thread: 2006-01-17 : More Character Co-ownership
On 2006-01-17, Levi Kornelsen wrote:
Here's how it *feels*, to me.
In the Dogs example, I feel like Ben is requiring Ann to *focus*, in the long-term. But not telling her how to focus. That's easy for me to accept, comparatively; players look for focus on specific things from each other all the time with their characters, and this simmply feels like a way of enabling that to a greater degree.
In the pirate example, however, I feel like Ben might be *revising* Ann's character. Ann may have this whole matrix of stuff in her head that can lead all over the map, to an infinite number of characters - but none of them can necessarily easily include this specific thing. Ann can generate as many oranges as you like, all of them different - Ben's telling her that she's an apple, and Ann might be unable to go with that; it just doesn't anchor to anything in that mess of stuff in her head.
But that's all just feeling.
This makes VAX go "Yeah, addition is different from change"
Having someone ADD something to my character feels different than someone changing something about my character that I had already decided (or would decide) otherwise.
That's why I made the "I Am Your Father" rule activate only when an NPC first hits play; after that, characters are already likely treating him as someone newly met, and having a blood relationship suddenly show up could concievably snap someone's suspenders.
That being said, in the right group the rule could concievably be expanded to cover any scene in which a blood relationship which was previously unknown could become known.
