thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-18, Mauro wrote:
Rafael:
If the players slam the door shut, they are only lightly injured (roll dice for details). If they decide to go out anyway, ask who goes first. If no one wants to go first, you're done; otherwise that character is severely but not permanently wounded (roll dice for details) as soon as he steps outside
But these are mechanical impact of player decision, aren't they? If I shut the door, I'll roll less dice (or smaller dice) than if I go on, and the resulting difference in how much I'm wounded could impact heavily on the story.
I've not clear what do you mean exactly by saying that you prefer player's choises to have non-mechanical impact on the story; do you mean that the mechanic should impact after the choise, and not the choise itself?
If you think that, having chosen to take the risk, the only satisfying result would be having him save the NPC, roll a lot of dice and let the rescue succeed regardless of what they say
What if the player thinks that another outcome'd be more interesting? Some time ago I was discussing with a friend of mine, and while in a game he'd have preferred his character to die (because he chose to risk his life to save another character, and he was willing to die for that), the master made him survive thinking it was the only satisfying result.
it seems to me that task resolution only results in "look at the cool thing we did" if (a) success or failure are both interesting or (b) you always succeed; otherwise, dice failure can result in narrative failure that is hard to work around
Do you know Play Passionately, by Jesse Burnenko (who replied above)? If not, I suggest you to read it, especially, with regard to the quote above, Play Passionateli #5: You Can't Ruin The Story.
