DnD Midnight to HeroQuest: The Big Leap

[Kerstin Schmidt]

In addition to the suggestions made so far, could the players also add reasons or goals for WHY they are fighting the war onto their character sheets?  I mean, could SB approach the players and say, "Listen, we haven't really talked about this yet,  but is there something you're looking for from all this?"

They might then come up with some negotiated backstory elements that become attributes.

...

I know this breaks a couple of continuity concerns in the transfer between games, but this is kind of how HQ is geared to work, right?  If it is, then it seems that this transition period would be a perfect place to add in details, just like in a tv series.  "Look, we haven't mentioned this one way or another yet, but here's a fact about me you don't know yet..." and so on.  It's not a contradiction of what's come before.  It's an expansion of what's already been revealed!

Thanks for reminding me about goals.  I was getting so fixated on how to explain and sell Personality Traits and Relationships to my playsers that goals were drifting into the background a bit.  

Including goals won't actually involve too much of a continuity break. Two of the characters have been in play for months and each has relationships with certain NPCs and mid-term goals;  the NPCs and goals differ between the PCs, which will be so cool for HQ now they can be quantified and actually used in play.  

That said I also won't mind players introducing new elements. I've been pretty flexible about background and goal changes in the past, HQ should only make it easier.  

Essentiallly SB says, "Because of the nature of this game, we can expand who your characters are, what they want, and what matters to them. Let's do that, because it actually matters to this game."

I so agree. Thanks. :-)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

"You mean, if I negotiate my guy to scene where he's hunting down the bastard who killed off my village, I get to augment my rolls with that attribute?"

Oh, they got that all right.  Though the vibe I got from the two more Gamist minded players in the group was more of a faintly superior "This is how easy it is to break this system?!" - Only looking at one dimension here, mind you.  I don't think either is out to break the game.

[Brand_Robins]

The flip side of all this is that many, even the majority of defeats the PCs have suffered in this game have in fact resulted from a bad decision on the players' part.  

I'm going to tentatively suggest that this is, once again, an outgrowth of D&D gamist play. Even the rhetoric of the setup and statement has a degree of goal-oriented  play assumption behind it, i.e. "the bad decisions" almost certainly being tactical decisions made for reasons of misunderstanding or misestimating the nature of the conflict/opposition and the paths needed to achieve victory. This setup assumes that the players are trying to win, that is that they are trying to overcome a given situation, usually with minimal damage and cost to their characters and their resources. The bad decisions they make come because they take to much damage and/or lose too many resources in a way that makes them unable to overcome the challenge at hand.

When you get into a Nar/SIS/HQ style game this has the propensity to up and vanish. Partly this is due to the system. Even a "bad plan" can come off a success due to augmentation and HP usage, and even the best plan can go all to crap if you roll a 20. D&D assumes a certain resource allocation mode of play, HQ doesn't, and so a lot of the bad decisions around system control and step-on-up style threat assessment simply ceases to be relevant.

It's like Mike pointed out in one of his posts. In D&D a confrontation with a Night King is certain to be doom for the PC group, so even choosing to do anything other than run and hide is a bad decision. In HQ, otoh, a confrontation with a Night King is not going to kill the PCs, and may actually give them more drama and story potential, and so isn't inherently a bad decision at all. Similarly, a group of 1st level characters raiding the Orc stronghold with bad plans in D&D may be a death sentence, but in HQ its just going to result in another challenge to overcome and more drama.

Now this doesn't mean that the character's won't suffer defeats from bad choices – but it is more likely that the defeat will be from bad choices by the character, rather than bad choices by the player. The game ceases to be about the players making the right decision on using their 5 foot step, or how many arrows to bring, and starts to be about what the players want to push and what the characters do with their personal choices. To go back to the Braveheart example, if we were to imaging that the movie was an RPG, is there any real doubt that Willy's player knew that near the end of the movie when he went to meet Robert the Bruce that he was going to be betrayed somehow? The character was warned by his friends, acknowledges the risk in his speech, and goes anyway – that all speaks of a character doing something that the author/player knows is going to lead to doom. In most RPGs this would be a bad choice, leading to defeat. In HQ it's a good choice, leading to drama. Also, in the HQ system it's possible that Willy could have won and escaped/converted the Bruce. The reason he got caught wasn't because of a bad plan, it was a bad roll.

Also, there are very few situations in HQ in which there is a real no win situation on its face. I've had players overcome vast odds with lucky rolls, lots of augments, and good tactics. (The tactics, btw, are things like you talked about before – real tactics rather than the resource allocation tactics of D&D.) You may toss your Night King 10m6 at the PCs and find them kicking his ass – I know I have.

[Mike Holmes]

Lot's to cover, and I haven't even gotten stuff back on my post yet. :-)
(Edited to note the cross post with Brand - almost deserves a "Jinx!")

I've also started drifting the game from its original hard-Gamist approach (trying to cater to what I perceived to be the group's wishes) towards a style I'm more comfortable with. That wasn't too appreciated by some players who wanted "their DnD" and I lost two players in the process - but I've had incredibly rewarding feedback, too, sometimes from quite unexpected directions.

Oh, so the "Creeping Up" rant was actually more pertinent than I thought.

Realize this. The players who are giving you the positive feedback are already down with the entire mode of play. Meaning that there's no reason to creep with these guys. It won't hurt anything to do so, but you could have skipped all the creeping.

Keep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make.

The good news is that you eventually get into a groove and no longer have to discuss it much if at all. In any case, don't overdo it. If it's not interesting to the people discussing, don't force it. You only get good feedback when people want to talk about it. Better no feedback than bad feedback.

It isn't as we haven't been talking about what the game _should_ be about, there's lots of goals - but somehow the dimension of "how is this going to be a cool story" is missing a bit.

This is one area that you can over-discuss for sure. One thing that's critical to avoid is any actual discussion of what might happen in play. "Playing before you play" makes the actual act rather dull when it happens.

The players have always tended to say that they expected their PCs to die horribly.

This should happen, then. But "horribly" just means "more sympathetically." It means that the death should make a statement of some sort strongly. Even if that statement is only one of hopelessness. Which is not the same as a thematically senseless death.

You never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.

Hm, not sure how I could prevent players from making stupid mistakes at times.

You already have. You're playing HQ.

This is one of those difficult concepts. The player is not the character, and in HQ this means that the character can fail, and the player "win." That is, doing "stupid things" in HQ should be encouraged. Rather, the player should be encouraged to do the dramatic thing, no matter what makes sense "tactically." Because he just might win. And if he doesn't, losing in HQ is fun anyhow. There are no bad results for the player.

So HQ makes all decisions good ones. You can't go wrong.


We'll get to PC smackdowns in your reply to me.

Though the vibe I got from the two more Gamist minded players in the group was more of a faintly superior "This is how easy it is to break this system?!" - Only looking at one dimension here, mind you. I don't think either is out to break the game.

