RE: [DL] Rules Tinkerin': Fate Chips

["Jeff Yates" <jyates@primaryfunction.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-deadlands@gamerz.net [mailto:owner-deadlands@gamerz.net]On
> Behalf Of Alan De Smet
> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 1:51 PM
> To: deadlands@gamerz.net
> Subject: Re: [DL] Rules Tinkerin': Fate Chips
>
>
> Marguerite Frey (natasha_corey@yahoo.com) wrote:
> > As much as it's frightening to say this as a player, you need
> > more combat.  Chips get spent at the END of the session, and if
> > you don't survive until the end, you don't get to spend them to
> > improve.
>
> The characters which take a more active roll in combat are
> already spending chips at a healthy rate.  The more
> defensive/sneaky characters go to lengths to avoid taking damage
> in the first place and end up holding on to more chips at the end
> of the fight.  I've tried more combat or more dangerous combat,
> this simple aggrevated the problem.  The combat oriented
> characters got more injured and burned more chips.
>
> I try to make sure the more defensive characters suffer some in
> the attack, but it only seems reasonable for the bad guys to
> focus their efforts on the more obvious threats.
>
> Part of the reason I'm considering tinkerin' with this is the
> more active combatents have gotten a bit resentful of the
> situation.  They resent the more defensive characters advancing
> their attributes more quickly.  They resent every wound as
> stealing their chances for aptitude advancement.  I certainly
> don't want everyone in my next campaign to err on the side of
> caution.  A certain amount of kicking in doors shootin' is part
> of the fun!
>

Aaah, the fact that some of your players do go in shootin' wasn't
immediately  apparent (to me anyway) in your original post.  Then upping the
combats won't help, like you say.  Unless you either start handing out chips
for being in the combat ("No, you don't get any chips, all you did was hide
behind the barn -- fate doesn't smile on the cowardly!"), or start having
the enemy be sneaky and cautious and very likely to strike at your
sneaky/cautious players first.

Even if you do switch to a bounty point and chip system, maybe you don't
award points to the guys that hang back and never do anything.  They aren't
helping the story, they aren't carrying their weight, etc.  Heck, the
PLAYERS should really be helping to even things out -- if I were always the
one kicking down doors and getting shot up, I'd eventually start refusing.
"I'm not goin' in there.  You go in there, you haven't been shot at
recently.  I've got five pounds of lead weighin' down my gut from last
time!"

Jeff Y.