[pulp heroes] How will our hero...?

[chris_moore]

Have you ever watched a movie / read a book where you know that the hero is going to win/escape/whatever, but there's a moment in there where you think, "HOW will they get out of this mess?" Now THAT'S suspense!
Idea: What if you had a mechanic where you a player earned some kind of effectiveness bonus (to be used later) for "taking on" complications now? Hell, maybe the players could create complications for each other; if they agree to make the complication fact in the imagined space, then they get their bonuses to save for a rousing, victorious end scene. Has this been done?

[Tobaselly]

Have you ever watched a movie / read a book where you know that the hero is going to win/escape/whatever, but there's a moment in there where you think, "HOW will they get out of this mess?" Now THAT'S suspense!
Idea: What if you had a mechanic where you a player earned some kind of effectiveness bonus (to be used later) for "taking on" complications now? Hell, maybe the players could create complications for each other; if they agree to make the complication fact in the imagined space, then they get their bonuses to save for a rousing, victorious end scene. Has this been done?

If a character gains a bonus for taking on a complication that they then use to overcome the complication, what was the point of the complication other than to alter the scene? The suspense that comes from a book/movie isn't from any overt bonus that the hero has that the viewer can perceive, it's from the handicap that the hero is perceived to have during that scene, in addition to setting and pre-conceived ideas that the viewer has about what will happen.

I'll use this for example,
The player's character has to disable a bomb within 30 seconds or the city will be destroyed.
It becomes suspenseful if the character has absolutely no knowledge of how to disable bombs, and no obvious ways for overcome the situation.
It looses all suspense if the player suddenly gets/got a bonus to his ability to disarm bombs, or can use his bonus to overcome the situation.

if you want a player to have that sense of suspense then the bonus must be hidden from the player of the game until it can be used, and for a real sense of suspense the player shouldn't know that they will even be receiving a bonus in any fashion.

[chris_moore]

no, I meant for the bonuses to be used in later scenes, not the same scene.

[Josh Roby]

If you want a player to have that sense of suspense then the bonus must be hidden from the player of the game until it can be used, and for a real sense of suspense the player shouldn't know that they will even be receiving a bonus in any fashion.

Chris is talking about situations in which the character is assumed to succeed; see his original post.  The suspense is not whether he will succeed, it is about how he will succeed.

I submit that the feeling of suspense that the audience member feels when watching these movies is a product of watching complications pile up and asking the question, "How will the movie get this character out of this situation without destroying my sense of plausibility?"  It is about the specific methods that the fictional character employs and how they compare with our previously generated understanding of his situation.  If the noir detective character started casting fireballs, we'd be disappointed.  If the action hero makes clever use of the pulleys that hoist the sails, and then harnesses his momentum to kick the badguy off the ship while simultaneously grabbing the McGuffin from the badguy's lackey's hands, we will simultaneously be satisfied that all those actions "made sense" while at the same time be impressed with how clever the combination of those actions were.  Watching the situation get set up in suspenseful because we begin to question whether the movie really is clever enough to make it work without resorting to a deflating deus ex machina.

[Callan S.]

Hi Chris,

At those moments of suspense, do you tend to formulate a plan in your own mind as how the hero could get out of it? Even if it's just something like "Turn the hell around, there's a bloody monster creeping up behind you!"

[TonyLB]

I'm not sure I'm tracking you, Chris.  In most Pulp-style situations I've seen, the characters fail a lot.

Yes, in the moment when the final death-trap is bearing down on them, set to crush them to a chunky red paste, then you know they're going to get out of it.  But that moment has usually been informed by all manner of failures:  they didn't notice the ambushing mimes (so quiet!), and then they were captured, and they accidentally snuck into the torture chamber rather than the exit, and then they failed to seduce the evil Baroness von Cogg, and that's why they've ended up in the death-trap.

So if you're saying "They get a bonus for taking complications which are mechanically meaningless because their total success is assured" then I'm with everyone else in being way confused.  But I think it could be cool if the mechanic were "You can always scrape out a minor success without rolling, but if you're willing to gamble against stiff odds then you get a bonus (succeed or fail) to other scenes equal to the odds you face."  Then you can do all those failures to accrue bonusses, then pile them on top of your automatic "minor success" to beat the death-trap in spectacular style so that it crushes your enemies instead.  Total victory!

[chris_moore]

Tony LB, that's what I'm going for.  I basically want a reward mechanic for players who put their characters in more complicated/dangerous situations. I also want the mechanic to help players  I like the plausibility point that Josh brought up, too.  Maybe other players could vote down "escapes" that they have a hard time swallowing.  I want to help players generate exciting, dangerous, "by the skin of their teeth" kind of stories!  Carrying on with Tony's idea, maybe a player could "save up" their minor successes to use later.  Keep the feedback coming!!