My game uses 'plays' in conflict situations, which is: to do something, the player must describe the characters intended actions as "what, how and why".  i.e.  "Jack is going to knock him over, using a takedown in order to gain an advantage"  or  "Jack targets his body with a double handed, overhead axe swing"  (implied 'why' is to inflict damage)

One of the aims of 'plays' is that the fictional situation changes with each character intent - thats why "how and why" are important, so that people are concentrating on the situation and not just the mechanics -- without the action changing the fictional situation, it just becomes a nebulous battle of attrition watching numbers go down until someone 'wins'.  To that end, plays are working as intended.

However.

The game also has the concept of risking 'body'  and/or 'soul'  in a conflict to overachieve.  This gives a bonus chance to the chance of success of a play, or to the successful effect - more damage or greater advantage gained.  If they succeed with their action, they dont lose the resources they risked, but if they draw or fail, they lose those resources.

This risk is supposed to be described by the player as the character performing something physically risky, or in some way applying extra effort / focus to the task - becoming more desperate in other words.  But that isnt happening during play.  In the heat of the moment, both player and GM are forgetting that invoking the risk mechanic is supposed to result in a change in the fictional situation of the invoking character, and its coming out as a bland, nebulous "I risk a point of Body"  or  "Im throwing two points of soul"   

Now the question
I need some sort of rule or mechanic that makes sure that the change in the fictional situation happens when resources are risked, but in an encouraging way that makes the player want to remember it, rather than a punitive way that forces the GM to have to remember to 'enforce it'.

Any ideas?

Your descriptions of "risk for bonus" leave me wanting more info:
1) "more desperate" -- What fictional actions emerge from that?
2) "physically risky" -- This seems like a fine example, but I assume you'll need others for situations where that wouldn't apply.
3) "extra effort/focus" -- This assumes that they weren't already trying as hard as they could.  Unless there's some reason why that would be so, I'd encourage you to ditch this line of thinking entirely.

If you share some good examples of "what happens in the fiction when someone risks a point of body/soul" covering a range of situations, I'm sure I could come up with some ideas for the rules you want.

First idea: when choosing to risk, you do lose a point; narrate what/how/why.  Then, if your action succeeds, you narrate how the success restores you, giving you the point back.  This may be a good idea or a terrible one depending on how you envision Body and Soul in the fiction.

Body is essentially hitpoints.  Soul is a vague mix of willpower and confidence.

They define how tough it is to knock a character out of the contest.  when Body is reduced to less than 1, the character is not physically able to go on.  when Soul is reduced, the character doesnt want to go on.  They are physically or mentally defeated.

You can risk Body in physical contests.  Using combat metaphors, the normal stance divides attention between offence and defence.  When you risk Body you are simply playing  more offensively at the risk of increased negative consequences if it doesnt come off.

examples play out in my head like "I wind up and really let him have it!"  or "I charge straight in!"

Likewise you can risk Soul in any type of contest.  This  represents pinning your hopes on a desperate action, redoubling your efforts, finding that little bit extra, giving 110%, etc...  In movies and fiction, the hero can always try harder in climactic dramatic situations.  Usually in slow motion with a rise in volume of the dramatic music paying in the background, you know?

David wrote:
Your descriptions of "risk for bonus" leave me wanting more info:
1) "more desperate" -- What fictional actions emerge from that?
2) "physically risky" -- This seems like a fine example, but I assume you'll need others for situations where that wouldn't apply.
3) "extra effort/focus" -- This assumes that they weren't already trying as hard as they could.  Unless there's some reason why that would be so, I'd encourage you to ditch this line of thinking entirely.

If you share some good examples of "what happens in the fiction when someone risks a point of body/soul" covering a range of situations, I'm sure I could come up with some ideas for the rules you want.

First idea: when choosing to risk, you do lose a point; narrate what/how/why.  Then, if your action succeeds, you narrate how the success restores you, giving you the point back.  This may be a good idea or a terrible one depending on how you envision Body and Soul in the fiction.

Thats just given me an idea, Dave.  Obviously with physical situations, you can describe the observable effect of risking body, thats relatively easy.

But you cant easily observe the change in situation of risking soul - which is why it goes into slo-mo and the music rises!

