[Torg] Possibilities: Better Results Now VS Character Advancement

[Kansas Jim]

Benn writes:

> I know that this must have been talked about before, can anyone fill me 
> on what conclusions were reached?  

The closest we've ever been to a conclusion is that people are split
on the topic. :)

[...]

> Perhaps the simplest fix (if one is even desirable) would be to have 
> separate pools for story influence (roll again) points and character growth.

WEG took that approach when they changed the system for Masterbook.

> After all, why should a character have to fail a task to raise a skill?

My take is that the concept isn't that the character has to accept
failures in order to raise a skill, the character is making things more
difficult for himself and thus (supposedly) more exciting and dramatic
by not succeeding every time he does something. As a delayed payoff for
taking this harder route, he ends up with more points being available
when it's time for improvement.

In my experience though, most players never actually think it through
that much. If it's a really bad roll they'll accept the failure but if
it's close they'll agonize over whether to spend the point now or to
save it for later - not for advancement later but in case they need
to spend it on a more important roll later in the adventure! I've had
only a couple of players who were focused on saving their points for
advancement, and the rest of the players would bitch at them for being
so stingy about spending their points on rolls.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html