[Torg] metapower vs advancement, reconsolidation

[Scott Schultz]

> Actually, I do get the point.  I just do not agree with
> it, nor do I believe the point is expressed in the best
> way.  I do not agree that the mechanic in question has to
> have anything to do with rewarding success.  

Well, I agree with most of the rest of this post so I've got nothing really to say about it. The specific point I was addressing was the "penalized for success" bit. I may have misunderstood, but I thought you laid claim to having originated that though. :-)

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to pigeon-hole or rigidly define what possibilities should be used for or how they should be awarded. That's up to the GM. I mentioned the "standard" awards that appear in the rulebooks and the "modules" because that's a standard that everyone is familiar with.

I was primarily pointing out that the "MvA dilemma" that Ben posits can't really be a penalty on success when it, in fact, is an enabler behind the success. 

Now, we might need to define "success". I'm getting the impression that you're using "success" in a meta-game fashion to mean "successfully completed the storyline to my satisfaction". If that required using possibilities, you're saying that's a "penalty" when they could have used those same possibilities for skill advancement. 

It is a cost, yes. That's not a bad thing. Penalties imply punishment. I don't think a player who makes a choice of an in-game reward over an out-of-game reward is really being penalized. It seems to me that if you see lost possibilities as a penalty, then it implies that you see stat growth as the only true reward.

To my mind, the possibilities are the reward. What you buy with them is incidental. I can envision a house rule that says "At the start of an act, a player can spend five possibilities to draw one extra card." Suddenly, stats aren't the only reward any more. Is a player who chooses an extra card being "penalized"? The choice is no different than spending a possibility on a die-roll, and the effect on the game is qualitatively identical. Should this house rule be thrown out because a player who chooses to exercise it is going to advance his stats more slowly than players who don't?

This entire discussion, IMO, revolves around the idea that stat increases are the "real" goal of the game. I would argue that such a viewpoint is incorrect, or at least very limiting. Yes, stat increases are permanent, and so they're measurable. Treating them as markers of advancement, though, is really just a way of defining a milestone; a replacement for "experience levels". There is no such milestone in Torg. Artificially creating one and then trying to ways to enforce it as a milestone is, IMO, missing the point of the game.