Anchor swapping
Posted by
Metal Fatigue
In the game I'm currently GMing, I've decided that the Authority Figure has the habit of swapping around pilot/anchor pairs, because he doesn't really understand how the ANIMa works and wants everyone to be "versatile." Anyone else ever done this? Anyone ever had it done to them? Any suggestions for the GM? For the players?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
This is absolute gold as a GM technique. Common catalysts are "experiments", an Anchor being Harmed and out of action, or well-meaning (or not so much?) interventions in relationship dynamics. Another reason can be an Anchor who is too protective of their main pilot (or not protective enough?).
This can really stir the pot of emotions between characters.
I did it in one game. The result was ... interesting. The in-game cause was scheduling problem (we had four players, divided so every mission was handled by two pilots with respective anchors. With one pilot temporarily out of commission, Everything had to be changed to get two ANIMA in the action).
One pair worked without much problem, the other was almost killed during the synchronization test alone. I was looking forward to some anchor drama (along the lines "Why didn't you take better care for him"), but sadly, the game ended shortly after (for unrelated reasons).
Additional thought: I was once thinking of a small rule change, to encourage anchor and "component" swapping. It was giving each character some special ability they confer to the ANIMA. These abilities would be fiction only, no mechanical benefits. Something like "this character is very focused, so relation with him can create weapons capable of penetrating strong alien armor". My inspiration for this one came from Sōsei no Aquarion. Alas, I didn't get to try this in play.
Doesn't the requirement to define components basically do that? I've always seen ANIMa components that were strongly reflective of the relationship they represented.
Or are you thinking of something more concrete, such as requiring the use of a particular component or type of component to attempt certain mission goals?
Yeah, that was the idea. I thought it could be handy to put more spotlight to a character sometimes, and this seems like good method.
There is also quite a lot of hotshoting goals going on in our games, and this way I could make it more difficult, but still interesting (because hotshotting would usually require using different component than the usual setup, which the mission goals would be optimized for).
This post reminded me of something I saw on http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ there's an awesome Venn Diagram with three overlapping circles: Willing to Run the Game, Has Enough Time, and Has an Idea for a Campaign. The outlier is Understands Rules. XD
Post a Comment