(Way With Worlds Runs at Seventh Sanctum, Muse Hack, and Ongoing Worlds)
I’m not quite Han Solo. You don’t have to tell me the odds, but I’d like a good sense of them when it comes to your world. But I do look good in leather.
When we play a game or ready a story, intuitively, we need to know the odds. If it’s unlikely someone can survive a fight with ten well armed Knights of The Singularity, when they win it makes us wonder how. If someone is ethnically and racially different than we expect in a game world, the impact of that difference is felt if we understand just what it means. Likelihood – and lack of likelihood – is something that we need to understand to get what something means.
I think this is instinctive to humans, and even more so in people with a vague sense of math and probability. We’re always evaluating, re-evaluating, projecting, and understanding. When math is part of our lives, even moreso. Either way, it’s human.
So the odds need to be part of your world. If they’re not, then you may be in for some problems. If you can’t express the chances of things happening, then your world isn’t going to make sense. People won’t be able to grasp what’s going on as their natural ability to evaluate can’t find anything to hold on to in order to make sense of the world.
(Even if you do know the odds, you might not use them right)
Lets talk what the odds are in your world, how to use them – and how not to overuse them.