[Torg] Any ever thought of or tried reversing/altering Torg's Metapower vs Advancement struggle?

[Dominick Riesland]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 8:02 PM, Jeff Clough <jeff at chaosphere.com> wrote:
> As a result of these choices, Bill and Ted will improve their skills faster
> than Bob.  This is a matter of simple mathematics.  Bob will spend more
> possibilities dealing with the bad guys, getting the good rolls and moving
> the story forward, and while RP-wise he might be having a grand time, his
> character's number-wise advancement will lag behind the other players.
>
> I consider this a Bad Thing.  Any time game mechanics invites a player to
> think "I don't think that roll was enough to hit the bad guy, but I really
> want to save that possibility to improve my Taunt skill.  Screw it!",
> there's an issue, in my opinion.  I'm not saying I have a solution that
> maintains the "feel" of Torg, I'm simply pointing out a contradiction
> between the way Torg handles Possibilities and my own, personal aesthetics
> of how players should be rewarded for which actions.  Loving or hating how
> this works in Torg is just as personal a preference, but you at least have
> to admit that this situation exists.  Is it game-breaking, of course not.  I
> just believe it's counter-intuitive.  In most other game systems, the
> players aren't faced with a choice between success and character
> advancement.  Rather, success is *rewarded with* character advancement.

There is a reason for that formula in other systems: there is no means
of altering the chance of success or failure. As a result, the system
rewards good character development and roleplay by encouraging people
to solve the situations in a way that plays to the characters'
strengths, and thus "success" at those tasks lead to "success" in the
adventure, which earns its reward.

Canon Torg often forces characters to make difficult checks on skills
that are their weaknesses, such as a willpower check to disbelieve an
illusion or a faith check to end a miracle that deals damage every
round. To allow for this, there is a means of allowing rolls to
transcend the standard range through Possibility expenditure.

It is no accident that this is the same resource used in character
advancement. Rather than being a Bad Thing, this is a drive to
motivate the players to alternate choices. Spending the Possibility to
gain success in a do-nothing scene is probably the wrong choice.
Spending that same Possibility to gain the card needed to set up the
perfect hand for beating up Baron Manwaring in the final scene may be
the necessary thing to do.

In my experience, players will not save for Taunt, Test, or some other
minor skill like that. If they save, it's for a major expenditure. For
me, a major expenditure consists of any of the following: an attribute
point, "special effect enablers" (such as a magic skill, arcane
knowledge, faith, focus, weird science, or psionics), medicine skill
for a party with no healing, or reality. These expenditures are often
good long-term goals, and the balance between a guarantee of finishing
the adventure versus risking failure of the adventure in the name of
personal advancement is not unintentional.

> Of course some balancing act needs to be created so that the players aren't
> constantly pumping up their die rolls and shrugging off damage with no
> trade-off.  I just really wish a different mechanic had been chosen.  Maybe
> someone here will suggest one.

I don't see what else could have been chosen. I am constantly trying
to break players of the "any failed die roll causes the whole
adventure to fail" mentality, and offering people the chance to save
for a needed skill is one of the more effective means of teaching
that.


Dominick Riesland, aka Rabbitball
Creator of the Cosmversal Grimoire
"There are always possibilities, my sergeant told me. But he never had
his possibilities torn away like wings from a fly."