Gun to the Head

[Jeph]

"Val! Val, where the areyou!" Jake rushed around the corner--to find Valerie held tightly by the bald man, a .45 pressed agaist the back of her head. The man presses harder, a muscle in his hand spasming. Jake stops dead in his tracks.

"That's it, kid," the man says, slowly backing away, maintaining his grip on the girl. "We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, now, would we? Just drop the knife, you wouldn't want to kill her, would you?"

At that moment, Valerie catches Jake's eye. She winks. Jake gulps, nods, makes as if to put his blade down--and lets fly. The knife whistles through the air. A loud bang rings througyh the air, and suddenly the bald man is lying on the floor, slim silver glinting from his neck, his blood rushing out of his body to mingle with that of Valerie's shattered skull . . .

The issue: Should a 'heroic' game make it easier to shoot someone if you have a gun to their head? Common sense says, 'yes'. But action movies say, 'no'.  What if the scene had ended like this?:

At that moment, Valerie catches Jake's eye. She winks. Jake gulps, nods, makes as if to put his blade down--and lets fly. It strikes the back of the man's hand, who clutches his bloody palm and he cries out in pain. As Valerie's knee connects firmly with the man's groin, the gun clatters to the floor, and discharges harmlessly.

The second version is more the type of thing that would happen in a novel or movie: yeah, the man has a gun to her head, but they're the good guys, and the good guys are protected by an Aura of Protagonistic Bias.

So, what are your opinions?

[John Kim]

 The issue: Should a 'heroic' game make it easier to shoot someone if you have a gun to their head? Common sense says, 'yes'. But action movies say, 'no'.

I have a few caveats here:

1) It depends which action movies you are talking about.   Notably, Hong Kong and HK-influenced action movies tend to be a lot more bloody.  For example, in The One, Jet Li's extra-dimensional double puts a gun to his wife and kills her.  

2) I don't think changing the difficulty of shooting is really the best way to handle this.  If you push the other way too much, then the hero will tend to not bother to pause before charging the villian holding his wife hostage -- which is equally out of genre.   Also, if the villian rolls well then you get the same dead-hostage result.  

Personally, I would handle this by making it easy for the villian to kill the hostage -- but allow the hero to modify this by a clever move as well as spending Hero Points or the equivalent.  Think of it this way -- if a nameless extra is trying to save a hostage, should the same thing happen as in your hero examples?