[Hero's Banner] War for the Soul of Uran

[Tim C Koppang]

Jason's self-knowledge goal was "met" in that his goal was to find out who his father was, and he did. The goal had a bit more nuance that we could have explored - he was supposed to find his name, and he never accepted his father - but it was found. Jason narrated who his father was when he won a conflict about halfway through the game.

I bet you're about to say that's invalid play, and you will not get backup from me on that. An artificial "you can't have this until I say so" mechanic is obtrusive to play. It might work better with centralized narration ability, but not with distributed narration ability.

I don't think I'll go so far as to call your play invalid, but you should at least recognize that you've definitely changed the rules of the game. I'm really not sure what you mean by "obtrusive". I think I'm pretty frank in the text about not being able to achieve your character's goal until he actually chooses the particular influence it's under (by putting all 100 points into it). This isn't something that the GM is lording over the players. Rather it's a basic agreement that everyone playing makes when they sit down to a game of Hero's Banner. As a group and individually, you're supposed to figure out how the character is prevented from achieving his goal -- that is until he reaches 100 passion points.

I don't think it matters whether or not the narration mechanics are completely centralized or distributed either. Just as a player or the GM is always restricted in his narration by any agreements made in the pre-roll discussion, so too is he restricted by the express limitations placed on him by the system (success/failure and whether or not he is able to reach one of his goals for example).

The only reason I make such a big deal of this is because the entire game is set up around a mounting tension between your character's influences. By taking one or two influences out of the game prematurely you both remove some of that tension and reduce the number of opportunities for interesting conflict.

[Jason Morningstar]

We all understood that finding out who my father was didn't have to be a huge impediment to finding out who my father was.  We all saw places that could have gone and the mid-game reveal wasn't a show-stopper - we discussed it, actually, and were OK with it. 

As far as the peace goal, the only way I could see that making sense is if I had scene framing power and was a dick.  "OK, thirty years later..."

[Bret Gillan]

It seems like one thing that needs to be discussed and negotiated is interesting influences that don't completely wipe out the game by preventing their occurrence before endgame.

This reminds me of the Capes "not yet" rule. In Capes, when you create a Conflict, any sort of narration that happens before that Conflict is resolved is met with a "not yet." Creating an influence in Hero's Banner seems analogous to creating a Conflict in Capes. When you create it you are saying, "This can't happen until endgame," and accepting all that goes along with that, but since this isn't a competitive game like Capes it requires discussion of influences and their consequences on the narrative pre-endgame so that everyone knows what they're getting into.