[Torg] Possibility Spending

[Travis James Hall]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com 
> [mailto:torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com] On Behalf Of 
> Benjamin Grant
> Sent: Tuesday, 11 November 2008 1:58 AM
> To: torg at justintimeadventures.com
> Subject: RE: [Torg] Possibility Spending
> 
> The rules clearly say that "No more than one Possibility may 
> be spent on any one action".  Not only does that clearly in
> black and white rules as written directly say to me that
> only possibilities spent ON the action count, after checking
> with other people I know, both gamers and non, every person
> I asked read it the exact same way - that unless the
> possibility that is spent is permitted to generated a dice
> roll, it is not being spent ON the action.

And you know, I'm quite sure I could phrase my questioning in such a way to
get people to agree to whatever I wanted them to say too. Presenting
selected phrasing in combination with appropriate leading questions, it'd be
easy. So easy, in fact, that avoiding such bias is a significant portion of
the study of statistics, because it's hard to avoid when framing questions.
It frequently occurs even when questioners are consciously seeking to avoid
it.

But if you simply slapped the book in front of someone, asked them to read
page 14 for themselves, left them alone to do it and then asked them to
describe how Possibilities may be used during play, I believe you will
rarely, at best, have anyone tell you that it is as you describe.

> And I would not only say that your charge applies much more clearly to
> *your* interpretation, my quick poll would seem to back that up.

There's another set of data available. You put your argument to this list,
and a number of people told you they didn't see your interpretation in the
written rules. For the most part, readers of this list are people who have
bought and read the rules before coming to this list, and thus their initial
interpretions have not been gleaned from the teachings of others here. If
you ask, I think you will find that your respondants will assure you that,
for the most part, they have played the way they do before discussing the
matter here.

> >>> It does not
> >>> appear to me that either of us has offered anything that
> >>> seems to be chaning the other person's mind on this.
> >>
> >>You hold too high an opinion of yourself, that you assume I care
> >>whether your mind is changed.
> 
> Where and when did I state that you did?

If you don't, you could consider stopping asking about it. Changing your
mind is irrelevant.

> It would also probably be for the best if you didn't take the 
> discussion so personally.

I don't get it. You barely exist to me as a person. It's your arguments I
address, and you matter to me no more than as a source of those arguments.
My part, likewise, is as a presenter of my own arguments. Where does
"personally" enter into it?

> I would further wonder what it matters, whether or not the 
> rules as written say one thing or the other.

You tell me.

When I first cracked open the book, a day or two after this thread started,
I fully expected to find an interesting ambiguity in the rules - a quirk in
the countering rule that indicates that countered Possibility is negated,
effectively never spent, or perhaps is spent towards something other than
its original purpose. I very much doubted that your alternative would be
positively and surely indicated, as you claimed, but I figured there'd be
something unclear, and we'd be able to note that your unusual interpretation
was incorrect, as confirmed by years-old interaction with the writers of the
game and the long experience of the knowledgable veterans, but that in the
absence of a resource such as this list and drawing only on the written
rules, the mis-interpretation would be understandable.

I was surprised when I found that the written rules state only that a
countering Possibility cancels the die roll - that there is no listed effect
on expenditure at all.

So I noted that, for no-one else had - it seemed that nobody had bothered to
read the rule - and expected the conversation to move on. And I noted that
conformance to the written rule is not necessary.

But you give this Byzantine justification based on words not falling into
certain patterns.

So you tell me, why jump through hoops to justify your rules? Especially
when you admit that there is a big problem that results from your
interpretation and that necessitates house rules to fix in your game.

Travis Hall