D20 and Levels and Sunday's Game of Evil

[wyrdlyng]

This touches upon the previous thread regarding D20 (Star Wars and D&D) characters being fairly ineffectual.

My wife is running a portion of our larger group through some small adventures (the pamphlet sized ones for $3.00). The difference in this campaign is that our 3 characters are evil. Despite what most might think our evil group worked together as a whole a lot better then our regular good characters.

Quick intro: all of us are 2nd level equivalent characters. We are bound by having the same patron, the Duchess of Domination. In exchange for our desires we sacrificed part of ourselves and our souls.

* Tyrr (real name unknown): Drow Elf Rogue on the fast track to Assassin. His family was forced to leave the Drow lands because they weren't evil. He lost his father in that exodus. They lived in the slums of a surface city until their presence was noticed and his mother was killed by surface elves. Tyrr feels very little except hatred towards all elves. His desire is retribution towards drow elves. His sacrifice was his left eye.

* Hammerhand: Orc barbarian which the others freed from the gladiatorial pits. Big and strong with a penchant for missing a lot but hurting people when he hits. His desire is to become the greatest warrior ever. His sacrifice was driving a bone shard through each of his ear drums thus deafening himself. His other sacrifice is being unable to leave a battle uninjured.

* Musashi: Hobgoblin samurai/fighter and with the assist of a magic ring the captain of the city guard. Musashi's a manipulator who doesn't like to get his had directly dirty. He runs the guard by putting his own people there and having his fingers in everything illicit. It's a corrupt city and he's a large part of it. He was liberated from imprisonment by Tyrr many years ago. His desire is to become the ruler of the greatest army ever. His sacrifice was his left hand.

And, yes, these are not standard D&D characters. All three have sacrificed their souls for power and started with items which most 2nd level characters would not have (like a Belt of Giant Strength for Hammerhand and a Cloak of Elvenkind for Tyrr).

Our adventure had us perform 6 tasks in one night in order to prove ourselves. Musashi also hired Tyrr to kill one of his newer guards who wasn't going along with the program, so to speak.

Their first task had them stealing the sword of the city's founder from his statue in the city's main square. With Musashi providing them information on the patrols Tyrr and Hammerhand were able to use darkness to steal it with no incident.

Their next task was to find a black diamond in the city. Musashi used his connections with the thieves' guild to track it down to a particular merchant. Pissed for having had something like that smuggled into the city without receiving a kickback, Musashi (disguised as a merchant) and Hammerhand found the merchant and killed him and his bodyguard and made it look like a robbery.

Meanwhile Tyrr hunted and killed the guard for Musashi using a particular dagger which they needed bloodied for another task.

The next task involved getting a fortune teller's journal. Tyrr went and asked to purchase it but was refused. He returned with Hammerhand and had the orc capture the fortune teller's familiar while he forced the book's location from her. They left both the bird and the fortune teller alive.

Meanwhile Musashi called his guard together. He had them learn of the one guard's death and the theft of the sword and started whipping them and the townfolk into a frenzy.

Their next task was leaving the bloody dagger in the hands of a visiting noble. With Musashi and guards causing a distraction out front Tyrr snuck in and placed the dagger.

Their last "known" task was to kidnap a known priest. Musashi had his guard question the noble and find him with the dagger and a drugged prostitute (she was already like that when Tyrr crept in). The noble was arrested and charged with the murder of the guard, the theft of the sword, the robbery and murder of the merchant and anything else Musashi could think of. While the guard where distracted Musashi sent a guard to retrieve the priest to assist in verifying the noble's guilt. Tyrr and Hammerhand amubushed them and took off with the priest.

In the town's main square the guard who had failed to protect the priest related his tale. When it was learned that the priest was working to excommunicate the noble's brother Musashi left the noble to the frenzied crowd who dispatched him with mob justice.

The three met at the warehouse with the items and gave them to their contact who was also in service to their demonic patron. Their last task was kill one of their group. Deciding that the contact was one of their own they chose to kill him. A battle ensued and the contact was slain with alchemist's fire. Musashi dismissed the others and called the guard. The burning corpse was found with the missing sword and several gems from the merchant's home. The corpse was linked to the now dead noble and his plot of murder and mayhem.

