[Torg] Are Orrorsh game mechanics "scary"?

[Kansas Jim]

Steve Crow wrote:

[I wrote:]

>  > My players had an irrational fear of True Sight and Spirit Medium, they
>  > were okay with doing Research but as I recall none ever acquired True
>  > Sight and they avoided NPCs with Spirit Medium like the plague.

> Why were they irrationally afraid of it?

I don't really know. Maybe with True Sight they were overly concerned
about it lowering their Perseverance. As for Spirit Medium, maybe they
just didn't like gypsies?

> Also, it seems that the way they describe it, that Spirit Medium is 
> rather... well, useless. or at the very least pretty limited. Only 
> Orrorosh Gypsies can learn and use it? That always seemed kind of 
> restrictive as an absolute, in a game where the intent is presumably 
> that anybody can do anything.

Yeah, I never really liked that limitation. I have no problem with
using the stereotype of the mysterious gypsy spirit medium, but for a
pseudo-Victorian setting to not allow for pseudo-British mediums at all
seemed a little odd.

> Plus, presumably, Spirit Medium is useless outside of Orrorsh anyway.

As written, yes. At one point I'd been working on a more generic version
of the skill that had an axiom requirement rather than being an Orrorsh-
only ability but unfortunately I don't seem to have committed it to a
computer file and don't remember any of the specifics.

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