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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial" align=justify>----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"
align=justify><B>From:</B> <A title=lev_lafayette@yahoo.com.au
href="mailto:lev_lafayette@yahoo.com.au">Lev Lafayette</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial" align=justify><B>To:</B> <A
title=design@mimesisrpg.com
href="mailto:design@mimesisrpg.com">design@mimesisrpg.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial" align=justify><B>Sent:</B> Monday, October 17,
2005 2:24 PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial" align=justify><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Design]
Ordinary is relative</DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV align=justify><BR></DIV></FONT>
<DIV align=justify><BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>The problem with d4-d4 and
similar sort of games<BR>(e.g., Fudge) is despite having a relative
ordinary<BR>level, it does have limits. Quite literally.<BR><BR>Now, I'm not
talking whether Superman is 1000 or 1001<BR>timews stronger than the normal
human. I'm talking<BR>about situations when a person is just off the
scale.<BR><BR>You know, like what's the chance of a person with<BR>Famous
Strength wrestling something which is... Well,<BR>about 2 levels above
Famous?<BR><BR>Do we have Famous + 2 or is a gorilla the same as a<BR>rhino
which is the same as a tank? The obvious thing<BR>to do would be to have "Famous
+2" but then players<BR>will want to increase their Strength above the
pre-set<BR>limit of the game.<BR><BR>Bloody players ;-)<BR><BR>***</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2>Yes, it does have limits. Remember
there are two limits. The first is the limit on Trait levels - for a
regular human in a realistic game, no worse than Poor, no better than
Outstanding. The second is the limit on _Performances_ - no worse than Crap, no
better than Famous. No-one is always crap or famous, they just have good days or
bad days. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> That's because
d4-d4's designed to give a realistic flavour for games. Someone whose base
ability of Wrestling is Famous - that means that 2/3 of all wrestling matches
they undertake will become famous. Famous is Albert Einstein's theories of
relativity or Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I'll be back" or whatever. It's quite
literally "famous." Now, real people do not perform famously most of the time.
They do, at best, a few things in each lifetime which have the potential to be
famous. Arnie's player rolled well when he came to say that line, and
Albert's player rolled well when he came to write that paper on Relativity. But
not every line Arnie said became famous, nor did every theory of Albert's become
famous. Arnie's less well-known for _Jingle All the Way_, and Albert's less
well-known for his paper on the photoelectric effect (even though he officially
won the Nobel Prize for it) or his opposition to Quantum Uncertainty Theory.
While they did SOME famous things with their abilities, not EVERYTHING they did
with those abilities was famous. So we would say that Arnie has Excellent Macho
Acting, and Albert has Outstanding Physics, or whatever; and they rolled well
the days they came to do those things, getting a Famous
performance.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> Real people don't
do Famous things every day. That's unrealistic, to do famous things every day.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> That's reality,
and that's the flavour the game tries to put across. Not realistic, since that's
impossible, but a realistic _flavour_.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> To complain that
it doesn't allow unrealistic performances on a regular basis is like complaining
that the chisel is not very good for getting the hubcap off. Well, duh, that's
not what it was designed for. Try a spanner, mate. A chisel will do the job, but
you'll wreck the chisel and the hubcap in the process. d4-d4 was designed for
realistic-flavoured games, and therefore does not do unrealistic-flavoured games
as well. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> If your game is to
be about famous wrestlers wrestling famously, you can simply assume that any
non-wrestler they meet they can just toss aside with impunity. Call their
Westling Trait, Wrestling! to indicate it's a higher league than regular people.
All that matters is how good a wrestler they are compared to other wrestlers. So
they are a Wrestler! Good or Wrestler! Crap or whatever. If they achieve a
Famous performance with their Wrestling!, then they'll be Famous.... among other
Wrestlers. But even the Crap Wrestler! is famous among regular folk; we just
assume that. Famous is famous, though, for regular folk. We don't really
distinguish between the different levels of positive reputation of
Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both are famous to us. But if I were
Brad Pitt, then the differences might matter, and I might decide that
Schwarzenegger had Positive Reputation! Excellent, while Clint only had Positive
Reputation! Good, and lowly old me, Brad Pitt, has just Middling Postive
Reputation!. The positive reputation of all three is simply off the scale for
regular folk. If we're roleplaying regular folk, we just call it Reputation
Famous; but if we're roleplaying Brad or Arnold or Clint, then the differences
matter, and we call it Reputation! and talk about its being ordinary, good,
terrible, etc. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> In each case, you
just decide what league you're playing in. You don't CARE if the Wrestler! can
toss a non-wrestler 22 metres or 22.5 metres, what does it matter? All that
matter is how far Hulk Hogan can toss Sgt Slaughter. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> The base design of
d4-d4 is for the "realistic" league, but the first game I heard about outside
the playtest groups was for Matrix... so there you go. And that prompted the
"ordinary is relative" rule. This extends the scope of the game a bit, but it's
still not very good for supers stuff, or roleplaying children, etc. It's like
the saw on the Swiss Army knife - it's better than no saw at all, but really a
saw needs to be bigger and sharper, get a specific tool for that. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> I still say, games
are tools, and designed for specific purposes. I don't think there are any truly
all-purpose tools. Any game which claims to be "universal", when you look at it
more closely, unless you're the most grovelling of drooling fanboys, you have to
admit it's better at some things than others. Like, GURPS does "gritty
game-balanced realism" well. FATE does "literary-style adventure" well. But
GURPS does "literary-style adventure" poorly, there's too much useless (for that
style) baggage to the system; while FATE does "gritty game-balanced realism"
poorly, there's not enough detail to it, and too much need for GM judgment.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> It's silly to
complain that the chisel is making a mess of your hubcap, and it's also silly to
think that you can have one all-purpose tool. Sure, there are the Swiss Army
knives and so on, but those sorts of tools tend to do many tasks in a pretty
ordinary way, and just one or two really well. They make up for their overall
ordinary performance by being light and easy to carry, unlike all the specific
tools they replace. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> Similarly, a
"universal" system like d4-d4 or FATE or Fudge or Over the Edge or Masterbook...
they do many things in a pretty ordinary way, not very impressive, BUT at least
there aren't a zillion rules and exceptions to them... </FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2> So really your
complaint about these system is less like "this chisel does not make a very good
spanner" and more like, "but this Swiss Army knife doesn't have a coffee
plunger." Every tool has its limits... I don't think it's productive to try to
create a tool which can do everything. Better to decide EXACTLY what you want
your game to do, and focus on that. Is your game to be about gorillas wrestling
rhinos? Or rhinos wrestling tanks? If so, I recommend Risus, a rules-light
comedy game...:)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV align=justify><FONT face=Arial size=2>Cheers,<BR>Kyle<BR>Better Mousetrap
Games<BR>home of d4-d4 and other stuff<BR><A
href="http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339">http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339</A></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>