If you tell the players something is illegal in the setting, they will probably want to do it. And probably will have more fun doing it than if it hadn’t been outlawed.
John Harper I have a “chicken or the egg?” sort of question. Watching players get exposed to the setting, it always amazed me how they seem most excited about the criminality of Blades fiction. While I could assume that it was cleverly contrived to provoke this feeling, or assume that it was more because the setting demanded it, I’d rather ask and know: From which direction did that come?
That is: when you wrote things like.. that spirit practices are illegal, or that death-seeker crows are dispatched to ensure murders are reported, or that there is sort of standing inquisition in place concerning religions that deal with spirits.. were these elements designed to make use of this reverse psychology (and hopefully make it more fun to engage), or were they more like.. unintentional features of the setting that just also happen to have this built-in?
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This is by design. It’s fun to play scofflaws… so I needed to create laws at which to scoff.
It’s especially fun when the laws are themselves (in whole or in part) unjust.
Excellent. Why I thought anything else could be true, I don’t know!
Also: my new word of the day is now scofflaws.