Feedback from Lurker37 (David)

The other cause of confusion in the Ben fight was a simple miscommunication between player and GM. 

Since we take turns to GM each other, and this is all about coming to grips with the rules, we are trying as much as possible to ignore all the house rules we've ever used for ADRPG, and play as much as possible 'by the book'. 

As Mister_Bruce has mentioned, in response to jdurall's comments in this thread, we had agreed that for this campaign there would be no NPCs above Dominant rank. This was one of the clear points of difference from a standard ADRPG campaign, and we wanted to see how it played out.

Expecting that the fight was being somehow observed and analysed (it was too staged not to be some kind of test), I spent a couple of minutes explaining Grant's attitude to the fight, and that he did not want to strike a child. Unfortunately Mister_Bruce thought that meant Grant was holding back in speed as well, when I meant that Grant was going to forgo all attacks and evade at full speed and ability. ( I changed tactics to have Grant try to grab a blow when that failed. ) For the character with Dominant Rank Strength and Warfare to still be getting hit, and this while using a tactic that had in turn previously allowed a much lower-ranked NPC to completely evade him, was baffling.

So the major problem was that I thought Grant was fighting all-out, just going full defensive, when Mister_Brucethought Grant was feigning a lower level of ability and deliberately moving slowly. Nuh-uh. See my comments below on Grant's actual age below.

Mister_Bruce wrote:Grant is acting like an 18 year old and wanting to rush things, and she is clearly wary of that. 

For the sake of those following at home - Grant and Ethan were both taking a gap year between High School and University when the campaign began. Neither of them would be much older than 18 (or is it 19? Grant's memory gap makes this very unclear right now). For me that means that Grant is firmly at the "youth and speed" end of the scale, not the "old age and treachery" end where I myself am drawing closer to.