thread: 2005-03-18 : Audience?
On 2005-03-22, Jonas Karlsson wrote:
Ninja Hunter J wrote:
Why don't you want to use such a mechanic?
I will try to keep this as general as I can and try not to steer the thread to much towards discussing my game, but I'll have to explain the basics. I don't intend to pimp my game, I just want to use it as an example.
The premise of the game is the question of how much the characters are willing to sacrifice for each other during a tough situation. The friends they have are only a backdrop, not something very central to the game. Each of the two characters has three attributes each: Health, Sanity and Friends. They also share one attribute, which is Love. Each turn one of the three attributes gets challenged, with some dice rolling. Afterwards the character can send as many dice as they lower their attributes, up to the score they have in Love, to the other character. There's no way to modify the amount of dice rolled in the challenge except by sending sacrifice dice to the character.
If I empower the audience mechanically by giving them a way to modify the challenge it has to be something which has something to do with sacrifices. The point for the players is not to overcome each challenge, but to try overcoming the ones they feel will produce the story they want to tell of their two characters.
I want the sacrifices to be very central when modifying the challenges. I really liked that in the Mountain Witch, that there were only one way to get a modifier and that was by playing the game as intended. You cannot get it through good roleplaying or clever tactics, only by trusting the others.
So if I empower the audience to give them some way to modify the challenges I feel like I'm de-powering the player. It's like I take away their control over the story they want to tell of their characters. It shouldn't be about trust, like the Mountain Witch, it should be about the connection between the player's own two characters.
So I want to engage the audience to really listen to what is happening and to be interested in the fates of the other characters, but not give them the option of modifying dice rolls. I can't really think of a way to do that, which is frustrating to say the least. Perhaps I'm wrong and there's a way I've overlooked.
Oh, and don't get me wrong, I like the Mountain Witch. I actually got the idea of not giving the players any other option than the ones that address theme when modifying dice rolls. I really like that.
