[Best Friends] A doubt about pushing
Aetius:
Hi to everyone!
We're playing right now with Best Friend and we encountered a little problem with the conflicts. Is this the right section?
Anyway...
When a character is in a conflict with another one is fairly common that she hates her direct rival in that ambit and so pushing is basically asking her rival to help.
For example:
Ezio is playing Jacqueline, the lacrosse captain, Tough as a brick
Lavinia is playing Kelly, the ultra-Cool goth girl
There's a little fuss, a revenge in development and a lacrosse ball is flying toward Kelly's face. The goals: Jacqueline wants to send Kelly to the infirmary; Kelly wants to impress the guys present on the scene.
Jacqueline is winning with her Tough 3; Kelly pushes and she hates Jacqueline for being Thougher.
This situation seems pretty common, seeing the mechanics of the game.
How is it played?
We described the fearful reputation of Jacqueline playing against herself: she's confronting without fear the infamous bone-breaker amazon so everyone is impressed. Yay for Kelly.
Another scene:
Katia is playing Cordelia, the the Pretty cheerleader.
Luca is Willow, our local smart-ass geek (yes, in Italy we like Buffy :-P)
Cordelia wants to convince Willow to give her "inner self" (err... rear self, actually *blush*) to Jason the night of the prom (we promised each other to not being virgin anymore the day after the ball!)
Willow doesn't want to give up.
Cordelia is all smoochies, cuteness and prettiness, so the ambit is Pretty.
Cordelia is winning, Willow pushes and she hates Cordelia because she's Prettier than her, like everyone.
Again, someone's asking for help to her direct rival.
Now the narration concern is simply how Cordelia isn't so convincing, her prettiness isn't enough to convince Willow.
Is this correct too?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Ezio!!
You are definitely posting in the right place. A few years have passed since I played Best Friends, so I hope I don't mis-lead you with my thoughts.
Your first example doesn't seem difficult to resolve. Your narration made a lot of sense to me. The logic goes like this: although Jacqueline is tougher, that only makes Kelly look better when she stands up to Jacqueline.
Perhaps you are making the incorrect assumption that a character's higher score, when Pushed, must somehow reflect positively on that character, or act to her advantage in some way. I don't have the book in front of me, but I think that's not necessarily required. Being smarter than someone can be a real disadvantage when they decide they really hate you because of it.
I think you're also facing some difficulty because one of the player-characters is directly attacking another. When we played, typically the adversity a character faced was something different from one of her friends, either a direct opponent or some kind of circumstances she was trying to avoid or overcome. Therefore the potential contradiction typically didn't arise. However, even in the few cases in which one of the friends did in fact attack or directly negatively affect one of the others, the logic I described above helped us play without problems.
It seems to me that your second example might best be resolved by turning away from what Willow wants or feels, and more toward what happens at the prom. Who knows, maybe Willow was even momentarily convinced by Cordelia, and then Cordelia is so God damned pretty that Jason doesn't notice Willow after all. So afterwards, Willow has "won" in the sense of Cordelia not having achieved her goal.
Or more simply, and if you did want to stay with the more psychological context of the conflict, then you might say that Willow
You might be interested in my old thread, [Best Friends] Larceny, hatred, and supportive actualization. Here are some points I'd like to abstract from it.
1. The characters really are friends and are unlikely to literally to attack one another without some kind of special tension at work. (This differs from Gregor's example in the book, in the cave-diving situation.) They also frequently face problems which affect them all, or which threaten the positive, teamwork side of their friendships.
2. There are lots of ways to hate someone, as I listed carefully in that thread. If you hate someone for a real reason ("she's smarter," and she is in fact smarter), that's different from hating her irrationally ("she's smarter," and in fact, she isn't). We found that keeping an eye on that detail makes describing Pushes much easier, because you have a good basis for whatever narration applies best in each match-up between any two of the characters.
Let me know if any of this helps or makes sense. Also, Gregor, check me on the logic involved.
Best, Ron
Luca Veluttini:
Thank you very much Ron. ^^
Aetius:
Thank you Ron, precious advices.
I definitely want to re-play BF, maybe in more than 4.
I must convince Luca to borrow me the handbook before our Con in September... :-P
I've also enjoyed playing it with 2 girls. It's real, they go on the personal better than men. My girlfriend surprises even me with her slickness...
Quote from: Ron Edwards on July 03, 2010, 06:29:02 PM
Or more simply, and if you did want to stay with the more psychological context of the conflict, then you might say that Willow
Maybe you forgot something in this phrase?
Luca Veluttini:
Quote from: Aetius on July 06, 2010, 04:11:39 AM
I must convince Luca to borrow me the handbook before our Con in September... :-P
Ok, so we could exchange views and impressions about this game... ^^
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