Wings Over the Pyre

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun

"Sir, is it true," they asked me, "is Umm Qasr secured?"

"That’s what he said."

"Can we go there?" This puzzled me.

"Why would you want to go there?"

"Dancing girls! Beer!"

Then it hit me -- Umm Qasr is a border town. For these men, it holds memories of a different time, a time before war, when they could travel freely to Iraq, and do all the things not allowed in their own country.

Umm Qasr is their Tijuana.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Dance Hall Crashers - Remember To Breathe

Friday, March 28, 2003, 3:53:18 AM, Dave & Jen Blewer wrote:

DJB> Do you see my point? I am not trying to be a wiseass, as I understand you
DJB> Americans  sometimes say, here - its just that Fated or Destined seem the
DJB> perfect way to twink a character out.

The problem here is that you're not thinking sufficiently deviously enough in order to make Destinies important.

Firstly, how often do you let characters in a game like Buffy die without accomplishing something in the process, anyway? Buffy is a cinematic game -- in a sense, all Buffy characters have at least a minor Destiny or Fate simply through the auspicious case of being a PC. Buffy'll never die if its not an apocalypse, Xander's not going to die in a pointless car wreck, Willow's not going to have a medical misadventure. They are the protagonists of this grand story. All that Fated and Destined characters have in addition is that with an additional measure, either their knowledge or another's.

Secondly, a player taking Fate or Destiny on their character is essentially raising a big ol' flag and saying, happily, "Hey, please screw with my character and make it all plotty!" Sure, they're not going to die -- so you play with that assured knowledge. How does that affect how they work with others, their relationships, their lives? What themes (undoubtedly related to that Dark Fate or Glorious Destiny) keep cropping up around them -- because, without question, they will? What other forces, either opposing or facilitating the Fate/Destiny are going to show up in town with an agenda, and the character smack in the middle of it?

This is a show about characters who, even if they're White Hats, are movers and shakers. White Hats rewrite the fabric of the world every time they get in trouble! Heroes do spinning jump-kicks off the wall and decapitate vampires by slamming them into the edge of a descending garage door! Let the characters be movers and shakers, be big players on the face of the plot; Destinies and Fates just add to that, giving you, as GM, that much more flexibility and an explicit agreement from the player to be complicit in that.

Consider a character like Conan as written by RE Howard. You know from midway through the first story he shows up on that his Destiny is to be a King, but it'll sit on a troubled brow. Its right there, black and white -- but that in no way makes the umpteen-hundred pulp stories which follow less interesting. On the contrary, they become more meaningful, because they're cast in the light of this foreknowledge of what's coming. Don't be afraid of giving explicit prophecies and letting them become literally true; they can give you great milage.

(The best advice I've seen for running Destinies is found in the Sorcerer suppliment, Sorcerer & Sword. Great RPG, and a great suppliment for ... well, a lot more than you'd think.)