thread: 2005-03-23 : Strong Stuff Indeed
On 2005-03-26, John Kim wrote:
Andrew Norris wrote: Relationship dice can be incorporated into a conflict whenever they're relevant, whether or not the person is present. (I don't think they even have to be alive.)
So in most games, if I'm consoling a grieving widow, and I tell her "You know, my brother died when I was a child, if you want to talk about it, I think I can relate," that's meaningful, but it's just color—it's up to the people at the table to decide how that's relevant. In Dogs, it was a Raise using the relationship. It was using stuff on your character sheet.
I find this very strange. To me, the GOAL is what you call "just color". That's the meaning of the game. The meaning is always determined by the people at the table, never by the rules. Yes, the rules can attach labels to parts of the narrative. If those helps generate meaningful events, then great—but the labels on the character sheet aren't the meaning. The meaning is what the real people at the table actually feel. Real people can and do feel things even if there is no character sheet.
To me, the mechanics are a means to that end. The stuff on the character sheet is there to help generate that "just color". I haven't played Dogs yet, but I'll buy that a short list of Dogs-style traits helps create color in the game.
On the other hand, I know that other methods work, too. I spent a lot of time on the character sheets in my Vinland game, and I think they worked pretty well. They were not a summary of issues, they were part of the grounding—part of what made the events feel real and immediate to the players. Very deliberately, everything on the main character sheet was physical, practical, or prosaic. This most certainly helped support the themes of the game.
- John
P.S. Rules quibble: I don't follow your example. In order to raise using a relationship with a person, you need to have rolled relationship dice. That requires one of (a) the person is your character's opponent; (b) the person is what's at stake; or (c) the person comes to your character's active aid in a conflict.
