About 10 months into our Midnight campaign, we playtested HeroQuest for the setting a week ago.
I pregenerated an all-evil cast of PCs to choose from, an NPC cast and a rudimentary R-map and some simple bangs, and off we went.
Before I go into more detail, here's the result: yup, we'll be converting over.
First responses (going around the table):
Player #1: Shining eyes. Like me she likes character-centred stuff and like me, she hasn't had many gaming opportunities outside the ubiquitous DnD. She's been sold on HQ pretty much since I first started raving incoherently about it a while ago, and it looks like play hasn't disappointed. "Fun session. Now let's talk about what my PC will look like in HQ, ok..."
Player #2: Mixed, ending on an upbeat note. Couldn't stay for the whole session (work interfering at short notice), and left looking a bit disappointed. I talked to him afterwards. He says he'll miss the tons of dice rolling and combat tactics stuff we had in DnD, but is in favour of converting over anyway because he saw how much fun I had running it and the other players playing it. He also told me that while he'd describe himself as a "powergamer" and "rollplayer", the most memorable moments from my game for him involved decisions his character made, and most notably one brilliant success talking a racist but powerful elf around to granting to humans more rights in the forest. He's distrustful of a magic system without detailed spell descriptions but looks forward to having a chance at making his character more of a "talker" when we convert. I'm planning to meet with him separately to talk over the magic system I want to use and give him input.
Player #3: Mostly in favour. Says he had fun, enjoyed how the system supports roleplay rather than shoehorning play into rules the way DnD tends to do. As yet unconvinced about what could possibly be cool about extended contests - we ran through one primarily to see how the mechanics work and what to do with them in the future, which isn't a good introduction to them.
Me: Wow. Simply, wow. I had suspected it but had no way of telling before I tried it: HeroQuest supports the style I like incredibly well. I was still struggling with the rules and some pesky engrained DnD habits (and will be for a while), but still it was enormously liberating for me to drop all the DnD ballast I've been struggling with in the past and focus on content of the game, both in prep and in play.
Next post: lessons taken and questions unresolved.
Two main learning lessons for me as a GM from this playtest session (I'm sure there will be tons more as we continue to play):
1. When you're playing rules rather than SIS, be aware of it. Rules play and SIS play are two different types of fun.
I used to think DnD was a game that supported tactical combat play. This worried me a bit because our Midnight game is a game about a bunch of freedom fighters operating as guerrillas/budding shadow politicians in a warzone, so there's always been a strong focus on combat and pre-combat "tactical" discussions. I feared that moving over to HeroQuest, which couldn't care less about combat merely because it's combat, might cause us to flounder a bit.
We had (I think) three instances of "combat" (by which in this context I mean contests involving acts or threats of violence on at least one side) in the playtest - two simple contests, one extended contest. Did they cause us to flounder? Yup, they did, to an extent, but not for the reasons I expected.
Most of us enjoyed the simple contest in the opening scene: a run-in of the evil PCs and their minions with a group of stragglers from a fleeing band of resistance fighters, which was quickly dealt with. Cool, players #1 and #3 said. In DnD this would have taken an hour to set up and run through.
Player #2 said he missed the "tactical" dimension and was a bit bored by the fight.
Talking after the game, he and I got into a discussion about tactics. It turns out that by "tactics" he means the whole DnD shebang. How many squares on the battle grid for that Fireball? How many rounds will this Stoneskin last before our fighters will have to beat the retreat? Who's getting the last two potions of Blur and when do we drink them to ensure the effect doesn't run out during the fight?
All this is rules stuff, stuff that "happens" on the battle grid and can be counted out and displayed using minis. It's got little to nothing to do what actually happens in the SIS before, during and after a fight. What about using the terrain and light/darkness to your advantage? What about staging a distraction? What about playing on the enemy's emotion to shake/enrage/move them? Etc. - and that's not even going to the more exotic examples such as reciting heroic poetry to stop someone lobbing at you with their axe.
DnD supports the first sort of tactics but not the second: tactical rules play, yes. Tactics that matter in the SIS? No. Combat is abstracted to what goes on on the battle grid and in computing the effect of the numerous combat and magic rules subsets. It can be fun, yup, I enjoy it sometimes.
The drawback for me after playing/running DnD for too long is that I've lost awareness of the other dimension, and the way I observed it, that's true of everyone in our group. The instant there's potential for violence "we go into combat mode". Thankfully, in HQ that doesn't mean "Let's get the rulebooks and the ruler out" - but in our playtest session it still means that we, all of us together, drop out of the shared imagination space and into a rules mindset.
In play:
- At the beginning of the session, players picked up their pregenerated characters, read the two or three sentences of intro blurb I provided for each, and jumped right in.
- We are zooming along, everyone is having big-time fun playing evil-and-in-power characters for a change and making them nastier by the minute. (They are looking forward to having their normal PCs encounter these baddies some time...)
- A game element that appears to be an enemy shows up. Contest time.
- People stop playing and sit staring blandly at their character sheets, computing, giving the bare bones of input. "I hit the leader." "I hang back. If my orcs can't deal with it, I charge in." It's not in the words so much as in the tone and in the mood around the table. From one instant to the next, the spark has gone out of the game.
- We roll dice (thankfully, it's a simple contest, so that's done with quickly), determine the outcome and move on.
- Immediately, fun and group speed pick up again. In hindsight, this "combat" felt like a glitch in the game rather than a moment of heightened drama, which is what I think a contest should be.
The glitch is much more noticeable in the extended contest:
- The two remaining PCs plus minions have cornered the remaining resistance fighters, including one PC's elven double(?) agent / lover.
- We decide to run this as an extended contest.
- What happens feels much like a DnD combat with all the tactical rules fun taken away and close to zero SIS content. It's my failing to a large extent: as much as I've tried to learn extended contests from the rulebook, I'm a kinesthetic type, so I don't grok the mechanics until about halfway through the contest. Even then I'm too caught up in managing AP stuff to offer any interesting in-game content that the players might have played off of. I'll make sure I reserve some brain capacity for the actual game next time I run an extended contest. :)
Again in hindsight, I'm sure there was a lot of potential in that contest: the personal conflict between the PC and his NPC lover; the personalities involved; the fact that the players and I love to play off of each other to create scenes - only we never do that in "combat". Somehow, it looks like to us, combat time is rules time. It doesn't have to be that way and I'm sure we can find a more fun way.
I just have to remember to break my own habit - and to offer opportunities for players to do the same.
Now... How do I do that? Any advice?
2. Before you save things for tomorrow, check and double-check that you really don't want them today.
We'll be getting together for a character conversion session in a couple of weeks' time. The R-map in the playtest scenario appears to have been useful to at least one player and I want people to have something more visual to refer to than our assorted cast list, so I'm now making a Relationship Map for our cast of recurring NPCs. This has made me notice two things.
(a) The local cast of NPCs in the three refugee camps the PCs use as a combined base of operations tend to sit around all by themselves - when I look at "blood and sex" only, I get virtually no ties at all. My first thought ws, "Blimey, what a dysfunctional bunch of NPCs".
Although that's not such a big problem now I've noticed it, could even turn into a benefit. The camps started out by being bleak, starving, hopeless places when the PCs first arrived. As they work in the area, things gradually change, and introducing some new ties over time will tie in ok with that development I think, showing that bit by bit, hope and life are returning to a previously desolate place.
(The local NPCs' seeming isolation also leaves me more freedom to include ties to other places and factions, which is cool.)
So, I'll be ok with this bit I reckon.
(b) Now, to my problem child:
I so have political factions on both the oppression and resistance sides. But in almost a year of play, none of that has entered play.
The declared goal of the campaign has been from the start that the players want their PCs to eventually grow into heroes powerful enough to try and turn this whole war around. In true DnD fashion, we've kept things nice and local at first, now as the PCs are reaching mid-levels, we're expanding into the environs a bit. The large-scale stuff has never entered our minds as far as specific play was concerned.
Big mistake on my part, that. How much more focus and direction the campaign could have had if I'd seen this at the outset! It makes me gnash my teeth. (Not that that helps any.)
I was all caught up in that old DnD paradigm - low-level characters do low-level stuff. Mid-level characters do mid-level stuff. High-level characters don't happen unless you have the stamina to stay in the campaign for years and years. Sigh.
Now, how to deal with this? I'll be talking about it to my players when we convert their characters, obviously; but I'd like to have some ideas for a solution.
Going from "PCs know nothing" to "PCs now miraculously know about continental politics" is cheesy. Having wagonloads of information dumped on them in game is a drag and a bore and extremely disempowering. So - cut it up into fitting pieces? Give every PC a sliver of the whole? I don't have to reveal everything at once, obviously. Have information filter slowly through as PCs achieve more and more? This was my original, DnDish approach, and something about it doesn't feel quite right.
Whatever way I turn it, it feels to me as if I have to talk large-scale politics with the players to empower them, and do it now.
How to deal with it in game is another matter. Hm. I'll keep thinking I guess. Unless somebody here has a genius solution to offer.
I'm going to preface this by saying I suck at giving advice. I don't know why. I just do. Recent developments have pretty much convinced me of that.
I'm going to follow that by saying I'm posting here in a spirit of helping out. I'm not pressing any agenda, style of play or any other BS on you or anyone else. If I talk about how I've done things or mistakes I've made and what I think it means, that's just me talking. It doesn't have to be how you or anyone else feels about it. You don't have to read/listen/adhere to anything I'm saying. I'm okay with that. I can be wrong. I can be a butthead. But if I say anything that you read that you think might help you out, then that makes this worth it (to me). That's my purpose here.
I just don't want there to be any confusion on those matters.
Quote from: StalkingBlueThe glitch is much more noticeable in the extended contest:
- The two remaining PCs plus minions have cornered the remaining resistance fighters, including one PC's elven double(?) agent / lover.
- We decide to run this as an extended contest.
- What happens feels much like a DnD combat with all the tactical rules fun taken away and close to zero SIS content. It's my failing to a large extent: as much as I've tried to learn extended contests from the rulebook, I'm a kinesthetic type, so I don't grok the mechanics until about halfway through the contest. Even then I'm too caught up in managing AP stuff to offer any interesting in-game content that the players might have played off of. I'll make sure I reserve some brain capacity for the actual game next time I run an extended contest. :)
I don't think this is a failing on your part. My first extended contest I tried to make climbing a tower some big, dramatic thing. It sounds like your first extended contest was far and above better than mine.
In the HQ game in which I'm currently playing, extended contests are pretty rare. In fact, (and I don't think I'm misrepresenting the game or GM) about 90% or more of the contests are just simple contests. A participant on the Forge (I think) once suggested to me (when I was starting out) to let the players' interest determine what type of contest you'll use. Just because something's a combat doesn't necessarily dictate that it should be an Extended Contest. You probably already know that but it's an important point, IMO.
That said (and I think it's good advice) -- there are times when players' interests can be
misgauged (for lack of any real English term). :) I don't think that's really a GM fault either -- people are just hard to read sometimes.
Without getting too far into a gamer's sociology debate, here's some things I've come across when I've stumbled into an Extended Contest only to find out that I shouldn't have --
1) Start bidding crazy. Bet the farm. Be careful though because if you're using a powerful ability you could actually gank the players. The point is that you don't *beat* them so much as speed the contest up and potentially "scare" them. A good example would be Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi betting 30 or so AP by bringing Luke's sister, Princess Leia, into the witty banter. Didn't work out so well for him. As GM, you can pull the same kind of stunts. I do so with impunity when I sense that players aren't clicking with a dramatic contest.
2) Use abilities other than the run-of-the-mill ones. Banter, insults, affronts to honor, dignity and manhood. All these work great in combative Extended Contests. If you see that your extended contests are just devolving into "I add up my augments, I bet 7 AP, I hit/miss..." doldrums, then have your henchman call another character an "ill-toilet-trained sissypants" and bet 15 AP on it. Well, don't use that terminology but it may just get the players thinking outside the 10' square as regards Extended Contests. (which helps liven things up)
Quote from: StalkingBlueI just have to remember to break my own habit - and to offer opportunities for players to do the same.
Now... How do I do that? Any advice?
Outside of what I gave above, the only other advice I can really handout is to resist the temptation to use extended contests in all but the most necessary instances. They work well for showdowns and combats but there's no real rule saying there has to be one per session. I can't remember the last Extended Contest I participated in and we've been playing off and on for 8 months or so. Not saying there hasn't *been* an extended contest in that time. I just don't remember when the last one was.
If I were running HQ (and I've done this in the past), I'd save up Extended Contests for points in time where the heroes were underdogs, the stakes were astronomical and I really could not sleep at night knowing that I hadn't used an Extended Contest. IMO, Extended Contests really can favor a saavy player. If players play them wisely (IMO), it's possible they could use an EC to defeat a more powerful opponent. That's harder to do with Simple Contests.
So, that's when (and why) I would use them. For all the rest of the time, I'd likely just use Simple Contests (or Automatic ones).
I hope some of this helps. Again, if it didn't, I'm sorry. It's just a subjective opinion with no real basis in anything other than my experience. Please feel free to ignore it if it's not helpful.
Scott
I think Scott's talking about my game. And it's at least 90% simple, if not more. I estimated that I'd had about 6 extended contests in 19 sessions. Well, 23 sessions now.
So, like Scott said (he's much better at giving advice than he credit's himself for).
Dude! Darth so won that round of the contest! Luke totally lost his cool after he said that!
If you ever have a problem trying to guage whether or not somthing should be an extended contest, remember this climactic scene between Luke, the Emperor, and Darth Vader. No, they don't have to be that climactic to use an extended contest. But think not just about the importance, but about how the conflict in question was framed. Note how that scene is so long that they break away, and come back to it several times. Even a five minute long Bruce Lee thug thrashing doesn't break in the action usually. If it only takes 5 minutes on screen, even though that's a long time in a movie, it should be a simple contest.
Only the marathon scenes that have to be paced out should be extended contests. Where each "salvo" is worthy of a scene itself.
OK, we beat that one to death.
Second, you'll get faster, and more comfortable with all sorts of contests. This was your first session of play. And everyone learned how things work basically, right? It's not a tough system, it's consistent, and it doesn't have many exceptions to how to resolve things. So, eventually, it'll start to go really quickly, you'll find.
Except when it doesn't. Actually what happens is that the players will start to get good at it. In fact, watch for player #2 to actually "get it" suddenly at some point, and become really good at making things dramatic in contests. Just a prediction. Anyhow, when they get good at it, suddenly they'll be describing how their augments are involved in more detail, and generally helping you make things interesting. This can take a while. But that's OK, because it's all smile time, not work.
You can encourage this to get them there more quickly. First thing is to question augments. Don't say, "No, that won't work" ever, instead say, "Wha? How do you figer?" Then get this big smile on your face when they explain it.
If they take the time to explain it, give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's a bit of a stretch, so what? Reward players who try hard to make things interesting. Even if they're not always that successful. Because they'll become more successful when you do. They'll note that you kinda balked at this one, and will automatically tell you why it works the next time they stretch an augment. And they'll get more entertaining to make you buy in.
So get entertaining back. Here's a neat fact. Don't worry about hurting the PCs. You can't kill them accidentally (if you think you can, then ask me why it's not true). In fact, HQ will have them loving to lose. So go to town on them. If they're not losing every other contest, you're taking it too easy on them. And sometimes, just squish them with something way bigger than they are. Puts things in perspective, and gives them something to shoot for. Play wild and carefree, and the players will too.
Eventually it's all smiles and nods in contests. Might take some time to get there, but not too long. Realizing that it's on it's way, reliably, will help your confidence, too. You can already feel what it's trying to do, can't you. Just have some faith that it will. And it will.
Why does it work? Because HQ played this way encourages the conflict resolution to produce the sort of SIS detail you're looking for. (To get all technical).
OK, on to the other issue, information. Here's the key. Play exactly like you did before, with only one exception. Give all the NPCs motives to spill the beans to the PCs. Don't infodump, no. Make the player feel that his hero is special because the NPC needs him to know where the dark cabal hangs out because the NPC wants revenge or whatever. The usual mode of play is that NPCs are obstacles to giving out information. Simply change that to it's opposite, and you'll be where you want to be in not time, and it'll be more than just plausible, it'll be dramatic, too. Because the heroes will get all tangled up with said NPCs on the way.
Before you know it, you'll have more plot happening than you can keep track of (literally, last night I lost track of all the stuff my players were creating through interaction).
Mike
Hi Scott, thanks for replying.
I'm much indebted to you already for your Midnight conversion.
I did end up writing my own keywords (not least because that's part of how I learn a system, by playing around with stuff and seeing what it does for me), and I'm planning to use a much simplified magic system. But your conversion and especially your carefully thought out and extensive design notes helped me divorce HQ rules from Glorantha setting ballast in the first place and get an idea of what I wanted in a conversion for my game. Without your document, I don't know how I'd ever have got anywhere, so many thanks for that.
Quote from: ScriptyI don't think this is a failing on your part. My first extended contest I tried to make climbing a tower some big, dramatic thing. It sounds like your first extended contest was far and above better than mine.
Hey, I can see climbing a tower as cool extended contest for a determined climber. At least when the tower is famous for not being easily climbed, and knows how to fight back. And the player in question wants a big, long-lasting spotlight on this.
In my contest I think I had a ton of potential, but no real clue (and as I've mentioned, no brain capacity available) how to capitalise on it or give the players cues what to do with the strange "hole in the scene" that the absence of DnD combat rules seemed to leave there.
Looking over what I posted last night, I notice that I was so caught up in my style and technique thoughts when I wrote the posts that I omitted to actually include play detail. Let me try to explain the setup a bit here, of course I can also supply more play detail as needed. We had:
PCs: Alander Everett, Erenlander Temple Legate - has had an affair and "mutually beneficial exchange of information" with the Feen
Raedrim, Wood Elf Channeler - inclined to start an affair with Rhianne, who appears to be of like mind
Luggurz, Orc commander - addict of Plue Powder drug provided by Alf
Raedrim was played by player #2, so when he had to leave for work I took the liberty of using the character up in a Bang: Raedrimm was found assassinated with a poisoned orc dagger. (By Rhianne, who'd got both poison and dagger from Alf.)
Major NPCs: Orban Nice, Mayor of Lailan, well-known collaborator
Rhianne, Orban's daughter
Alf Addings, resistance-friendly apothecary tolerated mainly for his drugs, Rhianne's lover*
Pincus, resident Legate in Lailan, Alf's half-brother*
Rob the Cautious, Erenlander Human, leader of the resistance band the PCs are in the process of hunting down, wounded and in hiding in Lailan
Feen, Wood Elf Channeler, presently in Rob's company
*Facts not shown on R-map handed out to players at beginning of play
The PCs' orders are to capture Rob and Feen alive and bring them to their base in Al-Kadil.
In the setup for the extended contest a the end of the session, the PCs with their minions and Pincus with his minions have run Rob&co. to ground in the Mayor's cellar while orcs are searching the town. We have:
- the two surviving PCs Alander and Luggurz with some temple guards and orcs;
- Pincus with some orcs, eager to be the one to "claim the kill" and spoil Alander's mission by getting Rob&co. killed after Alander and Luggurz have arrested, mutilated and killed his half-brother Alf;
- Rob (on a stretcher), Feen and a few survivors huddling around them, some desperately making a stand while the others are struggling to maneuvre Rob up a narrow and steep escape hole;
- Rhianne, who was waiting outside to guide the group out of town if they'd made it out of the cellar.
There's all sorts of things I could have had the NPCs do to set the tone for the contest and turn it into something different from and (I hope) more fun than "oh, we're in combat, I hit A, you cast a spell" - but in the event I didn't think of it. Well.
QuoteIn the HQ game in which I'm currently playing, extended contests are pretty rare. In fact, (and I don't think I'm misrepresenting the game or GM) about 90% or more of the contests are just simple contests. A participant on the Forge (I think) once suggested to me (when I was starting out) to let the players' interest determine what type of contest you'll use.
I agree with all of that. In the event, the main reason we even ran the extended contest was that both player #1 and I were keen to see what the mechanics do in play. Right after running it I wasn't so sure whether the situation had warranted an extended contest.
In retrospect it looks more like we did have a setup with enough dimensions to support an extended contest (if people wanted), it was just that we didn't know what to do with all that freedom provided by the absence of DnD combat rules.
Notably, I didn't think to capitalise on the conflict potential in the scene (other than "Kill the renegades and take those two alive!") - Pincus's suppressed rage and envy, Feen's emotions towards Alander, two rivalling bands of orcs etc. Looking at it now, I don't think it's clear at all how the conflict would go and who would turn out to be on whose side, but we played it out like DnD combat: identify foe, go into "combat mode" (i.e. drop out of SIS and get thinking about rules), run through it.
Player #1 put colour in by negotiating with me and describing the effects of the spells Alander (her PC) cast at Feen, which was fun. Player #2 at this point (not before) went into full Gamist mode and was playing the character sheet, not the character.
QuoteJust because something's a combat doesn't necessarily dictate that it should be an Extended Contest. You probably already know that but it's an important point, IMO.
Sure. In fact I started the session with a single-contest combat to give the players an idea of how things were going to be different from usual. Most of us liked that a lot, although player #2 says he missed the round-by-round fun we were used to before. I'll have to make sure to draw tactics and (where desired) narrating back-and-forth in contests even when we wrap it up with a single roll, so that people can still get tactical enjoyment out of the game at some level.
Quote1) Start bidding crazy...
2) Use abilities other than the run-of-the-mill ones...
Good points both, thanks. Of course I knew (theoretically) that you could use abilities that wouldn't be "combat actions" in the sense of RPGs with combat rules subsets (such as DnD) - that's one of the things that made me want to try out HQ. In practice, however... :)
I reckon practice is the word here, or rather lack of same on my part. And, frustratingly, long-engrained habits from operating in the rigid rules framework of DnD. But I'm happy I'm getting somewhere different, if slowly.
