thread: 2012-06-12 : Color and Currency!
On 2012-06-19, Tim Ralphs wrote:
Vincent, you're with me and I follow what you're saying. (Also, it's becoming clear that there's a sliding scale involved. Some subsytems make your currency more or less reliable than others.) And to answer your rhetoric, of course the move is less fun. Less risky, less likely to snowball, less useful for highlighting differences between playbook strengths etc.
Thanks for waiting, it's been a long weekend. I had a bit of a realisation on Friday. Firstly, I think the Czege principle stuff I was flailing for at 6. is probably about whether a subsystem should call for a player to judge their own fiction. The "Spend a point of Tactics, describe the situation that gives you an edge, get +2" should have a moment of judgement in it, implicitly. If the subsystem fails, I suspect it's because it calls on a player to judge their own fiction in response to them wanting a bonus.
To clarify, the problem that I see you talking about is not that the player spending Tactics points can't judge their own fiction critically or well. (Though that is a risk.) The problem is that if they jump ahead, if they go straight to giving themselves the bonus without describing the situation, then there's nothing in the subsystem that's going to stop them.
Secondly, and sort of conversely, I think the strength of the "Read a Situation, act on the answer for +1" subsystem is that it contains (at least) two moments of judgement. When asked the questions, the MC has to judge the fiction in giving the answer. When coming up with their next action, the Player has to judge the fiction to see if there's a way to get that +1. That sharing of the task of creation and judgement is powerful, and there's no way to skip any step in the process.
Does that make sense? I can't even remember whose job it is to actually award that +1. I don't think it's ever been contentious. By that point in the flow, things have always been obvious.
Incidentally, have you ever had that situation in Dogs which goes:
- Oh crap. Alright, I'm rolling for my "Beautiful singing voice." Oh, a 2. Damn, I need more dice. *scans sheet for traits that have not yet been used.* And I'm rolling for high quality Book of Life. 2 and 3? Bah! And "I'm a Dog". 4. And "Haunted by the dead." 6! I raise a 4 and a 6.
- 10? So what actually is your raise?
- I can hear the voices of those innocent children begging me not to let her get away with this. And I hold up my Book of Life and tell her to stop in the name of the King.
- Yeah. Erm. Your raise is meant to bring in all the traits you rolled.
Followed by either moments of awkwardness, uncertain raises, challenges with lots of bitty parts to them etc.
It's never been a big deal, but it's happened a couple of times and I suspect it's something to do with the moment of judgement taking place after the relevant currency transaction has happened.
