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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5623695" data-attributes="member: 22779">And, this is an excellent point.  Virtually anything can be associated with a bit of effort.  It's not like the game happens in a vaccuum and you can't justify almost anything.  So, if that's true, then where's the problem?But, we're playing a role playing game that takes place during a football game.  There is no "referee", only the people around the table playing the game.  The referee can't make an error in judgment, since he doesn't exist.So, we need some sort of mechanic that adds in (well, maybe not need, but, work with me here) a "game changing bad call" to the game since many football games exhibit this thing.  Since there is no actual live referee, any mechanic we come up with is going to be disassociated by its nature.  About the closest you could get to an associated mechanic would be to have a Referee NPC with some sort of perception ability and then assign some sort of stealth rating to every rules infraction.  Possible but extremely cumbersome.  Particularly since we're not really concerned with minor infractions that get missed, and, well, trying to introduce yet another mechanic that would simulate infractions being committed is just adding yet more complexity.It's possible to do, but, very, very cumbersome.Another option, and pretty much completely disassociated from the in game fiction would be to have "bad call" occur randomly.  Let the dice gods decide.  Charts and tables govern when and how bad the call is.  Again, this works (and Rolemaster comes to mind here, as well as GURPS) but it's slow and often leads to somewhat illogical results because of the vagaries of the dice.A third option would be to have the DM rule by fiat when the referee makes a bad call.  Again, possible, but problematic for the reasons I outlined earlier.  A fourth option is to allow the players to decide when the bad call occurs, but turn it into a player resource so that they have to choose when the bad call happens.  Make a bad choice and you won't have that resource available later.If you want to add in bad calls to the football game RPG, you have to design mechanics that will allow them to be added.  Which version you use will depend on all sorts of criteria.  If you want the most clearly associated mechanics, the first version will work, but, it's going to be a bear.  You have to accept that it's going to slow the game down.OTOH, the least associated mechanics - Player Chooses - is probably the fastest and simplest one.  Not necessarily the best, depending on your criteria, but, certainly the one that will resolve the fastest.It might be inconsistent with the rules of football, but, it is not inconsistent for the rules of FootBall The RPG.</blockquote>

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