thefutilist
Adventurer
I meant ambivalent in the sense that they have mixed feelings. Not that they’re disinterested.That's all fine and good. But the point of mechanics that point to fiction-first, non-"diegetic" conflict resolution in games like Ironsworn are to keep the character stakes relevant.
So, the player is ambivalent to the fate of the princess. Okay, so, why is the player putting so much at stake for the character to be involved with her? There's a disconnect there. The player isn't playing toward thematic character intentions and stakes. Or if the player is playing toward those stakes, then (s)he's doing so playing a character that (s)he isn't comfortable with. (S)he has built a character that (s)he isn't interested in exploring. So why is (s)he playing that character?
I can see the point, being that "Believe it or not, I was helping out the player avoid a rabbit hole of a plot development that (s)he wasn't interested in at all."
But in narrative-style RPG-ing, this is a clear fail state. If interacting with the princess isn't of interest to the player, (s)he shouldn't be investing character stakes into it. If those are the only stakes of interest made available to the player, it's a additionally a fail state by the GM for framing scenes and situations that don't speak to the character's evinced thematic intentions and stakes. It's even further a fail state because it seems like neither the player nor GM are communicating through character build, world building, out-of-character discussion what they want the themes and stakes to be.
If the solution to the problem is, "I as GM am going to arbitrarily kill off this NPC character we've invested significant play time around evincing character intent and stakes, because the player is bored / disinterested," then the question of "What kind of game are we really aiming for?" is strikingly misaligned between GM and player.
I mean your point still kind of stands because I don’t frame scenes in such a way as to speak to the characters thematic stakes and in fact would find doing so anathema. I think about what the NPC’s are up to and have them act on their own current best interests, ‘living world’ style.
But this works because we’re both invested in the situation and in many games have either built it together or it’s implicit in the setting. When we’ve built it though, then it’s living world all the way. This carries with it the chance of failure but on the plus side it means I don’t have to cater to what the player wants and the player doesn’t have to cater to what I want.
Although there are also nuances to this because we’re talking about three different things.
How resolution works and what we’re resolving.
How scene framing works.
The role of prep in play, especially prep of the type ‘the assassin will kill the princess on Tuesday.’