[Icar] Starting a game with medium characters and escalation

[brainwipe]

For most scenarios I run in Icar (free Sci Fi RPG), I start the characters at a base level. They can barely shoot, bargain or even get out of bed in the morning without some chance of failure. After months of play, the inevitable escalation between the team and the 'enemy' leads to the characters being very powerful - a climax and then closure, the end of the campaign. After this is normally a short break of a week or two and we start a new campaign, at the beginning. With rubbish characters. I read somewhere (probably here or RoleplayingTips.com) that starting with medium power characters can be rewarding and I have certainly found that.

My current campaign is based around a number of characters who have left their more mundane jobs and become expeditionaries (the closest in Icar to the archetypal adventurers). So they have transferable skills at reasonable levels and they will be provided with ample equipment from their employer.

From a GM point of view, the challenge was not really down to how tough to make the opponents but giving new sorts of challenges. The reason for this was that increasing the toughness of the 'bad guys' would soon lead to escalation and a freshortened campaign. Instead, I have found that the team have different moralistic challenges to face, such as killing a single man - to stop a war - to save a billion people. Furthermore, you can also slow the progress of the inevitable escalation by setting the players on long jobs - during which they cannot replenish comestibles (such as ammunition in Icar) and so leading to new ways of solving problems. Therefore, the characters have medium abilities and the equipment to match but need to be more frugal with their use.

I'd be interested in finding out what you do to keep a game fresh and solve the problem of rapid escalation.

What sort of methods have you used to slow escalation? How have you varied challenges in your game when the player characters overpower the foes?

[TonyLB]

Well, there are a couple of ways to deal with it.

First, you can just make problems that can't be solved by ultimate power, and then you don't care how much people escalate.  Dogs in the Vineyard, for instance, does this quite nicely.

Alternately, you can just remove any notion of advancement in terms of effectiveness, and then there's no avenue for such escalation.  Capes does this.

Are you looking, specifically, for situations where the power could become a problem, but you need to give people some advancement, and how to mete it out?

[brainwipe]

I think my players expect some advancement and it is definitely core to the game. Icar leans towards getting your character modified and improved. I can't stop the tide of increase but I am looking for ways in which I can slow it (such as having them kidnapped and all their stuff taken) and provide new challenges without it getting into a case of "We're tougher, the bad guy will be tougher". In a sense, I am looking for the first case, where there are problems that can't be solved by ultimate power.

How does Dogs in the Vineyard pose problems that can't be solved through ultimate power? Do you have any examples?

[TonyLB]

Dogs does it like this:  You're in charge of rooting out sin.  You have to cast a judgment of some sort or another (or sin will take the town, everyone dies, etc., etc.)  You can make any judgment you want.  But, human nature being what it is, no judgment is going to please everybody.  So you have to decide, who deserves mercy, who deserves punishment, which sins are forgivable, which weren't even sins in the first place.

For instance, I'm rather fond of my town Kettle Lake.  It's hard to see how ultimate power would really make those problems soluble.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Rather than seeing this thread turn into a poll, I'd like to concentrate more on your own experience with this particular game.

Something very important is missing from your account, both of your usual play and of this one - how much fun (rewarded effort) you are experiencing. Considering that led me to these questions for you.

Why did you switch to the medium-power level for starting characters? Was it due to specific insights or concerns which had arisen over your years of the former approach? Or did someone else request it? Or what?

Since playing with this new approach, you have discovered that, instead of "match player-characters to equal or bit-better foes in combat," you

I... have found that the team have different moralistic challenges to face, such as killing a single man - to stop a war - to save a billion people

You've "found" this? Like, as in, just lying around? What do you mean you "found" it? Is this based on a change in your own desires when prepping the upcoming scenario, or on the players' new ability actually affect the game-world from the start of play?

Best,
Ron

[brainwipe]

Hi Ron,

Incisive as always! I'll do my best to answer your questions. I always have fun while playing, I can't say it's ever been a chore (except when I run a game while seriously ill!). You could say that I like to explore new regions of my game universe but any new campaign would provide that.

