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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9612735" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It doesn't always. But it very frequently does, in fact, end up that way.That's why I said that designing a game this way isn't compatible with modern audiences. You are here admitting that the direct consequence is intentionally turning away lots of players. That's the whole point. That's the very reason why such mechanics are actively avoided in most TTRPG design today. It's not only not popular, it actively fosters greater hostility against itself when folks are forced to play that way.Ditto.And what happens if someone uses it for bad-faith play? Someone uses it just to mess with one of the other players, or to get back at them for something they did elsewhere, or in an attempt to trigger a pissing contest, or to get "even" because the target player won the roll for an item this player wanted, or whatever else?A mechanic that depends on zero-divergence good-faith play to not go wrong is risky, inherently. One that depends on players never ever using it for even slightly disingenuous reasons is much worse. This isn't just a requirement of good faith; it's a requirement of perfect good faith, where there's never even a single moment of perverse desire or incentive. Such things don't happen.This is only true if the conflict in question actually is unavoidable, hence why you used the word "war." If we instead changed it to "alligator wrestling", the whole concept collapses because that's obviously a ridiculously dangerous thing you don't have to do.But which is "foster CVC conflict" more like: a literal societal-level threat where the outright destruction or domination of your home and people is at stake, where your choices are "fight or surrender"? Or is it more like alligator wrestling, meaning, a thing you can do, if you feel like it, but unless you're a real adrenaline junkie, why would you?You can tell I fall on the "alligator wrestling" side here. Pretending that CVC conflict is an absolutely unavoidable thing that you can only either cower in fear from, or face boldly, is so many stacked bad arguments, I'm struggling to pick which one. (Appeal to emotion, appeal to virtue, false dichotomy, bad analogy...)Perhaps so, though the root came from the assertion that magic should cause harm to other players' characters through no fault of their own.Which, again: making character archetypes specifically designed to cause problems for others as one of the costs of using that archetype's features? Yeah. That's a direct anti-player, high-frustration feature. Smart game design for games made to be cooperative doesn't do that--it leaves such things as an opt-in choice, rather than opt-out.</blockquote>

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