Player vs player in HeroQuest

[MrWrong]

Has anyone handled this in their games, and if so how?

In a couple of weeks I'm running a game were all the player heroes are the vip of the city of Pavis. I'm using Moon Designs Pavis and Big Rubble as a source, and while it would have been very easy to make every one member of the same faction (Lunar Empire, the priests of the local temple to Pavis the city god  and the Sartar settlers who are rebels against the Lunars), I thought it would be more fun to have each of the six player heroes come from one of the three factions, with only one other player hero from the faction. Obviously this puts the Lunar player(s) at the Sartarite player(s) throats from word go.

Bear in mind the following;
1. I am going to be up front that this is a cooperative game, were the whole point is to push it far as it will go in the name of fun.

1. I don't use secret notes in my games. All actions are played out in front of the other players on the strict understanding that players can not make use of information that their characters wouldn't know.

2. Each Hero is a epic level character, with some abilities in the 15w3 region, with large numbers of capable followers and local armies at their finger tips. To put it into perspective one of the player heroes available will be Sor Eel the Short who is the Lunar Governor of Pavis.

3. No Hero can be killed by another Hero, without conscent of that player. Followers are fair game though.

4. I'm thinking about using plot edits from Mythic Russia.

5.Theres a good chance I'll be playing with new players, who are unfamiliar with the concept of cooperative games.

I would be very interested on people's direct experience and thoughts on the above in context of HeroQuest

[Vaxalon]

New players?

Two words:

Train Wreck.

[MrWrong]

Hmmn thats my gut feeling, but care to expand.

[Mike Holmes]

New players as in new to HQ? Or new as in new to RPGs?

If they're new to RPGs, then I think you'll be fine, actually. It's only players who've played previous RPGs who ever seen to have problems with this.

It's an important subject.

Basically player vs player is only appropriate in a very narrow style of play that's unlikely to be supported well by HQ. But what HQ does support well is player hero vs player hero. This is the key to this "problem." The problem only occurs when the player assumes that attacks against their characters are attacks against them as players. I could go on for a long time about why this is so prevalently problematic in RPGs (classic GNS issue), but it'll suffice to say that it doesn't have to be a problem.

Think of it this way - does a player have a problem when the GM has an NPC attack his character? Why not? Because he knows that the GM is doing so in order to make the game interesting. Well, as long as the other players are playing with an intent to make the game interesting for the other players, then there's no reason that anyone has to react to it any differently. It's only when one assumes that a player is playing only for their own self-interest (linked to the character's self-interest one to one), that anyone objects.

If you create a gameplay style where everyone is confident that all the other players are playing with the intent to entertain everyone at the table, then this "problem" disappears.

Now, that all said, it's easier said than done in some cases. I had a case not too long ago where we had a problem with this sort of thing, precisely because some of the players didn't know and trust the other players well enough, and/or one of the players was playing to his own self-interest. I'm not going to judge which. Doesn't matter. The problem is that the perception existed, where it didn't have to exist. That caused the problem in play. I should have been watching out for it more carefully.

Anyhow, there is a very simple technique that you can use that will diffuse this situation every time (and I wish I'd had it more in force when we were playing when the problem came up). Basically allow any player to veto any contest involving another player hero coming at them. Actually you can extend this to all contests, effectively. But, basically, tell the players that, implicit in the statement of the nature of the contest, and the implied potential results, is that the player may simply say that they don't find the potential to lose in this case to be interesting. If they do, no contest occurs.

At that point, when it happens, it's up to the narrator to simply decide something interesting to resolve the situation. This can be difficult. But here's the thing. If you have this rule in place, and allow players to negotiate the sort of contest they want between them, you'll rarely actually have a complete rejection. A player might counter, "How about if, instead of trying to kill my character, your character is trying to run my character off?" Usually players will come up with something that both enjoy.

And in doing so, players come to trust each other more and more until the point where nobody uses this veto ability. Because everybody is constantly assured that the other players are merely trying to make life difficult for the other player hero, and, thus, interesting for the player.

In this way, character conflict is player co-operation. Once everyone understands this, you shouldn't ever have to worry about this sort of conflict again. You can finally have these most interesting conflicts, and have them be some of the best play in the game.

Mike

[epweissengruber]

If you want to take the opposite tack and EMPHASIZE the interdependence of characters and the power of betrayal you could take a page from the Mountain Witch:

Have players put their Hero Points in the hands of OTHER player characters.  The player holding the HP can give support to the giver by taking an Unrelated Action --- or drive the giver into defeat by playing the HP against the player who gave it.

