[Other Family] Conflict resoloution and player choice.

[sirogit]

So today I wrote up this nifty little game about vampires and family:

http://bmdproductions.tripod.com/of.html

Right now I have come to a quandry about if the conflict resoloution allows for enough player choice between the conflict results.

Here's how the system works right now:

Player #1: Using Honesty, I plead with my sister not to tell anyone what I am, she thinks I'm a freak but agrees to keep my secret.
GM: Using Rage, you beat your sister into submission. She tearily complies.
Player #2: Using Lust, you give your sister an open-mouthed kiss and tell her now we both have secrets. She thinks of herself and you as total freaks, but is strangely attracted towards you.

The group agrees that player #2's option will intensify their connection while the others will lessen it, and involves the "Relationship: Sister d10" on that option.

The group also agrees that all 3 options are to some degree icky and have prices attached to them, so all 3 options are designated as "Hard".

Player 1 rolls: 3, 3 - GM rolls: 2 - Player 2 rolls: 5

Now, without any re-rolling, the player could choose either his(Raise Honesty, Lower Rage, Lower Lust, Lower Sister's relationship) or the GM's(Raise Rage, Lower Honesty, Lower Lust, Lower Sister's relationship) result.

But what the player really wants is to raise his sister's connection, and he's willing to do just about anything to do that. So he chooses to reroll player 2's roll in hopes of a higher number: It stays at 5. Player 2, sick bastard that he is, also wants to reroll that die: 4 GM prefers his option, so he keeps it there.

so the player is back to his original choice: His soloution or the GM's. Rage or Honesty, Should this be different, and if so, how?

Soloution #1: The player of the character may choose any option, but only the lowest number or one higher options are successfull. Con: "Do X or fail" isn't nessecarily the best choice. At the same time, it has no less freedom than traditionial roleplaying games.

Soloution #2: The player of the character may choose any option, but only raises any traits if its the lowest die and only lowers any traits if its the highest die. Con: Doesn't really work if the player doesn't care which way their traits go, which wouldn't be too farfetched since traits wouldn't restrict what someone is allowed to have happen anymore.

Soloution #3: The player sets forth all of the possible options instead of the GM or other players. Con: Not enough outside input.

Soloution #4: The number of an option represents the "difficulty" of that option. Choosing it means you get that many difficulty tokens to represent the character's fatigue from doing it the hard way. If a character has 10 or more difficulty tokens, they can't be in a scene, you have to wait until the next aging cycle when difficulty tokens refresh Con: I'm not sure on the artificial limiation on how much stuff can be done in an aging cycle. I also wanted to avoid the use of any kind of "bennies".

I am considering the idea that a soloution may not really be nessecary. Are there games that use a similar resoloution system, and if so, do they not feel somewhat constraining?

Are there other effects of different soloutions that I'm not taking into account? Do they or any other soloutions work paticularly well?

Thanks!

[Jack Aidley]

This strikes me as some very interesting stuff; I love the notion of games that push the boundaries of what player ownership means and the notion of games with long time periods backing them. Some comments

I'm not clear what you mean when you say a dice is raised, since lower is more significant, does raised mean go up a dice size or down a dice size.

The structure of play outside of the conflict system seems unclear as well; it's not at all clear what the GM's role is, for example or even why there is one. Do players take different characters from the same family, or each have their own family - if the latter how do they interact with each other?

I think I would allow only the player to re-roll the 'hard' choices.

[sirogit]

When it says a die size is "raised", what it means is that it uses a lower die size, which means more influence on the outcome (This is what happens when you do a lot of flip-flop revisions in one night.)

I'm definately thinking about GMless options. No concrete plan has stuck so far though.

The way I GMed it in the short little playtest I did was: Look at the player's character sheet. Look at what seems remarkably strong or weak (Not just in terms of being extremes of the scales, but in relation to general presumptions about the character.). Think of a way for that remarkability to come into play. Set-up a simple scene about that conflict.

Also in the playtest, I found a funny little detail about the game's Situation - On paper, it seems extrememly lacking - I was thinking to myself at the begining of the game "Uh... Maybe I should of writen somewhere about what the characters actually DO..." but in-game, the system drives situation forward pretty well because the GM or other players are strongly inclined to push for extremely proactive, risky actions and try to make them stick by involving relationships, and the aging mechanic throws in some nice complications.

So hopefully within a few playtests I could put something like that in the advice section.