Hans Messersmith Hm.

Okay so that kind of gets back to the thing where writing down a ruling makes it a rule. Which is interesting and weird.

If that sentence was in the book (probably more generally than the Fatigue thing, which is strictly an example), then I’d take it as encouragement to be creative about delivering consequences. Which in the case of TOR, would be a net positive — TOR itself says literally nothing about failure consequences other than to make sure they happen. That would turn Tales into a lesson in how to evaluate scope and fairness w/r/t failure adjudication. That’s good!

The fact that it doesn’t, to my eye, strongly telegraphs that the writers and editors are operating with big blind spots. I hate to use the phrase but it’s a red flag. It undermines both my trust and my enthusiasm. 

In this particular case, I took it to mean “ah, right, okay, this game is way more trad than all the little interlocking economies led me to believe. It’s fussy-trad, not fussy-indie.” Also a valuable lesson.