Taxing Resources

[MrKrasotkin]

also it’s worth pointing out that your Resources and Circles are advanced automatically when your guardmouse is promoted, so there’s that.

[Deliverator]

@MrKrasotkin

it seems to me that saying that Resources can only advance if the GM decides not to nuke your stats is like saying that i can only get better at fighting if the GM doesn’t murder me. it comes down to the GM being sensitive to the atmosphere of the game and the table and making a choice that, central to MG, forces your character to make tough decisions.

No, they’re not comparable. Again, it comes back to the recursive nature of the depletion problem. If you’re fighting in MG, you’re going to get better at it, because of the way the P/F system works. (Sure, you can get killed in a Fight conflict, but it’s very rare, and everyone buys into it equally.) Same with every single other skill and attribute in the game, except Resources.

As for the GM being sensitive: sure, of course the GM should never deliberately be a dick, and neither should the players, but it’s questionable game design to present me, as GM, with a completely valid mechanical option, equal in status to the others available to me in that circumstance, but that is often a dick move to invoke. There’s really nothing else that even comes close. Sure, going straight to Injury or Sickness could be comparably bad, but there’s good textual guidance surrounding the use of those more severe Conditions.

Honestly, I’d be fine with the depletion option if it was a player choice. But I don’t like games where my relationship to the game’s mechanics is mediated by the GM’s whim. And, conversely, as GM I want to be able to take the kid gloves off, and not have to pull my punches, when we’re talking about the game and its mechanics. Of course I have no problem with the idea that I should be sensitive to the mood of the group and stuff like that, but that’s not really what I’m talking about here.

@MrKrasotkin

Resources represents not just your “money” or funding, but also your ability to acquire things based on your knowledge, your connections, your resourcefulness and cunning, etc. so from a story perspective your Resources could be reduced to represent somebody becoming suspicious if you’re trying to get like a bunch of weapons or very particular items, or they might be deciding that you’re too expensive to hang around with, or from a monetary perspective somebody could have ripped you off–which may actually leave you wiser but you’ll certainly be without funds, and as Resources is an aggregate skill a tax is still justifiable from both a mechanics and a storytelling perspective. or maybe your character is a bit of a rogue with some underworld connections and a Resource tax represents a fence you know and use getting picked up by the Guard–and what if that mouse decides to talk about one of his loyal customers? in addition to a mechanical problem your character now has a personal problem, which is something that can be used to guide your players’ turns.

A lot of that stuff sounds like twists and conditions, which implies that the GM is not invoking the Taxing option.

@MrKrasotkin

basically what i’m getting at is that Resources is a very mutable and abstract type of skill, and while it fulfills specific functions it can work in a myriad of ways. a skilled GM will take into account what specific method you’ve declared that you’ll be utilizing of all of the possibilities (a fence, a straight transaction, an appeal to Gwendolyn) and arbitrate failed conditions accordingly. sometimes that will result in a hit to your Resources, and as long as it’s creating compelling gameplay then it’s in the spirit of the game.

Sure, but the entire game works that way. I’m talking about the specific mechanics involved with Resources here, not the overall spirit of how failure works in MG, which I’m both comfortable with and really like.

Matt

[Deliverator]

@MrKrasotkin

also it’s worth pointing out that your Resources and Circles are advanced automatically when your guardmouse is promoted, so there’s that.

Yes absolutely. That’s the only time I’ve ever actually seen Resources advance. And if that’s how it’s supposed to work, then fine, but why not say so in the book?

Matt

[Thor]

@Deliverator

Yes absolutely. That’s the only time I’ve ever actually seen Resources advance. And if that’s how it’s supposed to work, then fine, but why not say so in the book?

It works exactly how it says it’s supposed to work.

[MrKrasotkin]

@Deliverator

Yes absolutely. That’s the only time I’ve ever actually seen Resources advance. And if that’s how it’s supposed to work, then fine, but why not say so in the book?

It talks about that very thing in the Winter Session section when it talks about promotion. And I have to disagree with you that Resource nuking and death aren’t comparable. They’re both terrible outcomes (though, obviously, death is much moreso) and they are things that the GM MAY do, not SHOULD do, like Twists and Conditions.

Also the examples I put out would all, from a “fiction” perspective, make it more difficult for you to get what you want, which is reflected as Resources reduction. The only reason I included so many examples was that there were questions about how to incorporate the mechanics into the story.