Playing Alyria

[Mike Holmes]

Hey Ron,

I see your point, but that only helps so much. Essentially, against each opponent there will be a "best" tactic. The player who has the worse end of the deal can then try to manipulate the situation so that the reasonbly usable traits are different (and presumably to their advantage). So that helps again, some. But it ends up being a bit like what you see in Amber where the one player is trying to bring the conflict into one arena, and the other player trying to drag it back. Which is better than a totally static relationship, but gets stale soon as well.

At least that's the feeling I got in play. I'd be looking at the sheet, and the same traits would apply repeatedly. So why not use them? It's not like I wasn't in Author stance, either, the same traits honestly were as good for the story as the lower ones, with the exception of lacking variety. I tried to come up with occasions to use the other traits, but it never seemed to make much sense. This is all due to traits widely usable natures. Something like Hateful, can be pulled into almost any conflict. So if that's the highest trait, you'll see it in play a whole lot.

I was thinking that perhaps a trait could be lowered one level on each use. Only so much hate to go around. Replenishment would need to be roleplayed. To use moon parlance, traits would wane and then wax again.
This would make other traits desirable to use at times (which is cool because it represents a characters other sides showing through periodically), and reinforce the waning traits by focusing on needing to replenish them.

Just an example of the kind of thing that one could do.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Seth,

Here's the second of the two characters.

Salt
a very blonde, Nordic-looking woman, whose appearance brands her Misbegotten
Virtue: Weeping Moon
[note: if the New Moon "lower limit" had been explicit in the character creation section, this would have been New Moon and Salt would have had two more points for Traits]

Traits
Underconfident -- New Moon (2 pts)
Surly -- Crescent (3 pts)

Attributes
Force Full, "Repels" electricity, and sometimes demeanor can 'repel' people.
Insight Gibbous, Very good at mechanics
Determination New Moon, Not sure where she belongs, or whom necessarily she should follow.

Starting I/C = 0

Salt was a member of the web, a Misbegotten with a strange power that deflects electricity. She had always wished she could be part of the 'main crowd' and didn't quite fit with the other Web members, though they appreciated her for her power.

Grizzly and Salt didn't meet until the climactic scene, but both ended up taking rather different paths than they would have without meeting. The key "hinge" was my NPC character Shark, a shrewd and competent (but very green) Keeper agent - Salt ended up rejecting Shark's sincere offer by the Keepers, and Grizzly ended up injuring Shark and permitting the Web to damage an Arch of the city. In other words, a rather dark story of personal passions overtaking responsibility in both cases, but with an odd friendship/alliance born between the two of them, very effective in their scale of perceptions.

Both players are quite eager to see how another NPC, Hart, will take all of this. Hart is a Keeper's son who's joined the Web as an idealistic revolutionary, who helped Salt early in the scenario. Both players recognize that he's now the "corner" of a new triangle with them.

Best,
Ron