Quote from: Mike HolmesI think Scott's talking about my game. And it's at least 90% simple, if not more. I estimated that I'd had about 6 extended contests in 19 sessions. Well, 23 sessions now.
Hm ok. I guess we might end up with a similar ratio. Right now I'm thinking I might prod my players gently to try extended contests a bit more often at first, until we get the hang of them. I at least would like to get a clearer view of what we can do with extended contests and where the potential for fun is for our group.
Quote...But think not just about the importance, but about how the conflict in question was framed. Note how that scene is so long that they break away, and come back to it several times. Even a five minute long Bruce Lee thug thrashing doesn't break in the action usually. If it only takes 5 minutes on screen, even though that's a long time in a movie, it should be a simple contest.
Only the marathon scenes that have to be paced out should be extended contests. Where each "salvo" is worthy of a scene itself.
Wow, that's brilliant. I hadn't realised that before, but I agree. This speaks in favour of actually pacing extended contests in some cases, by cutting back and forth between the contest and other scenes.
(I know the book explains that for longterm things like election campaigns, but I hadn't realised it might work with conflicts that are resolved in one go.)
QuoteSecond, you'll get faster, and more comfortable with all sorts of contests. This was your first session of play. And everyone learned how things work basically, right? It's not a tough system, it's consistent, and it doesn't have many exceptions to how to resolve things. So, eventually, it'll start to go really quickly, you'll find.
Yup, that's what I'm hoping. The simple contest mechanic is straightforward enough anyway; even in this first session I was thinking about scene framing and contest framing a lot more than about abstract rules stuff, which was a great relief after DnD.
QuoteExcept when it doesn't. Actually what happens is that the players will start to get good at it. In fact, watch for player #2 to actually "get it" suddenly at some point, and become really good at making things dramatic in contests. Just a prediction.
You can encourage this to get them there more quickly. First thing is to question augments. Don't say, "No, that won't work" ever, instead say, "Wha? How do you figer?" Then get this big smile on your face when they explain it.
If they take the time to explain it, give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's a bit of a stretch, so what? Reward players who try hard to make things interesting. Even if they're not always that successful. Because they'll become more successful when you do. They'll note that you kinda balked at this one, and will automatically tell you why it works the next time they stretch an augment. And they'll get more entertaining to make you buy in.
Ok, great. That actually plays much towards my preferred style of interaction with players - some times it works better than others, but it's what I try to do.
QuoteSo get entertaining back. Here's a neat fact. Don't worry about hurting the PCs. You can't kill them accidentally (if you think you can, then ask me why it's not true). In fact, HQ will have them loving to lose. So go to town on them. If they're not losing every other contest, you're taking it too easy on them. And sometimes, just squish them with something way bigger than they are. Puts things in perspective, and gives them something to shoot for. Play wild and carefree, and the players will too.
I might have to tread lightly on this for a bit while we all learn what to do with this particular dimension of HQ freedom. - Hm, or possibly that's another DnD habit of mine speaking here, not sure which.
The problem I see is that traditionally the group has focussed strongly on success as the core goal of the game. This is due to a number of things:
- the overall goal we've formulated at the outset of the campaign, i.e. win this war;
- of the kind of play DnD supports best, i.e. success rocks (and nets XP and items), failure sucks; and
- a tradition the group has grown into through playing in player #3's long-standing, wonderfully challenging, hard-Gamist DnD campaign.
Though one of our best and most memorable sessions in the Midnight game resulted from a big failure on the PCs'/players' part, when they spectacularly bungled an attack on some enemy forces they'd badly underestimated. The attack ended with one PC down, one PC surrendering to save that PC's life and the remaining two fleeing for their lives into unsafe, orc-infested territory. The session we played around the two captured PCs escaping and the two others sneaking back in to help was ultra-cool and charged with tension. Strangely enough, althought the players still talk about the session, it hasn't made them want to fail more often...
I suppose next time this comes up I need to stress that the entire session sprung from a "failure" situation.
Anything in particular I could try to ease the group over into a new mindset about success/failure and fun/unfun?
QuoteEventually it's all smiles and nods in contests. Might take some time to get there, but not too long. Realizing that it's on it's way, reliably, will help your confidence, too. You can already feel what it's trying to do, can't you. Just have some faith that it will. And it will.
Yup, I feel it. I also feel some trepidation and the occasional stab of guilt at dragging the group into a new rules system halfway through the campaign, and I know that with making a big change like that I take a risk. But I think it's worth it.
QuoteOK, on to the other issue, information. Here's the key. Play exactly like you did before, with only one exception. Give all the NPCs motives to spill the beans to the PCs. Don't infodump, no. Make the player feel that his hero is special because the NPC needs him to know where the dark cabal hangs out because the NPC wants revenge or whatever. The usual mode of play is that NPCs are obstacles to giving out information. Simply change that to it's opposite, and you'll be where you want to be in not time, and it'll be more than just plausible, it'll be dramatic, too. Because the heroes will get all tangled up with said NPCs on the way.
(Emphasis mine)
Ah, now I see! I had to think about this for a while before I could see what in this identifies my problem.
I've never run NPCs as obstacles to information by default, yet the flow of information in my games has always been somewhat lacking. All those NPCs sitting around waiting only to be asked ...
I simply hadn't given them good enough motives to spill the beans.
Quote from: StalkingBlueThe problem I see is that traditionally the group has focussed strongly on success as the core goal of the game. This is due to a number of things:
- the overall goal we've formulated at the outset of the campaign, i.e. win this war;
- of the kind of play DnD supports best, i.e. success rocks (and nets XP and items), failure sucks; and
- a tradition the group has grown into through playing in player #3's long-standing, wonderfully challenging, hard-Gamist DnD campaign.
The third point is the hardest to deal with, I think. Like a court case, nothing so influences the outcome of a game as precedent. Changing it is very difficult, but luckily the methods are usually pretty simple – and you've already started doing them. It sounds, from your posts, like you've already had discussions with the players about why you want to change this for your game. That's step number one. You've also started analyzing your own play style. That's step number two. Step number three is to keep doing both of those things. Keep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make. It takes a lot of energy and patience, as most of us have a tendency to collapse into what is familiar and default out, but if you keep at it and your players are willing it will work in the long run. You'll set new precedents, and then you'll be able to run from those.
The second point is also a solid one, and something that I've been encountering as I've started a new group into an A Song of Ice and Fire RPG with HQ rules. A lot of the players are D&D players (or White Wolf – which in this regard is often similar) and in our set-up session became visibly disturbed when I told them that they could count on losing contests in this game at least once a session or so. They immediately became concerned that their characters would be stripped of their cool, that their protagonist role would be removed, and that they'd never be able to advance or grow the characters. They also were afraid that losing would make them unable to effect of change the world, which leads into your first point – if we lose, how can we win the war?
With my group I was able to show them the way around this by going to the novels we were basing the game off of. However there are plenty of examples of how losing a contest does not mean you lose the war in film, literature, and history. Getting your players to look at these and really think about how they apply to their characters and the story they are telling may give you a chance to draw out the dramatic potential in failure. They also can help you as a GM by showing you how to stage failure so that it doesn't de-protagonize the PCs.
Let us look for a moment at Braveheart. It's a good match for your campaign, I think, being a movie about a poor man's rebellion against the more powerful, entrenched, and duplicitous powers that are unjustly ruling his country. (It also has more to do with fantasy than history, but I'll leave that rant aside.) It starts with a war and ends with Scotland free, but the whole meat and juice of the story is about the failures in between. William fails to save his wife, is defeated in a major battle, and is betrayed and then executed in a spectacularly brutal fashion. These are the kinds of failures that many players associate with being character, goal, or game ending – and yet they're the very source of the drama that makes the movie good. If old Willy had saved his wife, then stormed the keep, invaded England, tossed Longshanks off the ramparts, then made himself King it wouldn't have been nearly so interesting of a movie. If your players can see that, can see that it was the rebuilding after defeat that made the story and the hero, then you're on the right track.
Also, watch the scenes as a GM. In every case where Willy fails it is because of circumstances he couldn't control. He doesn't make a dork of himself in failure, he doesn't do things so stupid that you think he deserves to die, he doesn't ever chicken out, run away, or plain give up. When his wife is killed it's because he tried to get her out before him and only left when he thought she was safe. It was only because the enemy outnumbered him so badly that he lost – not because he made an error. When he's defeated in his major battle it is because people he trusted (because he had to) betrayed him and left him without support. It's fairly obvious that he would have won if those rat-fink nobles hadn't snuck out on him, and so the failure is thematic to the character's struggle of uniting Scotland as well as not being something that makes him look dumb. Finally, when he goes to the meeting where he is betrayed he goes in knowing that it could be a trap and knowing that he could end up dead because of it. He does it anyway because that is his role and because he knows that without trust his goals cannot be finished. The movie goes so far to support him in this that it makes him correct about the noble who had betrayed him before – Robert the Bruce really is on his side. It's not just that Willy lost, it's that Robby did too, and so Willy gets to be right about the one man that matters. Even in loss he was correct about the man that mattered, and went into the situation knowing it could happen.
In all of these cases it is the failure, not the success, that sets up the whole next arc of the story. Being able to show the PCs that, along with the fact that failure doesn't mean you're a looser, should go a long way to helping them re-orient away from the idea that they always have to win. There have been very few wars in the history of mankind that have been one victory after another. It's even a cliché at this point – battles and wars are not the same, because you can win one and lose the other.
Hi.
I have a question for the guys with lots of HQ experience.
RE: Stalking Blues question about hooking the Players into the "factions" and the still vague Goal of the War:
In addition to the suggestions made so far, could the players also add reasons or goals for WHY they are fighting the war onto their character sheets? I mean, could SB approach the players and say, "Listen, we haven't really talked about this yet, but is there something you're looking for from all this?"
They might then come up with some negotiated backstory elements that become attributes.
For example, a player comes up with, "Seeking the Brotherhood of the Sun." 13. Now, SB might not have a Brother of the Sun, but he might have a faction lying around that serves this function quite well and could easily slot it in. (Apparently they haven't made any appearearances yet.)
Or, "Last survivor of Village Ruined by Badguys 13," or what not.
I know this breaks a couple of continuity concerns in the transfer between games, but this is kind of how HQ is geared to work, right? If it is, then it seems that this transition period would be a perfect place to add in details, just like in a tv series. "Look, we haven't mentioned this one way or another yet, but here's a fact about me you don't know yet..." and so on. It's not a contradiction of what's come before. It's an expansion of what's already been revealed!
Essentiallly SB says, "Because of the nature of this game, we can expand who your characters are, what they want, and what matters to them. Let's do that, because it actually matters to this game."
So, first, I'm asking this to see if I'm getting the game right.
And second, I'm actually offering this kind of thinking for SB and his players if I'm getting the game right.
Best,
Christopher
Quote from: Christopher KubasikSo, first, I'm asking this to see if I'm getting the game right.
And second, I'm actually offering this kind of thinking for SB and his players if I'm getting the game right.
First, you are right. So right that I feel vaguely retarded for not having thought of it in my post.
Second, SB, he has a good point. If you can increase character and player buy in, getting them to add their own individual ideas and goals to the greater theme, then the SIS will grow.
Thanks Brand.
And StalkingBlue, this approach might make Player #3's eyes all shiny.
No, he won't be able to count off hexes for a fireball.
But...
"You mean, if I negotiate my guy to scene where he's hunting down the bastard who killed off my village, I get to augment my rolls with that attribute?"
"Yeah."
"Oh." Beat. "OH!"
Good luck,
Christopher
Quote from: StalkingBlueHm ok. I guess we might end up with a similar ratio. Right now I'm thinking I might prod my players gently to try extended contests a bit more often at first, until we get the hang of them. I at least would like to get a clearer view of what we can do with extended contests and where the potential for fun is for our group.
It's not that particular ratio that I was trying to say is important. My point is, rather, that what you need to do is simply move to the ratio that works best for your group. My personal example is that there are very few extended contests because that's what we like to have happen, generally. If extended contests seem to be bogging down your game, you should move in that direction as well.
That is, there's absolutely nothing about a given conflict in terms of the in-game situation that makes it "automatically" have to be one sort of conflict or another - I recently ran an entire war on one die roll, for instance, and in other instances I've had contests about verbal sparring at a party between two PCs (with no audience) be an extended contest. When a contest is one of the other should depend entirely on whether or not the players (including the narrator) feel as players that it should be. For whatever reason.
Let me reiterate that. The reasons for having an extended contest are entirely player reasons. Something about the situation has to say to
all of the participants in the game (all, not just the player with the hero in question and the narrator) that it demands special treatment.
QuoteWow, that's brilliant. I hadn't realised that before, but I agree. This speaks in favour of actually pacing extended contests in some cases, by cutting back and forth between the contest and other scenes.
(I know the book explains that for longterm things like election campaigns, but I hadn't realised it might work with conflicts that are resolved in one go.)
Sounds cool. While we have done extended contests that had breaks, they were like your election example (for instance Josh ran a courting contest for my character that lasted several sessions, and several in-game weeks, which had all sorts of actions in between rounds). But I think it would be cool to do a fight or the like this way.
Basically, I think the criteria for this would be to do it when the other players in the game are facing their own extended contests, or a series of other contests. That is, while Luke battles Vader and the Emperor, his friends are doing all sorts of contests on Endor. So, yeah, as long as what you're flashing to is as dramatic, I think it's a go.
Conversely, you could establish a contrast by flashing to a totally non-conflict situation. You know what I'm talking about. In the one scene the hero battles furiously and in the other his buddy relaxes with some light music, a book, and a snifter of brandy. There's a term for this from movies, IIRC. Perhaps Chris would know what it is. Juxtaposition, in any case.
QuoteI might have to tread lightly on this for a bit while we all learn what to do with this particular dimension of HQ freedom. - Hm, or possibly that's another DnD habit of mine speaking here, not sure which.
Follow Brand's suggestions here. I'll add a couple of notes.
First, like he says, do discuss what's going on to analyze play, but, whatever you do, don't bring up Forge terminology. Just use plain English. There's nothing worse than theory talk to really gum up the works. And you don't need it at all to establish a clear creative agenda throughout all the players. It's tempting to drop into the shorthand of GNS and the like, but it never works well with non-theorists.
Generally speaking, I think this article might have something pertinent to say to you: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9812
It's not targeted at your specific case, but I think tangentially hits some points that are pertinent.
Second, I have to reiterate what Brand said about protagonists and failure. Here's a little exercise. Ask them to name a really cool character who never fails. It simply can't be done. Even the Baddest-Assed of characters fail. In fact, one could argue that a character can't be a real protagonist without failure. Would Indiana Jones be half as cool if he wasn't constantly beat up?
I always comment that there's been this running contest through the years about who is the most beat up actor, Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson. William Wallace indeed. But what about Gibson's entry into fame in Mad Max? Who loses more than he does (to say nothing of all the beatdowns he suffers in the sequels - want to bet he bleeds in next year's installation)? How often does he get beaten up as Riggs in the Leathal Weapon series of films? Hell, in Payback, the entire premise is that he starts out having lost everything to the badguys.
For Ford, Han Solo gets frozen in corbamite. Think of how Roy Batty destroys Decker's hand in Blade Runner, or how his girlfriend has to save him from being killed by the big guy ("Wake up, time to die.") He and his family get all blowed up in Patriot Games. Hell, he even gets dirty as the president in Air Force One.
In fact, name a movie where these guys play somebody that nothing really, really terrible happens to. These are their bread and butter roles. Do I have to even mention Clint Eastwood?
And all of these guys are just the obvious physical examples of harm. Consider all the psychological harm they go through in these sorts of movies and in all of their other roles. Fer chrisakes Gibson did Hamlet, in which his Father has been murdered, but he can't prove it, his mother is sleeping with the murderer, he accidentally kills his girlfriend's father, and she subsequently committs suicide.
I mean, it's about sympathy. If you don't feel bad for the character, then you're not going to feel good when they finally kick ass. For the game in question, start with the question for the players, "What has your character lost, because of the evil?" That's right, start them off as having suffered defeat, and lots of it. To get to the source matierial for Midnight, think Faramir. What has he suffered? Loss of a beloved land? Loss of a brother? Loss of all of his friends on the battle field? Loss of respect and a father's love? In fact, just what does Faramir have left at the end - just what keeps him going? Just his own personal honor. So is it extra cool when he gets the girl at the end? Hell yeah.
So Chris is absolutely right. The answer to "What has your character lost to evil?" should be represented in numerical form right on the character sheet. For some heroes it should be "Lament's Dead Family" as his family relationship, representing that his family was slain by the forces of Izrador. For others it should be a "One Eyed 10w" flaw that represents how he lost his eye to Orc maraders. For another it's a selected personality trait of "Saddened by Damage to the Woods."
QuoteThough one of our best and most memorable sessions in the Midnight game resulted from a big failure on the PCs'/players' part, when they spectacularly bungled an attack on some enemy forces they'd badly underestimated.
That's your ammo right there. It's not just that this ended up causing more interesting plot to occur, that's only a part of it. Ask the players if it felt extra cool, when they finally righted the situation. Then ask them how they expect to get that feeling if their characters don't lose something first.
QuoteAnything in particular I could try to ease the group over into a new mindset about success/failure and fun/unfun?
First, have a frank discussion about something. How many times did you fudge the dice in D&D so that they'd win? I'm going to guess that it was a bunch. Why? Because you're one of those conscientious GMs who wants to insure that the "story" part of the game happens. I mean, it's no fun if the PCs get dead, is it? Or have to retreat in the final scene to heal up and come back later to take a second stab at it. Where's the story in that? So you over-ride the rules in order to ensure that the story is better. D&D doing little to support the creation of drama itself. Then ask them if they were aware of your fudging. When they say yes, and that it bothered them in some ways, then ask them if they'd like it if you'd never have to fudge again.
When they say yes (yes I'm making a hell of a lot of assumptions here), then ask them if they trust you to make sure that their characters are cool. Because, after all, this is what the fudging was about in the other system, where only success is cool. If they trust you, then they have to understand that you, as narrator in HQ have the power to assure that not only do their characters never die in the wrong situations, but that they fail with aplomb. Without altering the system at all.
As Brand points out, it's about making the character look good failing. When Indiana Jones fails to win a fight, is it because he fought badly? No, it's always "the die roll." This is an important mnenomic. The ability level of a character does not change in a contest, the only variable is the die roll. Think of this as a statement. The character always does as well as his ability level would indicate - any failure is the result of the randomness of situation that occurs. So, I fail to seduce the chick? Not because I'm not cool - the character sheet says I'm good at this. No, it's because some stupid waiter spilled soup on me at an inorpportune moment - that representing me rolling a 20.
Now, that's an oversimplification - what you really want to do is to make sure that occasionally it
is the character's "fault". But here what you want to do is highlight any failings that the character has. Maybe he failed to impress the girl because of the fear of spiders that he has on the character sheet. The player took it, so he must be willing to have that be a factor. It makes the character sympathetic again, human.
The only real sin is saying that the character lost the seduction contests because he acted stupidly. If it's not on the character sheet, then it's not a characteristic the player wants to see come out in play.
So, if the players trust you to let the dice fall where they may, and to make their character's look cool when they fail, then what's next? Here's an interesting thing. Ask them if they thought it was realistic that all of their opponents were always tailored to their ability level? That is, why is it that they only met orcs when they were first level, and ogres when they were fourth? Why didn't they meet up with any Ogres at first level?
Because in D&D that would mean no interesting player conflict to overcome (they'd just lose), and because in losing it would mean that they lost their characters. What fun would that be? In fact, since D&D is about resource management, the players don't encounter "equal" foes hardly ever. Instead they encounter a series of way less powerful foes designed to slowly drain them of those resources.
What's really cool about HQ is that you no longer have to worry about this. You can instead concentrate on what's interesting, plausible, realistic, or dramatic as a foe. You can put anything out there, and not worry about the players getting punished.
So put anything out there. That is, there are basically three sorts of conflicts in HQ, IMO. In the first, the opposition is low, and it exists merely to show off how cool the heroes are. Have them occassionally roll against something of "default" (14) resistance, or even lower, just to display what they do well. In the second, the opposition is about equal to the heroes. This is cool, because it means that it's a "real" fight. Close. With a real possibility that the heroes will come out defeated. Unlike "close" fights in D&D where the players are actually pretty much garunteed to win (or the actual close ones where they have a 50% chance of losing their character). The great thing is that, if you want, every contest can be a close one. Because failing is OK, and because Hero Points mean that the player gets some control over when they succeed and fail.
Lastly, there are the ones with a relatively high resistance. These are the ones that you use to establish trust on how cool it is to fail. Just stomp the heroes. And I mean stomp them. Find that "high level" beastie in the setting, and have it come along.
No, wait, skip that - looking at the setting, have a Night King come along. No, seriously. Rate him at what you think he should be rated at, which is probably far beyond the heroes to deal with (I'm thinking some abilities in the 5 to 6 mastery range? Maybe more?). But he's just passing through. He doesn't know about the PCs, and has way more important things to do than deal with them. He doesn't know that they're "rebels," but something about them makes him leery. So, lacking time to investigate more closely, he casts a spell on them to "mark" them as potential troublemakers. Don't tell the players what the spell is, just say that they have to try to resist his magic. When the players fail, apply the result as some penalty to the player resistance to being identified as trouble by all Night Kings in the future. If they get a Complete Failure, there is no roll in future situations like this, all Night Kings simply identify them as trouble automatically.
