[Orphan game mechanic] What price victory?

[Bailywolf]

Stop me if this has been done, but I got to thinking about an alternate take on resolution (possibly diceless resolution).  In playing with mechanics for Maestro Mago, Strange Alias, On the Threhsold, and Stealing Heaven I got to thinking about systems requiring players to make meaningful choices about the price of winning- about what winning is worth. 

What if you- the player- picked your level of success before you rolled. 

Then what the dice determine is what that costs you.

Like, you step into the warehouse where Johnny Chang's shipment of drugs is coming in... and suddenly the silence is broken by the sound of dozens of automatic pistols being cocked.

"Detective Mang!  I would say we are surprised to see you here, but clearly, we are not."   

"Chang, you bastard!  You set me up."

"Oh yes, but I couldn't have done it... not without Julie's help."

"Julie!  You lying scum, she would never betray me!"

"Ha ha ha!  You poor fool.  Death will be a mercy, I think.  She's been working for me all along.  Very passionate, isn't she?" 

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"

:Blam!  Blam!  Blam!  Blam!  Screaming!  Blam!  Blam!  Blam!:

Outnumbered, outgunned, taunted, and betrayed by the woman you love- you decide to go for Total Domination (the best possible result in the system).

Problem is, against these odds, Total Dom will cost you.  Cost you allot. 

Screw it.

Say TD, against these odds, has a 4d6 difficulty, and on rolling the bones, you find the cost is 20 points.

Right off, your Two-Fisted Gunplay traits that give you 5, and you decide to get wounded and messed up a little, covering 5 more points from your Health, but... that last 10 points.  There's nothing for it... you decide to unleash the Beast.  What Chang and his cronies don't realize is that you're only half Chinese- your mother traveled widely in her youth, taking photographs of castles, and in a ruin in modern Romania, she met the man who would be your father- a man sometimes called Dracula. 

You have a supernatural Trait called 'Half Vampire' and it is powerful- each point of your Humanity you permanently burn gives you 10 points.

You're committed to the Total Domination of this scene.

Screw it- you burn the Humanity, and describe Chang's bullet punching through your side, describe falling, and describe the surge of glorious supernatural rage, and the incalculable pleasure of giving in to it.  Your vision goes red, and their blood seems grey as it sprays from their severed limbs and torn throats.

In the end, the only sound is the crackle the burning drugs, and the drip drip of blood down the drain grates in the floor.

You've won- but at what cost?

The player picks the desired outcome, the dice provide uncertainty as to the cost (but imply a certain level of threat), and then after the dice roll, the player is obligated to cover the Cost- regardless of what that means.  The scene is paced based on the number of these decisions the Player has to make before it resolves.  The stakes are established when the player has the choice of picking his result.

I'm not sure which of my cooking designs could benefit most from this (I'm leaning towards Threshold), but I'm intrigued by the possibilities.   

-B

[knicknevin]

Thats an excellent concept; I was toying with the idea of creating a horror system that got around the old 'Whoops, I'm insane/a monster' problem by letting players choose the manner of their corruption, e.g. instead of automatically losing sanity by reading the Forbidden Tome, you decide just how useful the Forbidden Tome is before you read it and effectively 'spend' that much sanity as part of your task-roll. This mechanic would fit perfectly with that, particularly if there were latent conditions that the player picked when creating the character (like the Half-Vampire in your example) that they could trigger for extra points with serious consequences.

Cool idea, keep at it.