Well, this is problematic because it is indicative of a Gamism perspective.

Here's how you alter this. Next time the player gets into a contest, find some ability that he didn't to augment with, and which makes sense to you, and ask him if he wants to augment with it. That is, help him discover more and more augments. Once they see that the idea is to find all the ones that apply, then it'll dawn on them that they're not trying to win. The augmenting is merely about making the character seem cooler in the current situation.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

My point is, rather, that what you need to do is simply move to the ratio that works best for your group.

...

When a contest is one of the other should depend entirely on whether or not the players (including the narrator) feel as players that it should be. For whatever reason.

I got that, thanks.  I'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads).  I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me.  I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction.  In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think.  So thanks for that.  

Let me reiterate that. The reasons for having an extended contest are entirely player reasons. Something about the situation has to say to all of the participants in the game (all, not just the player with the hero in question and the narrator) that it demands special treatment.

Thanks for clarifying, this was excactly what I'd have asked next. :)

Conversely, you could establish a contrast by flashing to a totally non-conflict situation. You know what I'm talking about. In the one scene the hero battles furiously and in the other his buddy relaxes with some light music, a book, and a snifter of brandy. There's a term for this from movies, IIRC. Perhaps Chris would know what it is. Juxtaposition, in any case.

That's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion.  That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)

First, like he says, do discuss what's going on to analyze play, but, whatever you do, don't bring up Forge terminology. Just use plain English. There's nothing worse than theory talk to really gum up the works. And you don't need it at all to establish a clear creative agenda throughout all the players. It's tempting to drop into the shorthand of GNS and the like, but it never works well with non-theorists.

Hell no, I wouldn't.  Two players read here occasionally, and the third and one ex-player have picked up disjointed bits of jargon from one of them, and (quite understandably IMO) hate it. "Those guys who need a Social Contract to game" is a running gag in our group.  

To be quite honest, I have to think hard to explain myself in Forge jargon even on these boards.  The reason I've started using it here is that in my earlier experience, no one seemed to understand quite what I was talking about when I wasn't using GNS terms.  

Generally speaking, I think this article might have something pertinent to say to you: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9812

I'll be checking it out, thanks.

Second, I have to reiterate what Brand said about protagonists and failure. Here's a little exercise. Ask them to name a really cool character who never fails.

Oh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would.   Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.

Again, thanks for tons of cool examples.

I always comment that there's been this running contest through the years about who is the most beat up actor, Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson.

Priceless.  

For the game in question, start with the question for the players, "What has your character lost, because of the evil?" That's right, start them off as having suffered defeat, and lots of it.

Another interesting point that's making me think.  You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs.  In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities.  So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).  

After a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.  

Which goes to show how powerful our shared imagination of this game world is. I wasn't exactly working hard to make the world a hopeless place, but it's coming across that way strongly enough for people to build a contrast to it.  All the players "voted" that way with characters they made at varying points in time, and all went on to play their new PCs as much more hope-inspiring and charismatic than the original ones, which led to some very cool story developments that wouldn't have been likely to happen with the old PCs.  

So frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it.  Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this.  I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".

Heck, maybe that's great anyway:  looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".  

Ask the players if it felt extra cool, when they finally righted the situation. Then ask them how they expect to get that feeling if their characters don't lose something first.

They have answered the first question many times.  I'm afraid I've never asked them the second.

Not that they needed to be asked about no. 1...

First, have a frank discussion about something. How many times did you fudge the dice in D&D so that they'd win? ...

Erm, zero.  I always make all rolls in the open and I never fudge.

Hence, not a good example, although ... hm, let me think:  

I mean, it's no fun if the PCs get dead, is it? Or have to retreat in the final scene to heal up and come back later to take a second stab at it.

A retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round.  Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.

PC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments.  We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.  

That said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.  The astonishing thing is that people kept coming back with big investments in new characters, even though they didn't expect them to live long - but it was beginning to wear on all of us. So, while I didn't want to take the pressure off completely, I ended up giving players limited amounts of Fate Points to turn death into a near-death experience; this basically meant PCs would only die if left behind in enemy hands.  We discussed it and the group agreed to both of it:  they wanted to have some possibilty of death in the game, and they liked the idea of FPs, especially since it wasn't a failsafe no-die mechanism.

So, erm, two things here:  

I suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.  

And isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.

...then ask them if they trust you to make sure that their characters are cool. Because, after all, this is what the fudging was about in the other system, where only success is cool.

Well yes, I suppose that's what my Fate Points were about in the other system.  So your general line of reasoning works for me.

If they trust you, then they have to understand that you, as narrator in HQ have the power to assure that not only do their characters never die in the wrong situations, but that they fail with aplomb. Without altering the system at all.

Very good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.

As Brand points out, it's about making the character look good failing.

I think I have practice in that - it was part of my learning to deal with a group who started out with an average trust investment of near zero.  

Now, that's an oversimplification - what you really want to do is to make sure that occasionally it is the character's "fault". But here what you want to do is highlight any failings that the character has. Maybe he failed to impress the girl because of the fear of spiders that he has on the character sheet. The player took it, so he must be willing to have that be a factor. It makes the character sympathetic again, human.

And it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail.  I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.

Ask them if they thought it was realistic that all of their opponents were always tailored to their ability level?

They weren't.  :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.

Because in D&D that would mean no interesting player conflict to overcome (they'd just lose), and because in losing it would mean that they lost their characters. What fun would that be? In fact, since D&D is about resource management, the players don't encounter "equal" foes hardly ever. Instead they encounter a series of way less powerful foes designed to slowly drain them of those resources.

Hey, DnD isn't that dumb a system! You're talking about traditional dungeon crawling scenarios, but that's not the only kind of play DnD supports. You can set up really cool tactical challenges that don't have to consist in kicking in doors and hacking to death everything that moves.  They usually involve judging how dangerous a given location/terrain/opponent is going to be, and working with the circumstances and resources available to the group to deal with the challenge, granted.  But the four-encounters-then-rest mode isn't the only way to play DnD and we weren't playing it that way.

Ahem.  Here I am defending DnD now? Strange that.

What's really cool about HQ is that you no longer have to worry about this. You can instead concentrate on what's interesting, plausible, realistic, or dramatic as a foe. You can put anything out there, and not worry about the players getting punished.

I don't entirely see yet how I'm going to stop worrying about PCs getting punished. Not all scenarios involve contact with the enemy, but this being a game about a war, many or most do.  In this case, when the PCs lose they'll likely be captured and/or killed by the enemy.  We've had one very tense session involving two PCs escaping and two helping them escape, but we can't do that every other session, it would just become silly.

I know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that.  In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.  

So put anything out there...

I've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.  