If they manage to succeed somehow...awesome. It might just happen if they stack enough abilities roll well, and spend HP. No matter what the result, the NK moves on to his important business. If the heroes do get all crazy after that, and try to attack him, then he casts a spell to capture them, and hands them over to an assistant to interrogate while he heads on to his more important business. Rule that a complete defeat does something like taking an arm off of a character, or a leg, or, more metaphysically a "Seared Soul" or something reminiscent of Frodo's injury on Weathertop. Give them an appropriate flaw to represent it (at an appropriate level, too, like 10W2 - yeah I'm serious). Or kill a follower involved. Or maybe they kill him, in which case now they're really in a heap of trouble, right?
This does a few things. First, if you'd wanted to, that could have been a D&D "Death Spell" or "Powerword Kill." I'm sure that these guys have access to magic like that, right? That is, you could have said that the contest was to survive. But you didn't. Instead you did something more plausible.
Second, they get to see that no matter how bad the result of a contest, even if they go so heroic as to attack an Uber-Bad-Guy it doesn't mean that they lose their characters. Instead, they now have all the more reason to hate the bad guys. They've lost something, and lost it in play (far more potent than losing something in the background). And they now see that you're not fudging die rolls - which means that even though this is a major metaplot baddie, that they could have killed it if they'd been prepared correctly. Losing like this actually gives the players some hope. Six Masteries seems like too much to overcome, but it's not - Josh, a player in my FTF game, nearly defeated a 10W5 resistance recently. Took a ritual with a ton of community support, and getting together all of the best stuff for it, but he had a shot at it. His failure was spectacular.
With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).
Lastly, they're in deeper trouble than they were before, meaning that more plot just has to happen. And they have some new goals like dispelling the mark, or regenerating an arm, or finding a dramatic replacement for the follower. The failure gives them something to do, something that the players will want badly.
QuoteI've never run NPCs as obstacles to information by default, yet the flow of information in my games has always been somewhat lacking. All those NPCs sitting around waiting only to be asked ...
I simply hadn't given them good enough motives to spill the beans.
Good analysis. Yes, don't ever trust that players will think to ask. Make sure that the NPCs tell, whether asked or not. Oh, give the players a chance to ask (makes em feel smart), but then have the NPCs grab the heroes and spill their guts if they're not asked.
What's key about this is that, not only do the players have more information to work on, but you can make the NPC demands interesting. Basically they should set up do or don't dillemas that say something about the character.
Mike
At the risk of people missing the post directly above this one, I'm posting again.
There are some other D&D assumptions that need to be checked at the door of HQ Midnight, IMO. For example, I was reading somthing that someone posted about the setting and their comment was something like "Lots to do without ever having to meet up with a Night King." Much less Izrador, I expect. I can see the reasoning - if they killed these guys, then they'd be unemployed as monster slayers, right?
Which left me thinking, what the hell?
The source material for the setting is LotR, right?
Izrador = Sauron
Night Kings = Nazgul
Orcs = Orcs
Right?
Let's see, what happens in the source story?
- Very human characters stop onslaught of huge army? Check.
- Hobbit and sheildmaiden of Rohan personaly slay the head Nazgul? Check.
- Two other Hobbits personally take on the incarnation of Sauron, by trying to destroy it. And do? Check.
This is my advice. Pick an approximate number of sessions that you want this game to go. You're goal is then to have Izrador dead by the end of that length. No other overall goal will suffice for this setting.
BTW, for the Dark Suns setting that Scott has worked up? Same thing, a complete saving of the world is what's appropriate? What, it's a D&D setting made to be infinitely adversarial to the PCs? Well, then why did they put all of the darkness/sacrifice/redemption theme into the setting? And why can't we use HQ to finally effect it?
Put another way, I wonder how many players actually got the chance to play out "winning" the Dark Sun campaign in D&D. And of those that did, how many played by the rules?
Thank goodness for Hero Quest.
I mean, I've played in a lot of settings like this. And when you start, you create a character, and think, "Huh, wouldn't it be cool if this guy someday ended up saving the world? Nah, he's just a newb, he'll never do that?" (sound like a kid from Tatoine, before his aunt and uncle get killed, anyone?) You might even want to play off this feeling, and not tell the players that your goal is for them to kill Izrador or whatever. But the point is that in D&D, the "Nah" is correct unless you plan to play the fifteen years it takes, fudging all the close contests it'll take to get the PC to high enough level to anti-climactically slay the big bad guy.
With HQ, it's more than plausible, it's going to happen if you play it out with that intent. Personally I would shoot for 40 sessions tops.
Mike
Quote from: Mike HolmesThis is my advice. Pick an approximate number of sessions that you want this game to go. You're goal is then to have Izrador dead by the end of that length. No other overall goal will suffice for this setting.
Well, you could also have the opposite -- to have all resistance stomped out. Or to bring all the gods back, so Izrador is only one among many...
But Mike's basic point here is solid. HQ can work for the kind of endless play where your freebooter characters sail around the world having adventures, but it works best for dramatic play where characters can bring about real and lasting change to the setting. It's much easier to see an extended contest as being worth it if the contest is over Zardix's redemption.
I'm reminded of a conversation I had last week with one of the players in my HQ Song of Ice and Fire game. It went like this:
Him, "So I have a small fleet right?"
"Right."
"And I know Danny, right?"
"Yep"
"So what happens if I give her and her Dorthaki a ride across the narrow sea? Wouldn't that fuck up the world?"
"Well first you have to do it, which is going to be a big contest."
"Yea, I'd think so."
"And if you fail, things get interesting. But if you succeed then they get even more interesting. I mean really, what happens if Danny lands in Westros just after Rob dies?"
"Jebus. That'd... wait, are you saying I could actually do that?"
"Yes."
"I think I'm going to like this game."
Quote from: Brand_RobinsThe third point is the hardest to deal with, I think. Like a court case, nothing so influences the outcome of a game as precedent. Changing it is very difficult, but luckily the methods are usually pretty simple – and you've already started doing them. It sounds, from your posts, like you've already had discussions with the players about why you want to change this for your game. That's step number one.
You bet. I've also started drifting the game from its original hard-Gamist approach (trying to cater to what I perceived to be the group's wishes) towards a style I'm more comfortable with. That wasn't too appreciated by some players who wanted "their DnD" and I lost two players in the process - but I've had incredibly rewarding feedback, too, sometimes from quite unexpected directions.
QuoteYou've also started analyzing your own play style. That's step number two. Step number three is to keep doing both of those things.
Keep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make. It takes a lot of energy and patience, as most of us have a tendency to collapse into what is familiar and default out, but if you keep at it and your players are willing it will work in the long run. You'll set new precedents, and then you'll be able to run from those. [/quote]
I mean to. Thanks for the encouraging words. Your examples of "cool failure" especially are helping me a lot.
Quote...I told them that they could count on losing contests in this game at least once a session or so. They immediately became concerned that their characters would be stripped of their cool, that their protagonist role would be removed, and that they'd never be able to advance or grow the characters. They also were afraid that losing would make them unable to effect of change the world, which leads into your first point – if we lose, how can we win the war?
Yup exactly. These two things seem to be linked to one another - and looking at it purely from the paradigm of the DnD system, rightly so.
QuoteWith my group I was able to show them the way around this by going to the novels we were basing the game off of.
The published Midnight material has "heroes" always losing. The game developers stress on every other page that even if the PCs happen to win a victory, they need to be shown that the price they and/or others pay for it was higher than the gain. In Midnight as written, a contest lost is a failure - and a contest won is also a failure, potentially a worse one.
I've warned my players about this from the outset and we all agree that "Losing Sucks and Winning Also Sucks" isn't our game - but, as I'm only realising now, discarding the Midnight story paradigm has left us with a bit of a vacuum story-wise.
It isn't as we haven't been talking about what the game _should_ be about, there's lots of goals - but somehow the dimension of "how is this going to be a cool story" is missing a bit.
QuoteHowever there are plenty of examples of how losing a contest does not mean you lose the war in film, literature, and history. Getting your players to look at these and really think about how they apply to their characters and the story they are telling may give you a chance to draw out the dramatic potential in failure. They also can help you as a GM by showing you how to stage failure so that it doesn't de-protagonize the PCs.
Yup you're right, I need to build a pool of "lose battle, win war" events from stories (fictional or non).
QuoteLet us look for a moment at Braveheart. It's a good match for your campaign, I think, being a movie about a poor man's rebellion against the more powerful, entrenched, and duplicitous powers that are unjustly ruling his country. (It also has more to do with fantasy than history, but I'll leave that rant aside.)
Agreed. (And agreed. Then again, it's a Mel Gibson film, so what did we expect...)
Which makes me think. Maybe I've been overlooking a "cool tragedy" factor in our game. The players have always tended to say that they expected their PCs to die horribly.
Part of that was because Midnight doesn't give easy access to resurrection spells, which are needed on a daily basis in default DnD games at higher levels - and the way we were playing Midnight, combat was happening a lot.
But there might also be an underlying pattern that contributed to this "we will all die" view, in the sense of "We will win this war even if we all die". If that makes any sense. Something I'll need to sound out my players about.
QuoteAlso, watch the scenes as a GM. In every case where Willy fails it is because of circumstances he couldn't control. He doesn't make a dork of himself in failure, he doesn't do things so stupid that you think he deserves to die, he doesn't ever chicken out, run away, or plain give up.
Hm, not sure how I could prevent players from making stupid mistakes at times. (I do make stupid mistakes when I play, not meaning to sound superior.) :)
Regarding situations s character can't control, I've been pretty careful about how I present challenges so that players wouldn't feel cheated and grow paranoid. My players have had some pretty bad roleplaying experiences in other groups. I've heard GM abuse-of-power stories from some of them, which are all the scarier because the players in question didn't notice the abusive dimension, they were merely "describing that GM's style". I'm not exactly a GM known for screwing over players, yet it's taken me an eternity to build a comfortable level of trust with this group.
The flip side of all this is that many, even the majority of defeats the PCs have suffered in this game have in fact resulted from a bad decision on the players' part.
Being very consistent in this was the only way I could see to work towards player trust, and I still wouldn't feel comfortable placing the group into inescapable "no-win" situations, at least not without asking for consent first.
That doesn't mean I don't use twists or surprises (I do), but those I've used have been kinda inflated in the players' perception. For instance, after two instances in which intel for missions behind enemy lines turned out to be outdated or inaccurate once the PCs arrived at their target location, the NPC who offered those missions and gave the intel was labelled "incompetent" and "untrustworthy" by most of the group, and one player (who has since left our group) refused to have any further dealings with this NPC. In both cases the PCs realised in time they were acting on the wrong information and adapted, so thinking in challenge terms they beat the challenge, and thinking in story terms they dealt with an unexpected turn of events in a cool and dramatic fashion. Yet there's only one player in the group who's never had any problem with this at all.
I'm saying this not to complain - in many ways this is the most exciting game I've ever run and the players have a big part in that - but to try and describe one way I feel hampered a bit in providing what I'd call opportunities.
Maybe I'm painting myself into a corner needlessly here. Is there something big I'm overlooking?
Quote from: Christopher KubasikIn addition to the suggestions made so far, could the players also add reasons or goals for WHY they are fighting the war onto their character sheets? I mean, could SB approach the players and say, "Listen, we haven't really talked about this yet, but is there something you're looking for from all this?"
They might then come up with some negotiated backstory elements that become attributes.
...
I know this breaks a couple of continuity concerns in the transfer between games, but this is kind of how HQ is geared to work, right? If it is, then it seems that this transition period would be a perfect place to add in details, just like in a tv series. "Look, we haven't mentioned this one way or another yet, but here's a fact about me you don't know yet..." and so on. It's not a contradiction of what's come before. It's an expansion of what's already been revealed!
Thanks for reminding me about goals. I was getting so fixated on how to explain and sell Personality Traits and Relationships to my playsers that goals were drifting into the background a bit.
Including goals won't actually involve too much of a continuity break. Two of the characters have been in play for months and each has relationships with certain NPCs and mid-term goals; the NPCs and goals differ between the PCs, which will be so cool for HQ now they can be quantified and actually used in play.
That said I also won't mind players introducing new elements. I've been pretty flexible about background and goal changes in the past, HQ should only make it easier.
QuoteEssentiallly SB says, "Because of the nature of this game, we can expand who your characters are, what they want, and what matters to them. Let's do that, because it actually matters to this game."
I so agree. Thanks. :-)
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik"You mean, if I negotiate my guy to scene where he's hunting down the bastard who killed off my village, I get to augment my rolls with that attribute?"
Oh, they got that all right. Though the vibe I got from the two more Gamist minded players in the group was more of a faintly superior "
This is how easy it is to break this system?!" - Only looking at one dimension here, mind you. I don't think either is out to break the game.
Quote from: StalkingBlueThe flip side of all this is that many, even the majority of defeats the PCs have suffered in this game have in fact resulted from a bad decision on the players' part.
I'm going to tentatively suggest that this is, once again, an outgrowth of D&D gamist play. Even the rhetoric of the setup and statement has a degree of goal-oriented play assumption behind it, i.e. "the bad decisions" almost certainly being tactical decisions made for reasons of misunderstanding or misestimating the nature of the conflict/opposition and the paths needed to achieve victory. This setup assumes that the players are trying to win, that is that they are trying to overcome a given situation, usually with minimal damage and cost to their characters and their resources. The bad decisions they make come because they take to much damage and/or lose too many resources in a way that makes them unable to overcome the challenge at hand.
When you get into a Nar/SIS/HQ style game this has the propensity to up and vanish. Partly this is due to the system. Even a "bad plan" can come off a success due to augmentation and HP usage, and even the best plan can go all to crap if you roll a 20. D&D assumes a certain resource allocation mode of play, HQ doesn't, and so a lot of the bad decisions around system control and step-on-up style threat assessment simply ceases to be relevant.
It's like Mike pointed out in one of his posts. In D&D a confrontation with a Night King is certain to be doom for the PC group, so even choosing to do anything other than run and hide is a bad decision. In HQ, otoh, a confrontation with a Night King is not going to kill the PCs, and may actually give them more drama and story potential, and so isn't inherently a bad decision at all. Similarly, a group of 1st level characters raiding the Orc stronghold with bad plans in D&D may be a death sentence, but in HQ its just going to result in another challenge to overcome and more drama.
Now this doesn't mean that the character's won't suffer defeats from bad choices – but it is more likely that the defeat will be from bad choices by the character, rather than bad choices by the player. The game ceases to be about the players making the right decision on using their 5 foot step, or how many arrows to bring, and starts to be about what the players want to push and what the characters do with their personal choices. To go back to the Braveheart example, if we were to imaging that the movie was an RPG, is there any real doubt that Willy's player knew that near the end of the movie when he went to meet Robert the Bruce that he was going to be betrayed somehow? The character was warned by his friends, acknowledges the risk in his speech, and goes anyway – that all speaks of a character doing something that the author/player knows is going to lead to doom. In most RPGs this would be a bad choice, leading to defeat. In HQ it's a good choice, leading to drama. Also, in the HQ system it's possible that Willy could have won and escaped/converted the Bruce. The reason he got caught wasn't because of a bad plan, it was a bad roll.
Also, there are very few situations in HQ in which there is a real no win situation on its face. I've had players overcome vast odds with lucky rolls, lots of augments, and good tactics. (The tactics, btw, are things like you talked about before – real tactics rather than the resource allocation tactics of D&D.) You may toss your Night King 10m6 at the PCs and find them kicking his ass – I know I have.
Lot's to cover, and I haven't even gotten stuff back on my post yet. :-)
(Edited to note the cross post with Brand - almost deserves a "Jinx!")
QuoteI've also started drifting the game from its original hard-Gamist approach (trying to cater to what I perceived to be the group's wishes) towards a style I'm more comfortable with. That wasn't too appreciated by some players who wanted "their DnD" and I lost two players in the process - but I've had incredibly rewarding feedback, too, sometimes from quite unexpected directions.
Oh, so the "Creeping Up" rant was actually more pertinent than I thought.
Realize this. The players who are giving you the positive feedback are already down with the entire mode of play. Meaning that there's no reason to creep with these guys. It won't hurt anything to do so, but you could have skipped all the creeping.
QuoteKeep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make.
The good news is that you eventually get into a groove and no longer have to discuss it much if at all. In any case, don't overdo it. If it's not interesting to the people discussing, don't force it. You only get good feedback when people want to talk about it. Better no feedback than bad feedback.
QuoteIt isn't as we haven't been talking about what the game _should_ be about, there's lots of goals - but somehow the dimension of "how is this going to be a cool story" is missing a bit.
This is one area that you can over-discuss for sure. One thing that's critical to avoid is any actual discussion of what might happen in play. "Playing before you play" makes the actual act rather dull when it happens.
QuoteThe players have always tended to say that they expected their PCs to die horribly.
This should happen, then. But "horribly" just means "more sympathetically." It means that the death should make a statement of some sort strongly. Even if that statement is only one of hopelessness. Which is not the same as a thematically senseless death.
You never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.
QuoteHm, not sure how I could prevent players from making stupid mistakes at times.
You already have. You're playing HQ.
This is one of those difficult concepts. The player is not the character, and in HQ this means that the character can fail, and the player "win." That is, doing "stupid things" in HQ should be encouraged. Rather, the player should be encouraged to do the dramatic thing, no matter what makes sense "tactically." Because he just might win. And if he doesn't, losing in HQ is fun anyhow. There are no bad results for the player.
So HQ makes all decisions good ones. You can't go wrong.
We'll get to PC smackdowns in your reply to me.
QuoteThough the vibe I got from the two more Gamist minded players in the group was more of a faintly superior "This is how easy it is to break this system?!" - Only looking at one dimension here, mind you. I don't think either is out to break the game.
Well, this is problematic because it is indicative of a Gamism perspective.
Here's how you alter this. Next time the player gets into a contest, find some ability that he didn't to augment with, and which makes sense to you, and ask him if he wants to augment with it. That is, help him discover more and more augments. Once they see that the idea is to find all the ones that apply, then it'll dawn on them that they're not trying to win. The augmenting is merely about making the character seem cooler in the current situation.
Mike
Quote from: Mike HolmesMy point is, rather, that what you need to do is simply move to the ratio that works best for your group.
...
When a contest is one of the other should depend entirely on whether or not the players (including the narrator) feel as players that it should be. For whatever reason.
I got that, thanks. I'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads). I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me. I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction. In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think. So thanks for that.
QuoteLet me reiterate that. The reasons for having an extended contest are entirely player reasons. Something about the situation has to say to all of the participants in the game (all, not just the player with the hero in question and the narrator) that it demands special treatment.
Thanks for clarifying, this was excactly what I'd have asked next. :)
QuoteConversely, you could establish a contrast by flashing to a totally non-conflict situation. You know what I'm talking about. In the one scene the hero battles furiously and in the other his buddy relaxes with some light music, a book, and a snifter of brandy. There's a term for this from movies, IIRC. Perhaps Chris would know what it is. Juxtaposition, in any case.
That's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion. That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)
QuoteFirst, like he says, do discuss what's going on to analyze play, but, whatever you do, don't bring up Forge terminology. Just use plain English. There's nothing worse than theory talk to really gum up the works. And you don't need it at all to establish a clear creative agenda throughout all the players. It's tempting to drop into the shorthand of GNS and the like, but it never works well with non-theorists.
Hell no, I wouldn't. Two players read here occasionally, and the third and one ex-player have picked up disjointed bits of jargon from one of them, and (quite understandably IMO) hate it. "Those guys who need a Social Contract to game" is a running gag in our group.
To be quite honest, I have to think hard to explain myself in Forge jargon even on these boards. The reason I've started using it here is that in my earlier experience, no one seemed to understand quite what I was talking about when I wasn't using GNS terms.
QuoteGenerally speaking, I think this article might have something pertinent to say to you: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9812
I'll be checking it out, thanks.
QuoteSecond, I have to reiterate what Brand said about protagonists and failure. Here's a little exercise. Ask them to name a really cool character who never fails.
Oh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would. Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.
Again, thanks for tons of cool examples.
QuoteI always comment that there's been this running contest through the years about who is the most beat up actor, Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson.
Priceless.
QuoteFor the game in question, start with the question for the players, "What has your character lost, because of the evil?" That's right, start them off as having suffered defeat, and lots of it.
Another interesting point that's making me think. You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs. In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities. So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).
After a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.
Which goes to show how powerful our shared imagination of this game world is. I wasn't exactly working hard to make the world a hopeless place, but it's coming across that way strongly enough for people to build a contrast to it. All the players "voted" that way with characters they made at varying points in time, and all went on to play their new PCs as much more hope-inspiring and charismatic than the original ones, which led to some very cool story developments that wouldn't have been likely to happen with the old PCs.
So frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it. Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this. I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".
Heck, maybe that's great anyway: looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".
QuoteAsk the players if it felt extra cool, when they finally righted the situation. Then ask them how they expect to get that feeling if their characters don't lose something first.
They have answered the first question many times. I'm afraid I've never asked them the second.
Not that they needed to be asked about no. 1...
QuoteFirst, have a frank discussion about something. How many times did you fudge the dice in D&D so that they'd win? ...
Erm, zero. I always make all rolls in the open and I never fudge.
Hence, not a good example, although ... hm, let me think:
QuoteI mean, it's no fun if the PCs get dead, is it? Or have to retreat in the final scene to heal up and come back later to take a second stab at it.
A retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round. Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.
PC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments. We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.
That said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them. The astonishing thing is that people kept coming back with big investments in new characters, even though they didn't expect them to live long - but it was beginning to wear on all of us. So, while I didn't want to take the pressure off completely, I ended up giving players limited amounts of Fate Points to turn death into a near-death experience; this basically meant PCs would only die if left behind in enemy hands. We discussed it and the group agreed to both of it: they wanted to have some possibilty of death in the game, and they liked the idea of FPs, especially since it wasn't a failsafe no-die mechanism.
So, erm, two things here:
I suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.
And isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.
Quote...then ask them if they trust you to make sure that their characters are cool. Because, after all, this is what the fudging was about in the other system, where only success is cool.
