Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Blood and Sand

So today I wanted to write about an exciting new GMing technique I tried out at the retreat. Mike created this technique for his Amber group down at Georgia Tech. I think he might've gotten the idea from my series of Devil games that I've run with the experienced Amber crew up here, where hard choices made by the characters shape the world around them. Unlike my decisions, which for the most part took place outside of combat, Mike places these decisions entirely inside combat (well, I should say that I assume he has hard large-scale choices outside of combat too, but that he also brings them inside combat as well). What results is something very interesting: roleplaying doesn't stop when the swords come out.

At least if you're me, every time your character resorts to violence you feel a twinge of regret that you aren't talking in character some more (I'm not saying this ever stops me, as people who play with me will attest). Additionally, if you're me, you probably wish that you had more character-based decisions to make in combat. In the current phase of my roleplaying career I look at combat as a place to make the action cool, not as a place to do interesting character decisions or create interesting changes in my characters. But by forcing hard decisions on the players in a combat, I think it is possible to put the characterization back in the game, even after the thugs start their work.

Basically how it works is this: say I've got a character who is just a normal, everyday fighter. For some reason they have gotten into a shouting match with the local village tough, and a fight has broken out. A standard intro could be something like: "He pulls out his sword, threatening you." or even, with more stunting, something like "His metal-laced scars glinting in the twilight, he begins a chant that draws forth a magical blade from his heart, blackened by his own evil. He begs you to lay your life down on his blade". Both of those are fine, if all you want is a fight. But what could be more interesting? Perhaps something like, "Without a second's thought he lunges for a watching lady, his fingers dig into her arm drawing blood. You see an opening, but the woman will probably be hurt by him as you thrust home, what are you doing?" Or perhaps he has captured something of value to the players and they must risk breaking it. Either way, the purpose is clear: by making a choice you reveal something about your character. Does she care only for justice, thrusting her sword deep into the ruffian's belly? Does she try to bargain for the woman's life? Does she purposefully run the woman through in order to complete her mission? I believe these are much more interesting questions to answer than just how you attack the bad guy, no matter how great a stunt you can make.

In the game I wrote about yesterday, "Both Alike in Dignity" the second half of the adventure consists of a couple of combats, with a couple of moments of rest to allow the players to do something I didn't think of. In the most recent iteration of the game, I used this style of combat quite a bit. Now in my particular setup I didn't have to work to hard to make the players make choices, since their "one true love" was right there with them. Do you gain an advantage over Benedict or protect your lover? Do you save the king of Amber or prevent a single scratch from befalling your companion's body. The best choice I thought up all night was "do you risk your unborn child or allow your lover to be stabbed". But even when the choice was easy to make, I felt it allowed the characterization to continue to flow. I really felt like we discovered stuff about the players during the second half that we hadn't in the first, even though the first was pretty much geared solely towards characterization, and discovery.

I was super pleased with how well this worked and the engagement I think I saw in the players, and I know that the next campaign or adventure I run I will be trying this technique again (perhaps my players will jump in on the comments and tell us otherwise, but I felt it worked well).

Tomorrow some thoughts on stunting and characterization or perhaps comments on player-assisted engagement!

12 comments:

Mike said...

One comment - this technique particularly works well in Amber, where you as the GM the the one and only arbiter of combat and the stats support you.

Even in Nobilis (also diceless), I found this system breaking down a bit. Why? Your characters stats are at a very low 1-5 granularity and there's only one that usually applies which PCs can very max out.

But I like this technique so much I'm seriously considering adapting Nobilis with more Amber-like stat system.

In terms of diced system, I've never tried it, but I think there's no reason you couldn't ask the character to make the choice before their roll. You could even allow the player to roll for "all the marbles" (i.e. save the pricess AND kill the bad guy) at a super-hard target.

Very important to doing this, IMO, is not to screw up and take away your players agency. One thing I think very carefully about is my players stats and make sure that they are feeling that high warfare. If you've put in the points in my game, you get a lot more "awesome and awesomer" kinds of choices. A choice I like to use is "charge your enemy at the risk of your own life". One of the nice side effects here is that when the player charges (of course he/she charges) another player often makes it their goal to protect them. I like this because it lets the PCs have awesome victory while setting the expectation that "Oh yeah, you have awesome warfare but *obviously* you'll need somebody to protect you when you risk yourself. Oh looks like the other players will actually have to participate in the battle too."

Also on the agency side, I make the PCs pay dearly when I run this way but I don't use these sort of checks to force an outcome. It's easy enough to demand that the players do so many choices that you can kill off a favored NPC or something. Clearly a dumb idea! When the players work towards a goal they clearly seem to want, I make sure it stays a possibility. Maybe you'll lose the battle (say) but you can save Debbie McNpc and liberate Benedict's secret taco supply depot.

Anonymous said...