In other situations, say, interactions with friendly / neutral NPCs or with other political factions that fight on the same side in the war as the PCs, I've staid away from "likely failure" situations completely, because of the group perception that "Failure Sucks" and because of the various trust issues I was working to overcome.  When things happened that the players likely wouldn't be able to affect, I had it happen off-camera and in ways that made clear that the PCs couldn't have been involved, so it was clear that it wasn't the players' "fault".  

So I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war.  Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape.  Does that make sense?

Yes and I also want to hear if it doesn't.  :-) I'm not pretending I'm the one person in the group who's not caught up in the "Failure Sucks and is Dangerous" paradigm.

Because failing is OK,

Working on that...

and because Hero Points mean that the player gets some control over when they succeed and fail.

We've had a similar mechanism with FPs in the old system, so that part of the transition should hopefully be smooth.

...looking at the setting, have a Night King come along....
...he's just passing through. He doesn't know about the PCs, and has way more important things to do than deal with them. He doesn't know that they're "rebels," but something about them makes him leery. So, lacking time to investigate more closely, he casts a spell on them to "mark" them as potential troublemakers...
...
No matter what the result, the NK moves on to his important business.

Fair enough.  All of this I could have done in DnD, basically.  Why didn't I?  
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.
- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.  
- The changes to the magic system and the dearth of magic items in Midnight as opposed to default DnD meant that players tended to feel deprived of safety and tactical options.

- And one other thing.  When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...".  But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him.  And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen".  Now where's that from?  Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe.  If I did, I'm now scared.  I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't.  Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".  

Rule that a complete defeat does something like taking an arm off of a character, or a leg, or, more metaphysically a "Seared Soul" or something reminiscent of Frodo's injury on Weathertop.

Here's another of my problems.  So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party".  I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.

A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.  

Give them an appropriate flaw to represent it (at an appropriate level, too, like 10W2 - yeah I'm serious). Or kill a follower involved. Or maybe they kill him, in which case now they're really in a heap of trouble, right?

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

Unless I can first convince the players that the game will still be fun with seriously challenged PC, I can't see how I could deliberately use that kind of thing.  To convince them, I have to really believe it myself first, of course. :)

That is, you could have said that the contest was to survive. But you didn't. Instead you did something more plausible.

Of course. We did that anyway.  That's one of the things DnD supports:  you can always decide how to frame the challenge.

Second, they get to see that no matter how bad the result of a contest, even if they go so heroic as to attack an Uber-Bad-Guy it doesn't mean that they lose their characters. Instead, they now have all the more reason to hate the bad guys. They've lost something, and lost it in play (far more potent than losing something in the background).

Except that I don't see a player wanting to keep a seriously challenged PC.  I admit, it's my failing in not seeing clearly enough how to change my own mindset on this, much less theirs.  

And they now see that you're not fudging die rolls - which means that even though this is a major metaplot baddie, that they could have killed it if they'd been prepared correctly. Losing like this actually gives the players some hope.

Yup - which is one reason I've never fudged die rolls.

Six Masteries seems like too much to overcome, but it's not - Josh, a player in my FTF game, nearly defeated a 10W5 resistance recently. Took a ritual with a ton of community support, and getting together all of the best stuff for it, but he had a shot at it. His failure was spectacular.

That's a great example, I'm beginning to see now.  To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.

Ok, that's cool.  I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them.  When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.  

Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)

Lastly, they're in deeper trouble than they were before, meaning that more plot just has to happen. And they have some new goals like dispelling the mark, or regenerating an arm, or finding a dramatic replacement for the follower. The failure gives them something to do, something that the players will want badly.

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players.  If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.  
(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic.  Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped.  There's no reason that can't change when we convert.  I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)  

Good analysis. Yes, don't ever trust that players will think to ask. Make sure that the NPCs tell, whether asked or not. Oh, give the players a chance to ask (makes em feel smart), but then have the NPCs grab the heroes and spill their guts if they're not asked.

LOL thanks.

What's key about this is that, not only do the players have more information to work on, but you can make the NPC demands interesting. Basically they should set up do or don't dillemas that say something about the character.

Examples would be much appreciated.  :)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Ouff, big cross-post.  (Plus distractions from a chain of phone calls unrelated to one another.) Jinx indeed!  

And again, lots from you guys for me to think about.  Work permitting, I'll post replies to tonight's new posts some time tomorrow.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads).  I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me.  I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction.  In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think.  So thanks for that.  

You're welcome. But I really should clarify something. If you ask Scott, whether I actually ask for feedback like this, he'd probably have to tell you that I don't. That is, my rhetoric probably makes my playstyle sound like there's all sorts of metagame chat going on.

In some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?

Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.

Even in IRC this happens. For example, I'll say, "Sounds like an extended contest to me, no?" And some player will type, "I'm having fun tonight." Not a direct answer, but they're acting positively in the context of the question. In a FTF game there'll be smiles, etc. Not everyone will answer, and a tacit response that seems favorable is all you need to go.

If they don't want to do an extended contests, they'll let you know with "Eh, I suppose" or just a frown.

This is all good, because it means that you can ascertain quickly what makes sense. This works because, having played with the group you're getting an idea of what they like from previous times that you've asked. So it gets more obvious to you when to even ask. And the responses can be even more quick and subtle. At full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.

Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.

That's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion.  That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)

Oh, yes, yes. That would rock in play. I only rarely get that artistic, but it's great to go for it.

Oh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would.   Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.

It is just "D&D", or classic gamism. In that mode, character failure is player failure - they didn't play the game well enough. So it makes sense to feel that way. The problem is that people expect that from all RPGs, not understanding that there are other ways to approach them.

Another interesting point that's making me think.  You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs.  In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities.  So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).  

Excellent. This is precisely why I apply HQ to this sort of setting myself. There's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens).  Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.

After a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.  

Excellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?

So frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it.  Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this.  I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".

Heck, maybe that's great anyway:  looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".  

Sounds right to me. Failure is what you learn from. Failure's are inevitable, but it's determination that counts in the long run. Etc, etc.

I mean, to be cliche, haven't you always wanted to fight an impossible battle against incredible odds? Sounds like the perfect thing here. In all of these stories there are moments where the heroes think about hanging it up. The most stirring moments are when they realize that they have to do the right thing. Think Han Solo's return to the Death Star battle. "It's suicide." Think Leia had anything to do with that?

A retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round.  Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.

You're getting the idea. There's a pace that's dramatic. Sure sometimes that involves second shots, even requires it. But you know it when you feel it. Sometimes another shot is just cheap.

PC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments.  We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.  

Of course. But in both of these cases it's the players creating the theme after the fact. What statement did the deaths in question make?

I'm not against PC death, I'm against lame PC deaths. As you say...

That said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.  

I suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.

Heh, actually it's what we call drift. Which is altering the game to match your needs. Which is what fudging is, too, just done on the fly.

