[Solipsist] The King of Monaco and a girl's undead father

[Gregor Hutton]

[Hituro]

Sounds like it was great Gregor, and I'm glad you felt the rules helped you along strongly, as you know that was something that the last few revisions of the text really focused on. Having run a pile more since the game came out myself I've been pleased by how little of what's written in terms of advice I feel I'd tweak before a second printing.

I'm interested in the bit you mention about the initial failure

	Logged

[Gregor Hutton]

No, I think he was a bit stunned that he'd been thwarted by the combined will of the other two PCs on such a ...mean... thing to do. It was downbeat, a sombre and touching moment. The GM, me, got narration and the NPC died. His limitations got ticked and it satisfied the visions of the other two PCs. But it really was pointed for his character and he was a bit taken aback. The other two players were seeing how it worked, and after that point he could see how it worked too.

It wasn't about doing the "right thing" as a group in itself, but about doing it and following your character's vision too. I mean, that player's girlfriend had already embraced the fact that her character killed her father as he was getting too old (and I, of course, had the shadow re-animate him as a restless soul to confront her about it).

It was a meatier story for having these issues in game, to be honest.

I didn't find them getting wilder and looking for the awesome. Sure, there were times they changed big things (all the trains in the UK now run exactly on time, Monaco is now a Kingdom and always has been, etc.) but as much there were small things. The stairlift blew up at the top of the stairs, the door was unlocked, the TV was too loud to hear him come in, etc.

[Hituro]

Thanks Gregor, that makes sense.

The key point is on p.31 "Changing Reality is all about what you get out of it right here and now." You are free to make massive sweeping changes to the world to get what you want, or even as a side effect of what you want, but you don't have too, little changes are just as effective at getting what you want, you redefine the world just as much as you need to get it the way you want at the moment.

Where I see Tears pile up is in two situations

(1) Players grab their special abilities (e.g. Flight) early on, and get a Tear for satisfying their Obsession

(2) Someone is determined to make a really high difficulty change (rather than letting it ride) and both push and overshoot in the process, which is two Tears. Sometimes they satisfy an Obsession too, which is really dangerous

[Gregor Hutton]

Oh, there was a point when the King of Monaco got his motorcade to drive him across town and the others just got the train that everyone suddenly realised he had satisfied his Obsession. When he got the Tear for that it was really an affirmation by the group rather than me as a GM that he'd done it. It was very satisfying as we all sort of looked at each other and the King -- then gave him the Tear.

I think the players were watching the Tears carefully and calculating how many they could "safely" have with their Limitations. We did the post-game stuff too where at least one of them (the girl with the undead father) got rid of a Tear by doing the satisfying a Limitation thing (p. 41 of the book). I think she visited her dad's grave?