From: jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: Time and judgement
Date: 11 Sep 92 20:28:18 GMT
Reply-To: jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim)
Organization: Columbia University

laird@think.com (Laird Popkin) writes:
>For every second of "intense" action, each character gets a cumulative -1
>penalty on all actions.  Each second of "resting" recovers one point of the
>penalty.
>
>To lessen the severity of this, each character could avoid the accumulation
>of penalty by making a Will roll.  That would mean that at the beginning of
>each player's turn, they would make a Will roll to avoid getting an
>additional -1.  I don't generally like rolling dice, but it would keep the
>penalties down a bit, and also reward characters with "nerves of steel" so
>it might be worth doing.

	Is it just me, or does this make things even slower than they 
already are? 
	Making a Will roll with every action, and having to keep track of an 
extra variable that changes *every round* is rather time-consuming. No, it 
doesn't slow things down very much, and of course it goes much faster if 
you rest a turn than if you take an action. But 'resting' still takes some 
play time - you have to call the player's action, then he has to decide to 
rest, and then he notes his changed modifier. 

>
>I like this a lot better than lengthening the "round", since (for example)
>I really can run that far in one second, or fire that many shots with a
>gun.  The actions that can be performed in a second in GURPS are, IMHO,
>realistic -- the "problem" is that the system assumes that characters are
>always at peak performance, so the solution should be to have the system
>handle people not being at peak performance, not to make everyone
>arbitrarily less effective than they realistically can be.

	Its a question of complexity here. Obviously, it would be nice to 
have a detailed system that takes into account physical limits and mental 
condition separately - but IMO this takes too long in play. 
	One of the things that takes up alot of time in combat is finding 
out who goes next, and having them decide what they are going to do. Even 
if you restrict them to, say, 10 seconds to decide - with 6 combatants over 
30 seconds (not long for a realistic combat), that's 30 minutes right there, 
not including any dice rolling, questions and answers, etc. 

>
>jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu(John Kim) writes:
>> What makes 
>> a combat feel 'real' to me is the fear, confusion, hesitation, shock, and 
>> pain of the combatants. Playing at the one second level, you generally 
>> lose all this, because you have at least 30 to 60 seconds to decide on 
>> what your character can barely register. 
>
>What I do to address *this* is to put pressure on the *players*.  If the
>situation is tense, and every second counts, I give each player 10 seconds
>to determine what the character is doing, or else the character does
>nothing. 

	Agreed. I know, however, that this is not much of a problem for me 
or a number of other players - who consider their next move while other 
actions are being resolved. Also, there are some players who have real 
trouble with this, and don't like it. In short, I don't support a hard 
and fast time limit, but rather general GM pressure to decide what to do, 
where the 'time limit' will vary from player to player and grow shorter in 
more tense situations and longer in more relaxed ones. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim                    | "Deservin's got nothing to do with it."
jhk6@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu |
Columbia University         |                - William Munny, 'Unforgiven'
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