In the end Musashi was hailed as a hero for stopping this killer and letting the town folk dispense some justice. He gained a small fortune in gems. Tyrr returned the journal to the fortune teller, after making a copy for himself. And Hammerhand got a job as a member of Musashi's elite guard.

Only 2 fights in the whole thing (the guard's assassination was done with a poisoned arrow) and a lot of clever and interesting roleplaying. As I said the evil group never got into an argument or tried to screw each other over. The fact that the adventure was designed for 4-6 4th level characters and was done with little injury (Tyrr got smacked by the priest during the kidnapping and most of Hammerhand's wounds were self-inflicted because of his requirement) or difficulty to our characters shows that level is not the only determinant in measuring character effectiveness.

Or basically if you're willing to allow the characters to be more than "straight off the farm and looking for treasure" then you don't need to worry about level as much.

[Balbinus]

What kind of culture is all this happening in?

I ask because traditionally in DnD Drow, Hobgoblins and Orcs are all well known to be evil races.  I'm surprised they're allowed to wander around in town like that.

Also, I notice that the Hobgoblin has a Japanese name.  Is it an oriental setting?

[wyrdlyng]

It's a standard D&D faux medieval setting. The drow is wrapped from head to toe and wears a dark hooded cloak and only his remaining eye shows. He also doesn't move about in daylight or outside of shadows. The hobgoblin uses a ring that grants him the change self spell. He appears to be human as the captain of the city guard. The orc does stand out but as the guard works for the hobgoblin he's left alone.

As for Musashi, he just liked the name I suppose.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

My concern about levels in this case - which is not to say that I'm objecting to them - is based on the fact that levels change. The question is whether the leveling-up and its significant impact on characters' in-game "nature" (effectiveness, etc) are going to take over play, eclipsing the priorities that you have stated so well.

Again, I don't think that leveling-up has to have this effect, but I think that you might give some thought to integrating the improvement process with the conflicts and concerns that correspond to the current aesthetic of the game.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Ron's spot on.  Based on the way you described the evening, this may well be one of those times where it is best (even in D&D) to NOT hand out XPs after each session.  Instead, as GM make little notes to yourself about how conflicts were resolved, how game goals were achieved, etc...assign a rough XP equivelent to them, and then periodically advance a character a level.  However, don't just announce it, make it part of the story...(i.e.  a dark priestess comes to a player and says, "you've done well, you are ready for the sacred rites of the second circle" [or whatever] then after the roleplaying of the nasty ceremony allow the character to level up.

For example here, if Musashi's player really pulled off this complex plot himself (i.e. it wasn't set up by you as GM), I'd probably level him right then and there as part of recieving a huge commendation from the mayor for a job well done.

In other words, tieing the "leveling" process right into the actions you find desireable  (always good advice)

[WhistlinFiend]

I gotta agree with Ron and Valamir here. If you're not careful, you'll end up with players that no longer see the point in advancing the main plot or the subplot. Why bother if the guy that shows up every other session and whacks monsters gets levels just as fast? Let me add that you should be careful of the other extreme. That is, don't reward players whose goals diverge drastically from the groups.

I speak from experience here...this is precisely why the very sight of Rolemaster throws my into catatonic schizophrenia and why I haven't gamed in 5 years. Do it right though, and you'll have a very rewarding game.

-dave

[wyrdlyng]

The question is whether the leveling-up and its significant impact on characters' in-game "nature" (effectiveness, etc) are going to take over play, eclipsing the priorities that you have stated so well.

I would normally say yes but in our situation I don't think it will. We all have long term goals and the leveling process is a factor in achieving them but it is not the priority. For example, one player's character wants to assemble a huge army and conquer the world. You can kludge a system-based solution together for this but this is more of a roleplaying rather than a mechanical situation. He's even started doing this in the game by hiring my character to assassinate the unwilling NPC guardsmen. The player created the situation with the guardsman from nowhere and hired me to kill him in order to show how his character is hand-picking the people for his the city watch.

My character's long-term goal is to become the god of death. Although the problem could be tackled by leveling up high enough to challenge a god but that would be boring. Instead he's assisting his allies in gaining power and leading them down the road that will cause them to kill their demonic patron and have one of them gain her power. Then he will use his allies' power for his goal. He also plans to get more allies and do similar things with them.

