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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NiTessine" data-source="post: 5848044" data-attributes="member: 475">There are two parts to any task, be it winning a firefight or getting through a locked door. These are the idea and roleplaying. The idea part is where the player describes how their character will go about the task, and the roleplaying is in how well this fits their character and how the player narrates it.Take the door, for a really simple example. The GM describes a heavy wooden door that bars the character's way. It's locked. The metal parts have a veneer of rust on them, the wooden surface is weather-beaten but not rotten. The GM has decided that whoever owned the house took his security and privacy seriously - the Difficulty Level for getting through the door is Difficult (15).Let's say the character is Jacques, a heavyset former weightlifter and occasional barroom brawler (he has the abilities Strong and Melee, both of them Fitness abilities). Jacques' player decides he will kick down the door, aiming near the lock and describes the character's actions to the GM.The GM figures that as far as plans go, it's pretty straightforward but there's a certain charming pragmatic quality to it. He ranks the idea a 3 (with 5 being the maximum). It's also something Jacques, a straightforward and impatient kind of guy, would go for. In addition, he's kinda violent and the solution fits his toolbox of abilities. The GM ranks the roleplaying also 3. In addition, because of Jacques has the Strong ability, appropriate for the job, both scores are raised to 4. Then one is multiplied with the other, for a total score of 16, above the Difficulty Level. The lock gives way beneath Jacques' combat boot, and the door swings open.Now, it could be that Jacques had tried to pick the lock. Even if he had a set of lockpicks, without the appropriate ability he would have been unlikely to succeed, especially because it requires patience and dexterity, neither traits that he has demonstrated in the past or supported by his character sheet. Jacques' nimble friend Fritz, a former cat burglar, would have had more luck with that approach.It could also have been that the door opened in the other direction, making straight-up violence a harder approach than, say, picking the lock. In such a case, the Difficulty could be 20, and Jacques unable to kick it down just like that. He could, if he wished, still burn a point of Fitness (with his abilities Strong and Melee, his Fitness is 1) to ask for a favour from the GM related to the challenge - say, to crash his entire meaty frame at the door in frustration, breaking it down but suffering the reduced Fitness score for the rest of the session, because even a man built like a Mack Truck doesn't go through a door without suffering bruises, sprains or scratches.That's the basic mechanic. Of course, unless there's an interesting story reason for the door to be a challenge, Jacques' Strong attribute would probably be sufficient to declare success outright.Edit: oh, soddit, I misremembered how attribute scores work. Having two abilities from a single attribute are worth only one ability point. A third (say, Throwing Arm) would push Jacques' Fitness over to 2. This is the result of ten months between me turning in the translation and the finished work coming out. Head like a sieve, nowadays...</blockquote>

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