NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8161155" data-attributes="member: 42582">Further on chance meetings: in LotR Gandalf tells the Council of Elrond how he was found by Radagast the Brown carrying a message to him from Saruman.In BW that again could be the result of a Circles check. It could be a failed check: hence the message is a trap. Alternatively, it could be successful, and the subsequent conflict between Gandalf and Saruman could be the result of failed social checks. As with many RPGs, BW can have multiple mechanical and play paths to much the same fiction.In Cortex+ Heroic/MHRP, a player can spend a plot point (a modestly-limited player-side resource) to establish a Resource, which must be connected to a Specialty (roughly, a skill) and reflects the PC's access to useful stuff and useful people. In our Vikings Cortex+ game, when the PCs were negotiating in the steading of the Giant Chieftain, the player whose PC had Social Expert spent a point to (in the fiction) have his PC establish a rapport with a giant shaman who agreed with the PCs' arguments, and (at the table) to establish a d6 Giant Shaman Resource. He was able to add the bonus die to his pool, which meant that - in the fiction - the PC was able to persuade the Giant Chieftain.That sort of thing hasn't happened yet in our LotR Cortex+ game, but in that game Gandalf's player could spend a point to establish a Resource based on his Lore or Arcana Mastery, which might be something like News from the White Council or even a chance meeting with Radagast the Brown. These would be rated at d8 (for Mastery rather than Expert) and could be added by the player to appropriate pools.This is one way in which the play of Cortex+ Heroic can be a bit more "meta" than the play of (say) Burning Wheel. Spending the point to create the Resource doesn't depend on framing and resolving an action declaration by reference to the current fictional situation. It can be a bit more abstracted than that. (Cortex+ Heroic also has the action declaration pathway, but in mechanical terms that creates an Asset rather than a Resource, which is a different component of the dice pool.)</blockquote>

Verification