Re: Difficulty Balance

In article <c26mq2h863akvnmu33tisq0u2t1i97gm1b@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh  <rmarsh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>This fascinates me about you an your style of play, Mary.  I just
>can't imagine being able to compartmentalise my PC characterisations
>enough to get the kind of immersive intensity you seem to be capable
>of for a whole party of characters.

We do a ton of stuff to sup****t this:  I suspect it's possible for
many players, but they've never encountered the sup****t infrastructure.

The Fritz/Charis scene profited a lot by getting Fritz and Charis
off by themselves.  And I had thought out Charis' challenge to
Fritz in fairly good detail beforehand, so I wasn't having to
worry about what Charis would say.  That let me focus on what 
Fritz would answer, which was *not* clear in advance.  The 
focus only snapped back to Charis at the very end when she had to 
decide whether she was satisfied with Fritz' answers, and then
I wasn't having to think about Fritz; he was just waiting 
(fearfully, admittedly) to hear her reaction. 

One bit of infrastructure that I think is underappreciated is getting
the player to describe in physical detail what her PC is doing,
even if this has no game effect.  I think the scene described here
"clicked" for me when Fritz asked Charis to boost him up onto the
great stone throne, and sat up there with his feet dangling like
a child's, looking down at her.  And Charis was wincing, because she
really didn't want to touch the thing.  It rubbed in the role
reversal (Fritz is Charis' older brother, but in this challenge
she was acting as the mature adult and he as the precocious child).
If I hadn't "seen" this I'm not sure I would have gotten it to
work.  But a lot of groups discourage this kind of description
for fear it will take too long--which it does, unless it's a priority
in itself.

You also have to be tolerant of massive delays if it's tem****arily 
impossible to switch from one PC to another--as in the case where
one PC is scared out of his wits and the others are not.

I once ran a multi-player game in this style.  It can work, with
enormous patience on all sides, but it was amazingly slow going.
And I had only three players; I doubt it would have worked at all
with more.  I think Sarah Kahn's group had some success, but they
were all living together at the time.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]