Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="thefutilist" data-source="post: 9648263" data-attributes="member: 7044566">Being able to clarify position, effect and intent is great. You can kind of pop the hood, so to speak, such that if things ever get muddled you can sort them out.There's two big reasons I don't formally use them in the systems currently run:The first is that the trigger for a conflict tends to clarify them anyway,You're trying to pick the lock on the safe. Are you actually in conflict with anything? Let's say you are in fact in conflict with the safe then I'll probably state what the other party in the conflict wants unless it's obvious.You want to unlock the safe and the safe wants to remain locked. So we know what the roll is determining.Or the player states something that I think over reaches in terms of effect and so I offer a lesser effect instead.You want to escape the inquisitor but the most you'll be able to manage in this position is to put some distance between the two of you.I tend to wed the means of achieving a thing very closely with the intent. The dice roll tends to show how effective these means are.You fail to pick the lock of the safe (failed intent to open the safe) so you try and blow the doors off with dynamite instead. This time the conflict is with the dynamite, it wants to destroy the money inside and you don't want it too.Although I'm playing The Pool at the moment and the player can take narration authority, which tends to mean they have more control over just how effective something is, which means the conversation before the roll is different.The second reason I'm less formal is because of social conflicts. Intent matters far less, if at all, and you really are at the mercy of whoever controls the character. In most cases I don't like clarifying intent or effect at all. Although I may signal severity of consequence just to be clear. Although it really is kind of fluid because sometimes someone will say something tat triggers a conflict and sometimes someone will state intent and means.I want to embarrass the king into letting us go on the quest, is of course the player stating intent and means. Which happens fairly frequently. Yet whether a roll is required might still be subject to precisely what they say. Things can get fuzzy.</blockquote>

Verification