Post originally by James_Nostack at 2005-01-07 15:08:42
Converted from Phorums BB System

It was Escher-ish in terms of game mechanics, but it may take me a moment to explain. The relevant scene can be found on the TSoY Wiki (link posted in the review): Examples of Play: "A Very Brief Engagement": Session 2 IC.

You've got two characters: Pendejo the goblin masochist, and Duval the prim and proper tutor. Pendejo loves getting beat up, so he tries to provoke Duval into smacking him around. Pendejo's player makes a simple roll to influence Duval, but this fails. So Pendejo Brings Down the Pain, which is what frustrated players do in this game.

Bringing Down the Pain defines harm in a very abstract way. In this case, Pendejo tries to harm Duval by insulting him, and Duval tries to "harm" Pendejo's intention of getting beaten up by ignoring him. So, Pendejo is figuratively harming Duval, so that he (Pendejo) will eventually suffer literal harm.

When Duval finally gave in and tried to hurt the little goblin, Pendejo's player decided to continue Bringing the Pain so that Pendejo could get really, really hurt. And Pendejo's player heaped gift dice on Duval's player to make sure the goblin got a real walloping. Meanwhile, although technically Pendejo can fight back, the player kept on switching intentions (mechanically, switching intentions forfeits your action for the immediate round) to render Pendejo helpless.

The entire scene was a mind-twistingly brilliant application of game mechanics. We had a blast trying it out.