Well yes, I suppose that's what my Fate Points were about in the other system. So your general line of reasoning works for me.
QuoteIf they trust you, then they have to understand that you, as narrator in HQ have the power to assure that not only do their characters never die in the wrong situations, but that they fail with aplomb. Without altering the system at all.
Very good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.
QuoteAs Brand points out, it's about making the character look good failing.
I think I have practice in that - it was part of my learning to deal with a group who started out with an average trust investment of near zero.
QuoteNow, that's an oversimplification - what you really want to do is to make sure that occasionally it is the character's "fault". But here what you want to do is highlight any failings that the character has. Maybe he failed to impress the girl because of the fear of spiders that he has on the character sheet. The player took it, so he must be willing to have that be a factor. It makes the character sympathetic again, human.
And it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail. I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.
QuoteAsk them if they thought it was realistic that all of their opponents were always tailored to their ability level?
They weren't. :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.
QuoteBecause in D&D that would mean no interesting player conflict to overcome (they'd just lose), and because in losing it would mean that they lost their characters. What fun would that be? In fact, since D&D is about resource management, the players don't encounter "equal" foes hardly ever. Instead they encounter a series of way less powerful foes designed to slowly drain them of those resources.
Hey, DnD isn't that dumb a system! You're talking about traditional dungeon crawling scenarios, but that's not the only kind of play DnD supports. You can set up really cool tactical challenges that don't have to consist in kicking in doors and hacking to death everything that moves. They usually involve judging how dangerous a given location/terrain/opponent is going to be, and working with the circumstances and resources available to the group to deal with the challenge, granted. But the four-encounters-then-rest mode isn't the only way to play DnD and we weren't playing it that way.
Ahem. Here I am defending DnD now? Strange that.
QuoteWhat's really cool about HQ is that you no longer have to worry about this. You can instead concentrate on what's interesting, plausible, realistic, or dramatic as a foe. You can put anything out there, and not worry about the players getting punished.
I don't entirely see yet how I'm going to stop worrying about PCs getting punished. Not all scenarios involve contact with the enemy, but this being a game about a war, many or most do. In this case, when the PCs lose they'll likely be captured and/or killed by the enemy. We've had one very tense session involving two PCs escaping and two helping them escape, but we can't do that every other session, it would just become silly.
I know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that. In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.
QuoteSo put anything out there...
I've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.
In other situations, say, interactions with friendly / neutral NPCs or with other political factions that fight on the same side in the war as the PCs, I've staid away from "likely failure" situations completely, because of the group perception that "Failure Sucks" and because of the various trust issues I was working to overcome. When things happened that the players likely wouldn't be able to affect, I had it happen off-camera and in ways that made clear that the PCs couldn't have been involved, so it was clear that it wasn't the players' "fault".
So I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war. Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape. Does that make sense?
Yes and I also want to hear if it doesn't. :-) I'm not pretending I'm the one person in the group who's not caught up in the "Failure Sucks and is Dangerous" paradigm.
QuoteBecause failing is OK,
Working on that...
Quoteand because Hero Points mean that the player gets some control over when they succeed and fail.
We've had a similar mechanism with FPs in the old system, so that part of the transition should hopefully be smooth.
Quote...looking at the setting, have a Night King come along....
...he's just passing through. He doesn't know about the PCs, and has way more important things to do than deal with them. He doesn't know that they're "rebels," but something about them makes him leery. So, lacking time to investigate more closely, he casts a spell on them to "mark" them as potential troublemakers...
...
No matter what the result, the NK moves on to his important business.
Fair enough. All of this I could have done in DnD, basically. Why didn't I?
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.
- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.
- The changes to the magic system and the dearth of magic items in Midnight as opposed to default DnD meant that players tended to feel deprived of safety and tactical options.
- And one other thing. When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...". But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him. And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen". Now where's that from? Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe. If I did, I'm now scared. I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't. Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".
QuoteRule that a complete defeat does something like taking an arm off of a character, or a leg, or, more metaphysically a "Seared Soul" or something reminiscent of Frodo's injury on Weathertop.
Here's another of my problems. So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party". I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.
A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.
QuoteGive them an appropriate flaw to represent it (at an appropriate level, too, like 10W2 - yeah I'm serious). Or kill a follower involved. Or maybe they kill him, in which case now they're really in a heap of trouble, right?
Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.
Unless I can first convince the players that the game will still be fun with seriously challenged PC, I can't see how I could deliberately use that kind of thing. To convince them, I have to really believe it myself first, of course. :)
QuoteThat is, you could have said that the contest was to survive. But you didn't. Instead you did something more plausible.
Of course. We did that anyway. That's one of the things DnD supports: you can always decide how to frame the challenge.
QuoteSecond, they get to see that no matter how bad the result of a contest, even if they go so heroic as to attack an Uber-Bad-Guy it doesn't mean that they lose their characters. Instead, they now have all the more reason to hate the bad guys. They've lost something, and lost it in play (far more potent than losing something in the background).
Except that I don't see a player wanting to keep a seriously challenged PC. I admit, it's my failing in not seeing clearly enough how to change my own mindset on this, much less theirs.
QuoteAnd they now see that you're not fudging die rolls - which means that even though this is a major metaplot baddie, that they could have killed it if they'd been prepared correctly. Losing like this actually gives the players some hope.
Yup - which is one reason I've never fudged die rolls.
QuoteSix Masteries seems like too much to overcome, but it's not - Josh, a player in my FTF game, nearly defeated a 10W5 resistance recently. Took a ritual with a ton of community support, and getting together all of the best stuff for it, but he had a shot at it. His failure was spectacular.
That's a great example, I'm beginning to see now. To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.
Ok, that's cool. I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them. When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.
Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.
QuoteWith a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).
Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)
QuoteLastly, they're in deeper trouble than they were before, meaning that more plot just has to happen. And they have some new goals like dispelling the mark, or regenerating an arm, or finding a dramatic replacement for the follower. The failure gives them something to do, something that the players will want badly.
Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.
(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic. Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped. There's no reason that can't change when we convert. I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)
QuoteGood analysis. Yes, don't ever trust that players will think to ask. Make sure that the NPCs tell, whether asked or not. Oh, give the players a chance to ask (makes em feel smart), but then have the NPCs grab the heroes and spill their guts if they're not asked.
LOL thanks.
QuoteWhat's key about this is that, not only do the players have more information to work on, but you can make the NPC demands interesting. Basically they should set up do or don't dillemas that say something about the character.
Examples would be much appreciated. :)
Ouff, big cross-post. (Plus distractions from a chain of phone calls unrelated to one another.) Jinx indeed!
And again, lots from you guys for me to think about. Work permitting, I'll post replies to tonight's new posts some time tomorrow.
Quote from: StalkingBlueI'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads). I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me. I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction. In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think. So thanks for that.
You're welcome. But I really should clarify something. If you ask Scott, whether I actually ask for feedback like this, he'd probably have to tell you that I don't. That is, my rhetoric probably makes my playstyle sound like there's all sorts of metagame chat going on.
In some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?
Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.
Even in IRC this happens. For example, I'll say, "Sounds like an extended contest to me, no?" And some player will type, "I'm having fun tonight." Not a direct answer, but they're acting positively in the context of the question. In a FTF game there'll be smiles, etc. Not everyone will answer, and a tacit response that seems favorable is all you need to go.
If they don't want to do an extended contests, they'll let you know with "Eh, I suppose" or just a frown.
This is all good, because it means that you can ascertain quickly what makes sense. This works because, having played with the group you're getting an idea of what they like from previous times that you've asked. So it gets more obvious to you when to even ask. And the responses can be even more quick and subtle. At full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.
Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.
QuoteThat's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion. That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)
Oh, yes, yes. That would rock in play. I only rarely get that artistic, but it's great to go for it.
QuoteOh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would. Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.
It is just "D&D", or classic gamism. In that mode, character failure is player failure - they didn't play the game well enough. So it makes sense to feel that way. The problem is that people expect that from all RPGs, not understanding that there are other ways to approach them.
QuoteAnother interesting point that's making me think. You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs. In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities. So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).
Excellent. This is precisely why I apply HQ to this sort of setting myself. There's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens). Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.
QuoteAfter a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.
Excellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?
QuoteSo frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it. Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this. I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".
Heck, maybe that's great anyway: looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".
Sounds right to me. Failure is what you learn from. Failure's are inevitable, but it's determination that counts in the long run. Etc, etc.
I mean, to be cliche, haven't you always wanted to fight an impossible battle against incredible odds? Sounds like the perfect thing here. In all of these stories there are moments where the heroes think about hanging it up. The most stirring moments are when they realize that they have to do the right thing. Think Han Solo's return to the Death Star battle. "It's suicide." Think Leia had anything to do with that?
QuoteA retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round. Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.
You're getting the idea. There's a pace that's dramatic. Sure sometimes that involves second shots, even requires it. But you know it when you feel it. Sometimes another shot is just cheap.
QuotePC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments. We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.
Of course. But in both of these cases it's the players creating the theme after the fact. What statement did the deaths in question make?
I'm not against PC death, I'm against lame PC deaths. As you say...
QuoteThat said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.
QuoteI suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.
Heh, actually it's what we call drift. Which is altering the game to match your needs. Which is what fudging is, too, just done on the fly.
Note that both are the right thing to do, Fudging, drifting...you're just trying to get the game you want. Fortunately HQ is going to fit you like a glove, I think.
QuoteAnd isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.
I think you're right. The more I read, the more I think your group is far past ready for HQ.
I think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.
QuoteVery good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.
Good, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.
QuoteAnd it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail. I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.
Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.
BTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.
QuoteThey weren't. :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.
The point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.
QuoteHey, DnD isn't that dumb a system!
Indeed. But even in a single battle set up, the question isn't whether you can survive round one, it's whether you can survive round ten. The point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.
QuoteI know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that. In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.
This is a function of the fact that fighting is where the mechanical focus of D&D lies. It simply is the most interesting thing to do in D&D. Not so in HQ, where all conflict is equal.
That all said, there's nothing wrong with fighting. Fight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?
For example, if there's a particular fight at the gate of a keep, the contest is really about getting inside, I'll bet. So what does failure mean? They don't get inside. Next fight they're trying to get past the guards of a magic gem. Failure is getting repelled. Next fight is to escape along the rout planned. Failure is having to go the long way back.
Note that these failures are rather dull, and don't follow the "Failure means more conflict" rule. In the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.
Three battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long. Here's my handy-dandy little mnemonic device, "There are no combats in HQ, only fights." "Combat" is the problem here, in that you're used to conflicts involving arms meaning only certain possible goals and outcomes as they do in all RPGs. Don't do combats to see who dies, have fights as a means to accomplish other stuff.
Consider this. 99% of all HQ contests end in something other than a complete defeat. Meaning that that the conditions that would even allow PC death (don't make it mandatory, tho), by the rules, are incredibly rare. So you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.
If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.
QuoteI've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.
Well, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.
IOW, this is precisely the same in both games, in terms of player response. Thing is, in HQ other plans can with the day. Combat does not have a privileged place, and a defeat in some other arena can suffice as well or better.
QuoteSo I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war. Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape. Does that make sense?
Well, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.
QuoteFair enough. All of this I could have done in DnD, basically. Why didn't I?
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.
This is no longer true, however, right?
Quote- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.
Ooh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.
It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.
Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.
Quote- And one other thing. When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...". But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him. And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen". Now where's that from? Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe. If I did, I'm now scared. I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't. Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".
First, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.
Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide. Drama is about placing things in jeopardy, not about percent chance to fail. Put your characters in the line of the worst the world has to offer. And if it all works out, you'll get something that has some of he coolness of the Lord of the Rings in terms of drama. Have them only bump into more orcs and trolls, and risk it becoming dull, dull, dull.
Doesn't have to be a Night King, make it a dragon. Or whatever seems plausible to you. All I'm saying is that confronting Izrador hissownself isn't out of the question. It's your game world.
QuoteHere's another of my problems. So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party". I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.
A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.
You're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same,
and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.
Yeah, it's a different mindset.
No magic in the game that allows regrowth of limbs? No magical prosthetics? The character is good for nothing else? What if he's the wizard (well, what passes in Midnight)? Will the loss of a leg really hamper him? What if he's the merchant?
What, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...
QuoteAgain, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.
So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.
Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?
In any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.
QuoteOf course. We did that anyway. That's one of the things DnD supports: you can always decide how to frame the challenge.
Well, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.
In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?
QuoteThat's a great example, I'm beginning to see now. To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.
Right, remember in the example that the NK only wants to mark them originally, since he doesn't know who they are. Again, it's a question of the goals for the contest.
QuoteOk, that's cool. I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them. When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.
Definitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.
But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust. Instead, if you give them the choice, they'll run away from more powerful stuff. You want one of the PCs to go nuts and attack a Night King. That's drama. You want all the other PCs to be pissed about it. But the players secretly loving it. Knowing that no matter what the PC does, the players won't be punished.
QuoteWho knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.
Cripes, that's a whole nother post. Actually I should link you to one of the threads where I've already explained this...
QuoteQuoteWith a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).
Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)
Definitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"
Or does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)
QuoteOk. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.
Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.
If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.
Quote(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic. Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped. There's no reason that can't change when we convert. I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)
Again, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.
QuoteExamples would be much appreciated. :)
That's a whole 'nother post as well. Check out "Bangs" under Sorcerer. Or start the thread, and I'll get to it when my typing fingers have recuperated.
Mike
Quote from: StalkingBlueI'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads). I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me. I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction. In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think. So thanks for that.
You're welcome. But I really should clarify something. If you ask Scott, whether I actually ask for feedback like this, he'd probably have to tell you that I don't. That is, my rhetoric probably makes my playstyle sound like there's all sorts of metagame chat going on.
In some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?
Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.
Even in IRC this happens. For example, I'll say, "Sounds like an extended contest to me, no?" And some player will type, "I'm having fun tonight." Not a direct answer, but they're acting positively in the context of the question. In a FTF game there'll be smiles, etc. Not everyone will answer, and a tacit response that seems favorable is all you need to go.
If they don't want to do an extended contests, they'll let you know with "Eh, I suppose" or just a frown.
This is all good, because it means that you can ascertain quickly what makes sense. This works because, having played with the group you're getting an idea of what they like from previous times that you've asked. So it gets more obvious to you when to even ask. And the responses can be even more quick and subtle. At full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.
Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.
QuoteThat's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion. That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)
Oh, yes, yes. That would rock in play. I only rarely get that artistic, but it's great to go for it.
QuoteOh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would. Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.
It is just "D&D", or classic gamism. In that mode, character failure is player failure - they didn't play the game well enough. So it makes sense to feel that way. The problem is that people expect that from all RPGs, not understanding that there are other ways to approach them.
QuoteAnother interesting point that's making me think. You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs. In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities. So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).
Excellent. This is precisely why I apply HQ to this sort of setting myself. There's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens). Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.
QuoteAfter a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.
Excellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?
QuoteSo frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it. Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this. I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".
Heck, maybe that's great anyway: looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".
Sounds right to me. Failure is what you learn from. Failure's are inevitable, but it's determination that counts in the long run. Etc, etc.
I mean, to be cliche, haven't you always wanted to fight an impossible battle against incredible odds? Sounds like the perfect thing here. In all of these stories there are moments where the heroes think about hanging it up. The most stirring moments are when they realize that they have to do the right thing. Think Han Solo's return to the Death Star battle. "It's suicide." Think Leia had anything to do with that?
QuoteA retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round. Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.
You're getting the idea. There's a pace that's dramatic. Sure sometimes that involves second shots, even requires it. But you know it when you feel it. Sometimes another shot is just cheap.
QuotePC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments. We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.
Of course. But in both of these cases it's the players creating the theme after the fact. What statement did the deaths in question make?
I'm not against PC death, I'm against lame PC deaths. As you say...
QuoteThat said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.
QuoteI suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.
Heh, actually it's what we call drift. Which is altering the game to match your needs. Which is what fudging is, too, just done on the fly.
Note that both are the right thing to do, Fudging, drifting...you're just trying to get the game you want. Fortunately HQ is going to fit you like a glove, I think.
QuoteAnd isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.
I think you're right. The more I read, the more I think your group is far past ready for HQ.
I think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.
QuoteVery good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.
Good, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.
QuoteAnd it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail. I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.
Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.
BTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.
QuoteThey weren't. :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.
The point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.
QuoteHey, DnD isn't that dumb a system!
Indeed. But even in a single battle set up, the question isn't whether you can survive round one, it's whether you can survive round ten. The point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.
QuoteI know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that. In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.
This is a function of the fact that fighting is where the mechanical focus of D&D lies. It simply is the most interesting thing to do in D&D. Not so in HQ, where all conflict is equal.
That all said, there's nothing wrong with fighting. Fight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?
For example, if there's a particular fight at the gate of a keep, the contest is really about getting inside, I'll bet. So what does failure mean? They don't get inside. Next fight they're trying to get past the guards of a magic gem. Failure is getting repelled. Next fight is to escape along the rout planned. Failure is having to go the long way back.
Note that these failures are rather dull, and don't follow the "Failure means more conflict" rule. In the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.
Three battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long. Here's my handy-dandy little mnemonic device, "There are no combats in HQ, only fights." "Combat" is the problem here, in that you're used to conflicts involving arms meaning only certain possible goals and outcomes as they do in all RPGs. Don't do combats to see who dies, have fights as a means to accomplish other stuff.
Consider this. 99% of all HQ contests end in something other than a complete defeat. Meaning that that the conditions that would even allow PC death (don't make it mandatory, tho), by the rules, are incredibly rare. So you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.
If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.
QuoteI've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.
Well, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.
IOW, this is precisely the same in both games, in terms of player response. Thing is, in HQ other plans can with the day. Combat does not have a privileged place, and a defeat in some other arena can suffice as well or better.
QuoteSo I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war. Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape. Does that make sense?
Well, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.
QuoteFair enough. All of this I could have done in DnD, basically. Why didn't I?
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.
This is no longer true, however, right?
Quote- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.
Ooh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.
It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.
Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.
Quote- And one other thing. When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...". But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him. And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen". Now where's that from? Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe. If I did, I'm now scared. I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't. Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".
First, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.
Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide. Drama is about placing things in jeopardy, not about percent chance to fail. Put your characters in the line of the worst the world has to offer. And if it all works out, you'll get something that has some of he coolness of the Lord of the Rings in terms of drama. Have them only bump into more orcs and trolls, and risk it becoming dull, dull, dull.
Doesn't have to be a Night King, make it a dragon. Or whatever seems plausible to you. All I'm saying is that confronting Izrador hissownself isn't out of the question. It's your game world.
QuoteHere's another of my problems. So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party". I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.
A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.
You're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same,
and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.
Yeah, it's a different mindset.
No magic in the game that allows regrowth of limbs? No magical prosthetics? The character is good for nothing else? What if he's the wizard (well, what passes in Midnight)? Will the loss of a leg really hamper him? What if he's the merchant?
What, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...
QuoteAgain, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.
So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.
Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?
In any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.
QuoteOf course. We did that anyway. That's one of the things DnD supports: you can always decide how to frame the challenge.
Well, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.
In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?
QuoteThat's a great example, I'm beginning to see now. To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.
Right, remember in the example that the NK only wants to mark them originally, since he doesn't know who they are. Again, it's a question of the goals for the contest.
QuoteOk, that's cool. I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them. When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.
Definitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.
But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust. Instead, if you give them the choice, they'll run away from more powerful stuff. You want one of the PCs to go nuts and attack a Night King. That's drama. You want all the other PCs to be pissed about it. But the players secretly loving it. Knowing that no matter what the PC does, the players won't be punished.
QuoteWho knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.
Cripes, that's a whole nother post. Actually I should link you to one of the threads where I've already explained this...
QuoteQuoteWith a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).
Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)
Definitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"
Or does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)
QuoteOk. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.
Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.
If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.
Quote(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic. Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped. There's no reason that can't change when we convert. I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)
Again, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.
QuoteExamples would be much appreciated. :)
That's a whole 'nother post as well. Check out "Bangs" under Sorcerer. Or start the thread, and I'll get to it when my typing fingers have recuperated.
Mike
Quote from: Brand_RobinsI'm going to tentatively suggest that this is, once again, an outgrowth of D&D gamist play. Even the rhetoric of the setup and statement has a degree of goal-oriented play assumption behind it, i.e. "the bad decisions" almost certainly being tactical decisions made for reasons of misunderstanding or misestimating the nature of the conflict/opposition and the paths needed to achieve victory.
No reason to be tentative. In some scenarios we were playing a very Gamist game. :) And yup, I was mostly thinking of tactical decisions here, but not only.
Example 1 - linear scenario set up as a Gamist challenge:
The group of PCs is on a mission in orc-controlled territory to contact a resistance band and gain various stuff from them that will help them blow up an evil temple.
The group arrives at the village to find the villagers being terrorised by a small bunch of orcs. They have recently acquired horses, which make them both more mobile and a lot more effective in a fight. They count the enemy and find them well within their capacity, smile sweetly, charge in and hack all the orcs to bits. Easy victory, players elated.
It turns out that the resistance band the PCs are looking for has been ambushed by the same orcs plus a bunch of reinforcements, a Legate and Channeler the previous day. The PCs track the Legate and his troops back to a lonely mansion. The players decide to simply charge in and kill everything, this time without so much as stopping to count the enemy, much less scout ahead. Defeat follows.
Example 2 - not-so-linear setup:
Two PCs travel several millennia back to the Second Age (or more specifically, to a dream echo of it), to the court of a Sarcosan Prince. To people of the Second Age they appear as local officers (NPC backgrounds and motivations prepped by me, but the players use their normal PC char sheets). There's a cast of NPCs to interact with, including an undercover Legate trying to worm his way into a position at the Court, and another time/dream-traveller and potential ally, and more.
