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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9493473" data-attributes="member: 42582">My lens isn't OC - the games that I play, that feature supporting casts of NPCs, are more "story now" and so the NPCs are not off-limits, and the GM is allowed to put them (and thereby the PC) under pressure. The classic statement from Luke Crane is in the Burning Wheel rulebook (revised, p 109):If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create situations in play. If you're hunting a Vampyr, of course its your wife who is his victim!Now I think the principle that's stated there is too "hard/brutal" for OC play; but still, I think there are some overlaps and lessons that can be transposed from the "story now" mode to the OC mode. A key one, I think, is to know limits of what is reasonable. In my sort of game, for instance, one important limit is set by the general resolution procedures: bad things happening to a liked NPC (eg the wife being seduced by the Vampyr) should only follow from failure, especially failure that implicitly stakes some interest of or connection to that NPC. If we apply that limit to OC play, and then consider that in OC play failure is probably less common and stakes often lower, it follows that the incidence and seriousness of "bad things" probably needs to dial down correspondingly. So if the NPC falls in love with a rival - at the instigation of the GM - then (i) the situation should be easier for the player to change (ie less of a tendency to brutal finality than can be found in "story now" mode), and (ii) maybe the GM needs to seek implicit or even express permission to put the relationship at stake in the first place, rather than relying on just the fiction and the fact of the relationship. (I believe that these sorts of "meta-channel" communications are important in OC play; whereas in my games the permission generally has been given by signing on to play Burning Wheel or Torchbearer or whatever in the first place.) I'm sure there are other principles and limits that could be stated, but I'd thought I'd start with this and see what you (and others) think.</blockquote>

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