Post edited 12:05 pm – September 28, 2009 by Suna
Post edited 12:06 pm – September 28, 2009 by Suna

Hi, Joshua,

We've played shock: during the last weekend, but a question arose in the group at a certain point.

My character was part of the domini canes, an inquisition type of black ops operatives whose aim was to hunt down sentient machines in a setting whose shock was exactly about machines being sentient and starting becoming like humans (with a GITS addition that they could control remote bodies while the 'soul' was in some sort of mainframe).

My character's story goal was to lose her faith, although I had been depicting her somewhat similar to the assassin of the movie Serenity: a cold blooded killer with a deep faith in what she does.

After a turn of events where she had to choose between what she was meant to do and what she was ordered to do, resulting in putting her faith in the church in doubt, she found herself in the last conflict where she was going to address her story end.

The conflict was a matter of choice, since she had clearly lost her faith in the Church by then. And my Intent was: “can I still be a domini canis without my faith?” While the Antagonist's Intent was, if I remember well, “do you stop believing all you've been believing before?”. I chose my worst die on purpose both in my D10 and my D4 because I wanted her to be unable to still be a domini canis and to join the activists. By doing that, I made it mathematically impossible for the Audience to influence my roll, because the Antagonist's rolls also helped in that direction. I can avoid playing character's advocacy vs. the Antagonist HAS to go against me.

Other players protested that my Intent was then phrased badly, and that I should have rather Intended “can I leave the domini canes considering my lost faith?”. They also added that my problem in that is that I was playing gamist, for the result, and that it was safe-playing.

On my behalf, I protested that the game rules allow that and that is what I am expecting to happen, so that shouldn't be that incoherent. At which, some voiced criticism towards the game's rules. I'm still totally ok with how the game is and the result it took my character to, but do you think something went wrong somewhere in the game? Did I misunderstand something?

Hi Joshua and thank you for your reply. Well, the explanation from others was that my character was be too unshakable, too much made of marble, that the Antagonist could find no conflict to involve me emotionally. She never called upon my links (which were “the Inquisition” and “god”). In the end, another, more expert player, called upon situation and conflicts that could break that in the Antagonist's player's place. Making me choose between “orders” and “what I believed in”. The Antagonist found it nearly impossible to find a grip in my character. And other players also said that I should have created a character in which there already was a glimpse of doubt. But I don't know. I didn't want to force my character's “change” in front of conflicts I did not perceive as interesting…

Right on,

he was one Lucien who had betrayed and left the domini canes in order to join the rebels who fought for machines' rights.

She shot him in the head in the first scene, during the first conflict, after he'd tried to make her change side and confessed his love for her. And then, since he'd been backupping his brain, went on contacting her (on facebible, the Vatican version of facebook… silly minutia, but everyone loved it).

I never felt very involved in any conflict but that first one…