Re: Difficulty Balance

"R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh" <rmarsh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:4bueq2142kv2ld2s32gfi342507ioeb8cn@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I would find it surprising if most players didn't
> prefer the "70 yard touchdown in the dying seconds to win the game"
> kind of heroism over the "died fighting a doomed rear-guard action to
> save his platoon" kind of heroism.

And yet how many people play "Football, the RPG"?

What this falls out to be is basically how someone reacts to failure. Can 
they exist with and still have fun with failure and at what level? It
seems 
like common sense to note that there is likely a point of continuing
failure 
where individual people can no longer have fun, and that such a point is 
different for each person. Thus it's also common sense to avoid a level of

game difficulty where that threshold is crossed for the players in one's 
group (or to find different players).

It's also very common for some people to have no fun at all failing, but 
also to have no fun if there's no chance of failing. Here the question 
becomes one of fail how often and under what conditions? You spend you
money 
and take your chances. For Mary, it appears this is a very serious
question 
because she takes the failures of all six characters directly and rolls
them 
up into herself without another player to offload them to. Perhaps the 
knowledge of that can keep her from rolling it up and allow her to
firewall 
the impressions- perhaps not. That's for her to decide.

But I seriously object to the concept that high pressure and failure by
and 
of itself prevents role-play. That's a "one-wayism" statement if there
ever 
was one. It may not be fun, YOU may not want to role-play it, but it 
certainly can be role-played.