I wasn't advocating any form of player/GM stakes negotiation before the conflict started (as suggested by Vincent Baker in DiTVY) but waiting 'til after the contest is resolved and saying to the player:
"Okay, you lost. What happened?"
Cheers,
Ash
>
> >From: "Silburn, Luke" <luke.silburn_at_...>
> >
> >Ashley
> > >>Ask the player of the penalised character what
> form
> > >>they'd like their personal shafting to take.
> >
> >For some players this is golden advice, others
> don't like it at all
> >however. I have one player in my regular group who
> find the whole
> >narrativist, 'make up appropriate in-game instances
> of the generic
> >mechanical penalties' aspect of HQ very alienating
> - ...
>
> Actually, and I'll probably surprise some people
> with this, but I think that
> "Setting Stakes" before contests is a tool that has
> limited uses. That is,
> for the most part, I don't do this. I use it in
> cases where I need to teach
> a player that I, or others playing, are trustworthy
> in making up outcomes.
> If I'm willing to let them in on the process, then
> I'm not trying to hose
> them, right? Or where there are other potential
> problems with a player not
> liking a contest outcome, I might set stakes. For
> example, if it's a case of
> a two players having their Heroes go at each other,
> I might have them
> negotiate the stakes first, so that they can trust
> each other in the
> process, that they as players are collaborating to
> create a fun situation,
> not competing against each other as players.
>
> But otherwise, I don't do this. Because, quite
> simply, I think it's a lot
> more fun not to know what the potential outcomes
> are. The system (wisely,
> IMO), specifies that the players should indicate
> what their characters goals
> are. And, in doing so, it does give the players some
> control of the outcome
> in this fashion. But within the mechanical result
> that says that the winning
> side must get their goal, there's a ton of room to
> come up with interesting
> other effects.
>
> For instance, the penalty for the loser isn't
> automatically related to the
> goal of the winner. If you're fighting to save the
> princess, and you get a
> "Minor Victory" over your opponent, yeah, you get
> the princess. But the
> opponent may also be wounded in the process. And
> have ran. None of that is
> specifically indicated by the mechanical outcome,
> but it's all sensible
> narration to explain the outcome mechanical effects.
> As are a myriad other
> things you can narrate. You could say that the
> opponent falls off a
> staircase out of sight and is injured on impact. Or
> even that he's simply
> intimidated terribly by your character's fighting
> prowess, and now is merely
> afraid to confront your character in any way. All of
> these results are
> mechanically sound.
>
> Thus, when a failure result comes up, unless it's
> the explicit goal of the
> attacker in a fight to do harm to your character (as
> opposed to, say, saving
> a princess), the narrator is free to make the
> "injury" be any sort of result
> he thinks is interesting. Sure, injury makes sense.
> But, in addition to the
> aforementioned fear, maybe his battle magic
> backfires, burning out his
> ability to use it at full power for a while? Or...
>
> Well, actually, what I do is to look at the
> character in question, and come
> up with some difficulty that will create a real new
> problem for the
> character. Sure, wounds always work, but are rarely
> a contentious thing -
> they exist to be fixed. If a character, instead, now
> has a penalty to use
> his magic, what does that say about his relationship
> to his god or spirits
> or whatever? In fact, generally, damage that
> penalizes certain relationships
> can be a great form of potential conflict.
>
> Anyhow, not knowing which of the myriad outcomes of
> a contest will occur
> adds a lot to contests. So I only advocate setting
> stakes prior to the
> contest when there's an over-riding reason to do so.
>
> Mike
>
>
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