thread: 2006-07-27 : 10 Observations from my Berlin trip
On 2006-07-31, Seth Ben-Ezra wrote:
Add on top of that, disclosing your spy's trespass. It seems superficially like a nothing, a gesture, but it's not. As an action, it reverberates through the game, both emotionally and procedurally. It was when I figured disclosing out - days later - that the game really lit up for me.
This is probably the biggest part of the game for me. I look at the Trespass as being this special bomb handed to each of the players of principals. You can only use it once, but it packs a serious punch—if you want it to. On the Spione forum, I related this account:
So, Kasha (our principal) is an American spying for the HVA. She was actually born in Poland, but her parents fled with her to the U.S. sometime during World War II. Her parents are rah-rah Americans but she is not. (Obviously, because she is spying for the other side.) However, she manages to recruit her co-worker to help her in an operation by claiming that she is actually American counter-intelligence and appealing to her co-worker's patriotic nature.
Later, though, Kasha Disclosed that, when she was younger, she had burned an American flag that belonged to her parents. In fact, this flag had particular emotional value to her parents, but she destroyed it. In a lot of ways, this is the point where everything fell apart for Kasha. She was arrested, her co-worker Karen was gunned down on the street.... Bad things.
Now, the significant fact here is that the Trespass as written only said, "Threw away your stuff and never told you." That's it. Now, it's a bad thing. I suppose. But, by itself, it doesn't really seem like it's all that impressive. However, by taking this as inspiration for the principal's Dirty Deed and molding it into something else, the Trespass actually became a fairly potent spike to the story content.
This showed me that any Trespass could be potentially powerful. At the same time, it does seem as though Trespass and Disclosure can require some of that same ability to make connections that Vincent talks about upthread.
I also appreciate how Disclosure is required in order to allow for "happy endings" for Supporting Cast. If the principal refuses to Disclose, then all his Supporting Cast are doomed to unhappy endings. Only by baring the depths of his soul (even once) can the principal actually "save" any of his Supporting Cast.
