reversia.ch says:
emsquared says:
Particularly if you're not using the "automatic success" math options...
Do people actually use that option?
Interesting question. My impression that the option is basically too weak to matter:
- Needing a relatively high pool to use it (a 'normal' difficulty is 6, but a 'normal' professional pool is around 4) normal characters do not get to use it against normal tasks. (Difficulty 4 is likely to be something you get when you hunt around for enough difficulty reducers on a non-routine task, not something you get asked to deal with by the GM 'naturally'.)
- Only getting a single marginal success means that it's often not worth asking for an auto-success when one cares about the outcome.
- It does not work in 'dynamic or stressful' situations.
So those three weaknesses, players are unlikely to ask for it and the GM is unlikely to grant it.
reversia.ch says:
Another interesting point are the conversational Abilities. Do you let a roll
influence the outcome or
decide it outright? If the character's arguments were weak, but the roll is high, does the roll decide outcome of the conversation or the roleplaying bits? Should you be able to sidestep the roleplaying with a roll, since there is a system for it?
I'm sure most people from any decade can name at least one real-life character whose arguments are weak yet who seems to 'win' conversations enough to get anywhere between a quarter and three quarters of other characters to give away a vote for a Really Important Post. Probably has something to do with much of persuasion
not being about how good the arguments are (logos), but about the emotions the target experiences as a result of the interaction (pathos).
That being said, I am not confident in my ability to draw a sharp line between influencing and deciding an outcome of a conversation. And I have seen in the past some people get up in arms about ending up on the wrong side of the line. I've seen some express such strong belief in unshakeable will (attributing it to themselves IRL and most Important NPCs, of course) as to consider any
useful change in outcome to be implausible ('Appearance and other social modifiers do not matter when money is at stake!' and the like).
reversia.ch says:
vicky_molokh says:
But if in addition to that, the worth of a given success level even after accounting for the pool and the difficulty is also variable, that further reduces the transparency of conversions between narrative, dice pool, difficulty, and/or outcome.
Is that a bad thing though? For a narrative heavy game that level of versatility seems preferable to the more transparent "yes or no" system. Now you can tailor your descriptions to the specifics of the roll, whether you're ST or a character-player.
I suppose opinions will vary. Personally I prefer clarity and being on the same page with the GM/player, and very much oppose
premeditated obscurantism in system design. That does not have to mean a strictly binary 'yes or no', but it does mean needing less back-and-forth before the player can arrive at a reasonably close-ballpark mapping between what's in the narrative and what's on the numbers sheet (and walking by that mapping in both directions as situations warrant).
