thread: 2005-11-10 : Open House: Ask a Frequent Question...
On 2005-11-22, Vincent wrote:
Collin: What do you think about systems that allow the stakes in a conflict to be one of the characters emotions or behavior? On one hand, they seem to interfere with the ability of the manipulated character's player to address premise, on the other hand, they might be useful for addressing issues such as manipulation, trust, betrayal, or love.
...I run a lot of games, and play in a few, and I find understanding this design theory helps me do both better. Furthermore, I frequently tweak existing systems or design simple systems from scratch when I run games...
It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that, in your experience, staking the character's emotions or behavior in a conflict messes with the player's ability to address premise. That's ...mmm... broadly consistent with my experience too.
But it's clearly not an in-principle thing, it's clearly just a matter of how games are generally structured.
For instance, in almost every Primetime Adventures session I've ever played, there's at least one conflict like "what's at stake is, does my character throw him out of the house or let him stay?" This would be a terrible disaster in lots of games, but in PTA it works just fine.
My overall practical advice would be: use emotional manipulation mechanics only when they're exactly what your design requires.
This makes Chris go "Setting Stakes helps"
Initial buy-in is what avoids deprotagonization with those kinds of mechanics.
