[UA] Roleplaying failed and hardened

[Sonja Pieper]

Wirén Mattias wrote:

>Hello. I'm in the middle of my new campaign and the characters are gaining
>failed and hardened notches fast!
>
>I would like to get some inspiration on how to roleplay these notches. Yea I know there are examples in the book that gives you a hint but I have trouble figuring out how to roleplay X nr of failed/hardened notches. So if I can't explain to my players how to roleplay it I can't really demand that they roleplay either...
>
>Well, all and all it would be good to have some  real gaming exampels, would prefer Self cause thats the real tricky one.
>Don't bother the extreme numbers though a 10 is pretty obvious -  so is a 5.
>
>//MW
>
>
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My players dealt with that one too. Well for one they started 
withdrawing from their closer friends because they got scared of what 
happened to themselves not wanting to draw others into their mess.  I do 
not know if that is really self and how many notches ... they had so 
many notches everywhere (which was the point  of MUAC and I am not yet 
done with them) I cannot quite tell which part of their behavior was 
self notches or others.

They quickly grew much colder towards themselves and others. They were 
making "compromises" hoping they will only last until they have 'solved 
the problem' - like getting weapons, burning houses and killing people, 
they have even considered torture. (They started out playing themselves 
I must point out again ...) They have dropped a lot of their morals 
already .... and that after spending about half a year in the OU.

I think that if every one of those mind rolls was justified the players 
should be able to deduce from there a little bit on how their 
character's personality starts changing. It is one of the most 
fascinating parts of UA (for me at least) to see characters change (most 
times for the worse as most would see it from the starting point if they 
could get back there later). I know this is not very good advice but I 
could give my players no better. For example someone gets a hardened in 
self for forgetting his kids birthday.  (that was it right?) Maybe he 
will feel bad about it but he thinks: just that one more 'deal' and 
after that I can get back to my kid and make up. He might think it was 
right to leave his family in order to protect them and the longer this 
lasts the less he cares about his family .... and in the end he can ask 
himself why he did it all only to find out his family is long gone and 
it was all for nothing. .... I find it much harder to make up 
interesting stresses than to apply them to a character. Oh well I hope 
this helps I really have to start working now :-)

Ciao
Sonja

-- 
sonja at newgods.org, http://www.delusions.de

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. -- Gertrude Stein




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