thread: 2011-05-11 : The Un-frickin-welcome
On 2011-05-11, Ben Lehman wrote:
Can I talk a bit about welcome and unwelcome?
The most recent time I played Bliss Stage, I was playing a guy for whom marriage was really important so that, even at 15, he knew he wanted to get married before he passed (which, in the setting, happens around 18-20) and that he wasn't going to have sex before marriage. These beliefs put him in stark contrast with the rest of the group.
(Since sex is a mechanical thing in the game, this is pretty important.)
There was a whole build-up between him and this other girl, who was kinda ditzy but very kind to him. We had a scene where he was picking through the rubble of a jewelry store looking for a ring, etc.
And then, due to some bad dice luck and poor strategy, she died.
So our whole story about marriage vs. non-marriage, what's it like to get married at 15, etc just completely derailed. It sucked. It felt like the wind was taken completely out of our sails, and I really flailed around as a player, trying to figure out what to do with the character. The character really flailed around too, trying to figure out what was best for him?
Would I have fudged it? Not in a million years. It's important that that sort of thing can happen because it makes it all the more rewarding when it doesn't.
yrs—
—Ben
