[Poison'd] Ambitions and 2on1 fights
Christoph Boeckle:
Hello
Oh, there's no establishing of character backstory before play begins, except for sins and abuse? So, at best, Flint could have asked for a flashback where he was getting some information out of a drunken pirate who thought he knew where it was, and then rolled Ambition vs. Brutality (act with cunning) to get something out of the pirate? And this information being fully up to the GM?
No Mr. Sly-guy saying he got raped before the fountain of youth, so he automatically knows where it is?
And I as the GM decide whatever I feel like about the world and NPCs, with no other considerations than what has to be to guarantee credibility and what I want there to be for my own sense of aesthetics?
Good note about the bargains, we hardly used them outside of the initial ones.
lumpley:
Well, instead, I'd say that you as GM need to be a full participant in the characters' backstories. If the player says "I was on an expedition to find the fountain of youth, and we found it," and you say "cool," then it's cool.
Quote from: Christoph Boeckle on April 02, 2010, 05:24:49 AM
And I as the GM decide whatever I feel like about the world and NPCs, with no other considerations than what has to be to guarantee credibility and what I want there to be for my own sense of aesthetics?
Right exactly on.
-Vincent
lumpley:
Oh and a little bit more I wanted to say, actually. When a player says "I trick him into telling me [whatever]," that's again a statement of goal, not of action. It's too soon to roll. Your answer isn't "cool, roll for it," it's "cool, what do you do? What do you say to him?" It's only when the character actually does act with cunning that you go to the dice.
This means, coincidentally, that very rarely will a social conflict go to dice at all, or never. In Poison'd, bargaining, not rolling dice, is how you resolve social conflicts.
-Vincent
Christoph Boeckle:
All right, that sums it up: I was thinking too much in terms of conflict resolution and soppy player rights on character background (and a bit too many details in addition to that). Your remark about social conflict being dealt with differently than physical conflict is a good one too, I needed that reminder branded into my brain.
So as a GM I get a lot to say about ambitions, except when they deal with other player characters, and this thread has given me lots of leads as to how to deal with them.
Perhaps a final question, not so much a technical one as an awareness expanding one: withholding dice due to an as yet unfulfilled bargain has nothing to do with character positioning, but everything to do with what the character's player wishes to be the form of the punishment at any given time, regardless if his character is present or not, right? Any use in justifying such a punishment on the character-level retroactively?
lumpley:
Great!
Withholding Soul: Correct. I don't think there's any need to justify it in-character. It's just this moment of terrible bad luck, or maybe this moment of hesitation, that we all know you fully deserved.
-Vincent
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