Refusing a Debt question. I had the following scenario happen:

Refusing a Debt question. I had the following scenario happen:

Refusing a Debt question. I had the following scenario happen:

Vamp goes to meet Libby, apologizes for treating her poorly, and asks here to accompany him on a thing (get rid of some ghosts, collect the ectoplasm they leave behind as they exit our plane for oblivion), so he could make use of her budding necromancy skills. She says sure, but I’ve done so much for you in the past, so I’m gonna take 80% of what we get (she’s calling in a debt here). In inform the Vamp that what remains will probably not be as much as he needs, so he goes to refuse the debt and succeeds on a 10+.

Here’s where the problem comes in. He presses the matter. Nothing in the situation changed, but he keeps asking. The player is expecting to try to persuade her with promises and sweet talk.

But this confuses me. He knows what it will take (the debt) but doesn’t want to give up 80%. He thinks he could talk her down to an equal share, but it doesn’t feel right to me on the rules side because the debt was already part of this.

We ended up rolling to persuade and he botched it, so it ended poorly anyway. But what would you have done?

7 thoughts on “Refusing a Debt question. I had the following scenario happen:”

  1. I think purely trying to negotiate using words shouldn’t be enough to trigger persuading at this point. The stakes for just using their relationship as currency were already established, and the player refused to play with those stakes; wheedling and saying “ah, c’mooooon” doesn’t change that. You don’t get to roll again for the same thing unless the fiction changes in some way.

    So, I’d say that if the Vamp wants to persuade, they need to offer something else that Libby would value. At that point it’s haggling and offering a new deal instead of just trying to roll again for the old one, and that feels fine to me.

  3. I think that could work if he has a Debt on her to back it up, otherwise their past interactions probably haven’t been so rosy as he claims (if he’d been good enough to her for her to do him a favor just because he’d asked, he’d have a Debt to show for it). Otherwise I think she’d need something more concrete and specific, or another Debt at a minimum.

    But then, I don’t know the fiction as well as you do.

  4. Yeah the persuasion was a little on the iffy side. I went with it because he was sort of implying the loss of friendship. It was like a weird threat/promise thing.

    But does it seem okay to even negotiate after refusing a Debt? It feels weird to me

  5. To me, negotiating in the wake of refusing a Debt seems fine as a general case.

    Cashing in a Debt is basically asking for something (a favor) in exchange for something else (the erasure of a marker). That negotiation seems like it should be able to continue if the indebted character has something else to offer (other than the requested favor). Though considering they’ve just proven themselves as the type who doesn’t always play straight when it comes to favors owed, that second offer better be pretty good.

    In any event, if communications broke down every time somebody refused to honor a Debt, I think the faction politicking would get gummed up pretty fast.

    This was just kind of a weird situation since he was refusing a Debt and then demanding a favor on top of that. Which is why I personally wouldn’t have allowed the persuade roll without something solid to back it up.

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