Angels & Operators Post-Game Analysis (Part II)

[robin_d_laws]

While devising choices I didn’t try to strategize too much or predict which choices the group would make. I simply tried to come up with the five most likely choices Steve might make given the narrative circumstances. Often it became apparent to me minutes after voting opened how it was going to go. “Of course!” I would think to myself, suddenly

Comments

Loose ends and opinions

[luagha]

1. I think your phrase 'the uncooperative protagonist' is really a brilliant one for this sort of experience (and has other uses I can think of, both in terms of gamemaster-player and player-charactersheet). I found that the writing style seemed designed to omit details that could be used clarify matters (and 'prove' sanity or insanity). I also found that quite often none of the five choices were anything close to what I would choose or design, either in the tactical phases or in the styles of discussion phases.
I would state though on the 'timid, directionless loser' category that most real, sane people who are not criminals and such do not resolve their differences by sneaking into people's houses and only a few do so by engaging in fisticuffs, for which they are generally eventually punished by the police in some fashion depending. But I felt that genre conventions more than anything were preventing the situation from being solved by something like, "The police see blood in the back of the van and from there the whole matter is unravelled," or "Using your family funds (the same that must be there to voluntarily commit you) you hire a private detective to watch Pierce - he peeps into the basement window when they aren't home and sees the torture set-up." It makes for a bad story and yet it's more like something a sane person would do.

2. What was up with the blonde nurse with the needle? Totally imagined out of whole cloth?

Re: Loose ends and opinions

[robin_d_laws]

The nurse was real, but Steve was interpreting his interactions with her in a hallucinatory way. His subconscious was telling him to deal directly with Pierce, his own treatment be damned, and so conjured her as a figure of menace.

This implies that the underlying truth of Steve's schizophrenic instincts is not quite as reliable or clear-cut as the conclusion makes them out to be.