Re: Difficulty Balance

In message <20070111180416.N85867@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
          John Morrow <morrow@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, gleichman wrote:
> > I can understand the concept of immersion quite well. And I can
understand
> > how all sorts of game systems and requirements can get in the way of
it.
> 
> I believe that.  I think that at least part of the problem is that other

> people don't understand how you reconcile the two without trouble.  I 
> think it would help people decouple tactical play and role-playing and 
> stop assuming they are mutually exclusive if they had a better 
> understanding of how you manage both at the same time.  The problem
isn't 
> on your end but some more detail might help create more understanding at
> the other end.
> 
> > That isn't my issue. And that certainly wasn't the claim being made.
> 
> As I saw it, Simon was assuming that difficult tactical thinking is 
> detrimental to role-playing and then built some comments on top of that 
> assumption.  And I wonder if the key to the whole assumption that one
must 
> choose between "roll-playing" and "role-playing" derives from an
inability 
> for many people to imagine a person doing both at the same time.  It's
> not uncommon for people to assume that what's not possible for them is
not 
> possible for others.

If I may slightly refine the above -

A scenario may be too difficult for a multitude of reasons, of which
excessive tactical difficulty is just one - albeit the one most easy to
identify. Any group running at the upper limits of its performance band
would benefit from a slight difficulty reduction, and any group running
/above/ the upper limits of its performance band obviously needs the
difficulty to be reduced. There's nothing controversial in either of those
two statements. For the record, I'm satisfied that gleichman is running
his
games a sensible distance away from this upper limit, so he can on
occasion
'up the stakes' slightly and see his players rise to the challenge.

Note the distinction between scenarios that are /too/ difficult with
/excessive/ tactical difficulty and scenarios that are merely difficult
and
tactically challenging. I have no problems with the latter. In fact I wish
I
was better at producing them myself.

-- 
Simon Smith

When emailing me, please use my preferred email address, which is on my
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