[Raedwald Bretwalda]

I believe that

1. I don't use secret notes in my games. All actions are played out in front of the other players

is good, but

n the strict understanding that players can not make use of information that their characters wouldn't know.

is bad.

Now, if you meant "characters can not make use of information their characters wouldn't know", that would be OK. When you say the game will be "cooperative", I guess you mean that the players will be cooperating. After all, the characters in an AD&D dungeon crawl are often cooperative.

What kinds of cooperative actions by the players do you want to occur?

[Web_Weaver]

I agree with Raedwald here:

in the strict understanding that players can not make use of information that their characters wouldn't know.

is bad.

And will qualify.

You may find players wanting to create co-incidences or be able to second guess other characters with the aim of making the game more fun in a co-operative manner. I doubt you would discourage this if it occurred, but by making the statement it may never occur, as they could consider it cheating and not make the suggestion.

[Tim Ellis]

I think this idea can have great potential, but could also be a "less than optimal" experience

Inter-character rivalry works wonderfully where all the players are happy with it, and are engaged in making the game enjoyable for all the participants.  It can be a bit of a disaster if the rivalry devovles to the players rather than the characters.  At it's most basic level, this is the classic  "D&D Munchkin" approach of killing the other PC's and stealing their stuff...

To make this work, I think you need a reason why these characters and factions are working together, which will serve to keep a lid on hostilities - at least for a while. 

Many years ago, I took part in a convention game inspired by the original run of Home of the Bold, in which a group of Lunars and a group of Pavisites/Sartar Exiles were hunting a Thanatari in Pavis, run as a freeform for the investigation, but as a "straight" RQ game to raid his secret temple.  The first part worked quite well, but the latter part (IMO) suffered from too many PC's and degenerated into a fight between the factions ...

[Jane]

This sounds quite similar to a game Neil Smith ran at Continuum - I forget the name, I'm afraid, but we were all Char-Un, all related, and trying to decide who would be the next tribal leader and what we were going to do about the Lunars. The players cooperated: the heroes did anything but. The main question was which of two brothers would bump off their dad and the other brother first. In fact every single PC ended up dead, though arranging the last one did take a bit of doing.

It was a huge amount of fun. Lots of hamming, lots of designing the most dramatic way for things to happen. But, everyone there knew the system, most of us knew each other. I'm not at all convinced that this would work with some players randomly chosen by convention game-bookings. The concept of "go on, you can kill my character much more dramatically than that!" can be an alien one.

Still, I recognise that game description. It's at Furnace, isn't it? It's one of the two games I'm hoping to play in. Please, please, go ahead and run it as you describe!

[nellist]

For what it's worth, I've like to run a boardgame style game using Heroquest contest resolution in which players are competing, they start as Balastor and his companions, then as each dies the player gets to control a troll faction - so although the number of active players remains the same, the characters change.

The players would be competing, pitting their abilities against one another, but their objectives are never directly opposed to each other.

Personally, I like player vs player competition. I ran a 'clan history' scenario (from Barbarian Adventures)  as a three way competition between factions, rather than as a straight questionaire and thought it worked well (each faction wanting to emphasize their version of 'true' history).

Keith   

[Neil the Wimp]

I think this idea can have great potential, but could also be a "less than optimal" experience

Inter-character rivalry works wonderfully where all the players are happy with it, and are engaged in making the game enjoyable for all the participants.  It can be a bit of a disaster if the rivalry devovles to the players rather than the characters.  At it's most basic level, this is the classic  "D&D Munchkin" approach of killing the other PC's and stealing their stuff...

To make this work, I think you need a reason why these characters and factions are working together, which will serve to keep a lid on hostilities - at least for a while. 

I think the reason for co-operation is a key thing to include in the scenario.  It's something I try to do now in all the convention scenarios I write.  An addition, if you have a really compelling reason why the characters have to work together (e.g. to save the PCs' two clans from utter destruction) it promotes alliance-forming throughout the game.

I've run quite a few games like this at cons and, so far, have never had the game be a dud or degenerate into real-world bitterness.  It may be because I've just been lucky, or it may be because only a certain sort of player is attracted to the game.  But I think it's because most players are happy to go along with the character-infighting and are perfectly capable of not taking it personally.  After all, that's how the freeforms work, and they're both large and good-natured. 

