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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5576745" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think so. It may be that I misread the OP, but it didn't seem to me to be talking about characters being upset. It seemed to talk about players being upset, about the way the game has unfolded.Perhaps I misunderstood the situation. But why would I be upset if another PC upset my PC, unless what the player of that PC did also upset me?Another way to come at the same issue - the OP didn't seem to be asking for RP advice (what should I do about my PC being upset)? It seemed to be asking for advice in relation to an issue of group disharmony.I'm not imputing motives. I'm offering my interpretation of certain fairly well-known game mechanical techniques. If I had to suggest a motive, I would opt for the fairly safe "We do it this way because this is the way we've always done it, and the way some reasonably canonical texts suggest to do it." My beef is primarily with those texts, which I think have a tendency to produce problems in play with no countervailing benefits. Most of the others posters on this thread seem to be focusing on ingame consequences of choices, and primarily material gain and loss at that.Most are not focusing on thematic consequences within the gameworld - choices made, values affirmed, emotions realised or thwarted - which tend to be the consequences for protagonists on which a lot of fictional works focus. And most are not focusing on the consequences for the players, considered as joint authors and audience, which in my view are the really interesting consequences.Yet the notion that no good deed goes unrewarded is the mainstay of a huge chunk of folk and contemporarary popular fiction, including probably the bulk of American film. Good fiction, or even mediocre fiction, is not generally concerned with affirming the causal patterns of reality. I don't see that it is important for RPGs to be different in this respect.</blockquote>

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