regarding character ownership

[Matt Wilson]

But in this game, the area that's been given to the player to adjudicate seems to be transfered to the other player at some point. And that's where the line seems to get crossed to me. Apparenly, Clinton feels guilty about narrating that the character is gunshy because normally that would fall under the purview of the other player.

So, what I'd suggest is one of two things. One thing you could do is to get the players used to the idea right away that they are not the only ones that control "thier" characters. For example, after chargen, you could do an entire scene where each character is played by the player sitting to the left of the "owning" player. To break the ice in this manner. Some means by which all the participants are broken of the illusion of complete ownership. Or, better stated, some means by which the players are informed that the characters are shared property. OTOH, that may still not sit well with some players (especially traditional players).

Another idea would be to simply limit the ability of the player to hose the player during a setback to external influences only. That way, the player is simply taking the normal role of the GM for purposes of narrating the damage done to the other character. Which shouldn't bother anyone.

Mike: I think that's it. It's not so much "hosing" a character as it is imposing a certain kind of character development. A setback that says, "you slip and fall," doesn't say anything about the character, but "you collapse and start crying" may contradict the opinions of the player who created that character, and that was tough to say as it was the first episode of the game. Maybe the rule needs to be that if you want to incite emotions or character qualities, they have to build on something that's already been established. So if, for example, everyone knows my character is a coward, they wouldn't feel so awkward about narrating a setback to say "your character runs and hides."

[Mike Holmes]

Well, the person to ask is Clinton. Would that have made a difference, do you think, Clinton?

What you could do is have players take "flaws" (assuming they don't already), and the hosing players have to stick to the flaws. The idea being that the player selecting the flaws understands that he's allowing the other players to define the character's weakness in these specific realms.

Mike

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Actually, adding a little social contract to the system worked perfectly. We played again last night with the rule: "Anyone can come up with a Setback, but it has to be approved by the character's player." So, I was fine with doing things like having a small ape-like creature leap on a character as if the character was its mother, putting that character into a hard situation; or having another character suddenly realize the alien that he was fighting was a woman, straining his morals, because in each instance, it was a proposal to the controlling player, not a statement.