How they resolved Scabramouche vs. Sparrowjenny

A follow on to my last blog post, about the conflict between two hobgoblins in a goblin market being resolved by the PCs.

The basics, for review: Scabramouche must give the first bite of any apple to Sparrowjenny. Sparrowjenny and her brood can't eat anything else other than that first bite. Scabramouche, annoyed to the point of torment by this arrangement, gives up apples, at least until Sparrowjenny's "children" starve. The two of them escalate their feud until the master of the market summons the PCs to restore order.

The first thing that happened is that the PCs decided they had to find out more about the players. So one of them (Summer Court ogre, played by RPMN's own Jon Perrine), used a power to get Scabramouche's hate towards Sparrowjenny projected onto him, claiming that he was the one that suggested the punishment Scabramouche was enduring to the True Fae. Obligingly, Scabs began to hate him rather than Jenny or the situation, permitting another character, (Spring Court mannikin) to engage Scabs in negotiation. Appeals to Scabs' better nature had failed (he didn't have any), but that was suggestive in and of itself. He was actually enjoying watching Sparrowjenny's brood starve.

"Well," offered the mannikin. "Is there something else more cruel that you'd rather do than this?"

Scabs thought about it and suggested: "You could steal a real human baby and bring it here and I could watch it starve instead."

The PCs decided that was not a good idea. But at least there were some negotiations.

The Winter Court elemental decided she would take some action to figure out the exact parameters of the situation. She snuck an apple in a box lunch and tricked Scabs into accepting it as a gift. Sure enough, he grouchily had to go across and give the first bite to Jenny, and she almost bawled she was so happy, and that made Scabs a hundred times more angry and set in his idea to starve her. But it also gave the PCs more information. Her happiness was one part of what was driving him crazy.

"What if it would be more cruel to give her the apple?" someone said.

That was the plan. The PCs would teach Jenny to pretend to be miserable when Scabs brought her a bite of the apple, and would tell Scabs that they had cursed Jenny so that the apple would taste terrible. (Interestingly, nobody thought about actually cursing her, though an abortive idea was to go to Arcadia to get Jenny's stomach back from wherever it was. Quickly nixed by the other players before I could do more than lift my eyebrows.)

So they coached her and coached her, and scammed Scabs into thinking they'd cursed her, and urged him to give it a test. He brought her an apple, she took that first bite and (roll roll behind the screen...exceptional success!) flew into a choking, mewling, moaning, gagging fit while Scabramouche rolled with laughter.

Problem solved. Scabramouche would eagerly eat plenty of apples just to watch her spasm with pain. Sparrowjenny got the food she and her brood needed not to starve. The goblin market would no longer be polarized.

As you might imagine from this little episode, one of the recurring themes of this game is "what we do when we can't get what we want". There really was no solution so long as the characters continued to want what they wanted. The only thing the PCs could do was to back the truck up and go around, find some other thing (cruelty, in Scabramouche's case) that one character wanted more than what they were doing.

In White Wolf games, you're encouraged to come up with a "theme" for your game, and a lot of GMs skip it, or they give one or two words. I don't agree with that. I think your themes should be very, very specific in terms of what they're about, but able to be applied to many situations. Every NPC that I've got in my NPC notebook has something they want that they can't get. What they do about that is the plot of the game.