[IAWA] Some minor questions...
Landon Darkwood:
Quote from: lumpley on January 28, 2008, 11:36:00 AM
Hey Landon, did I meet you at Dreamation?
Nah, we met at GenCon last year. I was the dude that asked you if you were still offering discounts on the Dogs book for folks who bought the .pdf, and looking extremely hung over most of the time.
Also, particular weakness, eh? You may have just provided me with a new LJ entry.
For John Harper:
Given your stated preferences, how would you have done it? Like I did, or differently?
Because if you'd have handled it like I did, I'm not sure that you and Vincent are saying different things. Effectively, I *did* make the alcohol poisoning an NPC - I just didn't go through the full process, because all it needed were action dice, which I assigned as d6 d6. I didn't think about it that way at the time, of course, but it tracks mechanically as long as you're not hanging too much on the definition of "character".
For Lars:
Don't worry about it. When it came up in play, I was insecure about my choice for precisely the same reason until I talked it over with the players. So I totally get where you were coming from.
John Harper:
I wouldn't have gone to the dice over the alcohol at all. It doesn't meet my threshold for when dice come out in Wicked. Like you said, "...there was no other character around for him to reasonably have a conflict with." To me, given the spirit of the game as I interpret it, that means there's no dice -- and I don't go looking for a way to add them. To me, you never, ever roll dice in Wicked to see if someone can do something, or even how well or poorly they do it. You only roll when someone steps in to stop someone else, or two people undertake actions that interfere.
The guy has a serious struggle with the alcohol, and that's awesome. I'm riveted, whichever way he decides to go with it. We don't dice over it, but it still matters.
Ryan Macklin:
Quote from: lumpley on January 28, 2008, 11:36:00 AM
Hey Landon, did I meet you at Dreamation?
Actually, it was me you met and only briefly asked that question while we were both busy. I was bummed to not get to sit down with you later about it.
For the record, I was the sword-wielding PC in that game.
Ryan Macklin:
Quote from: John Harper on January 28, 2008, 12:23:27 PM
You don't need dice and consequences for those things to have power and meaning in the game.
Incidentally, I don't think we're talking about "power and meaning" here. At least, that wasn't the deal with our game. In talking about it tonight, I think the reason I grabbed onto the idea so much was because (to completely show my misunderstanding of the term), I had a foot in actor stance and a foot in author stance. What we did allowed me to retain my enjoyment of the game and grove on it down the road. If it were to have been stated without mechanical tension, I don't know if it would have felt like more than just color in that scene, as there were so many elements going on there. Going to dice made that moment stand out among others -- and since you only go to dice when something is trying to stop someone else from doing something, we played with the paradigm.
I suppose the important point wasn't that it was dictated that we should go to dice for this conflict, but that the decision was rather left in my hands, and let me deal with an inner conflict between the two stances I was feeling at the time -- I found the idea distasteful on one hand and really compelling on the other. So, I got to play out a meta-conflict in this manner. But, at this point I'm clearly not talking about IAWA, I think. To bring it back to IAWA, there were a couple really good scenes filled with "power and meaning" that didn't involve dice, and in fact would have been trashed if we had. A dead soul essentially talked me into having it possess me, all through weighty conversation. Later, we talked and said that if anyone had gone to dice because they felt some sort of resistance should have happened (as with many other games), that scene would have been pissed on.
That is to say, John, I do get what you're talking about, and like how IAWA doesn't get in the way of that.
DainXB:
I realize that Vincent has spoken, and therefore there's little room for debate on this -- but I want to agree with John Harper about the strict interpretation of "Roll dice when one character undertakes to do some concrete thing, and another character can and would try to interfere." I love that part of the Wicked rules! It's "Say yes, unless some other active participant in the game says no".
All of which means that I think Darcy has the right answer. There is only one character in the scene, but that player's character feels seriously that somehow there should be opposition to the thing he has his character undertaking. He's in opposition to his own character's action, which is cool: He is stating that his character is in conflict with himself.
On the one side; "I have to fight through this fog, and get out there and stop this from happening!" Call it 'for Others' and 'Directly' or even 'for Others' and 'with Love' if the emotional context is right. On the other side; "You're too drunk, too tired, too depressed, to defeated to do this. Just give up and pass out." Call that one 'for Myself' and 'Covertly', since it's that insidious little inner voice telling the character "you can't".
Now roll the conflict. It's all internal, in his head, externalized only by the staggering around, the breaking of furniture, and the puking up of his guts.
The weird part is, the player is the only one in the conflict, so when the win/lose comes about, he is negotiating consequences with himself... "I make it out the door, but I'm Exhausted." or "I fall flat on my face in a pool of vomit -- I'm Injured." or "In a drunken haze, I stagger onto the street, I'm down one die type to my 'Directly' because of blurred vision and DTs". or "I'm snoring peacefully at my table, not even twitching, when someone finds me after sunup, but I take no stat losses." or whatever outcome seems reasonable to him (and is legal under the rules).
Hows that for a take on the situation?
The same technique could be used for other cases where a player is unsure of what his character might be capable of making himself do -- is he really brave enough to face down the dragon, cowardly enough to leave his friend behind to die, vile enough to commit human sacrifice, etc. Of course, if the player is sure of what his character is capable of making himself do, there's no conflict, he just narrates the event.
--
DainXB
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