ReCoil: Player Influence

[Lance D. Allen]

Hey all,

I'm actually coming up on a finished product (sans a few things that I'm going to leave to be hashed out after playtesting) with ReCoil, and I'm overall quite pleased with the result. However, I'm getting into the "how to play" section, and try though I might, I've not been able to hammer out a mechanic that puts the majority of the narrative power into the players hands.

Before I go into my problem and possible solution, you can review previous discussions about mechanics here.

As is, they already have a lot of control over their particular actions, with the mechanic allowing them to improvise the results of their rolls based on their number of successes. What I'm having trouble with is how to give them the ability to create the storyline as it goes.

What I'm thinking now, though I'm uncertain as to the effectiveness, is to allow the players to seize narrative control of a scene by adding dice from their Character pools (the pool of points used to improve the character) to a roll, then using successes on those dice to narrate additional effects incidental to their action. For example..

Morph is dodging through cars on a busy street, trying to catch the Naughtwraith-possessed man that he feels will be crucial to the success of the sabotage of the subway rails. He makes a Body roll of 6 dice against the TN of 8 to try to catch up with the Naughtwraith, and the Naughtwraith, already across the street, makes it's own Body roll of 4 dice against a TN of 5. Mitch, Morph's player, decides to add 2 dice from his Character pool to try to get some narrative control, then rolls. Morph's rolls come up as 6, 4, 5, 10, 7 and 8, two successes, then his two Character dice, a 9 and a 10, also two successes. The Naughtwraith rolls his 4 dice, and comes up with 4, 5, 5 and 10, for 3 successes. The GM, gets to declare actions first, as his roll was better. He declares that the Naughtwraith spends all 3 dice fleeing, preventing Morph from using his two successes to catch up, and giving the 'wraith a lead. Morph grumbles, but decides he's going to use both dice to do a rolling jump across the hood of the next car, which will take him to the sidewalk. Then he uses his two narrative successes to say that, as he does so, the car he jumped across loses control and takes out a roadside newspaper stand, sending the scrap across the sidewalk in front of the Naughtwraith.

These points can be used in a variety of ways, from that mentioned above, to the example Mike made in the Mechanics thread about tackling someone and discovering the trapdoor they'd been standing on.

What I'm uncertain about with this idea is how often it would be used. As the points will come out of the same pool that is used for character advancement, players might be reluctant to use them. Likewise, the idea of actively seizing narrative control may be foreign to many players, so this mechanic might fall by the wayside.

I'd like to hear any ideas about how this might be improved or done better, any other flaws with the idea that I may have missed, or the likelihood of the problems I predicted being an issue.

Thanks in advance.

[Thomas Tamblyn]

I agree that using the character advancement resource is a bad idea - players (in my experience) seem very reluctant to use it up and if its to use some "pretentious storytelling nonsense" I've a feeling it'll be moreso.

My first thought was what if you have drama dice equal to your character pool but they et refreshed at the begining of each session.  The problem here is that the number of drama dice you have doesn't relate to anything about the character.

The best option would seem to be drama dice being a thing in and of themselves.  Say, each player gets X drama dice at the begining of the session to use as you will (you lose all unused drama dice at the end of the session).

For an added twist, howabout this - player start with a fairly low number but they get awarded more for particularly interesting narration.

For example, any other player who thinks you've done something particularly interesting/creative can give you one of their drama dice.  if the Gm agrees he gives a free dice to the donating player, replacing the given dice.  Any number of players can donate per narration, but all must donate BEFORE the Gm makes his judgement call.

The problem here is that this only works if the GM doesn't always agree with the players and that could create some unwanted tension.