thread: 2011-05-11 : The Un-frickin-welcome
On 2011-05-02, David Berg wrote:
Oh, yeah, I think my confusion about "overcoming" is related to my confusion about "unwelcome". I'm not sure what you mean by either term.
Maybe we could nail this with an example?
Apocalypse World. Matt MCing for me, Abel, and others. Abel's Driver leaves his car to go hit up some NPC for work, while NPC Jack minds the car. Abel rolls (can't remember what... Manipulate?), gets under a 7. Matt says, "While you're spending time haggling, Jack steals your car."
"What the fuck?!" I thought. "Without that car, Abel can't do all his character's cool stuff! Wouldn't this Driver be used to keeping it secure from half-trusted folks like Jack? He's not a moron, right?" So, that was unwelcome to me. Matt thought it was great (so, no group unity being overcome here).
I then looked at the MC moves, and saw "take their stuff away" on the list. And then we played through Abel's Driver's quest to get his car back, which was fun. At some point, I went, "Oh! As a player, doing any action that counts as a move, and then picking up the dice, invokes a social contract whereby the MC can fuck with me on a low roll. And the MC having the freedom to fuck with characters in such varied and dramatic ways is a big part of the game." So, from then on, every time Matt fucked with us in interesting ways, I welcomed it.
If all you're talking about by "overcoming group's best interests" is my initial "What the fuck?!" reaction (plus the group unity that Dave shouldn't be sitting there going "What the fuck?!"), then I'm with you, given the caveat that a game should eventually turn "What the fuck?!" to "Oh!"
P.S. I can re-post this if you'd rather stick it in another thread.