Now we've done scenarios like this before, the players are familiar with the pattern and are ok with me providing NPC "shells". This time around though, things don't work out. One player "turtles" on me and insists on sitting in the barracks kitchens and not doing anything: "I eat and wait for evening." (He didn't have plans for the evening. I asked.) The other player follows his cue. They keep whispering to each other about everybody they see and behave so suspiciously that when a murder attempt happens, all fingers are pointed at them.
I ended the session with the PCs cornered and a bunch of guards coming for them - at this point the players were getting ready to fight although they hadn't a prayer of fighting their way out; and I needed to think about what I'd do if they did that. I didn't want to kill the PCs, but killing featured so big in the game at the time that it completely dominated my thinking. (It still does to some extent.)
In hindsight I can see how in this scenario I should have done things differently. I should have thrown bangs at them a lot more violently, I should also have had a much more flexible mindset about consequences and drama. (I should also perhaps understood a player-v-player tension that first surfaced in this scenario.) Fact is, I didn't; so the way things played out, the PCs got into trouble through the players' decision to refuse to act. And the players didn't enjoy the session much.
QuoteWhen you get into a Nar/SIS/HQ style game this has the propensity to up and vanish.
That's what I'm hoping. I'm just trying to work out what I can do to help the transition - amongst other things, by changing my own mindset, with which you people are helping me a lot in this thread.
QuotePartly this is due to the system. Even a "bad plan" can come off a success due to augmentation and HP usage, and even the best plan can go all to crap if you roll a 20. D&D assumes a certain resource allocation mode of play, HQ doesn't, and so a lot of the bad decisions around system control and step-on-up style threat assessment simply ceases to be relevant.
I kinda see your point; although I'm thinking that the players' decisions in both examples I've described above was about something other than resource allocation.
QuoteIn HQ, otoh, a confrontation with a Night King is not going to kill the PCs, and may actually give them more drama and story potential, and so isn't inherently a bad decision at all. Similarly, a group of 1st level characters raiding the Orc stronghold with bad plans in D&D may be a death sentence, but in HQ its just going to result in another challenge to overcome and more drama.
Yes, yes. Slowly but steadily I'm beginning to see what the two of you are driving at. I read the words clearly the first time round, but that particular paradigm takes a lot of time to shift in my head.
QuoteThe game ...
... starts to be about what the players want to push and what the characters do with their personal choices.
There's so much potential for player power in this. We'll just be able to branch out more and be creative, rather than think about winning all the time.
QuoteAlso, there are very few situations in HQ in which there is a real no win situation on its face. I've had players overcome vast odds with lucky rolls, lots of augments, and good tactics. (The tactics, btw, are things like you talked about before – real tactics rather than the resource allocation tactics of D&D.) You may toss your Night King 10m6 at the PCs and find them kicking his ass – I know I have.
Thanks for reassurance, both about the vast odds and the tactics.
Oh damn, and now I have to go. Hopefully back later tonight!
Quote from: StalkingBlueExample 1 - linear scenario set up as a Gamist challenge:
This example is exactly what I was talking about. Now in HQ they still might lose if they charge the Legate willy-nilly, but losing won't be such a horrible thing. It won't get them dead, and may not even blow their mission -- it'll just give them more personal involvement, likely from being capture and escaping while finding more information, or something similar. (Once the players learn to trust it, that is.)
For this one I can't but help think of the newest Zorro movie. In said movie Zorro gets captured at least twice, and in both cases the capture is essential to the plot. If he hadn't underestimated the Don, and if he hadn't done a tactically dumb move when he tried to reclaim his daughter, the movie wouldn't have had nearly so much punch.
Quote from: StalkingBlueExample 2 - not-so-linear setup:
Yea, that's not a tactical problem, it's a player buy-in problem.
One thing I will note is that some of this won't get easier with HQ. Because players are bought into their own PCs so much more (generally), giving them NPC shells may remove some of the cool for the group. There are ways around it (which you probably know many of already, being experienced at this kind of thing) -- but generally you'll want to let the players keep focus on their coolfunthing. Whether that's from linking the flashback situation to the current world, or giving the NPC a very similar conflict, without a good tie and bangs that keep the theme it can be tough.
Plus, players are screwed up. Freaks go and turtle on you sometimes for no reason at all.....
;)
QuoteI kinda see your point; although I'm thinking that the players' decisions in both examples I've described above was about something other than resource allocation
In the second it certainly was. That was about a lot of things, not all of which I can analyze from your short description, but none of them were outright resource allocation.
QuoteYes, yes. Slowly but steadily I'm beginning to see what the two of you are driving at. I read the words clearly the first time round, but that particular paradigm takes a lot of time to shift in my head.
Trust me, I get this. One of the reasons why I'm always so keen to talk about HQ is because I too am still learning. I started playing D&D when I was 5 and I'm now 30. Between there I've had so many dysfunctional experiences, and so many good ones that were in other modes of play, that getting my head around this stuff is often a challange.
Ouff - back again. I've finally realised what makes me take so long to post replies to this thread: half the time I write something, then look at it and think, "Wait a minute, there's something here, think again..." And I do. And often end up writing something else because some tiny thing has just clicked that hadn't before.
Quote from: Mike HolmesOh, so the "Creeping Up" rant was actually more pertinent than I thought.
Realize this. The players who are giving you the positive feedback are already down with the entire mode of play. Meaning that there's no reason to creep with these guys. It won't hurt anything to do so, but you could have skipped all the creeping.
You're referring to your Sneaking up on Mode thread that you linked above, yes? Again, very useful to me. I agree with you that sneaking up on players isn't a good idea - being upfront is much better.
I wasn't, but I didn't actually intentionally sneak up on my players; it was more that mode was sneaking up on me.
When I started this Midnight game I hadn't even heard of GNS. The way I had run games in the past (with little experience as a player and none that was really satisfying), I just did what I felt I wanted and/or "had to", without little guidance or skill. I'd only just stopped feeling horribly inferior to GMs who were boasting about their "cool pre-planned story arcs" - in my games, the story would always head its own way; but I'd realised that those other GMs were pushing "their" story through by something called "railroading" and I didn't want to do that, I just couldn't see why that would be fun.
I'd had some satisfying play experience with this new group in the other GM's high-level DnD game - pure Gamist challenge. When I started the Midnight game, I tried to imitate that. It worked fine for a while, only for me something was lacking. Without knowing what I was doing, I dropped occasional "roleplaying" opportunities in, some players jumped at them, others didn't.
QuoteThis is one area that you can over-discuss for sure. One thing that's critical to avoid is any actual discussion of what might happen in play. "Playing before you play" makes the actual act rather dull when it happens.
Agreed. I did a lot of "playing before play" on my own every time I prepped something and had to wrestle my vision of things into the DnD ruleset, which resisted heroically every time.
So what class do I make this NPC? How could this kind of personality ever come to be in a DnD class environment? Couldn't? Then how about I make her an Aristocrat/Expert and maybe handwave a house-ruled class and then... would she work like that? Nope. So... [gnashes teeth]
It was not fun.
The one time we had a kind of discussion of "play before play" in the group happened after the first example of "bad decisions" I've posted in my earlier reply to Brand. For the upcoming session, I had two PCs prisoners, two PCs on the run, with their players hesitantly deciding to sneak back to take out the Legate anyway. I talked to the two players of the captive PCs about what kind of scenes they saw their PC in. I got only uncomfortable silences from both of them, until I managed to work out that I (learning by doing, sorry 'bout that) wasn't asking the right questions.
Fortunately we managed to fix that and ended up with material for an extremely focussed and tense session.
QuoteYou never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.
If I do that it'll be a breakaway from some pretty deeply established traditions in our game - ones that I haven't necessarily made. The players have created them as much as I did, if not more: by always expecting the enemy to slaughter everyone, and by slaughtering everyone in their turn. I've seen them take a prisoner only once, and then only because they knew he was dangerous and could likely kill another PC before they could take him out, so they got him to surrender.
QuoteThis is one of those difficult concepts. The player is not the character, and in HQ this means that the character can fail, and the player "win." That is, doing "stupid things" in HQ should be encouraged. Rather, the player should be encouraged to do the dramatic thing, no matter what makes sense "tactically." Because he just might win. And if he doesn't, losing in HQ is fun anyhow. There are no bad results for the player. So HQ makes all decisions good ones. You can't go wrong.
Not unless the GM creates the bad results, anyway. I'm not clear yet about how I'll make decisions and how much (and how) to involve players in the decision about Consequences of defeat - no big deal when the Consequences are small, but scary (to me currently) when we're talking a Night King's Mark from your example.
QuoteHere's how you alter this. Next time the player gets into a contest, find some ability that he didn't to augment with, and which makes sense to you, and ask him if he wants to augment with it. That is, help him discover more and more augments. Once they see that the idea is to find all the ones that apply, then it'll dawn on them that they're not trying to win. The augmenting is merely about making the character seem cooler in the current situation.
Yes, exactly. Of course. How could I not see this... If we also manage to narrate any unusual and cool use of augments, this might do the trick.
Quote from: Mike HolmesIn some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?
Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.
I can follow you here for FTF games at least ("face-to-face", yes?). I've found that I need to explain stuff expressly mostly when I'm first trying to build trust, to show players how I think and that I try to be fair. The same is probably true for our change to HQ. It's not a new group, I'm not a new GM to them anymore, but it's a new system and to some extent a new style. Which is going to be all the more bewildering because we'll be continuing with a campaign that has already gone on for almost a year. (So here, too, your Sneaking Up thread is relevant I think.)
QuoteAt full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.
Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.
Ok, next time I have a strong dissenter on something I'll work to limit the time it takes away from our game to twenty seconds. Although I don't think I'm as bad as to let people rant for ten minutes. Not even our resident rules-lawyer in DnD. :)
QuoteThere's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens). Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.
I do hope so! The strong themes were what first inspired me about Midnight. I think that as a group we've done a pretty good job of bringing out a theme in our game - considering we were playing DnD, a system that actively gets in the way of theme I feel.
QuoteExcellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?
Player #1's PC has lots of relationships, both play and pre-play. No problems here.
Player #2's PC has a few relationships gained in play, but zero background and no goals that would link him to his homeland. This is something the player always does: he'll play a race different from everyone else, but then does everything he can in play to pretend his race isn't different at all. He appears to hate for play to happen in his PCs' homeland. This PC's goal is to "assist a human leader to grow into her or his power because he believes that humans are worth it and realises elves are a dying race anyway".
Player #3's PC is new (played one session I think) and as yet has relationships only to NPCs in an earlier (dream-)Age of the world (player's idea). I don't know yet what his motivation is to operate in the Fourth Age, if any.
QuoteI think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.
Erm...
Good point.
There's some logic glitch there. Hm, maybe we've more often been able to make PC deaths mean something than turn other defeats into cool outcomes? Nope, not true either. Nevertheless, it's about meaningfulness. There's a big determination on payers' part to sacrifice PCs for a good reason. They still fear failure as such though. I've spent countless hours waiting through players' tactical planning and talking through all available and not-so-available options before tackling a difficult challenge. Partly that was due to one player's preference for doing just that over actually playing, but he couldn't have talked them into it if Failure wasn't such a big Boo word in my game.
QuoteGood, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.
I think that's true, yes. That and generally resisting change (which is what humans do), and for some, being rather set in their ways.
QuoteMost would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.
Yes, isn't it. And it's not even something you did "to" yourself, it's more that _you_ introduced a cool element into the scene by having Fear Spiders on the char sheet. Because (in the kind of game I'm dreaming of) spiders likely wouldn't put in an appearance unless someone had a Fear Spiders trait.
QuoteBTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.
As-high-as-they-w-w-w-wwant? [gasps]
I'd read the first half of that bit of advice from you in some other thread and liked it a lot. I wasn't aware that you also let them choose how high they want to go. That's very nifty indeed - and yet another bit chipped away from that Gamist rock of players-want-power-GM-denies-power.
I'm learning so much here. (Ok, I should stop saying that over and over. It just keeps amazing me, is all.)
QuoteThe point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.
Ah ok. I'm getting the hang of this slowly. So you're saying that in HQ I can throw in stuff that completely overpowers the PCs without disempowering the players. That as long as the players trust me I can go a lot farther than I could before - always provided that the outcome leads over into some new dramatic coolness and makes the game deeper and more fun than before.
Yes?
QuoteThe point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.
I follow you on the bit about Hit Points and I much prefer Action Point bids already, even though my first attempt at running an Extended Contest wasn't so brilliant; but what do mean by saying Action Points give plot immunity? By avoiding accidental PC death?
This post is growing out of proportion. I'll make another reply to the rest of your post.
Quote from: Mike HolmesFight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?
Oh,
right! Narrating a defeat is about what happens to the goal the PCs were fighting for at the time, not so much to the PCs and their opponents in the fight. What happens to the PCs and their opponents us expressed as a Consequence. Yes? Or sorta?
QuoteIn the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.
We've done that in the past. We called it "PCs live with the consequences of their actions", but "Failure breeds new conflict and drama" is a much better way to express it - or at least it helps me more to come up with good ways to handle PC defeat.
QuoteThree battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long.
Can you do it in a game in which the PCs always kill everyone they can? Although maybe in our game that will change now that Relationships are going to become that much more relevant...
QuoteSo you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.
If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.
I realise that and I'm trying. I'm glad you suggested that mutilating PCs might be acceptable - it has made me realise how many perceived "limits" on players' parts I respect. I still think respecting limits is a very important thing, but maybe I can start pushing my own limits a bit here.
QuoteWell, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.
And if that isn't highly tactical, I don't know what is.
QuoteWell, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.
Oh cool. So I can basically stop worrying? You know, one thing DnD has done is make me slightly paranoid about doing things to characters, for fear of spoiling players' fun.
QuoteOoh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.
It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.
Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.
They were between 6th and 8th level, i.e. low mid-levels in DnD.
I'm not sure how much Advanced Experience I should give them. I'm thinking maybe I'll give them a total of 3 points to spend on keywords (AE by the book), and maybe 30 points to spend on abilities but without the "no more than 10 per ability" cap from the book. Does that look like it'll make characters who are distinctly heroic and better than most people in their larger area? The PCs I generated for our playtest had 30 points and no keyword increases and they were scary monsters...
The slight problem with DnD players is, if they are made too powerful they will likely feel cheated. If they aren't powerful enough I can give out more Hero Points more quickly or if it's too bad, let them make additional one-time adjustments. OTOH I also don't want to keep them "small" and hungering for advancement like in DnD, that's one feature of that system I've always hated.
On a side note, I'm also meaning to take another bit of earlier Mike Holmes advice :) and offer some Relationships to NPCs for free (and of course other double-edged abilities or "flaws").
QuoteFirst, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.
Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide.
Yes, I'm seeing it now I think. I can get rid of that "gulf of power" mindset DnD fosters. In DnD, a character's power pretty much explodes with advancement through the levels, so having Night Kings ride through the woods on their own would completely shatter disbelief. In HQ, power disparities are much less pronounced, or at least the chances of winning anyway (with cool and creative tactics) are a lot better.
QuoteYou're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same, and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.
Yeah, it's a different mindset.
Only -5 for losing an arm? Wow, that _is_ cool.
QuoteWill the loss of a leg really hamper him?
Seeing that running away and riding very fast are core to the group's current standard tactics, yes. Although again, if I make it only -5 to riding... Heh, it might even jolt the group out of their entrenched tactics into trying something new.
QuoteWhat, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...
Up to now no one has wanted to make up any kind of character that had any perceivable ties to the Shadow, not even previously or potentially. They all claim they don't want to have to deal with possible mistrust from the other PCs. While this argument in itself is pretty lame, I'm thinking that if they all agree, there must be some theme in it they want in the game.
QuoteQuoteAgain, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.
So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.
Hm, they've trusted me with creating "NPC hosts" for them for the dream/time travel scenarios, and most of the players even took it in their stride when I threw them into the first of them without explanation and simply had them play the NPCs ... until one PC's true memories were stirred by something emotionally difficult and she "awoke" to who she really was. Of course none of that was permanent, or "suitably permanent"...
QuoteDude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?
You know what this makes me think? Your game sounds cool. :-)
QuoteIn any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.
Broken bones, yay! I now can use broken bones! And cut off arms and legs and poke out eyes! And inflict horrible curses and grant staggering boons.
Nah, I'm not worried anymore. I'm staring in wonder at new vistas opening up. This game is about to grow so much bigger.
Btw, I haven't quite got yet why people around here say that it's the players who are "on the losing side of Gamism". I've always felt on the losing side as the GM, bending over backwards to provide a "fun challenge" without breaking anything - don't break anyone's character, don't take their stuff away without very good reason, don't break the game by allowing them too many benefits ...
QuoteWell, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.
In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?
So true. Another bending-over-backwards situation: how do I make sure that even though the players may find smart ways around many fights, they will still find a meaningful fight in the end?
In HQ, I only have to make sure I set up the environment so that they can find satisfying stuff, and throw satisfying stuff at them.
QuoteDefinitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.
But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust.
Both points taken, about the timing (which I'm not going to take literally, no fear - I think I'll know how to time it) and about the stomping.
QuoteDefinitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"
That's pretty much what I was thinking I'd do (and did for our playtest session, on a small scale - no Izzy in that one, I'm afraid).
QuoteOr does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)
Hm, not sure, I don't remember stats for big baddies from Scripty's text. There were sample stats for Orc Troopers IIRC. (I may misremember - I'm pretty much using my own keywords and magic rules by now, so it's a while since I've looked at his work.)
QuoteQuoteOk. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.
Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.
If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.
Will do.
QuoteAgain, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.
[slaps forehead many times] I'm such an idiot. One of the major local NPCs (the guy who some players won't trust because his intel wasn't always perfectly accurate) has a mithril leg! One with a working knee joint. (Yes, it has entered play.) D'oh.
Quote from: Brand_RobinsNow in HQ they still might lose if they charge the Legate willy-nilly, but losing won't be such a horrible thing. It won't get them dead, and may not even blow their mission -- it'll just give them more personal involvement, likely from being capture and escaping while finding more information, or something similar.
That's exactly how the following session played out. Except that one PC died in the event, tying down the Legate in stubborn resistance talk while the others were busy picking off lone orc guards and getting a rescue under way. The survivors named their band after her.
Quote(Once the players learn to trust it, that is.)
Well, one player at least trusted me enough to have his PC surrender, hoping to save the life of another PC who was wounded and unconscious.
You know, the more I read from you guys, the more I wonder whether I've been drifting the game (or rather, sitting on a game that was drifting without me qute uinderstanding what was going on) much farther than I thought when I started this thread. Either that, or you two see DnD in a rather more limited and boring niche than it has to be in.
QuoteQuote from: StalkingBlueExample 2 - not-so-linear setup:
One thing I will note is that some of this won't get easier with HQ.
Because players are bought into their own PCs so much more (generally), giving them NPC shells may remove some of the cool for the group. There are ways around it (which you probably know many of already, being experienced at this kind of thing) -- but generally you'll want to let the players keep focus on their coolfunthing. Whether that's from linking the flashback situation to the current world, or giving the NPC a very similar conflict, without a good tie and bangs that keep the theme it can be tough.
Yup, I've seen that already. I haven't worked out a good solution, it may be that dream travel will fade into the background a bit if the PCs grow more tied into dramatic stuff in their own time; or PCs may learn how to return to previous time-dreams to use their Relationships to NPCs there&then; or perhaps a mix of both, and other stuff I haven't thought of yet.
QuotePlus, players are screwed up. Freaks go and turtle on you sometimes for no reason at all.....
;)
LOL :) And wouldn't we all be much better off without players...
(The turtle has since left our group btw, and after he did he finally talked to me more openly, so now I think I understand at least some of his reasons. But that's a different story.)
QuoteTrust me, I get this. One of the reasons why I'm always so keen to talk about HQ is because I too am still learning. I started playing D&D when I was 5 and I'm now 30. Between there I've had so many dysfunctional experiences, and so many good ones that were in other modes of play, that getting my head around this stuff is often a challange.
:) That's a comfort. Reading the Forge kinda makes me feel sometimes I must be an odd one, what with all the GM abuse and dysfunction I've seen (and not walked out on soon enough). Thanks for keeping coming back and posting, I'm learning whole lots from this thread.
Quote from: StalkingBlueYou know, the more I read from you guys, the more I wonder whether I've been drifting the game (or rather, sitting on a game that was drifting without me qute uinderstanding what was going on) much farther than I thought when I started this thread. Either that, or you two see DnD in a rather more limited and boring niche than it has to be in.
You probably have been drifiting it, as most D&D games are drifted to one degree or another -- just because of the number of people playing the game.
As for how I see D&D, I think I probably come off harsher in this thread than is actually refelctive of my feelings about the game. D&D is very good at what it does, and is also good at being drifted to do other things. It isn't really great at doing things outside of it's focus, but then what tool is?
The reason I keep hammering it in this thread isn't even so much because it's D&D as it is because the "D&D mindset" encapsulates something about the way that RPGs are traditionally seen as inherently being that isn't true at all. People who've played one RPG for most of their RPing history get ideas about what RPGs are that come out of that game. For D&D players there are a pretty solid set of assumptions that get made, and reinforced, through years of play.
QuoteThat's a comfort. Reading the Forge kinda makes me feel sometimes I must be an odd one, what with all the GM abuse and dysfunction I've seen (and not walked out on soon enough).
Jeppers Mr. Wilson, that just isn't so. If you dig back in the forums you'll find some of Scripty's horror stories. Mine I don't even dare post because no one who read them would be able to sleep for a week afterwards.
Quote from: StalkingBlueYou're referring to your Sneaking up on Mode thread that you linked above, yes? Again, very useful to me. I agree with you that sneaking up on players isn't a good idea - being upfront is much better.
