Last night in our Primetime Adventures game, I saw what was probably the best stakes for a conflict ever.
Our campaign is conceptually like if you took Evangelion and mixed it with Control – people are using power armor to fight supernatural anomalies; the suits are also not safe and have costs to pilots using them.
It’s a flashback scene when one of our protagonists, Saoirse, last saw her (best friend/lover? we’ve been leaving it open) Willa before she died on a mission. They’re fighting some kind of anomaly that copies powers to reflect as attacks, and Willa realizes her suit’s self-damaging berserk mode, if she used it and just let it kill her, the anomaly would copy the “attack” as well and finish itself.
Now, Saoirse also has Lore, a (alternate personality/possessing entity, also left open) in her head. She acquired this self from the high stress of fighting supernatural things for so long and it’s already proven itself to take over and help during high stress situations.
This is a high stress situation.
Another one of our players suggested, “The stakes are who gets to speak last words to Winnie; Saoirse or Lore?”
Ooof. Ah. Damn.
That player got doused with Fanmail tokens.
I think a lot about how many RPG groups want stakes about emotional weight, like that, but the mechanics they’re using focus on physical logistics; how far can you run, did you successfully do the skill or not, etc. which is not to say those are bad rules; they’re bad rules for games where you want to focus in on emotional stakes.
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