On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 04:12:25PM -0600, Tim Hall wrote: >Karen J. Cravens wrote: >> I still haven't found a workable balance. I *like* character-can-do >> rules. Outright narrative-can-do rules feel like cheating. >The alternative is behind-the-scenes GM fudging, which is even more like >cheating. Only if your rules say that the GM can't do whatever he likes. :-) This comes back to the absolute power and trust relationship that I tend to harp on about: the players trust me not to mess them about (so if they've spent lots of points on a neat attack ability I'll let them get some use out of it rather than just giving every bad guy invulnerability to it), and because they trust me they don't mind my making strange things happen - there's an assurance that there will eventually be an explanation of some sort. The opposite of this, as far as I'm concerned, is the D&D3.5-style game with all its status flags and mechanistic detail: "I know that my (foo power) should work this way on any monster that doesn't have (bar or baz ability), and I'll argue with the DM if it doesn't". In some respects that's very like the forced-narrativist games, except that the D&D rules force you into a combat-orientated dungeon-bash instead. :-) -- Roger, gaming grognard Lots of role-playing stuff: http://tekeli.li/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GAMERS Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gamers/
