The Add 1 Debate

[jefft]

Mar 12, 2008 20:50:01 GMT -5 Pete said:

Incidentally, does anyone "Add 1" on one of the handful of characters with a Level 3 comeback? I don't--if Vengeance is dumb enough to try to Cleave Colossus' robotic eye, he should pay for it.

cotg.proboards12.com/index.cgi?board=misc&action=display&thread=1171249622&page=2#1171299825

[glow=red,2,300]THE OFFICIAL WORD FROM TOM[/glow]

Hi Jeff!

Yes, add the "Add 1" prior to rolling a pin. It's a little weird when a guy rolls an Add 1 and Colossus rolls his reversal, but I assume the move really hurt and while Colossus makes a herculean effort to rebound that he's still affected by the move and the Add 1 still applies. It's like "playing through the pain" and may come back to haunt him later in the mach.

Rather than my searching for the discussion please feel free to report my comments.
Good questions...

Tom

[Trent Lawless]

Mar 30, 2008 11:49:42 GMT -5 jefft said:

Mar 12, 2008 16:56:14 GMT -5 wildfire said:

That is the official rule, yes, but I still think my way makes more sense, and I'm sticking to it.

Right. So you and Mark, et. al., think Tom is a befuddled idiot who doesn't even know how to play is own game and that he should just retire because you guys are the only ones who know what's right for this game.

Thanks for clarifying.


We needed someone to say something like that, right? ;D ;D

Dude, I just don't like the rule.

[roninnoir]

If there has ever been a game that has been played by more than a handful of people and hasn't been house-ruled, I haven't seen it.

[antimony]

I think the "problem" (which is a horrible word to use, because it's not so much a problem as it is a by-product of the system) is that there's no other (simple) way to measure damage, fatigue, or anything else that can help contribute to the end of the match. Maybe a good Eye Cleaving should reduce your Ropes Rating by a letter grade instead of adding to your PIN. Maybe a figure four around the ringpost should increase your agility by 1. But then, it will also make it harder to use power moves, so maybe every other time it's applied, it should be +1 to power, too.

See? It becomes a nightmarish mess way beyond the simplistic (in a good way) mechanic that runs the system.

So, when you get Eye Cloven, your PIN goes up by 1 to represent some nebulous injury/agony/blindness factor. If that leads to a PIN attempt, and you kick out, your PIN goes up by 1 to represent some nebulous fatigue/depletion of reserves factor.

OR

You get Eye Cloven, and then you almost get pinned, so you increase your PIN by 1 to represent some nebulous combination of injury and fatigue.

Doesn't really matter which rule you use, so long as you apply it uniformly. We know what Tom *intended* the rule to be--but then again, Tom *intended* a lot of things that people have changed, whether rule-specific or storyline-specific or mechanic-specific. I'll bet that NO ONE--even those who have been most vocal against changes to canon--has ever played the game with *zero* changes (maybe putting two guys from different faction into a team together which isn't in the books--that's a change).

Me? I used Cage Ratings instead of PIN Ratings when someone is in a submission hold and a PIN situation came up. If I wanted to get really fancy, I could've used two different color "tokens" and only increased, say, PIN Rating when a guy kicked out or Cage Rating when a guy was Eye Cloven. But again, that adds a level of complexity that just doesn't reflect the original system.

Tom also intended you to play the game your own way ("It's your fed, 'Promoter.'") Using the second rule interpretation above punishes guys like Vengeance, but then again, maybe Vengeance could use a little punishing. It certainly levels the playing field a bit in the New Beginnings era, where "Add 1" moves are more (in my opinion, *too*) common.
If you're playing on your own, what difference does it make? If you're playing against another person, say at a convention, so long as you both know (and agree to) any rule changes ahead of time, what does it hurt?

Or do you want a situation like this, taken from an old, old mailing: "You use it and you know it." <--said by *** (name withheld by author) in reference to a house rule that adds 1 to a character's PIN rating after any piledriver.

(Show of hands if you remember the reference...or better yet, the actual conversation.)