[IaWA] Breaking Bad Habits
Peter Nordstrand:
Regarding Sorcerer, I suggest that you take a look at the illuminating thread Amazing Series of Sorcerer Threads on SG, including all the threads at storygames linked to therein.
lumpley:
One of the things I'm trying to get to here is that in the Wicked Age, you ALSO can't just demand a reroll. By the end of an action sequence, circumstances have changed enough that pressing the fight ISN'T just a reroll.
Mike, I think I had an insight into your dissatisfaction, driving to work this morning.
In the game's source material:
- the person who holds onto the ring despite every grief poured out upon him: Conan.
- the person who pours vast grief upon Conan but never wins the ring from him: the Sorcerer-king.
The reason that the loser can hold on to the one thing that really matters, while the winner can do nothing but smash, rend, break, bloody, and ultimately kill, never taking the one thing that really matters, is because that's how it works in the Flat Earth, Lyonesse, and the Hyborean Age.
You'll notice that the owe list rules are extremely coherent with this.
My conclusion: the game mechanics were treating your character as a villain, because your character was acting the villain. You said (I'm paraphrasing) "why wouldn't I always choose driving goal best interests, and why wouldn't I always fight to the death for them?" The answer is: please do, if you want to. However, you should know that when you do, the game appropriately considers your character a villain, and treats him accordingly.
-Vincent
Mike Holmes:
Funny, I see how it's supposed to work now, but I think your arguments are bad.
First, I don't agree that pounding to get what you want is neccessarily villainous. If you look at the characters in question here, while John's character was a protagonist in her own way, she was at least as villainous as my character. I think that everyone felt that she deserved to get pounded by the ogre. What's more, again, by that point I had revealed how my character was, in fact, giving of himself to get what he needed for others. That is, he didn't want to be an ogre, he felt he had to in order to get what he wanted. What's more, he didn't really want to pound on folks, but did it because he knew that the survival of his culture was on the line.
I thought that it was very hyborian age in it being about end's justifying means, and being very grim. About survival.
I was Conan trying to get the ring from the Sorcerer King. At least that's how it felt to me. And the fact that I couldn't get John to give up the ring without pounding seemed odd.
Rather, again, I think the real problem was that John felt uncomfortable accepting the deal. That is, in keeping with the source material, he should have done what he did, and he did give. The problem being that he felt that he was being potentially jobbed by the mechanics, which couldn't enforce the deal he was making. That is, the mechanics were telling him that, despite the Hyborian aesthetic, where he should give, that he was being compelled not to do so. So that when he did go with the aesthetic, he felt a bit the fool for doing so. Or, rather, was doing it despite what the mechanics were telling him to do.
Of course... it was really much more like my character was Conan beating up on Red Sonya. That is, both were protagonists in their own right, so there's bad guy to give. His character should hold on, if they want to in order to be the protagonist who doesn't give in, but at the same time this makes my character look like the villain, yes. That's a contradiction right there.
Could the problem be that we had more than one protagonist, and the genre allows only one? Or that all protagonists be on the same side, instead of having best interests that oppose each other?
Second, I'm not understanding your statement that the situation will neccessarily change in conflicts. If, in fact, that was the case, then I'd probably have much less objection. But, while I understand that players do have the power to change the situation during conflicts through narrations, I'm not seeing that this will always automatically happen. In fact, in our play it was precisely because these situation changes did not occur (just one reason) that it felt wrong to do the contest again in several cases.
If what you're saying is that the technique you give of resolving the question on the first round solves this, again, I'm not seeing this as likely to happen often, or be effective at the end. I'm seeing the character who answers on the last round putting the situation precisely back to square one in most cases. He starts out saying, "Oh no you don't" and ends up saying, "Oh no you don't, unless you negotiate with me." So the only change in the situation, if they take injury or exhaustion instead of accepting negotiation, is the description of the events of the scuffle. The question of character situation remains unchanged.
There's the associated tacit question I ask above. Let me be more explicit: when agreeing to a negotiated result, how much lattitude to the players involved have to create finished action after the conflict?
