Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
You just defined tipping points for various situations. Right there. I see 'em. Now, I would prefer you avoid restricted parameters (the tipping point for court action is -10; the tipping point for a finger wag is -2; the tipping point for an ass-kicking is -100) because those tipping points are only valid as far as the end of your nose. For Thrasher, those points might be -12, -4, and -50 respectively, and that's simply no way to run a railroad.
You have a very weird idea of "tipping point," dte. Those weren't thresholds; they were examples. I was trying to get across the idea of a continuous scale, both of actions and of reactions.
Second, it may not be the way to run a railroad, but in real life, that's how the railroad runs. It's all a big ol' mess of opinions, interests, values, views, and what have you. Imperfect, messy, often ugly, often unfair, but somehow it muddles along -- and we with it, as we try to make it better, one little bit at a time. Pretending it's something else yields beautiful neoclassical Fascist facades, but underneath it's all the same rot, only hidden where it festers all the worse. I prefer to bring all that mess to the surface and then make as much sense of it as I can.
Ultimately, it's a proactive/reactive problem. I set up DTE's Grand Tome of Binary Law up front and everybody can operate as they please within that framework. Maybe add an Appendix A on rare occasion to account for time marching on. You have to add another page to PJ's Evergrowing Book of Subjective Situationals every single @%@%$& time some rube somewhere does something unexpected. I take a rigidity penalty (meaning I have a hard time making those "feel good" exceptions you seem to love) but I blow your doors off with efficiency and consistency.
Then how come no dictatorship in history has actually worked like that? They all turn into inefficient, corrupt, nasty, messy dictatorships, sooner or later. What have you discovered that makes yours any different from Caesar, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mussolini, and all the rest?
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540