More fun with Trollbabe

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Here are some more notions about Trollbabe.

The biggest unit of play is "the Adventure," which is like a short story. It contains Scenes within it, and Scenes contain Conflicts within them. As with many role-playing games, what we think of as the "core mechanics" are about resolving these conflicts.

However, taking a big step back, I wanted to emphasize that the larger-scale framework presents, as it were, core mechanics of its own.

From the first couple of pages:
Every adventure of Trollbabe includes something called "the Stakes," which is to say, a conflict at hand in the setting of the adventure. Someone or perhaps a whole bunch of someones, in this place, at this time, want something, and cannot get it easily. The Stakes are whatever is desired.

Is the person who desires the Stakes a victim of injustice, or its perpetrator? Is the desired thing a person, a relationship, a resource, a status, a political goal, or what? How does this factor into the troll and human issues discussed previously? Preparing and defining these things are left for a later section, but the key point here is that any adventure is filled with individuals, run by the GM, who are busily in action regarding problems and agendas.

The point of having Stakes is to generate something else entirely, called Consequences. Consequences are how the conflict at hand turns out: the resulting status of the Stakes and the fates of everyone involved. Again, a trollbabe's very presence tends to amplify or to complicate most people's takes on whatever situation is occurring, and therefore tends to move a conflict about some Stakes into a resolution with Consequences.

The player has no responsibilities regarding Consequences; the trollbabe does not have to "fight for justice" or be anything to anyone - except that, given what she is, she will be involved as far as everyone else is concerned. Consequences will occur, as the Stakes must change, develop, and come to any form of resolution through the course of the trollbabe's presence and voluntary-or-involuntary involvement in the situation.

Stakes and Consequences occur at a specific Scale, or basically, the extent of people and territory that are affected by the outcome of the situation. The smallest Scale would be one-on-one interaction, with the Consequences essentially affecting the well-being of single or very few persons. Larger Scales include extended family, an organized group like a war company, on up to villages and whole lands. The range of Scales is presented later in the rules.  For now, the point is that Trollbabe play begins at the personal level, and that the Scale of play may increase specifically and only at the request of a player, between adventures.

Eventually, if the players want, Stakes and Consequences may be occurring at the level of the entire land, in which case results might include such drastic events as the trolls wiping out humans, humans wiping out trolls, or some sort of accord being reached for good and all.

Although Trollbabe has no personality descriptors of any kind, players tend to latch onto the above concept quite quickly and to put a lot of effort into the Consequences of play - again, with full freedom in terms of what sort of impact they'd like their characters to have. Note how much power the players have, in terms of setting the Scale of the game - and that Scale can never be decreased. [Within an adventure, conflicts may still be at the personal level; but the Consequences of that adventure must be at the designated Scale.]

Best,
Ron

P.S. Played it again! It's one of those games in which, for a little while, the GM thinks, "Oh man, they're walking through it, this system allows too much success" - and then, when the failure happens, it's so significant that it really makes the story. In the first run of the game, that failure came early; in this one, for one trollbabe it came near the end and for the other, it came wham at the big showdown.