Lets say in the actual play example that I had offered: "I get the treasure, but then we together conquer Player C's character." As in we don't go and attempt to conquer player C's character, but, if agreed to, the event is a done deal. Is that valid? Or can negotiations only involve the reasonable outcome parts of the conflict that's occuring?
If, in fact, you can do more than have your character promise future action, but can actually effect it, that changes things. Put another way, is the negotiation between the players, or is it between the characters? If between the players, what are the boundaries of the choices made.
My apologies at this point for not having a copy of the game on hand. The answer to this question might be plainly in the text, and I've merely forgotten it.
All this said, if, in fact, the system is just has an extended resolution system that is sorta reminiscent of D&D as stated above, then I get it. And I think it might work better than D&D in terms of moral questions because of the context of the other rules (Combat plus EXP creates amoral genocide play). I'll have to consider it in that context. But that doesn't change how I felt in actual play.
Mike
David Artman:
Quote from: Mike Holmes on April 30, 2008, 06:37:39 AM
All this said, if, in fact, the system is just has an extended resolution system that is sorta reminiscent of D&D as stated above, then I get it.
From my recent demo-driven actual play and full reading (and recognizing how our AP didn't quite follow the rules) and reading Vincent's various replies... yeah, you get it. Forget stakes--there are none. There's "I Do This And Fuck All Of You" and there's "Oh, No, You Don't, You Fucking Asshole!" and a slight ret-con (not undoing the I Do This, but interrupting it mid-Do).
It's all Means, not Intent. We don't care about your intent. We care that you Did something which we can't accept lying down.
Roll the dice for initiative, winner keeps that as attack roll, loser rolls again to "defend". No one doubled up? Ok, then high roller has advantage and add die. (Maybe We Owe the loser.) Loser describes the setback. Negotiate or go to round 2.
Repeat rolling in round 2. Negotiate or go to round 3.
High roll in round 3 injures or exhausts loser, or negotiates with that stick with the loser.
No where in that is "set stakes" or "and the winner gets what he or she intended prior to round 1." Hell, the conflict could be across a continent and months of time away from the MacGuffin over which the fight began. The MacGuffin could have been destroyed in the scuffle--this time, it's a ring; next time, it might be a mirror or a fragile damsel. Or the round 3 negotiation could be "OK, you get the damned thing, already." I'd negotiate to let you have it in lieu of my being injured or exhausted, if narration got us to that point. "No, don't strike! Here' take it, with my best wishes." And then...
(To GM) "He turns around and I stab him in the back."--"Oh, No, You Don't!" Repeat.
But usually, the "I Do This" is gone forever, UNLESS "I Do This" is the winner's narration, all over again. And, yep, the loser can--if not out of game/dead--say "Oh, No, You Don't" all over again. As I see it, this is one of the very few ways a single "scene's" conflict can take a character from fit and healthy to dead. No one backs off on I Do or No, You Don't; and two or three injuries/exhausts will kill most characters.
Making sense? Apple butter or shit?
Note that, for myself (and maybe your own sanity) it might be best if you did winner, proactive narration rather than loser, reactive narration. Some scenes sort of demand the latter (sneaking around, a chase scene); but for a straight-up fight, I'd prefer winner narration over trying to come up with some way to self-disadvantage after every losing roll. Plus, with loser narration, it's tempting to get into mealy mouth "disadvantages" like "I get the ring back, but slip and fall at your feet." --yeah, you get the MacGuffin, but it feels 'wrong' to me to be able to "lose" and yet gain the MacGuffin under dispute, if only for a round... but what's to say I don't keep it the whole exchange, and as such end "losing" in possession of he ring? Well, nothing--and that's how you get rolling battles. You'll have that ring if you have to lop off my hand--and head--to keep it....
Mike Holmes:
David, the first part of your post simply seems to be recapitulating what Vincent said. So I'm not sure what your point is with that part.
For the second part... you're proposing an alternate rule? That you and I might like better?
Note that I think the whole "No stakes" thing is semantics. Yeah, the resolution system doesn't directly resolve who gets X, but if you kill the thing that's stopping you from getting X, you get it. That is, very much even if the stakes are not resolved, that's not to say that they aren't present. No matter the fact that the system didn't give me a way to resolve if I got the treasure, that was what I was seeing as being at stake when I went into the conflict.
Mike
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