[TSoY] Difficulties with stakes negotiation

[JMendes]

Hello, all, :)

So, we had a most excellent TSoY session last night, about which, a post in Actual Play will follow soon.

While I compose that post, I'd like to talk about what occurred at the end of the session.

There's this NPC called Gerard, who has Done Bad Deeds(tm) and now my character is intent on catching him, confronting him, and then getting him home. We've been chasing this character for quite some time.

As we chased, we came across a slippery NPC whom I finally managed to track down and corner. (Well, semi-corner, as he has that elven secret that unfocuses the world, which makes it hard for us to interact with him on a physical level.) We'll call this NPC the Unknown Elf.

Now, this Unknown Elf has goals of his own, which he isn't willing to reveal, which is, you know, regular. :)

So, me and Unknown Elf, we rolled opposed Sways and Discern Truths back and forth, while I tried to figure out who he is, what he wants, and what he wants from me. So far, so good.

Only all of a sudden, the GM announced that Unknown Elf was going to try to convince me to delay my taking Gerard home, which felt incredibly odd to me. I mean, what happens if the NPC wins, do I have to change my character's goals? Let me draw a parallel: what happens if I go against an Ammenite house lord and Sway him into giving me his estate? Even with the heavy penalty dice, I might win. Then what? I get his stuff? That just seems odd. Shouldn't there me some limit on how far Sway goes? Where do you draw that limit?

Here's what I specifically don't want:

1) Suggestions that I accept the roll, then Bring Down The Pain if I lose. I'm aware that I have that option, but that's not what I want to talk about.

2) Suggestions that the GM should have handled the NPC differently. Both I and he are aware that he has or had that option, but I consider that goal on part of the NPC legitimate, and most importantly, I consider that kind of player pressure on the part of the GM legitimate.

So, what do I want?

I want to talk about stakes negotiation.

What do you guys do when the GM (or some other player) puts forward stakes that are just weird or even outright unacceptable? How do you guys resolve it?

For the record, what happened is that the GM and I started talking in character, and I became increasingly uncomfortable as I felt us slipping into old habits of resolving social conflict non-mechanically. In reality, what was being done was that both I and the GM were trying to put extra information on the table, in a vague attempt at coming up with different stakes, but that extra information was degenerating into me trying to convince him and him trying to convince me, at least from my point of view. It felt weird, detached and un-TSoY-like.

So. Thoughts on what happened to us, and thoughts on stakes negotiation. Go.

Cheers,
J.

P.S. Some of you are going to put forward suggestions that I am going to argue against. That is a Good Thing(tm). Those suggestions are still welcome. My arguing should be construed as an attempt to integrate them, rather than an attempt to put them down.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Me, I just say, "Hey, that's not very cool with me." Honestly, that's all.

I want you to think of your game group as a team of people. Your team has a goal: a rockin' good time playing RPGs. If one team member shafts another's vision, that's not great. But, hey, it happens - they might not know. So tell them. If they insist, they're not being a good team-mate.

Shafting your vision and shafting your character's vision, by the way - very different things. The second one is awesome.

- Clinton

[joshua neff]

Me, I just say, "Hey, that's not very cool with me." Honestly, that's all.

Seconded.

When I've run TSOY for my daughter, I would often put some pretty heavy stakes on her failures. But everytime, before dice were rolled, I'd ask, "Are you okay with these stakes?" And when she said yes, we'd roll and take the results as they came.

There was something in your post that confused me, though. You said,

So, me and Unknown Elf, we rolled opposed Sways and Discern Truths back and forth, while I tried to figure out who he is, what he wants, and what he wants from me.

Was this not Bringing Down the Pain? That's the only time you'd roll back and forth--otherwise, you'd roll once for the conflict and the success and failures of both sides would indicate the resolution. If it's not in Bringing Down the Pain, the Unknown Elf can't suddenly change tactics, because the conflict is resolved in one roll.

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

So the gist of it seems to be, this is ok, this happens, discuss it as players, find a common ground that is fun for everyone regarding the players' game vision (and not characters' goals or other such non-issues) and go from there.

I'm cool with that.

Josh, to clarify, it wasn't BDTP. First, there was an Athletics conflict, which I won. Then, I won a Sway conflict to convince him to even stay and talk to us, what with him going out of focus and all. Then I lost a Sway conflict to convince him to reveal his identity, and then, after I chose to have my character be forthright about his goals, I lost a Discern Truth conflict to gauge his intentions towards those goals.

At this point, I wanted to try to Sway him into just coming with us, since he'd been following us, after all, and that's when the GM advanced those steep "if you lose, he's gonna convince you to tweak your goals" stakes.

After a full 24 hours of reflection on this, in retrospect, I should have accepted the stakes and gone into BDTP if need be.

Anyway, thanks for the clarifications, guys. Oh, and the whole of the session was quite awesome, if you discount the very last few minutes of it. AP post here, as promised.

Cheers,
J.

[Ralek]

I'm the GM in this situation so I wanted to add a little something.

The fact that the player had a problem with those stakes caught me TOTALLY by suprise. I would never put stakes on the table that I tought the PLAYER would not be confortable with. More specifically, I would never make stakes change a PLAYER goal, but I would definitely, in fact I view it as my obligation, to keep trying to change CHARACTER's goals and motivations, so that the character may grow and evolve. What surprised me was that apparently, bringing Gerard home was a PLAYER goal, not a character goal like I thought. And if its a player goal, why don't I know about it?

After discussing the issue further, I think we reached the conclusion that in fact it wasn't a player goal and that Joao probably would be ok with those stakes after all. I think the stakes just caught him by surprise (we've come from very many years of tradional roleplaying and socially deciding this stuff instead of rolling it).

Regarding instances where this might happen again, I'm totally okay with a player telling me: "No, that's something *I* care about so those stakes are not cool with me." I just think that if it is a player goal it should be brought to the table as such and not what happened which is the player hiding behind the character. I couldn't care less if it is a character goal (well, in fact I do care or I wouldn't have put it on the table). I view it as my obligation as GM to keep putting conflicts on the table that change the way the characters feel.