I find that the focus on leveling up comes when the player has no world-focused, long-term goal in mind for the character. In our other game the other players have not done much to tie their characters to the setting and as such have no real goals aside from bimbling from one adventure to another. They could be ported to any setting and they would remain the same. Their actions have no motive behind them aside from "killing it because it was there so it must be killed."

In that game my character's a lawful cleric following the lord of retribution and his actions reflect his beliefs and his goal of bringing orderly balance to the world. He's attempted to talk when possible and even restored evil back to power and apologized when the evil was wrongly attacked. (His biggest conflict is his companions who run around like frothing badgers.)

The other key to this equation is to have a GM who recognizes and rewards play which is not leveling focused. By playing your character and dealing with the world and the story you will be rewarded in the end.

We fought and killed very little in our evening of play so normally we would get next to nothing for experience. But instead we got more than enough to level us up. We did not expect to receive any experience and played our characters as they would normally act in the given situations. Even now do we roleplay in the hopes of getting lots of XPs? No. We trust our GM to deal with those details and let us just play.

If you want to change the focus then alter what behaviors you reward. This is something that's been talked about many times around here so it should come as no surprise.

Oh, and a last thing is to throw "play balance" out the window. I agree that "play balance" is a pointless thing in most roleplaying games and is a hold-over from wargames. We've thrown it out the window and our GM lets logical things happen.

Example, two of our number rob the gem merchant and steal the gems to make it look like a robbery. Consequently, after all is said and done we have a crapload of gems and massive amount of wealth. Do we go apeshit and abuse this? No. Does our GM contrive something to take our wealth away? No. She trusts us not to abuse it and we trust her enough to not artificially screw with us.

Once you have players who are not level and power-focused then both sides need to trust each other enough not to abuse the freedoms given. We don't worry about running around and killing everything in sight and our GM trusts us not to do anything stupid with our wealth. As it is the captain of the guard already receives a large sum of money from kickbacks from the thieves' guild, smugglers and "taxes." Since money is not really a concern neither GM nor players focus on it.

I know I've rambled a bit but I think that it all comes back to rewarding the behavior you want to see come out in the game. Once players let go of their fears everyone can enjoy the game.
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[Valamir]

Sounds like a great group.

A further comment that may be of interest.  A couple of my best actual roleplaying experiences with D&D (that is actual roleplaying as opposed to having fun hacking) has also been with evil based parties.

I suspect this has alot to do with the dramatically ingrained tropes of D&D itself.  We all know how the thief is supposed to act, how the paladin is supposed to act, how the one player who insists on being chaotic neutral will intentionally fuck with everything in the guise of "playing his character" etc.  I think by playing evil characters and non standard races it is easier to mentally cast aside those D&Disms and pursue actual roleplaying.  Or in otherwords without the standard cliche interactions (like elf/dwarf rivalry) to use as crutches, one is forced to come up with new paradigms for character relationships.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Ralph, that's a good point. I've always disliked the ongoing tendency in TSR publishing to clarify, explain, and standardize the non-standard races (hobgoblins, etc), because they represented the one way people could inject personal themes into play. When you played a hobgoblin, it was time to see "what hobgoblins are really like," whereas we all "just know" what dwarves are like.

[Yes, I know that such publications were justified by "humanizing" what were, previously, beings that were defined as evil so you could kill them mercilessly. Not the current issue.]

I wrote,
"... you might give some thought to integrating the improvement process with the conflicts and concerns that correspond to the current aesthetic of the game"

Alex wrote,
"... it all comes back to rewarding the behavior you want to see come out in the game"

So we're talkin' the same stuff. Cool!

Best,
Ron

[DeadGirl]

How cool to see this!

As the GM of the above mentioned game (see also the Gaming Resurection - Post Mortem thread), it was interesting for me to read all the posts here. It was especially nice to see how much one of the players enjoyed himself.

I've had a very positive response from the other two players as well. One of them calls me every night to talk about his character and to get my OK on things he wants to do.

I also appreciate the points that were raised regarding potential pitfalls; forewarned is forearmed! The players are very focused on continuing to forward the story, because achievement of their character's goals is dependent not so much on level as on developing the characters and furthering the plot. This group of players is excellent in every way and I have found that they don't take advantage of my trust in them. And I try to be fair and impartial. It's been a rewarding experience so far.

~Kris