NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6399551" data-attributes="member: 2067">Yeah, where I fail to follow you is in noting why any of that entertainment is not of real-world value or significance. These all have real-world value, emotional value. I don't really know the setting lore of BW that well, so of course I did. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Of course, that seductiveness is still a threat. You know a vampyr in your house is going to put at risk things you value (your wife), just as the Xaositect knows that these Guvners with their shiny metal pals are going to put at risk the things that she values (her beliefs). But if I understand you, the key difference for you is that the PC in your vampyr example has to choose between conflicting desires, between two things that are incompatible in that scenario (making your wife happy, and making yourself happy). That is, the aesthetic you seek is one of tension, anxiety, and tragedy. So lets extend the PS example as well, by putting it in the same context. I, of course, left out the nature of Guvners as a trustworthy source of law and order in PS, one of the few groups who can be trusted not to put their personal spin on the rules because the purity of the rules is paramount for them. So as the Xaositect and the Guvners do battle, the city around them is erupting into riots and looting and general anarchy, as the laws here cease to have much meaning in the face of a populace who believes that they are built on a foundation of lies. Your success is leading to very real horror being perpetrated on innocent people. Are you OK with that? Is that a price you're willing to pay for success?This is the Unity of Rings in action (what you push will come back and push you), and part of my explicit Tier 3 goals: to question what you believe. This is a choice between conflicting desires (your desire to spread Chaos, and your desire to enjoy the benefits of a functioning city). It's not as intensely personal as the BW example, because the scope is significantly different, but if the aesthetic you're going for is some tension, anxiety, and tragedy, that hits those notes. It's not incompatible with a more personal realization of that (perhaps you have a husband who goes missing in the chaos! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), but the scope at its most iconic is bigger than that, certainly.I don't know that one is more dramatically compelling than the other just because one makes you cry more easily. Their aesthetic goals are different, and they use drama to achieve different ends. Casablanca might make you cry unless you're hard-hearted, but if Star Wars doesn't make you smile and cheer a bit, you're numb. That's not because Casablanca is "more dramatically compelling," that's because Casablanca uses its drama in a different way than Star Wars does, for a different purpose. They're BOTH pretty dramatically compelling. But if you're looking for a particular kind of drama, a particular kind of emotional aesthetic, it may certainly be true that PS doesn't highlight that aesthetic. It is true, for instance, that PS doesn't specifically highlight a character's personal attachment to anything other than their beliefs. This means that it matters more that the vampyr believes something in opposition to you, than it does that the vampyr is attacking your wife, though the attack on your wife might be in the context of that belief (ie, it believes that personal bonds are a sign of weakness and wants to make you strong; you believe otherwise). Motivation is an essential consideration in PS, while in other settings it might just be, "that's what vampyrs do."That emotion need not be sadness, though. Joy, fear, compassion, familiarity, anxiety, empowerment, delight, amusement...these are no less real, and no less worthy. The Xaositect may believe the Guvner is wrong, but she also knows that the Guvnor has the power to be right, to make the multiverse conform to their ideals. The stakes are as big as all of reality, because the outcome of this conflict could determine what is true about the world. The value in the conflict of ideas is that success or failure determines which ideas become reality. Those are certainly not weightless for the player, or for the PC.Part of the aesthetic that trucks in is empowerment. Like a lot of heroic fantasy games, the ability to enact your will is a big part of the fun in PS. There's also a sense of awe in the scope of your power, in transforming reality at a fundamental level. Not to mention the excitement of fighting against those that would stop you.The fact that this chaos is going to cause some legitimate disaster.This is an explicit part of the character arc I present, the part of Questioning Your Belief. It is telegraphed in PS materials with the Unity of Rings, the fact that what you put forth comes around and strikes you, and that the opposite of you is still connected to you. If the Xaositect achieves their goal, civilizations will collapse, people will die, entire planes will be wiped from the face of the multiverse, decreasing the potential amount of variation in it. The Xaositect themselves will find life less reliable and less secure. They wield plane-shaking power. With great power comes great responsibility and all that.I think this might be a big part of the dialogue, too. PS is designed as a way to play D&D, so it doesn't necessarily focus on your preferred way any more than any other given D&D setting focuses on it (which is to say, they don't, really). Adding the elements you prefer to PS is just as easy as adding them to any other bit of D&D, I imagine.</blockquote>

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