Ben,

I like this post a lot. There are many games that treat combat as a separate sub-routine in a game that might otherwise be all about character or theme driven roleplaying. In these games, combat feels more like a tactical exercise than an integrated part of the game. When a fight becomes just another way to explore the same sort of choices that the rest of the game is about, then you know you have a system that is working.

Your technique of presenting players with hard choices in combat is a great suggestion. When you start playing games like Dust Devils, Bliss Stage, and the like with these hard choice ideas in mind, I think it's easy to see why the "combat" rules in these games don't bother with too much detail. It's always about the characters.

On the other hand, I'm still confused by your use of the word, "stunting." Does that mean simply doing cool things during combat? If so, why do you need a special term? I feel like I'm missing a key concept that you use when talking about roleplaying. Could you please enlighten me?

Mike:
I agree with you about player agency. As soon as players feel like what they say doesn't really matter, it's all over. But I'm curious as to why you think that the technique Ben is describing works best with a strong GM role. Why would a player maxing out a particular stat undermine the technique?

Ben said...

yeah, absolutely agree that you don't want to take away player agency... that would be terrible. I like the idea of choices between Awesome and Awesomer, and I'm definitely going to try that out as well.

Tim: on stunting. Um... I mean sure, you could reduce it to just cool description, but I rather feel like that is likening roleplaying to a game of pretend: yes they are structurally similar and it might even be hard to describe the difference to a skeptic, but I believe they are very different.

A great stunt involves some very cool description. It also involves not a little bit of narrative control to position the enemy, the sun, and even the other players in the way you need to pull off the stunt. It should be awesome, as a given, but also include some unexpected elements of combat. It should show not tell (works like "fast" and "expertly" should be avoided at all costs). and in general crafting a great stunt is, I feel, a completely different skill from normal roleplaying, which I think shares more with acting as far as getting into character and sharing your characters emotions (I know others probably disagree with me). Perhaps I shall try to write this better in my stunting post.

-Ben

Anonymous said...

Ben,

I'm wasn't trying to reduce or belittle the concept. I just hear you guys use the term all the time, and I realized that I didn't really know what you were talking about. I'm just trying to understand, and I await your stunting post!

Ben said...

Hmm... I seem to have lost the tone that I was going for in my response :). I promise that I wasn't offended or irritated, and I was going for a tone of explanatory rather than anything else. I definitely didn't feel like you were attacking or anything :).

Anyway, onward to my stunting post!

-Ben

Anonymous said...

Awesome, we were on the same page then.

Mike said...

Tim - it's not the "strongness" of the GM that makes the difference really, it's the fact that dice or particularly funky combat rules/powers are not involved. It makes it easier to frame the choices when you have a strong feel about how player compares to NPC.

I guess I would say that the combat must be at least semi-narrative, and the GM needs at least the power to say "you must choose EITHER a OR b" without the players being able to say "both".

With little granularity, building NPCs is harder. The players know from the mechanics that the bad guys can't be stronger/faster than them if their stats are maxed. They know that the distinctions between level 4 and 5 are very large. So while in Amber the situation often feels very dynamic (ok, this dude is slightly better than me but maybe if I can make the thing more strength focused...) in Nobis its more like "ok, we're exactly equally powerful so if the GM says he's winning he's basically saying it by fiat so I'd better go along with it".

Anonymous said...

Mike,

That helps. I was getting hung up on your Amber specific examples. I see now that's it's more about having the appropriate amount of detail and system support so that everyone can create powerful choices and meaningful distinctions in combat. If everyone is the same, then the players are more apt to defer to whatever the GM declares and less inclined to engage with the theme or try to overcome tough obstacles. At least I think that's what you're saying?

I'd be curious to see what you guys do with a game like Hero Wars.

Ben said...

Tim,

Is this the game you're talking about: http://www.glorantha.com/hw/ ? I even see a post about it on the forge... It looks a lot like a traditional RPG...

-Ben

Anonymous said...

Gasp! Tim suggested a game that looks traditional!

Actually Hero Wars is out of print. The new game, HeroQuest, I've heard, is quite a bit different. And it may even be more traditional. I don't know. Hero Wars is pretty cool though. I did a quick Google search and came up with an old review by Ron Edwards on RPG.net of all places! It's a nice overview. Check it out if you care: http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_3838.html

Ben said...

Hey Tim,

That sounds pretty cool, I really like the description of the combat... The review is a breathless portrayal of a non-simulationist system, which I find a little humorous at times, but it does sound pretty interesting and cool.

-Ben

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the review is back from 2001. Just the concept of Narrativist roleplaying was brand new, let alone a system that supported it. I think Ron's excitement is pretty evident. I also got a chuckle out of how vehemently he was trying to convey that Hero Wars is NOT like any traditional game you've played. But, not surprisingly, the game actually holds up pretty well.