Rethinking a response

[Emily Care]

Back in Jonas' actual play write up on the Forge a while back, he & his friend Helena ran into a creative clash:

I chose to continue my turn at the café, with Charlotte suggesting that they'd do something else, like catch a movie. She just had to use the bathroom first. After waiting ten minutes outside the ladies' room, earning me a Bonus Die for "true to life", she had to use the men's room instead. I described the place as having two urinals and a toilet that was too dirty for Charlotte to even consider. She would instead stand over one of the urinals when Fredrik entered the room, earning me a Re-Roll for something really bad happening to the poor girl. The thing was that Helena didn't let me do it, she said that it was so unbelievable that a woman would do something like that, that it couldn't happen.

I must admit that this made a bit irritated, since I was the Active Player and she was supposed to support me. We had a brief argument as to whether this could possibly happen somewhere at some time to someone, when I said that it could surely happen in a movie. Helena agreed, but said that she thought we were playing a bit more realistic than that. That was the source of the disagreement: that I set it up like a scene in a movie and she was picturing it as it would look in real life. After some "we can do it your way, no, we can do it your way," we decided to skip the whole toilet thing and move on with the date.

Now when I think about it, perhaps Helena should've used one of her unused Bonus Dice to suggest something else than my proposed thing? That would've worked, and I would certainly have felt like it was more friendly than the "no, that can't happen" thing we had now. And if the Guide doesn't have any Bonus Dice or Re-Rolls left to use for suggestions, the scene should be over soon anyway so it shouldn't matter.

At the time, I responded that Helena had the right to say "no" to his suggestion, since the guide gets to award dice or not.  But in thinking about this, I think that his solution would have been best.  If the guide just doesn't go along with something the Active Player narrates, they should make another suggestion of a way to modify it or an alternate way things could go.   It simply is more friendly.

What happens if someone baldly says no is that then the player  narrating is much more likely to feel blocked creatively than if they'd just been given a different way to look at it.

Sorry about that Jonas!

best,
Emily