[Trollbabe] advice about the practical application of these two rules?
Callan S.:
Just quite curious about this: It'd strike me if the player had said their characters goal was to calm everyone because obviously that guy was just talking mumbo jumbo and not real magic, that'd work. That would combine pure invent the world imaginative invention with the actual from the characters perspective, character goal determination and declaration. Those are two different things, granted, but they can link into each other pretty seemlessly (though perhaps it takes a bit of crafting). I'm not arguing at all with anything here - a character goal is not at all the same as deciding the nature of reality itself. It's just these ideas can be so close together yet so very different.
Oh and forgive me this idea that just sprung up...what if you did have a character who was demented enough in their own head to have actual character goals of making a certain reality simply be the case? That's almost the definition of magic using, wouldn't it? "My goal is that there is a fireball over there!".
Markus:
Eero, Callan,
I'll try to give my own answers to your observations, mainly to check whether I really understood what Ron explained or not.
Please forgive me if this will prove incorrect.
@Eero:
Perhaps I'm just failing to see your point, but it seems to me that Ron's comment about my question (2) above still applies in full to your example. I have serious problems in seeing how "proving by the way of magical expertise that the chanting guy is just a conman" is different from what I wrote above. Despite the different choice of words ("proving that" instead of "making sure that"), the goal has still (in Ron's own words) "nothing to do with anyone's opinion or perceptions, but instead is literally dictating the content of the targeted person's actions". Am I failing to see something more subtle?
@Callan:
"To calm everyone because obviously that guy was just talking mumbo jumbo and not real magic" seems a perfectly fine goal for the trollbabe, provided that everyone at the table fully understande that the bit about "because obviously..." is intended as the trollbabe's intended mode of action for obtaining her goal, and does not have any guarantee of being true *regardless* of the outcome of the conflict.
In other words, you don't get "free" content authority just because you managed to add a sub-sentence to the goal declaration. It's a bit like saying "I want to kill the dragon: I'll behead it". OK, that's a fighting conflict about killing the dragon. We'll see if you manage to slay it or not, and how... but you don't get a guaranteed decapitation just because you mentioned it. In your example, "I will behead the dragon" is functionally equivalent to "This is not real magic".
(Last-moment edit: OK now that I wrote this example, I see that there is a difference between "beheading the dragon" and "this is not real magic", but that would only come up during the narration step. Let's put the issue aside for later discussion...)
Finally, I can see you are hinting at something cool with your sentence "Those are two different things, granted, but they can link into each other pretty seemlessly (though perhaps it takes a bit of crafting).", but I cannot really put my finger on it in practical terms. Could you give an example of what you mean?
Thanks to all for the nice discussion!
Ron Edwards:
Fuck. I totally lost my detailed reply.
All right, briefly and without my well-honed and careful prose - the "real magic" vs. the "bandits or not" situations are different because the latter isn't about the trollbabe trying to make the bandits be real or not. She's doing what she's stated to be doing. The rules are very cunning (if I do say so myself) because they take a person's precise statement about an unknown and use that as the basis for the two real people at the table to address what is in fact happening. In most role-playing, dealing with "I'm watching out for bandits" and "are the bandits there" when they weren't prepped to be there, is a grey area that can become an arena for authority-crisis and perhaps bullying. In Trollbabe, that area is de-greyed and the fine but real line that Callan described is precisely delineated.
None of that necessarily adds to anything which has been said already, but it's what's been flapping in my head for the last day or so.
Eero, I agree with Markus - your re-statement doesn't change anything.
Callan, for completism only, "to convince others that his magic is bogus" is especially well handled by the Trollbabe rules for social conflicts. Also, to address your point in the little tiny type - see Dawnfire, which I wrote about in the first Fantasy Heartbreakers, for a whole lot of great system for different relationships of types of magic, impact on reality, character intention, and even character knowledge of his or her own magic. It's the best RPG text to date about that stuff, or at least in the top few.
Best, Ron
Eero Tuovinen:
Cool. Just checking.
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