I can't have been clear, I wasn't talking about alternative branches but separate stories. Taking a well known example - The Lord of the Rings. That is primarily the story of Frodo and his journey. But there are also the stories of Aragorn, Gandalf, Merry, etc. Tolkien chose to make Frodo the primary story so the others are rather fragmented. Indeed Aragorn's courtship of Arwen is just part of one of the appendicies. To that character it is crucial to their story but peripheral to the others. I understand the film made more of that part of his story than the book does.
In a RPG with a group of characters there are multiple stories even if some stories are shared by all. I know there's a problem in a typical RPG session with concentrating on one character but to say they haven't got a story because it doesn't involve the whole party seems wrong.
>Before you resolve a conflict, you usually can often see a
>couple of directions that the story could branch in. If, by
>looking at the possible branches, you can see that one of them
>leads to a dull or disappointing null result, you should take
>measures to avoid that. Costly Successes are one way to
>do this. Automatic Successes are another. Which tool
>you choose to use depends on your assessment of the
>context.
>
>> Costly Success would appear to be the answer if initiation is
>> necessary for a story to progress but I'm not sure why that
>> would be the case.
>
>There might absolutely be sessions in which failure at initiation
>would lead to further plot obstacles that are as rich and enjoyable
>as success. In that case, I'd use one of the standard resolution
>methods.
I can see at least as much interest in failure as in success. The immediate decision is does the character try again or not? If they try again how are they going to improve the chances so they succeed. If not how do they achieve their objectives by other means? Another cult?
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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