I wasn't, but I didn't actually intentionally sneak up on my players; it was more that mode was sneaking up on me.
Well, yeah, you can't be blamed. Not knowing what the full on techniques supporting the mode look like, what else could you do but edge towards it.
All I'm saying now is don't let your player's prior proclivities make you hedge. Going all the way will work better than trying to adapt for their previous play style.
QuoteI'd had some satisfying play experience with this new group in the other GM's high-level DnD game - pure Gamist challenge. When I started the Midnight game, I tried to imitate that. It worked fine for a while, only for me something was lacking. Without knowing what I was doing, I dropped occasional "roleplaying" opportunities in, some players jumped at them, others didn't.
Classic. Both modes have similarities in terms of metagame. So it's not really surprising to me that you had success with Gamism, but then tried to add "roleplaying" moments. Even calling them roleplaying moments is classic. What you were really trying to insert were moments where narrativism was supported.
It's all "roleplaying." :-)
QuoteQuoteYou never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.
If I do that it'll be a breakaway from some pretty deeply established traditions in our game - ones that I haven't necessarily made. The players have created them as much as I did, if not more: by always expecting the enemy to slaughter everyone, and by slaughtering everyone in their turn. I've seen them take a prisoner only once, and then only because they knew he was dangerous and could likely kill another PC before they could take him out, so they got him to surrender.
See, you're still stuck in the Matrix. And it's hard to get out. Yes, if you set up a situation in which death is on the line, then death is what's appropriate. Just stop putting death on the line. What's interesting is that the threat of death is still there in the narrative. It just never becomes a reality for the players. More on this below.
QuoteQuoteYou can't go wrong.
Not unless the GM creates the bad results, anyway. I'm not clear yet about how I'll make decisions and how much (and how) to involve players in the decision about Consequences of defeat - no big deal when the Consequences are small, but scary (to me currently) when we're talking a Night King's Mark from your example.
You'll do as good as you'll do. I mean, I wish all my results were awesome, but I'm glad if only 50% are "pretty cool." I'm betting that you won't ever create a really bad result at this point.
QuoteYes, exactly. Of course. How could I not see this... If we also manage to narrate any unusual and cool use of augments, this might do the trick.
Yep. The key, generally, is to make it "too easy." That is, if you make it a challenge, then they'll assume that it's there to "game." If you don't make it a challenge in this way, then they'll discover that this is just not something that's important to play.
D&D largely supports Gamism by making it the only fun thing to do in play. I mean, some GMs give rewards only for "roleplaying" and not for "winning" (meaning tactical victories). But it doesn't matter, because the only thing EXP can be spent on are powerups for your character to make them better at winning.
In HQ, the powerups are all relative. They just indicate what's important to the player to come out in play. And the same currency can be spent on victories instead. Meaning that victory is largely a player choice.
To give an example from my game last night, Julie's character Solani was ambushed by some men intent on using a ritual to make her unborn progeny emerge as a sort of messianic individual. She lost the contest, but had like ten HP to spend. But instead of deciding to win the contest, she let Solani get captured, because it was more interesting for her and her unborn child to be in jeopardy. Later, then, as the ritual was being performed, she got a divine intervention roll to work, and converted all the cultists into thinking that she was something akin to a saint. Then she spent the HP on giving Solani a relationship with the NPCs. So in the end, the character ended up much more interesting because of Julie's decision
not to spend HP.
Mike
Quote from: StalkingBlueI can follow you here for FTF games at least ("face-to-face", yes?). I've found that I need to explain stuff expressly mostly when I'm first trying to build trust, to show players how I think and that I try to be fair. The same is probably true for our change to HQ. It's not a new group, I'm not a new GM to them anymore, but it's a new system and to some extent a new style.
Yeah, but assuming you make the correct decision, there's no question of trust. That is, all we're talking about is deciding whether or not to go with extended contests or the like. My point is that just as you'll get quick at making these assessments subtly, so too will the players discern what you're doing. At least by the fact that play is matching their expectations, and for the more discerning players, they'll even see how you're making the assessments.
QuoteI do hope so! The strong themes were what first inspired me about Midnight. I think that as a group we've done a pretty good job of bringing out a theme in our game - considering we were playing DnD, a system that actively gets in the way of theme I feel.
Sounds like it. Again that's evidence that you're ready for a full mode shift and shouldn't be tentative at all.
QuotePlayer #2's PC has a few relationships gained in play, but zero background and no goals that would link him to his homeland. This is something the player always does: he'll play a race different from everyone else, but then does everything he can in play to pretend his race isn't different at all. He appears to hate for play to happen in his PCs' homeland. This PC's goal is to "assist a human leader to grow into her or his power because he believes that humans are worth it and realises elves are a dying race anyway".
That's perfect fodder in HQ, IMO. So he should have some relationship to the human leader like "Respects Dude," if he's not abstract, or something like "Drive to Find Human Leader" if not. He should also have "Sees Own Race as Dying" or somesuch. The player then gets bonuses when playing to this, and you can then challenge his assumptions. Have an Elf come along from the homeland who's there to prove to him that the Elves still have something to give and that he should come home. Whatever the player's response, you get theme.
QuotePlayer #3's PC is new (played one session I think) and as yet has relationships only to NPCs in an earlier (dream-)Age of the world (player's idea). I don't know yet what his motivation is to operate in the Fourth Age, if any.
Too cool. Just frame occasional short scenes in the dreamworld. Have those NPCs put pressure on the PC. Then it's all about whether or not it makes sense for the character's beliefs to lie in a dream or not.
QuoteThere's some logic glitch there. Hm, maybe we've more often been able to make PC deaths mean something than turn other defeats into cool outcomes? Nope, not true either. Nevertheless, it's about meaningfulness. There's a big determination on payers' part to sacrifice PCs for a good reason. They still fear failure as such though.
Well, because failure in D&D is player failure. Death is acceptable if the plan worked. If they survive and fail, then they didn't put forth the ultimate effort, right? So there is a logic to it for D&D. But for HQ, that's not true, since character failure is not player failure.
QuoteQuoteMost would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.
Yes, isn't it. And it's not even something you did "to" yourself, it's more that _you_ introduced a cool element into the scene by having Fear Spiders on the char sheet. Because (in the kind of game I'm dreaming of) spiders likely wouldn't put in an appearance unless someone had a Fear Spiders trait.
Well, we often call this Self-Hosing. Basically the player can get just as much joy from hosing characters as the GM can. As long as it's fun for the player in the system used when the character gets hosed.
QuoteI'd read the first half of that bit of advice from you in some other thread and liked it a lot. I wasn't aware that you also let them choose how high they want to go. That's very nifty indeed - and yet another bit chipped away from that Gamist rock of players-want-power-GM-denies-power.
Well, two things. First, not really as high as they want. The limitation is scale. That is, don't allow them to take things described as one thing at the wrong point on the scale. If its a "Consuming Passion" or something, that's likely not more than in the 2 masteries range for normal humans. I mean, if they have "Slave to Alira 10W4" that's a legendary flaw. Meaning that, literally, the character is so devoted that it would turn up in legends passed down from then on. So usually you want something lower than that. Often flaws should match the heroes other ability levels, being as they've had about the same amount of time to develop.
But, yeah, with a good enough explanation, the sky is the limit in theory. What it really means is that they don't have to build it up from 13 or something. You can start at a level that's got a pretty high augment (which is the most common use).
Second, presumably it's going to get used against them, so even the gamism channeled players will see that it's not neccessarily a tactically sound idea to take a large Flaw. Like the passion and slave flaws above, it means that the NPC in question will be able to lead the hero around without much chance for the player to resist.
Yes, this is all good news to a player who likes to hose their character. But since flaws are such good ways to make the story go, that's why they're free. IMO.
QuoteAh ok. I'm getting the hang of this slowly. So you're saying that in HQ I can throw in stuff that completely overpowers the PCs without disempowering the players. That as long as the players trust me I can go a lot farther than I could before - always provided that the outcome leads over into some new dramatic coolness and makes the game deeper and more fun than before.
Correct. That's very astute. As long as they can still spend their HP, and have cool choices to make, it's all good.
QuoteI follow you on the bit about Hit Points and I much prefer Action Point bids already, even though my first attempt at running an Extended Contest wasn't so brilliant; but what do mean by saying Action Points give plot immunity? By avoiding accidental PC death?
Sorta. Basically both AP an HP serve to make sure that the character doesn't experience bad effects before getting to do some interesting stuff. They're immune to stoppage while they still have points. Compare other, less dramatic systems where you often can be killed with one lucky shot. Even 3E has some rules that are trending that way (and here you see the gamism/simulationism incoherence in that system).
Actually if you just look at HP as though they are like AP it sorta works out fine. The problem is that HP are then assumed after the fact to represent damage. That is, the system tells us that if I do 8 HP damage to one character with 8HP, and the same damage to another with 80HP, that the latter actually took less damage from the blow - he's not actually able to take ten times the punishment. But then why does a cleric's 8HP of healing heal the same amount on each? Put another way, why does the same plot immunity that prevents PCs from being injured work in inverse proportion to prevent PCs from healing up?
As soon as you stop looking at them as a measurement for damage, but just dramatic plot immunity, it all makes sense.
Mike
Quote from: StalkingBlueOh, right! Narrating a defeat is about what happens to the goal the PCs were fighting for at the time, not so much to the PCs and their opponents in the fight. What happens to the PCs and their opponents us expressed as a Consequence. Yes? Or sorta?
Yes, definitely. Read the rules. They say that the player has goal, and the roll determines whether or not they achieve that goal or not.
Your clarity here makes me wonder why you don't see the solutions below.
QuoteCan you do it in a game in which the PCs always kill everyone they can?
Yes, I can, because again, you assume that there are some sort of equal consequences for each side of the conflict. There is no rule that says that if the PCs are fighting to the death, that the only reasonable outcome of failure is their own death. I mean, you admit that capture is another possibility and only don't like it because it might get overused. Well, all this means is that you're only seeing two outcomes as potential results of such a contests when there are infinite potential results.
Let's see. Didn't kill all the orcs? Well, then aliens came down and sucked up the PCs into a UFO before they were able to finish.
I use a dumb example, to show you that anything is possible. Again, look to what the actual goal of the fight is, see the big picture, and suddenly all sorts of other interesting and dramatic failure conditions become possible. So, in the gatehouse contest example, if the defending orcs lose the contest, they die.
Yeah, even if it's not a complete victory. Because the goal wasn't really to kill the orcs, but to get inside. So killing them is just narration that follows accomplishing the goal. This is important, ignore the names of the penalties that are given out by the system. This is not voiding the rules but playing by them carefully - read close and you'll see that I'm correct.
Yes this means that if your only goal is to kill somebody that it's a lot harder to do so. Feature, not bug. For more explanation see the thread on deer hunting.
QuoteI realise that and I'm trying. I'm glad you suggested that mutilating PCs might be acceptable - it has made me realise how many perceived "limits" on players' parts I respect. I still think respecting limits is a very important thing, but maybe I can start pushing my own limits a bit here.
The player's limits are you disempowering them.
In D&D, if as the result of a failure, I slap you with having to bear a cursed item that gives you a -5, is that disempowering? I mean even HP loss falls into this category. In HQ, losing an arm or a leg is only as disempowering, theoretically, as the given flaw. But it's even less disempowering than that. Because all abilities can be used "positively" or "negatively" as needed.
So, for example, I have my now armless dude come into a tavern. He wants to seduce the pretty wench serving drinks. So I augment with my Missing Arm 10W2 to play on her sympaties thus giving me a +5 to the roll. Nice, eh? So in some ways, I've actually made the character more powerful by giving them the flaw.
Josh? Arm off for Bevik Soo. Next time we play him. Please? He's not a fighter anyhow, what does he need the arm for?
Flaws are as empowering, as they are disempowering. Moreso in some cases - Solani gets so much use out of her "Histrionic" ability, and I activate it against her so little, that I'm thinking I'm going to have to charge her for it.
QuoteAnd if that isn't highly tactical, I don't know what is.
Right. It's like Brand says, HQ doesn't make real world tactics useless. It just makes "gaming" tactics useless. Which in the end just encourages creativity in play. Instead of relying on your biggest ability all the time, sometimes you're forced to look at another ability.
This is important in establishing scale in the world. Players will get the idea that their character with a 12W is a mighty swordsman. Well, he's not, he's just heroic. Have the Count come by with his 12W3, and school the player on what the scale is. About half the time the hero will still win. But the player will be informed that it's because of their hero status (HP), and fighting for what they care about that makes them tough. Not because they're the best out there.
Ooh, and if the hero loses the duel with a Complete Defeat, then give him "Cruel Face Scar 10W." C'mon, you have to admit that's cool as hell, no? Josh, one face scar, too, please? Ooh, I got it, I'll have Bevik attack Julie's character. That ought to do it. :-)
QuoteOh cool. So I can basically stop worrying? You know, one thing DnD has done is make me slightly paranoid about doing things to characters, for fear of spoiling players' fun.
As long as you're trying to do a conscientious job, I'm not seeing how it can go wrong. Oh, there's probably a way. But the system works as designed, and fabulously well.
They were between 6th and 8th level, i.e. low mid-levels in DnD.
QuoteI'm not sure how much Advanced Experience I should give them. I'm thinking maybe I'll give them a total of 3 points to spend on keywords (AE by the book), and maybe 30 points to spend on abilities but without the "no more than 10 per ability" cap from the book. Does that look like it'll make characters who are distinctly heroic and better than most people in their larger area? The PCs I generated for our playtest had 30 points and no keyword increases and they were scary monsters...
Well, if you allow all 30 points to go on one ability, and you allow this to stack with the other points, too, then you get a max ability of 17W2. Which is pretty high, but not out of hand. With the keyword bumps you have, that'd be 20W3. Almost a master's master, but not quite.
I'd do two things instead. The problem with this is that the incentive to stack really high is very strong. And the characters will not have much breadth. Instead add 10 Levels of Advanced Experience at least. Maybe as much as 15 (or even 20 if you only allow 15 on any one keyword). Then give them 80 total points to add, no more than 20 in any one ability. Using the 15 figure above for keywords, this gives a max keyword of 12W, and no more than 12W2 in any one ability.
That sounds to me more like "mid-level".
QuoteThe slight problem with DnD players is, if they are made too powerful they will likely feel cheated.
Please. Too powerful? Night King 10W6, remember? Heck, try this. Write up a character as I suggest, and then put him against a big giant. Giants can have abilities like 10W3 Large augmented by 10W Strong, etc. By the time you're done, the giant has 10W4 or more. In fact, it's with Giants that I get the term "stomp" from. Giants stomping heroes just sounds too cool to me. I'm seeing heroes going down with broken femurs as the giant continues on his merry rampage of the village.
Actually this makes the giant and character not too disparate in power. The player might be able to muster 10W4, too, all said. Does that match your D&D game? Characters about on par with Giants?
Next time the player faces the "stomper" they will try their character's "Clever 5W" rating, augmented by the giant's Stupid 15, going against his 6 default resistance to avoid being tricked. It's a much better gamble.
Moreover, have them fight the equivalent of an 8th level orc. Who will have pretty much the same stats as the heroes do, since they're generated in precisely the same way.
QuoteYes, I'm seeing it now I think. I can get rid of that "gulf of power" mindset DnD fosters. In DnD, a character's power pretty much explodes with advancement through the levels, so having Night Kings ride through the woods on their own would completely shatter disbelief. In HQ, power disparities are much less pronounced, or at least the chances of winning anyway (with cool and creative tactics) are a lot better.
Nope, you're still not seeing it.
Yeah, Brand has a point that you can still win out occasionally. The real way to win is how I outlined it above. Find the target's weakness and go after that. But that's not even the real consideration. Winning and losing in contests is just not important from a player satisfaction POV. So it doesn't matter what the opponent's rating is.
The only thing you have to watch out for is making sure that the PCs have a choice at some point. That could be wether or not to attack something way out of their league. If they do, and get stomped, it's all good.
QuoteOnly -5 for losing an arm? Wow, that _is_ cool.
What's the penalty in D&D? Can't wear a shield or use two handed weapons? What did you think the penalty would be.
In any case, the penalty is precisely whatever you set it at. I suggested 10W2, because it's substantial. But if you want, you can make it 10 or 10w5 for a -1 to a -11 or even higher. It's whatever level you like to set the flaw at. But don't give them a No Left Arm 10w8, because think of the jeopardy you'll be putting all of those barmaids in. I use 10W2 as a typical life changing injury or the like. A "masterful" wound.
QuoteQuoteWill the loss of a leg really hamper him?
Seeing that running away and riding very fast are core to the group's current standard tactics, yes. Although again, if I make it only -5 to riding... Heh, it might even jolt the group out of their entrenched tactics into trying something new.
Exactly. Instead of running, now we do a lot of hiding. Infinite abilities, infinite options.
QuoteUp to now no one has wanted to make up any kind of character that had any perceivable ties to the Shadow, not even previously or potentially. They all claim they don't want to have to deal with possible mistrust from the other PCs. While this argument in itself is pretty lame, I'm thinking that if they all agree, there must be some theme in it they want in the game.
Well, you went all tangential on me. My point was, again, just not to give the worng flaw to the wrong character. That is, if the character's main ability is running, and you eliminate the leg, and strip him of that ability, that's harsh. So just don't. Save the lost leg for the merchant who doesn't use them for much anyhow (in mechanical terms).
Second, my point about the merchant is that your likely to have far more character "types" with HQ than with D&D. Because all approaches to problem solving become equal, there's no reason to avoid any character concept. Even hobbit dilletants.
QuoteHm, they've trusted me with creating "NPC hosts" for them for the dream/time travel scenarios, and most of the players even took it in their stride when I threw them into the first of them without explanation and simply had them play the NPCs ... until one PC's true memories were stirred by something emotionally difficult and she "awoke" to who she really was. Of course none of that was permanent, or "suitably permanent"...
Again, neither is it in HQ. That is, there's always some way out of a flaw. But it's moot, because the players will love their flaws.
QuoteQuoteDude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?
You know what this makes me think? Your game sounds cool. :-)
Well, Josh's game in this case. At the end of the last session we played (a while back now), Ryan had a choice of whether or not to accept a complete defeat at the hands of my character or to spend a HP, and reduce it to a Major Defeat. He chose the Complete Defeat, because he felt it was a suitable place to end the character's story.
It was a very cool game.
Let's see, in my game, I've never had a complete defeat that I can think of. So it's never become an issue. Complete Defeats are rare man, especially if the player has a HP to spend. All of the above are just examples of what I'd do if it came up.
QuoteBtw, I haven't quite got yet why people around here say that it's the players who are "on the losing side of Gamism".
People around here say that? Hmmm. I dunno.
QuoteIn HQ, I only have to make sure I set up the environment so that they can find satisfying stuff, and throw satisfying stuff at them.
Now you're getting it.
QuoteBoth points taken, about the timing (which I'm not going to take literally, no fear - I think I'll know how to time it) and about the stomping.
Just to follow up - when you do it, it won't seem like a stomping. That is, you'll know why you've introduced the dragon, but the players will just see it as a really big adversary, and react accordingly. Also, let them know some of what the creature's statistics are (or all of them), so that they can calculate their odds of different tactics. For example, when they ask how big the giant is, say, 10W3 big. Watch their eyes go real round in response. :-)
QuoteThat's pretty much what I was thinking I'd do (and did for our playtest session, on a small scale - no Izzy in that one, I'm afraid).
The big bad definitely has to be statted out - it's critical. Why? I'm not sure on the precise details, but he can project power in many ways, right? It's not just his minions, but he has magic power up the wazoo, right? Well, he uses it, right?
Let's see. Two hobbits cross Mordor, and Sauron's looking for them. That's his "Magic Eye 10W6" minus some for the range penalty for half way across the plain of Gorgoroth. Goes against the Hobbits Hide and Small.
Oh, yeah, the heroes should feel the personal reach of the evil one at times. Or how are they going to hate him?
QuoteTrust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.
Correct. Now you're getting it.
Quote[slaps forehead many times] I'm such an idiot. One of the major local NPCs (the guy who some players won't trust because his intel wasn't always perfectly accurate) has a mithril leg! One with a working knee joint. (Yes, it has entered play.) D'oh.
LOL. And you don't think that the player won't be thanking you profusely for cutting off his leg once he has a cool mithril leg?
Hmm. Now I need Bevik to lose a leg, too. This might take several shots at Julie's character...
Mike
Quote from: Brand_RobinsThe reason I keep hammering it in this thread isn't even so much because it's D&D as it is because the "D&D mindset" encapsulates something about the way that RPGs are traditionally seen as inherently being that isn't true at all. People who've played one RPG for most of their RPing history get ideas about what RPGs are that come out of that game. For D&D players there are a pretty solid set of assumptions that get made, and reinforced, through years of play.
Yes, and as all these threads I've been starting here show, I'm having a hard time finding a way out of the DnD mindset even though I'm aware that it's not what I want for the game I want to run here - and even though I've run enough games for roleplaying newbies to at least remember what a different mindset a non-DnD-veteran would have.
Quote from: Mike HolmesAll I'm saying now is don't let your player's prior proclivities make you hedge. Going all the way will work better than trying to adapt for their previous play style.
I'll do my best. Currently my main problem is that their previous playstyle has affected my style for the past months, sometimes more than I'm aware. So, it's great for me to be able to pick your brains here.
QuoteClassic. Both modes have similarities in terms of metagame. So it's not really surprising to me that you had success with Gamism, but then tried to add "roleplaying" moments. Even calling them roleplaying moments is classic. What you were really trying to insert were moments where narrativism was supported.
It's all "roleplaying." :-)
Heh, I'm aware of that now - but when I started doing it, that's the way I thought about it. It's still the accepted terminology for the rest of the group.
QuoteSee, you're still stuck in the Matrix. And it's hard to get out.