Not to blow my own trumpet, but the best write-up of my 'PC v PC' style of game is the "Wood, Blood, and Snow" scenario in the back of the Mythic Russia book. 

This sounds quite similar to a game Neil Smith ran at Continuum - I forget the name, I'm afraid, but we were all Char-Un, all related, and trying to decide who would be the next tribal leader and what we were going to do about the Lunars. The players cooperated: the heroes did anything but. The main question was which of two brothers would bump off their dad and the other brother first. In fact every single PC ended up dead, though arranging the last one did take a bit of doing.

It was a huge amount of fun. Lots of hamming, lots of designing the most dramatic way for things to happen. But, everyone there knew the system, most of us knew each other. I'm not at all convinced that this would work with some players randomly chosen by convention game-bookings. The concept of "go on, you can kill my character much more dramatically than that!" can be an alien one.

The game was called "Biting the Hand".  Thanks for the kind words about it.  It may turn up as an eight-player freeform at a future con. 

During the game, I was in awe at how much the players were pushing each other on to bigger and better things.  I agree that had the players not known each other, it perhaps wouldn't have flown quite so well.  But, further to the comment above, I don't think it would have been a flop.  If fact, the person playing the Gordon Brown analogue was unknown to me.  (He also provided one of my favourite moments of the game: when we were wrapping up, he actually asked me "How much of that had you already plotted?"  I barely had a couple of Bangs and a couple of NPCs.  The thought of me predicting what was happening in that game was delicious.)

Neil.

[Mike Holmes]

Jane makes a good point:

But, everyone there knew the system, most of us knew each other. I'm not at all convinced that this would work with some players randomly chosen by convention game-bookings.

I would say that Tim's misgivings are incorrect, except that every once in a while at a convention, you will run into a player who is set in their "I am my character, and will do whatever it takes to make him win," attitude. This player can't be convinced that Character v Character isn't Player v Player, and, if presented with an opportunity to give his character advantage will probably not consider the other player's feelings. Instead blaming the scenario for having promoted PVP.

Now, my experience has been like Neil's - I've never had this player. What I'd like to think is that I've had him, but that the techniques that I used made an instant convert out of him. But I'm sure that somewhere out there is a player who is unconvertible.

So there's the connundrum.

My thought is that you can't worry about this player showing up. I think that he probably won't. But, even if he does, you're going to change the entire nature of the scenario based on the potentiality that one such player may show up? Here's the thing...even if he does, and self-identifies in the middle of the game by saying he's either not enjoying himself, or by doing something that another player finds offensive, it's still not unsalvageable. Worst case scenario, let the player know what the problem is, and that you're sorry that the scenario is not what he was expecting, and that he should go try something else.

That all said, if you want to be really cautious about this, you could even put up a disclaimer at the front of the scenario. Something like:

Thanks everyone for coming. Before we get going, I want to make sure everyone here understands the nature of this scenario that you will be playing characters who will probably end up with conflicts with the characters being played by other players. The goal is not to play to win for your character, but to play co-operatively with the other players in order to create a situation in which the character conflict is interesting for all of the players. If you don't feel that you want to play this way, then I apollogise, but this event won't be fun for you.

But I have to say that I feel that it's actually more likely that you will succeed with the sort of techniques that I give above in "converting" such a player, than the rate at which the above sort of disclaimer will create success. In fact, I think that a disclaimer like this could be read as protesting o'ermuch, and lead, in fact, to problems.

But at least you'd be covered.

All-in-all, I think that you're best off just going for it. :-)

Mike

[MrWrong]

I've decided to go with the safer option having everyone belong to the same faction, The Daughters of Pavis, so they have a co-operative goal to work towards (the resurrection/return of Pavis) but having personal goals and relationships that put them slightly at odds with one another if players choose to go that way. This is based on the fact that

1. I may have players who are new to the system, and to the idea of cooperative player vs player.

2. I don't want to force the players in pvp if they don't want to go that way. I know some groups positively thrive on the working together towards a common goal.

3. I don't think I'm ready as a GM to run this sort of the sort of game where the players are so obviously at each others throats from word go. Its still something I would like to have a go at , but it would be with players who are comfortable with each other and know up front what I was trying to achieve.

My idea to even try pvp in HeroQuest was inspired by the second of two Burning Wheel games I ran at Continuum where the players who we're all extremely experienced and open minded players took over the game and ran it in a pvp manner.  I've written this up and posted it over at the Burning Wheel forums here http://burningwheel.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3202

Thanks for everyone who has contributed to this thread.