Why did you switch to the medium-power level for starting characters?

Like many others, the core of my gaming group has been together for a number of years and as we've got older, we've managed (collectively) to keep a 14 year old game fresh by approaching it from another angle. Perhaps it was more concern that the players would grow tired of having to drag a character up from the depths of starting to something formidable. It can be a long wait between starting a campaign and gaining bionics, for example. Furthermore, the previous campaign ended before the characters had progessed very far, so another motive was to start near where they left off. It seemed obvious at the time.

What do you mean you "found" it?

This is actually a little more difficult to answer than it first might seem. An Icar campaign is comprised from a number of parallel plotlines, the events of which are logged in a timeline. The actions of the characters effect these actions to a certain degree and so the outcome of many of the events they encounter are quite emergent.  For example: If they fight back at the pirates and their ship is damaged, they will have to stop to make repairs. If this has made them late to a battle, they get the aftermath.

Around this structure exists the typical add-libbing that you get with most RPGs. I wouldn't say it was my desires that changed or the character's increase in ability but an emergent consequence of plotline conjunction. A few events co-inciding to produce a situation which is more about morales than about combat.

You might well argue, of course, that this is a property of their new level of ability. They now have the ability to stand and fight and so the morale argument is a consequence of having the choice. With low power characters, they would not have had the choice, so the morale argument would go unnoticed in the push for survival.

So, in a sense, I didn't find the challenge, it found me. Given the example above, I would not have engineered the aftermath but set up the plotline with the battle in it and a plotline with a load of pirates in it and with a little bit of random chance let them collide.

My problem is that I want to be able to set up more non-combat or foe-related challenges to slow the escalation. I would like to throw in some new challenges altogether and that was my motivation for this thread.

[Andrew Norris]

Hi Rob,

I've looked over the system briefly, but I don't think I'm understanding the advancement issue. It looks like character advancement comes through spending Roleplay Points, but it seems like those are distributed by the GM. It seems like the easiest way to tweak advancement would be adjusting how you give out RP. (Something like the Keys from The Shadow of Yesterday could be an interesting alternative, but you may not want to change your system.)

It sounds like your main avenue of advancement is through equipment -- more money, better weapons, bionics, and so forth. Is that correct? I suppose it's common in SF games, and your comments about slowing advancement by having the PC's stuff stolen suggests it's an issue.

Here's a thought: Maybe the expeditionaries' equipment is just plain better than the stuff people have in this new area they're exploring. Their opposition doesn't have much worth taking. The local bionic implants are cruder and riskier than the stuff back home.

If it's important to keep a level of challenge, make their foe's resources nontransferable. If someone comes after you with a big gun, and you beat them, now you have a big gun -- but if their weapons are inferior but they have superior numbers and a home-field advantage, you're providing challenge without escalation.

I think just periodically taking the PC's stuff is going to be frustrating for the players. It's setting a clear reward mechanism -- "Get better equipment, become more powerful, take on more powerful foes, get even better equipment" -- and turning it into Snakes and Ladders. Get better, oops, you lost your stuff, start all over again.

Whereas if you can minimize or remove "stuff" as a reward/advancement issue, you can escalate within situations without escalating within the game as a whole. Say you're fighting bandits on a backwater planet. They know the terrain, they have support within the community, so they're dangerous even though their lasers are crap compared to yours. The PCs escalate by learning the lay of the land, convincing the cowering locals to stand up for themselves, etc. By the end of the situation, the PCs are much more effective here. They've accomplished a lot, they're lauded as heroes. But you can make the next situation challenging without taking things away from the PCs or ramping up the opposition.

[brainwipe]

Andrew, thanks for the very useful reply (and for looking over the system).

There are two escalations here. Roleplaying Points (RP) are rewarded to improve the character's abilities and statistics. However, I don't think that's where the problem lies. You're quite right that the most powerful form of advancement is through equipment (and related bionics/etc) adn theiving the items of others can definitely be an issue.

