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May 26, 2004
Foods Touch
This Forge thread sure says Kobayashi Maru to me.
Comments
That is not the instance I was looking at when I posted my original comments, but yeah, that is a dead-on example. The parallels are eerie.
Loved Edwards' advice, too: Quit telling the player how to run his character. Which was pretty much what I thought in the other case, I might add.
Posted by: Ginger Stampley at May 26, 2004 5:46:33 PM
Interesting thread... but I have no idea what you mean by "Kobayashi Maru" in this context. I'm familiar with the Trek reference, but I don't understand the connection.
Posted by: Loki at May 27, 2004 10:30:53 AM
The original discussion is here.
Posted by: Emily K. Dresner-Thornber at May 27, 2004 11:23:54 AM
I suppose it's Kobayashi Maru in so much as the player (and the group) didn't react the way the GM expected. However, my understanding of the original post was that in a true Kobayashi Maru would be a scenario in which the GM was expecting the players to either storm the castle gates, or fly over them, and the characters -- seeing the danger of both options -- go out and subdue a bunch of umber hulks in order to dig under the castle walls. In other words, it was a question of what actions players took in response to a scenario, rather than just their emotional response. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it :)
As for the this particular post ... I think the drama was killed the moment the GM told the player what he was planning to do to the character. In my own campaign, the most dramatic moments have often come when the players are suddenly confronted with something totally unexpected. A loyal companion is revealed to be a doppleganger ... who just lured them into a trap that will unleash an ancient horror on the world. The conspiracy to overthrow the city that they'd been hunting is suddenly revealed to be a red herring ... and the real threat has just come rising up out of the sea. A murderer who's been killing off city officials turns out to be a party member who'd been possessed by a demon.
Now in one of these cases I did consult a player -- I needed the player who's character was replaced by the doppleganger to go along with the conspiracy -- but for the rest, it was all "sprung" on the party.
I suppose I can see consulting a player ahead of time and then working with a player to script out that dramatic moment for the benefit of the party, but I can't help but feel it would come off feeling scripted and unsatisfying. None of us are great actors and IMHO, the best reactions are the ones that are unplanned.
Posted by: Ken Newquist at May 27, 2004 6:50:19 PM
Why on earth would you tell the player what's coming up in this scenario (leaving aside the strange idea of hoping for drama in a game where an underwater guitarist trying to get out of an Evil record deal gets bitten by a shark -- I mean this is serious R.A. Wilson territory), let alone asure them it will all be for the better later? This re-affirms my conviction that if you want to write fiction then you ought to go write fiction and not try to do it to a group of players.
Fiction and games are different.
Posted by: Halfjack at May 28, 2004 2:23:16 PM
