<TBODY> Major Arcana and Minor Indiscretions

Newsletter           December 8^th, 2007</TBODY>

<TBODY>Wade Lahoda	Head Storyteller   storyteller@saskatoonbynight.com or 477-0145
Narrators:    Allan Schnell & James Nobel

The official Saskatoon by Night webpage can be found at www.saskatoonbynight.com

Next Game Date Saturday, January 12^th.  Downtime due in Saturday, December 22^nd.

Because the due date for downtime is only a couple of days before Christmas, I highly, highly encourage everyone to get their downtime in early this month, otherwise it risks getting lost in the Christmas season.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Remember Plot Leadership and Escalation!

It is in your best interests to remember to nominate other folks for Plot Leadership in your downtime submissions, and to let me know if you think you deserve a point for Escalation.  Remember for Escalation – you have to tell me both where things were, and where they went to, and it has to be a decent enough gap to be able to express in words.  Saying “I got closer to Johnny” doesn’t tell me much – you could give me that line every month for years without it being dramatic.  Saying “I went from Johnny’s friend to Johnny’s oathsworn confidant” on the other hand gives me a real idea of what you did.  Also remember that you can only get Escalation points for stuff that happens at a gathering – side scenes and downtime never yield Escalation points.

Let me know if I am neglecting your Complications

Let me know if you feel I am neglecting one of your Complications that you wish you would come up more often.  Sometimes it is because I think you’ve already got enough on your plate and messing with you with one of your Complications would just be cruel, other times I’m just neglectful or stuck for a way to bring the Complication in.  Talking to me about it can help me figure out what I’m going to do to – with, I mean do with you.

Downtime – Remember narrow focus wins

Just a reminder that when it comes to downtime, if there is a contest between two people, the person with the narrower focus will generally win(assuming comparable successes).  If Johnny’s action is “Hide what I’m getting up to this month”, and Adam’s action is “Find out what Johnny is up to this month”, then I’ll generally just compare successes (ties usually going to the defender).  If Johnny’s action is more specific, such as “Hide my secret plot to steal Fred’s fern”, and Adam might find out about all sorts of other stuff, but probably not the fern plot unless he gets two to three times as many successes as Johnny – Johnny is just more focused.  This can also apply to actions over areas – if two people are trying to, say, gain popular support for some cause and one person is targeting all of Saskatoon, and the other only Sutherland, the person targeting only Sutherland will probably win out in that specific area.

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to actions that are contested – it also applies to all sorts of actions.  “I search for all the ghosts in Saskatoon” might require ten times as many successes as “I search for all the ghosts in Varsity View”.  It just has come up fairly frequently with contested actions recently, so I thought I’d point out to folks why some people might be beating them out – they might just be fighting on fewer fronts.

In the Community: Winter and Construction- A Changeling the Lost Chronicle (January-June)

Talk to Andrew (lordgrymm@gmail.com / 374-7311) and check out the SLARPA forums for more information.