Re: ME-PBM re: Companies of Agents

From: Mark G Jaede <jaede@acsu.buffalo.edu>

Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Stanley, the Daredevil Crow! wrote:
>
> Are companies of agents more likely to be able to kidnap?

No. Characters still perform their functions as individuals, even if
they are in companies. The advantage to being in a company is that only
the company commander has to give a movement order for the whole group.
That frees other characters to use both their orders for other purposes,
such as Assassinate and Challenge (if you have a high-challenge rank
agent) or Assassinate and Refuse Challenge (if you have a low-challenge
rank agent, which is more likely). So an agent in a company is likely to
be able to make more attempts at kidnapping, but his chances of success
on each attempt are not affected by being in a company.

> Seems unlikely, one person can move quieter than five; but then
> companies are geared towards the concept of the more the better.

You must put out of your mind what "seems unlikely." This is not a
human-moderated game wherein a GM assesses the "reasonableness" of
players' actions and awards success based on such a standard. MEPBM is
computer-moderated and operates by fixed rules, many of which are not
made public by GSI, and many of which are not at all "reasonable" in
some of their applications. Mastery of the game involves empirical
observation of its functioning much more than rationalization. See, for
example, the disagreements over the opertion of stealth in agent
actions. These reflect players' imperfect assessments of the the
observations they have made or heard about of stealthy and non-stealthy
agents attempting various actions. Reasoning about how stealth "should"
act is not helpful.

> Would every member in the company get the 1-10?

No.

> If so... ICK!
> Come here little ones, let Errinis show you how its done.
> (After having traded the helm of the Mumak-King for the Ring of Binding)
> Errinis new value 40+30+20
> With a few starting 40pnt Agents along to learn the ropes.

Doesn't work that way.

--
Mark G. Jaede: jaede@acsu.buffalo.edu

References

ME-PBM re: Companies of Agents
"Stanley, the Daredevil Crow!" <samcraig@io.com>
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000