Quote from: James J SkachI keep hearing things like you lose your Soul - what does Soul get you?

Stamina and fortitude, basically: Soul is what allows you to suffer hardship of any kind without being hardened by the experience, to "endure duress". It also makes you more sympathetic towards others, to the point where harming anyone might become unthinkable.

A thing I've noticed: the mechanics in Forge games try to encourage good story by giving mechanical inducements to players to have their characters behave in a manner consistent with the kind of story the game in question wants to tell.

However, in most works of great literature the characters don't all respond to the same inducements - even though in especially structured Forge games, like Poison'd or My Life With Master (and Poison'd seems to be based very much on MLWM), the very psychological makeup of all the PCs are essentially the same. For example, on the Big Purple thread we read how pirates in Poison'd have a Brutality score, which goes up whenever horrible things happen to them, and represents their ability to be nasty and vicious - but undermines their ability to be sneaky and underhanded. It all goes back to the idea that people who are abused tend to become abusers, which is fair enough - but the way it's set up means that you can't play a pirate who, say, endures horrible torment, realises that he is too much of a weakling to stand up to his tormentors directly, and therefore takes revenge through guile and betrayal as opposed to direct violence - which would be a perfectly appropriate character for the sort of story Poison'd is.

My Life With Master, Poison'd, and similar games hinge on the game designers deciding how human nature is going to work in their game - just as authors, if only on a subconscious level, decide how human nature works in their novels - rather than letting individual players decide how their characters' psyche works. Which might work perfectly well for ensuring that sessions of MLWM or Poison'd will produce the sort of stories the game designers want, but it seriously undermines the ability of the players to contribute to the story by deciding how their character's mental makeup functions - which is surely against the "shared narrative" aim of Narrativism.

(To be fair, this isn't a universal problem of Forge games - Dogs In the Vineyard and The Shadow of Yesterday, for example, give the player absolute freedom to decide how his character's mind functions. I would also argue that they are less purely Narrativist than MLWM or Poison'd.)

Quote from: gleichmanNor even in the context you've put it does 'getting into Heaven' matter, you've exited play of the game on that event (be it Hell or Heaven) and are either on to something else or creating another Pirate- at least as far as the rules go.

Consider it a "victory condition", and one that simply cannot be reached by a character who has lost all of his soul to the Devil.

Quote from: James J SkachSo...I just want to be clear..it's much more difficult to take care of your soul, I think being noble you put it, than it is to submit to Sin and be rewarded.

If I have the right of it, the first question to answer is there any long term impact to submitting; something beyond the reward?  I keep hearing things like you lose your Soul - what does Soul get you?

I just get the sense that there's a piece missing...

Reading between the lines, it seems that the state of your Soul (vs the state of your Devil stat) determines what happens to your character when he dies - whether he goes to Heaven or Hell, or haunts the earth as a sad, mad ghost.

Which sounds an awful lot like the endgame scenarios in My Life With Master: a nice idea to see how your character ends up, but who really cares what happens to your PC after the game finishes?

Quote from: GrimGentI've been reading Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly lately. It contains all kinds of interesting snippets of information which should prove useful if I ever happen to run a pirate game.

I wouldn't deny that all sorts of terrible violence, plunder, and rape happened in times past. I just think there's something, for lack of a better word here swinish, to build a game that encourages it in the name of arty, edgy, and hip roleplaying.

Quote from: GrimGentConsider it a "victory condition", and one that simply cannot be reached by a character who has lost all of his soul to the Devil.

So basically the choice is to endure and be a wimp, and win a victory condition at the end once play ceases...

...or be a Sinful pirate who gets all sorts of rewards in the here an now during the actual play of the game?.


Ok, let's agree for a moment that's a fair choice just for the sake of the exchange here.

How does it change the basic claim that by Forge Theory- the game is encouraging Sinful play? It may also be encouraging wimp play ("the meek" and all that) in addition, but multiple ends does not remove all offered roads.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityCorrect my memory if you will, Mr. Chuckles, but I don't think GTA's transgressions were coated with Baker's Own(TM) Christian morality syrup.

Poison'd says it's Christian to rape someone's throat?  That seems hard to support.

Quote from: gleichmanHow does it change the basic claim that by Forge Theory- the game is encouraging Sinful play?

Hey, I have nothing against the Forge, but don't particularly agree with all their theories, either. I'm just reacting to the "OMG in D&D you'd go to hell and burn for that" attitude which seems to have sprung up around this game.

Quote from: GrimGentHey, I have nothing against the Forge, but don't particularly agree with all their theories, either. I'm just reacting to the "OMG in D&D you'd go to hell and burn for that" attitude which seems to have sprung up around this game.

Ok, different thread then. At least for me.

As cute as this latest Forge advertising thread is, a game that encourages its players via mechanics to deliberately fuck over each other in game will not be commercially viable because it will turn off most of its potential buyers. So, with this in mind, I'd like people to remember this shining example of a Forge game when someone whines about why most indie games don't sell and why game store owners won't carry them.

Quote from: gleichmanSo basically the choice is to endure and be a wimp, and win a victory condition at the end once play ceases...

...or be a Sinful pirate who gets all sorts of rewards in the here an now during the actual play of the game?.

Not to mention that, again, if you want a good STORY then by definition different characters are going to have different ultimate desires - victory for one may be a miserable second place for another.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityAllow me to suggest Wushu instead.

Nah. Then you'd just have, "I rape the corpse / while doing a backflip / in the conservatory / with the candlestick," or whatever.

Quote from: jeff37923As cute as this latest Forge advertising thread is, a game that encourages its players via mechanics to deliberately fuck over each other in game will not be commercially viable because it will turn off most of its potential buyers.

Yeah, remember how Paranoia completely bombed and there's no market for competitive boardgames and wargames?

There's definitely scope for competitive games. But Poison'd isn't the one to grab that market.

Quote from: WarthurThere's definitely scope for competitive games. But Poison'd isn't the one to grab that market.

Frankly, I don't think that anyone seriously expects it to compete even with Amber.

Quote from: jeff37923As cute as this latest Forge advertising thread is, a game that encourages its players via mechanics to deliberately fuck over each other in game will not be commercially viable because it will turn off most of its potential buyers. So, with this in mind, I'd like people to remember this shining example of a Forge game when someone whines about why most indie games don't sell and why game store owners won't carry them.

To be fair, Diplomacy was popular for a long time and sold very well.

Never underestimate people's enjoyment of fucking other people over. Its the basis for 98.4%* of all internet debates.


*Offical statistic made up on the spot, thereby ensuring its as accurate as 99%** of all other internet statistics.

** See above