You have some cracking ideas: perhaps by making the opposition have poor kit but be stronger in numbers might make an interesting challenge. Riskier items definitely fits in well with the scenario.

Making the foes stuff non-transferable is another good way, one I have used in terms of the Droids (seen-from-a-distance human-created-out-of-control-killing-machine-cliche) where their bodies and technology is actually dangerous to the non-Droid user. I could use that elsewhere in terms of ammunition calibre mis-matches and the like. Non-transferability could be performed in a Predator style, where they just detonate if they don't win. Terrible sportsmanship but might work once in a while.

Your last idea regarding the power of local knowledge is my favourite. This is the sort of new challenge I am looking for - where the escalation of the equipment is not as important as local knowledge. Rather than going in with guns blazing (albeit tactically) would not be the best option and something more long-lasting would be preferable.

Thanks again, Andrew, that's been really useful!

[Andrew Norris]

Great!

I'm not sure where you want to go thematically with the campaign, but I don't want to drop the points Tony and Ron have raised. I'm thinking that the two are closely connected.

Player characters as privileged, distinct individuals in a backwater is a great way to get those themes and moral challenges you were talking about. The PCs come into a situation with The Big Guns. This puts them in a position where they can cut a swath through the opposition, at the cost of their own dwindling resources. If they do this every time, they're reduced to using local equipment -- slugthrowers instead of lasers, bulky rocket launchers that may well blow up on them, and so on. They won't be so "special" any more.

This suggests a pretty clear premise: "What lines will you cross to change things here?" You can pull out the big guns to break up a slaving operation on one planet, but what if that leaves you without the resources to stop a genocide on the next planet? And are there situations where coming in as The Hand of God from off-planet is going to make things worse in the long run than if you hadn't gotten involved? (I can envision a situation where the PCs act as Deus Ex Machina to run off some raiders that are exploiting a local town, and they get heralded as heroes. They come back a few months later, and things are worse, because it's easy to stand up to a bully when there's a guy behind you with lasers, but it's open season when that guy leaves.)

This stuff reminds me a lot of American Westerns, specifically when the crack gunfighter rides into town to make things right. The attrition factor is more abstract, but it's there, and it ties strongly into the moral issues.  It's not a question of "Can I take him?" but "I don't know how many times I can do this before somebody gets lucky and takes me down... is this situation, right now, worth using up one of those times?"

[Mike Holmes]

If you're still stuck on "Advancement," Rob, here's my suggestion. Treat equipment like you treat abilities. That is, only allow them to be purchased with RP.

Have we been over this before? I'm getting deja vu.

The usual retort is that this would be "unrealistic." That is, if a character picks something up, but can't pay for it, then it vanishes? Well, no. It works precisely the same way that RP works with abilities. That is, from this POV, RP are "unrealistic" too. That is, if you present me with the RP system I could say, "what if my character goes off and just studies for a year? Shouldn't he get some ability in what he's studying?"

We have reward systems like RP to promote players doing the sorts of things we want them to do in play - and then we explain the dramatic convention of improvement via an in-game explanation. Like now that I've spent the points, now I can go study and get the ability. So it doesn't happen magically. I'm just only allowed to do the aquisitive activity if I spend the points.

Same thing works for equipment. You don't just magically lose the equipment you don't pay for, any number of in-game explanations for it's dissapearance can be applied:

• It gets lost.
• It gets destroyed somehow.
• It gets stolen.
• Character gives it to a friend.
• Character gives it to the authorities.
• Character sells it and spends the money on:


• Vacation
• Parties
• Charities

Doesn't matter. Because it's metagame. The player knows he can't keep it, so let him decide what's the most interesting way for the resources to get dissolved, understanding that he can't get them back unless he spends points.

In the middle of a scenario, the character can use whatever he comes across. He only has to get rid of stuff between adventures. Basically anything can temporarily become part of the character - but it takes RP to make it a permenant addition.