Fortunately we are playing an RPG so the player can describe the change of situation inside the characters head, without resorting to such b-grade film tactics.

So yeah, thats helpful, but its still advice of the hand wavy form "It would be nice when you do that sort of thing if you could say this sort of thing"

David wrote:
First idea: when choosing to risk, you do lose a point; narrate what/how/why.  Then, if your action succeeds, you narrate how the success restores you, giving you the point back.  This may be a good idea or a terrible one depending on how you envision Body and Soul in the fiction.

How frequently do you envision these conflicts being played out? And how varied should they be?

I ask because, a while back, when playing a hack and slash RPG, my group had this weird urge to narrate every action in rich detail. This sounds like a good idea - for a while. But we were playing a hack and slash so, all we were narrating was 50 iterations of "I try to strike." Pretty soon, we had nothing in the tank, and the purpler prose was quietly forgotten, replaced with pretty raw dice rolling. Then, inevitably, when we get back to the village, and there's a chance for 'proper roleplaying' everyone is bored of all that storytelling crap, and the scenes fall flat.

That's happened a few times to me, over the years.

That's not what I think will happen with your game, but I do think it could be a risk. So just as a ballpark figure, how long should these conflicted scenes last? And at what point do you think people are going to start running out of narrative juice, particularly if the mechanical aspects are more or less static?

Oh, and one last question, how much control do players have of the game world? I'm not using the correct Forge lingo for this, but what I mean is - do players just control player characters? Or do they also control certain aspects of the scene as a whole? Can they narrate that a bus load of sexy college girls happens to drive past, and if they mess this up, they'll lose a lot of Soul? It seems like, if the players are able to narrate more than just their own character's actions, they'll be able to produce more varied Body/Soul instances.

Hmm. Maybe the additional requirement of players narrating what they're risking is a creative problem for the players. Is the narrating of the additional risk creatively inspiring? Or is it just additional complexity and work?

What I might do is have some thresholds on those Body and Soul points:

If you're down more than one Soul point, you have to get another character to do something for you that's really your responsibility.
If you'd down to just one Soul point, you won't take action on your own behalf until someone else gets angry and argues some sense into you.

If you're down more than one Body point, you act after the opposition in your next physical conflict.
If you're down to just one Body point, you don't act at all in your next physical conflict until you've been harmed by the opposition.

Something like that.

Paul

happysmellyfish wrote:
How frequently do you envision these conflicts being played out? And how varied should they be?

I ask because, a while back, when playing a hack and slash RPG, my group had this weird urge to narrate every action in rich detail. This sounds like a good idea - for a while. But we were playing a hack and slash so, all we were narrating was 50 iterations of "I try to strike." Pretty soon, we had nothing in the tank, and the purpler prose was quietly forgotten, replaced with pretty raw dice rolling. Then, inevitably, when we get back to the village, and there's a chance for 'proper roleplaying' everyone is bored of all that storytelling crap, and the scenes fall flat.

That's happened a few times to me, over the years.

That's not what I think will happen with your game, but I do think it could be a risk. So just as a ballpark figure, how long should these conflicted scenes last? And at what point do you think people are going to start running out of narrative juice, particularly if the mechanical aspects are more or less static?

Oh, and one last question, how much control do players have of the game world? I'm not using the correct Forge lingo for this, but what I mean is - do players just control player characters? Or do they also control certain aspects of the scene as a whole? Can they narrate that a bus load of sexy college girls happens to drive past, and if they mess this up, they'll lose a lot of Soul? It seems like, if the players are able to narrate more than just their own character's actions, they'll be able to produce more varied Body/Soul instances.

Paul wrote:
Hmm. Maybe the additional requirement of players narrating what they're risking is a creative problem for the players. Is the narrating of the additional risk creatively inspiring? Or is it just additional complexity and work? 

What I might do is have some thresholds on those Body and Soul points:

If you're down more than one Soul point, you have to get another character to do something for you that's really your responsibility.
If you'd down to just one Soul point, you won't take action on your own behalf until someone else gets angry and argues some sense into you.

If you're down more than one Body point, you act after the opposition in your next physical conflict.
If you're down to just one Body point, you don't act at all in your next physical conflict until you've been harmed by the opposition.

Something like that.

Paul