thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-24, Rafael wrote:
Mauro: it's possible that the character was willing to die for something, but the player would definitely prefer his character to survive.
Sure; that's what I meant by "semi-explicit (maybe the character is lying)". I could have added "lying, self-deluding, or the character and the player disagree". As a rule the people in my group tend to want for their character what their character would want for himself, but there are certainly exceptions.
doesn't what you say still costs some immersion? If the players is willing to accept the death of his character and wants to communicate this to the master in play, he has to consciously decide this; and to think "I'm willing to let my character die, I had to communicate this" is outside the immersion, isn't it?
To the extent that the player is immersed, he isn't making a player-level decision to accept the death, but a character-level one, or rather identifying the two levels. And he isn't going out of his way to communicate the decision to the GM; the point of my examples is that the most immersive communication is (a) in character and (b) to other characters. If (a) or (b) weakens, so does immersion, giving rise to various levels of metaplay, as I described above.
the roll only decides whether the Approach is successful or not, not why it is; you fail the roll (mechanic), the story must go on with a failed Approach (narrative content).
But the definition of "failed" seems like it could get so broad as to be meaningless. This wouldn't be a problem for systems in which the player sets the stakes, of course, but it seems like it could be in MLwM, since "failed" is defined purely in terms of mechanical attribute changes.
It would divorce the story from the mechanical structure if it wasn't that way: let's say you approach the girl and win the first roll; the girl accepts you.
Next, you speak with her and win the roll: the girl listens to you and comforts you.
Next, you try to kiss her and win the roll: you kiss her.
Next, you give her a flower, but you fail the roll; suddenly the girl dislikes you?
This is a pretty contrived example. In practice, you would only roll for things that could plausibly go wrong; if you think that her accepting the flower is the only plausible outcome, you wouldn't roll. If you don't, you'd roll and have a plausible explanation for failure ready (e.g. she hates flowers and is insulted that you didn't know that—ok, not very plausible, but neither is the scenario).
if Superman has to break in a jail, obviously he meets guards, but assuming they're normal humans nobody thinks they'll stop him, and he beats them in a couple of frames.
I had in mind a fight like that: sometimes it happens, and it'd be simply narrated how the PCs win, if no one is interested in rolling dice.
Ok. If there's really no risk (Superman vs. normal humans), we wouldn't roll, just as you say.
