thread: 2009-07-27 : Resolving Player Conflicts by Reconciling Their Interests
On 2009-07-28, Bwian wrote:
'If you strike me down, Darth, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine'.
Very clever idea for solving one of the common difficulties in RPGs! The examples are quite helpful, as (I am slightly embarrassed to admit) I have played neither game.
I gather the victim's player gets to hold onto that fallout (or those dice) and use them as a resource later on?
Clever that the players have to describe what their characters are trying to do to each other in order to determine the kind of fall out dice applicable. Forces them to at least narrate.
What prevents the players arbitrarily having their characters abuse each other in order to collect a pile of fall out for use against third parties? (a la Risk territory swap). Or is this not a problem from your perspective? Maybe it is part of the game?
At one level what it seems to do is to provide a rule that makes inter-player conflicts part of the game. i.e. the possibility of this type of interpersonal competition is recognised and harnessed.
This is something that your standard RPG doesn't tend to do. While the rule-books often discuss some of the common conflicts over fiction that can arise between players (typically between players and GM), the method of dealing with them is effectively outside the game rules. In other words, the standard RPG is assumed to be essentially cooperative (at least between players and GM); if players (or GM) are not cooperating, then this is dealt with out of play.
Cheers
Bwian