The problem with allowing in-game actions to be rewarded is that players will always be more creative than you at getting stuff than you will be at taking it away, and this becomes a major part of the game. Note how every time you capture them and take away their stuff, how the first thing they do when they escape is go look for it? Ignoring all other considerations until their stripped power is back? The in-game solution just does not work. It leads to characters getting day jobs, going to classes, and buying equipment as the only form of play if allowed to proceed. See GURPS.

In any case, paying for equipment with a player resource is often something that people find odd. But this is just RPG conditioning, and the idea has been around since 1981 with Champions. And it works just fine. Better than fine, it's the only reasonable way to go if you have an advancement system.

Mike

[brainwipe]

MIke, it's a very interesting idea and a very good way of solving the problem. Getting equipment is very much like being able to advance without using any RP. I shall have a good think of how I might build this into the Icar system and get back to you. I am running my campaign game tonight, so I should be able to gauge the long-term players feelings!

Thanks for the help!

[Mike Holmes]

I should be able to gauge the long-term players feelings!

Frankly, take what they say with a grain of salt. This won't be what they're used to, and there's a good chance that they'll protest just because of the paradigm change. I'd actually insist that they try it first before making any decisions on the use of the idea.

In any case, remember that this isn't some radical new game idea. It's been around since 1980 or before, and lots of games use it. It's absolutely tried and true. It might not work for every group, but it works for most groups that honestly give it a try.

Mike

[brainwipe]

Well, as promised, I did mention it to the players and they had some reservations but would be happy to test out some sort of system if I created it. They were a little worried that I would spend time on this rather than finishing the graphics for version 3.5 of the core rule book (alpha available now for free, of course). If there was some way to build this quietly into the system, then that would be great.

One did have a good point about its use in Icar:

In Icar, you get your bits blown off on a regular basis. It's not strange for a character to have a near death experience at some point within a campaign. Thanks to medicine and bionics, this can be all fixed up but should this be controlled by the points system? If your character takes a big hit at the start of the game and you don't get much of a session - you won't get any points to spend. If you don't get any points spent, you won't get any bionics.

I countered this by saying that you can get your bits replaced up to your original statistics (if possible) without spending anything but if you want more powerful limbs or statistics then you're going to have to delve deep into your pockets. In the game world, this would equate to the medic having some quality bionics on hand by chance. Thus, the XP can be spent to improve the character's luck.

While talking about this, we went full circle. Icar allows a player to keep an XP back to spend on 'turning over' a bad dice roll. An insurance policy if you will. Only one a session and only on your own character. This use of RP is very much like giving yourself a bit of luck. Therefore, I could easily add this to the existing system with only a little play testing and some typesetting. Could even make it into the next release (3.5).

That way, I can better control the acceleration of escalation. Without something of a system overhaul, it won't solve the problem of the characters facing conflict with iteratively better weapons but it's a start.

[Mike Holmes]

You've generally deduced the way rules like this work. That is, "once you've bought a bit of equipment, it's yours to keep." So we use the same sort of dramatic logic once the character has been deprived of equipment. That said, what's more fun is simply to rebate the points for them, allowing the player to change thier mind on what to spend them on. Maybe they do pile them together with some new points, and improve their cyberwear. Or decide that "natural is better" and just get some equivalent training.

This is especially important with people. Oh, didn't I mention that people are equipment, too? Rather, all character effectiveness is one big pool. Whether it's from a person, ability, thing, whatever, that's all just description. Anyhow, when your purchased NPC gets blown away and can't be reasonably brought back by any means, you should get the points to spend on something or someone else.

While talking about this, we went full circle. Icar allows a player to keep an XP back to spend on 'turning over' a bad dice roll. An insurance policy if you will. Only one a session and only on your own character. This use of RP is very much like giving yourself a bit of luck. Therefore, I could easily add this to the existing system with only a little play testing and some typesetting. Could even make it into the next release (3.5).

I've refered to this before as a pseudo-in-game rationale. That is, we all know that the rule really exists for the players to have some meter of advancement that keeps things fun. But there's always this inclination to try to come up with in-game rationales.

