So, I’m running a Play-by-post game with a Protoge in it. I noticed that in a couple of games I’ve play before, the sharing a triumphant celebration team move usually gets invokes pretty early.
For the Protoge, this means that the mentor is very likely to lose influence over this character (more or less before the mentor is even seen in play). What implications do you think this has, in play?
As far as i can tell, it’s very hard to get influence back (or have I missed something), so it would seem to me to be fairly common for the first adult that the Protoge doesn’t listen to is their mentor.
It’s not actually all that difficult to gain Influence. One of your GM moves is “Take Influence over someone,” so provided it makes sense in the fiction and you have an opening to make a move the Mentor has ample opportunity to take it back. And that’s not getting into how that Team move can give Influence back to them directly.
As for what that means for the game: well, the Mentor should be all up in the Protege’s business from very early. They’ll likely have a scene together immediately after the first fight, and how that celebration played out (assuming for the moment that the team won the day) will go a long way towards painting what their initial relationship is.
Did the team do something the Mentor disagrees with? Cool, they’ll try to shift labels. And if they don’t have the Influence to do that, that may mean their relationship is strained and the Protege is using the team as a refuge, as well they should if they beat the bad guy and won the day.
The Mentor/Protege relationship is one of the most prominent ones, and one of the most dynamic. The Mentor won’t always be the wise all knowing adult; they won’t always be right, or be able to make the Protege listen. And that’s cool! Explore how their power dynamic changes depending on the fiction.
Of course in play by post this grand conversation will move like a glacier, and it probably will seem like the Protege doesn’t care about the Mentor’s opinion and never will again, but that’s a medium issue, not a mechanical one.
There’s lots of good stuff in what you say James Etheridge, and I’ll certainly try to use that as the game progresses.
I’m not too worried about the Pbp aspect of the conversations. It’s just a matter of how the posts get structured.
PbP style question about NPC/PC dialogue for your game. Does the GM let you run with a scene as long as nothing needs to be retconned? I’ve played with that in the past as a way to give the players more story stick/narrative control and to keep the pace of the game moving along. Also curious if you’re using in character and out of character threads to keep the game narrative separate from the mechanics or just mark up the mechanics with text (ala // this is a comment.)
I try to give the players as much freedom for narration as possible Todd Zircher, including using NPC in their posts – effectively voicing them.
In general, this seems to work pretty well, as long as everyone is willing to honor what’s been posted, or, if something really jarring comes up, it can always be retconned.
I’m actually fairly fond of Pbp. Its much slower than other forms, but you get a more literary style out of the game.