It Slices! It Dices!

Bigger is better. Ignore all the spam messages you may have gotten along these lines. ("It's certainly more memorable. Who can forget a tattoo on their ass?" asks Shadowpryde. Of course, originally I thought she said, "tac-nuke...") The truth is, a subtle victory condition can be unsatisfying to the needs of the players, one of which is that they feel like heroes. (Or at least, the biggest, baddest folks around.)

So an immensely, grotesque failure (the primordial "Whoops!") is better than a mere mistake ("Uh-oh.") (In my lexicon, "Whoops!" is when you accidentally blow up Acapulco. "Uh-oh" is when it comes out that you shot your favourite authority figure.) People will be telling the story of how one little vampire-hunting escapade grew to the destruction of the city for years. (As a matter of fact, Shadowpryde happened to have one right there...unprompted.) Everyone's heard the, "Um, I killed the wrong guy," story. Unless "the wrong guy" was, say, a god, it just doesn't have the necessary impact. ("Um, Yves... I accidentally made god go poof. What do we do now? Turn in our halos and our harps and make merry 'til our hooves shine?")

Similarly, winning has to be big. Big in importance to the characters is OK, but it's better if it's also spectacular. Merely climbing up and saving the kitty stuck in a tree is a feel-good story. Climbing up Yggdrasil and saving Bast from Thor...(thanks, Shadowpryde!) is a whopping good tale. ("You need to spell it 't-a-i-l'...") (And it gives me some ideas for a Nobilis game...)