Note that both are the right thing to do, Fudging, drifting...you're just trying to get the game you want. Fortunately HQ is going to fit you like a glove, I think.

And isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.

I think you're right. The more I read, the more I think your group is far past ready for HQ.

I think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.

Very good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.

Good, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.

And it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail.  I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.

Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.

BTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.

They weren't.  :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.

The point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.

Hey, DnD isn't that dumb a system!

Indeed. But even in a single battle set up, the question isn't whether you can survive round one, it's whether you can survive round ten. The point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.

I know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that.  In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.  

This is a function of the fact that fighting is where the mechanical focus of D&D lies. It simply is the most interesting thing to do in D&D. Not so in HQ, where all conflict is equal.

That all said, there's nothing wrong with fighting. Fight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?

For example, if there's a particular fight at the gate of a keep, the contest is really about getting inside, I'll bet. So what does failure mean? They don't get inside. Next fight they're trying to get past the guards of a magic gem. Failure is getting repelled. Next fight is to escape along the rout planned. Failure is having to go the long way back.

Note that these failures are rather dull, and don't follow the "Failure means more conflict" rule. In the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.

Three battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long. Here's my handy-dandy little mnemonic device, "There are no combats in HQ, only fights." "Combat" is the problem here, in that you're used to conflicts involving arms meaning only certain possible goals and outcomes as they do in all RPGs. Don't do combats to see who dies, have fights as a means to accomplish other stuff.

Consider this. 99% of all HQ contests end in something other than a complete defeat. Meaning that that the conditions that would even allow PC death (don't make it mandatory, tho), by the rules, are incredibly rare. So you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.

If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.

I've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.  

Well, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.

IOW, this is precisely the same in both games, in terms of player response. Thing is, in HQ other plans can with the day. Combat does not have a privileged place, and a defeat in some other arena can suffice as well or better.

So I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war.  Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape.  Does that make sense?

Well, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.

Fair enough.  All of this I could have done in DnD, basically.  Why didn't I?  
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.

This is no longer true, however, right?

- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.  

Ooh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.

It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.

Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.

- And one other thing.  When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...".  But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him.  And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen".  Now where's that from?  Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe.  If I did, I'm now scared.  I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't.  Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".  

First, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.

Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide. Drama is about placing things in jeopardy, not about percent chance to fail. Put your characters in the line of the worst the world has to offer. And if it all works out, you'll get something that has some of he coolness of the Lord of the Rings in terms of drama. Have them only bump into more orcs and trolls, and risk it becoming dull, dull, dull.

Doesn't have to be a Night King, make it a dragon. Or whatever seems plausible to you. All I'm saying is that confronting Izrador hissownself isn't out of the question. It's your game world.

Here's another of my problems.  So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party".  I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.

A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.

You're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same, and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.

Yeah, it's a different mindset.

No magic in the game that allows regrowth of limbs? No magical prosthetics? The character is good for nothing else? What if he's the wizard (well, what passes in Midnight)? Will the loss of a leg really hamper him? What if he's the merchant?

What, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.

Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?

In any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.

Of course. We did that anyway.  That's one of the things DnD supports:  you can always decide how to frame the challenge.

Well, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.

In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?

That's a great example, I'm beginning to see now.  To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.

Right, remember in the example that the NK only wants to mark them originally, since he doesn't know who they are. Again, it's a question of the goals for the contest.

Ok, that's cool.  I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them.  When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.  

Definitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.

But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust. Instead, if you give them the choice, they'll run away from more powerful stuff. You want one of the PCs to go nuts and attack a Night King. That's drama. You want all the other PCs to be pissed about it. But the players secretly loving it. Knowing that no matter what the PC does, the players won't be punished.

Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.

Cripes, that's a whole nother post. Actually I should link you to one of the threads where I've already explained this...

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)

Definitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"

Or does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players.  If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.

(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic.  Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped.  There's no reason that can't change when we convert.  I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)  

Again, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.

Examples would be much appreciated.  :)

That's a whole 'nother post as well. Check out "Bangs" under Sorcerer. Or start the thread, and I'll get to it when my typing fingers have recuperated.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

I'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads).  I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me.  I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction.  In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think.  So thanks for that.  

You're welcome. But I really should clarify something. If you ask Scott, whether I actually ask for feedback like this, he'd probably have to tell you that I don't. That is, my rhetoric probably makes my playstyle sound like there's all sorts of metagame chat going on.

In some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?

Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.

Even in IRC this happens. For example, I'll say, "Sounds like an extended contest to me, no?" And some player will type, "I'm having fun tonight." Not a direct answer, but they're acting positively in the context of the question. In a FTF game there'll be smiles, etc. Not everyone will answer, and a tacit response that seems favorable is all you need to go.

If they don't want to do an extended contests, they'll let you know with "Eh, I suppose" or just a frown.

This is all good, because it means that you can ascertain quickly what makes sense. This works because, having played with the group you're getting an idea of what they like from previous times that you've asked. So it gets more obvious to you when to even ask. And the responses can be even more quick and subtle. At full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.

Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.

That's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion.  That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)

Oh, yes, yes. That would rock in play. I only rarely get that artistic, but it's great to go for it.

Oh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would.   Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.

It is just "D&D", or classic gamism. In that mode, character failure is player failure - they didn't play the game well enough. So it makes sense to feel that way. The problem is that people expect that from all RPGs, not understanding that there are other ways to approach them.

Another interesting point that's making me think.  You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs.  In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities.  So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).  

Excellent. This is precisely why I apply HQ to this sort of setting myself. There's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens).  Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.

After a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.  

Excellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?

So frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it.  Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this.  I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".

Heck, maybe that's great anyway:  looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".  

Sounds right to me. Failure is what you learn from. Failure's are inevitable, but it's determination that counts in the long run. Etc, etc.

I mean, to be cliche, haven't you always wanted to fight an impossible battle against incredible odds? Sounds like the perfect thing here. In all of these stories there are moments where the heroes think about hanging it up. The most stirring moments are when they realize that they have to do the right thing. Think Han Solo's return to the Death Star battle. "It's suicide." Think Leia had anything to do with that?

A retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round.  Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.

You're getting the idea. There's a pace that's dramatic. Sure sometimes that involves second shots, even requires it. But you know it when you feel it. Sometimes another shot is just cheap.

PC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments.  We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.  

Of course. But in both of these cases it's the players creating the theme after the fact. What statement did the deaths in question make?

I'm not against PC death, I'm against lame PC deaths. As you say...

That said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.  

I suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.

Heh, actually it's what we call drift. Which is altering the game to match your needs. Which is what fudging is, too, just done on the fly.

Note that both are the right thing to do, Fudging, drifting...you're just trying to get the game you want. Fortunately HQ is going to fit you like a glove, I think.

And isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.

I think you're right. The more I read, the more I think your group is far past ready for HQ.

