[Misery Bubblegum] Opinion and Truth

[Josh Roby]

Makes sense, Tony.  I might add a further goad that creating new, related Opinions right then and there happens at a discount or something, but it's just that: a goad.  Is it painfully obvious that spending your pay-off on forming new Opinions is a better buy?  Is it convenient to buy new Opinions in the heat of the moment, or is there some systemic way that those Opinions can be related to the revealed Truth?  If both of those are 'yes', then you have no need of the goad.

[TonyLB]

Joshua:  I'm inclined to think (inspired by Thomas) that the difference between creating a bunch of Opinions right now and creating a bunch of Opinions after a voluntary pause and period of relaxation is primarily a pacing issue.

The difference between creating a bunch of Opinions right now and not creating them at all, that would be much more serious.  But I don't think that a goad needs to be immediate in order to make sure that people make these connections eventually.

Particularly, I've been thinking that a good goad (liking that word!) toward further Opinions would be to have a parallel track of relationship development for Needs.  As I pointed out in the Actual Play, I think that desire and need have a very similar pattern:  having the unfulfilled desire is cool, having fulfilled the desire is not so driving.  So you could use a similar (though certainly not identical) mechanic.

What fascinates me is how Need and Opinion intertwine.  Shawn pointed to Stephanie, who was a character that I simply whipped up to be obnoxious.  He registered her as having some need that was driving her to put forth the opinion that Flavius was gay.  That's cool, how powerful that assumption is.  Likewise, the existence of the Opinion about Flavius had a substantial impact on whether Shawn decided that his character Glenda had a Need for Flavius's attention.  That kind of thing happens all the time, of course.

Now, while Opinions are bought out when they're either confirmed or denied, the Needs that interacted with those Opinions do not get bought out at the same time.  So they're sitting there, suddenly placed into a powerfully new context.  That should (I think) drive formation of further Opinions, using the new Truth as a spring-board.  Likewise, when a Need is either resolved or abandoned, the Opinions that you formed to support or restrain the pursuit of that Need don't vanish, and they will drive formation of further Needs. 

So long as it is rare for people to have the dice on hand to resolve both items at the same time, I think that this leap-frogging style (Resolve Opinion, new Opinions fostered by Need, then you resolve the Need and the new Need is fostered by the Opinions that you just formed) will do a fairly good job of tying the material together without tying anyone to anything permanently.