[Serial Homicide Unit] Who cares for the victim's goal?
Moreno R.:
Hi Callan!
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If someone had a job of judging a scene as to whether it, say, evoked quiet hope or angst. And hope added certain points and angst added different points and both points changed things latter in the game in different ways, would that make a difference with you? Maybe not a huge difference, but atleast something? It's a rough example.
Maybe. It would depend a lot on the exact mechanics, it wouldn't be easy to avoid the de-powering of the roleplaying that usually go with a numeric conversion. As I said above, if I wanted to hack the game to make it more enjoyable for me I would probably go in the other direction - removing the die roll altogether and use the possibility of murder for tension at the end instead of a roll.
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You say it was to the point it was difficult to give a quick narration - what sort of narration did they give? Alot of cliches and expected/predictable narrations, perhaps? Almost like going through the steps of a ballroom dance?
Some were rather boring and cliched, but with many players with some experience in room-LARPS and Impro, most of the time they were improvised comic sketches.
For example, in one of my scenes, the obstacles was "the perception of classical music as not commercial enough", and the scene was about my character (a violinist) trying to get work in a Country Bar. The dialog was for the most part a discussion about how really, all you need to turn Bach into Country is a hat and remembering to stomp the feet on the ground...
Callan S.:
Hmmm, well, you know, for the guys who give the comedic sketches - they're getting a stage, an audience and they probably just ignore and forget the dice rolling bits. So that's probably what they get out of it and come to game sessions for.
jburneko:
Moreno,
I think you're letting the presence of the die roll in victim scenes distract you. Imagine for a moment that there was not die roll at all. That this was more like like a Jeepform LARP. The purpose of the victim's scenes is to raise sympathy for the victims. If socially the group isn't doing that, they're literally failing to play the game. Yes, the SIS doesn't matter *for the die roll* but the SIS is VITAL to achieving the intended experience of the game.
If the SIS doesn't garner sympathy for the victims then there's no tension in detective scenes. If the SIS doesn't show us where these people's lives are going then we nothing to base our vote at the end of the game. If the SIS doesn't develop the details of their lives then there's nothing to base our clues on when do the detective scenes. If we don't properly connect our clues to the victims there's no sense of "reality" to the killer which as I said, is the ultimate payoff for the game.
So why the die roll at all? It's a data point that adds variance. In Sorcerer or Dogs in the Vineyard the SIS impacts the dice because Theme is informed partially by Outcome which means that the narrative "weight" of the SIS has to be reflected in the dice. What you as a player choose to have your character stand for needs to be factored in. That doesn't matter in SHU because the die isn't about theme and the game isn't about the victims standing for anything. You aren't *fighting* for your victim's goals, you're just generating sympathy for him. The die just lets us know if things are getting better or worse for the victim because either outcomes breeds two different kinds of sympathy, "Man, he's having it rough" or "Oh, he's really pulling through this." The point is the sympathy, the TYPE of sympathy is irrelevant so there's simply a 50/50 chance to see which kind we generate this game.
Does that clarify things?
Jesse
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