Freedom where you want it

[M. J. Young]

If what players what in Sim is to Explore the Dream, and learning more, and discovering things that make the Dream more real (for the values of real that you're working with) then it seemed to me that Force in this context could be blocking that.  I'm not sure how that could happen.  Maybe only putting players in the same situation, setting, what have you, and letting nothing new happen?

I think you might be right on target here, Claire.

In Multiverser, anything can happen, and characters can go just about any direction they want. Every once in a while, though, some character takes a modern nine-to-five office job with nothing really happening in it, and I start to worry. How can that possibly be interesting to anyone? What can they explore, working in an office like that? It's going to be the same thing every day for years to come.*

Well, I don't think I'd go there. I'd look for something else instead. It would be more interesting to explore being a bum on the streets, given that there's some insulation between what happens to my character and what happens to me. I do think that there are ways to lock a character into something that is completely without new elements to explore, and that this would be the Death of the Dream--how long can you keep going over the same tasks day after day before it's boring?

*I can see taking this sort of setting and making something of it, if the player takes an interest in "beating the system" or otherwise "climbing the corporate ladder" in an effort to see what it's like to fight your way to the top and ultimately to be there. There is potential for the nine-to-five job in play; it just requires that there be some opportunity to move from one thing to another within that framework, so that there are new things in view.

--M. J. Young