[IaWA] Breaking Bad Habits

[Moreno R.]

Hi Vincent!

I am asking this for purely aesthetics reasons (I don't like the idea of negotiating future dice, so I am thinking about different ways to get the same results): I suppose that we could instead negotiate for "I get a particular strength called <I have locked you in my basement>", but in this case that particular strength would have to be at Significance 1, or the significance can be whatever we negotiate if it make sense in the fiction? (in this case, I can see that Particular Strenght as being doubly potent, unique (there is only one me to lock in the basement), far reaching and even consequential against maneuvering and covertly)

[Mike Holmes]

OK, at this point I'm going to have to take a break and read the text. My one quick read didn't indicate to me that this stuff was possible. Further, it sounds to me like you're saying, "Go ahead, make up rules as you go!" for part of this. I'll be pleasantly surprised if/when I find this in the text. If so, then all I can say is that the text didn't seem to indicate this on a quick read, which isn't much damnation at all.

This all said, if this is the case that this is how the game is supposed to play, then I'm going to start down the other road of condemnation... but we'll wait for that...

Mike

[lumpley]

Condemnation, huh? How about you skip it?

-Vincent

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, I'll probably address the concern in the design thread I'm doing at Story-games.

Mike

[Noclue]

Hmm. Let me try to elicit the principle behind this in greater detail. Let's say that I maneuvered you onto a desert isle, but forgot that there's a ship that we narrated that stops there regularly, which gives a player an easy explanation for how his character might return. So do you narrate returning? It's plausible, and I just forgot about it. Or do you narrate that you miss the ship, because you're lost on the island, understanding my goal as a player in stranding you on the isle?

Mike, in the example you agreed to a PC on an Island and you got a PC on an Island. You got the fiction you agreed to in negotiation. The assumption is you wanted that more than you wanted to injure or exhaust the loser. If you had some hidden player goal that you really wanted instead, like trapped on an island until the end of the chapter or something, shouldn't that have been included as part of the negotiation?

In terms of negotiating mechanical consequences, page 18 doesn't explicitly list the examples from your post, but it basically says you can negotiate for changes in the loser's character sheet. That's pretty open-ended. The one I liked from our last game was "I want you to erase your particular strength. Otherwise, not only will I injure your character, I will keep injuring him until he's dead."

I want to say, I'm finding this thread extremely useful.

[Valamir]

We did that in a game at FMW as well.  My particular strength was a back of prize hunting dogs.  I got entangled with some nature witch (cuz I wanted to hunt on her nature preserve) and after kicking me around with her freakin' Unicorns, she took my dogs away so they could live in fun and frolic on the preserve.

What was really irritating is the narration wasn't that she STOLE the dogs...but that they went eagerly and willingly to her...traitors.

I think I was in half a dozen conflicts in that game...lost them all.  Never lost a single a die.  But narratively I got totally owned.

[GreatWolf]

I think I was in half a dozen conflicts in that game...lost them all.  Never lost a single a die.  But narratively I got totally owned.

And yet, he ended up atop the Owe List. Which seemed only right. Of the various characters in that game, his was the only one that I would have been interested in seeing more about.

The others established fascinating bits of setting, though. Which only makes me more interested in playing this game in campaign mode for a while to see how it works out.

[Noclue]

What was really irritating is the narration wasn't that she STOLE the dogs...but that they went eagerly and willingly to her...traitors.

I love that!