In our ongoing Midnight campaign our elven twin brothers have one major flaw: Enemy! It happens that the enemy is a demon and that he plagued the twins since ever.

After a long pause he is coming again and the brothers are after him, not sure if this threat is the demon at all, but they smell something... (a note: the brothers have each one passion: love for my brother - at 5 at the moment!!!!)

Anyway, he is not showing himself but only his magic: he conquers the mind of one of the brothers and tells him to kill his brother if he things it will be sweet.

At this point we had a discussion about deprotagonisation (What is the correct word?) of a playercharacter. The twin-player thought it would be cool. One said that he would never do such a thing if he were a GM and this whole thing could be great if it were the brother who came up with this idea, but so it feels just lame.

We decided to change the order of the demon into something less boring. (now the brother will take the shell of the demon and bring it to his chamber, in where he will rise again with new powers; he have to defend the shell, yes that means he will have to fight or to tactic around his brother)

But the bad feeling is still there. What are your thoughts about such a spell, power or magic against the players. (and yes we rolled the dice fair!)

MfG

Dirk

Boring for the possessed, from certain perspective.
It is a bang, and a strong one: Demon possessed your brother. He tries to kill you. What do you do?
Doesn't sound that fun for the possessed.

Does the system allow bolstering the resistance roll with some resource?

The resistance roll may be bolstered with any applicable SAs, Drama points (if you're using that option) or spell pool, if the character is a sorcerer.

I'm thinking, dependent on the command, that those extra 5 points from "Love my brother" would definitely apply.

( wrote:

We decided to change the order of the demon into something less boring. (now the brother will take the shell of the demon and bring it to his chamber, in where he will rise again with new powers; he have to defend the shell, yes that means he will have to fight or to tactic around his brother)

But the bad feeling is still there. What are your thoughts about such a spell, power or magic against the players. (and yes we rolled the dice fair!)

Yeah, it sounds like a strong bang. But I feel it is not a real one, because that would include a choice. In here the char had never a choice but the resistance against the spell. So I am more inclined towards the bad feeling that I stressed everything a little bit too much.

None of the brothers was bad about the whole issue. It was another player who thought that possession and the like should not be aimed at a playerchar.

He could not resist with his "love for brother" SA because the spell did not say anything about his brother. The order was only given after he was already influenced. At that time he could have rolled again, but we never thought about that. He will roll again if he tries to resist if the feelings will get stronger...

My problem is not a technical one. It is the simple question if such and under what circumstances a gm may use such magic or tricks. Because this smells like deprotaginising. (Plz is there anyone who can give me the right spelling?)

MfG

Dirk

Deprotagonisation/deprotagonization --> deprotagonising/deprotagonizing

How were the stakes set in the conflict, or do you use task resolution? Setting them "If you fail, the demon will make you fight your brother, if you win..." would have done something to the issue. And would have given a reason for using drama points or such.

I say that conflict resolution is a good fix for the problem in general. Telling the players what is going to happen is the first step. Second is giving them a way of affecting it (like artha/luck/drama points/karma/hero points).

When a given player's input is very much a factor of controlling a single character, taking that control away is deprotagonising.

Most possession-style magics have a clause that gives another resistance or outright end the spell when someone is forced to act against his nature.

It's "deprotagonizing" for the simple reason that you're taking away the player's ability to make decisions. Now, that said, I'm personally of the opinion that this isn't a horrible thing in the short term. If you can maneuver things so that the player can get back in control shortly, then I think that the payoff may be worth it. The whole "mind control" issue is one that I don't agree with some folks here saying that it's always bad. So, from that perspective, I'd say it's a great way to set up a bang. Generally.

The problem in this specific case, however, is that it's TROS, and somebody is going to die in all likelihood. Which means character removal. Meaning that if the PC in question dies, that this has become completely deprotagonizing in a permenant fashion.

A simple solution is to do two things. First, force the issue in such a way that the character is going to be done being controlled in short order. There's an exorcist on the way or something to cure the character next scene. Second, tell the player of the posessed character that the spirit of the demon inadvertently protects him so that if he seems to be "killed" in a fight, that all this will do is remove the demon - the body will be instantly repaired.

In this way, you have your bang - the character doesn't know that killing his brother's body won't kill him - but the player of the possessed character is still going to be back in control very soon. Either his brother will win, and he's back in control, or his brother will lose or not fight, and the exorcist or whatever puts him back in control.

What's cool about this is that the player, once he's back in control has some important bang himself based on the outcome:
1. I killed my brother - "What do I do now? Was it in some way my fault?"
2. My brother "killed" me - "How do I feel about my brother thinking he was killing me, even in self-defense?"

Here's how I think of mind-control: if the character has no chance of escaping, it's the same as if he'd been killed. This is TROS, and players lose characters. Sorcerers can do it with great ease. I presume there was some bang involved in the players going up against the demon (if not, then there's your error right there)? So the question that was asked was answered at that point, and the theme created involves character death, essentially. No different than a player deciding to go into a fight with a troll and getting killed. Just a slightly different special effect to the nature of the character death.

Mike

Thank you all.

We use Drama but for just two things: 1. to change something in the world, situation, char, nsc or the like
                                                        2. if you receive a deadly wound, than you can spend all your drama to not get killed in                                                             
                                                            that moment, your woundlevel is 3 but you are unconscious.
That means we removed a little bit of the deadliness.

The bang is that there is the demon and he will try to separate the brothers, because together they are too strong. My thinking is that they love each other but can this love get in their way? If they love each other with passion will they fight each other with that same passion or will they not fight and die together, because if they wont the daemon will have a simple game.
Now, I don't think that with the mind-control I am on the right side to accomplish this. Can anybody help me? I am just a little uncreative with this situation. How can I get it another way?

We use conflict resolution with the skill-rules from the "Companion", everytime somebody rolls I roll for the difficulty against him, so we have a judgement for the resolution. It feels a little bit awkward because the skills-system of TRoS is pure task.

Yes I have forgotten the stakes. That is my fault and I will correct it.

Mike, you just brought some nice ideas in here and you are dead right with your opinion about mind-control

Thank you so far.

Dirk,

I think the big problem you're running into is that sorcery in Riddle is HUGE.  Having a bad guy with sorcery and good guys without basically means your good guys are screwed, unless the encounters are very tightly controlled. 

If they are combat types, then the area they can influence ends at the tip of their sword.  So hitting them with magic and not letting them get near the demon isn't necessarily deprotagonizing, but it is definately stacking the deck.  All the cards are in your hand right now...

Riddle is fairly explicit up front about flaws being pretty darn bad, and life being short and deadly, so I don't think that the demon situation is, in and of itself, deprotagonizing - after all, they did choose it, right?  But you need to make sure the situation gives everyone a crack.  You wouldn't put the characters at the bottom of a pit with archers at top without having some back door or way out, would you?

Hope that helps,

James

My suggestion is to let the player of the possessed character keeping playing the PC while he's being possessed.  It may sound weird, but we've had situations like that come up in our games and it was a blast for everyone, and no one felt deprotagonized at all.  Most of the people I've gamed with love the chance to muck things up--it just makes the story more interesting.  It also sets up a cool dichotomy of what the Character wants vs. what the Player wants.

Nick

We have a Sorc and I will give him the idea to get to the scene because he feels something or so. That means, we will have a "Curer" on the way. Thanks Mike, for the tip.

@ironick: of course he can play his char. I never would play the char for myself!

I think I have some other ideas now and I will see to what the original situation will bring us.

MfG

Dirk

( wrote:
@ironick: of course he can play his char. I never would play the char for myself!