Getting bonus dice but not wanting them?

[sirogit]

What are the ramifications in Sorcerer if a player is purposefully setting their characters up to lose in a conflict?

Specifficly, I was thinking about bonus dice. What if a player goes into a scene wanting their character to lose a battle of wills, they get into the scene so well that they rack up 2-3 bonus dice for firing up the other players, but, they do not want them. Should they be able to just refuse the dice? Or have the dice count against them? Should they just not try to do cool things in a conflict they want their character to lose?

As its a purely "metagame" reward system for allowing people to edge a conflict towards what they want for being spiffy, I'd think that it'd be totally cool if someone wanted to edge the conflict towards their character losing. But is there something I'm missing that'd make this a bad idea?

[Bankuei]

Hi,

I don't know the "official' answer, but you might want to consider allowing the player to apply those bonus dice to the opposition :)

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

If the player does not want the character to win the conflict, then there is no conflict. Just role-play the acquiescence.

Dice in Sorcerer are about conflicts - not about "wanting to lose." To be absolutely clear: in such a situation as you describe, the character automatically loses. This is an absolutely necessary outcome of understanding the basic rule in Sorcerer, Chapter 1: you roll dice to resolve conflict. "I want my character to give in" is not a conflict.

Now, if that's what a player did when I was GMing, I'd roll the NPC's dice against the player-character's Will just to see whether any bonus dice would accrue, but the only potential negative outcome would be 0 bonus dice, not suddenly inexplicably losing.

Best,
Ron

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Ron,

I agree that "I want my character to give in" isn't a conflict. The problem sirogit is describing sounds, to me, more like "I want my character to do his utmost to win. However, I the player, hope my character loses." Isn't that a little different?

Cheers,

[joshua neff]

Then I would suggest Ron's statement still holds--if the PC is fighting to win, but the player wants the PC to fail, don't roll the dice. Simply narrate that the PC tries & fails. Rolling the dice doesn't mean the PC wants to resolve the conflict, it means the player wants to resolve a conflict.

[Ron Edwards]

Josh is right - saying "my character wants to win" is merely color for the non-conflict statement that the character is going to lose.

Best,
Ron

[greyorm]

I disagree!

The conflict for the player is "I want to lose, but I might not" -- he wants X to happen, and getting X to happen is what rolling the dice are all about.

Otherwise, why not simply declare that you want to win in the reverse situation? Why use dice/a randomizer at all?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Raven, here's how I see it.

Player wants Conflict X.

However, Conflict X requires that the character be subordinated or otherwise put at a disadvantage relative to a given other character.

Currently, the in-play situation offers the possibility that this subordination/disadvantage is not going to occur.

Therefore the current in-play situation is actually a threat to the existence of Conflict X.

Solution 1: play the current situation with rolls. Thus Conflict X is now put at risk, and the player must live with the possibility that his or her anticipated situation will not occur. Doing this automatically establishes that the current in-play situation is indeed a conflict of its own, let's call it conflict W, which has just as much interest for all of us present as Conflict X would have.

Solution 2: move to the Conflict X by role-playing the character into that state of subordination/disadvantage. This is very easy! The other character says or proposes something, and the player-character merely rolls over, acquiescing (even if he or she verbally protests, no actual resistance occurs). No conflict occurs, hence no dice are rolled, and now the potential for Conflict X exists.

(Again, the GM might see fit to roll some dice for some bonuses later, but forget that if it seems too much like a "conflict.")

Both of these are perfectly viable solutions and both are consistent with the rules.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, rolling and not winning when you want to win is interesting. Rolling and winning when you don't want to win is just weird.

Think of it this way: I say that I want to have my character cross the street - we don't roll for that, right? Why? Because it's too easy? Not really, we could put a lot of traffic in there and make it hard. We don't roll because it's not a conflict that anyone is interested in playing out. There's no suspense, because nobody cares about the stakes (losing to traffic would be one of those useless deaths).

Same with conflicts where the player wants to fail, there's no suspense. Nobody wants to see these played out mechanically. If you do lose, then you got where you want to be (like Ron says), but it's not really a "Yay!" moment. If you win, it's like losing to the traffic. You get a big weird "now what" feeling. I know, I've been in that situation a lot - I hose my characters a lot and feel weird when they win despite me. You want to hose them again, but it's often implausible at that point.

Whereas people do want to see the conflicts where the player wants the character to win. Because then there's suspense. If the player wins, it's all "Yay!" If they lose it's all "Awww!" Both are interesting.

Mike