Yesterday I was playing in one of the weekly games I play. I ran into a piece of dissonance within the game. I had taken out an NPC in a psuedo-confluct(it was only one roll, I rolled really well). At this point +Michael Pedersen said that I had taken him out and he was unconscious. But wait a minute, says I, that is not how taken out works. Basically the person what takes out the other fella decides how that goes down. Michael and I got in a bit of a discussion on this. He felt he should have some say in how it went down, but the rules supported view that I got the final decision on how it went.
From a GMs perspective I get where he is coming from. It is an alien feeling just letting go like that. Also it begs the question, where do you draw the line? How far does the player's control go? So I had captured the dude, does that mean that I get to dictate his actions? For how long? Or do I just get to tie him up and then we move on. There is a nebulousness to who's in charge of what in this particular situation.
Anyway here is the recording of play, should you wish to see the disagreement[starts in the 14:20ish range]:
You're right that as the person who does the taking out, you get the say in how it happens. It's *your* cool moment, and since the target didn't concede before it got to that point, the target does not technically have a say.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean there shouldn't be a conversation. All outcomes in the system have to pass the table's sniff test. But as I see it, that'd mainly be Michael having the option to say "that doesn't quite sound right" and prompt you for a revision. You still get to be where the buck stops, as the guy who scored the taken out result.
This is basically an inversion of who-has-the-authority in a concession situation. Say that Michael conceded instead of you taking him out. There, he'd be the one to get to say how it goes. *You* would say "hm, that doesn't sound right", perhaps. But you are not where the buck stops in that concession scenario.
Heck, the entire point of a concession is that the one conceding gets to define how they're Taken Out (because they are effectively Taken Out). If the GM can always define how their NPCs are Taken Out, why would an NPC ever concede?
ReplyDeleteIn a one-roll situation, would it not be better to explicitly set the stakes of the outcome of the roll? I'm not sure if this would be counter to a design principle of FATE but when both parties of a conflict decide to settle it with one contest, there is an expectation that both parties would have if they "win".
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't help after the fact but it does make clear the importance of the conflict. If this is very important, I may want the full range of tactical choices in a multi-roll conflict. If not much is at stake, I can be fine with a single roll.
part of the issue is that both the GM and I had different understandings of the stakes. We both agreed in part on the stakes, but we were both going in different directions without understanding that we were not on the same page.
DeleteI find this happens often, where both sides of an issue seem to be in agreement, yet they are not and fail to realize this. Often it is easy to say, "make sure you set the stakes properly." Often communication is not so straight forward as to provide universal understanding in anything less than several pages of text.