Play This Card As Weakness / Play This Card as Strength
So I have Strength cards which lean towards a good ending, and Weakness cards that lean towards a bad ending, and I have Assets and Subplots and Goals that lean towards… an ending.
So first, let me own up and say I'm not terribly certain what playing a non-strength, non-weakness card is supposed to represent, exactly, in the story. So maybe this is based off of a lack of understanding on my part.
However, I'd really like to be able to play Assets, Goals, and Subplots as strengths and weaknesses. I really want to be able to play them as weaknesses, as a way to flag "Hey, this is a part of my character and it's not helping me right now." For parallelism's sake, I guess I'd also like to play them as strengths occasionally.
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Essie commented
I would like the ability to choose whether or not subplots, natures, goals, and assets. Will have a positive or negative effect (or maybe even a neutral effect) That would be extremely useful int eh long run. (And possibly the ability to let players start with more than one strength/weakness card would also be awesome)
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Salinity commented
Agreed. One of my players recently played an asset card on a challenge and completed it with an uncertain outcome. That card was given to him as the idea that it was a strength. He was giving a gift to an NPC, and that NPC needed to be made fond of a party member in order for an event to occur.
I am writing the outcome as such, however I feel my player would have felt much more accomplished to see that green link icon get slapped onto the obstacle.
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newfoundjoye commented
Allow narrators to give assets/goal cards a strength or weakness status so they do not always have neutral designations.
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Haystack commented
Also, in certain contexts, a weakness may play out as a strength, and vice versa. For example, poor health gets one out of an undesirable situation ("get him out of here...I don't want to catch that.")
It's important to remember that the outcome guidelines are just that--guidelines...Just because the system says "strong outcome" doesn't mean that you have to write it that way, if it makes better sense otherwise.
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Josh Roby commented
The narrator can always play. The narrator sets scenes, plays challenges, lays out cards to pick up, gives cards, and ends scenes. When the narrator plays a challenge, she sets guidelines for a strong and a weak outcome. The narrator already has TONS of inputs to the game.
To me, playing cards to result in an uncertain outcome is roughly equivalent to saying "I don't care what happens here; you pick." Which seems lazy.
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Scott Dunphy commented
What the non-Strength/Weakness cards do is give the narrator a chance to play. You need a good amount of uncertain outcomes for the narrator to get control once in a while.
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Mischa Krilov commented
I had an earlier suggestion that your Nature card would be a permanent either Strength or Weakness. (Sometimes, it's good to be a werewolf. Sometimes not so much.)
I think a neutral card just steps the game closer to moving past the obstacle. If you were playing more competively, it's a way to shut out other players from shifting the story in an outcome you like. Kind of.
Maybe the player flags the card as what they'd like to use it for and the narrator can agree or kick it to neutral?