[Afraid] Sister Nancy Piety, second night

[Tim M Ralphs]

Last weeks play was here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=22455.0

Playlogs are here:
http://community.livejournal.com/fateofeden/5164.html

My house last night which meant it was easier in terms of space and in terms of crawling distance to get to bed. It also meant I was busy cooking from before the players arrived to when we sat down to eat.

I guess the interesting conflict is the opening conflict with "Do I get to the Victim before the Monster victimises him?" as implicit stakes. Following on from Ludanto's thread in the Lumpley forum, I should have just told the players to frame their characters into the conflict if they wanted and we'd work out the whys and wherefores after the fact, if at all. I wanted to see whether there could be a meaningful set of raises and sees leading into the scene, so I didn't tell the players they could do this. (Looking back, this is flat out cheating on my part.) From the playlogs, there is a bit where I talk about what I'd have done differently in Dr Brown's research conflict, and suggest setting the scene inside the stakes. By this I mean setting the stakes at "Do I get to the Victimisation in time?" and then framing a scene with a conflict in the way of the stakes, so to speak.

Now this is still basically ignoring Vincent's suggestion to just let the player frame their character into the scene. So suppose I give the player a choice. "These are the stakes, this is what's happening over here. You can either jump into that scene and we'll do the justification later, or we can start somewhere else and the justification will be part of the conflict." Is this cheating, and is it missing the point in what Afraid is meant to do?

That said, there were some conflicts that were all in the research arena, and they worked really well. Not sure where I'm going with this, poke me if you want examples.

I talk about the escalation being a free block in my play log. Suffice to say here that this is really powerful and was a decisive factor in several conflicts, and that the lesson learnt is that if things are going to get worse then you want to be the one who makes things worse.

I want to talk a bit about circumstances. There's a wonderful thing with circumstances and I think it's why they don't break the game as has been suggested. Firstly, if it's appropriate to loose them or if they are remotely tied to stakes I'm letting people toggle them. Secondly, and this is why the system works, the players get to choose when and how to make their circumstances true. As a GM, I can't ever make the player take a particular circumstance. Which means that every true circumstance is a cue, it's the player saying: "What I'd like to do next is a scene in which I am In Trouble." Or whatever. It gets better, because as the GM I can raise an eyebrow when a player toggles a circumstance and if I'm really stuck I can ask the player what they are aiming for. "Why have you checked Alone?" "Because I've wandered away from the party for some reason. Why would I have done that?" "Oh, maybe because of this noise you heard." "Yeah, that's cool. I've ditched these losers and I'm exploring on my own."

The only time this isn't going to work like that arises because there are very few short term fallout options. I can conceive of a scenario where there is no follow up and yet the player doesn't think any of the circumstances are appropriate. I suspect this is where the player checks In Trouble and throws the character to the GM's whim.

Quick question. It was suggested somewhere that a Player can only be Victimised if all four circumstances are true. Is that something you are committed to Vincent?

Lastly, it occurred to me at some point that nobody has the trait: "I'm Afraid." I think that "I'm a Dog" is one of my favourite traits in Dogs, because it really helps the Players get into the role of being Dogs. Part of me thinks that having the trait 'I'm Afraid' would help the players get into the spirit of things with Afraid. Part of me thinks that it would spoil the vision that players have of their characters. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Questions welcome.

[lumpley]

Come to think of it, I'd say that the monster can victimize a PC only if the PC has the quality that the monster finds attractive. Given THAT, I'm not committed to all 4 circumstances at all.

That's a fun writeup to read!

-Vincent

[Tim M Ralphs]

Excellent. My little heart lit up when Sarah announced she wanted Alicia to be an orphan, but the prospect of waiting until she had all four conditions was too much to hope for. I contemplated whether the Monster could pursue making circumstances true as stakes, in the same way that characters can try and toggle them, but it seemed against the principle of the thing.