I think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.

Very good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.

Good, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.

And it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail.  I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.

Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.

BTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.

They weren't.  :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.

The point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.

Hey, DnD isn't that dumb a system!

Indeed. But even in a single battle set up, the question isn't whether you can survive round one, it's whether you can survive round ten. The point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.

I know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that.  In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.  

This is a function of the fact that fighting is where the mechanical focus of D&D lies. It simply is the most interesting thing to do in D&D. Not so in HQ, where all conflict is equal.

That all said, there's nothing wrong with fighting. Fight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?

For example, if there's a particular fight at the gate of a keep, the contest is really about getting inside, I'll bet. So what does failure mean? They don't get inside. Next fight they're trying to get past the guards of a magic gem. Failure is getting repelled. Next fight is to escape along the rout planned. Failure is having to go the long way back.

Note that these failures are rather dull, and don't follow the "Failure means more conflict" rule. In the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.

Three battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long. Here's my handy-dandy little mnemonic device, "There are no combats in HQ, only fights." "Combat" is the problem here, in that you're used to conflicts involving arms meaning only certain possible goals and outcomes as they do in all RPGs. Don't do combats to see who dies, have fights as a means to accomplish other stuff.

Consider this. 99% of all HQ contests end in something other than a complete defeat. Meaning that that the conditions that would even allow PC death (don't make it mandatory, tho), by the rules, are incredibly rare. So you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.

If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.

I've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.  

Well, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.

IOW, this is precisely the same in both games, in terms of player response. Thing is, in HQ other plans can with the day. Combat does not have a privileged place, and a defeat in some other arena can suffice as well or better.

So I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war.  Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape.  Does that make sense?

Well, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.

Fair enough.  All of this I could have done in DnD, basically.  Why didn't I?  
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.

This is no longer true, however, right?

- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.  

Ooh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.

It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.

Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.

- And one other thing.  When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...".  But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him.  And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen".  Now where's that from?  Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe.  If I did, I'm now scared.  I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't.  Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".  

First, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.

Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide. Drama is about placing things in jeopardy, not about percent chance to fail. Put your characters in the line of the worst the world has to offer. And if it all works out, you'll get something that has some of he coolness of the Lord of the Rings in terms of drama. Have them only bump into more orcs and trolls, and risk it becoming dull, dull, dull.

Doesn't have to be a Night King, make it a dragon. Or whatever seems plausible to you. All I'm saying is that confronting Izrador hissownself isn't out of the question. It's your game world.

Here's another of my problems.  So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party".  I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.

A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.

You're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same, and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.

Yeah, it's a different mindset.

No magic in the game that allows regrowth of limbs? No magical prosthetics? The character is good for nothing else? What if he's the wizard (well, what passes in Midnight)? Will the loss of a leg really hamper him? What if he's the merchant?

What, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.

Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?

In any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.

Of course. We did that anyway.  That's one of the things DnD supports:  you can always decide how to frame the challenge.

Well, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.

In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?

That's a great example, I'm beginning to see now.  To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.

Right, remember in the example that the NK only wants to mark them originally, since he doesn't know who they are. Again, it's a question of the goals for the contest.

Ok, that's cool.  I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them.  When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.  

Definitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.

But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust. Instead, if you give them the choice, they'll run away from more powerful stuff. You want one of the PCs to go nuts and attack a Night King. That's drama. You want all the other PCs to be pissed about it. But the players secretly loving it. Knowing that no matter what the PC does, the players won't be punished.

Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.

Cripes, that's a whole nother post. Actually I should link you to one of the threads where I've already explained this...

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)

Definitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"

Or does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players.  If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.

(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic.  Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped.  There's no reason that can't change when we convert.  I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)  

Again, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.

Examples would be much appreciated.  :)

That's a whole 'nother post as well. Check out "Bangs" under Sorcerer. Or start the thread, and I'll get to it when my typing fingers have recuperated.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

I'm going to tentatively suggest that this is, once again, an outgrowth of D&D gamist play. Even the rhetoric of the setup and statement has a degree of goal-oriented  play assumption behind it, i.e. "the bad decisions" almost certainly being tactical decisions made for reasons of misunderstanding or misestimating the nature of the conflict/opposition and the paths needed to achieve victory.

No reason to be tentative.  In some scenarios we were playing a very Gamist game.  :)  And yup, I was mostly thinking of tactical decisions here, but not only.  

Example 1 - linear scenario set up as a Gamist challenge:

The group of PCs is on a mission in orc-controlled territory to contact a resistance band and gain various stuff from them that will help them blow up an evil temple.

The group arrives at the village to find the villagers being terrorised by a small bunch of orcs.  They have recently acquired horses, which make them both more mobile and a lot more effective in a fight.  They count the enemy and find them well within their capacity, smile sweetly, charge in and hack all the orcs to bits.  Easy victory, players elated.

It turns out that the resistance band the PCs are looking for has been ambushed by the same orcs plus a bunch of reinforcements, a Legate and Channeler the previous day.  The PCs track the Legate and his troops back to a lonely mansion.  The players decide to simply charge in and kill everything, this time without so much as stopping to count the enemy, much less scout ahead.  Defeat follows.

Example 2 - not-so-linear setup:  

Two PCs travel several millennia back to the Second Age (or more specifically, to a dream echo of it), to the court of a Sarcosan Prince. To people of the Second Age they appear as local officers (NPC backgrounds and motivations prepped by me, but the players use their normal PC char sheets).  There's a cast of NPCs to interact with, including an undercover Legate trying to worm his way into a position at the Court, and another time/dream-traveller and potential ally, and more.  

Now we've done scenarios like this before, the players are familiar with the pattern and are ok with me providing NPC "shells".  This time around though, things don't work out.  One player "turtles" on me and insists on sitting in the barracks kitchens and not doing anything:  "I eat and wait for evening." (He didn't have plans for the evening.  I asked.)  The other player follows his cue. They keep whispering to each other about everybody they see and behave so suspiciously that when a murder attempt happens, all fingers are pointed at them.  

I ended the session with the PCs cornered and a bunch of guards coming for them - at this point the players were getting ready to fight although they hadn't a prayer of fighting their way out;  and I needed to think about what I'd do if they did that. I didn't want to kill the PCs, but killing featured so big in the game at the time that it completely dominated my thinking. (It still does to some extent.)

In hindsight I can see how in this scenario I should have done things differently.  I should have thrown bangs at them a lot more violently, I should also have had a much more flexible mindset about consequences and drama.  (I should also perhaps understood a player-v-player tension that first surfaced in this scenario.)  Fact is, I didn't;  so the way things played out, the PCs got into trouble through the players' decision to refuse to act.  And the players didn't enjoy the session much.

When you get into a Nar/SIS/HQ style game this has the propensity to up and vanish.

