Buried Without Ceremony

Writing this post took several hours, and forced me to re-evaluate my stance several times. Here goes the current thinking…

Good story games, and good stories, present meaningful and challenging choices. Sometimes, these choices really grab me by the heart, and really make me think & feel. And I wondered what made those choices different, that made those choices stand out and hit me so viscerally. Why do some choices hit me quite viscerally, and not others?

Let’s look at a decision with great stakes, great potential for catharsis, that doesn’t grip me at all. Spiderman is facing off against a powerful enemy, and a situation emerges: save your dream girl, or save a train-car full of innocent people. Which do you choose? The first thing my mind does when presented with “X or Y” is to think in terms of utility (which is objectively more important? how about subjectively?) and likelihood (how easy is saving the train? how about the girl? what about both?). I don’t consider the poetry of the situation, the great weight of power, nor do I consider how I view the world. In other words, the epic ultimatum becomes a strategic and utilitarian thing (to me). At a fundamental level, I fail to think about this experience in terms that matter to me. Strategically, it might be a fun exercise. Otherwise, unimportant. Part of the reason is that reasoned consideration will reveal the “right” action, and pursuing that action will be the right thing to do. And that is uninteresting, because you can take a morally gray situation and separate it into something black/white. Another thing that’s going on there is that the interesting consequences aren’t really at the hands of the decision-maker, but at the hands of the person forcing the decision (perhaps that’s untrue, please consider that line and argue it back at me).

A much more interesting kind of decision, to me, is “what are you willing to do to get what you want?” And the primary reason that’s an interesting question to me is that all of the consequences (positive and negative)  stem from the decisions of the decision-maker. Suddenly, there is no shining hero in a shiny suit defending the world with a noble and angelic duty, facing hard choices because of the bad people. There are people, and their actions are tinged with consequences, and no matter how noble your intentions, there’s no such thing as pure good. Or, to quote something I see every day on the way to school: this.

Suddenly, the situation becomes relevant to me: I’m a regular person who makes decisions with consequences. Further, I may be put in a situation where I decide “what are you willing to do to protect the lives of a group of people”, whereas I’ll likely never be put in a situation where I decide “do I save my girlfriend or do I save a group of people.” Worth/risk assessment is a much more transferable skill than binary-choice assessment, which makes it more likely to be relevant to us. Which makes it matter more. Please tear that apart if you disagree.

So, that’s the kind of choice I like: choices where you get what you want, and you pay a price for it. Now, let’s narrow that down. If the price is irrelevant or insignificant, I’m not interested. The price needs to be vital. But, here’s the meat of this post: prices are more interesting to me if they are small, but vital (small here meaning “smaller than the gains”). Let’s take a hypothetical episode of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer. There’s a vampire lord, and he’s wicked evil. You can go out and kill him, but there’s a price. A vital-and-large price would be “but other vampires will kill hundreds,” which is kind of interesting. A vital-but-small price would be “but you’ll need to ditch your study session, and your best friend will be upset.” That’s the kind of situation that makes Buffy interesting, where the threat of world-ending demons is juxtaposed with petty high-school drama.

What’s even more interesting, what’s the most interesting is: prices that start small, or are presented as small. So, that best friend being upset? Now she’s not there for Buffy when the vampire lord’s second-in-command comes for her. Or perhaps she’s upset and makes stupid choices and gets herself kidnapped. Or she lashes out, hurts Buffy’s feelings and now Buffy is vulnerable.

One of my favourite games is Polaris. My favourite part is that the fundamental way you challenge something isn’t by saying “no” or contesting it, but by attaching a price to it, using the ritual phrase But Only If. You can do a lot with that phrase, but the most interesting application is to add a cost that the other player will outright accept, but knows they shouldn’t. In other words, offer them a price that is vital, but small. Or that seems small – but with the right imagination and confluence of events could prove critical and devastating. If the Heart (protagonist) says “I banish the demon, and my wife is freed of its clutch,” the most interesting thing to do is to attach to that price that seems, in context, small (and yet still vital enough to prompt consideration). “But only if she is ungrateful,” perhaps, fires on all of those cylinders. With the right player (because this is obviously pretty contextual to play group), that’ll cause some thinking, but it’d be near foolish to refuse it. It’s this little wink of tragedy folded into success, but at the same time, how could you not accept? Well, perhaps it’s foolish to accept, because that small consequence could grow or morph in pretty unpredictable ways. Or, perhaps it’s foolish to refuse, because it’s such a small consequence. Either way, it might be foolish. And that’s what we want:

A writer has a responsibility to tell stories that are dark and sexy and violent, where characters that you love do stupid, wrong things and get away with it…because that’s what makes stories into fairy tales instead of polemics.
(Joss Whedon, by way of Primetime Adventures)

But should they always get away with it? What do you do with that little consequence that’s been handed to you, as a storyteller? How do you use that? I’m going to write a post, later this week, on cruelty and mercy. It’ll be about that.