Yes. :)
QuoteThe key, generally, is to make it "too easy." That is, if you make it a challenge, then they'll assume that it's there to "game." If you don't make it a challenge in this way, then they'll discover that this is just not something that's important to play.
Thanks for spelling it out. It is the Matrix. (sigh)
But I see what you mean. A local group has been kind enough to invite me in and play a few sessions of HQ with them. In that group, as far as I can see after three sessions or so it looks like pretty much all HPs are spent on bumping. I've started out doing the same because in that game, winning felt important for some reason. But last session I decided to use no HPs, and didn't. I want to find out what happens if I buy out of the winning and let the dice fall where they may.
QuoteShe lost the contest, but had like ten HP to spend.
You can't spend more than one HP in a single contest, or can you?
QuoteSo in the end, the character ended up much more interesting because of Julie's decision not to spend HP.
Well, looking at it from a clueless-but-learning GM's point of view, it was both her decision not to spend HPs to avoid "failure",
and you presenting a good alternative to "winning" with lots of opportunities to shape the game and character afterwards.
Quote from: Mike HolmesThat's perfect fodder in HQ, IMO. So he should have some relationship to the human leader like "Respects Dude," if he's not abstract, or something like "Drive to Find Human Leader" if not. He should also have "Sees Own Race as Dying" or somesuch. The player then gets bonuses when playing to this, and you can then challenge his assumptions. Have an Elf come along from the homeland who's there to prove to him that the Elves still have something to give and that he should come home. Whatever the player's response, you get theme.
I think you're right. That may be one reason why this particular player keeps saying he enjoys the game even though it has too much "roleplaying" in it for his taste. It's not a normal DnD game really, so his character-with-strong-but-cloudy-themes works better than he's used to from other games. And now it'll be getting better. Cool.
QuoteWell, because failure in D&D is player failure. Death is acceptable if the plan worked. If they survive and fail, then they didn't put forth the ultimate effort, right? So there is a logic to it for D&D.
You're right. What a rail-track game DnD is. In a way "Success no matter what the price" is the only theme it supports. Other than "Kill Things and Take Their Stuff" that is, which can be fun and exciting at one level IMO but isn't much of a theme at all.
QuoteWell, two things. First, not really as high as they want. The limitation is scale. That is, don't allow them to take things described as one thing at the wrong point on the scale...
Yep, that makes eminent sense. Thanks for the examples.
QuoteSorta. Basically both AP an HP serve to make sure that the character doesn't experience bad effects before getting to do some interesting stuff. They're immune to stoppage while they still have points.
Plot Immunity in DnD. Who would have thought it.
(And yeah, I've tried explaining Hit Points to newbies and they never "get it" at first because it's so inconsistent. The instant you get to the healing rules, it all breaks down.)
QuoteCompare other, less dramatic systems where you often can be killed with one lucky shot.
The interesting thing here is that you say "less dramatic". I completely agree, but some people would defend the option of one-shot kills as highly dramatic. I find it restricting and frustrating because, as you've said, early death prevents you from doing enough cool stuff to make it worthwhile.
Quote from: StalkingBlueA local group has been kind enough to invite me in and play a few sessions of HQ with them. In that group, as far as I can see after three sessions or so it looks like pretty much all HPs are spent on bumping. I've started out doing the same because in that game, winning felt important for some reason. But last session I decided to use no HPs, and didn't. I want to find out what happens if I buy out of the winning and let the dice fall where they may.
See, what's interesting to me here, is that there are no failures. What you've implied by this is that the narrator has set things up where the resistances are just so, and the HP enough, that the heroes only fail (what 95% of the time) if they do not spend HP. Is that accurate?
This is a way to play HQ that seems common. Here's the question. On those 5% of failures so far, how has the narrator responded? Were the failures interesting at all? Or have there been absolutely no failures?
How has play with this group been so far in terms of your satisfaction?
QuoteQuoteShe lost the contest, but had like ten HP to spend.
You can't spend more than one HP in a single contest, or can you?
My point was that it wasn't like she was short on HP. Spending the one she needed to win the contest wouldn't have put her out at all. IOW, she didn't chose to fail because she was worried that she would fail someting more important, or that she wouldn't be able to buy something she wanted, but simply because failing was more interesting in this case.
QuoteWell, looking at it from a clueless-but-learning GM's point of view, it was both her decision not to spend HPs to avoid "failure", and you presenting a good alternative to "winning" with lots of opportunities to shape the game and character afterwards.
I didn't tell her what would happen if she failed. But she trusts me, and knows that I'm not going to make the game duller with a failure. She knew that things would only get more interesting.
Josh got so extreme about this for one session that he spent all of his HP just so he wouldn't even be tempted to succeed when he rolled a failure that would have been salvageable with a HP. He's since retreated from that position, because, yeah, sometimes it is more fun to win. And you can always refrain from spending. So it's always best to leave yourself with the choice.
But that's what it ought to be, a choice. Not a case of, "Better spend that HP, or horrible things will happen that you the player will not like." Simply a player input on what sort of pacing is best in the particular circumstances.
Note that some people have the opposite experience, and their players never bump, wanting to use the points to power up. These players, too, haven't gotten it yet. They don't see that powering up isn't an indication of how cool they are as players, or that their characters will be any more successful in the future. It just indicates to the narrator where they want their character to be cool.
Mike
Quote from: StalkingBlueI think you're right. That may be one reason why this particular player keeps saying he enjoys the game even though it has too much "roleplaying" in it for his taste. It's not a normal DnD game really, so his character-with-strong-but-cloudy-themes works better than he's used to from other games. And now it'll be getting better. Cool.
Keep this in mind. Allow this player to...how to say this...dodge around with his themes. Allow him a lot of leeway in altering his ability scores such that he can keep his cloud, cloudy. Don't hammer that out of him by pointing out how the numbers on the page make certain things hard-coded into the character.
This is a dificult point. But too much support might be just as much of a problem for the character as no support at all.
QuotePlot Immunity in DnD. Who would have thought it.
There are substantive similarities between D&D and HQ. I think HQ just takes a different (and more coherent) angle, and hits it very well.
QuoteThe interesting thing here is that you say "less dramatic". I completely agree, but some people would defend the option of one-shot kills as highly dramatic. I find it restricting and frustrating because, as you've said, early death prevents you from doing enough cool stuff to make it worthwhile.
They conflate drama and suspense. That is, knowing you could die at any moment is suspenseful - even a realistic feeling in some ways (though, interestingly these systems are never truely realistic). But that's not the same as dramatic. Suspense lasts only until the bomb goes off, and then you have to deal with the outcome.
Here's the thing, you can have both drama and suspense. We know that Indiana Jones isn't going to get squashed by the big rolling boulder, but it's suspensful anyhow, isn't it? In HQ you could spring a PC death on somebody. Just as we're not absolutely sure that the Spielberg won't kill Indy in the next scene, we don't know that we won't roll that complete defeat, and that the narrator won't kill off our character. It can happen in the game, in theory. So suspense happens anyhow.
When I say that "death can't happen unless it's appropriate, I mean that it can't happen in HQ without the narrator saying it should happen then and there. So, death being just another negative result for the character, as always the player can count on the narrator doing the right thing. Since we're not sure what that is, there's always suspense. Just not a fear of failure.
Mike
Quote from: Mike HolmesIn HQ, losing an arm or a leg is only as disempowering, theoretically, as the given flaw. But it's even less disempowering than that. Because all abilities can be used "positively" or "negatively" as needed.
Thanks for the Armless Dude example. Nice.
Thinking about it this way, flaws aren't disempowering, they simply force the player into developing new creative ideas with their character. And that's all good with me. After all, in stories the stars (whether villain or hero) always come back with a vengeance after suffering horrible setbacks, and usually with a strength that has grown out specifically of their defeat. HQ makes that possible, too.
QuoteRight. It's like Brand says, HQ doesn't make real world tactics useless. It just makes "gaming" tactics useless.
I've been trying to discuss this with my self-labelled "rollplaying" player, but he doesn't see the difference. Yet. Maybe he's kinesthetic (like me) and just has to experience it for it to click with him.
QuoteAbout half the time the hero will still win. But the player will be informed that it's because of their hero status (HP), and fighting for what they care about that makes them tough. Not because they're the best out there.
Major paradigm shift ahead for some players. :-)
QuoteI'd do two things instead. The problem with this is that the incentive to stack really high is very strong. And the characters will not have much breadth.
Very good point, especially since the players, being used to DnD, might decide to stack high in abilities that will make the characters "powerful" as for DnD, rather than powerful (meaning strong in star and story potential) for HQ.
Quote...That sounds to me more like "mid-level".
Thanks, I like your suggestion a lot, I'll use it.
QuoteIn fact, it's with Giants that I get the term "stomp" from. Giants stomping heroes just sounds too cool to me. I'm seeing heroes going down with broken femurs as the giant continues on his merry rampage of the village.
LOL. That's about how ordinary orc troopers experience the PCs charging through.
As to being on par with Giants - in DnD it all depends on the type of Giant, but very broadly speaking, yes.
QuoteMoreover, have them fight the equivalent of an 8th level orc. Who will have pretty much the same stats as the heroes do, since they're generated in precisely the same way.
More powerful in melee, but yeah. Orcs in Midnight are borm shock infantry.
QuoteQuoteYes, I'm seeing it now I think. I can get rid of that "gulf of power" mindset DnD fosters.
Nope, you're still not seeing it.
Yes I am. I'm aware that Brand was saying something different from you, but it is something important for me to realise.
Winning isn't, as you put it, the "real way to win" in HQ, I've bought into that. Yet, there is the "gulf of power" dimension also, at least to me.
Traditionally in a DnD game you'd keep distances artificially wide so as to keep power strata in a world reasonably separate, which enables the players to have their PCs move comparatively freely. You learn to avoid certain areas or actions, which leaves you with a reasonably "safe territory" to play in. You keep pushing your limits by taking on challenges and winning or losing them. Sometimes you're overmatched, but a fair GM will let you get away.
IMO this is one of the reasons why DnD game worlds tend to be made so staggeringly large and empty (Eredane being a particularly rampant example): The players need the breathing room for their PCs, without running too much of a risk of brushing with powers that would automatically squash them.
In HQ I don't need to have those gaping distances. I can close the gulfs. Because the players may decide to take on the almost-impossible challenge (which with the power gulfs in DnD would have been ultra-impossible, hence ridiculously dumb and unfun to even try).
So (1.), the characters just might win - which is possible by HQ mechanics, but not in DnD.
And (2.), the players will also win even if the characters lose because HQ supports much more varied and cooler Consequences. That's the core of what you said I think. Am I getting you? If so, I agree; you have convinced me. You had already convinced me in your earlier posts. My only point here was that without (1.) there wouldn't be as much room for the players trying as there is if there's a tiny chance to win a legendary victory. Running headlong into a wall can make for a meaningful ending. But running into a wall with that tiny sliver of a chance that you might break through (rather than smash your own skull) makes for a lot more incentive.
QuoteThe only thing you have to watch out for is making sure that the PCs have a choice at some point. That could be wether or not to attack something way out of their league. If they do, and get stomped, it's all good.
I wouldn't have a problem stomping them without something without giving the PCs a choice first, as long as the players had some chance to choose - for example by asking them beforehand to trust me, or giving them an inkling of what I wanted to have happen. This would be a big exception obviously, and I'd consider it only as the beginning of a scenario, almost like a prelude to a film, with very brief shots of the PCs in mid-being-stomped. Quite likely without even rolling any contest. We've been using "preludes" as lead-ins to scenarios for a while and it works well. In one I even put them in the middle of an inescapable fight the PCs were losing, and we used only narrative, no dice. Even though it was DnD. And no one so much as frowned.
(It turned out the enemy they fought had been an long-lasting illusion, so they ended up exhausted but not actually wounded. I'd still put them in a dangerous trap, besieged by orcs and with an offer of temporary alliance from a bunch of Fell.)
QuoteQuoteOnly -5 for losing an arm? Wow, that _is_ cool.
What's the penalty in D&D? Can't wear a shield or use two handed weapons? What did you think the penalty would be.
The way the sytem works, as a Fighter you survive by your Feats, which means you are pretty much forced to specialise on either ranged or melee and on a single weapon. In 3.5 two-handed (and especially the greatsword) beats everything and sword-and-board beats sword-no-board. Make any changes to that and you invalidate the character's one and only strength.
In DnD, you have to be better than everyone else at one thing. If you lose that, you're toast. As long as you don't lose that, you shrug.
QuoteIn any case, the penalty is precisely whatever you set it at. I suggested 10W2, because it's substantial. But if you want, you can make it 10 or 10w5 for a -1 to a -11 or even higher. It's whatever level you like to set the flaw at. But don't give them a No Left Arm 10w8, because think of the jeopardy you'll be putting all of those barmaids in. I use 10W2 as a typical life changing injury or the like. A "masterful" wound.
Thanks for this. This is almost as good as play experience for me. I can analyse and understand things abstractly, yet I really learn (in the sense of acquiring working knowledge) by experience and examples.
Quote...there's always some way out of a flaw. But it's moot, because the players will love their flaws.
QuoteQuoteQuoteDude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?
You know what this makes me think? Your game sounds cool. :-)
Well, Josh's game in this case.
Ok, let me amend this. Josh's game sounds cool, and you sound like a cool player. Better? :-p
QuoteQuoteBtw, I haven't quite got yet why people around here say that it's the players who are "on the losing side of Gamism".
People around here say that? Hmmm. I dunno.
Not? I thought that it was in threads on Actual Play that I've read it a number of times. Maybe I'm misremembering and it was somewhere else.
QuoteThe big bad definitely has to be statted out - it's critical. Why? I'm not sure on the precise details, but he can project power in many ways, right? It's not just his minions, but he has magic power up the wazoo, right? Well, he uses it, right?
Oh, but you see? That's why I had to kick free of the DnD "Power Gulf" thinking. In DnD it doesn't make sense to stat out the Big Baddies too early. Average chances are the game won't live long enough to see Big Baddies in detail because the game world is three times as big as Asia with under a million people or so in it (Eredane), and the Big Bads are hidden safely away somewhere.
QuoteOh, yeah, the heroes should feel the personal reach of the evil one at times. Or how are they going to hate him?
Heh yeah. I don't think any of the PCs in our game currently have reason to Hate Izrador. I mean, not personally. Power gulf again.
QuoteTrust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.
Oh yes, that's important. Mustn't forget to explain that more clearly.
QuoteHmm. Now I need Bevik to lose a leg, too. This might take several shots at Julie's character...
The mithril leg in my game doesn't always work right either. Especially in the morning the knee may sometimes bend the wrong way. Interested? :)
Mike[/quote]
Quote from: Mike HolmesSee, what's interesting to me here, is that there are no failures. What you've implied by this is that the narrator has set things up where the resistances are just so, and the HP enough, that the heroes only fail (what 95% of the time) if they do not spend HP. Is that accurate?
No, not quite. The GM gave out 3 HP three sessions ago (when I first joined), that's it so far. Players will also use HPs to mitigate Defeat (turn Minor into Marginal, for example). We haven't really had enough contests to deermine an average, but it feels more like maybe 30% failure. Possibly more.
QuoteWere the failures interesting at all?
Hm, let me think what they were. All bumps mentioned are from HPs.
Very briefly, it's a Heortling game with a strong Soap Opera slant and some political maneuvring.
In the first session a character failed to convince the women's council to vote against war - bumped from Minor Defeat to Marginal, the GM ruled that the decision was put off until later.
In the second session we were on a cattle raid that my character was leading. Minor Defeat sneaking in, bumped to Marginal, the GM ruled we ran into a single shepherd boy in the darkness in the middle of nowhere. With more contests, we managed to stop the shepherd running away and tied him up so he couldn't go and raise the alarm.
Marginal Defeat bumped to Marginal Victory when my character tried to calm and lead away the first bull. The GM allowed me to narrate what I did and go crazy if I liked, so I (having no cattle-related skills but Riding...) decided I leapt on its back and rode it out of the barn. The GM allowed some cows to follow.
Complete Defeat (I think) trying to calm the second bull. The player was playing a minor NPC and had no HPs. The GM ruled that the bull caused a stampede, in which the rests of the cows ran away.
In the third session Marginal Defeat (I think) when boasting of the cattle raid to the locals at our stead. I spent no HP. The GM ruled that people wandered away because the story wasn't gripping and had been going on for too long.
Another Marginal or Minor Defeat retelling the story to the clan chief when offering the cattle. Again, I didn't bump. The chief expressed mild displeasure at the raid, saying it was politically unwise to have caused more trouble at the border in the current situation. Not sure what other consequences there were, it felt as if there might have been a reward for my character if I'd succeeded on the roll.
Then two PCs went on Heroquests for One Day. Each went through their Heroquest's stations. There were a number of Defeats, each of which gave penalties for the next station. The players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride. The other player went through everything (the wifely rug of peace thing) and learnt some new magic ability but seemed exasperated, not sure why.
QuoteMy point was that it wasn't like she was short on HP. Spending the one she needed to win the contest wouldn't have put her out at all. IOW, she didn't chose to fail because she was worried that she would fail someting more important, or that she wouldn't be able to buy something she wanted, but simply because failing was more interesting in this case.
Yes I see. Not a resource management decision, a dramatic decision.
Quote... sometimes it is more fun to win. And you can always refrain from spending. So it's always best to leave yourself with the choice.
...Note that some people have the opposite experience, and their players never bump, wanting to use the points to power up. These players, too, haven't gotten it yet. They don't see that powering up isn't an indication of how cool they are as players, or that their characters will be any more successful in the future. It just indicates to the narrator where they want their character to be cool.
That's going to be learning process for my group, I expect.
Quote from: Mike HolmesKeep this in mind. Allow this player to...how to say this...dodge around with his themes. Allow him a lot of leeway in altering his ability scores such that he can keep his cloud, cloudy. Don't hammer that out of him by pointing out how the numbers on the page make certain things hard-coded into the character.
Good point, thanks.
QuoteQuotePlot Immunity in DnD. Who would have thought it.
There are substantive similarities between D&D and HQ. I think HQ just takes a different (and more coherent) angle, and hits it very well.
If that is so, then we're making even less of a Big Leap than I still thought until now. (It's already less big a leap than I believed at the time I started the first thread, because then I hadn't yet realised how far we had Drifted already.)
And your HP-AP comparison for one thing has convinced me. More similarities?
QuoteThey conflate drama and suspense. That is, knowing you could die at any moment is suspenseful - even a realistic feeling in some ways (though, interestingly these systems are never truely realistic). But that's not the same as dramatic. Suspense lasts only until the bomb goes off, and then you have to deal with the outcome.
Constant suspense also wears out instead of being entertaining. Who wants to be stressed all the time? That's about as satisfying as being a bodyguard (and I mean in real life, and I know what I'm talking about - a horrible burn-out-quick job).
QuoteWhen I say that "death can't happen unless it's appropriate, I mean that it can't happen in HQ without the narrator saying it should happen then and there. So, death being just another negative result for the character, as always the player can count on the narrator doing the right thing. Since we're not sure what that is, there's always suspense. Just not a fear of failure.
Hm yes. A "I can't wait to see what happens next" kind of suspense, more than a "Let's see whether or not I survive this one again". Cool.
Quote from: StalkingBlueThinking about it this way, flaws aren't disempowering, they simply force the player into developing new creative ideas with their character. And that's all good with me. After all, in stories the stars (whether villain or hero) always come back with a vengeance after suffering horrible setbacks, and usually with a strength that has grown out specifically of their defeat. HQ makes that possible, too.
Now you're seeing the big picture better.
Character failure is player empowerment. Only in the gamism mode, where character failure is player failure, or in simulationism where the player is to match their desires to the character's desires, is this problematic. In narrativism, we only sympathize with the character, we don't empathize with him. And that's freeing to do what we want to do.
QuoteQuoteRight. It's like Brand says, HQ doesn't make real world tactics useless. It just makes "gaming" tactics useless.
I've been trying to discuss this with my self-labelled "rollplaying" player, but he doesn't see the difference. Yet. Maybe he's kinesthetic (like me) and just has to experience it for it to click with him.
Hmm. Try this on him. In D&D, you take the longsword, because you know it does more damage. In real life, you take the sword that you feel you can wield best, and use it best you can. In HQ, they're all the same, so you can't use this sort of unrealistic "gaming" tactic. But in HQ, if you note that the target character is in armor, you can roll to knock him down first, and use the "half-swording" technique (see TROS) to punch through that armor like a can-opener. There's no rule in HQ that says you can do this, it's simply a real-world technique that we know works. As long as the narrator agrees, this should get you some bonus to deal with your opponent once you've accomplished it (might just end up as AP, but you get the point).
There's no way to do better in HQ, by finding loopholes or otherwise manipulating the rules. Even augments are entirely a narrator call. So there's no way that the player can "show off" how good he is that way. He can only do so by modifying the situation in-game. And even the results of that are subject to narrator whim, so there's no incentive for gamism there, really, either. Any bonus for creativity there, can be just as much for the narration sounding cool as it is for the tactic being particularly real-world valid.
QuoteQuoteAbout half the time the hero will still win. But the player will be informed that it's because of their hero status (HP), and fighting for what they care about that makes them tough. Not because they're the best out there.
Major paradigm shift ahead for some players. :-)
Well, I think this is an unrelated topic. But, basically, that's because in most D&D games, somehow there's never anyone besides the players and a handful of NPCs who are at the level that the characters are. Basically, after, what, sixth level or so, the D&D character is some sort of superhero capable of greater than human feats. Of death dealing, mostly.
In HQ, again, "normal" people should have abilities up to near the W3 range. Unless the hero in question can get up to a 10W4 or so, he's not really superheroic. Just an outstanding human being. If you don't keep that in mind, and base all NPC abilities on the PC abilities, then the world will be seriously skewed. You'll be making the D&D mistake of having the world "level up" right along side the characters. Instead of letting them become more and more heroic.
