Yeah, I didn’t really want to dig into the issues I have with that article. Read like someone who hasn’t been involved in this stuff for that long.

Re. the proxy solution: probably need to set that up in the beginning, yeah? Right now I have two very smart, very persuasive humans playing characters at opposing ends of the persuasiveness spectrum. So like, inside the fiction it’s been hard to wrap our heads around the smarts and social effectiveness that our professional corporate lawyer brings to his ex-slave (who’s both dumb and unempathic). Yes, sure, that’s poor roleplaying but there’s also nothing mechanical there to induce him into character. Either he does it because it’s fun, or it doesn’t happen. (No surprise that he is a huge Burning Wheel fan; he’s totally okay with deep characterization as long as there’s a carrot at the end of it. Feel free to speculate on his moral failings outside this thread.)

And man, it just doesn’t seem to come up in well-implemented PbtA games that have spent the time/effort to get right — the deal about doing what you’re told and getting paid for it is terrific. Simple and smart and you still retain a lot of agency.