Question about the design: Is there any reason why a player wouldn't Bring Down the Pain whenever she doesn't get her way? Like, "Oops, I flubbed that roll. Bring the Pain! (Twenty minutes later) Oops, flubbed that one too. Bring it!" and so on.
I can see how this would frustrate other players and/or the Storyguide, but are there any harmful effects for that player-character?
The reason not to bring down the pain over little things is that it causes damage that lingers over to big things. If you took three points of damage trying to, say, win an argument over who owns this pig, and then later got in a fight with people who were trying to kill you, you would still have three points of damage, and be closer to being bloodied or broken.
Bringing down the Pain could hurt your character just as much as you want to hurt the opposition. Conflicts can turn nasty during Pain, especially because intentions can change.
At least that's what we experienced in our game, and it brought a real tension into it. A character nearly bought it in the very first BDTP situation - and we all knew and accepted it could have happened. My players were definitely thinking twice before bringing it down after that.
Quote from: pfischerBringing down the Pain could hurt your character just as much as you want to hurt the opposition. Conflicts can turn nasty during Pain, especially because intentions can change.
I second this.
Whe we played TSOY the question of why not BDTP came up and in the end, we found there are three important things to remember:
1) If you choose to BDTP after an unsuccesful roll (as suggested in the first post), you automatically take damage.
2) The only way a named character (the PC being a trivial case of this) can be killed without his "owner" explicit allowing it is through BDTP
3) The GM can't BDTP.
So ... when you BDTP you are putting your character's life on the line since intentions can change. You are telling the GM: "Ok, now you can try to kill my character if you that's what you want."
Without BDTP the GM can't kill or otherwise remove the PC from the game so even if the failed roll was one with pretty nasty consequences, your character won't die because of it UNLESS you BDTP.
Andreas
The very second scene of my very first TSOY session, a character tried to capture an escaping spy and failed. So he brought down the pain.
An hour, all our Gift Dice and one "The GM can't win, he must roll 12 now! - What, 12?"-moment later, his character was dead.
That's why you don't want to bring down the pain unless its really important to you.