QuoteQuoteI'd do two things instead. The problem with this is that the incentive to stack really high is very strong. And the characters will not have much breadth.
Very good point, especially since the players, being used to DnD, might decide to stack high in abilities that will make the characters "powerful" as for DnD, rather than powerful (meaning strong in star and story potential) for HQ.
Hell, a high stat is powerful in story potential in HQ. Even strongly narrativism oriented players will stack. So you have to limit it. Per the rules for starting characters where only 10 of the 20 points can be spent on any one ability.
QuoteQuoteMoreover, have them fight the equivalent of an 8th level orc. Who will have pretty much the same stats as the heroes do, since they're generated in precisely the same way.
More powerful in melee, but yeah. Orcs in Midnight are borm shock infantry.
Right. Watch the merchant win this one, when he says, "We're over here," in orcish, and lures them all into a deadfall pit.
QuoteAnd (2.), the players will also win even if the characters lose because HQ supports much more varied and cooler Consequences.
This is more it.
BTW, you can still control "pacing." Let's say that some player gets all hot and bothered to go kill Izrador, and heads straight there. Well, fine, is he going to make it all the way there without running into somebody else first? Course not, that wouldn't be dramatic.
And then again, maybe it would. I can see a game in which they fight Izrador first thing, and he lets them live inexplicably. Then the entire game becomes people avoiding them because they wonder why Izrador would have let them go. Must be some secret curse or something. Maybe he can see through their eyes now, and is using the PCs to see where his opponents lay. Or...who knows what? :-)
I'm reminded of the Thomas Covenant books in which on arrival he meets the most powerful being carrying the most powerful item, and then spends a lot of time trying to get back there.
Think of it this way, Izrador is just another character in the story. Use him as appropriate for a character of his type. Don't avoid him based on the fact that he's powerful, avoid him only if a meeting would be anti-climactic or something. Just stop thinking about the whole "power" and wining/losing thing, and just inject him like any other NPC.
Yes, even he exists only to pose bangs for the heroes. He has no more weight this way than does the cook who travels with the rest of he gang. To the extent that he represents a possible goal for the heroes, you keep him away just as long as you keep away the cook's daughter who is the goal for another hero.
QuoteI wouldn't have a problem stomping them without something without giving the PCs a choice first, as long as the players had some chance to choose - for example by asking them beforehand to trust me, or giving them an inkling of what I wanted to have happen.
Nope.
"Suddenly a Night King comes over the hill on his dark horse, and sees you around the fire. You see his face get a sorta suspicious look on it, and before you can even get to your feet, he starts casting a spell. Roll..."
Stomp them. If you don't do it this way, then, again, there's no point in the lesson. The idea is to teach them that no matter what you do as narrator it's going to come out cool for the players. If you give them an option to avoid, and they avoid the stomping, then they miss the lesson. If they fall into the trap then they learn that the game is about making the best tactical decisions.
If you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.
QuoteThis would be a big exception obviously, and I'd consider it only as the beginning of a scenario, almost like a prelude to a film, with very brief shots of the PCs in mid-being-stomped. Quite likely without even rolling any contest.
That works to get them to trust you, but then they don't learn to trust the system.
See, what stomping does is to say, "Look, you got the worst effect for the character that the system can possibly produce. And it was pretty cool, eh? So stop worrying about losing and go out there and kick some ass. Oh, and BTW, now you know what the scale is like."
QuoteWe've been using "preludes" as lead-ins to scenarios for a while and it works well. In one I even put them in the middle of an inescapable fight the PCs were losing, and we used only narrative, no dice. Even though it was DnD. And no one so much as frowned.
So, call it a prelude if you like, but then have them roll. See, what this does is it says to the players that HQ play is like playing constantly in a prelude. But interactively.
QuoteIn DnD, you have to be better than everyone else at one thing. If you lose that, you're toast. As long as you don't lose that, you shrug.
Which is why there are no rules for losing arms in D&D. So thank goodness for HQ where you can lose an arm and become even more interesting as a character.
BTW, giving out flaws is just one idea of how to represent a permenant loss the like of which is appropriate for a Complete Defeat. Um, the Night King could strike them dumb, which you could enumerate, but works just as well using it as a limitation on what sort of contests the player can partake in. In fact, generally this is what Complete Defeats do, they make it so that you can't win some sort of contest ever. If it's death, you can't win any contest ever (except, possibly, ones in the appropriate otherworld). So One Arm could come without a flaw, the narrator would just say that you can't do anything that requires that arm. Which he can feature by having situations where it becomes a limitation.
Yes, it's OK to make fun of cripples in RPGs. Rather, you can't make light of these things such that the character looks less interesting, but you can in such a way as when the character discovers an alternate solution, that the character looks very cool.
Player A: My character is unconscious. Can you pick me up C?
Player B: Wait, you can't carry Big Bill with one arm. Ha ha.
Player C: Damnit Kersten for giving me that! Fine, I kick Big Bill over and over to flip him down the hall.
Player A: Heyyy!
Player C: Whaddaya want? I only got one arm!
QuoteOk, let me amend this. Josh's game sounds cool, and you sound like a cool player. Better? :-p
Yep. Credit where credit is due. I will try to lop somebody's arm off soon, however, as a practical. :-)
QuoteNot? I thought that it was in threads on Actual Play that I've read it a number of times. Maybe I'm misremembering and it was somewhere else.
I dunno. Gamism is great if that's what you're up for. That's why I'll be playing 1870 this weekend...
QuoteQuoteTrust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.
Oh yes, that's important. Mustn't forget to explain that more clearly.
Show, don't tell. Stomp them.
QuoteThe mithril leg in my game doesn't always work right either. Especially in the morning the knee may sometimes bend the wrong way. Interested? :)
Twice as much.
Julie, Bevik kicks your character's dog - I forget his name. Gonna do sometin aboudit?
Mike
Quote from: StalkingBlueMarginal Defeat bumped to Marginal Victory when my character tried to calm and lead away the first bull.
You mean Minor Victory. Just to be pendantic. :-)
In no case will bump change marginal defeat to marginal victory.
Sounds like the narrator's doing a pretty good job so far on failures.
QuoteIn the third session Marginal Defeat (I think) when boasting of the cattle raid to the locals at our stead. I spent no HP. The GM ruled that people wandered away because the story wasn't gripping and had been going on for too long.
This isn't too bad. But did it lead to further conflict? Also the narrator could have been nicer, and made the problem the wind or something instead of you.
Sometimes a failure is OK as a simple failure, however. Once in a while.
I'd have had somebody in the crowd get insulted by some element yor character put in the story, and demand an apollogy in front of the crowd or something. But that's just me.
QuoteAnother Marginal or Minor Defeat retelling the story to the clan chief when offering the cattle. Again, I didn't bump. The chief expressed mild displeasure at the raid, saying it was politically unwise to have caused more trouble at the border in the current situation. Not sure what other consequences there were, it felt as if there might have been a reward for my character if I'd succeeded on the roll.
Hmm. Well one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.
QuoteThen two PCs went on Heroquests for One Day. Each went through their Heroquest's stations. There were a number of Defeats, each of which gave penalties for the next station.
Again, what's neat is that the penalties automatically mean something in the later context. Just makes things more challenging.
QuoteThe players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride.
Interesting. Allowed by who?
QuoteThe other player went through everything (the wifely rug of peace thing) and learnt some new magic ability but seemed exasperated, not sure why.
Interesting, too.
Anyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.
Mike
Quote from: Mike HolmesYes, it's OK to make fun of cripples in RPGs. Rather, you can't make light of these things such that the character looks less interesting, but you can in such a way as when the character discovers an alternate solution, that the character looks very cool.
Player A: My character is unconscious. Can you pick me up C?
Player B: Wait, you can't carry Big Bill with one arm. Ha ha.
Player C: Damnit Kersten for giving me that! Fine, I kick Big Bill over and over to flip him down the hall.
Player A: Heyyy!
Player C: Whaddaya want? I only got one arm!
Again, I feel the need to provide an example (reading long-ass posts brings me to post myself, I guess). Anyway.
Once upon a time, about ... hmm... three years ago, there was an RPGA tournament-style competition to design a DnD group in the 3.0 rules. It was an RPGA club competition, and I was active in the club at the time, so I took part. The idea was to make up a group of PCs with a kind of wicked interrelated story going on... sort of a built in r-map or something. Whatever, I didn't have the language to explain it those terms then anyway.
So, in the process of doing this, the group I was working with came up with a mixed Human/Dwarven group that had basically been on a quest for about ten years or so to lift a curse from their respective villages -- both the dwarves and humans had been cursed, basically due to comutual racial ignorance and bigotry. They hated each other -- they barely got along, and there was a ten-year litany of mistrust and bad choices that got brought up whenever anything at all went wrong.
One of those bad choices had, many years back, resulted in my character losing his right hand.
Now, I'll be honest. I made up the one-handed guy (and grouchy old scottish-style skald in his mid-forties) simply because I had a good miniature for him -- a guy in a kilt with his bastard sword balanced on his shoulder and held with his left hand, and pointing forward with his right arm, the stump of his wrist wrapped in a tartan-patterned cloth. It was badass.
I honestly never intended to play the guy. Seriously. We were supposed to make up the group, write up the history, submit it, and that was it. (We won the national contest, btw... it was a pretty cool group.)
Thing is, everyone wanted to play these poor screwed up bastards after we got done, so we found a GM to run the group and played.
Which left me with a one-handed guy... in DnD... a system where there's no mechanical in game benefit at all to such a handicap.
* You can NOT quietly open a door and sneak into a room with your weapon drawn, if you only have one hand -- if you want to enter a room with a weapon out, you HAVE to kick it in -- that's the facts.
* Hugging your daughter when you're in a dangerous area is flat out of the question.
* Forget about playing instruments as a skald -- everything you do is acapella.
* Mounted combat is... well, better to be avoided. Missile combat isn't even a thought in your head -- you charge. That's it.
* Even clasping your companion's arm in a way that indicates you and the dwarven leader are finally coming to an understanding is different.
My point is -- there is almost no moment in the game where you are not forcibly reminded that you are missing that hand -- the fact that you continue on despite that is ... a huge statement about your character. It changed the way I thought about playing handicaps in RPGs.
Imagine having the same handicap in a game that can support the story elements of it (not the Hero-system disads, but the story elements). Just makes me hungry to dust that guy off and convert him.
Now, for the record, I'm not volunteering Gennadi to lose a hand, Mike :)
Though if I get caught with that idol... hmm.
Quote from: Mike HolmesNow you're seeing the big picture better.
Whew. The maddening thing was that I knew there was a bigger picture out there, but my eyes insisted they couldn't see it. It's still fragmented, but that's ok, once we play again (which won't be until late January, sigh) things will come together for me more.
Meanwhile, thanks again for staying on this and helping me along step by step.
QuoteIn narrativism, we only sympathize with the character, we don't empathize with him. And that's freeing to do what we want to do.
Hm, is that where "author stance" comes in? I know that stance and mode are two different things, but what you're saying about sympathising with the character looks like what an author would do.
QuoteBut in HQ, if you note that the target character is in armor, you can roll to knock him down first, and use the "half-swording" technique (see TROS) to punch through that armor like a can-opener. There's no rule in HQ that says you can do this, it's simply a real-world technique that we know works.
I used this when we went for a drink after converting characters over on Thursday, and one player said something about not having to fear "a puny little goblin with a pointy stick". Lights lit up in both players' eyes. (In this case it was of course the goblin kicking out the armored PC's kneecap and hopping on their chest.)
QuoteBTW, you can still control "pacing." Let's say that some player gets all hot and bothered to go kill Izrador, and heads straight there. Well, fine, is he going to make it all the way there without running into somebody else first? Course not, that wouldn't be dramatic.
And then again, maybe it would. I can see a game in which they fight Izrador first thing, and he lets them live inexplicably. Then the entire game becomes people avoiding them because they wonder why Izrador would have let them go. Must be some secret curse or something. Maybe he can see through their eyes now, and is using the PCs to see where his opponents lay. Or...who knows what? :-)
Cool. The "who knows what" is the best bit of course.
QuoteThink of it this way, Izrador is just another character in the story.
...
Yes, even he exists only to pose bangs for the heroes. He has no more weight this way than does the cook who travels with the rest of he gang. To the extent that he represents a possible goal for the heroes, you keep him away just as long as you keep away the cook's daughter who is the goal for another hero.
Wonderful. What headaches I could have saved my self I I hadn't tried to run my games with DnD for years.
QuoteIf you give them an option to avoid, and they avoid the stomping, then they miss the lesson. If they fall into the trap then they learn that the game is about making the best tactical decisions.
If you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.
I would so like to disagree. Unfortunately, I can't. :-)
QuoteQuoteThis would be a big exception obviously, and I'd consider it only as the beginning of a scenario, almost like a prelude to a film, with very brief shots of the PCs in mid-being-stomped. Quite likely without even rolling any contest.
That works to get them to trust you, but then they don't learn to trust the system.
See, what stomping does is to say, "Look, you got the worst effect for the character that the system can possibly produce. And it was pretty cool, eh? So stop worrying about losing and go out there and kick some ass. Oh, and BTW, now you know what the scale is like."
Ok. Yeah well, what can I say. You're right. Again.
QuoteYes, it's OK to make fun of cripples in RPGs. Rather, you can't make light of these things such that the character looks less interesting, but you can in such a way as when the character discovers an alternate solution, that the character looks very cool.
Player A: My character is unconscious. Can you pick me up C?
Player B: Wait, you can't carry Big Bill with one arm. Ha ha.
Player C: Damnit Kersten for giving me that! Fine, I kick Big Bill over and over to flip him down the hall.
Player A: Heyyy!
Player C: Whaddaya want? I only got one arm!
LOL.
As long as the player doesn't curl up into a tight ball and pretends he has a shell, I'm happy.
Edit: (I wouldn't dream of doing this kind of thing if I had a crippled player in the group BTW. Not unless I knew the player very well and was absolutely certain that they didn't have a problem with it - which is very well possible. You see, I do think disempowering players isn't the only limit. Other things that might touch a too personal note in a player's life are limit, too.) /End edit.
QuoteI will try to lop somebody's arm off soon, however, as a practical. :-)
Aha, I'm not the only one...
Quote from: Mike HolmesWell one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.
I haven't seen mechanical penalties used in the group (except in the religious holiday heroquests). It may be that they all have the consequences so pat down that thre's no need to ever mention them though, in which case I wouldn't have noticed.
QuoteQuoteThe players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride.
Interesting. Allowed by who?
As far as I remember, the narrator said the character was too exhausted to go on beyond this point.
QuoteAnyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.
Yeah... One of my players said that he's played some other system in the past that had "XP and Fate Points" rolled into one, and he hated that - he's announced he's never going to use HPs to bump. Ever.
Of course again I haven't a clue at this point whether some dysfunction may have been involved in that other play experience, the player appears to have had a bunch of them, all of them I'd ever heard of and then some. (He probably has played in a shut-up game as well... maybe I should ask.)
Quote from: DoyceI honestly never intended to play the guy. Seriously.
He's far too cool not to be played of course. Although in DnD... it kinda spoils the fun for everyone unless everyone is dealing with limitations on a similar scale and is happy to be playing a fairly grotesque game.
QuoteImagine having the same handicap in a game that can support the story elements of it (not the Hero-system disads, but the story elements). Just makes me hungry to dust that guy off and convert him.
You already have bits for a narrative there if you wanted to convert him to HeroQuest. Also, in HQ you'd have room for about a ton more cool traits than your writeup above contains.
He looks like a wonderful character to me.
Quote from: StalkingBlueHm, is that where "author stance" comes in? I know that stance and mode are two different things, but what you're saying about sympathising with the character looks like what an author would do.
Not really. There may be some correllation, but it's certainly not automatic. Consider - a player has to make a decision between two options, and decides to use actor stance to do so, only considering what the character knows, and what he thinks the character is like. The outcome will still be influenced by the players ideas. So very much he could be doing narrativism, and he may very well only sympathize in this case.
Actor stance is not the same as a player being under some illusion that he is the character. So author stance is not synonymous with making decisions in a way that separates a player from his character. Indeed, a player might empathize more with their character by putting them into a situation that they, themselves had been in.
QuoteI used this when we went for a drink after converting characters over on Thursday, and one player said something about not having to fear "a puny little goblin with a pointy stick". Lights lit up in both players' eyes. (In this case it was of course the goblin kicking out the armored PC's kneecap and hopping on their chest.)
And wedging that stick into their visored helmet, and gouging out their eyes.
One of the things I love about HQ, is that everyone becomes dangerous, potentially. Consider - in real life, and in HQ, what makes someone dangerous is not their training, but their willingness to do harm to somebody else.
Suddenly goblins, the little sociopaths that they are, are quite scary. I'm going to hopefully be using this precise fact in both my IRC and FTF HQ games coming up. Turns out that the same goblin civilization is threatening both sets of PCs...
Goblins as throwaway foes: dull. Goblins as the thematic threats that they are: terrifying.
QuoteQuoteIf you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.
I would so like to disagree. Unfortunately, I can't. :-)
Well, I'm going to let you wiggle out. That is, there may be other ways to do this. Stomping is simply the most direct that I can think of.
More subtle is to present the players with a situation where they come across a foe who's somewhat stronger than they are, but not tremendously so, but who they'd think would want to do them major harm. They may win these, so do them enough that they eventually fail. When they fail, just make sure that you deliver some really atypical results that are way cool. Even ask them what they think the penalties delivered should mean.
Mike
I don't want to interrupt, but seeing as the game in question is my 'Red Cow' campaign I might be able to illuminate a few points.
QuoteQuoteIn the third session Marginal Defeat (I think) when boasting of the cattle raid to the locals at our stead. I spent no HP. The GM ruled that people wandered away because the story wasn't gripping and had been going on for too long.
This isn't too bad. But did it lead to further conflict? Also the narrator could have been nicer, and made the problem the wind or something instead of you. Sometimes a failure is OK as a simple failure, however. Once in a while.
I try to be guided by the level of defeat when deciding how much impact defeat has (or control to take things in a new direction the narrator has). Marginal Defeat shouldn't have any consequences beyond failure (the same is true for victory of course). p.62 of HeroQuest is a my guide here.
QuoteI'd have had somebody in the crowd get insulted by some element yor character put in the story, and demand an apollogy in front of the crowd or something. But that's just me.
Nice idea, I'll remember that one for a minor defeat at some point ;-)
QuoteQuoteAnother Marginal or Minor Defeat retelling the story to the clan chief when offering the cattle. Again, I didn't bump. The chief expressed mild displeasure at the raid, saying it was politically unwise to have caused more trouble at the border in the current situation. Not sure what other consequences there were, it felt as if there might have been a reward for my character if I'd succeeded on the roll.
Hmm. Well one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.
IIRC in this context there was a real penalty. Under Heortling tradition the plunder of the raid belongs to the chief. The chief then decides what to hand back to the raiders. In this case the chief kept much of the proceeds, to compensate those damaged by expected reprisals, A victory would have you got you a bigger share of the wealth. In this game wealth equates to political power and influence. I think the raiders did not gain any increase to wealth in this case.
QuoteQuoteThen two PCs went on Heroquests for One Day. Each went through their Heroquest's stations. There were a number of Defeats, each of which gave penalties for the next station.
Again, what's neat is that the penalties automatically mean something in the later context. Just makes things more challenging.
QuoteThe players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride.
Interesting. Allowed by who?
QuoteThe other player went through everything (the wifely rug of peace thing) and learnt some new magic ability but seemed exasperated, not sure why.
Interesting, too.
So what happened here. Well my players are also reacting to learned habits around defeat/failure and cost/reward. Farandar's player is more trusting that I will turn a defeat into an interesting story line. with rolls or without rolls. When he missed the session with the raid I ruled that his character also missed the raid, leading some to question his courage. Farandar's player quickly accepted that as a good challenge for his character (whose father sees him as a failure) and it led to a good story development when Farandar moved out of his father's house and into his uncle's. I think that Orsta's player may still be more of the fun equals my character succeeds at their goal viewpoint, seeing defeat as failure. That is the reason why Orsta's player is more concerned with game fairness, reflecting their desire to 'win', and hence can react negatively when they are faced with overwhelmeing opponents or generous, giving the benefit of the doubt on augments or game unbalanced rewards from heroquests. No idea whether that will change.
It probably is worth raising the 'defeat is not bad point' in the future. As always your perscapicity as to these issues is welcomed.
QuoteAnyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.
I think the issue here is that players dislike the 'whiff factor'. They do not like to be stomped too often because they like to be heroes not zeroes. Again it is coupled to their notion that to be a hero you need to 'win', not to feel like a zero. But my experience is that you have to be careful about showing players that defeat is not a disaster by deliberately stomping them. It is just too easy for them to feel crushed by the whole thing.
Thanks for dropping by Ian, & for answering Mike's questions.
Quote from: Ian CooperBut my experience is that you have to be careful about showing players that defeat is not a disaster by deliberately stomping them. It is just too easy for them to feel crushed by the whole thing.
That's my concern, yes; especially because any creative Consequences to a stomping will make serious, long-term changes to the character that the player has had no control over happening and that may well turn the character into something the player wouldn't want to play anymore. Mike's examples of the loss of a limb or a curse or mark that makes people distrustful are very cool and creative, but they may still destroy the character for the player if they alter what the player perceives as the core of the character concept. I guess I'll just have to feel my way and take some risks. :-)
And it's looking as if the original topic has run its course, so let's call this thread closed. Thanks very much everyone, again, there has been some brilliant advice.
We converted characters last week. Once the players let me have their writeups of the finished characters I'll post them to a new thread.