Bargaining and Stakes

Now, I may wind up eating all of this after reading Polaris, but here’s the thought: every stakes-setting/CR/FIM style system I’m familiar with has some variant of a free-and-clear where players discuss what the stakes are for a particular conflict. But only rarely have I personally seen the free-and-clear work on a level other than the situational. In other words “if he’s doing that, I wanna do this instead…” etc. But there’s something appealling about the idea of establishing stakes such that they’re of equal value, somehow.

What I’m thinking about is a “libre-clear” stage, where everyone can offer stakes for either side of an argument, but ultimately there’s a sort of bidding/betting/bargaining aspect to the exchange. Consider poker: your stakes have to match your opponents, eventually you show, and the winner gets the stakes. So, stake-setting by analogy to back room poker, where players will dramatically offer their watches and tie-tacks for whatever value the other players will grant them.

And as a final disconnected thought: Jon Tweet’s pleasant trope of the High Stakes Poker – some mystical force empowers the game to wager all kinds of abstract things – years of life, talent, skill, beauty. There’s a whole game in that concept, where characters are built to be players at that table.