RP for Character Ability Advancement - they're spent to represent study and practice
RP for Character Success - they're spent to represent karma or fate working in the character's favor
RP for Equipment - they're spent to represent the same luck with regards to equipment

Frankly, the problem with this is that all three are unrealistic. That is, you don't get better, or get luckier at things by doing the sorts of things that get you RP. Which leads to all sorts of misunderstandings, and maundering about how to fix it. There's a very simple other rout...

The points belong to the player, not the character.

Consider: let's say you have a character making an attack with an energy weapon, and the GM narrates the damage done as "Bob defies the fire overhead, stands up, aims and puts a hole in his enemy." This in a situation where "Bob huddles behind cover, and waits patiently taking his shot when the enemy pops up." Basically both in-game descriptions fit the mechanical situation in terms of both input and output. But somehow you like one better than the other for the situation. There is no rule that covers this, right? It's just the skill of the players narrating what just happened.

Well, game mechanics never tell us 100% of what happened. There is always some leeway. So, really, what the mechanics do is to simply get us to a consensus on some of the important points of what's going on in the game world. Other than that, we can imagine or narrate what we like to fit those mechanical results.

Well, if the mechanical results say that you get to learn something, say, then we all agree that your character learned something. What the mechanic doesn't do, perhaps, is say how it was that you learned that thing. Certainly it can't be 100% precise about it. So we fill in the details as we feel neccessary.

This is true of all role-playing. You're always filling in details as you feel neccessary. Some people play D&D without any detail at all. We just don't know what 8 HP of damage looked like - just that the character is 8HP closer to being done. Some people require more detail, but when the system only says something like 8HP, you have a lot of lattitude (and, in fact in D&D, you are supposed to consider overall HP when considering what the effect looked like).

So it's no different with equipment. If the equipment leaves, in fact, you don't even have to say why. All that matters, mechanically, is that it's gone. Note that, interestingly, this actually matches a lot of dramatic convention - in Star Trek, if Whorf picks up some seemingly very effective enemy blaster weapon, do we see him with it in the next episode? Is it explained where the weapon went? No, it's just not part of his character.

The original rule for Champions actually was created because of this sort of convention. Why doesn't Spider-Man show up in the next comic with the weapons that the Punisher had after Spidey captured him last issue? Because Spidey isn't about using submachineguns. It's just not done. The genre is matched well by using this sort of rule. So no surprise that's where it comes from.

So, in fact, you don't even have to explain where the equipment went, for some players. Now, that said, the nice thing is that, if you need to do so, you can. That is, just as in D&D I can narrate that the 8 HP was a glancing blow to the shoulder that's going to leave a nasty bruise, I can narrate the loss of a weapon using any of the rationales that I listed above, or any other anyone wants to come up with.

To summarize, the points are for the player to alter his character. How that happens, or even whether or not to discuss it, is up to the players, and can be anything that everybody agrees is cool.

That way, I can better control the acceleration of escalation. Without something of a system overhaul, it won't solve the problem of the characters facing conflict with iteratively better weapons but it's a start.

What's the continuing problem? That is, if they have to choose between spending their RP on abilities and equipment (and contacts, and...), then presumably they won't get any more potent than they do with just ability advancement alone. And presumably you can give them few enough points to make that all work out to the right rate.

Or did I miss something? I strongly suggest reading either Hero System or (especially if you have less time) Hero Quest. Or both. Which'll show how any equipment can be rated to balance with any abilities as just another part of the character.

Mike

[brainwipe]

What's the continuing problem? That is, if they have to choose between spending their RP on abilities and equipment (and contacts, and...), then presumably they won't get any more potent than they do with just ability advancement alone. And presumably you can give them few enough points to make that all work out to the right rate.

The problem is that to encode the new system of everything being bought using RP will require a fair amount of work (Icar has a lot of equipment). For now, at least, the system will need to stand as it is. I shall try and rough something out to playtest with the players but I think this sort of dynamic will change the manner in which we play greatly. Admittedly, this might be for the best! I shall keep this thread updated when I have a system and have playtested it.

Many thanks for the extensive advice!