Gamism vs Simulated Gamism
Cliff H:
After many scheduling snafus, I finally am heading out to game again tonight with my die hard crew of 7th Sea players who claim to want to live on the knife edge continually. In the scheduling discussion, I threw out the idea we'll be trying tonight where character death is decided in part by character decision, instead of it being all rules or all my call. Clearly we've not tried it yet, but I did find the only reply via emal to be quite telling.
"Finally! I get to play a swashbuckling game again!"
When I thought about it, this player had been plying pretty reservedly, while the others were hog wild berserkers. He clearly took the treat of death seriously, never once asked to be spared, but tried very hard not to get into potentially lethal situations. Now that he can choose not to die for failing a stunt, he's relieved.
I'll update how it works once someone actually has to make that decision.
Chris_Chinn:
Hi Cliff,
That often can be a tricky ground to navigate, especially since gamer culture very much has trained a lot of folks to not really say what they want or put it into clear terms. Another part of the problem is that most rpgs have rules for death, but not really any formal rules for lesser loss-conditions that would make losses something players could endure regularly without losing everything.
Chris
stefoid:
Good luck!
jburneko:
What version of 7th Sea are you playing? I played quite a bit of the game back in the day and my recollection is that the mechanics can only Knockout a character. Death has to be a conscious and deliberate act undertaken by a character after they've been Knocked out.
Jesse
Cliff H:
Quote from: jburneko on February 16, 2011, 03:28:25 PM
What version of 7th Sea are you playing? I played quite a bit of the game back in the day and my recollection is that the mechanics can only Knockout a character. Death has to be a conscious and deliberate act undertaken by a character after they've been Knocked out.
We're playing by the book, with a slight change to raise mechanics to lessen the math involved and reduce the drive to tally up high rolls even when unecessary. By and large, you're spot on about death, except there's a rule in there that lets you get up after being knocked out. If you take another dramatic wound, then you die.
The agreement I'd put on the table at the beginning of the game was that I'd never take that deliberate action to kill a downed character. I'd do all kinds of other things to them, up to taking eyes and hands, but not their lives. Unless, that is, I pronounced a scene one of grave danger. If I said those words, I'd go for the throat. The reaction from our most aggressive player was that they should be in grave danger all the time, and he very much disliked that rule, and wanted it removed.
So, yesterday, I put forth a system suggessed by Callan, in which whenever a character fell, I'd choose a card in secret live or die. The player, after my choice but before knowing what it was, would slap a token on the table, live or die. If we both agreed on die, the character died. If one of us chose live, regardless of who, the character lived. If the players wanted to be in grave danger all the time, they could slap the death token down every time.
I broke this out yesterday, pssed out the tokens, and the grave danger all the time playerfell twice in the span of a 3 hour session. Both times I made my choice and aske him to do the same. Once I chose live, once I chose die. His response both times? "I hid the death token so that it can't even accidentally fall on the table."
Looks like walking that knife edge of constant danger is not what he wants at all. Now that that's out in the open, I'm going to let that sit for a day, and then try re-opening the "what do you want from the game" dialog that got us "all grave danger all the time" and see ifwe git different results with this most recent illumination.
Thanks again for the tips everyone! I think this i the most aware we've been as a group in a long time.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page