>From: "Sam Elliot" <sam.elliot1_at_...>
>Fail to cross over to the hero plane, fail to get devotee status you've
>been angling at for the last year of play etc. What about that?
Examples are hard to give for this sort of thing. I mean from the example I gave, it probably seems pretty exciting just because of the magnitude of the problem that I created for the hero. But what's really important is the context that the contest occurs within. Sans giving you the whole background of the game, you can't know that in the Arkozaan example, that the character was all about climbing and ambition, and actually honorably serving his country. That in messing up the "gift" the way that he did, that he was actually exposed to potential problems with his family, with the organizations to which he belonged (and specific members therin), his girlfriend, and others. Or any of the multitude of other stuff that framed that particular event.
So rather than just give more examples, I'll give the principle. Which is actually encoded in the MRB as "yes, but" and other similar good advice. That is, failure should always mean more conflict. The worst thing a narrator can do, is simply to say, "you fail" and give no other repercussions. Because if you do, especially in HQ where you can't try it again, the game stops dead. The player who had this plan as his rout of advance suddenly now has nowhere to go. If the angle upon which the plot was proceeding is shut down, you must instantly open up another. Just asking, "OK, so what do you do now?" is a game killer in many cases.
Instead, if a character has been planning to cross to the other side with a big ritual, and fails his attempt to do so, find something valuable to that character (more importantly, that the player really cares about), and threaten it with the results of the failure. Let's say that he's part of a cult that was supporting him in the endeavor. When he fails, have a particularly surly member of the cult call for the character's expulsion. Now the player has a whole new set of problems to set his character toward resolving. The more things you can threaten at once, the better, because that gives both you and the player more choices on where to go from there. Maybe the backlash from the opening caused a crop to burn, and the whole village now faces starvation. Now you've got conflicts with family (trying to keep them on your side), with religious leaders who will take sides based on what they believe, and the general populace, not to mention possibly trying to make up for the loss of property somehow. Making tons of avenues to go along for the player, and even more places for the narrator to make new conflicts.
The corollary to "yes, but" is "no, and." That is, never just say no, say "no, and your girlfriend doesn't seem to want to talk to you anymore since you failed the Destor initiation." Always know what the player is interested in with regards to their characters (start with the highest abilities on the character sheet), and then when failure occurs make conflict revolving around those things. This is, generally, how you make failure interesting.
Mike
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