The perennial discussion has come up on the Fudge List (mostly because of me, and somehow it's resulted in us becoming a dice vendor of sorts, which probably does something to Paradox Three (I think it was)) about the weird range of Fudge die rolls. Anyway, I'm back to thinking about game design, which is not really a good thing, because I don't wanna be a game designer. I just want a game that works. So I threw this idea out at least once here and once on the Fudge List, and no real game designer picked it up and made it work, so I'm still stuck with it. My theory is that the problem with setting high stakes (and I use this term not in the Dogs-in-the-Vineyard specific sense) and taking big risks is that sometimes you fail. So what we end up wanting is for the character to take the risks in *his* world, but not actually in ours. And that's awfully hard to do and actually have it feel like a risk. But if you don't, sometimes you break your game. So my idea was stakes-setting, but not really in the Dogs sense (it predated Dogs, for one thing)... you state your goal, and what you're willing to risk to get it, and the GM throws everybody's goals and (SOMETHING MAGIC HAPPENS) and you find out who succeeded at what. If you risk more, you have a better chance of getting what you want, I'd assume. No matter what, you don't end up with a setback that's more than you were prepared to deal with. Of course, not succeeding may be a setback of its own... but it does eliminate the "Wait, my character wouldn't have done that if he'd known he was going to die!" sort of moments. Well, a little extreme. You don't end up with the dice-broke-the-story sort of moments, though, because they're more restricted. For those who like surprises, I suppose there could be a critical "Something Surprising Happens" result on the roll. I like that sort of thing, as a GM; a random "You know all the possibilities you'd debated amongst? Don't pick *any* of them" requirement. But that's a whole nother post. Of course, I still don't know exactly how the magic part should work. That's because I'm not a game designer. -- Karen J. Cravens silver@phoenyx.net ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
