thread: 2006-01-10 : Pulling Coplayers In
On 2006-01-11, Brand Robins wrote:
Seth (and Tony, I guess)
I'm a little devided on the issue. A lot of stuff has gone on in the comments on Mo's blog, but the thing Vincent orriginally said was: "So that it's not that I get to reach in and fiddle with your character, but that you open up pieces of your character that just demand that I fiddle with them?"
Both Tenra Bansho and Inspectres (shame—I have never played Inspectres) sound like they do something close to this, but mildly reversed. In both cases you reach in and fiddle with my character, then I decide if I use the thing you fiddled with or not. This (to me) speaks of a Push with a soft place to land—or a Push then Pull.
Vincent, otoh, seems to be asking about a Pull first. It isn't that I get to go "Gotcha! You love the princess!" It's that I set up a character who so obviously loves the princess in order to get you to fiddle with that love. The idea comes from me, and is given force by you, or by you using the system. This, rather than the idea coming from you and being given force by the system, you, or a bribe after the fact has already been established.
So, rather than me spending points to say you love the princess, I start off by saying I love the princess. I also say (whether outloud or through system flags) that I open up my love for the princess, and then Tony comes in, dying to screw with it, and says, "Sure, but you hate her too."
At that point you'd need a system that rewards Tony for making screwing with things I've pulled him to screw with.
Then, once again, we have the subtly different way Xenopulse was doing it: in which Tony decides he wants me to love the princess, but rather than forcing it at me (even if it is a forceful bribe and not actually a full force), bribes me with escalting rewards to do what he wants. "You love the princess huh? Well here are 5 drama points that say you hate her too." At that point I decide whether or not I want to take them.
And I suppose there is the fourth axis of this "who says what and who gets to respond how" diagram as well. So far we've got "He suggests, system bribes me" (xenopulse), "He forces, system bribes me to play along" (Tony), and "I suggest, system bribes him to play along" (what I thought Vincent might be asking after). That leaves us with "he forces, system forces me to go along" that we get in many tad GM-centric RPGs.
The love-hate thing can happen in any of the above ways, the question is who started it and what the power dynamics around establishing it were like.
