I have a feeling this has been discussed already, so a link to an old post is fine.
In our recent chargen session, both myself and another player, Tod, found ourselves in a similar situation, though it came about in different ways. For my character's potential accomplishment, I said I wanted my character to be first in his Theology class, though as a player, I didn't. I wanted him to NOT be the first. Tod wanted his character to restrain himself and control his anger. But the thing is, we followed the book and had Tod control the character "as he was" (meaning, he wanted to hit the guy), and had the GM take the side of having Tod's character control himself.
So both of us were in situations where the Initiation was more or less meaningless, because we could both just give, which we did after a few token sees/raises. My situation went fine, as I didn't tell the group what my intention was until after the conflict. It was only in retrospect that I wondered if I should have declared the stakes to be "I WON'T be first in my Theology class."
Tod's situation, however, caused some debate. To both Tod and myself, the way it was outlined in the book didn't make sense. We thought that Tod should try to control his anger, while the GM should try and get him to unleash it. In the end we went with the book, but it still seemed odd to Tod.
So anyway, what's the "official" reason for this? And should I have run my initiation differently?
Thanks!
Here's a link to a recent similar discussion:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17119.0
It adresses only half of your problem, though.
- Frank
Perhaps initiation challenges should be pitched to players as, "Name an accomplishment, for which it would be interesting to YOU, regardless of success or failure." That done, it doesn't matter who chooses which side.
Well what I think is, if you the player have a strong opinion about which you want, you should ... ready? ... you should make that moment be the given, uncontested setup for the actual conflict.
So like, you're NOT first in theology class. You're obviously not rising to the challenge. Do you win the respect of the theology teacher anyway? Do you knock the theology teacher down a peg? Something like that, maybe? I'll bet that between you and your fellow players you can come up with just the thing. The thing you want badly and want its opposite badly too.
Now, in the real world, whatever. You did some raising and seeing so you got a little experience with the mechanic, your GM took the opposite side from you so you got a little experience with your GM actively opposing you, and you obviously got your 1d6 trait - so the initiation conflict did its job. A less-than-perfect initiation conflict is not that big a tragedy.
-Vincent