That's what I'm hoping.  I'm just trying to work out what I can do to help the transition - amongst other things, by changing my own mindset, with which you people are helping me a lot in this thread.

Partly this is due to the system. Even a "bad plan" can come off a success due to augmentation and HP usage, and even the best plan can go all to crap if you roll a 20. D&D assumes a certain resource allocation mode of play, HQ doesn't, and so a lot of the bad decisions around system control and step-on-up style threat assessment simply ceases to be relevant.

I kinda see your point;  although I'm thinking that the players' decisions in both examples I've described above was about something other than resource allocation.  

In HQ, otoh, a confrontation with a Night King is not going to kill the PCs, and may actually give them more drama and story potential, and so isn't inherently a bad decision at all. Similarly, a group of 1st level characters raiding the Orc stronghold with bad plans in D&D may be a death sentence, but in HQ its just going to result in another challenge to overcome and more drama.

Yes, yes. Slowly but steadily I'm beginning to see what the two of you are driving at. I read the words clearly the first time round, but that particular paradigm takes a lot of time to shift in my head.  

The game ...
... starts to be about what the players want to push and what the characters do with their personal choices.

There's so much potential for player power in this.  We'll just be able to branch out more and be creative, rather than think about winning all the time.  

Also, there are very few situations in HQ in which there is a real no win situation on its face. I've had players overcome vast odds with lucky rolls, lots of augments, and good tactics. (The tactics, btw, are things like you talked about before – real tactics rather than the resource allocation tactics of D&D.) You may toss your Night King 10m6 at the PCs and find them kicking his ass – I know I have.

Thanks for reassurance, both about the vast odds and the tactics.


Oh damn, and now I have to go.  Hopefully back later tonight!

[Brand_Robins]

Example 1 - linear scenario set up as a Gamist challenge:

This example is exactly what I was talking about. Now in HQ they still might lose if they charge the Legate willy-nilly, but losing won't be such a horrible thing. It won't get them dead, and may not even blow their mission -- it'll just give them more personal involvement, likely from being capture and escaping while finding more information, or something similar. (Once the players learn to trust it, that is.)

For this one I can't but help think of the newest Zorro movie. In said movie Zorro gets captured at least twice, and in both cases the capture is essential to the plot. If he hadn't underestimated the Don, and if he hadn't done a tactically dumb move when he tried to reclaim his daughter, the movie wouldn't have had nearly so much punch.

Example 2 - not-so-linear setup:

Yea, that's not a tactical problem, it's a player buy-in problem.

One thing I will note is that some of this won't get easier with HQ. Because players are bought into their own PCs so much more (generally), giving them NPC shells may remove some of the cool for the group. There are ways around it (which you probably know many of already, being experienced at this kind of thing) -- but generally you'll want to let the players keep focus on their coolfunthing. Whether that's from linking the flashback situation to the current world, or giving the NPC a very similar conflict, without a good tie and bangs that keep the theme it can be tough.

Plus, players are screwed up. Freaks go and turtle on you sometimes for no reason at all.....

;)

I kinda see your point;  although I'm thinking that the players' decisions in both examples I've described above was about something other than resource allocation

In the second it certainly was. That was about a lot of things, not all of which I can analyze from your short description, but none of them were outright resource allocation.

Yes, yes. Slowly but steadily I'm beginning to see what the two of you are driving at. I read the words clearly the first time round, but that particular paradigm takes a lot of time to shift in my head.  

Trust me, I get this. One of the reasons why I'm always so keen to talk about HQ is because I too am still learning. I started playing D&D when I was 5 and I'm now 30. Between there I've had so many dysfunctional experiences, and so many good ones that were in other modes of play, that getting my head around this stuff is often a challange.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Ouff - back again.  I've finally realised what makes me take so long to post replies to this thread:  half the time I write something, then look at it and think, "Wait a minute, there's something here, think again..." And I do. And often end up writing something else because some tiny thing has just clicked that hadn't before.  

Oh, so the "Creeping Up" rant was actually more pertinent than I thought.

Realize this. The players who are giving you the positive feedback are already down with the entire mode of play. Meaning that there's no reason to creep with these guys. It won't hurt anything to do so, but you could have skipped all the creeping.

You're referring to your Sneaking up on Mode thread that you linked above, yes? Again, very useful to me.  I agree with you that sneaking up on players isn't a good idea - being upfront is much better.  

I wasn't, but I didn't actually intentionally sneak up on my players;  it was more that mode was sneaking up on me.  

When I started this Midnight game I hadn't even heard of GNS.  The way I had run games in the past (with little experience as a player and none that was really satisfying), I just did what I felt I wanted and/or "had to", without little guidance or skill.  I'd only just stopped feeling horribly inferior to GMs who were boasting about their "cool pre-planned story arcs" - in my games, the story would always head its own way; but I'd realised that those other GMs were pushing "their" story through by something called "railroading" and I didn't want to do that, I just couldn't see why that would be fun.  

I'd had some satisfying play experience with this new group in the other GM's high-level DnD game - pure Gamist challenge.  When I started the Midnight game, I tried to imitate that.  It worked fine for a while, only for me something was lacking.  Without knowing what I was doing, I dropped occasional "roleplaying" opportunities in, some players jumped at them, others didn't.  

This is one area that you can over-discuss for sure. One thing that's critical to avoid is any actual discussion of what might happen in play. "Playing before you play" makes the actual act rather dull when it happens.

Agreed.  I did a lot of "playing before play" on my own every time I prepped something and had to wrestle my vision of things into the DnD ruleset, which resisted heroically every time.  
So what class do I make this NPC?  How could this kind of personality ever come to be in a DnD class environment?  Couldn't?  Then how about I make her an Aristocrat/Expert and maybe handwave a house-ruled class and then... would she work like that?  Nope.  So... [gnashes teeth]

It was not fun.  

The one time we had a kind of discussion of "play before play" in the group happened after the first example of "bad decisions" I've posted in my earlier reply to Brand.  For the upcoming session, I had two PCs prisoners, two PCs on the run, with their players hesitantly deciding to sneak back to take out the Legate anyway.   I talked to the two players of the captive PCs about what kind of scenes they saw their PC in.  I got only uncomfortable silences from both of them, until I managed to work out that I (learning by doing, sorry 'bout that) wasn't asking the right questions.  

Fortunately we managed to fix that and ended up with material for an extremely focussed and tense session.  

You never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.

If I do that it'll be a breakaway from some pretty deeply established traditions in our game - ones that I haven't necessarily made.  The players have created them as much as I did, if not more:  by always expecting the enemy to slaughter everyone, and by slaughtering everyone in their turn.  I've seen them take a prisoner only once, and then only because they knew he was dangerous and could likely kill another PC before they could take him out, so they got him to surrender.  

