thread: 2010-06-14 : A Bit of Hardcore
On 2010-06-25, Mauro wrote:
Rafael:
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
Let's take an actual play: I was playing Dogs in the Vineyard and my character died trying to stop a lynching (he'd have died outright only by rolling at least two 10s on three d10; indeed...).
Now, my character was willing to die, but'd have preferred not to; while I, as a players, preferred him to die because I choose to be in that situation, to take that risk; I didn't prefer the master saving him, so there was a difference between what the character'd have said, asing to be saved, and what I as a player wanted.
This is what I was thinking about, and I'm wondering if the needing of communicate this difference could in your idea ruin immersion.
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's defined also in narrative effects: "the Approach fails" has an heavy impact on the story (remember that Minions think of themselves as monster, but wants to be loved: "fails" means they are treated as monster, and not as the humans they are).
In addition, I failed to stress a thing: the rules say that NPCs reaction to a fail has to... humble? (I'm not sure about the exact wording) the minion. "Failing" doesn't mean "A cart passes nearby and she doesn't see you", "failing" does mean "Someone made it fails by humbling you and beating on your convinction to be a monster".
"Fail" is surely broad, but given an Approach I think the players'd be able to understand what a meaningful failure is.
So, in the flower example I will definitely roll, because the roll doesn't say whether her accepts the flower or not, but whether the Approach itself is successful or not; maybe she's willing to accept the flower, but her father shows up and cart her away insulting you. Has the Approach been a success? I'd say no.
Maybe accepting the flower is the only plausibile outcome from the girl, but there is a whole village outside, most of which thinks the Minions are monsters; any approach could fail thanks to them.
