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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8423735" data-attributes="member: 16814">And we've moved to fisking.I'll take both of these together.  I see what you're saying, but you're missing what I'm saying.  You're saying that the character is different in these situations, and I'm asking how that's actually represented in the fiction -- in the fiction, this is a null.  The challenge doesn't change based on your stress level -- the difficulty of the task to sabotage the airlock, the sequence of steps needed (presumably fictional and assumed rather than explicit), etc, do not at all change from 0 stress to all the stress.  The only difference is how the mechanic works.  And that's always going to be post-hoc ergo proctor hoc -- after the fact therefore before the fact.Let me present a though experiment here -- the airlock sabotage.  Case 1, character has 8 stress, attempts the sabotage.  The scene is described, the player rolls, and rolls a 1 on the stress die, the character panics, and gets a "run away" on the table.  This then gets retconned to explain that the character was very jittery from all the stress accrued, loses it, has a panic attack, and runs off from the airlock.  Cool.Case 2 is the same character.  Everything is exactly the same, except that this character doesn't roll a 1 on the stress die and gets 5 sixes!  Now this character sabotages the airlock, does it in half the normal time, does it in a way that totes shows off and impresses others, breaks it forever and ever, and now can break any other airlock without having to roll.  This is the SAME character in the SAME situation.The stress reaction is always post-resolution and, if the situation isn't already fraught and tense and scary, requires post-hoc retconning of the framing and character to make the resolution make sense.This is why I say this system works great for the intended genre emulation, but not really outside of that narrow scope.  The feedback loop is if you are doing a series of dramatic things, or if you're together with others.  I do something, panic, induce stress, and now the other characters have to make a check because they see me panic, they've gotten more stress from that, and now they panic.  This can absolutely create a feedback loop that can up stress by 3 or 4 points and have everyone panicking in short order.The first can easily happen in an adventure where there's not enough downtime between rolls to reduce stress (due to pressure) but you're constantly doing things like searching areas.  I mean, I'm not deviating at all from the pacing of the sample adventure when I say this.It doesn't at all because there are situations where that can easily happen that aren't violating the way the game plays.  Yes, there are other ways it can't happen, but the existence of one way that can't happen doesn't blanket disprove that it can also happen.Look, I think this is a great game, so long as you stick to the genre emulation it's clearly meant to do.  There's no hill to die on to defend it.  Games don't have to be perfect to be good.  I can critique the other games I play just as easily -- for me, this is very important so that I fully understand exactly how a game works so I can stay within the assumptions and get the most out of it.  I don't play every game assuming it does everything -- I pick a game to play to do the thing I want.  This game has some issues that prevent it from being as flexible as I (and the group I am playing with) thought it was, and as the guidance for the GM suggests.  I now view that guidance through the lens of the genre emulation assumption, and I think it works fine there.  Not as much outside.  That means that if I want to do more in this universe, I need to hack this game or find a different one that also works in the genre.  Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to running a few cinematic one-shots for my home group.  I don't plan on houserules.</blockquote>

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