This is one of those difficult concepts. The player is not the character, and in HQ this means that the character can fail, and the player "win." That is, doing "stupid things" in HQ should be encouraged. Rather, the player should be encouraged to do the dramatic thing, no matter what makes sense "tactically." Because he just might win. And if he doesn't, losing in HQ is fun anyhow. There are no bad results for the player.  So HQ makes all decisions good ones. You can't go wrong.

Not unless the GM creates the bad results, anyway.  I'm not clear yet about how I'll make decisions and how much (and how) to involve players in the decision about Consequences of defeat - no big deal when the Consequences are small, but scary (to me currently) when we're talking a Night King's Mark from your example.

Here's how you alter this. Next time the player gets into a contest, find some ability that he didn't to augment with, and which makes sense to you, and ask him if he wants to augment with it. That is, help him discover more and more augments. Once they see that the idea is to find all the ones that apply, then it'll dawn on them that they're not trying to win. The augmenting is merely about making the character seem cooler in the current situation.

Yes, exactly.  Of course.  How could I not see this... If we also manage to narrate any unusual and cool use of augments, this might do the trick.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

In some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?

Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.

I can follow you here for FTF games at least ("face-to-face", yes?).  I've found that I need to explain stuff expressly mostly when I'm first trying to build trust, to show players how I think and that I try to be fair.  The same is probably true for our change to HQ. It's not a new group, I'm not a new GM to them anymore, but it's a new system and to some extent a new style.  Which is going to be all the more bewildering because we'll be continuing with a campaign that has already gone on for almost a year.  (So here, too, your Sneaking Up thread is relevant I think.)

At full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.

Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.

Ok, next time I have a strong dissenter on something I'll work to limit the time it takes away from our game to twenty seconds.  Although I don't think I'm as bad as to let people rant for ten minutes.  Not even our resident rules-lawyer in DnD.  :)  

There's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens).  Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.

I do hope so!  The strong themes were what first inspired me about Midnight.  I think that as a group we've done a pretty good job of bringing out a theme in our game - considering we were playing DnD, a system that actively gets in the way of theme I feel.  

Excellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?

Player #1's PC has lots of relationships, both play and pre-play. No problems here.  

Player #2's PC has a few relationships gained in play, but zero background and no goals that would link him to his homeland.  This is something the player always does:  he'll play a race different from everyone else, but then does everything he can in play to pretend his race isn't different at all.  He appears to hate for play to happen in his PCs' homeland.  This PC's goal is to "assist a human leader to grow into her or his power because he believes that humans are worth it and realises elves are a dying race anyway".  

Player #3's PC is new (played one session I think) and as yet has relationships only to NPCs in an earlier (dream-)Age of the world (player's idea).  I don't know yet what his motivation is to operate in the Fourth Age, if any.

I think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.

Erm...
Good point.  

There's some logic glitch there.  Hm, maybe we've more often been able to make PC deaths mean something than turn other defeats into cool outcomes?  Nope, not true either.  Nevertheless, it's about meaningfulness.  There's a big determination on payers' part to sacrifice PCs for a good reason.  They still fear failure as such though.  I've spent countless hours waiting through players' tactical planning and talking through all available and not-so-available options before tackling a difficult challenge.  Partly that was due to one player's preference for doing just that over actually playing, but he couldn't have talked them into it if Failure wasn't such a big Boo word in my game.  

Good, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.

I think that's true, yes.  That and generally resisting change (which is what humans do), and for some, being rather set in their ways.

Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.

Yes, isn't it.  And it's not even something you did "to" yourself, it's more that _you_ introduced a cool element into the scene by having Fear Spiders on the char sheet.  Because (in the kind of game I'm dreaming of) spiders likely wouldn't put in an appearance unless someone had a Fear Spiders trait.

BTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.

As-high-as-they-w-w-w-wwant? [gasps]

I'd read the first half of that bit of advice from you in some other thread and liked it a lot.  I wasn't aware that you also let them choose how high they want to go. That's very nifty indeed - and yet another bit chipped away from that Gamist rock of players-want-power-GM-denies-power.

I'm learning so much here. (Ok, I should stop saying that over and over.  It just keeps amazing me, is all.)

The point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.

Ah ok. I'm getting the hang of this slowly.  So you're saying that in HQ I can throw in stuff that completely overpowers the PCs without disempowering the players.  That as long as the players trust me I can go a lot farther than I could before - always provided that the outcome leads over into some new dramatic coolness and makes the game deeper and more fun than before.  

Yes?

The point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.

I follow you on the bit about Hit Points and I much prefer Action Point bids already, even though my first attempt at running an Extended Contest wasn't so brilliant;  but what do mean by saying Action Points give plot immunity? By avoiding accidental PC death?


This post is growing out of proportion.  I'll make another reply to the rest of your post.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Fight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?

Oh, right! Narrating a defeat is about what happens to the goal the PCs were fighting for at the time, not so much to the PCs and their opponents in the fight.  What happens to the PCs and their opponents us expressed as a Consequence.  Yes? Or sorta?

In the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.

We've done that in the past.  We called it "PCs live with the consequences of their actions", but "Failure breeds new conflict and drama" is a much better way to express it - or at least it helps me more to come up with good ways to handle PC defeat.  

Three battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long.

Can you do it in a game in which the PCs always kill everyone they can? Although maybe in our game that will change now that Relationships are going to become that much more relevant...  

So you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.

If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.

I realise that and I'm trying.  I'm glad you suggested that mutilating PCs might be acceptable - it has made me realise how many perceived "limits" on players' parts I respect.  I still think respecting limits is a very important thing, but maybe I can start pushing my own limits a bit here.  

Well, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.

And if that isn't highly tactical, I don't know what is.

Well, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.

Oh cool.  So I can basically stop worrying?  You know, one thing DnD has done is make me slightly paranoid about doing things to characters, for fear of spoiling players' fun.  

Ooh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.

It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.

Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.

They were between 6th and 8th level, i.e. low mid-levels in DnD.  

I'm not sure how much Advanced Experience I should give them.  I'm thinking maybe I'll give them a total of 3 points to spend on keywords (AE by the book), and maybe 30 points to spend on abilities but without the "no more than 10 per ability" cap from the book.  Does that look like it'll make characters who are distinctly heroic and better than most people in their larger area? The PCs I generated for our playtest had 30 points and no keyword increases and they were scary monsters...

The slight problem with DnD players is, if they are made too powerful they will likely feel cheated.  If they aren't powerful enough I can give out more Hero Points more quickly or if it's too bad, let them make additional one-time adjustments.  OTOH I also don't want to keep them "small" and hungering for advancement like in DnD, that's one feature of that system I've always hated.  


On a side note, I'm also meaning to take another bit of earlier Mike Holmes advice :) and offer some Relationships to NPCs for free (and of course other double-edged abilities or "flaws").

First, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.

Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide.

