And, now that I think about it, that may be what Characters was referring to - for someone with ETS, a movie is a series of still frames, but that can certainly still be enjoyed.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

You don't need photosensitive epilepsy for an entire movie consisting of nothing but flashing screens to be a problem.

<shrug>It's an annoyance and sensible people go away and do something else but they don't suddenly develop photosensitve epilepsy because of it.

ETS doesn't come with "Can't Enjoy Movies" either. If this means there has to be some mechanism for compenating that's what it means. Very high movement rates don't cause characters to burn up from heat from air firiction either.