thread: 2006-10-02 : Conflict resolution sans stakes
On 2006-10-02, Vincent wrote:
Character death is a black pit! All discussions of it suck. So okay, fine, you have discomfort with diced character death that isn't discomfort with not knowing upfront whether your character's going to win. Okay! I concede.
Let's talk about not knowing whether your character's going to succeed instead please.
We played Dogs in the Vineyard. Sister May, my character, had a shining vision of the future, and God told her what she needed to do to achieve it. The first step was to rally the townspeople behind her; each step would build momentum, so that when it came time to finally overthrow the U.S. she'd be poised and able.
And she couldn't achieve that first step. The stupid-ass townspeople fell to squabbling, they punched each other, and she lost. She lost them, she lost herself, she let God down, because the dice didn't back her up.
It was AWESOME. I learned something about people from it. The dice didn't deprotagonize her, they made her lose.
