Training is likely to be affected in several areas, sure, but I'm more worried about a) running around at a 5% PL - that's much less safe, and limits what we can achieve quite a it. And b) being Sealed whilst we're running around as a Shade might lead to Karen becoming a separate personality, like Jaron. Which I really, really, really do not want.
Can you explain
specifically why this is such a horror outcome for you? Because you've mentioned it several times without going into detail, and it's clearly a major motive for you.
Personally I think we have less to worry about on that front than Jaffur did, because we're already pretty good at Multiform, which seems the most obvious way to (with some modifications, possibly magical) make sure we have two bodies to go with two minds.
I always know that I can count on you for a detailed accounting of your thoughts.
Thanks!
No problem.
I don't know if you've ever played a tabletop RPG like Dungeons and Dragons as a player, but imagine the problems you'd run into if you had never read the Players' Handbook and were entirely reliant on the DM to tell you rules- and, moreover, the DM usually didn't volunteer information beyond the most basic things.
I'm not even talking about "waaah we can't munchkin to produce mathematically optimal characters" nonsense. I'm talking things like "someone eschews the rogue class because they falsely believe it would compel them to steal things counterproductively" or "repeatedly buy Toughness feats in 3rd Edition" or "someone chooses 'cleric' but then doesn't wear armor OR otherwise build the character around cleric abilities properly, because they aren't in a good position to think through the implication of those abilities, and are just working off of stereotypes about medieval monks."
This would tend to result in character builds, and party behavior, that would result in the party getting
slaughtered while the GM (who knows the rules and has long since internalized them and THINKS they are dropping enough hints) goes "wait, why are they being so dumb about this stuff" or "shrug, they made their choices."
It's not really fun for anyone.
...
We're already experiencing those problems.
For example, I suspect we'd have pushed Style training a lot harder if we were collectively thinking "wait, each rank of Style corresponds to a +10 on the die roll for all our Combat checks, possibly
more since it entails leveling up the skills we'll actually be fighting with." Now we've got NPCs
mocking us for our lack of Style training... but while it was hinted at that Styles were powerful before, the lack of that specific, concrete number makes it harder to focus attention and build consensus around the process. Whereas IC, Kakara would
know, or should know, that anyone proficient in a Style could kick her ass in a fight at equal power level, because she's spent years of elapsed time directly in the Hall training and must have seen this kind of thing play out even if she's not that interested in combat herself.
We've passed up opportunities to gain advantages or even completely pre-empt major problems through socialization, I think in part because everyone has an intuitive "realistic" concept of how much can be gained that way, while
Kakara personally stands to gain much more because she's a dedicated diplomancer build. But even
knowing that, we've made some poor choices. Some of them were for roleplaying reasons (I won't go into specifics), but I think others were just because we honestly thought it impossible to achieve through Communications the things we wanted to achieve. Or at least some of us thought that way.
This isn't me trying to be whiny, and I have no desire to blame you. I understand why you've wanted to run a rules-light game as far as your interactions with the playerbase are concerned. Lots of games work that way and it ends up going pretty well.
But I think you might want to experiment with running things rules-medium or rules-heavy, just to see how it goes. I think you'd find your players being happier as a result. Even the beer-and-pretzels types who aren't going to be obsessively poring over every bit of the system they see. Because they'll have reason to feel like
someone understands what is going on and can make good plans, and that provides a certain sense of security, compared to no one being able to tell a good plan from a bad plan.
- I invisitext them for a very particular reason, but I have considered spoilering them at the end.
- Clarify this, please.
- I may make it more paradigmatically clear what certain kinds of situations do to your rolls, but I'm not going to provide detailed breakdowns of everything affecting every single roll, for, at the very least, the simple reason that I rule many of them from moment-to-moment. I may alter that so that some are more standardized.
I think the best thing would be to publicize any modifiers that, realistically,
Kakara knows about, unless there's like eight of them and they're all situational. Because in a realistic scenario, Kakara probably does MOST things with a reasonably clear idea of whether they are likely to succeed or fail, or at least a clearer idea than we have.
That doesn't have to translate into putting out breakdowns for every single roll- just for a representative sample of those Kakara can see playing out. Like, if Kakara makes four Communications checks during a shonen speech, we might see the breakdown ONCE, with some of the modifiers being "+??, not telling" or "-??" After that, no more breakdowns, except maybe in brackets like [Critical success, further bonus gained]
If there are
specific cases where you want to keep a roll or its outcome secret, and there
very much will be and should be, I get that... That's fine. But the general policy of keeping literally all the 'nuts and bolts' behind the screen has left us so ignorant about our own abilities and what our enemies can do to interfere with those abilities that it's been nerfing us mechanically.
I strongly recommend that, in an attempt to offset any lingering bias in favor of classifying
too much information about how things are working and what is going on under the hood, you may want to try consciously leaning in favor of revealing a bit more information than you otherwise would. The Goku vs. Frieza battle is a commendable example of this, because you totally didn't have to do it and people
learned things from it, things that will help us going forward and make us more confident that we understand what is happening to our character and what we can do about it.
It replaced a sense of player helplessness with a sense of player agency and that is always a huge good thing.
Operation Success
She left the great hall, moving quickly to a small corridor hidden away from the rest of the compound. It had taken a bit of time, but she'd successfully modified the spell to ensure that all her puppets would keep following a convincing mimicry of life. It wouldn't stand up to suspicion for long, but then again, it didn't need to. She went down the stone steps, past torchlight and mage light alike, before reaching a dead end. Reaching down to her wrist, she quickly typed in the password on her tool. The wall slid down, revealing a corridor made from advanced alloys and lit with electric lights.
As the woman called Dandeer walked through that corridor, she let the all-encompassing illusion that disguised her figure and voice fall away. It was no longer necessary. She stood outside the room for one brief moment, reviewing the report she was about to make. She entered, walking up to metal podium in the center as it turned on, receiving instructions from light years away. A few seconds later, a blue holographic image of her boss appeared. She looked up briefly, then set aside the pad she'd been looking at and focused her full attention on the situation at hand.
"You were successful then?" Under her mask, 'Dandeer's' flesh pulled back in what could have been a smile, a habit she'd picked up in the company of her previous employers.
"Indeed. The Saiyans have been"-
gshk-"subverted. Garenhuld is yours"-
gshk-"Minister T'Vael."
Through a combination of the strange biotics found on the planet and the technology you reverse-engineered from the SO-4 site, Shurna has successfully subverted all relevant governments on Garenhuld, hidden or otherwise. The military force you have gained from this could very well be the solution to fighting the Rachni in a land war.
A/N: DAMN YOU TERMINUS QUEST!
Speaking of Terminus Quest, San Shurna being a wizard would explain suspiciously much.
Pffff-
Oh, so
very non-canon! Hell, I have absolutely no idea what bonus to give this. Ideas?
Hm.
Interaction with science-fictional technology? Kakara hasn't got much experience with that, so it'd be a helpful bonus to have.
Interaction with galactic polities?
Intrigue, in honor of San Shurna's epic deception?
Fighting space monsters, because that's what the Virmireans are trying to recruit saiyan janissaries to do?
