I can only speak for myself here, not anyone else in the Seattle Farmers group. I haven't narrated enough to really answer the narrator questions definitively, even for myself.
> - was failing contests ever a fun option?
> - do you think the risk-aversion upon which you comment arose out of
losses
> being less fun for players than they might have been (including
character
> death)?
In my opinion: Face-to-face sessions are more interesting if everyone is engaged and there's some suspense. I think the behavior I was calling "risk averse" is a natural side effect: The narrator has set up a suspenseful situation where what happens is difficult to predict and of serious import, and I am engaged and care about what happens to the character. If there's an obvious way to help the character succeed (e.g. by choosing an extended contest over a simple one), why not take it?
> - did you (if you narrated or played, doesn't matter) find finding
fun ways
> to narrate defeats difficult (I do) if you tried?
I've seen it happen, but it looks difficult, and I hope my players aren't always expecting it when I'm narrating. I don't expect the muse to always come upon me at the right time.
By the way: Both my player characters in the Seattle Farmers games were killed, one by the scenario and the narrator (he was with an NPC who the scenario book said was killed with his whole following), and one by me and the narrator (because we figured out a way for him to die that seemed cool).
If either one had been killed in an event important enough to narrate as a long extended contest, it could have still been OK. Getting killed by some secondary event (simple contest) or a couple of bad rolls in an extended one doesn't sound as fun. So I lean toward the "risk-averse" end of things.
Powered by hypermail