Free choice

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 97 00:07 MET


Peter Metcalfe about Androcles in Digest 04 079

Dave Cake (I think):
>>No free choice = no fun.

>So you've never played Call of Cthulhu? "I don't *want* to
>drool and gibber insanely _just_ because I've seen Azathoth
>for the second time running" So you don't allow the use
>of emotion-affecting spells? "But I don't *want head over
>heels in love with the Evil Seductress, She'll turn me into
>a Pig!"

It is one thing to be subjected to limitations in your free choice for the duration of a spell, but it is a totally different case if the rules don't allow you any. How this can be applied in the heroquest genre, which (according to most sources) is about the free will of the human quester in the environment of pre-defined solutions of myth, escapes me.

Quests are more about free-willed choices than they are about fighting obstacles. The latter usually only occur as result of the former...

(Rather than the current Pendragon trait mechanic, which produces binary solutions, I'd prefer a set of rules which gives three options: obeisance to one side of the trait pair - free-willed choice - obeisance to the other side of the trait pair.)

If a quester still insists on acting against this outcome, it should weaken his/her substance.


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