Re: Difficulty Balance

In message <eogjec$4pk$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:

>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.  <...>

That makes sense.  Do you find your immersion shallows when you are
dealing with combat scenes where every character has to function
simultaneously in as-near-as-rpgs-get-to-real-time?

>One bit of infrastructure that I think is underappreciated is getting
>the player to describe in physical detail what her PC is doing,

This I grok.  I find that as a player, I never feel "in character" (in
the immersive sense) unless I can "see" what's going on.  I also mime
things like typing on the table top, locking and loading guns,
changing gears, etc.  

>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.

I find a little physical description goes a long way, and it can be
over-done.  By that I mean that sometimes it can be better for each
player to have a slightly different concept of what things look like
than to try to resolve imagination conflicts.  Sometimes it becomes
necessary, but often it doesn't matter if John sees striped wallpaper
and Mary sees paisley, Brian sees leatherbound volumes and Warren sees
paperbacks or whatever.