Resolving Passions

[boredoom]

I can't see that Mortal Coil has a mechanism for dealing with Passions that have run their course. For instance, what happens if a character with "Hate: Kill all vampires in Sheffield" achieves that goal? Or if a character who has "Love:Protect my sister" sees her being killed?

This isn't a big problem: you could simply eliminate the passion and redistribute the points, perhaps adding a new passion. But I'm considering, inspired by Nine Worlds, sweetening the pot a bit for players and giving them a Power point for evey point in a Passion that is resolved. What do you think about that? It would make the player rewards for pursuing their Passions more explicit, but it might also inspire the players to go for Passions that are easily resolvable, which might not be a good thing. (In Nine Worlds, all Muses, or passions, must be resolvable)

[Brennan Taylor]

Yeah, a lot of times passions in Mortal Coil aren't things that can ever be resolved. One good way to deal with them, however, is to make passions part of the stakes in a conflict. This isn't for every conflict, but sometimes it is appropriate to have a conflict change a character's passions.

When a passion on the character sheet is resolved, I would suggest adjusting it to reflect the outcome of that resolution. If that means changing it into a different passion, or reworking it a bit, that's fine. Then, Love: Protect my sister, when failed, becomes, Hate: Punish those who killed my sister or something.

As far as rewarding the resolution of passions, this is probably a good house rule, but I probably wouldn't implement it in my game. Passions reward you for bringing them into play already by giving you a nice bump in a conflict your character is passionate about.

[Nathan P.]

Also, you can tailor whats happening in the game to the progression of passions. Remember that when you raise one passion you have to lower another - so, if you are working towards acheiving a concrete goal that concerns one of your passions, you could be lowering that passion as you get closer to it (and raising others), so thats its gone by the time you acheive the goal.

Might take a little tweaking, but it's a thought.

[boredoom]

Yeah, a lot of times passions in Mortal Coil aren't things that can ever be resolved. One good way to deal with them, however, is to make passions part of the stakes in a conflict. This isn't for every conflict, but sometimes it is appropriate to have a conflict change a character's passions.

When a passion on the character sheet is resolved, I would suggest adjusting it to reflect the outcome of that resolution. If that means changing it into a different passion, or reworking it a bit, that's fine. Then, Love: Protect my sister, when failed, becomes, Hate: Punish those who killed my sister or something.

Interesting suggestions, especially the second one.

[boredoom]

Also, you can tailor whats happening in the game to the progression of passions. Remember that when you raise one passion you have to lower another - so, if you are working towards acheiving a concrete goal that concerns one of your passions, you could be lowering that passion as you get closer to it (and raising others), so thats its gone by the time you acheive the goal.

Might take a little tweaking, but it's a thought.

Yes, but resolving a passion should take a climactic scene, where the player would want his Passion as strong as possible, both for reasons of mechanics and drama (nice how they work together in that case.)