[Solar System] Quick Questions Thread
Eero Tuovinen:
Quite. The basic principle is that characters are only killed in two ways:
The group agrees to make death a part of the stakes in conflict. I discuss this under the heading of "propriety" in the conflict chapters of the booklet, as it's ultimately a matter of style and genre to determine when a character's death can be on the table. For example, in a superhero game a character is saving the city, and it might be quite appropriate to decide that hey, the saving is granted, but will he survive? In a children's show death wouldn't really be on the table, so it would be more along the lines of whether the character himself saves the city or whether he has to ask for his mentor to help him. Appropriate conflict stakes are all a matter of genre.When characters are forced out of conflict with Harm level 7 (either somebody rolls it or, more likely, the Harm bumps up because level six is already full), the opponent may decide what happens to them in the immediate scene - they are not necessarily dead, but the opponent can decide that they are. This choice is still constrained by the genre, of course, so it wouldn't really be appropriate for a My Little Pony game to feature a character driving another character mad, forcing them to prance off a cliff.Also note that the SG can't extend the conflict, that choice belongs to the players. In some cases a player might wish to extend because the SG refuses to escalate the stakes for pacing reasons unless the player makes a big deal out of a situation. The SG might decide that a given NPC is too cool to be killed just like that, say, so he insists that while the character can quite reasonably throw him into the reactor shaft, the SG reserves an option to have the NPC come back later on.
In practice you don't see much player character death in most campaigns. Mostly it happens as a finale for a suitably dramatic situation, or as a gritty flavour to a gritty campaign. In both cases it's largely the player's call whether the character lives or dies: it's rather difficult to get mortally wounded without going into extended conflict, and players can always back down from those, so the only way to really get yourself helpless on the mercy of your enemies is to stubbornly refuse to back down; something needs to be important enough to die for.
Also note that while the general SS rules allow character death as part of the stakes, it's almost always not a good idea. If the SG puts in death, he's also saying that you have to extend if you want to live; if he continues insisting on death when goals are declared for extended conflict, he's again saying that you can't give in. So offering death is almost always just an unnecessary limitation on a player's choices; it's much more interesting to threaten the character's honor instead, for example, and let the player choose whether he'd rather die. The SG's job is to invent a bargain where the player voluntarily gets his character killed off, I might say.
You're right that the amount of Harm is by default independent of weapon use, but that's easy to change with a Secret or two. Something like this might work for a prison game, for instance:
Secret of the Shiv
The character is lethally good with stabbing instruments. Whenever he is spending an Effect that amounts to a stabbing instrument in a conflict, he may declare that he's going for the throat: the opponent suffers a Harm of degree equal to the number of overflow dice (rolled dice left over after picking the three used in the conflict) showing a '0'. This Harm comes in addition to other consequences of the conflict. Cost: 1 Instinct, and has to blow a shiv Effect completely on the roll.
Or you can just use equipment ratings described in the Secrets chapter, their original purpose in Shadow of Yesterday was to emulate weapons and armor in a fantasy environment. Depends on what you're going for in the game.
oliof:
Hey Eero, you're en-passant importing a stupid dice trick from Greg Stolze's ORE; namely using overflow dice (what he calls waste dice in his game). I like that. Clarification question: Does a character with Secret of the Shiv get the Harm Bonus from using the Effect as well as getting an additional Harm Level equal to the number of overflow dice?
Eero Tuovinen:
As in, does he get to use the bonus dice to improve his check and thus maybe get to cause Harm by succeeding in the Ability check? Yes, my intent was to allow the character to potentially cause two Harm at once with this. Might be a bit strong, but if the campaign is a sparse prison drama, then I don't mind. You should fear the shiv.
ORE has overflow dice? I never noticed, must be because I got bored and skipped the combat system. I figured this thing out while bashing my head against the wall with the equipment rating rules; perhaps I'll get something tidy for TSoY out of it. Also, I already used the overflow dice trick at Story Games last month, in case you're interested.
oliof:
ORE has quite some stupid dice tricks. Overflow dice are a nice variable add-on.
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