Yes, I'm seeing it now I think.  I can get rid of that "gulf of power" mindset DnD fosters.  In DnD, a character's power pretty much explodes with advancement through the levels, so having Night Kings ride through the woods on their own would completely shatter disbelief.  In HQ, power disparities are much less pronounced, or at least the chances of winning anyway (with cool and creative tactics) are a lot better.  

You're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same, and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.

Yeah, it's a different mindset.

Only -5 for losing an arm? Wow, that _is_ cool.  

Will the loss of a leg really hamper him?

Seeing that running away and riding very fast are core to the group's current standard tactics, yes.  Although again, if I make it only -5 to riding...  Heh, it might even jolt the group out of their entrenched tactics into trying something new.  

What, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...

Up to now no one has wanted to make up any kind of character that had any perceivable ties to the Shadow, not even previously or potentially.  They all claim they don't want to have to deal with possible mistrust from the other PCs.  While this argument in itself is pretty lame, I'm thinking that if they all agree, there must be some theme in it they want in the game.  

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.

Hm, they've trusted me with creating "NPC hosts" for them for the dream/time travel scenarios, and most of the players even took it in their stride when I threw them into the first of them without explanation and simply had them play the NPCs ... until one PC's true memories were stirred by something emotionally difficult and she "awoke" to who she really was. Of course none of that was permanent, or "suitably permanent"...

Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?

You know what this makes me think?  Your game sounds cool.  :-)

In any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.

Broken bones, yay!  I now can use broken bones!  And cut off arms and legs and poke out eyes! And inflict horrible curses and grant staggering boons.  

Nah, I'm not worried anymore.  I'm staring in wonder at new vistas opening up.  This game is about to grow so much bigger.  


Btw, I haven't quite got yet why people around here say that it's the players who are "on the losing side of Gamism".  I've always felt on the losing side as the GM, bending over backwards to provide a "fun challenge" without breaking anything - don't break anyone's character, don't take their stuff away without very good reason, don't break the game by allowing them too many benefits ...

Well, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.

In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?

So true.  Another bending-over-backwards situation:  how do I make sure that even though the players may find smart ways around many fights, they will still find a meaningful fight in the end?  

In HQ, I only have to make sure I set up the environment so that they can find satisfying stuff, and throw satisfying stuff at them.  

Definitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.

But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust.

Both points taken, about the timing (which I'm not going to take literally, no fear - I think I'll know how to time it) and about the stomping.  

Definitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"

That's pretty much what I was thinking I'd do (and did for our playtest session, on a small scale - no Izzy in that one, I'm afraid).  

Or does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)

Hm, not sure, I don't remember stats for big baddies from Scripty's text.  There were sample stats for Orc Troopers IIRC.  (I may misremember - I'm pretty much using my own keywords and magic rules by now, so it's a while since I've looked at his work.)

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players.  If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.

Will do.  

Again, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.

[slaps forehead many times] I'm such an idiot.  One of the major local NPCs (the guy who some players won't trust because his intel wasn't always perfectly accurate) has a mithril leg!  One with a working knee joint.  (Yes, it has entered play.)  D'oh.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Now in HQ they still might lose if they charge the Legate willy-nilly, but losing won't be such a horrible thing. It won't get them dead, and may not even blow their mission -- it'll just give them more personal involvement, likely from being capture and escaping while finding more information, or something similar.

That's exactly how the following session played out.  Except that one PC died in the event, tying down the Legate in stubborn resistance talk while the others were busy picking off lone orc guards and getting a rescue under way.  The survivors named their band after her.

(Once the players learn to trust it, that is.)

Well, one player at least trusted me enough to have his PC surrender, hoping to save the life of another PC who was wounded and unconscious.  

You know, the more I read from you guys, the more I wonder whether I've been drifting the game (or rather, sitting on a game that was drifting without me qute uinderstanding what was going on) much farther than I thought when I started this thread.  Either that, or you two see DnD in a rather more limited and boring niche than it has to be in.  

Example 2 - not-so-linear setup:

One thing I will note is that some of this won't get easier with HQ.

Because players are bought into their own PCs so much more (generally), giving them NPC shells may remove some of the cool for the group. There are ways around it (which you probably know many of already, being experienced at this kind of thing) -- but generally you'll want to let the players keep focus on their coolfunthing. Whether that's from linking the flashback situation to the current world, or giving the NPC a very similar conflict, without a good tie and bangs that keep the theme it can be tough.

Yup, I've seen that already.  I haven't worked out a good solution, it may be that dream travel will fade into the background a bit if the PCs grow more tied into dramatic stuff in their own time;  or PCs may learn how to return to previous time-dreams to use their Relationships to NPCs there&then;  or perhaps a mix of both, and other stuff I haven't thought of yet.  

Plus, players are screwed up. Freaks go and turtle on you sometimes for no reason at all.....
;)

LOL :) And wouldn't we all be much better off without players...

(The turtle has since left our group btw, and after he did he finally talked to me more openly, so now I think I understand at least some of his reasons. But that's a different story.)

Trust me, I get this. One of the reasons why I'm always so keen to talk about HQ is because I too am still learning. I started playing D&D when I was 5 and I'm now 30. Between there I've had so many dysfunctional experiences, and so many good ones that were in other modes of play, that getting my head around this stuff is often a challange.

:) That's a comfort. Reading the Forge kinda makes me feel sometimes I must be an odd one, what with all the GM abuse and dysfunction I've seen (and not walked out on soon enough). Thanks for keeping coming back and posting, I'm learning whole lots from this thread.

[Brand_Robins]

You know, the more I read from you guys, the more I wonder whether I've been drifting the game (or rather, sitting on a game that was drifting without me qute uinderstanding what was going on) much farther than I thought when I started this thread.  Either that, or you two see DnD in a rather more limited and boring niche than it has to be in.

You probably have been drifiting it, as most D&D games are drifted to one degree or another -- just because of the number of people playing the game.

As for how I see D&D, I think I probably come off harsher in this thread than is actually refelctive of my feelings about the game. D&D is very good at what it does, and is also good at being drifted to do other things. It isn't really great at doing things outside of it's focus, but then what tool is?

The reason I keep hammering it in this thread isn't even so much because it's D&D as it is because the "D&D mindset" encapsulates something about the way that RPGs are traditionally seen as inherently being that isn't true at all.  People who've played one RPG for most of their RPing history get ideas about what RPGs are that come out of that game. For D&D players there are a pretty solid set of assumptions that get made, and reinforced, through years of play.
 

That's a comfort. Reading the Forge kinda makes me feel sometimes I must be an odd one, what with all the GM abuse and dysfunction I've seen (and not walked out on soon enough).

Jeppers Mr. Wilson, that just isn't so.  If you dig back in the forums you'll find some of Scripty's horror stories. Mine I don't even dare post because no one who read them would be able to sleep for a week afterwards.